Mirae University’s main gate rises out of the morning like a decision carved in stone.

Not a romantic decision—nothing cinematic like that. More like the kind you make with a half-charged phone and a head full of deadlines: I’m here. I’m doing this. I’m not going to fall apart on day one.

The air is still cold enough to sting, even though it’s March. A wind moves through the street with the smell of coffee and hot bread and someone’s too-sweet perfume. It catches the banners hanging across the entrance—MIRAE WELCOMES YOU—snapping the fabric like a flag trying to start a war with the sky.

Students stream in around me, layered in coats and ambition, moving like they’ve done this their whole lives. Backpacks bump, sneakers squeak, someone laughs too loudly, someone argues into a phone as if the world is already wrong and they’ve been appointed to correct it.

I zip my hoodie up to my chin, tuck flyaway hair behind my ear, and pretend I’m the type of person who doesn’t triple-check the same schedule screenshot like it’s a sacred text.

The truth is: I’ve already checked it four times.

And I still feel like I’m about to walk into the wrong building and accidentally enroll in a degree called Public Humiliation.

“Anna!”

I don’t have to turn. I know that voice the way you know the chorus of a song you’ve heard since you were a kid—whether you wanted to or not.

Park Geon-woo jogs up beside me with two paper cups in one hand, moving easy, athletic, like the city was designed around his stride. His hair is black and slightly messy in a way that looks accidental but probably isn’t. His track jacket hangs off broad shoulders like he belongs on a team poster, smiling under stadium lights.

He’s grinning before he even reaches me, that same grin that has been working on teachers, teammates, and strangers since we were twelve. It used to irritate me.

Now it just makes my chest do something I refuse to name before breakfast.

“For the chronic late-sleeper,” he says, holding out a cup like a peace offering.

“I was early,” I protest, taking it. The lid is warm through my fingers. The smell hits first—sweet coffee, just the way I like it. “In my soul.”

He tilts his head, studying me with that casual focus that always makes me feel like he sees more than he says. “Your soul doesn’t look like it slept.”

“It did,” I say, then immediately regret it because my voice comes out too honest. “In… fragments.”

He makes a sound like he’s trying not to lecture me and failing. “Anna.”

“It’s fine,” I interrupt, because if I let him start, he’ll get that gentle-serious look and I’ll end up promising to do things I can’t keep up with. “First day. Adrenaline. New semester chaos. I’ll crash tonight.”

He doesn’t look convinced, but he lets me have the lie. That’s his talent—knowing when to push and when to stand beside you like a wall, just in case.

“So,” he says, walking with me up the wide campus road that cuts through Mirae like a spine. “International Relations major. Ready to solve the world before midterms?”

“As long as solving the world doesn’t include math.”

“It does,” he says cheerfully. “But it also includes joining the climbing club. We need your weird monkey strength.”

“I thought you wanted me for futsal.”

“Both,” he says, as if my entire schedule is his personal playlist. “You’re ambidextrous.”

“I’m ambi-tired.”

He laughs—head tipping back, breath visible in the air—and the sound does something stupid to me. Something warm. Something like home, even though home is a dorm room and a half-dead plant and the ache of missing my mother’s kitchen in France.

I’ve known him forever.

Elementary school group projects. Middle school cafeteria wars. High school bus rides where I slept against the window and he pretended not to notice.

He’s always been my safe place.

Which is exactly the problem.

“Geon-woo!”

Lee Min-jun slams into our orbit like a human firework, nearly colliding with a passing freshman and not even noticing. He throws an arm across both our shoulders, dragging us closer like we’re props in his comedy.

His hair is chestnut and unruly, his hoodie half-zipped like he dressed while running, and his smile is reckless—like he’s never had a thought in his life that didn’t immediately become a performance.

“Our distinguished couple on campus,” he declares loudly, as if Mirae needs an announcement. “I am available to serve as officiant at your ceremony, should the occasion arise.”

“We are not a couple,” I say, peeling his arm off like it’s a parasite.

“Not yet,” a voice sings, smooth as expensive lip gloss.

Yeo Soo-ah glides up behind us, looking like she stepped out of a drama set on purpose. Her hair is glossy black, her makeup perfect without looking heavy, her skirt swishing with every step like it has its own opinion.

She gives us a once-over that could cut glass. “But destiny moves in mysterious and highly photogenic ways.”

“Photogenic?” Min-jun gasps, offended. “Then I volunteer as the villain in their love story.”

Kim Hye-jin appears next, half-hidden behind a fortress of pamphlets and a laptop bag that looks like it contains the entire academic library. Her glasses slide down her nose as she adjusts the stack like it’s treasure.

“You’re blocking traffic,” she says, dry but not unkind.

Min-jun bows dramatically. “I was born to be a human obstacle.”

Daniel lingers at the edge of our chaos, tall and blond and very obviously still learning where to put his hands in a group of Koreans who move like they’ve rehearsed friendship their whole lives. He grips his bag strap like it might run away and offers a shy smile.

“An…nyeong,” he says carefully, then waves like he’s greeting royalty.

“Ready?” Hye-jin asks, tapping her phone. “Western Civ is in the main humanities building. If we’re late on day one, Professor Han will remember our faces forever.”

“Tragic,” Soo-ah sighs. “I’m saving my dramatic entrance for something worth it.”

“Like what?” I ask.

“Like a prince,” she says, fully serious. “Or at least an exchange student with a jawline that could cut glass.”

Daniel flushes, ducking his head. “I will… work on jawline,” he mutters.

We laugh—real laughter, the kind that loosens the tightness I didn’t realize I was carrying—and the six of us fall into step together.

For the first time that morning, it feels like I might survive this day.

The lecture hall smells like polished wood and decades of decisions.

Sunlight slants through tall windows, making dust glitter in the air like the room is full of tiny, patient ghosts. I choose a seat in the middle—where average students hide and extraordinary distractions can still find you.

Geon-woo drops into the chair beside me like he owns it, legs stretched, posture too relaxed for someone who’s always responsible when it matters. Before I can stop him, he’s already doodling in the margin of my notebook.

A tiny soccer ball.

Then legs.

It becomes a spider.

A very athletic spider.

“Hey,” I whisper. “This is scholarship paper.”

“They’ll give you a second one,” he whispers back, adding a little crown to the spider like it’s royal now.

I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.

Professor Han walks in like she was summoned by the word discipline.

She’s in her fifties, hair cut clean and sharp, expression calm in a way that dares laziness to try her. She clicks the projector without looking at her notes.

“Welcome,” she says. “Western Civilization: Court and Culture, 1400–1600. Some of you will love this period. Some of you will nap. Both are historically accurate responses.”

A ripple of laughter runs through the room.

Then the first slide appears: a French château, pale stone and tall towers against a cloudy sky. Not a fairytale castle—something heavier. Something built to watch as much as to protect.

Professor Han gestures toward it. “This was a world where appearances were everything. Nobles lived under constant scrutiny. Every gesture mattered. A wrong word at court could cost you an alliance—or a head.”

The next slide: a great hall lit by torches. A feast. Goblets raised. Musicians in the corner. Dancers moving between long wooden tables. The gleam of armor at the edges like a warning disguised as decoration.

“Court life wasn’t just silk gowns and poetry,” she continues. “It was politics disguised as etiquette. Rivalries disguised as smiles. Chivalry was less romance and more ritual. Loyalty. Discipline.”

Her words hum at the back of my mind like something familiar I can’t place

Ritual.

Rules.

Being watched.

The next image is a training yard: men in chainmail, wooden swords clacking like metronomes of bruises. Then a court dance—women moving like they were trained from birth to make their bodies say yes even when their mouths couldn’t.

“To live at court,” Professor Han says, “was to perform. Constantly. Even your silence had meaning.”

I write: watched. wrong step. cost.

My handwriting looks like I’m making threats.

Soo-ah leans across the row. “I was born for pearls and alliances,” she whispers.

“You were born for posing near pearls and alliances,” Min-jun whispers back.

Hye-jin shushes them both without looking up from her laptop, like she’s done this in every lifetime.

Professor Han flips to a final slide: a painted portrait of a noble family. A father with an expression like law, a mother like a blade wrapped in velvet, children arranged around them as if affection can be measured in symmetry.

A caption at the bottom reads something I can’t fully see from my seat—House of something. A date. A place.

And my stomach flips, sudden and strange.

It’s ridiculous. It’s just a painting.

But for one breath, I get the sensation of standing too close to a window and feeling the air on the other side.

Professor Han clicks again. New slide. “Your first assignment is to read the excerpt I uploaded and bring one question about early sixteenth-century France. ‘Was it hard to wear corsets?’ is not a question. It is a sentence that will make your TA cry.”

The class laughs.

My laugh comes a second late.

Because something inside me is still stuck on that portrait.

On the idea of a house.

On the quiet feeling that some doors, once cracked open, don’t close the same way again.

Geon-woo nudges me. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I lie. “Just thinking about… duty wrapped in ritual.”

He grins. “You? Ritual? You wore glitter sneakers to prom.”

“They were glitter sneakers,” I say, offended. “And I did a very formal moonwalk.”

“Courtiers wept,” he says solemnly.

I manage a smile.

But the weird feeling doesn’t leave.

I tell myself it’s nothing.

I am very good at believing that.