Chapter 6

His appearance, which naturally entered my view even though I didn’t want it to, looked far from well.

Last Friday he had looked like a neat model student, but today he looked like a thoroughly disheveled delinquent.

The hair falling over his forehead was slightly messy, and his complexion was pale, so he somehow looked unwell.

I was roughly scanning him with unfocused eyes when I felt a gaze fixed intently on me and lowered my eyes.

Beyond the thin silver-rimmed glasses, Yoon Yoo-seon was looking down at me askew.

This person is surprisingly tall.

I thought that while staring at the wood grain of the table.

Of course, shorter than Gi In-hwa.

Maybe because he’s tall, his gaze somehow felt oddly oppressive.

Of course, that too was nothing compared to Gi In-hwa.

Are all tall humans like this?

I was thinking about the correlation between height and oppressive presence when a loud groan violently stimulated my eardrums: “Ah, sitting up is so fucking hard…!”

Startled, my heart dropped with a thud and then began pounding again, and the culprit who had made the loud noise twisted his limbs this way and that before collapsing flat onto the wooden table.

Then, a moment later, he lifted only his eyes and looked at me, then sulked cutely, “Aren’t you going to ask why it’s hard?”

I’m not curious.

More than that, I was really startled.

And why the sudden casual speech? I remember he used something like semi-formal speech at the new member welcome party last time.

“I drank all night with a buddy who just got discharged. My stomach is killing me.”

Yoon Yoo-seon, who answered shamelessly even though I hadn’t asked, said, “I was going to buy you coffee when I saw you, junior, but I’m too wrecked to get up,” and then collapsed flat onto the table again.

“I’ll just rest a bit.”

Rest or don’t, I don’t care, but I wish he’d do it somewhere other than here.

I really felt it this time: this person’s unpredictable behavior is quite incompatible with me.

Besides, I have severe caffeine side effects, so I don’t even touch coffee.

“If you want something other than coffee, just tell me.”

At his mumbled words, as if he had read my mind, my shoulders flinched again.

Since I myself have that kind of ability, I habitually become suspicious even at a coincidental situation like this.

‘Could this person also be a psychic?’ or ‘Is he reading minds?’ or ‘How does he know when we haven’t even touched?’…

Of course, the probability of it being real is realistically close to zero, and my habitual suspicion, accompanied by anxiety and fluttering, naturally dies out a few seconds later.

“I could buy you a meal too. You don’t have to eat at the school cafeteria—we can eat something else.”

Yoon Yoo-seon muttered weakly, still collapsed on the table.

He’s a clueless and persistent person.

Maybe something about me has provoked this person’s stubbornness.

If the ‘ignore’ tactic doesn’t work, I have no choice but to switch to the ‘avoid’ tactic.

I hurriedly gathered my bag.

I lifted my hips to move seats, but suddenly felt wronged.

There is no better spot than this bench for observing the building entrance.

So why should I be the one to move?

The rolling stone is Yoon Yoo-seon, and the stone that’s stuck is me.

While I hesitated with petty calculations, Yoon Yoo-seon raised his head, hair mussed.

He stared at me in my awkward posture, then suddenly stretched his upper body forward and brought his face right up to the phone in my hand.

I was so startled I almost dropped my phone.

I almost reflexively spat out a curse, too.

“I was curious last time too—when on earth did you buy that?”

His gaze rudely swept over my clunky old-model phone and then, as naturally as flowing water, fixed on my nail-covered-in-scratches.

Whenever I bought it, what does that have to do with you?

And why on earth does he keep looking at other people’s fingernails like that?

Doesn’t he know this kind of behavior is nothing but harassment?

I glared at him until a cold wind blew, then turned the hand holding my phone behind my back and hid it from his gaze.

Then I hurriedly slung my bag over my shoulder.

“Am I that uncomfortable to be around?”

His voice, full of hurt feelings, was ridiculous, so I reflexively replied coldly, like a north wind: “Yes.”

Of course, I regretted it less than three seconds later.

Because Yoon Yoo-seon, slowly leaning his upper body back, flashed a triumphant smile.

“Wow… listening to your voice is a total difficulty spike.”

His playful tone seemed to be teasing me.

I had been suppressing my discomfort and displeasure, and at last I got angry.

I had thought this human was okay, but now I thought he was a worse person than he looked.

“I don’t know if that’s a joke to you, senior, but it’s not to me. A joke the other person doesn’t take as a joke is just bullying or harass—”

“Huh? Senior! What are you doing here?”

But my deliberately poured-out words of anger were cut off by a group of female students who suddenly interrupted, and thus scattered unfinished into the air, leaving a lingering unpleasantness.

*

The three female students who suddenly invaded the bench where Yoon Yoo-seon and I were bickering said they were members of ‘Film Maniac.’

They seemed to be quite friendly with Yoon Yoo-seon, because they rushed over like baby birds chirping “Senior, senior,” exchanged something like greetings, and then one of them suddenly pointed at me and shouted, “The one who claimed to be In-hwa senior’s girlfriend and disappeared!” which greatly hurt my already uncomfortable feelings.

To that I responded confidently, “I’m not claiming—I really am his girlfriend”…

And that was my fatal mistake.

I shouldn’t have done that…

“Wow, daebak. Seriously daebak. How did you two end up dating? Did you confess?”

“…”

“Why aren’t you answering? Don’t tell me you got confessed to?”

“Kyaa! Crazy! That iron-walled guy? No way!”

When the girl with brown permed hair named Jeon Song asked, full of excitement, one of the other two, a bob-haired girl, shrieked with an exaggerated reaction.

Then the bob-haired girl suddenly clapped her hands as if something had occurred to her.

“Oh right! That day Kang-joo went out to smoke and said he witnessed it. He said she was waiting in front of the restaurant until In-hwa senior came.”

“Really? So you did confess! Right? Huh?”

The brown-haired girl scooted closer and began smacking my arm, wrapped in thick fabric, with her hand.

I was startled out of my wits, but I managed to limit my excessive agitation to a single flinch of the shoulders.

After calming my startled heart for a moment, I subtly pulled my arm out so it wouldn’t seem unnatural and slightly tucked in my hips.

These girls seemed not to have heard the rumors about me yet.

Well, I was rumored to be an oddball only within the English department, among my own year, and my presence isn’t big enough to be known by people from other departments.

Unless they had an acquaintance in the English department.

Otherwise, it was natural they wouldn’t know.

Anyway, I was in a daze from the conversation of these overly high-energy girls.

I couldn’t even follow half of it.

I didn’t know how things had ended up like this.

No, actually I did know to some extent.

I am weak against girls who radiate bright, open energy like this.

These kinds of girls had never approached me in such an easygoing way before, and because I had never once had a same-age, same-sex friend in my life, I also held a longing for such ordinary everyday things.

The three of them happened to be, by coincidence, the same year and same age as me.

With the sparkling energy unique to fresh young female students, they created an atmosphere that drew out self-introductions in an instant, and before I knew it they had found out my name, student number, age, major, and phone number, and even invited me to the ‘Film Maniac’ group chat.

All of that took less than five minutes.

Yoon Yoo-seon, who had been watching the scene with a pleased look, got up unsteadily with a face still showing his hangover, bought four iced Americanos from somewhere, handed them over, and vanished.

I should have cleverly slipped away with him then… I meant to… but strangely my heart weakened and I failed.

I subtly lowered my gaze and checked my phone; it had just passed 10:40.

I had been held captive by the three of them as if dragged away, suffering a barrage of questions, and it was almost thirty minutes now.

“But somehow I felt like that might be it? In-hwa senior doesn’t seem to act that way because he likes Joo-eun senior so crazily. You can tell from the atmosphere.”

“I felt that too… but the rumors were so much. They said he’s had a one-sided love for ten years, that No Joo-eun is managing a fish pond, and all that. Then why on earth does he do that? He practically treats him like a master-servant relationship, ordering him around. And In-hwa senior accepts all of it.”

“There must be a story. Maybe she’s got a weakness on him. Yun-i, don’t you know anything?”

The bob-haired girl, Kim Hye-seung, who had friendly called me ‘Yun-i,’ spread both palms like a flower dish, rested her chin on them, and looked at me burdenedly.