Slumber Party Games: 18+ Edition

You’re leaping across lands as if you were walking on clouds. That’s a pretty close thing to what you are doing; the wispy blue cotton wafts around you like snow. Touch them for a moment, giggling with genuine happiness, before leaping up another step. You’re only going upwards from here, only towards the destination of perfection.

The whole place is flawless. Small islands are individual homes for dreamers like you. The sky never pours unless you want it to. Everything in this world can be controlled with just a word from you. But you were told that there are bigger things up ahead, in that bright golden cloud, where a castle sits grandly and a woman leans down to give you an inviting smile—

“Hey, heeeey! ”

Two thin fingers snap you awake from the world you created for when the boredom takes you. You go to it quite often—during lectures, lonely nights when sleep just refuses to visit you, and road trips to nowhere. You’ve unknowingly dozed off to your wonderland again in the campus quadrangle, right where you’re supposed to be wide awake. It’s already thirty minutes past your mathematics class; you’re the only one in the quadrangle.

Well, not the only one. Blink twice, then thrice for good measure. Turn your head away from the streaming sunlight and force a reintroduction to reality. Here, on Earth, there are no happy utopian cities floating in midair, easily accessible through a few measured jumps. There aren’t any bright clouds in arm’s reach to navigate through the various world. Here, it’s just… your university. It’s an extremely boring place that only pique your appreciation with their well-kept gardens and satisfactory air-conditioning.

There’s no air-conditioning out here in the quadrangle though. Nor is there a smile on Honda Hitomi’s cute face. What a pity. What an utter waste.

“Hey there yourself, Hiichan,” say brightly, as if you weren’t just caught cutting classes. Cutting classes… but isn't— oh right! It’s two in the afternoon, and you just sat through majority of your class in the quadrangle. It was an accident, you swear, but your strict little Japanese friend won’t agree with you on that sometimes. “How you doing?”

“Not fine,” she says grumpily, “because I was called to drag a certain boy who was lounging outside of the classroom he’s supposed to be attending a lecture in.”

Huh?

Direct your gaze to the left. Through the rectangular window of the wide room, all of your classmates and one unamused teacher stare at you. They exchange glances of disbelief, accompanied with words that consist of nothing but spicy gossip.

Your face burns. Now that’s a situation you can’t joke yourself out of. Why did you have to cut Bae Yoonjung’s class out of all the classes you could have skipped? Life in the real world remains just as troublesome as your last return here.

“Miss Bae says you either get your ass inside,” Hitomi continues, hands set on her hips, “and answer all the questions we’re going over, or you get a failing grade.”

A failing grade? “What? No, I’m not flunking her class!” you say. Flustered emotions burst and take your formerly-relaxed body from the comfort of the quadrangle bench. They bring your hands into the air, make your eyes seal a firm glare into Hitomi’s tired ones. “Have you seen what her students look like after a remedial? They look like they came back from fucking World War Two or something!”

“Then get inside,” says Hitomi. She’s gathering the last of her patience now to give you a comforting smile. Give her props for trying to deal with you; you can barely do it yourself. “Believe me, I’m just as humiliated as you are.”

“I can’t get in because I can’t do math, Hitomi!”

“Then get Hyewon to help you out, for fuck’s sake, if she’s not wrapped up trying to answer them herself. Come on, Haram. Get in.”

Hyewon? Oh, come on, you aren’t asking her for help! She barely talks to anyone except when she’s answering in recitations. She may be pretty, but she has that kind of prettiness that makes her unapproachable. You’re intimidated by her, and sometimes you feel a little guilty for it; she hasn’t been unkind to anyone or bullied people to clean up dorms. She’s just… scary. Scary because she simply exists.

Why do you always have to be scared of pretty girls? You’re in college already and your fear of them still hasn’t ceased.

But you have no choice. Get up on heavy feet and trudge the walk of shame to Bae’s classroom. You’re sure you look like a complete idiot. Anyone who has an IQ above room temperature knows that the number one rule of skipping classes means that you can’t make yourself seen. You’re supposed to hide in the dorms and make up an excuse letter, not sit outside of the classroom you’re supposed to be in with the oblivion of a mouse. You can already spot Eunbi giggling at you. Throw her a glare, and she reciprocates, an eye for an eye. High school habits die hard.

“Welcome to class, mister Jo,” says your professor, wearing the fakest of smiles. It’s that signature Bae Yoonjung smile, a smile that any campus troublemaker knows. It spells out four clear words: You’re in deep shit.

From far away in the classroom, your sister Yuri cringes. She’s the better student out of the two of you: most well-behaved, most diligent, most high grades. It’s been going on ever since she was in kindergarten. But you… it’s like you were born into the Jo family to make an imbalance in the matrix of the inherited intelligence and discipline your parents and sibling are known for.

“Good afternoon, professor Bae,” you say quietly. At least you’re still polite.

“How was the little sit-down you had outside?”

“Quite good. I mean—I mean—uh…”

Politeness fails you. It’s too late. Laughter scatters then takes the classroom by full force. Professor Bae isn’t as pleased as they are, though. Not at all, not in the slightest.

“Silence, class,” she barks. Immediately, the noise dies as if it were a fire extinguished by icy water. You’re amazed sometimes at the power the professor has gathered over her years of teaching, which are considerably shorter compared to the other teachers.

“Now, mister Jo, there are strict rules on tardy here in this school. If a student is caught cutting classes or coming in five to ten minutes late, they’re given a punishment. Are you aware of these rules?”

Nod. You read the student handbook a couple of times. It’s the only book you’ve ever finished. In your defense, it has pictures. It’s easier to visualize the message when there’s pictures. You discovered that when your English professor made you read fucking Shakespeare and provide an explanation to three plays slash sonnets slash headache-inducing rhymes.

“I’ve given you enough time to dilly-dally by yourself,” continues your unrelenting professor, “but it’s mandatory that you learn the consequences of your own actions.” Her hand knocks the whiteboard. “What is the value of x in x squared in the equation of x squared plus six equals zero?”

Stupid flowery math words and their stupid complicated meanings. You can never get a grasp of them.

“Um… b?” you say.

The whole class erupts into a chorus of snickers. Everyone is laughing at you now. All of their eyes are on you in half-crescents as your unintentional comedian flare takes them by storm. Chaeyeon is cackling with glee. She’s the class comedian, but even she can’t fashion a joke as ridiculous as that. Yujin’s smiling dimples have never been more visible. Even your sister, once embarrassed that you were shaming the family name again, is laughing along with them. The whole world’s laughingstock is you.

Just everyday things, you guess.

Look around. Well, not the whole world, maybe, for in the corner of the room on the farthest right-hand side of the first row, two wide eyes gaze at you with sympathy.

It’s a small girl whose name you don’t know, but face you are quite familiar with. She’s usually seen giggling around her friends, but you’ve never talked to her. Not yet, at least.

Funny how just one person makes a whole difference. If she had laughed along with them, you’d be devastated. Crushed. Over. But she had chosen to look at you kindly, mouthing some soft words to you of reassurance. You feel like you owe everything to her: your sanity, your dignity, your battered pride.

If only you knew her name.

-

Needless to say, the rest of the class sucked. You were scolded plentily enough, and the humiliation from not getting any of the questions correct still makes you want to roll up into a ball and hide somewhere. Yuri would surely call your mother again and give an exaggerated retelling of how her brother—her pathetic, underachiever good-for-nothing brother—got into trouble again. You’d be the talk of the campus, too, and to be honest, you couldn’t blame them. If one were going to cut classes, they could at least do it properly. That was the unspoken rule of troublemaking for dummies.

How do you always get into this kind of mess? Wonder over that as your hands clasp your phone, with your form now lounging atop your level of the bunk bed in the dorms. At least you’re safe here. If you manage to fuck up again, nobody would see but your roommate. But she’s already had a good show from earlier; she’s Kwon fucking Eunbi, the girl you always somehow get into the same class with and bump into in the lockers. The world just strings your threads together without prior knowledge that you both have the scissors to snip the knots away. You’re honestly getting a little sick of it.

“Haram, it’s your turn to do the laundry,” she reminds you. She says it without looking up from the book she is reading under your mattress, using the flickering lightbulb for proper vision. Neither you or Eunbi have the money or the guts to replace the bulb, so it remains as it is: shutting and flickering on like it belongs to the set of a low-budget horror movie.

“I’m not doing shit,” reply seamlessly. Your eyes are focused onto the incoming messages of your KakaoTalk app. Everyone’s forwarding various texts of group chats making fun of you. Whole group chats throwing tomatoes at a poor semi-senior. Fucking pathetic.

You can’t say it wasn’t unexpected, though. What were you doing out in the quadrangle? Had you lost yourself in such a daydream you forgot about everything?

Yes.

You possess a chronic tendency to daydream. You like worldbuilding, but never had the penmanship nor writing skills to plot it all down. You like visualizing better worlds—worlds where everything is pleasing to the eye, nothing out of place nor out of line—but were never the artist to illustrate them. Any potential you have in something, all rooted in daydreaming, is always ruined by another unavoidable trait you have. It fucking sucks sometimes, how you’re always at a dead end once you think you’ve got the hang of it all.

“Come on, Haram,” says Eunbi. She’s tired, too. Finals are taking a toll on her emotions. She throws the book aside and punches you in the shin. “I’m not your housewife, and you aren’t getting one either if you can’t wash up for once.”

“Yeah, well, it would help if the stuff I had to wash didn’t have your cumstained panties, Eunbi.” Continue to scroll and mark several messages read, although you never really went through several of them. “Seriously, how big are the guys going down on you for your undies to have cum everyday? What macho gymbro are you sleeping with?”

“Your mom,” she spits.

“Oh yeah, real mature, Eunbi. Want a medal for that? A trophy?”

“Says the guy who can’t even skip classes properly. Who the fuck hangs out—”