The Tiger King (Chaelisa)

29| Monday

"Dubu! Over here!"

Dahyun jostled through the crowd of college students thronging the canteen floor until she finally made her way to Somi and Chaeyoung who were waving her over to their table. 

Thanks to Dahyun frequenting the Vault, she had grown closer to these girls and hung out with them during empty periods where all three of them didn't have classes.

"Somi, your professor didn't show up again?" Dahyun asked as she took a seat and dug into her lunch.

"What professor?" Somi scoffed and rolled her eyes. "He's barely shown up all semester. Probably jetting off to tropical beaches and chasing after girls, the pervert!"

"I wouldn't mind going along, but just for the beaches and the girls."

"Son Chaeyoung, not helping!"

Dahyun chuckled. "He's better off than us for sure."

"Well I need his credit and I'm gonna fail it at this rate," Somi grumbled, grouchily slurping on her orange juice. "What you reading anyway? What's up with everyone reading today, is it some National Book Day or something?"

"What do you mean everyone?" Dahyun arched an eyebrow. "It's just Chaeyoung."

"I don't think I ever saw a book in her hands ever since I got to know her," Somi declared, earning an indignant 'hey!' from the said girl.

"Tests coming up. This is extra reading," Chaeyoung muttered afterwards and sank back in her seat. "I'm gonna be leaving to meet Mina soon-ish."

"Well, I only stopped by here for some pick-me-up rice break," Somi replied, "so anyway, I was just thinking...it's funny. Not funny ha-ha but funny in a bizarre way. You two should have been at the Vault this morning, it was so...unusual?" She turned to her friends. " You wanna know the first thing Lisa said to me after I gave them the bagels?"

"What?" The other girls glanced at each other curiously. Dahyun had skipped going in the morning today because of an extra class that was scheduled to start earlier than her usual nine o'clock one, much to her chagrin.

"She asked me to look up stuff on X-Men later on my phone. I'm supposed to search out best sites to read synopses of major arcs and stuff so she could brush up," Somi explained, looking unsettled. "Where did she even hear about X-men? I mean okay, maybe in passing, like they do get mentioned in Stranger Things, but this is the first time she seems to be taking serious interest in it."

Dahyun shrugged and bit into her sandwich, chewing thoughtfully. "So? She's branching out and joining the geekdom aside from fantasising about her pilates instructor and getting laid. Is it such a bad thing?"

"But it was weird, like last week all she was into was boxing boxing boxing, no time for leisure stuff, bla bla bla and now over the weekend...she suddenly develops an interest in X-men?" 

"Did you ask her why?"

Somi shook her head. "She didn't give me much of an answer. And it gets weirder. Jennie unnie then took me aside at one point, like she didn't want anyone else to know what we were talking about, and she asked me if she could sometimes borrow my phone to watch—get this—yoga videos." Somi threw her hands up to the ceiling. "That's so random I can't even..."

This time Chaeyoung spoke up. "So? What's the big deal? Seems they're finally deciding to get a life outside of boxing. Maybe since Lisa is doing pilates now, Jennie wants to try stuff too. That's a good thing."

Somi wrung her head. "That's not my point! What I'm saying is...what happened for them to do a complete one-eighty like that? I'm just...at a loss. It's bamboozling, okay? I knew them for the longest time and sure we used to rag around together but this...it's like they're taking it to another level of dedication. Lisa wasn't even joking around, she was so serious when she asked me, like she needed the material to study it for some test for heaven's sake, that's the vibe I got from her."