Without knocking, Elphaba yanked open the door, stomped inside the room and smacked the absolutely ridiculous fluffy sleeping mask right off her roommate's face.
"Don't even pretend to be asleep", she hissed, leaning close to Galinda's right ear.
"Are you responsible for this ri-di-cu-lous name tag on the door?", Elphaba demanded, stressing every syllable of the word that described Galinda the best.
Ri-di-cu-lous.
The blonde girl blinked just a little but pinched her eyes shut as soon as she got sight of Elphaba's furious expression.
The other girl didn't hesitate for a second and reached out to peg the blonde's nose with her fingers.
"I KNOW YOU'RE NOT SLEEPING", Elphaba yelled and finally, Galinda gave up and sat upright, shaking off Elphaba's ruthless grip on her nose.
"Have you lost your sensanity?!", Galinda protested, rubbing her nose in discomfort.
Elphaba had crossed her arms, impatiently padding her foot on the wooden floor tiles.
"I repeat it, if you want, have you put up this name tag on the door?"
"No need to make such a fuzzity fuss about this. How am I supposed to know how to spell your name.
'Ael-phar-bar', what kind of name is that anyways? Sounds like a deadly disease."
She was still holding her nose, a pained expression in her eyes.
"I think you broke it", she declared whinily.
Elphaba was on the brink of bursting.
"Oh, whiny whiny whine. What are you, twelve?!", she imitated Galinda's complaints and then let out a frustrated grunt.
"Ugh, I can't believe, I'm stuck with you!"
"Dito!", Galinda barked, putting her nose up and turning away from Elphaba.
The tension between the two did not cease over the following weeks and their constant bickering annoyed their fellow students to no end.
"Would you two knock it off already?", someone would interrupt yet another one of their endless arguments.
"I will knock it off as soon as this blonde-brained lunatic stops comparing me to vegetables!"
"Then stop calling me 'blonde-brained lunatic'!"
"But that's what you are! Blonde!"
"Well, I'm sorry, salad-face..."
"Your obnoxiously high-pitched voice robs my last nerve, could you stop squealing like that?!"
"When you stop wearing clothes that were out-dated last century!"
"I am so sorry we can't all be spoiled rotten by 'Momsy and Popsicle'. Who calls their parents 'Momsy and Popsicle' anyways, how old are you? Five?"
Galinda gasped.
"Have you been reading my letters?"
Her voice almost cracked with outrage.
"No, but I couldn't help overhearing your nerve-racking voice reading it out to yourself as you had finished! We do share a room, in case you had forgotten!"
Elphaba stared at her loathsome roommate.
She had pretended not to hear the extraordinarily unflattering description of her Galinda had mumbled, reading out the letter to herself.
The only way to properly describe her roommate in her own letter to her father had infact been the word 'blonde'.
She blinked irritatedly as she saw the faint glint of a flush appear on Galinda's face.
Last night she had assumed that Galinda had intentionally read out the letter audibly so Elphaba couldn't help but overhear, but remembering the terribly misspelled version of her name on the door, she started to wonder if Galinda wasn't too good with words and spelling in general.
"How could I forget that, I have to try not to die of a heart attack every morning when I wake up in the same room like you!"
Every semblance of empathy that had appeared in Elphaba's mind was wiped away again instantly.
Of course, everyone agreed with Galinda when it came to picking sides in the argument, but that was no surprise to Elphaba.
Everytime she passed Galinda and one of her friends, they made sure she was able to hear them before they offered her commiserations about how awful it had to be, sharing a room with the spinach girl.
Galinda would humbly assure them that this surely was only a way to try her patience and would pay off in one way or another in the end.
Elphaba tried to make the best of the situation, occasionally taking advantage of the fact that Galinda seemed to fear her a little bit, after all.
So she would often lurk on Galinda's bedside in the morning, her face hovering over her roommate's until the clock struck the fifth hour.
"Wake up", she'd growl, causing Galinda to open her eyes and be nearly scared witless every time.
This way she had Galinda fuming mad at her right from the start of the day.
Pure loathing.
That described their relationship perfectly.
And it did not look like it would take a turn for the better anytime in the near future.