Epilogue Chapter 5
After saying it, I worried that I might have sounded too gloomy. There was no need to be this honest.
Completely hiding my face to prevent my boyfriend from greeting another friend – honestly, it was a creepy idea, even if we were meeting after several months.
What if Joo Kwon-oh thought it was strange? As I walked around the back of the Art Building, I kept glancing at Joo Kwon-oh beside me.
He walked silently next to me without saying a word. With his face completely covered, I couldn’t see his expression, which made me even more nervous.
“So.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Where are we going?”
“Ah. This area doesn’t have many people passing by…”
“Are you taking me to a secluded place to do something? To have your way with me?”
“What? That’s not it!”
Startled by his blunt words, I let out a yelp.
I had no intention of doing anything outside, I just wanted to be alone with Joo Kwon-oh for a moment. Since I’d have to go back soon anyway because of exam preparation.
Joo Kwon-oh’s shoulders shook slightly. I had the illusion that I could see his grinning expression.
I scratched my neck in embarrassment.
“And I have too many assignments, so I can’t hang out with you this evening.”
“Can’t be helped. What are you doing on the weekend?”
“Exam preparation and night work then too.”
“Seems like you’re too busy to meet.”
“You’re busy too, aren’t you?”
“Well. I can make time if I want to.”
“Ah.”
“The exams are until next week, right?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing we can do about it. Looks like I’ll have to support you and practice celibacy for a whole week.”
I hunched my shoulders at his seemingly reproachful words.
“Yesterday, I… I must have been too tired. I didn’t mean to sleep, but when I woke up, it was morning.”
“It’s okay. I got to watch your sleeping face all I wanted.”
“After the exams are over, we’ll have a lot of time, so then we can…”
“Then we can what?”
Joo Kwon-oh asked back.
“Do what together?”
“…”
Knowing full well what I wanted to say, Joo Kwon-oh persistently pressed on.
“Let’s… do it together.”
“Hmm. Do what?”
“…Date.”
“…”
Joo Kwon-oh just kept staring at me silently.
“Why do you keep looking at me like that? Is there something on my face?”
“No. I’m just happy to see you in person after only seeing you in my dreams every day.”
“I appeared in your dreams?”
“Yeah. Quite a few times.”
His voice was ominously lewd.
“What… did we do?”
“Very naughty things.”
“…”
This time, I stopped in the middle of the walking path.
As I looked around urgently to see if anyone was passing by, Joo Kwon-oh found my reaction amusing and lowered his voice to whisper.
“I couldn’t calm down even after waking up, so I jerked off before going to work.”
Just what kind of dream did he have to…
I felt the blood rushing to my face and turned my head away.
“You didn’t mention anything like that when we talked on the phone.”
“How could I say that outright?”
Just then, a familiar laugh rang out from afar. Surprised by the familiar voice, I turned my head towards the sound and saw Choi Kyung-won walking along the path with a group of friends.
As if on cue, we both stiffened our bodies.
Joo Kwon-oh frowned and clicked his tongue.
“Ah, if that bastard catches us, we’ll be stuck for at least an hour.”
I was thinking the same thing.
“It’s good we’re wearing hats and masks. Our peach is so smart.”
Joo Kwon-oh pulled his hat down further and shrugged his shoulders.
“I thought he was busy with the competition these days. Looks like it’s over.”
“How does Jeong-ha know Choi Kyung-won is busy?”
His voice, half-joking and half-jealous, urged me on. Yet, Joo Kwon-oh covered his face more thoroughly with his mask, afraid of being caught by Choi Kyung-won.
“I helped him with the competition when we met last time.”
“The competition Choi Kyung-won is participating in?”
“Yeah.”
“How exactly did you help?”
“He said the design was awkward… so I modified it a bit.”
“Isn’t that Lee Sung-rok’s team? Why are you helping with that?”
Joo Kwon-oh said, as if suddenly remembering.
“Did you meet Lee Sung-rok too?”
“…”
Quick-witted as he was, he soon deduced what had happened in the meantime.
“You really met him? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I ran into him by accident. I thought only Kyung-won would be there, but I happened to see him.”
“Shit. Don’t tell me that bastard spouted nonsense to you again?”
I could feel Joo Kwon-oh getting rapidly agitated.
“No, he didn’t say anything.”
“So you did meet him, then.”
“…”
“Explain. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well, nothing really happened…”
Joo Kwon-oh’s voice, which had been gentle until just now, turned cold, making me unconsciously shrink back.
Honestly, running into that senior hadn’t left much of an impression on me, so I was taken aback by Joo Kwon-oh suddenly digging into this issue.
“How is it not a big deal? Have you forgotten what that guy did to you?”
“…”
“Ah, that bastard. He said such awful things to you and then even got help with his competition? What a shameless jerk.”
“He didn’t ask for help first, Kyung-won asked me…”
“Still! This is ridiculous. I can’t even go yell at him now.”
“Don’t, don’t do that.”
Afraid that Joo Kwon-oh might really go and blow up at him, I tried to stop him.
“…I won’t.”
“Really?”
“Anyway, he’s not coming to school from this week until graduation because he’s preparing for his MBA.”
“Ah…”
That was a relief. Even though they’re in the same department, they won’t run into each other anymore.
“Anyway, you should have told me if something like that happened. We agreed not to hide anything from each other.”
“I wasn’t trying to hide it. We didn’t even have a separate conversation… I didn’t think much of it since I saw him with the competition team.”
“…”
Joo Kwon-oh was silent for a moment, then spoke up after a while.
“So you think it’s okay not to tell me at all?”
“What…”
“Both about Lee Sung-rok, and about using another guy as a model instead of me.”
“Jae-hyun is just a friend. And you were abroad at the time…”
“You could have at least told me in advance. Is that so difficult? I don’t understand why you always try to hide things.”
“I’ve never tried to hide anything. I just missed the timing to talk about it somehow.”
Joo Kwon-oh sighed at the unresolved difference of opinion. That sound echoed particularly loudly, piercing my heart.
“Are you angry?”
“I’m not angry.”
Joo Kwon-oh denied it immediately, but it sounded like a lie to my ears.
“I don’t like it when things happen that I don’t know about.”
“…”
“We talked every day, how could you miss the timing? Honestly, it just sounds like an excuse.”
Somehow, it felt like everything had become my fault.
But I didn’t think it was my fault. So Joo Kwon-oh’s attitude bothered me.
“You… didn’t tell me everything either.”
Finally, I brought up what I had originally intended to keep buried.
“What didn’t I do?”
We shouldn’t talk about this anymore. We’ll definitely end up fighting.
That intuition held my tongue. But my lips moved on their own anyway.
“You didn’t tell me that a girl in your internship team liked you.”
“Who in the team… Oh.”
Joo Kwon-oh hesitated as if he had understood a beat late.
Rather, that reaction made me feel even worse.
I had hoped it wasn’t true, but it really was. I had secretly thought that maybe his friend who went abroad with him was just bragging.
“Who did you hear that from?”
“That’s not the important part. Did, did you think I wouldn’t find out? If you were on the same team, you must have seen each other every day…”
“I don’t know where you heard it from, but it was just something said when drunk.”
“When… drunk?”
“Nothing happened after that.”
Even if another woman had confessed to Joo Kwon-oh while sober, I would have been annoyed, but she confessed while drunk?
How can this be considered nothing?
I felt like my vision was spinning with jealousy.
“Isn’t confessing while drunk… even worse?”
“She probably didn’t even remember what she said the next day, I don’t pay attention to things like that.”
“How do you know whether she remembers or not? If you were on the same team… that means you ate together, worked together, and partied together every day. You’re the one who deliberately kept a secret, so why have you been nagging me all this time?”
“Is that the same as hiding the fact that you met Lee Sung-rok? Can you compare it to drawing someone else’s face while staring at them every day?”
“…”
Kim Jae-hyun had been a friend I hung out with since freshman year, and I used him as a model for the portrait solely for convenience. And my encounter with senior Lee Sung-rok wasn’t multiple times, it was a one-time meeting.
I couldn’t understand why Joo Kwon-oh was making such a sensitive issue out of this.
Was I really the only one who made a mistake? Is it not a problem at all that he received a confession from a woman on his team and stuck close to her for nearly three months?
“Ryu Jeong-ha.”
But I didn’t have the eloquence to logically explain all these reasons to Joo Kwon-oh and argue my point. I mumbled, trying hard to organize my words, but the sentences inside wouldn’t come out in a coherent form.
Rather, I was afraid that my sentences would get tangled and become even more ridiculous. Then I would look even more foolish compared to the articulate Joo Kwon-oh.
“Ryu Jeong-ha.”
“…I don’t want to.”
“What?”
“I said I don’t want to talk to you, Joo Kwon-oh.”
Joo Kwon-oh flinched at my words. He then lowered his mask and looked down at me intently.
“Joo Kwon-oh? Did you just call me Joo Kwon-oh?”
“Yes! You, you called me Ryu Jeong-ha too!”
“That’s…!”
“You can do it but I can’t? You’re really selfish!”
Unable to control my emotions, I burst out shouting, then quickly walked towards the Art Building, leaving Joo Kwon-oh on the walking path.
“Jeong-ha!”
I heard Joo Kwon-oh following me with wide strides.
“Don’t follow me.”
“Where are you going in the middle of our conversation?”
“I can’t talk to you anymore, it’s suffocating. I, I need to study for my exams now.”
“You’re just going to leave in this situation? I’m not done talking.”
“…”
“Wait a minute. What about dinner?”
“I’m not eating. And I’m really busy, so… I’d like to continue this conversation after the exams are over.”
I entered the studio without looking back at Joo Kwon-oh until the end.
Joo Kwon-oh, who had been calling my name and following me, stopped pursuing me, perhaps because he was angry too.
And so, Joo Kwon-oh and I, meeting after three months, ended up having a big fight.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
