I’d missed my morning class and, feeling empty, figured I’d at least have a smoke, so I headed to the back courtyard. Judging by the pile of cigarette butts already scattered across the ground, others had been here before me. I rummaged through the cigarette pack in my pocket.
“I forgot to buy more.”
I had just put the last remaining cigarette between my lips and flicked the lighter on when I heard the sound of someone fighting from around the concrete corner of the building.
A man’s voice barked harshly, followed by the other person’s protest, edged with a slightly rough energy.
Startled, I peered around the corner and saw two large silhouettes grappling with each other. Curiosity crept in—what kind of lunatics get into a real-life brawl at this age?
“What the hell, it’s those guys….”
The figures were people I knew all too well. My classmate Go Heemin, shoved up against the wall, and another classmate, Kang Taeyoon, pressing his mouth against Heemin’s.
It was a sight I’d already seen several times, but I still couldn’t hide my shock. The cigarette slipped from my mouth and dropped to the ground—that was proof enough.
I stared blankly at the dying butt as ash scattered in the air, then let out a hollow laugh. Ah, that was my last one. Looks like my brain had short-circuited from what I was seeing.
I could only stand there stupidly, watching as Kang Taeyoon’s lips devoured Go Heemin’s. Heemin, gasping as if he couldn’t breathe, clenched his fist and repeatedly struck Taeyoon’s shoulder.
“Should I call 112?”
Faced with what looked like some kind of violence, my law-abiding citizen instincts kicked in and I fumbled for my phone in my pocket. I’d never wanted to get tangled up with those two, but if this was dating violence, I ought to step in.
At that moment, Kang Taeyoon, who had been staring at the struggling Go Heemin, twisted his face as if he were in pain. Seeing that, Go Heemin stopped fighting. Before long, the two who had been arguing began staging a blush-inducing love scene.
Go Heemin wrapped his arms around Kang Taeyoon’s shoulders and tilted his head, accepting him. It was so sticky and wet that, even at an age where I knew full well what was what, I couldn’t stop the goosebumps from rising on my skin.
Ugh, gross. Ugh, you plague-ridden idiots. As their love quarrel dragged on, I raised my arm and scratched at my shoulder furiously.
“What did I do to deserve this?”
I quickly became certain that those two no longer needed 112. Realizing that my so-called good intentions had just been meddling, I dragged a hand down my face in self-reproach. Then, despairing at my current situation, I turned my body away from the scene.
What the hell kind of savage love fight is that? No, before that—are they even in their right minds? This might be a world inside a novel, but when it came to homosexuality, it seemed to share the same values as reality.
In what could be considered a small society—a university campus courtyard where people were constantly passing through—two silhouettes that anyone could tell were grown men were going at it shamelessly. I clicked my tongue.
Disgusting. You crazy bastards. Suppressing a sigh, I glanced at my sacrificed last cigarette. Just as I was about to step away in a hurry—
“Ah.”
A lot of people use this place as a shortcut. In that mood, those two wouldn’t notice even if someone came by, right?
An image flashed through my mind of passing students catching them in the act. Of all places, this was a back courtyard that doubled as a makeshift smoking area—there was no guarantee they wouldn’t get caught.
In the end, I hugged my bag to my chest and quietly crouched down on the ground. The clock had already passed the time for the first lecture and was now pointing toward when I should be heading to my second class.
“You sons of bitches…. I’m making you pay me back double later.”
Because of my two classmates’ desperate romance, I’d become a self-appointed guardian of love—something I’d never done in my life—standing watch beyond the corner wall. I’d already mentally slapped them with charges of “obnoxious couple syndrome” and “public indecency.”
How did it end up like this? Twenty-nine years old—no, now twenty-three—I couldn’t suppress the sigh rising from deep in my core.
Cha Jungwoo, 23 years old, a university student. Until recently, I’d been an ordinary office worker at a small-to-medium-sized company.
I still couldn’t believe that, in a body six years younger, I was now attending school as a classmate of that couple.
“Cha Seung-ah, you little brat. I told you to stop reading about men sticking to each other like that.”
As I mulled over my miserable position, I recalled the past. It had already been three months since I’d ended up inside the BL novel Love Prequel that my younger sister had been reading.
***
It was a Friday evening, a day I’d decided to drop by my parents’ house after work for the first time in a while. My parents were out, so only my younger sister remained to greet me.
“You’re reading that again today?”
“Huh? Oh, Oppa, you’re here? Mom and Dad went out~ This is when you read in the living room.”
“Seriously.”
Seeing her older brother for the first time in three weeks didn’t seem to matter to her at all; she was sprawled on the sofa, too busy reading her book.
Cha Seung-ah—my younger sister, five years younger than me. Back in high school she’d gotten hooked on so-called BL genre novels, and now she’d even lost all shame, going so far as to share her reviews with her own brother.
“Cha Seung-ah, how long are you going to read that? Can’t we eat first?”
“Uh, uh…. It’s a really important scene right now. Gasp! No way! Heemin finally kissed Taeyoon! It’s mutual now~!”
“Ha….”
Listening to her describe the kiss scene between some Taeyoon guy and some Heemin guy I’d never even heard of, I sat alone at the dining table chewing my food.
Why do I have to eat dinner while listening to a novel about two dudes locking lips? Thinking I’d come home for nothing, I glanced at Cha Seung-ah in the living room.
At least she was bold—no, reckless—only in front of me. I was grateful she still tried to hide this from our parents.
Once she started reading, she rarely put the book down. I continued my meal alone, unable to feel even a shred of satisfaction about coming home, all thanks to Cha Seung-ah’s BL novel and its main couple’s romance.
How much time had passed like that? I had been ignoring her voice, focused on my phone, when I noticed she had gone quiet.
“Cha Seung-ah! Hey! Aren’t you going to eat?”
After placing my empty bowl in the sink, I left the kitchen and went into the living room, only to find Cha Seung-ah asleep on the sofa with the book closed on her chest.
Just a moment ago she’d been shrieking about a kiss scene, and now she’d fallen asleep in an instant. I was dumbfounded.
“Where did you grow up, acting like this? You immature brat.”
Still, she was my sister. I couldn’t just leave her sprawled there. After tidying up the dishes and table in the kitchen, I returned to the living room and draped a blanket over her.
That was when I noticed a book with a flashy illustrated cover lying on the floor, as if it had fallen while she was moving.
At a glance, you wouldn’t even suspect it was a BL novel. But if you could read Korean, the blurb on the back made the genre obvious enough.
“You’d better thank me later.”
In case our parents—currently going through menopause—stumbled upon it and suffered a shock, I resolved to keep Cha Seung-ah’s secret as usual.
Leaving my sleeping sister behind, I entered her room. There, partially hidden among her major-related textbooks, was her BL novel zone.
After spotting the novels wedged tightly between textbooks, I realized where the allowance I’d given her had been going.
She might be shamelessly honest with me, but I still had to stop my expression from twisting.
“What’s so fun about this anyway?”
Judging by the covers alone, they didn’t look cheap. I flipped through the book in my hand. As the pages fluttered by, I thought I saw the names of the characters she’d been shouting about earlier.
Reading a few random pages, I learned about the protagonist and the main and supporting characters.
Go Heemin, Kang Taeyoon. …And who’s this guy again? It seemed to be a novel about university students on campus.
It wasn’t that I had any particular prejudice against that genre, but I wasn’t generous enough to take an interest in the love story of two complete strangers.
I found myself shaking my head at the explicit scenes that appeared here and there.
“What am I even doing right now?”
Thud—. After snapping the book shut with both hands, I slid Love Prequel back into an empty spot on the shelf. Then I checked on the sleeping Cha Seung-ah in the living room before returning to my own room.
It had been a night when I planned to sleep early, exhausted from the week. I lay down on the bed, let out a sigh—and that was my last memory of reality before I blacked out.
***
“Should I not have fallen asleep like that? Where did things even start going wrong?”
After finishing all my duties as the guardian of that plague-ridden couple, I watched the two of them disappear down the opposite path, then stretched out my cramped legs and headed toward the lecture hall.
The campus, welcoming the late spring of early May, was bathed in warm sunlight. But after witnessing those two lovebirds’ nonsense first thing in the morning, my mood was terrible.
The morning after I’d resolved to keep Cha Seung-ah’s secret, I realized that this was not the place I had known.
Cha Jungwoo, once a 29-year-old office worker, had in an instant become a 23-year-old returning student at a university he’d never attended.
I found out during breakfast, in a conversation with my parents, who seemed somehow younger.
I’d joked that it felt like I’d grown younger—but that turned out to be entirely real. Of course, that seemed to apply not only to my parents but to me as well.
“A returning student?”
“Oppa, then you’re not graduating? After only attending for a measly year?”
“What nonsense are you talking about…. It’s been ages since I graduated.”
University? To someone who had been three years into working life, that sounded absurd.
You little thug, Cha Seung-ah. She’d extorted a huge allowance from me saying it was a reward for landing a job. I poked at my side dishes halfheartedly, wondering if this was some new scamming tactic.
“Jungwoo, what time did you go to bed last night?”
“Guess you’re still dreaming~ You worked your ass off to get into Hanguk University, and now you’ve finally lost it?”
“Seung-ah, you—!”
“…What?”
When my parents’ puzzled expressions layered over what I’d thought was just Cha Seung-ah’s joke, a creeping sense of dread began to rise.
After finishing a meal I could barely taste, I returned to my room in a daze to check.
That was when I discovered that the suit I’d worn home from work the night before had vanished.
I was sure I’d hung it right there. Thinking maybe Cha Seung-ah or Mom had moved it, I flung the door open and shouted.
“Mom! Did you move the suit that was on the chair? Or was it you, Cha Seung-ah?”
“What are you talking about~ Since when do you have a suit, Oppa? Are you going on a blind date or something?”
“Jungwoo, did you buy new clothes? I didn’t touch anything~”
I closed the door in alarm and began rummaging through my wardrobe. No matter what kind of conversation I tried to have, nothing seemed to line up with me.
Only after opening every closet did I confirm that it was filled solely with casual clothes like hoodies and sweatshirts—the kind I’d worn as a student.
There was no trace of the suits, shirts, and slacks I’d kept at my parents’ house for the occasional commute.
Then I noticed that the desktop computer I hadn’t used since becoming an adult was sitting on my desk.
Opening the drawers with a hollow feeling, I found what appeared to be a student ID card for this university.
[Hanguk University]
College of Business Administration
Cha Jungwoo 000000
There was a photo of myself attached—looking young enough to have just become an adult.
Only then did I understand the sense of incongruity I’d felt in my family’s words.
After tearing my room apart to confirm it, I learned that I was a university student scheduled to return as a sophomore after being discharged as a sergeant at the end of last year.
Was this insane? Since when was it Hanguk University? It might not have been some prestigious alma mater, but it wasn’t the name of any school I knew. My mind was in shambles.
It seemed that this place was a slightly different world from the one I had known. Hard as it was to believe, none of this was a dream—it was reality.
