Chapter Text
Everything about orientation is overwhelming.
He couldn’t figure out why at first because none of it is new to him. Or at least it shouldn’t be; he’s been around huge crowds before, going to the market back home was always just hundreds of bodies and screaming vendors and people plowing past you with handcarts.
It wasn’t new, and that might be why he let it get so bad, not recognizing the panic attack for what it was because the crowd of screaming freshmen packed into the stadium wasn’t supposed to generate a reaction. Yes they’re everywhere and loud and running into each other constantly, but that’s par for the course for his life so far. Yeah, the orphanage he grew up in didn’t have five thousand students jammed into a single space, but…
Either way, he’s now ignoring the prompt from the PA system that has the throng of bodies in identical ‘Class of 2025’ shirts scrambling to rearrange themselves. Instead he tries to make it to one of the walls of the stadium, to find a door out so he can hide somewhere for a little bit and calm down.
Once he gets to the edge, it’s not very hard to leave. No one is paying attention to him, the students rearranged in their new configuration now and busy doing whatever the announcer had told them to do, and volunteers in red shirts are milling around between them to make the process smoother. So he slips out, down a hallway into the bowels of the stadium and somehow the quiet feels even worse.
It’s not pure quiet, he can hear the announcer say something over the PA system through the walls, and there’s a fain thrum as thousands of voices shout something back. He tries to keep walking, turning down a hallway until he can’t hear them but there’s no space in this building that the throng won’t reach.
He gives up, sinking to the floor and covering his ears while he tries to breathe through the crushing feeling in his chest. He can feel tears building up, which he really, really doesn’t want because he can still hear the crowd, he’s not alone.
Not wanting the tears to fall only makes them come quicker, and his hands move from covering his ears to wiping them away frantically, trying to get rid of them before they can solidify.
He hears footsteps and the squeaking sound of wheels and he tries to dry his eyes off more frantically, swallowing back the tears, sniffing into the empty space to get them to retreat.
“I’ll catch up.” Says a voice as the footsteps pause at the end of the hallway he’s hiding in, and he blinks rapidly, hoping the red volunteer shirt he can see out of the corner of his eye will just walk by him.
“You ok?” The student volunteer asks, coming down into a squat in front of him.
Jisung isn’t, clearly isn’t, but he wants to say yes just so he will leave.
“Overwhelmed?” the volunteer asks and Jisung nods a little, shoving the heels of his thumbs into his eye sockets to make the tears stop. It reveals a new problem, one that he desperately needs to be alone to deal with.
He felt the stabbing pain of his tears starting to crystalize on one of the contact lenses. Once it starts it’s hard to stop, but he can’t just remove the lens in front of this stranger. It’s literally his second day in the U.S., first day as a student and he can’t already start making people scared of him.
“Do you miss home?” The volunteer continues, and Jisung rubs his eye again, hoping to dislodge the crystal from the lens and push it out of his eye, but all it does it press it harder against his eyelid and it immediately gets so much worse.
“Holy shit, you’re bleeding.” The volunteer says and this is really the worst case scenario, because this is about to get really complicated to extricate himself from.
“There’s something in my eye.” Jisung says, voice wet with tears and fear and maybe the volunteer will leave to get something and he’ll be able to run away.
“Can I see?” the volunteer asks, his hands reaching up to cradle Jisung’s cheek while waiting for his hand to lift away from his eye.
“I think it’s just my contact.” Jisung says quickly, because it is and he also can’t have the guy looking at it because how would he explain that. It already barely makes any sense and this dude is still sticking around, holding on to way too much empathy when Jisung just wants to be ignored.
“Your contact is making you bleed?” He says incredulously but doesn’t push it, “Stay right there, I’ll get something to help.”
And then he’s gone, finally walking down the hallway and Jisung has no intention of staying in place. He digs his contacts out first, because the crystal digging into his eyelid is painful and only going to get worse. He takes both of them out, because while the second eye hasn’t started being an issue yet, eventually it will. All it takes is the tiniest crystal forming when the contact gets too dry and the whole thing snowballs from there.
He keeps the contacts in his hand, he doesn’t want to leave them to form a lump of crystal on the floor for someone to find later. He can feel them starting to fuse into each other as he gets up though, the spikes of the crystals digging into his palm.
He makes it down the hall before he sees red out of the corner of his eye, and the volunteer is back, jogging towards him with one of those drawstring bags they were handing out that morning.
“Come with me.” He says, grabbing onto Jisung’s arm and pulling him away like Jisung hadn’t explicitly been trying to run away. He leads them down two hallways and into a room littered with bags and backpacks and snacks.
Jisung is pulled towards a chair, told to sit in it and he follows along dumbly, the volunteer putting his bag on the table nearby and grabbing something out of it before getting a handful of tissues and coming back to stand in front of Jisung.
He puts the tissues against his temple, the bottle of something hovering in the air as he freezes at the sight of Jisung’s eyes.
He expected this, that’s why he wanted to run away. His eyes startle people, scare them and then they never talk to him again. He doesn’t exactly know this person nor really wants to talk to talk to them, but it’s literally his first day as a student and he doesn’t want to already start alienating himself.
“Is that normal for your eyes?” The guy asks, bottle still held in the air, voice very intentionally neutral. Jisung nods slightly, the tissues against his face rubbing as the guy continues to stand stock still.
“This is just saline solution, is that ok to use on you?” He asks, eyes still boring into Jisung’s and he clearly has so many questions but is doing his best to be polite. Jisung isn’t sure though, he’s only ever used water bottles to clean out his eyes when this happens, and the bottle has a bunch of words that say it’s specially made for eyes so it should be fine. He shrugs.
“Ok, tell me if it hurts, I guess.” He says and the bottle finally moves, right above Jisung’s still stinging eye and he flinches as the liquid hits it.
“Keep it open.” The guy mutters, a thumb coming to pull Jisung’s eyelid open. It feels weird, but he can feel the grittiness of the remaining crystals start to disappear as he blinks rapidly. The tissues against his skin become saturated with the runoff, the guy tossing them away and grabbing a bunch before flooding his eye again.
“Is your other eye ok? You removed both contacts.” The guy asks, but Jisung mutters a soft “it’s fine.” The guy looks at his right eye critically, but lets it go. “Can I look at the damage?”
Jisung can’t really nod, because there are hands holding his head in place, but he whispers a little “ok” because he won’t be able to look himself. His dorm room is small, shared with someone and doesn’t have any mirrors. The shared bathroom on the floor has mirrors, but it’s too risky to take his contacts out somewhere that public.
“Your contacts did that?” the guy gasps, hid thumb on Jisung’s lash line as he rolls the eyelid over his middle finger. Jisung still has the contacts in his hand, fully crystalized now and jabbing in his palm. For some reason, he doesn’t know why and he regrets it the moment he does it, he lifts his palm and opens it.
“Oh yeah, that’d do it.” The guy says a little incredulously, and the lump of crystal that formed around his contacts looks bad even to Jisung. The contacts are easily visible in the middle, warped and bent as the slightly green-tinged crystal formed.
“Do you have anything you can use to cover your eye? I don’t think you can wear your contacts while this heals.” This poses a new problem, beyond how weirdly chill this guy is about the fact that Jisung has decidedly not normal eyes. He has backup contacts, lots of them – he goes through them pretty quickly – but he doesn’t have anything for if he can’t wear them.
Seeing Jisung’s hesitation, the guy goes and pulls something out of another bag. “Here, wear these. I’m going to bring you to CVS to get stuff.”
Jisung takes the sunglasses, big ones with a thick frame and opaque lenses. The guy is busy texting on his phone, one strap of a backpack slung over his arm.
“You don’t need to.” Jisung mumbles, hoping the guy will let it go. He plays with the glasses in his hands hesitantly.
“No, this is great. I don’t want to be here any more than you do, but I need an excuse to leave.” The guy dismisses, finishing his text. “You’re lucky you can leave any time you want.”
“I can?” Jisung says, because all the material he had been sent strongly suggested this orientation was very important and mandatory.
“Yeah, they’ll tell you that it’s important and that you’ll make friends there and stuff, but it’s mostly a photo-op for the university. You can just ask me any questions you have and you won’t have missed anything.” The guy states finally threading his other arm through the backpack straps and pocketing his phone.
“Oh.” Jisung says simply, putting the sunglasses on as the guy motions him to and they start walking towards the door. It feels weird to wear sunglasses indoors, to wear them at all really – almost no one wore any back home even though there was a lot more sun. It’s a thing that pretty much singled you out as a tourist or a rich person. Someone scammable.
Everyone wears them here though, which makes sense as it’s the source of most of the tourists back home. He barely gets any looks as he follows the guy out to the street exit of the stadium.
“Yeah, I have to be here because I’m an RA. Residential Advisor, it’s a bunch of work in the beginning but a month in the students think they know everything and you just get a free dorm room.” The guy says as he pushes a door clearly labeled as an emergency exit and they walk out into the sunshine. “The store’s like three blocks away. I’m Minho by the way.”
“Jisung.” Jisung replies, falling in step beside Minho as they walk down the sidewalk. He doesn’t know what they’re going to look for, but being with this weirdly calm stranger is nicer than the screaming throng of freshman.
“Nice to meet you.” Minho smiles at him and Jisung makes a wobbly smile back.
They don’t talk much as they walk, despite how pushy he’s been so far, Jisung gets the distinct impression that Minho isn’t usually this friendly. Once they enter the store, which is a whole experience of its own given that walking through the sliding door is like being punched in the face with air conditioning, Minho strides to one side with purpose. He seems to know his way easily, barely needing to read the signage.
He’s quickly amassing a sizable number of things; a box with bottles of saline solution, a smaller bottle of eye drops like they Minho used on him, an eye patch to cover up his injured eye.
“Do you have any sunglasses?” Minho asks him and Jisung shakes his head. Other than the ones currently on his head, he’s never worn glasses before. “Figured as much, you don’t talk like you wear sunglasses.”
“What?” Jisung questions, because yeah he’s never worn them but it shouldn’t be that obvious. He’s clearly an international student, but he’s worked hard to not feel that foreign.
“You emphasize your vowels too much, westerners love their consonants.” Minho tells him and Jisung files that away as something to fix. “They also have pale little eyelashes that makes the sun hurt their eyes.”
Minho doesn’t emphasize his vowels much, but he does mumble through his Rs a little and Jisung can tell he’s had to adapt to American English too. Jisung’s way earlier in the process, tons of students at orientation had been excited to hear him speak because they loved his British lilt to his accent.
The rotating stand with the sunglasses is a little bit overwhelming, with so many different styles on it, but Minho ends up picking for him, holding out two options on either side of Jisung’s head before picking one.
“Do you have any money with you, by the way?” Minho asks as the sunglasses are added to the pile in Jisung’s arms.
“No, I only have money on my ID card.” Jisung replies sheepishly, stilling in case they have to go put everything back.
“Only?” Minho asks, still walking towards the register. “Your parents sent you over here with only school cash? No American money?”
Jisung doesn’t tell him that he doesn’t have parents, that there’s no one who could send him money. He nods though, because it’s close enough – he only has the small allowance his stipend puts on his school ID so he can pay for incidentals on campus.
“That’s dumb. You should get a job then, cuz everything’s way more expensive on campus. You’ll run out immediately.” Minho mutters as he swipes a card on the register, pulling items out of Jisung’s arms and scanning them himself. There’s no one around them, no one checking that they’re doing it right and not just stealing everything and it’s an absolutely wild concept. Everything in this country has been wild so far.
“Can’t. I’m on a student visa.” He mumbles back, handing over the last item for Minho to scan before watching him pull out his own wallet.
“They really don’t tell you anything.” Minho sighs as he pays. “If you work on campus, it doesn’t count against your visa. And they pay in real dollars, not that stupid campus shit.”
“Oh.” Jisung says because yeah, that wasn’t covered at all.
“Not all the jobs are good though, I can help you find one that doesn’t suck.” Minho continues, ripping the plastic bag off the little rack and making his way outside.
“Thanks.” Jisung says as he runs after him, stopping a few steps outside the store as Minho tears the tags off the new sunglasses.
He holds out the pair and Jisung removes what are presumably Minho’s off his own face, placing the new ones on as Minho sticks his into his hair. He hands the rest of the bag over then, and Jisung reaches inside to pull out the little bottle of eye drops.
Minho looks at him with a confused frown when he holds it out to him.
“To replace the one you used earlier.” Jisung explains.
“Oh, that wasn’t mine.” Minho dismisses. “One of the other RAs is a huge stoner and always carries them. He won’t notice we used any of it. That’s for you, a small one to carry and a big one to refill it when you run out.”
Jisung makes an o shape with his mouth, nodding as he puts it back in the bag.
“Also give me your phone.” Miho says, holding his hand out.
Jisung pulls his phone out of his shorts, the only thing in there except for his student ID. It’s an old model, several generations behind the ads he saw at the airport but it functions. All it needs to do is be able to operate the dual authentication app that the school had mandated he download, his new laptop was really where the equipment portion of his stipend went.
Minho is using his phone to take a selfie, a cute pose with his fingers out in a v, before he returns the phone with its third contact added. The first two are the campus police and his RA’s number, as he was told to do during the very beginning of the orientation.
Minho then takes a picture of Jisung, a probably horribly unflattering one, and Minho shows it to him as he fills out the contact form. “What’s your last name?”
“Han.” Jisung replies and Minho nods, finishing up and clicking to save.
“If you have any questions, just text me.” Minho tells him and they start walking again. “Same thing with if you have any more issues during orientation, especially if they mean I can get out of that stadium for a while.”
They walk back towards campus, Minho giving Jisung directions to his dorm since he’s still barely able to orient himself in the city, and they separate with a wave as Minho goes back inside to finish his duties. Jisung makes his own way home with the distinct feeling he was just involuntarily adopted.
He ends up asking Minho a ton of question, maybe because he only goes to bits and pieces of the orientation program. He ends up asking about those on-campus jobs, and Minho sends him the link to apply to them and his shortlist of the best ones. They also meet up the day where the freshmen are supposed to be doing some sort of Instagram-based scavenger hunt, Minho pointing out the things he’s supposed to take pictures of once Jisung creates an account for himself. He only really does two of the dozen or so items, the rest of the time walking around campus as Minho points out the various arts buildings and they end up walking in them and finding all of Jisung’s classrooms instead.
Minho also teaches Jisung what a stye is, when he answers a question about why he has an eyepatch on for him. “It’s really gross looking but not dangerous. No one will press you on it.” He tells him and Jisung nods because that’s a really good cover actually, he’s just been avoiding telling his roommate anything by pretending not to know the English word for how he got hurt.
His roommate had shrugged and moved on. They got along so far, but there was a very clear gap in lived experiences between them, and with the guy’s extreme whiteness and Jisung’s very foreign everything.
Jisung is still not over the fact that he wears shoes inside the dorm room. On his bed, even. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be over it.
He complains about it to Minho, who tells him Americans are just like that sometimes. It’s one of their quirks, along with the sunglasses, lack of sunscreen use, and weirdly huge gaps in the bathroom stalls. You learn to live with it.
He learns that Minho, very reluctantly, emigrated five years ago. His father got a position at the American branch of his company and ripped Minho out of Korea right in the middle of his secondary education and he resented him for it for years.
He still talks to his friends from Korea, Jisung learns when he makes them both freeze mid-step to take a picture of a squirrel running across the green. They love the squirrels, Minho tells him, and Jisung loves the furry little creature too. It appears to have no fear, hopping around the shade of the trees until it jumps into a trash can and digs through all the discarded lunchboxes that were jammed into it from the orientation catering.
Actual classes start the week after orientation, with a gap weekend which he spends mostly in his room getting everything ready, and partially outside trying to find his way to the classrooms again alone.
He finishes his second day of classes with a panic attack, unsure he can actually do this.
He came to the states because he wanted to pursue music and it has one of the most developed music industries in the world. So many of his program’s alumni are big names and have big careers and come back to recruit sometimes. The whole university is renowned for its arts school, everyone had been so excited when he got in with a scholarship from the charity that helped run his orphanage.
He was good at school, really good at music; he had thought it would be just as easy as it had been before but he hadn’t anticipated how much English there would be. He was good at English too, better than most of the other kids and he’d only been speaking for under a decade. But American English was so different, without any pidgin and its own slang he had to learn to keep up with any of the conversations around him, and it was so, so much.
Minho shows up at his dorm room, having demanded to know which one he was in after Jisung texted him that he wasn’t sure college was right for him. He startles a little when he sees Jisung’s eyes without the contacts in, but recovers quickly as a tear runs down his face.
“Come on, tell me what’s wrong.” Minho says as he pushes into the room, dragging Jisung to climb onto his bed with him.
“It’s just so different. I don’t understand anything, and they talk so fast and I don’t know what’s happening.” Jisung whines as Minho rubs his back.
“If you’re talking about all the slang, no one knows what they’re saying.” Minho tells him. “I use urban dictionary all the time to look up the new words, and people still use them wrong all the time. Even the Americans. Especially the Americans.”
“It’s not just the students.” Jisung mumbles, but he’s already trying to remember the name of the thing Minho mentioned. It turns out that he doesn’t need to remember it, Minho has him pulling out his laptop a little while later, after peeling a strip of tears that have almost finished crystalizing off his face like it’s not the weirdest thing ever. Jisung goes to flush his eyes with the saline solution because it really does help, even without the contacts in, to get whatever crystalizes in the corners of his eyes out and away.
They lay on his bed for a while, Minho going through his schedule with him and teaching him all about how blackboard works. Where to find the recordings of the classes, how to turn on closed captioning on them, where to find the portal through which he can anonymously send messages to his professors if he’s too shy to do it by email. He also tells Jisung that the school here is a lot more casual, he can ask the other students for their notes and they won’t think he’s trying to steal from them.
He also teaches him about the urban dictionary website, bookmarking it on his browser so he can look things up easily. Minho is in the process of showing him the weirdest entries he’s found when Jisung’s roommate comes back.
Jisung has almost forgotten about his contacts being out, enjoying being able to actually see his surroundings, when Minho makes a quick motion towards his eyes and he scrambles to pull the contact case off the dresser next to them.
“Hi, I’m Brandon. Business Major.” His roommate says, voice coming closer as he introduced himself. That’s basically the only thing Jisung knows about him really, he’s here to ‘network’ and ‘live the college experience’ and from what he’s learned in the barely a week they’ve been together, it means a lot of coming home smelling like cheap beer.
“I can tell.” Minho deadpans, his eyes looking the kid up and down with distaste. Jisung has to hide the laugh that comes out as the hand that had appeared in his periphery retreats. Brandon really likes handshakes, this is probably the disappointment of a lifetime.
Minho turns away from him then, Jisung has already complained enough about his roommate that he doesn’t feel like he needs to keep up appearances. He smiles as Jisung gets the last contact in, a practiced move, and they go back to the laptop and giggle over slang.
The next day is significantly less overwhelming, and Jisung takes Minho’s advice and picks a seat next to someone who has their laptop out, a word document open for notetaking. He’s too shy to talk to her, but when he gets lost or confused he looks over at the words on his neighbor’s screen and jots those down.
Friday afternoon all the freshmen who have already declared a music composition major are invited to one of the arts buildings for a ‘mixer.’ Minho tells him it’s just a code for lots of people awkwardly standing around too afraid to talk to each other, but theirs is slightly more organized apparently. There’s older students there too, ones who volunteered to be mentors to the freshmen and Jisung finds himself adopted once more by a guy called Changbin.
He’s only one year older than him, unlike Minho, and has a very strong foreign accent but they exchange numbers before standing around awkwardly like expected. Another Asian guy walks over at some point, and Changbin introduces him as his own mentor, Chan.
“They always give us the Asian newbies. My mentor is over there.” Chan says after he introduces himself, pointing at a tall Asian man talking in a cluster of Americans. “We’re a long, unbroken line of Asian comp students.”
Chan is very friendly, saying that as his grand-mentee Jisung should feel free to ask him anything. He gets added as Jisung’s sixth contact and sticks around with them drinking diluted lemonade and chatting about the classes everyone has this semester.
Jisung is mostly taking general education classes, only one basic composition class on his schedule. He’s jealous of Changbin and Chan who get to do basically only music, not bogged down with any of the less interesting courses.
“You can always rent the studios, even if you don’t have a music class.” Chan tells him and Jisung is very interested in that possibility, because he had not expected a music degree would include quite so much economics and biology.
When he gets back to his room that evening, he tells Minho all about the mixer over text. Minho replies telling him that he’s lucky his mentors are helpful, the dance program has the same system but his didn’t want anything to do with him.
Jisung feels glad he found nice people for himself as he texts Chan for information on the studio booking website. Chan replies within a couple minutes, telling him that he’s happy to walk him through all the equipment in the studios if he’s never used them before.
As the weeks go by, he’s still largely too shy to make friends in his own in class, afraid of stumbling over his words or sounding like a dunce by incorrectly using the new slang he’s slowly learning. He has a lot of homework to do though, so it doesn’t really matter that he’s not making a ton of friends because he is very busy. He has no idea how his roommate manages to get any of it done given how often he’s out all night.
Whatever, it makes for a quieter workspace and it’s not like he really cares if Brandon passes his classes. Minho certainly doesn’t like him, being extremely curt to the kid each time they’ve run into each other when Minho was over.
Jisung starts going over to Minho’s too, especially right before dinner when Minho has his open door hours as an RA and can’t leave his room. Jisung just works quietly at his desk or scrolls through his Instagram and tries to keep up with all his favorite artists until Minho finally kicks out the last student with a sigh.
He was right though, there’s fewer and fewer of them as the semester goes on, and by mid-October they’re frequently just sitting in the room alone for the hour, either working or chatting until it’s time to make their way down to the cafeteria.
Eating with Minho is great because he carries a jar of chili oil down to the cafeteria every time, letting Jisung use it to flavor his selection if it turns out even blander than expected. Jisung is by no means a spice hound like Minho clearly is, but he has some standards for his food.
He also doesn’t eat the melon from his fruit cups, and Jisung doesn’t eat the grapes. Minho called them a match made in heaven the first time he switched the cups on their trays.
He also eats with Chan and Changbin sometimes, the two of them helping him orient himself around the rental studios. Chan has an even worse spice tolerance than Jisung, but is way better at producing music so he asks him a million and a half questions as they eat after the sessions.
“You’re going to be so advanced when you finally hit the practical courses.” Chan jokes, ruffling Jisung’s hair and he beams back at him because that’s ideal really. Jisung wants to make music, be good at making music. Being ahead of the curve is great.
His first actual project, which is not really a commission despite Minho calling it as much, is alterations to a song for Minho’s final exam. He immediately runs to Chan and Changbin for help, Changbin walking him through ripping the file apart and discussing how to interpret Minho’s requested changes.
Apparently the dance students regularly ask the composition students for edits, it’s a pretty established system, and Changbin has a request of his own to work on too. Jisung learns that he’ll get his name on the showcase flyer, ‘remixed by Han Jisung’ tacked on after the song name and he is pretty excited to see it.
Chan ends up being very impressed when he learned that it’s Minho he’s remixing for, since apparently he’s one of the best and most feared dancers in the school. He has a reputation for being really cold and focused on his studies.
Jisung has seen it a little, the students in his open door hours only come for questions and disappear as soon as they’re answered, no one hanging out in his room, except for himself, like the students do in his own dorm. Minho is never cold with Jisung though, instead he’s funny and giggly and helpful.
Chan’s bewilderment means that Jisung brings Minho over, as proof, to one of their dinners in the cafeteria and the first thing Minho does after sliding in his seat is pressing his chin into his first and staring at Chan.
“I heard you didn’t believe my Jisungie when he said he’s working on a commission for me.” Minho purrs out and it sounds like a threat.
“I believed him!” Chan defends immediately, “I was just surprised.”
Minho turns his head to look at Jisung, who nods to confirm that’s what happened.
“Ok, I forgive you.” Minho dismisses, pulling the chili oil jar from his bag and twisting the lid open. It’s a peace offering that Chan doesn’t take from, though Changbin politely asks if he can have some. They eat together, all four of them, more often after that. It makes Jisung happy that his two friend groups are getting along.
Jisung is with Minho when he gets the email about the international student thanksgiving dinner.
“Absolutely not.” Minho declares as he opens it. “If you think the food they know how to prepare is bad, attend that and lower your expectations even more.”
The email also explains that the cafeterias will remain open for them during the break, but at reduced hours since all the Americans are going home.
“You can’t eat that.” Minho declares, still on a long tangent about the catering quality of the school. “I’m going to take you somewhere actually edible for your first thanksgiving.”
Jisung actually has money now, from his shifts sitting at the dorm entrance and checking IDs while he does his homework. It’s boring, incredibly so, but he gets to do whatever he wants when there’s not a person trying to get in so it doesn’t really eat into his free time all that much.
It’s with that money that he bought his first ever coat, way back in October when Minho saw him running between classes in nothing more than a hoodie. Malaysia doesn’t really get cold like the states do, so he hadn’t really thought about winters being something he needed to prepare for.
Minho knew what to do though, and he bundled Jisung up in his jacket and a scarf before dragging him out on a weekend afternoon to a vaguely nearby store. The coat had been expensive, though Minho told him it was a pretty reasonable price. The scarf and gloves were significantly cheaper, and he still ran around in his one pair of sneakers despite the snow starting to fall.
After forcing Jisung to delete the email invite Minho orders them a traditional American thanksgiving meal, though he promises they’ll also go get better food one of the other days. Jisung doesn’t really care either way, he’s never had thanksgiving food and from the way Minho hypes it up, he doesn’t really want to.
They go together to pick it up, because delivery is expensive. Minho tells him that Boston Market is not the best version, but it’s the most authentic you can buy for cheap and it’ll give Jisung a sense for the holiday. When they finally eat it in Jisung’s dorm room, both chairs dragged against a cleared out desk, it’s not bad. Very beige, a little dry, but overall pretty decent given everything he’s been told.
The Chinese takeout they have the next day is way better, especially since Jisung ordered in his piecemeal Mandarin and they got served authentic Chinese instead of the Americanized stuff.
“This is my favorite thing about you now.” Minho tells him in between bites, his chopsticks pointed at Jisung. “I’m taking you with me each time I eat out, what other languages do you know?”
“Uh, mostly Malay and English, but I know some Mandarin and a tiny bit of Tamil.” Jisung responds and Minho nods to himself like he’s having deep thoughts.
“I know Korean and some Japanese.” Minho tells him. “We’re missing Thai, but we have most of China Town covered between us so we’ll be eating well.”
Jisung smiles at that, because the food they’re eating is way better than what they have on campus and he doesn’t mind continuing to go out. Especially with Minho, who is so easy to hang out with.
The semesters passes faster than he expected, and in between his many, many exams Jisung finds himself making his way to one of the auditoriums to watch Minho dance to his remix. He had received a lot of instructional help from Chan and Changbin, but all the actual mixing he had done on his own and he was really pleased with his work. Minho had been too, when he had played it for him. There had been some more requested tweaks, because he was still new to interpreting vague hand motions as musical movements, but it was an easy thing to fix.
But now he’s going to see how Minho interpreted it, see how all the other dancers interpret the music they selected.
He’s used to a rather different set of music being danced to. When he got old enough to start sneaking out at night, he would go to dance clubs in the center of town and listen to the music the priests running his orphanage wouldn’t approve of. That’s where he really fell in love with music, feeling its beat ripple through him and watching the crowds dance and sway and jump.
It had been so much compared to the gentle swaying to the hymns every Sunday in the chapel. But those club goers weren’t professionals, weren’t artists. Not like the dance students that threw themselves across the stage and contorted to make the melody even more visceral.
It was nothing compared to the way Minho had taken his remix and made it into art.
It makes him want to do more music, ideas coming to mind immediately as he translates movements into melodies. He wants Minho to dance for him, wants to make music for Minho to dance to.
Chan chuckles at his hanging jaw when the performances finish, ruffling his hair as his teeth click back together.
“Enjoyed yourself?” Chan asks, mirth still present. Jisung nods his head in big sweeping motions.
“I have so many new ideas for songs.” Jisung breathes out and Changbin laughs.
“Write them down before you forget them over break.” Chan tells him and Jisung doesn’t have time to question why he doesn’t make music over the winter because they’re out in the lobby and he can see Minho walking to the doors with his bag and he’s running after him screaming his name.
“That was so coooool!” He shouts as he slams into him, the both of them hitting the wall. Jisung hits it with his hands, extended on both side of Minho as he taps the wall with his shoulder and Jisung gives him no time to recover. “How do you come up with that stuff? Like I knew it was going to be different from like, club music or whatever, but that move you did with the beat drop? The one where you were all robotic and then it looked like you melted and it got all smooth. That was so cool.”
Minho is smiling at him, leaning against the wall as Jisung cages him in and listening to his effusive praise.
“I want to make all your music, Min. I have so many ideas already.” Jisung finally breathes out, blushing a little when he realizes how close they are. No one seems to be really paying attention to them when he finally pulls away, Minho remaining against the wall.
“I get to suggest changes?” Minho asks and Jisung nods.
“Of course, it’s your dances. The music should match what you want to do.” Jisung states because he doesn’t want to make music just so it sits on a shelf. He wants to make music for stuff like today, where people can turn it into art.
“Then I agree to your deal. I get an exclusive contract with producer Han Jisung, and you get to see your music on stage.” Minho proclaims and Jisung smiles back, excited.