Chapter 21: Sorry, First Come, First Serve

Wednesday | November 8th, 2023 | 12:52 AM

I leaned back in my chair, staring at the ceiling. A loud, drawn out sigh escaped from my lips. I wiped my face and fixed my hair out of my eyes before looking back at my computer. I was just too tired for this shit. 

Right after I got home from work, I saw that I had packages waiting for me at the residential service desk. At first, I didn't know what they were but when I opened them up in front of Seulgi, who happened to be home at the time, I remembered what I brought.

If memory serves right, I had made an impulse purchase to buy an RFID card reader as well as other supplies and they finally came in. Seulgi, obviously curious, watched as I pulled the part out from the package.

"What is that?" She asked.

"I got myself an RFID card reader," I said, trying to not make a big deal out of it. Now that my supplies came in, I can kickstart my impulse plan to put together a reader that could scan our student IDs. With these cloned student IDs, I'd have access to any dormitory rooms I want. The possibilities of what I could do was endless, but of course, panties were my end goal.

"An RFID reader," she repeated, "The hell is that?" She giggled. I blankly stared at the reader in my hand. Since last week, it's been hard to make eye contact with her without being reminded of what Nakyung and I did in her bed. Even though it seems like we got away with defiling her room, I can't help but feel like I need to be careful around Seulgi.

"It's just something for my computer science class, a project," I quickly fibbed. Seulgi hummed and crouched down next to me. I somewhat flinched and scooted over to leave space between us. 

"These look like credit cards," Seulgi said, taking out this pack of empty cards from another box.

"Ah, well, credit cards use some form of RFID, so yeah, it's the same kind of stuff," I explained. I could feel Seulgi’s eyes on me, clearly confused about what I said. 

"Wow, smartie pants. Look at my roommate, going and becoming a computer nerd," she laughed. Seulgi took the empty boxes from me, "I'll toss the trash for you." She offered, picking up the empty packages and headed towards the door.

"Oh, thanks."

Skip to a few hours later, and I was still tinkering with the program for the reader. Even after watching videos on videos, it felt like I only understood about 30% of what I needed to do. The first couple fuck-ups, I couldn't correctly connect the reader to this mini computer I bought and I had to rewire it a few times, but eventually, it was all hooked up. Now, the issue was actually coding this program and making it do what I wanted.

It turned out, the tech company I had brought the reader from happened to be the only other company who used this unconventional custom programming language that the internet had scarce documentation on. This meant the program had to be made from scratch by me. And, that's where I was now, stuck in a loop that I had no clue how to get out of.

After sitting in my chair for hours, working on this fucking project, I felt like throwing the whole thing out the window. My laptop's screen, even on low brightness, was hurting my eyes the more I stared at my code. Of course, I could just go to sleep and finish it tomorrow, but my mind felt like it couldn’t rest until I fixed the fucking issue.

So, that's where I found myself, staring at the ceiling and feeling my eyelids become heavy. The idea of sleep seemed more appealing every second, but my body wouldn't move. I sat there, frozen, my eyes glued to the ceiling and the air conditioner running at full blast. It felt like I was there for an eternity, until finally, the sound of something broke through the silence.

It was my phone, which vibrated face-down on the desk. At this late in the night, who was messaging me? I lazily flipped my phone over to look at the notification and saw Chaewon had sent me a text. Feeling a bit more awake, I unlocked my phone and checked the message:

Chaewonfacetime?

this late?

Chaewonwhy not?

I took a deliberate pause:

ofc gimme a sec

I stood up from my chair and stretched, feeling my body ache a bit. After cracking my neck and rolling my shoulders a bit, I sat back down and propped my phone up against my laptop screen. I leaned forward and called her. She only took a couple seconds to answer.

"Hey," I smiled as soon as her face popped up on the screen. Chaewon smiled back at me with a black tank top on and no makeup. She looked to be laying down with only the light from her phone lighting up her face.

"Hi," she responded. Her voice was a little quiet and sounded a bit tired. "I'm surprised you're still up," she sighed.

"Ditto," I said, "what are you doing?"

"Just finished watching this movie and now I can't fall asleep."

"You watched a movie before going to bed? Was it good?" I asked.

"Nah, it was boring," she laughed. Chaewon adjusted her position, moving her arm out of the shot and resting her head against the pillows. She must've known how entranced I was by her, because she smiled knowingly, "I was hoping to talk to you before going to bed."

"Yeah? What about," I asked.

"Nothing really, just about the day. I'm kinda bored and want some company," Chaewon admitted. She looked like she was trying her hardest not to fall asleep.

"You should try to sleep then," I told her.

"Mm, but I'm talking to you," she mumbled. "I'd rather talk to you."

"I'm not going to be good company, I fear. I'm too busy with this computer science project to keep you entertained," I sighed, glancing back at the laptop.

"A project, huh," she muttered, "what are you making?"

"It's for a class, just something for double test grades," I fibbed, once again. The less I had to explain, the better I could hide my actual intentions.

"Sounds hard," Chaewon remarked. "I hope it works."

"Me too." I looked away from my phone and tried to focus back onto the janky code I wrote. Maybe if I just stared at the screen long enough, it would make sense and fix itself.

"Is this class important?"

"It's for my major," I whispered while deleting some lines and rewriting them.

"Oh, you're a computer science major?" Chaewon asked.

"Uh," I stopped and looked back at the camera, "yeah."

"That's cool, Minjae. You always did seem to be into that kind of stuff."

"Haha, yeah," I chuckled, trailing off as I zoned out reading an entire code block, trying to see where my logic messed up. Chaewon softly laughed from her side and I heard her shift around. We sat there in silence while I slowly made progress.

"Um, what about you? What major are you," I asked suddenly, feeling guilty about ignoring her for the past few minutes. Chaewon didn't reply immediately, so I looked back at the phone and noticed her eyes were slightly closed. Thinking she was asleep, I looked back to my computer but she quietly replied, "Haven't decided."

Maybe it was because she was tired, but the way she answered the question didn't seem very enthusiastic, and the usual perkiness of her voice was absent. The way her tone shifted slightly worried me, so I left the code alone and looked back at the camera, "Chaewon?" I called.

"Hmm," she hummed, her eyes fully closed.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she sighed, "why'd you ask?"

"Just wondering," I paused, switching tabs to look at some documentation. "You sounded a bit sad."