Love is trying anyways

The next morning arrives quietly.

You wake before your alarm, not because you are well rested but because your body seems to know this time is limited. Pale sunlight slips through the thin dorm curtains, painting soft stripes across the wall. The room smells faintly like laundry detergent and coffee from somewhere down the hall.

For a few seconds you forget where you are.

Then you hear Yujin laughing outside the door.

It is a familiar sound. Bright. Easy. The same laugh that used to echo down the halls of your high school when she told a joke too loud during lunch.

But here it sounds different somehow. Not worse. Just… placed inside a bigger world.

You sit up slowly.

Her voice fades down the hallway, then grows louder again as footsteps approach. The door opens and she steps inside carrying two paper cups and a small paper bag.

Her hair is messy in the way it always is in the morning, strands sticking out where she probably tried to fix it with her fingers instead of a brush. The sleeves of her university sweatshirt are too long and she keeps pushing them back.

When she notices you're awake, her face lights up immediately.

“Oh good,” she says. “I thought you’d still be asleep.”

You rub your eyes. “What time is it?”

“Late enough that I had to save you from starving.”

She hands you one of the cups.

The coffee is warm in your hands.

“Thank you.”

She sits beside you on the bed and opens the bag.

Inside are two slightly lopsided croissants and a wrapped muffin.

“Emergency breakfast,” she announces.

“You robbed a bakery for these.”

“I bravely purchased them.”

“Heroic.”

“I know.”

You eat together on the edge of the bed, knees bumping occasionally when one of you reaches for the bag. She steals a piece of your croissant and pretends not to notice when you stare at her.

“You took the flakiest part,” you accuse.

“I deserve it.”

“Why?”

“Because I got up early.”

“That’s not how croissants work.”

She grins. “It is now.”

For a few minutes everything feels perfectly ordinary.

The same rhythm you had before she left. The same comfortable closeness that never required effort.

She smiles, but it lingers somewhere between happy and sad.

Later she takes you back across campus.

The air is crisp and bright, sunlight glinting off tall windows and stone walls. Students move around you in clusters, talking about assignments and deadlines and weekend plans.

Yujin walks beside you, hands tucked into the sleeves of her sweatshirt.

“I forgot to show you the garden yesterday,” she says suddenly.

“You forgot a garden?”

“It’s hidden.”

“That sounds suspicious.”

She grabs your sleeve and pulls you around the corner of a building.

Behind it is a small courtyard filled with trees and benches. The noise of campus fades here, replaced by the quiet rustle of leaves.

“This is where I study sometimes,” she says.

You sit together on one of the benches.

Sunlight filters through the branches overhead, dappling her hair with shifting light.

“It’s nice,” you say.

She leans back against the bench.

“Sometimes when I get overwhelmed, I come here.”

“You get overwhelmed?”

“Frequently.”