After arriving at a rather familiar samgyeopsal restaurant, I attempted to execute Operation “Do Jihoon Isolated Island” and herded Do Jihoon into a corner. The plan was to seat him in the corner and then block every bit of flirting directed at him from the seat beside him.
However, my perfect plan failed gloriously when the vice president grabbed us and guided us to seats in the middle. The small mercy in this misfortune was that the club president-sunbae ended up sitting next to me. In this chaotic world where life never flows the way you want it to, I decided I’d settle for President on the left and Do Jihoon on the right.
But once the meat time began, I discovered a fatal flaw I hadn’t considered earlier.
“Jihoon, you joined this club too? That’s really surprising.”
From the seat directly across from Do Jihoon came a familiar, faint voice along with a strong pheromone scent. When I naturally turned my creaking neck to look toward the front of Do Jihoon…
As expected, Ha Min-young was sitting there.
You historic-level idiot! I should’ve secured at least five seats around Do Jihoon in a full circle.
With an artificial smile plastered on his face, Do Jihoon began talking with Ha Min-young. Even though I knew he had absolutely zero interest in Ha Min-young, and that smile was one hundred percent pure pretense! Unlike the bright smile on my face, my insides were boiling like a furnace.
To make matters worse, Woo Hyun-woo was sitting right across from me. Thankfully, he was busy chatting with the club member beside him and wasn’t paying me much attention. I silently recited the Heart Sutra in an attempt to regain some inner peace.
The president and vice president stopped the new members who tried to grab the tongs and personally began grilling the meat themselves. With the sizzling sound of cooking meat as background music, everyone poured alcohol into their glasses. When the president declined to give a toast, the vice president stood up instead and said something. Since it seemed to end with something like “—yeo!”, I just mumbled along and loudly repeated the last part. Then I tossed back a shot of soju in one gulp. It had been a while since I drank distilled liquor, and even the sharp sensation sliding down my throat felt strangely pleasant.
“Oh! And you can speak casually. Our club isn’t big on hierarchy or anything. Drop the formal speech whenever you feel comfortable. We’ll do the same.”
The president-sunbae said this with a kind smile.
“You 21s have half a year of experience now, so you’re good with drinking games, right?”
And then the vice president ruined the warm atmosphere.
Using the president’s words as a starting signal, shouts of “Random game for whoever likes whoever!” rang loudly across the table. The true drinking gathering had begun.
Every time I attend a drinking session, I’m reminded of one thing: the guy who gets picked first keeps getting picked until the end. It’s a national rule passed down since the Joseon era. We started playing drinking games—so many rounds I couldn’t even count them. At the beginning, people who were bad at the games kept failing, so it was hard to even make it through one full rotation. But as time passed and we entered the later rounds, the incompetent ones either died off or moved to other tables, so the pace of the games started to pick up.
At the moment, about eight people remained at our table. None of us were exactly fresh, but we were still lucid enough to keep playing another ten or so rounds. The problem was that after running games for over three hours, we had run out of games to play. Forced hype had its limits.
In the end, we decided to wrap things up somewhat early. Thankfully, the two people I had been most worried about—Ha Min-young and Woo Hyun-woo—didn’t cause any trouble. Still, I couldn’t help worrying about how those two might behave in the future under the pretext of club activities.
***
Time flew by without caring about anyone’s personal circumstances. Regardless of the stress I was experiencing because of my relationships with people, midterms arrived. Damn it. After spending several weeks arguing with Woo Hyun-woo and constantly bickering with Do Jihoon, the midterms were suddenly only three days away.
I was studying for exams with Do Jihoon at the Central Library. After once again furiously spam-clicking my fingers to reserve a seat, I thankfully managed to secure the large window-side table I wanted. If Do Jihoon had been left-handed, we could’ve held hands and studied together, but unfortunately, Do Jihoon was right-handed.
For quite a while, I kept sending affectionate glances toward him. Not once did he lift his head to look at me. At moments like this, I was truly grateful that “studying” or “learning” were just concepts rather than actual people. If they had been people, they probably would’ve filmed an intense morning drama with Do Jihoon caught between them.
Now that I was buried in the field of studying, the only joy left was sneaking glances at Do Jihoon wearing glasses.
While he was focused on his textbook, I quietly turned on my phone and took a picture of his side profile. There was a soft click, but Do Jihoon, absorbed in studying, didn’t turn around. I secretly succeeded in setting his photo as the background on my phone.
Later, when we were heading home, I showed Do Jihoon the picture. He looked dumbfounded and asked when I had taken it. But even while grumbling, he burst out laughing happily.
And after we arrived home, Do Jihoon threatened me with a smiling face, saying it was only fair that I give him a photo too. I had no choice. Humiliatingly, I had to wiggle around in front of the camera and strike ridiculous poses for quite a while.
After spending several days living that gloomy yet happy library life, we finally reached midterms. For engineering majors, unlike finals, midterms didn’t include written exams for lab courses, so the exam period was relatively relaxed.
“……”
Of course, that didn’t mean I submitted satisfying answer sheets. In one subject, I couldn’t solve two or three questions at all—an utterly disastrous result. Still, during this exam period I had studied fairly diligently, even going to the library with Do Jihoon. I just hoped that this time I’d finally win the grade bet with my classmates.
[Did you do well on the exams?]
[21 Kwon Jisoo: Looks like Yeon Yuri did well.]
[21 Lee Daeju: Right? Asking everyone about their results first lol]
[21 Lee Daeju: pointing-finger rabbit emoji]
[You bastard.]
Those jerks were all in the high 3-point range themselves. The memory from last semester still lingered like a nightmare—when I protested that it was just comparing the height of acorns, they stubbornly insisted their grades were higher and suppressed my complaints. Damn bastards. Smiling viciously, I swore that this time I’d definitely be on the side of the majority and thoroughly crush whoever came in last.
***
The week after exams ended. The sky was perfectly clear without a single cloud, and a cool breeze was starting to blow outside. It was exactly the kind of weather I loved. Finally, it was cool enough to wear light outerwear like cardigans without getting hot! Of course, Do Jihoon—who carried a cardigan even in the middle of summer—scrunched up his face roughly, completely unable to understand my joy.
On a perfect day like this, I should’ve been out on a Han River date with Do Jihoon… Damn it, reality was a mess. Forget Do Jihoon—right now I was carrying out a sweet yet dangerous pseudo-date “assignment” with Ki Tae-young.
We walked along Garosu-gil, stopped by Namsan Tower, and barely dragged our exhausted bodies before finally settling down in a café.
Ki Tae-young picked up an iced Americano and a café mocha from the counter and brought them over. I thanked him and immediately chugged the café mocha. I finally felt like I could live again.
Slowly sipping his iced Americano, Ki Tae-young watched me gulp down my drink with intense enthusiasm. Maybe I drank too aggressively; feeling embarrassed, I set down my cup and casually asked him a question.
“Did your exams go well, hyung?”
“They weren’t bad. What about you, Yuri?”
“I think mine weren’t bad either.”
“Really? Sounds like you did well.”
While keeping the beautiful image of Do Jihoon carefully tucked away in a corner of my heart, I answered Ki Tae-young’s question.
“You saying that makes it sound like you did well too, hyung. Can I ask what GPA you got last semester?”
Ki Tae-young gave me a sly smile.
“What do you think I got? Want to guess?”
“Ah, please. That’s the hardest question in the world right after ‘How old do I look?’”
Ki Tae-young raised his hand to cover his mouth and laughed softly in an elegant way. Watching him every week made me realize something—Ki Tae-young laughed easily. At the slightest comment, he would scatter laughter like someone with wind in his lungs. Of course, it wasn’t unpleasant. Who would dislike someone laughing at what they said? Besides, people say laughter brings good fortune, so I figured it was fine.
“Alright, I’ll go with a normal guess—3.5.”
“I did better than that.”
“Wow, how annoying.”
The moment the words left my mouth, my eyes met Ki Tae-young’s. Realizing my slip of the tongue, my spine turned cold. Since I was always hanging out with Do Jihoon or classmates, the casual way of speaking we used with people our age had stuck to my tongue.
