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Episode 5
Yeon-jae got up from the swing and approached Dohan. And she spoke without hesitation.
“Hello. I’m Shin Yeon-jae, I go to the girls’ middle school near here. A girl in my class likes you. She’s too shy to ask for your number herself.”
The words came out without a single tremor, like spitting out a rapid-fire rap.
Dohan stopped, looking flustered. And he waited silently while Yeon-jae finished speaking.
A brief moment of silence passed between them.
Yeon-jae swallowed hard. She was afraid she wouldn’t get Dohan’s number.
After a long silence, Dohan finally spoke.
“But why didn’t that friend come herself and instead sent you?”
His tone was genuinely curious. When Yeon-jae hesitated, Dohan gestured with his chin towards the swings. Before she knew it, she was sitting on the very swing she had been occupying alone until just now, together with Dohan.
Yeon-jae was a little worried that the other girls might be watching this scene right now.
Contextually, it was a perfect setup for her to be seen as a sly fox.
The swing Dohan was on swayed slowly. Yeon-jae just stared at the tips of her shoes.
Dohan didn’t say anything. She wondered why he had suggested sitting on the swing if he was going to be like this.
Meanwhile, the sun set. Streetlights flickered on, and lights turned on in every apartment window. After another long silence, Dohan asked.
“Will you be in trouble if I don’t give it?”
Yeon-jae couldn’t bring herself to answer.
Whether the silence served as an answer, Dohan swung his backpack to the front and opened the largest zipper.
“I don’t see any paper.”
After rummaging for a while, Dohan pulled out a ballpoint pen and looked back at Yeon-jae. And he asked.
“If it’s okay, could you make a fist?”
When Yeon-jae made a fist with her fingers visible, Dohan carefully grabbed her wrist and turned it over so the back of her hand faced up.
And he raised the pen and wrote eleven digits.
That was it.
After that day, Yeon-jae’s goal was always Dohan.
She studied with Dohan as her goal, chose her university. She even repeated a year just to get into the same university as Dohan.
Finding out about Dohan’s recent activities was easy. He was a neighborhood celebrity, and if she scoured the social media accounts of seniors, she would inevitably find a glimpse of him.
But she couldn’t just spill all of this.
Avoiding Hyun-oh’s gaze, Yeon-jae offered a suitably filtered version.
“When I was really struggling, Senior Dohan reached out to me. Of course, it was probably such a trivial thing to him that he wouldn’t even remember it, but to me, it meant the world. That’s why. That’s all.”
Hyun-oh was silent for a moment. And after a considerable pause, he spoke.
“Well, that’s how one-sided love is, I guess. Just looking at the other person’s fingertips can make years fly by.”
“You sound like someone who’s mastered it. Could it be… you’re in the middle of a one-sided love yourself?”
“Nope.”
Ugh.
Yeon-jae was about to take a step but stopped. Suddenly, she was curious.
“But isn’t it a bit weird?”
“What is?”
“The stalker thing. Me.”
Having heard it repeated a few times now, the word flowed out of her mouth much more easily now.
Perhaps sensing that Yeon-jae’s answer was different from before, Hyun-oh’s expression also turned noticeably serious.
“If you know it’s wrong, why did you stalk him?”
Stalking.
Honestly, Yeon-jae had thought the same thing a few times herself.
‘Am I too much like a stalker?’
But that was just a joking form of self-censorship.
But hearing the word ‘stalker’ directed at her so many times today by Hyun-oh made her realize that maybe this one-sided love of hers could look like that to others.
Still, it was hard to answer Hyun-oh’s question. Yeon-jae wondered what answer would be appropriate.
But after much deliberation, the final words she chose were.
“…Because I wanted to know about him, even if it had to be that way.”
Confessing love, even if it was to a third party rather than the person themselves, required tremendous courage.
Feeling embarrassed even by her own words, Yeon-jae quickly changed the subject.
“A-Anyway, you’re close with Senior Dohan, right? You’re really close?”
“Yeah. We’re close. I’m telling you, we’re close. And you should know that best, right? You filled a whole page about me. If you really don’t believe me, want me to call him right now?”
With that, Hyun-oh also made an exaggerated motion, pretending to call someone.
She thought it was just pretend, but from the speakerphone, Dohan’s familiar voice came through.
hello?
A voice that could make your heart race with just those two syllables.
“Yeah, Dohan. Where are you?”
Yeon-jae’s expression as she looked at Hyun-oh turned to horror. Yeon-jae mouthed the words.
Hang. Up. Now.
Whether he found Yeon-jae’s reaction amusing, Hyun-oh teased her a few more times. Even while dodging this way and that to prevent Yeon-jae from grabbing his phone, his voice remained as casual as ever.
“Yeah. I’m with someone right now. I’m back at school now~ Just called to see where you were~”
She knew it was Hyun-oh’s own way of lightening the mood, but for Yeon-jae, it was nothing but embarrassing.
Hang. Up. I. Said.
“I’ll call you later.”
The call ended, and Hyun-oh looked at Yeon-jae again. And with a somewhat triumphant air, he said.
“Now, is this proof? Of how great of a helper I can be?”
Proof or not, it didn’t really register in Yeon-jae’s ears. She was too busy trying to calm her startled heart.
“No, but I still don’t get it. Senior Dohan is popular, it’s not like there aren’t other people. Why me of all people… I’m not particularly pretty…”
To that, Hyun-oh didn’t answer right away. He just stared at her blankly as if dumbfounded.
“But you take off those glasses when you wash your face, right?”
“Huh?”
The answer that came back after a long while was one whose meaning was difficult to grasp immediately.
Yeon-jae asked back, but Hyun-oh didn’t explain further, and Yeon-jae didn’t ask the meaning again.
She just thought he was a strange person.
The two of them continued walking, maintaining that awkward silence.
Hyun-oh, who had been walking along dangling the empty plastic cup, stopped.
As if aiming at a target, he closed one eye, adjusted his position a few times, and then threw the cup.
The cup traced a parabolic arc and landed perfectly in the trash bin marked with a plastic recycling sign, but the straw he threw next fell right on the ground in front of it.
“Ah.”
Letting out a disappointed sigh, Hyun-oh, as if she knew he would do that, walked forward, picked up the fallen straw, and put it properly in the trash bin.
Yeon-jae, finding the sight a bit unexpected, watched Hyun-oh from a distance.
She could have taken this opportunity to leave him behind and go first, but she didn’t. For some reason, she thought he wasn’t such a bad person.
Eventually, Yeon-jae and Hyun-oh stopped only when their paths towards their respective buildings diverged.
“Give me your phone.”
When Yeon-jae hesitated, Hyun-oh lightly snatched her phone, entered his number, and even made a call to confirm it.
“Contact me.”
Hyun-oh turned his back first. Yeon-jae watched his retreating figure and resolved.
This American is disgustingly bad. I’m never going to that cafe again.
And a beat later, she realized.
This was the first time she had ever eaten a meal with someone during a free period.
The Korean Language and Literature major lecture hall was already sparsely filled.
Avoiding people whose faces she roughly knew but nothing else, Yeon-jae sat in an empty seat.
The girls who had arrived earlier were already gathered in small groups, chatting amongst themselves.
“I wonder what the cutoff for the merit scholarship will be this year?”
“I’ve given up now. I had a 4.1 last time, but I didn’t even get the 30% merit scholarship.”
“No, but who on earth is top of the major? I checked grades last time, and I found up to second place? I just can’t figure out who’s first.”
Hmm… Yeon-jae felt oddly self-conscious and fixed her gaze on her textbook.
Although Yeon-jae was in the Korean Literature department, when she first entered university, she had no particular interest in Korean literature at all.
How many students in Korea actually choose their major out of genuine interest? For Yeon-jae back then, whose only goal was to get into the same university as Do-han, it mattered even less what her major was.
But as she studied, she found parts she enjoyed, and so she worked hard.
And before she knew it, she was top of the major.
People like geniuses, but Yeon-jae thought effort had its own value.
‘It’s a bit like that with my one-sided love too…’
Come to think of it, compared to a one-sided love that doesn’t go as planned, studying, where results come from effort, wasn’t such a difficult thing.
As Yeon-jae was rolling her pen meaninglessly, thinking about the morning’s events.
“Excuse me.”
Just then, someone tapped her on the back. Yeon-jae turned around.
A girl with long brown hair neatly tucked behind her ears was looking at Yeon-jae and smiling.
Yeon-jae knew this girl.
Choi Si-eun. The second-year vice representative and the ‘pretty girl’ of the Korean Literature department.
They had become acquainted during a department event once, but there had been no significant friendship since.
Si-eun had an expression suggesting she had something to say.
‘What is it, maybe she wants to ask about grades?’
Si-eun skipped any greeting and asked directly.
“You know Kang Hyun-oh oppa?”
Next.
