Chapter Text
Lena was trying to read.
This was, in theory, a simple thing. She had a chair. She had a book. She had approximately forty minutes before her next obligation. The conditions were ideal.
What she did not have was silence, because Ginny was pacing.
Ginny had been pacing for seven minutes. Lena knew this because she had checked her watch at the start of it with the specific intention of calculating how long she could tolerate it before saying something. The answer, it turned out, was seven minutes.
“Ginny.”
Ginny stomped her foot. Not a small, polite stomp. A full, committed, both-heels stomp that made the floor vibrate slightly, followed by a sigh so large and so profound that it seemed to briefly alter the air pressure in the room.
Lena lowered her book.
Ling did not look up from her phone. “Still no response?”
“Nothing,” Ginny said, with the gravity of someone reporting a national tragedy. “I texted the number I had. The old one. And nothing. No delivered. No seen. Just—” she made a gesture that apparently represented the void, “—nothing.”
“She probably changed her number,” Ginny continued, spinning on her heel to pace in the other direction. “She changed it and she doesn’t know I’m trying to reach her and she’s just sitting there thinking I never texted and—”
“Or,” Lena said, in a measured, reasonable tone, “she changed her mind.”
Ginny stopped pacing.
“Which is,” Lena continued, picking her book back up, “completely within her rights. She said sure. It was a low-commitment word. She thought about it and decided she didn’t want to. That’s a valid choice and frankly it simplifies everything—”
“She didn’t change her mind—”
“—you could focus on your actual coursework, I get my activity sheets done by someone who isn’t operating on romantic delusion, everyone wins—”
“Lena.”
“I’m just saying it’s the cleaner outcome.”
Ling finally looked up. “She could also just be busy.” She said this with the easy diplomacy of someone who had mediated between these two specific energies many times before. “It’s the first few weeks of sem. Freshmen are drowning. She probably hasn’t had two consecutive minutes to breathe.”
“She changed her number,” Ginny said, with the absolute conviction of someone who had already decided. “I know it. I just need to get the new one.”
A silence.
Lena turned a page.
“I need help getting it,” Ginny added.
“No,” said Lena.
“I haven’t even—”
“The answer is no.”
“You don’t know what I’m going to ask.”
“It doesn’t matter what you’re going to ask.” Lena looked up from her book with the expression of someone who had made a very firm and final decision. “I have already helped you once this week. I think that’s a generous contribution to your romantic endeavors and I’d like to return to my book.”
Ginny was quiet for exactly three seconds, which was the amount of time it took to recognize that Lena wasn’t going to be moved by a standard approach.
She sat down on the edge of the bed. She folded her hands. She looked at Lena with the focused calm of someone changing tactics.
“Kate,” she said.
Lena turned another page. “Absolutely not.”
“You know her. Second year Tourism. You two had a thing—”
“We did not have a thing.”
“You flirted with her for two weeks at the lib—”
“I was being friendly—”
“And then you ghosted her,” Ginny said.
The page-turning stopped.
“You ghosted Kate,” Ginny continued, “and she was upset about it, and I know this because she vented to me about it once and I said I didn’t know who she was talking about even though I absolutely did.” She tilted her head. “She’s Second Year Tourism. Miu is First Year Tourism. The department isn’t that big. If anyone has the first year log or the student directory or even just knows someone who knows someone—”
“What you are describing,” Lena said, very slowly, setting her book face-down on her lap, “is me flirting my way back into the good graces of someone I ghosted for the express purpose of obtaining another girl’s phone number.”
“When you say it like that—”
“That’s what it is, Ginny.”
“I know what it is.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“I know you’re not.” Ginny looked at Ling. “Tell her she’s being a coward.”
“You’re being a coward,” Ling said to Lena, helpfully.
“I am being reasonable,” Lena said, “which apparently looks like cowardice from where you’re both sitting—”
“Kate liked you,” Ginny said. “She really liked you. If you just showed up and apologized and turned on whatever it is you do when you decide to be charming—”
“I’m always charming—”
“—then she’d forgive you. And then you could just casually mention the first years and she’d—”
“She’d know exactly what I was doing,” Lena said flatly. “She’s not—it won’t work. Getting back into someone’s good side after ghosting them and then immediately asking for another girl’s number? That doesn’t work. That’s not a thing that works.”
“It works if you’re convincing enough.”
“I’m not doing it.”
Ginny leaned back on her hands. She looked at the ceiling. She looked at Lena. She looked at the ceiling again, in the way of someone arriving at a conclusion they had already prepared.
“The F1 LEGO set,” she said.
Lena went very still.
“The big one,” Ginny continued, in the deliberate tone of a person laying down a winning hand. “The one you’ve been looking at every time we pass the mall. The one you took a photo of with your phone when you thought we weren’t watching. The 1,400-plus piece one that’s—”
“I know which one it is,” Lena said tightly.
“Tomorrow. In your dorm. Done.”
The room was very quiet.
Ling was watching Lena with the patient expression of someone who already knew how this ended.
Lena looked at her book. She looked at the ceiling. She looked at Ginny, who was looking back at her with the calm confidence of someone who had just played the only card that mattered.
The LEGO set was five thousand pesos. It had 1,434 pieces. It had functioning suspension. She had looked at it for a combined total of — she wasn’t going to calculate that.
“If she asks me out,” Lena said, “I’m saying no.”
“Obviously—”
“And I need a reason to be looking at the first year directory that isn’t I’m trying to find my friend’s ex.” She picked up her book again. “I’ll figure one out. Don’t help me figure one out. I don’t want to hear your suggestions.”
Ginny pressed her lips together to suppress something that was very much a smile. “Okay.”
“And I want the LEGO set in the original packaging.”
“Of course.”
“With the receipt.”
“Lena—”
“With the receipt, Ginny.”
The thing Lena had going for her — the only thing, she told herself, walking into the corridor of the Tourism department building with a borrowed notebook and an expression of mild bureaucratic distress — was that she was genuinely good at talking to people when she decided to be.
She found Kate outside the faculty room, scrolling her phone, tote bag on the floor beside her.
Kate looked up. Blinked.
“Hi,” Lena said.
A silence that carried a lot of history in it.
“…Hi,” Kate said.
Lena sat down beside her, not too close, with the practiced ease of someone who had thought about this for the entire twenty-minute walk over and was absolutely not nervous. “I owe you an apology.”
Kate looked at her sideways.
“I disappeared,” Lena said. “I know. It was bad. I was dealing with— I had some things going on, which isn’t an excuse, and you deserved a proper explanation instead of silence.” She said it plainly, without excessive decoration, because she had always found that a direct apology landed better than an elaborate one. “I’m sorry.”
Kate studied her for a moment. Something in her expression moved — not all the way to forgiving, but somewhere in that direction. “That’s literally the least you could’ve said.”
“I know.”
“I complained about you to like four people.”
“That’s fair.”
“One of them was my mom.”
Lena winced slightly. “That’s—also fair.”
Kate looked at her for another beat, then looked back at her phone, which Lena understood to mean: I accept this apology and would like to change the subject. “What are you doing in this building anyway?”
And here it was.
“Actually—” Lena held up the borrowed notebook, which contained absolutely nothing relevant but looked official enough, “—I’m trying to track down a first year for a project thing. A mutual friend wants to connect with her but lost her contact details, and I figured since you’re in Tourism you might have the—I don’t know, the first year contact sheet? The department usually circulates one for group work.”
Kate looked at the notebook. Looked at Lena.
“A mutual friend,” Kate said.
“Yes.”
“Not you.”
“Not me.”
Another pause. Kate did something on her phone and then turned it to show Lena a shared notes document titled 1st Yr Tourism AY Contact List — pls don’t spam with approximately thirty names and numbers on it.
“Name?” Kate said.
Lena looked at the list and said carefully, “Miu?”
A pause. Kate looked at her confusely, "..Miu? You're not sure?"
Lena places one arm against the back of her neck, her fingers slightly gripping the nape in the classic, defensive gesture of awkwardness. She let out a small, breathless laugh─the kind that usually escaped her when a script she was working on suddenly veered entirely off course. "─No. Yeah. It's Miu."
Kate scrolled. Stopped. “Got one. Miu.” She shrugged. “Here.”
Lena took a photo of the number before Kate could reconsider anything.
“Thank you,” Lena said, and meant it, and stood to leave with the clean exit energy of someone completing a task—
“We should get coffee sometime,” Kate said. “If you want.”
Lena stopped.
She thought about the LEGO set. She thought about the 1,434 pieces. She thought about Ginny’s face if she came back having successfully obtained the number AND accidentally rekindled something with Kate.
“Yeah,” Lena said, which was the kindest form of probably not she could manage. "Text me."
She was halfway down the corridor when she sent the number.
Lena [4:52 PM]: +63917-XXXXXXX
Lena [4:52 PM]: That’s Miu.
Lena [4:52 PM]: Don’t ask me how I know. Don’t ask me what happened. Don’t ask me anything.
Ginny 🌻 [4:52 PM]: LENA
Ginny 🌻 [4:53 PM]: LENA HOW
Ginny 🌻 [4:53 PM]: YOU ACTUALLY DID IT
Ling 🍟 [4:53 PM]: 👀👀👀
Lena [4:53 PM]: LEGO set. My dorm. Tomorrow. I want it before 10AM.
Lena [4:53 PM]: Also Kate asked me out again.
Ginny 🌻 [4:54 PM]: LENA WHAT
Ling 🍟 [4:54 PM]: 💀💀💀
Lena [4:54 PM]: I said okay.
Lena [4:54 PM]: 10AM, Ginny. Box unopened. Receipt attached.
From the desk of Lena:
Activity log. Entry three. Obtained the number. I’m not going to write down how because I think the documentation of this specific sequence of events is not something I want to exist in writing. What I will say is that I went in with a plan, executed it cleanly, and left with exactly what I needed.
Kate asked me out again.
I said yes. I don’t know why I said yes.
I am not gonna have coffee with her.
The LEGO set arrives tomorrow. It has 1,434 pieces and working suspension and I refuse to feel guilty about how I earned it.
Ginny had better text Miu tonight. I did not make today’s choices so that she could sit on it for three days.
Also I think Ling is finding all of this funnier than she should be.