“Your roommate won’t mind me tagging along, will he?” I asked Seunghyun.

He shook his head. “No roommate.”

“That must be nice,” I said wistfully, thinking of all the things I would be able to do without a roommate and how much easier my life would be and all the music I wouldn’t be forced to listen to. “I wish I had a single.” Seunghyun just nodded.

He led me through his building and to his room. After he unlocked his down and let me in he gestured for my bag and hung it up on a hook on the door. He motioned towards the hair dye on his desk and waited for instructions.

“Ok, then,” I said rolling up my sleeves and checking over the instructions to make sure they were the same as the ones I’ve read before. “We’re gonna need a chair for you to sit on cause you’re way too tall for us to do this standing.” I looked up at him, “and of course the beanie has to come off now. And your shirt,” I added, turning back to the directions.

“Mwoh?! Andwae!”

I turned back to a strangely shocked Seunghyun. “I don’t know what that meant but I think I get the message so you can uncross your arms from your chest.” He slowly lowered his arms and attempted to regain his dignity. “I’m not a ert so chill out. It’s so the dye doesn’t drip on your clothes,” I explained. “If you’re so against showing some skin then we’re gonna need a towel or a shirt that you don’t mind getting hair dye on. Your hair is short enough that it shouldn’t be any trouble but it’s usually good to play it safe in these situations.”

“This is fine,” He said pulling up a chair beside me and sitting down in it.

 “If you insist,” I shrugged. I took off his beanie to look at exactly what I was dealing with. It wasn’t too bad; he managed to get most of it. There were just specs of blue here and there and chunks of roots that managed to escape from his attention. It should be a quick and easy fix. I slipped on the gloves that came with the dye and got to work. I first saturated the spots that were still blue and then coated the rest for good measure. It was a relaxing activity. The systematic application was soothing and his hair was soft underneath my fingers. Beneath the strong chemical fumes of the hair dye I could still sometimes catch a hint of the cologne Seunghyun was wearing. All I could catch from it was faint hints of vanilla and white musk but it still made me want to bury my face in his neck and breathe deeply. Maybe later I could find out the name of it. We didn’t talk but somehow it was a comfortable silence. There was no urge to fill the air with meaningless chatter.

Before long I had already gone over the whole area of his head twice and couldn’t put off finishing any longer. I put the bottle of hair dye down and stripped off the gloves. “My job here is done.” I double checked the instructions. “You have to rinse it out after 25 minutes.” Seunghyun stood up and his hand reached up to touch his hair. I gently smacked it down. “Don’t touch it; you’ll get dye all over your hands which will lead to getting dye everywhere else even after I managed not dripping it on anything.” He nodded sheepishly and lowered his hand. I felt awkward as I glanced around the room. “Soo…well I guess my work here is done,” I turned slightly towards to door as if to leave but Seunghyun’s hand on my wrist stopped me.

“Stay please?” he asked. There was a hint of desperation that I could just barely make out and it hit me just how lonely it must be from him this far from home, stuck speaking a language he wasn’t fluent in without even one person to talk to in his native tongue to get a break.

It was then that I decided that I was going to be the best friend I could to Choi Seunghyun even if he started to regret it. I used my free hand to gently release his hand from my wrist and walked over to the door. I got my phone from my back pack and then returned next to Seunghyun. “Of course I’ll stay,” I smiled at him, “I just had to set the timer for the dye.” I sat down on the small couch he had in his room as I set the timer on my simple tracfone. It was the simplest little phone ever since my parents are kinda cheapskates when it comes to technology. At least it got the job done. When I was done I set the phone aside and smiled up at Seunghyun. “So to repay for my helping me out with your hair help me out with Korean. Teach me a few phrases.”

“You want to learn Korean?” he asked incredulously, angling his chair to face me and sitting back down in it. “Why?”

“You said yesterday that there was no one to speak Korean with you so teach me some Korean so you have someone to talk to even if I won’t be able to understand a lot of it for a while.” Seunghyun didn’t say anything and just stared at me. I blushed and looked down embarrassed. He clearly thought it was a terrible idea and I was starting to feel the same way. I couldn’t even pronounce his name correctly at first, how could I even think I would be able to say any words? Not to mention it would probably be a great bother to him. I found myself wishing that the timer would go off right now or that Alex would call or text me so I had a reason to leave, to escape. “I mean, if you don’t want to it’s-it’s fine, totally understandable…” I trailed off. Why does the earth never open up and swallow you up when you need it to?

After another pause Seunghyun finally spoke up. “Gwenchana, Gabby-ah. Annyeonghaseyo,” he said with a little wave and a smile.

“Annyeonghaseyo?” I repeated.

“Your accent is no good but get better with practice,” he seemed to conclude. “I’ll do it but conditions. You can’t listen to kpop or watch any Korean tv shows or movies.”

“Strange request but ok,” I agreed. “Anything else?”

“Different nickname.”

“Did you think Tabi was too easy for me?”

He shook his head. “Friends now so different name is better.” He seemed to pause to do a little check to confirm what he said. “We are friends, geurae?” he asked shyly, confidence gone.

I nodded quickly even though I wasn’t completely sure what that last bit of what he said was. “Definitely friends. So what should I call you then?”

“Oppa.”

I eyed him warily. “This nickname doesn’t mean anything weird either, does it?”

“Aish Americans trust no one,” he said exasperated and then explained, “nothing bad. It’s for addressing older friend who is boy.”

 “Ok then, Oppa it is.” I leaned back. “Teach me then, Oppa.”

And he did. Seunghyun went over some basic Korean with me, how to say hello and such. My pronunciation must have been horrible because whenever I said a word for the first time he would have to struggle to hold back laughter.

When the timer went off I was going to leave but he insisted I stay since it wouldn’t take him very long to wash out the dye. “If you’re not here when I get back I’ll not be happy,” he threatened. “You have to make sure hair turned out ok.”

“Ok, ok,” I laughed. “Hurry up and go.” He held up a threatening finger one last time as he closed the door behind him. I figured I might as well entertain myself as I waited for him. I got up from my spot on the couch and walked to the window. Seunghyun had a nice view of campus from his room if you preferred a view of a bunch people over the river views that some dorms had. From here I could even see the table that I worked on homework at when it was warm enough outside.

I turned away from the window and glanced around the rest of the room. There were some picture frames on his bedside table. I picked them up to get a better look at them. One was of Seunghyun with who was probably his mother and a young woman that could have been his sister. The other picture was of Seunghyun with four other guys, smiling and laughing together. Surprisingly Seunghyun’s blue hair didn’t stand out as much as one of the guys in the picture who had one long piece of hair that was dyed red halfway down. Another guy was blonde. The other two didn’t have their hair dyed but one of them seemed to have had lost his shirt. It was a surprisingly professional looking picture considering the subject matter.

Seunghyun came through the door rubbing his hair with a towel. “I told you it wouldn’t take long,” he said pausing when he saw the picture in my hand.

I held it up, not bothering to try to hide that I was looking at it. “Your friends look friendly. The blonde one is kinda cute,” I added putting it back down.

“I’m cuter,” he sulked.

“Aww look, Oppa’s jealous,” I teased. “Now come over here so I can see how your hair turned out.” Seunghyun did so and bent over a bit so I could see the top of his head. “Wow, Oppa, I gotta say, you have one talented colorist. There’s not one speck of blue on this head.” I took the towel from him and dried his hair off a bit more and then used my fingers to style it a bit. “And now you’re ready to seduce the hottest girl on campus,” I said. “You’re so lucky to have a friend like me.” Seunghyun stood up straight and peered in the mirror across the room at his hair. “Now that you’re taken care off is there any chance your blonde friend speaks any English?”

“Ya! Hajama!”

“That means ‘stop,’ right? I was only joking, Oppa,” I pouted. When that got no reaction I sniffed a bit, “It’s not like I could date him anyways. He’s got the look of someone who already has a girl. The one with his shirt off however, definitely looks like he needs a girl.”

Seunghyun snorted. “That’s more true than you know.”

The rest of the week passed by smoothly. Seunghyun would often join me for breakfast and as a result Alex as well.

 One night I ran into him while having dinner with some other of my friends. Sophia didn’t have much to say to him. Ian welcomed him, glad to have another guy added to the mix to help balance out the estrogen. Christina just stared at him and then shot off some Korean to everyone’s surprise since she was Chinese, not Korean.

Seunghyun as wide eyed and stuttering, trying to figure out how to respond.

“Christina,” I scolded, wondering what she said so easily that made Seunghyun so uneasy. “This is why I never bring you guys new people. One of you always offends them.”

“Christina just rolled her eyes at me and then said something else in Korean with a wink. She spoke too fast for my Korean lessons with Seunghyun to be any use.

“Hey, did I hear my name?” I asked. “You guys heard it too, right?” I asked the group.

“They all shrugged and Ian added the helpful comment of “hey, it’s all Korean to me.”

After that encounter Seunghyun tended to avoid Christina and both of them, despite gratuitous begging, refused to tell me what was said.