Chapter 1

Yuma was jolted awake by a cacophony of sounds no one should have to process before sunrise—screaming, moaning, and the unmistakable gnashing of teeth.

He stared at the ceiling for a moment, dead-eyed, willing the noises to be anything else. A horror movie. A particularly aggressive raccoon in the vents. Anything but what he knew it was.

With a long, theatrical sigh, he swung his legs out of bed and trudged toward his bedroom door. As he opened it, the sounds only intensified, confirming his worst suspicion.

There they were. Niles and Sunny. His roommates. Half-dressed and tangled on the living room couch like a pair of exhibitionist eels, completely unbothered by the fact that they had barely any walls and doors in this apartment.

Yuma didn’t even flinch. His eyes briefly locked with Sunny’s over Niles’s shoulder—an awkward moment of accidental acknowledgment—and then he quietly closed the door.

Back in the safety of his room, he reached for his speaker, turned the volume up to something just below “deafening,” and flopped back onto his bed.

“I need a new roommate,” he muttered, the bass thumping beneath him as if agreeing.

By the next afternoon, the mission had begun.

He started scrolling through roommate matching forums, housing apps, and even mildly sketchy subreddits. A few interviews and even more red flags later, he stumbled upon someone with the username RedRacer95. Their profile picture was a pixelated image of Red Racer from Gekisou Sentai Carranger, and their bio simply read:

“Just trying to keep my engine clean and my vibes cleaner.”

Yuma raised an eyebrow but kept reading. The way they typed—direct, meme-literate, and just self-deprecating enough—made him think this was probably someone in their early twenties with at least a functioning grasp on hygiene and personal space.

The two hit it off quickly, trading messages about toku shows, bad roommates, and the eternal struggle of splitting Wi-Fi bills. Yuma hadn’t even met them in person yet, but for the first time in a long time, he felt cautiously optimistic.

Maybe—maybe—he’d finally found someone who wouldn’t traumatize him on a Tuesday morning before coffee.

Three months later.

The morning was unusually crisp for late summer, and Yuma was standing outside his new apartment complex with a dolly full of boxes, balancing a coffee cup between his teeth and internally repeating his moving mantra: Don’t drop anything, don’t make eye contact with weird neighbors, don’t drop anything.

So far, so good.

He glanced down at his phone again. Red Racer—his future roommate, texting under their real name now—had said they’d be a little late but were bringing snacks and energy drinks. Yuma assumed that meant some guy in joggers and a racing tee who’d pull up in a beat-up hatchback blasting Eurobeat.

So when the black luxury van pulled up and a small cluster of people jumped out—stylists? handlers? security?—he nearly dropped the dolly.

And then she stepped out.

Eunbi Kwon.

Not just a K-pop idol. The K-pop idol. The one with three platinum albums, a sold-out world tour, and a rabid fanbase that once doxxed a radio host for mispronouncing her name. She was casually dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie, but her face was unmistakable.

Yuma blinked. “…You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

She spotted him, grinned, and jogged over—totally unbothered by his slack-jawed stare. “Yuma?”

“Uh. Yeah.” He tried not to stare. Failed.

She offered her hand. “Red Racer. But you can call me Eunbi now.”

He didn’t shake her hand. He just looked at it, then at her again, then at the dolly, like this was some kind of elaborate prank and the punchline was in one of his boxes.