My Universe

47: “I’m not doing this to make you forgive me.”

“SCREW OFF!”

If there was someone who was being stressfully clueless in the middle, that would be Alice.

20 minutes ago, the art student just arrived to the dormitory and went straight to the bathroom to excrete feces after having a nice snack in a café. There was no place better to go to make sketches than a café with tasty pastries and delicious milkshakes. As soon as her bare thighs made physical contact with the toilet seat that just got cleaned last Sunday, the art student heard a loud bang on the door followed by heavy footsteps which basically almost made her jump from the toilet.

Alice was about to be anxious that someone might have broken in their room, though she realized that it would not make any sense that the person outside the bathroom was a burglar when loud pop music began to blast from speakers. It was obvious that it was her roommate who arrived to the dorm in an obviously bad mood just by hearing the heavy footsteps and loud music. With that, the art student just calmly stayed on her toilet while discharging all of the waste from her body and making up guesses in her head about the reason why her roommate was hotheaded again.

It usually takes between 15 to 25 minutes for Alice to poop and wash everything. When 20 minutes had passed, the art student stepped out of the bathroom like she was walking on eggshells as she looked around to see Winter writing something on a piece of paper in an aggressive way. She did not have to take a clear look on her face to check the mood that she was in as she could already feel the gloomy aura that made it seem like a random spear would come stabbing through her if she does one little mistake.

Alice turned to the front door when she heard knocks followed by the muffled voice of Aster from outside the room, telling Winter to go out of the room and talk to her. With that, the art student already had a clue on the reason why her roommate was suddenly being productive in writing an essay while pretending to not hear anything but the loud music that she was blasting from her Bluetooth speakers. Knowing that neither of them were going to give up anytime soon, she decided to be the one to stop at least one of them as she walked toward the door.

Aster stood in a straight posture as her face turned friendly when the art student opened the door.

“Hey, Avery. You should come back another time. Summer isn’t really in a good mood right now,” Alice softly said, almost in a whisper like she did not want Winter to hear her, while peeking only her head out through the gap.

The brunette pinched the bridge of her nose as she let out a sigh after before nodding. “All right, fine. Bye.”

With a smile on her face, she waved at the art student before turning around and walking away from her. While the brunette was walking toward her room in the dormitory, the image of the raven getting mad at her appeared in her mind as she could not help but let out a soft chuckle in amusement because of how adorable she actually looked in her perspective. Perhaps it was some kind of kink that she was developing.

***

Time went by too fast until it was finally Friday, the day when they would be making the dishes in Korean cuisine for their performance task. For the past few days, the raven was still ignoring the brunette. Aster thought that she was ignoring her because she was still annoyed at her for lying and keeping secrets from her, though she did not know that the raven had already gotten over that.

Basically, Winter had not spoken to the brunette yet because she was embarrassed at herself for acting like an immature teenager like it was a big deal when she herself was doubting Aster even after telling her that she did trust her for helping her. It was the pride of hers that was stopping her from making up with the brunette.

Not wanting to mess up, Winter decided to not think about anything else as she gave all of her focus and attention to the instructor that was telling them basic instructions that they had to know before beginning to cook. Though it was impossible to completely focus on the instructor when she could literally feel more than eyes being glued on her in a way that felt like their stares were piercing a hole through her head.

“Okay, all of you can start cooking now,” the instructor said before walking toward the side to take a seat while everyone began to move.

Everyone in the kitchen started to take all of the things and ingredients that they needed while distributing parts to make each member in one group have a fair contribution to the work that they would be doing. Unfortunately, the group of Winter was not one of the groups that prioritized teamwork as her members immediately started to wash the ingredients that they would be using for the dishes that they would be cooking while talking among themselves without letting the raven join their conversation.

It was a good thing that the names of the dishes that they would be cooking were given to them beforehand, which was why Winter was able to watch cooking video tutorials before that day to have some knowledge on how to cook the dishes. The raven heard from her groupmates that they would be making japchae and soybean sprout soup, which left the last dish for the raven to cook by herself.

It was not like Winter had a choice as she decided to not be dependent on her useless group members and began to wash the vegetables that she bought from the supermarket from the previous days. But since it was her first time to cook, her hand began to slightly shake while cutting the carrots because of nervousness that she might screw up.

So far, nothing wrong was going on as everyone was focused in doing whatever they had to do to make the dishes. Her groupmates did not bother watching her work since they themselves were busy doing the other dishes, which was a good thing since Winter knew that she would make mistakes if they were watching her.

Aster would occasionally throw glances on the raven to make sure if she was doing fine alone in her group while chopping the vegetables skillfully; it was a good thing that she had amazing multitasking skills as she was not getting any injuries while doing those two things at the same time. To not make it obvious that she was checking over a woman from another group, the brunette would join in the humorous conversation that her fellow group members were having while they continued to do their jobs.

Just when Winter was about to begin stir-frying some of the vegetables, that was when the chaos was about to start within their group.

“Hey, are you stupid? You’re supposed to cut the carrots in julienne slices, not in thick blocks like that,” the woman with a high ponytail said.

The other members sneered while staring at the way the raven sliced the carrots. Winter could not exactly defend herself since she literally did not know anything about cutting vegetables nor did she even know what a julienne slice was. Instead, the raven uttered a soft apology to them without having eye contact with any of them because of humiliation.

“It’s really funny how you would act so high just because Mr. Tray said that you were the best in the kitchen among all of us once. Now you’re just suddenly an i***t who can’t even cut a carrot the right way,” one of her group members said with a scoff following after. “A murderer and a talentless HRM student—yeah, you don’t belong here. You know where you belong?”

The other three members coughed and spoke at the same time, “Prison.”

“True!” The four of them laughed together.

The raven clenched her jaw as she just silently took the knife and began cutting the carrots in smaller strips with hope that that was what julienne slices were. As much as Winter wanted to talk back to them to defend herself, there were no words that she could utter to them since everything that they were saying was true. At that point, Winter felt apologetic toward Summer for ruining her reputation even more. Summer was acknowledged to be good in the kitchen and Winter came just to destroy that image.

While Winter was quietly cutting the carrots, her four group members turned to look at each other with smirks on their faces as they exchanged messages through telepathy. Feeling hatred to the same person basically made the four of them be able to read each other’s minds without uttering any word to each other. All of them came into an agreement as they nodded, which gave the cue to the woman with a high ponytail to do what they planned to do to their innocent groupmate.

“AH!”

Immediately, the head of the brunette turned to the direction where she heard the loud high voice of the raven. Without wasting any second, she instantly ran toward her faster than the greatest sprinter in the whole wide world.

Everyone in the kitchen stopped in what they were doing as they turned to look at the table where Winter’s group was in curiosity. They were surprised at the abrupt shriek of Winter as she accidentally cut her finger; but what surprised them the most was the fact that Aster was the only one in the room that looked utterly worried to the point that she almost had to slide on a table just to be by the side of the raven.

“s**t,” Aster mumbled when she saw the blood that was flowing from the finger of the raven before turning to their instructor that was flustered on what just happened. “Mr. Tray, I’m taking her to the infirmary.”

Before Mr. Tray could even give her a response, Aster and Winter were no longer in the kitchen as the brunette swiftly grabbed the wrist of the raven and pulled her out of the kitchen. The whole kitchen was silent after the two of them left and was about to stay like that for a couple more minutes if only the instructor did not recover quickly and tell everyone to continue doing their tasks.

***

“You know running here was totally unnecessary, right?”

“Shut up.”

The sound of the air conditioner was the only thing that was keeping the room from being in deafening silence as the two women stayed seated on chairs across each other. The nurse stepped out of the infirmary to get some snacks as she trusted the two women to watch the infirmary. That was when Winter also discovered that Winter frequently goes to the infirmary if she wants to skip classes and have (flirty) chats with the nurse.

“It’s so stupid how there aren’t any first aid kits in the kitchen when accidents like this can literally occur anytime,” Aster complained with her eyebrows knitted together in annoyance as she gently applied petroleum gently on the cut on the finger of the latter.

“You do know that doing this won’t make me forget about the fact that you’re a shameless liar, right?” Winter said.

The brunette let out a soft chuckle before replying, “I know. I’m not doing this to make you forgive me.”

“All right.” The raven let out a chuckle.

How could Winter continue ignoring Aster when she was that sweet and protective of her just because she got a small cut on her finger which she got from slicing the vegetables?