rinse and repeat
s.coups/nayeon
3199w, g
nayeon accidentally floods the laundry room. seungcheol really needs to do laundry.
a/n: written for kisoap !
There are some days where Nayeon recalls with astonishing clarity all the times she had refused help on the basis of being ‘grown up’. Being able to climb the jungle gym by herself when she was 5… being able to tie her own shoelaces when she was 7… being able to carry a 5kg bag of rice when she was 10… in not one of those instances can Nayeon remember being able to complete any of those tasks without help. She surveys the water lapping over the tops of her sandals and sighs for the tenth time since entering the laundry. In this instance she really is a grown-up - a fledgling 19 year old maybe but still grown-up nonetheless - and grown-ups really should know to close the washing machine lid properly before settling down on the dryer to watch Spirited Away on her phone for the twentieth time. Grown-ups should really know how to wash their clothes without help.
“It’s not my fault I’ve never used front loader machines before,” she grumbles to herself as she resumes her place on top of the dryer to escape the flood. The water ripples in the sunlight streaming through the window, and Nayeon thinks that this isn’t so bad, being able to create a mini ocean for herself when she’s so far from the coast. It’s actually a little calming when she forgets that she’ll have to find a way to clean this all up in a bit.
The door swings open without warning and Nayeon leaps from the dryer in a moment of panic, forgetting that there is currently an ocean crawling across the laundry room floor and thoroughly soaking her sandals. The water seizes the opportunity to escape and flows out into the corridor, gushing over the tops of the newcomer’s flip-flop-clad feet. Nayeon winces.
“Whoa,” says the boy standing in the doorway, his arms wrapped around the laundry basket piled high with clothes. “What the hell happened here?” He takes a step into the room, and his soaked flip-flops squelch on the damp floor - the quintessential sound of summer, Nayeon thinks. She thinks a little of frozen watermelon and grape ice cream and has a sudden longing to escape this stuffy dormitory with its stupid front loading machines. Get on a bus and head down to the coast, just for a day.
“Was it like this when you got here?” The boy sets his basket on the dryer and crouches down in front of the washing machine. “Whose clothes are these?” He reaches into the washing machine and pulls out a bright yellow bra. Nayeon screams inwardly and snatches it out of his hands.
“It was me, I flooded the laundry room, okay?” she throws her arms out, remembers that she’s holding a bra in one hand, and shoves her hands back behind her. “I’ve never used front loader machines and I didn’t know the lid could actually open in the middle of washing and I wasn’t watching it because I have better things to do than watch my clothes spin round and round in a dumb machine that can’t even keep itself closed and why are you still taking out my clothes?”
The boy looks up at her. He has eyes that look as though they’re still sprinkled with stardust, and she thinks she could build a city on his eye bags. “Because I need to do my laundry,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. He pulls out the last of her damp clothes and dumps it into her laundry basket on top of the machine.
“You could use the other one,” she points out, trying to keep from rolling her eyes.
He looks at her with a lopsided grin that just makes him look sleepier. “The other one’s been broken for weeks.” His flip flops squelch against the floor again as he gets to his feet and drags his own basket over. “Everyone knows it. Are you new here or something?”
“Yes…” Nayeon says to herself as he throws his clothes in without bothering to straighten them out or untangle them. He doesn’t seem to hear her. Nayeon wonders if a whole t-shirt gets cleaned when one half is twisted around a pant leg. Do the wrapped up parts stay dirty? She has sudden visions of pulling a white t-shirt out of the washer to find dirt marks still streaked across it. She shudders slightly.
He straightens and leans against the machine as it whirs to life. For a full minute no one says anything, and as Nayeon stares at her feet in her soaked sandals she wonders if he’s looking at her. What if he is? Should she look back? She wiggles her toes and risks a glance at him. He’s crouched down in front of the machine, watching his clothes tumble around through the glass. She furrows her eyebrows slightly, wonders if all guys are total opposites of her.
“What are you still doing here?” he says into the silence without tearing his gaze away from his clothes.
“Well I still have to clean up the place, don’t I?” she shoots back.
He turns to her then, that easy lopsided grin on his face again. “I meant what are you doing here in the dorms when it’s summer holidays? Shouldn’t you be back home with your family like everyone else?”
“Oh,” she tries to keep from blushing and fails miserably. She can blame it on how warm the room is though. “My parents went to see my sister in the US so I came here early. What about you?”
“Huh,” the boy makes a noise and looks back at the machine. “My parents went to a wedding in Hawaii and decided to extend their stay so I’m stuck here. Guess our parents both abandoned us for America, huh? The mop is in the cupboard down the hall, by the way. You’ll probably find a bucket there too.”
When Nayeon comes back he’s already gone. She squats in front of the machine and watches his clothes tumble over each other for a few minutes before getting to work.
The summer seems to pass in a haze to Nayeon. Not in the fleeting, I’m-having-so-much-fun sort of way, but rather in a drowsy, boredom tinged amble - sort of like when a train begins to slow to a stop in the middle of nowhere because the train before has been held up. The days begin to merge into one long, endless wait for the new semester to begin where she wakes up in the middle of the day, skips breakfast and spends an enormous amount of time in front of her fan trying to cool off. Sometimes she wanders into the communal kitchen to inspect the fridges of her dorm mates who haven’t returned yet and finds their ghosts lurking behind mouldy loaves of bread and empty jars of pre-made Bolognese sauce. Other times she wanders the empty corridors, touching the customized name plates some people have stuck to their doors, imagining loud obnoxious music flowing from the crack. Imagines footsteps echoing past her door when she wakes up. She always wakes up to a humid, stifling silence.
She bumps into the boy from the laundry on her way back from the store, laden with bottles of cider and tins of grape juice and the odd packet of frozen peas. Her mother likes to tell her that too much sugar will make her lose brain cells, but Nayeon figures she’d have to lose some to get through these next two weeks. Plus she needs the peas for her dinner.
“Hey,” he grins that lopsided grin. “You’re the girl who flooded the laundry room.”
“Yeah, and thanks for helping with the cleaning,” she huffs back. He laughs.
“I did tell you where the mop was though,” he sticks his hands in his pockets. “I’m Seungcheol, by the way. I live on the 3rd floor. You?”
“4th,” she sets the plastic bags on the burning asphalt, then picks them back up. She’d rather have sweaty palms than risk melting the plastic on her bottles. “I’m Nayeon,” she adds. She gives him a slight bow which he returns.
“Cool,” he says, then jabs a thumb down the street. “Well I’m just gonna go pick up some laundry detergent so I guess I’ll see you around? Since we’re practically the only people in the building at the moment.”
“Are you always doing laundry?” she calls at his retreating back. He just laughs and waves a hand at her without turning around.
“Have you tried exploring the city?” he asks the second time she bumps into him, this time at the entrance as he’s coming back and she’s going out. She shakes her head. Concrete jungles have never been of much interest to her.
“We should hang out some time,” he suggests the third time.
“What reminds you of home?” he enquires the fourth. She tilts her head to one side. The aroma that comes with opening a box of her mother’s kimchi for the first time. The scratch of the branch against her window at night when the wind blows. Her father’s cheerful voice announcing his arrival every time he comes home. Nayeon breathes.
“The ocean,” she replies.
She gets the fright of her life when she stumbles into the dining slash living room on her floor in her pyjamas to find Seungcheol sprawled in one of the chairs, watching a football match on the TV with the utmost concentration.
“Good morning,” he casts a look at her as she tries to cover her chest without making it too obvious. “I took one of your cans by the way,” he lifts the grape juice and tilts it at her. “Do you usually wake up at 1pm on a weekday?”
“It’s the holidays,” she mumbles. “And what the hell are you doing on my floor?”
“It’s no fun waking up to an empty room filled with 10 empty chairs and a TV you never turn on so I thought I’d give you a nice surprise,” he groans as a player on the screen attempts to score a goal and miserably fails. “I got a bit hot while waiting though, so I took your peas to cool my head down.” He shakes the packet at her. “Hope you don’t mind.”
Nayeon takes the packet from him and pushes past him into the kitchen, twisting her hair into a bun and taking a long drink from the tap before throwing the peas back into the freezer. The kitchen has been spotless since she arrived, and she intends to keep it that way until the others come back. She hopes her future dorm mates are as clean as she is. She remembers the way Seungcheol washes his clothes and hopes that not everyone will be like him.
“Hey Nayeon,” he calls through the door. She sticks her head out. “What?” she asks rather brusquely.
He grins. “Let’s go to the beach.”
It’s cooler in the bus when she opens the window and lets the air lift the ends of her hair. It’s a little crowded and Seungcheol’s bag bumps into her shoulder every time the bus makes a turn, but she doesn’t really mind. She’s glad to just be out of her stuffy room, even if it’s with a boy she barely knows. She hugs her bag to her chest, closes her eyes when she catches the first whiff of salt in the air and feels it seep down to her bones. It smells like home.
“What would you be doing right now if you weren’t here?” Seungcheol asks as they walk down the street. They happen on a small food store with an ice cream chest out the front, and he sticks his head into it while he chooses his ice cream. Nayeon shoves him in further and tries to close the lid on him as he gives a muffled yell that sounds more like a laugh and struggles against her.
“What would I be doing if I weren’t here…” she muses as she pops open the melon popsicle he hands to her. The plastic grating against icicles sounds like her feet baking on the asphalt as she runs barefoot thorough the town. She can already feel the popsicle melting as she gives it a tiny lick. It tastes like waking up to her mother yelling at her to get up, like running down to the beach before she’s even finished breakfast. They turn the corner and she sees that familiar expanse of water, shimmering as far as the eye can see. The tide breakers seem to be waving at her, like they’re welcoming an old friend home.
Nayeon smiles around her popsicle, probably for the first time since arriving in the city two weeks ago. “I’d be doing the exact same thing,” she says, and she runs.
In the coming days Nayeon would scramble to keep the details of that day tight in the fists of her mind. The salty smell of the ocean. The texture of the sand between her toes. The wind bringing no respite from the heat but wafting the smell of food from the food carts down the street. The feel of her sweat dripping down the side of her face. The cries of the seagulls as they hover overhead and try to steal their snacks. Seungcheol’s scream of surprise when they snatch a kimbap right out of his hands. The sound of his laugh when she imitates him.
She replays this moment over and over in her mind until it no longer feels like a memory but something that she made up entirely: Seungcheol falling asleep on her shoulder on the bus ride home, his hair tickling her cheek. His fingers brushing against hers once, twice, then disappearing.
She doesn’t see him at all when the semester starts and a swarm of students descend on the dormitory. Suddenly Nayeon finds herself yearning for the days when she could spend her time reading in absolute silence or watching a movie without having to hear the music from her neighbour across the hall. She tries to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible because the sight of food spilt across the counter and over the stovetop makes her feel physically sick.
The chill begins to creep up around her before she even realizes, and it brings a fresh set of feelings with it. Heartbreak, probably. Wistfulness, maybe. Betrayal, definitely. Summer has turned its back on her, and she didn’t even have time to give it a proper farewell.
She bumps into him one night as she’s coming back and he’s going out. He’s with a group of boys, all laughing and joking around as they exit the building, and she stands aside to let them out. They catch each other’s eye for a second and she thinks he looks different in his thick jacket and large hood. His eyes still look as though they’ve been sprinkled with stardust and she could probably build two cities on his eye bags now, but it’s as if the Seungcheol who sat beside her on the beach in a t-shirt and shorts was nothing but a mirage conjured up by the heat. He blinks, and the connection breaks. He inclines his head slightly to hers, and she does the same. He disappears down the street.
Summer has turned its back on her, taking with it everything she ever loved.
She opens the door to the laundry room without knocking, a thermos lodged in her basket amidst her neatly folded clothes. Her readings for the week top the pile and she has a highlighter in her pocket. Gone are the days when she can watch a movie while waiting for her clothes, but at least now she can wash her clothes without flooding the room.
“Sorry…” she mumbles when she finds someone else wedged in the small space, then does a double take when she realizes that the other person is none other than Seungcheol himself.
He grins a little sheepishly at her. “Looks like I’m not the only one who washes my clothes at 12am then.” He shifts a little on the dryer and watches as she loads her clothes into the other machine and shuts the door firmly behind it. She settles on the dryer beside his, crossing her legs and pulling her readings towards her.
“I’m sorry,” he says into the silence. His machine gives a rumble as it starts to rinse, and the quiet whirring of hers offers a constant background rhythm. She looks at him, wrapped up in a sweater and scarf, same as her.
“What for?” A perfunctory question she already knows the answer to.
“I wanted to keep you as a memory,” he says by way of explanation, staring at his clothes tumbling around through the glass door. Nayeon furrows her eyebrows. “I thought that if I could associate you with just summer then every time I saw you I’d be reminded of everything that came with it.”
“Did it work?” Nayeon sets the highlighter down on the papers in her lap.
“No,” Seungcheol gives a lopsided grin that seems more cynical than easy. “It just made me guilty.”
Nayeon manages a laugh. “Good,” she goes back to her notes. Seungcheol cocks his head to one side for a few moments, then leaps off the dryer and pops the door of his machine open. Water floods out in a great rush, sending a soapy waterfall cascading over the tops of his socks and house slippers.
“What the hell are you doing?” Nayeon exclaims with initial shock, but she laughs as water laps against the dryer she’s sitting on. Seungcheol climbs back up beside her, grinning from ear to ear.
“Going to the ocean would be a bummer in this weather, but this makes up for it don’t you think?” he asks, turning to her. She sees a little more of the Seungcheol she knew in him, sees the part of him that would stick his head into an ice cream freezer to cool it down and scream like a teenaged girl when a seagull snatches his food out of his hands. She reaches for her thermos and pours out some tea, passing him the lid.
“I’m not going to help you clean this up,” she warns as he sips on the tea, tendrils of steam curling into the air.
“We’ll call it even,” he shrugs with that easy lopsided grin that she associates so much with the long lazy days before the storm of university entered their lives and swept everything away with it.
Nayeon closes her eyes. If she concentrates hard enough she can almost believe that she’s back on the beach in the middle of summer, a can of grape juice in one hand and Seungcheol stretched out beside her on the sand. Until her machine comes to a stop they’re both content to sit on their tumble dryer seats in silence, sipping on hot tea and looking at the moon reflected in the ocean on the laundry room floor.
3199w, g
nayeon accidentally floods the laundry room. seungcheol really needs to do laundry.
a/n: written for kisoap !
Click to viewThere are some days where Nayeon recalls with astonishing clarity all the times she had refused help on the basis of being ‘grown up’. Being able to climb the jungle gym by herself when she was 5… being able to tie her own shoelaces when she was 7… being able to carry a 5kg bag of rice when she was 10… in not one of those instances can Nayeon remember being able to complete any of those tasks without help. She surveys the water lapping over the tops of her sandals and sighs for the tenth time since entering the laundry. In this instance she really is a grown-up - a fledgling 19 year old maybe but still grown-up nonetheless - and grown-ups really should know to close the washing machine lid properly before settling down on the dryer to watch Spirited Away on her phone for the twentieth time. Grown-ups should really know how to wash their clothes without help.
“It’s not my fault I’ve never used front loader machines before,” she grumbles to herself as she resumes her place on top of the dryer to escape the flood. The water ripples in the sunlight streaming through the window, and Nayeon thinks that this isn’t so bad, being able to create a mini ocean for herself when she’s so far from the coast. It’s actually a little calming when she forgets that she’ll have to find a way to clean this all up in a bit.
The door swings open without warning and Nayeon leaps from the dryer in a moment of panic, forgetting that there is currently an ocean crawling across the laundry room floor and thoroughly soaking her sandals. The water seizes the opportunity to escape and flows out into the corridor, gushing over the tops of the newcomer’s flip-flop-clad feet. Nayeon winces.
“Whoa,” says the boy standing in the doorway, his arms wrapped around the laundry basket piled high with clothes. “What the hell happened here?” He takes a step into the room, and his soaked flip-flops squelch on the damp floor - the quintessential sound of summer, Nayeon thinks. She thinks a little of frozen watermelon and grape ice cream and has a sudden longing to escape this stuffy dormitory with its stupid front loading machines. Get on a bus and head down to the coast, just for a day.
“Was it like this when you got here?” The boy sets his basket on the dryer and crouches down in front of the washing machine. “Whose clothes are these?” He reaches into the washing machine and pulls out a bright yellow bra. Nayeon screams inwardly and snatches it out of his hands.
“It was me, I flooded the laundry room, okay?” she throws her arms out, remembers that she’s holding a bra in one hand, and shoves her hands back behind her. “I’ve never used front loader machines and I didn’t know the lid could actually open in the middle of washing and I wasn’t watching it because I have better things to do than watch my clothes spin round and round in a dumb machine that can’t even keep itself closed and why are you still taking out my clothes?”
The boy looks up at her. He has eyes that look as though they’re still sprinkled with stardust, and she thinks she could build a city on his eye bags. “Because I need to do my laundry,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. He pulls out the last of her damp clothes and dumps it into her laundry basket on top of the machine.
“You could use the other one,” she points out, trying to keep from rolling her eyes.
He looks at her with a lopsided grin that just makes him look sleepier. “The other one’s been broken for weeks.” His flip flops squelch against the floor again as he gets to his feet and drags his own basket over. “Everyone knows it. Are you new here or something?”
“Yes…” Nayeon says to herself as he throws his clothes in without bothering to straighten them out or untangle them. He doesn’t seem to hear her. Nayeon wonders if a whole t-shirt gets cleaned when one half is twisted around a pant leg. Do the wrapped up parts stay dirty? She has sudden visions of pulling a white t-shirt out of the washer to find dirt marks still streaked across it. She shudders slightly.
He straightens and leans against the machine as it whirs to life. For a full minute no one says anything, and as Nayeon stares at her feet in her soaked sandals she wonders if he’s looking at her. What if he is? Should she look back? She wiggles her toes and risks a glance at him. He’s crouched down in front of the machine, watching his clothes tumble around through the glass. She furrows her eyebrows slightly, wonders if all guys are total opposites of her.
“What are you still doing here?” he says into the silence without tearing his gaze away from his clothes.
“Well I still have to clean up the place, don’t I?” she shoots back.
He turns to her then, that easy lopsided grin on his face again. “I meant what are you doing here in the dorms when it’s summer holidays? Shouldn’t you be back home with your family like everyone else?”
“Oh,” she tries to keep from blushing and fails miserably. She can blame it on how warm the room is though. “My parents went to see my sister in the US so I came here early. What about you?”
“Huh,” the boy makes a noise and looks back at the machine. “My parents went to a wedding in Hawaii and decided to extend their stay so I’m stuck here. Guess our parents both abandoned us for America, huh? The mop is in the cupboard down the hall, by the way. You’ll probably find a bucket there too.”
When Nayeon comes back he’s already gone. She squats in front of the machine and watches his clothes tumble over each other for a few minutes before getting to work.
The summer seems to pass in a haze to Nayeon. Not in the fleeting, I’m-having-so-much-fun sort of way, but rather in a drowsy, boredom tinged amble - sort of like when a train begins to slow to a stop in the middle of nowhere because the train before has been held up. The days begin to merge into one long, endless wait for the new semester to begin where she wakes up in the middle of the day, skips breakfast and spends an enormous amount of time in front of her fan trying to cool off. Sometimes she wanders into the communal kitchen to inspect the fridges of her dorm mates who haven’t returned yet and finds their ghosts lurking behind mouldy loaves of bread and empty jars of pre-made Bolognese sauce. Other times she wanders the empty corridors, touching the customized name plates some people have stuck to their doors, imagining loud obnoxious music flowing from the crack. Imagines footsteps echoing past her door when she wakes up. She always wakes up to a humid, stifling silence.
She bumps into the boy from the laundry on her way back from the store, laden with bottles of cider and tins of grape juice and the odd packet of frozen peas. Her mother likes to tell her that too much sugar will make her lose brain cells, but Nayeon figures she’d have to lose some to get through these next two weeks. Plus she needs the peas for her dinner.
“Hey,” he grins that lopsided grin. “You’re the girl who flooded the laundry room.”
“Yeah, and thanks for helping with the cleaning,” she huffs back. He laughs.
“I did tell you where the mop was though,” he sticks his hands in his pockets. “I’m Seungcheol, by the way. I live on the 3rd floor. You?”
“4th,” she sets the plastic bags on the burning asphalt, then picks them back up. She’d rather have sweaty palms than risk melting the plastic on her bottles. “I’m Nayeon,” she adds. She gives him a slight bow which he returns.
“Cool,” he says, then jabs a thumb down the street. “Well I’m just gonna go pick up some laundry detergent so I guess I’ll see you around? Since we’re practically the only people in the building at the moment.”
“Are you always doing laundry?” she calls at his retreating back. He just laughs and waves a hand at her without turning around.
“Have you tried exploring the city?” he asks the second time she bumps into him, this time at the entrance as he’s coming back and she’s going out. She shakes her head. Concrete jungles have never been of much interest to her.
“We should hang out some time,” he suggests the third time.
“What reminds you of home?” he enquires the fourth. She tilts her head to one side. The aroma that comes with opening a box of her mother’s kimchi for the first time. The scratch of the branch against her window at night when the wind blows. Her father’s cheerful voice announcing his arrival every time he comes home. Nayeon breathes.
“The ocean,” she replies.
She gets the fright of her life when she stumbles into the dining slash living room on her floor in her pyjamas to find Seungcheol sprawled in one of the chairs, watching a football match on the TV with the utmost concentration.
“Good morning,” he casts a look at her as she tries to cover her chest without making it too obvious. “I took one of your cans by the way,” he lifts the grape juice and tilts it at her. “Do you usually wake up at 1pm on a weekday?”
“It’s the holidays,” she mumbles. “And what the hell are you doing on my floor?”
“It’s no fun waking up to an empty room filled with 10 empty chairs and a TV you never turn on so I thought I’d give you a nice surprise,” he groans as a player on the screen attempts to score a goal and miserably fails. “I got a bit hot while waiting though, so I took your peas to cool my head down.” He shakes the packet at her. “Hope you don’t mind.”
Nayeon takes the packet from him and pushes past him into the kitchen, twisting her hair into a bun and taking a long drink from the tap before throwing the peas back into the freezer. The kitchen has been spotless since she arrived, and she intends to keep it that way until the others come back. She hopes her future dorm mates are as clean as she is. She remembers the way Seungcheol washes his clothes and hopes that not everyone will be like him.
“Hey Nayeon,” he calls through the door. She sticks her head out. “What?” she asks rather brusquely.
He grins. “Let’s go to the beach.”
It’s cooler in the bus when she opens the window and lets the air lift the ends of her hair. It’s a little crowded and Seungcheol’s bag bumps into her shoulder every time the bus makes a turn, but she doesn’t really mind. She’s glad to just be out of her stuffy room, even if it’s with a boy she barely knows. She hugs her bag to her chest, closes her eyes when she catches the first whiff of salt in the air and feels it seep down to her bones. It smells like home.
“What would you be doing right now if you weren’t here?” Seungcheol asks as they walk down the street. They happen on a small food store with an ice cream chest out the front, and he sticks his head into it while he chooses his ice cream. Nayeon shoves him in further and tries to close the lid on him as he gives a muffled yell that sounds more like a laugh and struggles against her.
“What would I be doing if I weren’t here…” she muses as she pops open the melon popsicle he hands to her. The plastic grating against icicles sounds like her feet baking on the asphalt as she runs barefoot thorough the town. She can already feel the popsicle melting as she gives it a tiny lick. It tastes like waking up to her mother yelling at her to get up, like running down to the beach before she’s even finished breakfast. They turn the corner and she sees that familiar expanse of water, shimmering as far as the eye can see. The tide breakers seem to be waving at her, like they’re welcoming an old friend home.
Nayeon smiles around her popsicle, probably for the first time since arriving in the city two weeks ago. “I’d be doing the exact same thing,” she says, and she runs.
In the coming days Nayeon would scramble to keep the details of that day tight in the fists of her mind. The salty smell of the ocean. The texture of the sand between her toes. The wind bringing no respite from the heat but wafting the smell of food from the food carts down the street. The feel of her sweat dripping down the side of her face. The cries of the seagulls as they hover overhead and try to steal their snacks. Seungcheol’s scream of surprise when they snatch a kimbap right out of his hands. The sound of his laugh when she imitates him.
She replays this moment over and over in her mind until it no longer feels like a memory but something that she made up entirely: Seungcheol falling asleep on her shoulder on the bus ride home, his hair tickling her cheek. His fingers brushing against hers once, twice, then disappearing.
She doesn’t see him at all when the semester starts and a swarm of students descend on the dormitory. Suddenly Nayeon finds herself yearning for the days when she could spend her time reading in absolute silence or watching a movie without having to hear the music from her neighbour across the hall. She tries to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible because the sight of food spilt across the counter and over the stovetop makes her feel physically sick.
The chill begins to creep up around her before she even realizes, and it brings a fresh set of feelings with it. Heartbreak, probably. Wistfulness, maybe. Betrayal, definitely. Summer has turned its back on her, and she didn’t even have time to give it a proper farewell.
She bumps into him one night as she’s coming back and he’s going out. He’s with a group of boys, all laughing and joking around as they exit the building, and she stands aside to let them out. They catch each other’s eye for a second and she thinks he looks different in his thick jacket and large hood. His eyes still look as though they’ve been sprinkled with stardust and she could probably build two cities on his eye bags now, but it’s as if the Seungcheol who sat beside her on the beach in a t-shirt and shorts was nothing but a mirage conjured up by the heat. He blinks, and the connection breaks. He inclines his head slightly to hers, and she does the same. He disappears down the street.
Summer has turned its back on her, taking with it everything she ever loved.
She opens the door to the laundry room without knocking, a thermos lodged in her basket amidst her neatly folded clothes. Her readings for the week top the pile and she has a highlighter in her pocket. Gone are the days when she can watch a movie while waiting for her clothes, but at least now she can wash her clothes without flooding the room.
“Sorry…” she mumbles when she finds someone else wedged in the small space, then does a double take when she realizes that the other person is none other than Seungcheol himself.
He grins a little sheepishly at her. “Looks like I’m not the only one who washes my clothes at 12am then.” He shifts a little on the dryer and watches as she loads her clothes into the other machine and shuts the door firmly behind it. She settles on the dryer beside his, crossing her legs and pulling her readings towards her.
“I’m sorry,” he says into the silence. His machine gives a rumble as it starts to rinse, and the quiet whirring of hers offers a constant background rhythm. She looks at him, wrapped up in a sweater and scarf, same as her.
“What for?” A perfunctory question she already knows the answer to.
“I wanted to keep you as a memory,” he says by way of explanation, staring at his clothes tumbling around through the glass door. Nayeon furrows her eyebrows. “I thought that if I could associate you with just summer then every time I saw you I’d be reminded of everything that came with it.”
“Did it work?” Nayeon sets the highlighter down on the papers in her lap.
“No,” Seungcheol gives a lopsided grin that seems more cynical than easy. “It just made me guilty.”
Nayeon manages a laugh. “Good,” she goes back to her notes. Seungcheol cocks his head to one side for a few moments, then leaps off the dryer and pops the door of his machine open. Water floods out in a great rush, sending a soapy waterfall cascading over the tops of his socks and house slippers.
“What the hell are you doing?” Nayeon exclaims with initial shock, but she laughs as water laps against the dryer she’s sitting on. Seungcheol climbs back up beside her, grinning from ear to ear.
“Going to the ocean would be a bummer in this weather, but this makes up for it don’t you think?” he asks, turning to her. She sees a little more of the Seungcheol she knew in him, sees the part of him that would stick his head into an ice cream freezer to cool it down and scream like a teenaged girl when a seagull snatches his food out of his hands. She reaches for her thermos and pours out some tea, passing him the lid.
“I’m not going to help you clean this up,” she warns as he sips on the tea, tendrils of steam curling into the air.
“We’ll call it even,” he shrugs with that easy lopsided grin that she associates so much with the long lazy days before the storm of university entered their lives and swept everything away with it.
Nayeon closes her eyes. If she concentrates hard enough she can almost believe that she’s back on the beach in the middle of summer, a can of grape juice in one hand and Seungcheol stretched out beside her on the sand. Until her machine comes to a stop they’re both content to sit on their tumble dryer seats in silence, sipping on hot tea and looking at the moon reflected in the ocean on the laundry room floor.