A/N: Gen fic with a Kimmy Jin POV. More or less canonical.
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended.
She doesn't hate Beca Mitchell. Not really. Well, okay, it's a lot more complicated than that.
Beca just found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. She thinks that if her roommate had shown up even just a week later than she actually did, they could have gotten along, she could have gotten her shit together enough. But Beca didn't, and Kimmy Jin couldn't change her ways even if she tried. She'd always been a little bit rougher around the edges, her emotions a little bit more brash than she'd liked; it's something her parents continually pointed out because she ought to be a more refined woman, honestly.
She resents her ex-best friend now more than ever for putting her in this position. If only her ex-best friend hadn't been an asshole and skipped town with her 26-year-old douchebag of a boyfriend, she wouldn't be alone in this school. They had grand plans of growing up and experiencing the world through college since they didn't get a chance to do that in the conservative rural towns of Georgia. But now she just feels alone and bitter about the whole thing.
Beca taking the now empty half of their room feels like a slap in the face.
So instead, she – metaphorically speaking – slaps Beca in the face by impressing upon her that they're not friends, will never be friends, and she better keep to her side.
It's not her fault that she holds grudges close to her heart. And she's perfectly justified for holding one in the first place.
A couple hours of settling in, Dr. Mitchell shows up at their door pretending to be the police. She's glad that she's facing the wall because she can't hide the amused smirk at how lame Beca's father is.
She overhears their entire conversation, of course. She types the same paragraph in an e-mail to her mother twice over as she listens in on their conversation. Just because she's not going to openly share her personal life doesn't mean that she's not interested finding things about her roommate.
After a turn for the awkward in the conversation, it seems only natural for the Mitchell genetic pool, she's had enough of listening to it and announces that she's going to the Activities fair. Just as she extends her hand to the door, she hears Beca behind her.
"I'm going to the Activities Fair with my super good friend, Kimmy Jin."
Her new roommate eventually stops following her when they reach the perimeter of the Activities Fair. She makes her way towards the Korean Student Association booth to mend her broken spirit about her ex-best friend, ignoring Beca completely.
/
Five minutes after she introduces herself to the officers of the KSA, she's pushed to meet the other Asian groups at school. When she draws a confused expression on her face, one of the members explains to her with a chuckle what's going on.
"We're not a big presence in the school. So our group has a history of joining up with the other Asian groups to build solidarity. It's great."
She doesn't say anything, just follows their lead when a handful of them walk over to the booth a few yards away and meet some of the members of the Japanese Student Association. She's eager to make a good first impression since she thinks she's tarnished that possibility with Beca. At the thought of her roommate, she quickly scans the rest of the Activities Fair to see if she spots her. She eventually finds her walking around near the a capella tables.
Her attention gets pulled away from her roommate when she feels someone invading her personal space.
She practically jumps out of her own skin when she finds a girl staring at her, lips barely moving. Instinctually she puts her arm up in defense ready to strike back just in case this girl starts doing anything funny.
She gets a good look at this girl with her braided pigtails and the bangs, the wide eyes and the puckered lips. She's wearing overalls on top of a bright yellow tank with images of ducks. This girl's about as misplaced as Kimmy Jin's anger towards everyone today.
"I see you've met Lilly!" Helen proclaims when one of the members of the KSA stands beside them.
Reluctantly, she extends her hand, "Kimmy Jin."
Lilly is slow to take her hand and she can't help but narrow her eyes when she struggles to hear what Lilly's saying, if she's even saying anything.
"What?"
But she still doesn't hear a word. When Kimmy Jin seeks help from Helen, her friend doesn't offer anything useful and she's left having to decipher things for herself. What she does end up hearing strikes her with mild panic and fear. She decides that she'll make friends with the others around her, but she's going to stay far away from Lilly as much as she possibly can because, like, what the fuck was that.
Helen ushers her to mingle with the other people around them, she even gets introduced to some kid named Donald who starts talking about a capella and pointing at a bunch of ragtag set of guys on the ledge by the steps just outside the Activities Fair booths. Not even thinking about it, Kimmy Jin glances up to look for her roommate around the last place she'd seen her – around those a capella booths on the other side of the fair – but her roommate's gone. No tiny girl with a vest and heavy eyeliner to be seen anywhere.
What she does see forces her to turn her head back quickly and to start paying even closer attention to Donald talking about his mad mouth skills: Lilly staring at her, her arms crossed over her chest, seemingly muttering devilish incantations under her breath.
/
Later, when she sleeps in their shared room for the first night of what already feels like a tragically long year, she stares at the ceiling and comes up with ways to try to apologize for the first impression she can never get back and replace it with a second one, maybe with a better one. It's not her favorite idea, but it sounds a hell of a lot better than drawing lines against people within 24 hours of meeting them. Plus, after hearing about the excitement that the other students shared about their roommates at the Fair, she considers mending their sour introduction since she can probably use a friend right now.
But as she turns to her side and sees the tiny (and she can't believe just how tiny this girl actually is) figure across the room with her mouth slightly open breathing softly, anger consumes Kimmy Jin's entire body.
This girl, this white girl with the too big headphones and the unnecessarily large music contraption thing that seems to overtake Beca herself, is not her best friend.
She's not over it and neither of them can do anything about that.
/
The grace period for redemption has long since passed and she has no choice but to stick to the system they've somehow managed as roommates. It's pretty simple, they just don't let each other's things bleed beyond their agreed areas.
It's not a proper friendship by any means. Hell, she doesn't even think that Beca herself would consider this a friendship. It's a twisted kind of roommate situation that they've found themselves in and she's just gonna run with it. At this point in the semester, it's hard to take the last few weeks back.
She settles into a strange dynamic where she's kind of angry at the world and Beca comments sarcastically about it. If things had been slightly different, she wouldn't be surprised if they got a reality television show deal out of it.
Besides, there are literally worse options for roommates than Beca. For one, she's met Lilly Onakuramara and even though Kimmy Jin has somehow successfully tolerated her presence and her generally quiet nature, the string of potentially legitimate criminal activity that she gets herself into is just not gonna work out for them.
On occasion, while she works on her homework, she'll hear bits and pieces of Beca's music mixes.
Once, she so much as attempts to tell Beca that they're not so bad. She even tosses around the words in her mouth, muttering them under her breath for practice. Before she gets a chance to try it, Beca turns around to face her.
"Did you-did you just grace my presence with your voice?"
Before she can react any differently, she dons a scowl and glares at her roommate. "That's too loud."
Beca bites her lip and narrows her eyes just a little, making a face at her that she can't quite decipher. "Sorry."
The words sound about as sincere as it's going to get from someone like Beca, so she's betting it's not that sincere at all. Their room is now all too silent and she thinks that she's never going to forgive Michelle Khu even if that woman showed up at their front door, fell to her knees, and begged for forgiveness.
/
Over the following weeks, she busies herself with her classes and with the KSA. She doesn't mind fitting in the Asian stereotypes as long as it does get her parents off her back about trying harder. Her new friends help her out a lot in that and she likes being around them. She won't admit it to anyone, especially since she's established herself in the group as kind of the asshole (because she kinda is for good reason) but she's hoping that one of them can fill the spot Michelle vacated.
For now, though, she's sitting with Helen and Elaine at the library trying to work on her French homework. She's mixing up her avoir conjugations when a voice interrupts their work.
Kimmy Jin looks up to find a well-endowed brunette smile seductively at them. She's wearing a white blouse that is clearly from the children's section of The Gap. Kimmy Jin tries not to react, but she's also getting ready to say that she's not gay but maybe she should try the group three tables down.
"Hi, my name is Stacie, and my friends and I were just wondering if we could borrow this chair." Stacie's perfectly manicured hand lands on the back of the empty chair across from Kimmy Jin as she proceeds to point at the four boys behind her waving awkwardly at them.
"Go ahead," she says eventually. The seductive smile widens just as Stacie winks her gratitude. Kimmy Jin wonders if this chick knows any other way of smiling. She focuses her attention back to her work but not until the chair gets dragged back to the table of boys, Stacie's hips swinging from left to right.
Occasionally, she glances up at the table directly ahead of her and just observes how all these boys are leaning forward and listening to this Stacie girl's every word. Kimmy Jin wonders how this woman does it, get these men to follow her every word. She knows she's not the biggest flirt in the world, but she's had a few boyfriends in her day, much to the chagrin of her parents (since those boys were not at all Korean).
It's not until she's finished one page of her workbook that she pauses and reminds herself that she's actually super straight. But when she steals a peek and finds Stacie's shirt pulled up just enough to expose her back dimples, Kimmy Jin thinks she's straight, but maybe not completely.
/
Her anger subsides a little and tapers into overwhelming sadness. College has been a good distraction giving her other things to do and think about.
Beca doesn't know this, of course, since she's been too busy with her job at the radio station and her a capella group to know. And speaking of, Kimmy Jin would have been surprised that Beca even tried to join an a capella group, but Beca promptly corrected her during the rare occasion that they even held a conversation.
"I was ambushed in the shower," Beca offered as she took a seat in front of her desk. "So I have to go to their audition tomorrow."
She blinked once, twice, three times before she bothered to respond. Seeing Beca be at the edge of her seat wondering how she was going to respond was pretty damn entertaining, so she kept it up for own amusement. It's kind of mean, but they didn't get cable for their room so she needs it at times like these. When Beca looked like she'd given up, Kimmy Jin took that as a sign to provide her words of wisdom.
"Well I hope you sing an actual song."
Beca frowned a little before it transformed to confusion, having swiveled her chair to face away from Kimmy Jin. They didn't talk the rest of the night, but she thought she'd done her best to help. Beca needed a song that would show her singing abilities, not her computer abilities.
Anyway, when Kimmy Jin's sadness and melancholy overwhelmed her (and it annoyed her to no end that she still felt all this teenage angst), Beca would sometimes furrow her brows at her and just stare like doing so would somehow reveal her innermost feelings.
She can't get too upset about it because she does the same thing when Beca zones out while doing homework or just sitting at her desk not moving things around. Kimmy Jin has never been convinced about this cold exterior thing her roommate is trying. It just doesn't work for her face, she thinks. She looks too cutesy to pull off the angry look since Beca looks like a teenager going through her emo phase with all that eyeliner. Kimmy Jin has her angst, but she also doesn't wear it.
In any case, their system is working for now.
/
It's hard to talk herself into wanting to change the current status of her friendship with Beca when someone is incessantly knocking at their door at an obnoxiously hour of the night. The worst part about this incessant knocking is that it's not even loud. It's just a quiet pattering on her door and maybe if it was just a smidgeon louder, it'd actually get the job done.
She wants to ignore it, but she's ignored it for a solid two minutes and it's not going away. Sporting a death glare, she lugs herself towards the door and opens it to find a redhead standing in front of her, just beaming up at her like she'd just won the lottery and wanted to share this happiness with everyone. The bright blue eyes are kind of scary because she always thought that those things only existed in cartoon movies, but apparently they exist in the real world in people who suck at knocking. She feels particularly resentful at this stranger's existence because, seriously, why is this happening to her.
"Hi, so sorry to bother you! My name's Chloe and I'm here for Beca? Is she in this room-"
She holds her hand out for this Chloe person to stop speaking and shakes her head. It's effective because the girl just stops cold and almost recoils back into her spot. She lets out an exasperated sigh before stepping back to point at the useless lump on the bed. The brightness of this girl's smile at being directed to where Beca is surprises her beyond words since she thought that it couldn't possibly have gotten worse after she opened the door.
Chloe attempts to thank her for her graciousness of letting her in and directing her to Beca but she raises her hand again. Without much of a glance back, she tucks herself back into bed even though she knows she has to wait until this conversation between Beca and her unwanted visitor has passed.
She hears bedsheets rustling and Beca waking up in a start. She strains to listen to the whispering.
"What the fuck, Chloe! What are you doing here?"
"It's initiation night. We have to go."
"Ugh, did Kimmy Jin let you in?"
"Yeah, except I don't think she was happy about it because you apparently sleep like a log. But it's okay because I think that's totally cute. My ex used to be like that."
Kimmy Jin has no idea why this woman is sharing her life story with Beca right now, but she can confirm that she's not happy about being woken up like this. She does her best to even her breathing when more talking and less leaving is happening behind her.
"Let me just put on some real pants or something, jeeze."
"We're not supposed to let you. Besides, I think you look pretty good in your pajamas. It softens the edges of that bad girl persona of yours."
She's not the most observant person in this world and she's also fairly certain that she's not the most naïve, but this stranger in her dorm definitely is flirting. She just wants to sleep, so she clears her throat just before Beca has a chance to respond.
There's a loud whisper of an apology that gets thrown her way before the door eventually shuts and she's left in her most preferred silence. She seeks comfort in the fact that Beca, for all her supposed badassery and general detached demeanor, is a lot more naïve than she is and will probably not realize that some girl has a crush on her.
With that in mind, she sleeps with a small smile on her lips, smug satisfaction lulling her to sleep.
/
A few weeks later, she settles in a comfortable routine knowing that Beca is gone for a lot of the day doing all that stuff that she does. She almost misses her roommate and her music-mixing thing and the sarcasm. But she can't say that she's upset with all this alone time for herself. Everything is just kind of bothering lately, probably because the idea that her best friend is not coming back is slowly dawning on her. So she appreciates the space.
After she pulls her first all-nighter for a killer Calculus exam, she just wants to take a nap. She's too tired today for anything else. Her early afternoon class just got cancelled so that means a reward for herself especially since she knows Beca is not going to be around for a solid three hours.
What she doesn't want is this pair of blondes standing in the middle of the path handing out stupid flyers. She's tempted to just walk around them and take the path behind the education building but this walkway is a straight shot to her dorm. She slows her speed when she's still a fair bit away from the pair aggressively soliciting strangers with paper. She weighs her options: which decision will piss her off less.
She takes her chances with these blonde broads because her bed is calling her name: Kimmy Jin, it's nap time! Nap time, Kimmy Jin!
The fatter blonde wearing an atrocious jean jacket and some kind of sweatband around her forehead raises her arms up like she's in a gangster rap video yelling aloud her greeting. The skinnier blonde, standing rigid in her 50s garb and high heels, shushes the other blonde and Kimmy Jin has enough sense to get out of there.
She starts to make her way from this obnoxious duo when the 50s wife runs after her with a flyer.
"Hi, hi, yes hi. We're Aubrey and Fat Amy-"
"Hullo!"
"-And we're part of the Barden Bellas, one of the elite a capella groups on campus."
Kimmy Jin has heard of them and has heard of their epically tragic shit fest from last year when some girl vomited all over the crowd. Now that she thinks about it, this Aubrey girl looks a lot like the vomit culprit.
"Are you the one who puked everywhere at the competition in New York?"
She takes a step back when Aubrey's already rigid posture gets even straighter, her nostrils flaring, no doubt to remain in control of herself.
"Yeah, that's her," the girl dubbed Fat Amy interjects in her Australian accent, taking over the space between her and Aubrey, and shoving a flyer in her hands. "But that's the past now because we told her no more bad Mexican food nights for her."
"Fat Amy!" she watches Aubrey hissing behind her.
"Anyway, I just handed you the best present you could give your friends this Halloween season."
Kimmy Jin doesn't bother to look at the flyer since no one gives anybody Halloween presents. Fat Amy doesn't seem deterred, just pokes the paper. "For a low, low price of five dollars, we'll get dressed and sing any of these five songs to your friends, your enemies, your frenemies, your crush, your friend's crush, your favorite professor, your most hated professor, your roommate, your best friend, your ex, your 2 AM booty call, your 3 AM booty call, your favorite lunch lady at the caf, whoever!"
The entire speech gets garbled up in the thick Australian accent and all Kimmy Jin can do is stare at both of them. The two women squirm in their spot until Aubrey attempts to regain a handle on the situation.
"What my teammate is trying to say here," Aubrey says slowly, "is that, we would love to be able to provide our a ca-services to you and yours during this season for entertainment. It's our fundraiser to pay for our journey to competitions."
"I don't care."
Stunned, the two women in front of her exchange looks.
Just as Aubrey prepares to try again, Fat Amy places a hand on her arm and shakes her head even as she dons an unconvincing smile. Aubrey takes a deep breath before continuing.
"Well, we thank you for your time. If you ever change your mind, please e-mail us at the address on the bottom."
She's staring at them until the two slowly back away to try and annoy other students. She holds onto the piece of paper and gets ready to throw it away in the trash bin right outside of her dorm when it finally dawns on her who these Barden Bellas are.
She's not sure what kind of emotion passes through her, but she knows it's not jubilation. She keeps the flyer and brings it up to her room. She tucks it under her laptop and decides to worry about her plan later. For now, it's her well-deserved nap, especially after that interaction with those two blonde idiots.
/
It's hard to contain her excitement but she manages when there's a loud knocking at her door and Beca is staring at her with a confused expression plastered on her face.
"K-Jin, are you expecting anyone?"
She doesn't bother replying not when she's already glared at Beca for continuing to call her K-Jin. Undeterred by her normal silence, Beca just heads to the door and opens it.
"Holy fu-"
She steals a quick glance at the door and finds a brunette clad in a very revealing French maid costume.
"Stacie what are you doing here?"
The brunette at the door just shrugs before fixing her cleavage. "It was in the e-mail request. Get the hottest girl to sing Time After Time in a French maid costume. Good thing that I already had one in my closet, right?"
Beca, eyes still round from her shock chances a glance at her but she keeps her poker face on, typing on her computer without so much as batting an eyelash.
"You probably just got it wrong. I mean, are you sure it's not for Kimmy Jin?"
Stacie looks at the card. "For Beca Mitchell. That's you."
"Who sent it?"
Stacie rolls her eyes. "Here, take the card. But a song is a song and we got paid a full twenty for this performance so someone must really like you."
Stacie starts belting the words to Time After Time – a rendition that Kimmy Jin doesn't expect but otherwise appreciates. Beca tries to stop her, but Stacie recites some random Bellas rule about performances so Beca's left standing by the door, her pale cheeks reddening with embarrassment.
Kimmy Jin watches from her desk with her computer and her chair angled just enough to see the whole thing. She thinks that Stacie really outdid herself with the song. But the cherry to this performance is when the brunette leans forward, cleavage and all, and places a kiss on Beca's cheek.
Afterward, Beca softly closes the door and makes her way back to her desk stunned into silence. Kimmy Jin can't help but smirk when she sees a faint red imprint on Beca's face. She straightens her face back to neutral when Beca makes eye contact with her.
"She was pretty good," Beca finally offers, probably not knowing what else to say.
"A real Cyndi Lauper."
She wants to roll her eyes when Beca is visibly stunned at her knowledge of musical artists that isn't traditional Korean music or Top 40 hits because she doesn't live under a rock.
She refocuses her attention back to her work. But not before thinking that it was twenty dollars well spent and realizing that the brunette bombshell at the door was the same woman that had borrowed her chair at the library all those weeks ago.
/
She thinks that she's doing really well with the utter betrayal and dishonor that Michelle Khu has brought to her. She has good days where she has to work on remembering who this douchestick Michelle is. But then she has bad days where the betrayal feels like a fresh wound and she can't possibly forget who Michelle is and what she's done.
Today, unfortunately, is one of those bad days. She's been looking forward to spending some quality time with some KSA friends when Beca's teammates stampede into her room, refusing to get the hell out until they know that Beca is out of jail, safe and sound.
There's a slew of women who just suddenly parked themselves onto Beca's side of the room. There's a blonde, prim and proper, standing rod straight up explaining to her the situation.
"We're the members of the Barden Bellas, as you may have seen around campus."
"No," she says without hesitation. The blonde takes a deep breath before plastering on an abnormally wide smile. She notices the jaw clench so she thinks this woman isn't really happy to be here.
"Well, we're one of the elite a capella groups here on campus, right ladies?" There's a noisy assent from the women behind her who have all settled into their spots. It only seems to further aggravate this woman and Kimmy Jin feels compelled to throw them all out, her anger flaring up.
This woman, Aubrey, eventually gives up and takes a seat at Beca's desk while the rest of the women talk amongst themselves. It's almost like she's not even in her own room.
The redhead with the bright blue eyes steps up from the edge of the bed and walks up to her and introduces herself as Chloe Beale, co-captain of the Barden Bellas.
"We're so sorry to barge in here like this but we just wanted to make sure Beca's all right. She got arrested for something – totally minor don't worry – after the competition and so we're just here to support her." She ends it with a bright smile as if that would make Kimmy Jin accept this intrusion.
She offers a tight smile until this Chloe person finally leaves her side and goes back to Beca's bed. She wants to leave for her movie night at Jenny's room at the dorm next door, but she can't anymore; she needs to keep an eye out on them.
So she texts Jenny a short apology about probably missing the first part of movie night because of some emergency. She's left clutching at her blanket as she sits face to face with these people.
She observes each one of the girls and wonders how this mishmash of women can make a functioning team. That Aubrey girl at the desk looks like a cross between terrified and livid who's five seconds away from upchucking her dinner or something.
On the bed is a blonde talking animatedly with an Australian accent to the black woman with the weird haircut about punching men.
Then there's the woman who is literally resting her arms on her breasts as she files her hands. It's almost like she's not sitting in a stranger's room and Kimmy Jin doesn't really like that.
The redhead, Chloe, is observing their room in some strange awed trance. Her eyes seem to be mentally memorizing every corner of their room and it's freaking Kimmy Jin out. This Chloe girl revels in the vast collection of albums on the bookshelf behind her letting her hand graze their spines, far too enthralled about this place.
A couple other girls seem to just be texting on their phones – finally a reaction that she understands, they don't want to be here as much as she wants to be here.
And then her focus lands on Lilly sitting stock still on the floor with her legs crossed. How Kimmy Jin doesn't notice she's there is both impressive and unsettling. Lilly turns her head and stares at her, her perpetually widened eyes scaring the crap out of her. Her lips are moving but, as is always the case, she can't hear her. She scrunches her face in confusion before turning away, afraid that the image of Lilly carves itself in her brain and haunts her dreams that night.
As she gets a good look at each of these women, she realizes that she recognizes some of them. The girl with the boobs, Stacie, is the first one she notices having seen her recently. Her mind is racing until she pinpoints the times that she's interacted with these people. The Australian and the really angry blonde were the same annoying idiots that had harassed her on her way back to her dorm. And then the redhead was the one who didn't know how to knock on a door like a normal human being. Suddenly, the idea that these are the people that make the a capella group that Beca spends most of her time with somehow makes a lot more sense. It doesn't make their being here acceptable, but it does somehow makes sense to her.
The realization that these people have been bothering her since the beginning is not really surprising given her track record with her roommate. Even so, she doesn't like that they're here when she just wants to be elsewhere. So she prays that Beca's on her way back already.
But a half hour passes of awkward stares and random mutterings and Beca's still not home. The Australian girl beckons for her.
"Have you got any chips? Something to snack on for this party?"
All eyes are on her. She takes a deep breath, her glare in place.
"No."
A couple of the girls slump back down in their spots before resuming their previous activities. She just wants them to leave so she can go to her movie night.
The half hour extends to an hour and she's left watching this group of women talk about their performance from earlier and the catastrophe that landed Beca in the slammer to begin with.
Soon the group is talking over each other about Beca. How this brand of misfits end up siding with and rooting for Beca is astounding. Beca, the perpetual loner outcast, has friends that are willing to intrude on a stranger's place just to check on her. At first she thinks it's just polite, but the redhead spears the conversation about being positive about Beca and Kimmy Jin thinks that people really care about Beca.
It's kind of unnerving to hear someone talk so animatedly and positively about the same Beca who speaks only in sarcasm around her. It's not a Beca she's familiar with. And she thinks maybe that Beca isn't so bad but she doesn't know because her ex-best friend ruined any possibilities of knowing that.
After another hour and a half, Beca finally makes it to their dorm and offers a little dance as she walks in.
She stands from her bed, blanket still clutched in her hands, and stares at her roommate.
"They've been here for hours. It's a real inconvenience, Beca."
Beca, the roommate who she knows so little about, offers her an almost apologetic smile. But she doesn't stay. Instead, she walks towards the door and passes her. As she makes her way away from her dorm to go to Jenny's, she can hear the loud roar of voices from her room.
/
She makes it a point to stay out of Beca's presence ever since the night Beca went to jail. She hasn't been able to bounce back from her bout of sadness about her pre-college life and she'd just rather not deal with anybody else except herself. That's what college is about, right? Finding yourself and what suits you?
Well, being by herself suits her.
Besides, she can't shake off this kind of betrayal from her roommate. They're by no means friends or anything close to it, but there's a certain kinship that she thought they had: a similarity in their chosen solitude from people. But having these Bellas storm into her room in support of Beca knocks that idea out of the water. The KSA lets her be when she tells them, but no one's ever invaded someone's place to make sure that she's okay.
/
She's seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off. She knows that life moves by pretty fast and that if she doesn't stop and look around once in a while, she could miss it.
But no one told her that in college, life moves at a different pace and if you take your eye off of it for one second, it's going to zoom by.
Before she has any chance to consider what's going on, she's already spent the weeks before winter break holed up in a study room in the library and the weeks after winter break wondering why the year is already half over.
/
She jumps in surprise when she senses Beca on her side of the dorm room. When she looks up, Beca puts on a small, polite smile and holds up an envelope before tossing it to an empty space on her desk.
"Sorry, it was just-uh, it's for you," Beca tells her. She doesn't get a chance to ask because Beca's already on her way out of the room, a stack of records tucked under her arm probably headed to the radio station.
Her heart feels like it's leapt out of her chest when she sees the name on the corner of the envelope. She grabs hold of it and stares at it in disbelief. After six months, her best friend writes her a letter. The envelope feels heavy, no doubt the weight of excuses piled high.
Before she can second-guess herself, she abandons her work at her desk and walks to the door. Just as she's leaving, she drops the envelope in the wastebasket on her way out.
/
Kimmy Jin has just enough time to move out of Beca's way when she, in all her miniature existence, barrels her way inside their dorm.
"I don't want to talk about it!" Beca vehemently yells at no one in particular before swiping at her uniform in fits of anger.
"I didn't say anything."
"Well I'm telling you now we're not fucking talking about it."
She's still standing her place by the foot of her bed where she'd moved away from Beca's warpath just watching her roommate struggle to get rid of that stupid handkerchief around her neck.
For however much she disregarded the ineffectual tough exterior that Beca showed to everyone since the time they met, she's now legitimately concerned that Beca's going to snap at any minute and she's going to be the unlucky roommate that will need therapy for years to come.
Instead, Beca strips out of her stifling uniform and into pajamas, cranks her music thing inappropriately loud just to plug her headphones in and cover her ears, and burrows herself under her covers all in a span of the three minutes since her return.
She may not be the best roommate in the world, but she knows when someone needs to be left alone. So she packs her computer in her bag and leaves for Helen's dorm across campus. She turns the light off and closes the door until she hears a soft click.
When she returns several hours later, her room is still in the same spot as she left it. If she stills long enough, she can hear the music blasting through Beca's headphones. Letting the light from the hallway guide her through her darkened room, she puts a small bag of snacks from the convenient store on Beca's desk right by the music contraption thing.
She's not going soft because it's just apple juice and a banana nut muffin in the bag so it's not that big of a deal. She's just making sure that when she returns tomorrow from her impromptu sleepover on Jenny's floor that Beca will think about how much Kimmy Jin has had to go out of her way for her so she doesn't do it again. That's all.
/
She hoped that when she got home later that day, Beca wouldn't be home. But Beca, seemingly alive and well, is sitting at her desk and acknowledges her presence when she opens the door.
"Thanks for yesterday," Beca says softly as she fiddles with her bracelets. "And for the muffin and apple juice. I mean, you didn't have to especially since we're not friends or anything."
"Stop talking," she says. She doesn't stick around to witness the smirk on Beca's face when they both realize that her general caustic words don't have the bite it usually has.
/
She's hesitant to admit that after months of having one of the tenser roommate relationships amongst her group of friends, she and Beca have come to a complex understanding.
They're still not friends and they probably won't be, but after their own individual drama, it almost makes them comrades. She'll never say those words out loud because she's not a weirdo, but there's some kind of progress there. And from how they started out in the beginning, she deserves the spring break trip to Disney World with her cousins next week.
She knows who's visiting their dorm by the sound of the stupid, useless knocking at her door. A panic-stricken Beca waves her hands and tells her that she's not home.
When she opens the door, the bubbly redhead – Chloe or something – greets her with a warm, almost infectious smile. Almost. But before she can say anything, Kimmy Jin gets the chance to speak first.
"If you're gonna knock, knock like you want someone to hear it."
The girl narrows her eyes in confusion. "What?"
"It doesn't matter. What is it?"
"I need to talk to Beca and she's not answering any of my texts. I was wondering if you've seen her…"
She'll consider it as her extending an olive branch to her roommate because she keeps her eyes at the girl in front of her.
"No."
"Well, can you just tell her that I stopped by, that Chloe stopped by, and if she could call me back."
She doesn't say anything, just offers a curt nod. Chloe walks away with a small, polite wave. When Kimmy Jin closes their door, the shock on Beca's face seems permanent.
"You actually…"
But Beca doesn't finish her sentence. Kimmy Jin proceeds to put her earbuds on and ignore her roommate being surprised across the room. She considers it her belated Christmas present for one Beca Mitchell.
/
She's lugging the last bit of her luggage for her upcoming trip when she glances back to find her roommate looking pitiful. Kimmy Jin thinks that Beca's successfully moved out of cold exterior territory and into pathetic little puppy territory if the sadness in her face is anything to go by. She considers the possibility that whatever happened with her singing group definitely did a number on her because she's mopey and less tolerable to be around.
"Have a good spring break," she says when she starts wheeling her carryon out of their room.
"You too," Beca replies and goes so far as to offer a real smile instead of a smirk. That's weird, especially to her, so she hopes that whatever happened with Beca and her group gets fixed soon because she doesn't think she can handle this kind of Beca. She wants the roommate that exchanged sarcastic remarks for her mean and disgruntled ones back.
/
She hits the ground running with school when she returns after her spring break that she almost doesn't notice the shift from mopey, lame roommate to less mopey but still kind of lame roommate.
"Please tell me you didn't just have sex all around the dorm over break," she says, slightly horrified at the image.
Beca seems to be equally horrified with the mental images and visibly scrunches her face in disgust. "That's gross. Why would you say that to me?"
"You're acting weirder than usual. Stop it."
"Our group is back in the competition! It's kind of unbelievable."
She raises her hand. "I don't care."
Beca shakes her head but otherwise leaves her alone. As she types out an e-mail to one of her classmates yelling her about pulling her stupid weight for this group project, she can't help but admit that she does care a little bit.
/
The knock on the door is unlike the previous kinds of knocks so she assumes that it's not the redhead. When she pulls the door open, she finds the Australian girl with a slightly disturbing grin offer a wave.
"G'day, mate! I can say that because I'm actually Australian."
She doesn't move from her spot, not too sure why this person is even talking to her. "Beca's not here."
"Yeah, I know. She's hanging out with Chloe."
A brief jog through her memories remind her that Chloe is the redhead with the crush and the terrible knocking habits. Not finding any legitimate reason why this interaction is happening, she motions to close the door when a hand stops it.
"I came by because I wanted to ask you how living with Beca's like."
"Why?"
"She and I are gonna be roomies next year! And I can't trust her to tell me if she's as organized as she claims to be. I need the perspective of the one person that knows fact from fiction, you know?"
She shakes her head and tries to close the door again.
"Look, I just need some pointers like do I need to leave a sock or a rubber band on the door knob so she knows that the room is occupied."
The girl stands as a doorstop with a small notepad and pencil in hand like a reporter waiting for her words of sage advice.
It's not a life-shattering discovery of any sort, but it takes her aback just a little to remember what she and Beca had independently chosen to do months ago: live with other people. They were never going to work, but now she's standing in front of an Australian reminder that whatever complicated set of parameters of friendship that she and Beca are working in, that their days as roommates are numbered.
Without understanding the how or why, she starts bulleting out the main things she knows about Beca that she's learned over the last several months.
"Don't touch her music stuff or she'll kill you."
"Got it."
"If you leave the trash, she'll throw it away."
"Great."
"She's awkward with people so invite as many guests as you want."
"Oh, I know. She just needs to let loose, you know what I mean?"
"No."
"Is that it?"
"She likes banana nut muffins and apple juice."
/
Beca's thankfully not in the dorm when she gets home sweaty and exhausted from a heated volleyball game against the JSA. Lilly had shown up at the tail end of the game and were doing some air gun shooting at her own team. She'll take whatever kind of support she can get because the KSA slaughtered the JSA for all three games.
After she opens up her computer to check her e-mail, her gaze lands on an envelope perched atop her Calculus notebook. There's a small post-it stuck to the middle of it.
Found this on the floor while I was vacuuming the rug. Thought you might want it. –B
It's the envelope that she'd thrown away months ago.
Without feeling the heaviness that she did then, Michelle feels like a distant memory.
She takes a chance and runs the letter opener through it. When she unfolds the letters, she finds pages of what she'd always suspected: Michelle's paper-thin apologies about deserting her.
She reads all nine pages of the letter. The emotions flare up as she expected, but only with residual anger. She still holds a grudge for the betrayal and dishonor that Michelle Khu brought on her, but it's not a concentrated ball of anger but an ebbing of a lost friendship. Or something equally poetic.
All Kimmy Jin knows is that she's confirmed what she's learned since she started school and that she's much better off without that asshole of an ex-best friend. But she also discovers something about herself that she never really anticipated even if it feels too hokey and too sentimental-y: she doesn't need someone to make her experiences feel validated, it'd just be nice having people there to share it with.
/
Instead of the two blonde girls harassing innocent students walking around campus, it's Beca and Chloe passing out flyers. Before she has a chance to map an escape route in her head, Chloe has discovered her and is now beckoning for her. It's embarrassing how loud this girl is. She wonders why that can't translate to a proper knocking technique.
Cautiously, she walks towards them. Chloe is quick to hand her the flyer.
"It's not a song…gram…thing," Beca explains when she grimaces at the paper that's been shoved at her.
"It's just letting everyone know to support us and the other a capella groups because the competition is being streamed online. The more people that we can get to tune in, the more people we can get to be interested for the future school years and stuff. It's a great cause and it's free!"
She narrows her eyes at the obscenely peppy voice. When she makes eye contact with her roommate, Beca only seems to nod in understanding.
"Are we done?"
"Yes," Beca replies. It's like they've formed this weird sixth sense about each other.
She doesn't bother with closing this conversation as she starts making her way back to the dorm.
"Please support us!"
"I'll see you back at the dorm!" she hears soon after.
"I don't care!"
/
She watches the competition online out of sheer curiosity to see what this singing thing is even about. When Helen and Jenny knock on her door to see what she's doing, she ends up hooking her computer to her television monitor and watching the stream there so all of them can watch.
Before she knows it, the rest of her friends from the KSA have made it to her room with snacks, their attention glued to her television.
It turns out that the Barden Bellas is pretty damn good. The familiar faces that have bothered her at one point or another during the year all appear on her computer screen.
Helen taps her on the arm. "Isn't that your roommate?"
She shrugs. "Yeah."
"She's pretty good. Did you know she did that?"
She huffs even as she looks away from her friend and back to the screen. "She's my roommate, of course I knew."
As the layering of songs come into play, Kimmy Jin can't help but consider how familiar that sounds until it hits her that all of it is probably Beca's doing. What with all of her remixing and stuff that she does all the time at her desk, it kind of makes sense.
She doesn't get a chance to think too much about the intricacies of the song when the group erupts in excitement seeing Lilly on the screen beatboxing the hell out of that microphone. By the time that the Bellas are done with their performance, her friends in her dorm are cheering for them.
What's more surprising is that she finds herself cheering for them.
She'll have to sort her priorities since she thinks she's going soft. But for now, she celebrates with her friends at the success of her roommate and her team.
/
Kimmy Jin doesn't see her roommate until late Sunday afternoon when the Barden Bellas come back to town.
She's pruning her miniature tree when Beca walks in, a wide smile on her face.
"Guess what, K-Jin?"
"That you still use that stupid nickname despite my protests?" she guesses not once looking up from her spot.
"The Bellas won the competition!"
"Good job," she says flatly.
"Did you get a chance to see it online?"
"No."
Jenny knocks and opens their door, interrupting their conversation.
"Hey Kimmy Jin-oh, Beca! Congratulations on your win yesterday!"
Beca looks at her daring for her to explain herself, but she continues just as she was. She doesn't owe anybody anything. She entertains Jenny at the door and ignores her roommate completely. But when she steals a glance at Beca, she can see a smile on her face accompanied by a knowing nod.
Eh, she'll let her have it.
/
She has never been more excited to finish her exams until her friends quickly tell her that there are more exam weeks for the rest of her college years. Some with exams that count 50% percent of your grade and others with group projects with idiots in class that's worth even more than that. Then she deflates like any normal student.
For the most part, she and Beca are out of each other's hairs. The same kind of system that worked for them in the beginning still works for them now, but there's less tension between them. She'll chalk it up to the kind of person that Beca became because of the Bellas. Just like she'll accept that without the KSA and Helen and Jenny, she wouldn't have figured out how to move on from the betrayal and dishonor that Michelle Khu brought her.
Who knew all she needed were better things to do, a better attitude, and better friends.
Before she knows it, it's time to move out. She has a camp to lead for the next two months, so she's excited to leave school. What she doesn't expect is to consider the possibility that she'll miss Beca. For however much a pain in the ass she was for a lot of the year, there could have been worse options. Lilly is still one of those worse options.
She comes back to her room with a box even after she's cleared everything out. Beca's side looks like she's never leaving since nothing has been touched. But that's not her concern anymore.
"I'm leaving," she announces so Beca looks up from her computer screen.
"Oh. Okay, well, um, it was an interesting experience, Kimmy Jin." Beca, in all her awkward glory, extends her minuscule hand out and she decides to take it. But she drops it after the second shake. In much the same awkward fashion, Beca retrieves her hand and tries to salvage her pride by crossing her arms.
"Here." She brings the box up that she's tucked on her waist and under her arm.
"A present? For me? You shouldn't have."
"I didn't."
She watches her roommate open the box and find a miniature tree near-identical to the one she's kept on her desk for most of the year.
"That's definitely something."
"Bye, Beca."
"Bye, Kimmy Jin."
She turns around and heads out, stopping only by the RA's door to drop her keys off.
She thinks she'll miss Beca. Hell, she might even miss those obnoxious and inappropriate team members Beca considers friends.
Probably not.
But maybe.