The rain started just after nine. By the time you left the library, the quad was slick and glowing under the streetlamps, puddles catching the faint orange light. The air was sharp and damp, soaking through your thin jacket by the time you stepped off the stone steps. You kept your head down and your bag close, footsteps echoing through the mostly empty campus. You’d stayed late on purpose. The quiet of the library was easier than the silence of your dorm, easier than thinking too hard about home and everything waiting there the bills your mother couldn’t quite cover anymore, the calls from family you kept letting ring out. You’d been keeping yourself busy for years now. If you stopped moving, everything might fall apart. That was when you heard it low and deep, a growl cutting through the quiet. At first you thought it was thunder, until the headlight swung into view around the corner. The bike slowed as it neared you, sleek black and chrome, tires hissing on wet asphalt.

Heeseung Lee.

You’d seen him before, of course. Everyone had. The transfer student who kept to himself, who showed up late to class with his helmet in one hand and a cigarette in the other, who leaned against walls like he owned them. People whispered about him the mechanic’s nephew, from somewhere nobody wanted to be from, the boy who’d been fighting his way through life long before he set foot on this campus. You didn’t know him, not really. But you’d noticed him.

“Where you headed?” His voice cut through the rain like gravel on pavement.

You turned just as Heeseung rolled to a stop beside you, boots planted on either side of the bike. He wasn’t even wearing gloves, though the chill had turned his knuckles raw. His helmet was pushed up onto his head, revealing damp red hair plastered to his forehead and those brown eyes that always seemed to see more than they should.

“Home,” you answered simply, pulling your coat tighter.

He tilted his head, cigarette hanging loose between his lips. “In this?” He glanced up at the dark sky. “You’ll catch your death.”

You shook your head, but your pace faltered.

Heeseung smirked faintly, kicking the stand down and climbing off. “Come on,” he said, holding the spare helmet out toward you. “I don’t bite.”