Author Note: The idea for this came from some of my own experiences in college, along with a suggestion from my friend bax. I plan on making this multiple chapters, though I'm not sure how many.

Eli lives in a dorm room that is connected to another dorm room by a bathroom. Two college students live in each room, and all four of them share the bathroom. The doors lock from the outside only. In the rooms, the beds are lofted, which means they are basically bunk beds with only the top bunk in place.


Before Eli opened her eyes, she could already feel her head throbbing. Each beat of her heart sent blood pounding through her skull. She started to open her eyes, but screwed them shut against the harsh light pouring in her dorm room's one window. For some reason the blinds were pulled wide open, though there was only one person to blame for that.

"Honoka," Eli groaned, her own voice echoing painfully in her ears. She raised one hand to cover her strained eyes. "Close the window." Eli counted the pulsing of her brain while waiting for a response; she made it to 30 before she realized no one was responding. Slowly rotating her head towards the center of the room, Eli peeked down through the cracks of her eyelids.

Honoka wasn't there. From her vantage point of lying prone in her lofted bed, it seemed like Eli was alone in the dorm. With another groan, she mustered all her strength to kick her blanket off, sit half way up, and crawl extremely slowly towards the ladder on her loft, which was on the end of the bed. She was careful not to hit her head on the ceiling; a concussion would only make her hangover worse. The motion brought a wave of nausea to her throat, but managed not to barf.

By some miracle, Eli made it down the ladder and onto solid ground. As she suspected, her roommate Honoka was nowhere to be found. Eli glared at the alarm clock as if it could change her situation, and resisted another groan when she saw it was already 12:24. She'd slept practically her whole Sunday away.

After leaning over, and immediately regretting it, to check if the light was on in the bathroom, Eli knocked gently on the door before unlocking it and entering the conjoining room. The door on the other side was closed, and Eli could see some light through the bottom crack. She stepped over to the sink, turning it on and splashing some cold water on her face. It brought her a small amount of relief, but wasn't enough to fight off her migraine.

Eli lifted her face to see just how disheveled she looked in the mirror, but stopped when something light blue caught her eye.

About half way up the mirror, right near the middle, a blue sticky note stuck to the surface. Much to Eli's dismay, she recognized the handwriting. The note read:

sorry its so gross in here :( i feel soooooo sick right now :( :( :( :(

There was no doubt about it, that handwriting was her own. Eli glanced over at the toilet, but it looked about as clean as it normally did. If it was clean then that meant… Eli didn't want to think too hard about it. Besides, her brain was only functioning at about 25 percent capacity right now.

With a sigh she reached up and pulled the note off the mirror. At least drunk her was considerate, she thought as she re-stuck the blue square to the right edge of the surface. If there did turn out to be a pool of vomit somewhere, at least she left a note. Hopefully her suitemates wouldn't be too mad.

With that done, Eli flicked the light off and vacated the bathroom. She relocked her side of the suite, and looked in her desk for some pain killers. After a few moments of digging she found some ibuprofen, which she consumed eagerly. After that, Eli took a sip of water from a bottle she had on her desk, and started the laborious climb back up to her lofted bed. She made it somehow without vomiting, and collapsed back into hungover slumber.


For the next few days the blue note remained up in the bathroom. Eli ignored it whenever she went in there, but Honoka always had a comment when she noticed its presence. Honoka joked about how she never actually found that mess, and how their suitemates never seemed to care about keeping the bathroom clean anyway.

Three days after the initial note placement, on Wednesday evening, Eli was studying in her dorm room. Honoka was supposed to be studying as well, but she spent far more time playing games on her phone. She also took relatively frequent bathroom breaks to aid in procrastination. Eli was busy copying some definitions from a textbook when Honoka emerged from one such break.

"I don't know how you did it," the bubbly girl chirped as she plopped down at her desk, grabbing Eli's attention. "That's some magic trick."

What was Honoka babbling about this time? "What do you mean?" Eli looked up from her notes to ask, turning slightly towards her roommate.

"You made it purple somehow., without even going in there." Honoka said as if that would help, while looking at Eli expectantly. Eli inhaled deeply, trying to formulate a response of some kind. She had no idea what Honoka was actually trying to say. The best way to find out would be to just look in the bathroom herself, since Honoka didn't seem like she was going to continue speaking.

Since Honoka had just come out, Eli was able to enter the bathroom without having to wait. When she turned the light on, it looked the same as it normally did. Eli scrutinized the room carefully, and paused when she reached the mirror. It felt like her heart skipped a beat at the realization. A purple note in the shape of a heart sat where the blue note had been before. Eli didn't recognize the handwriting. It read:

thats ok! are you feeling better :?

For a second, all Eli could do was blink at it. Someone had replied to her note. A person had entered the shared bathroom, seen the note, and felt concerned enough to write a reply. That was literally the last thing she expected to happen. With a sharp inhale Eli retreated back to her dorm room. She left the light on in the bathroom and made sure the door was closed before speaking, since her suitemates would be able to hear her if the bathroom door was open.

"Honoka," she said slowly and steadily. "Are you pranking me?" It had happened before, more than once.

"What! Of course not!" Honoka insisted with a pout. "Not since last month!" Ah yes, the fake spider in the fridge had been last month's delightful prank.

"Then who wrote that note?" Eli crossed her arms, leaning against the bathroom door.

"It wasn't you?" Honoka's eyes widened, and she sounded so surprised Eli decided to believe her.

"No." Eli frowned. "It must've been our suitemates." That was odd though, because they weren't close to their suitemates. The two girls on the other side had roomed together intentionally, while both Eli and Honoka had roomed blind. They'd introduced themselves at the beginning of the year, but Eli forgot their names.

Honoka's eyebrows knight together thoughtfully. "Hmmmm." She tilted her head to one side. "You should respond." Was the conclusion she came to.

Eli wasn't sure she agreed with that idea. "I dunno." She tried to think of a way to explain her hesitation, but struggled to put it into words.

"C'mon, it'll be fun!" Honoka jumped up for emphasis and leverage. "Besides, we don't eeeever talk to them, so this is a chance to make new friends." She insisted, inching into Eli's personal space.

"Fine," Eli acquiesced, leaning away from Honoka. "Just this once though." She stepped over to her desk and grabbed the pad of blue sticky notes along with a pencil. She gave it a few seconds of thought, and then scribbled:

I'm feeling much better, thank you!

That was good enough, she decided, and re-entered the bathroom to place it on the mirror. Since the other person took the original note, Eli figured she should take the purple one. She peeled the heart shaped note off and replaced it with her response.

Eli only looked back once as she flipped the light off and left the bathroom. Once the door was shut and locked, she looked for a spot on her desk to put the purple heart. She ended up sticking it to a piece of loose-leaf paper, and putting in one of the desk drawers.

"Done." She said to Honoka, who shot back a thumbs up in response. There was no way someone would respond to that note, and even if they did Eli was determined not to respond again.

She planned to stick to that decision.


Eli was wrong.

A few days later, she found a new purple note plastered where hers had been. It said:

im glad! the cards told me but i wanted to confirm it :D

Eli couldn't help but write back:

What do you mean by the cards?