“……We just fought like friends do. I was upset.”
“I see…….”
“Yeah. Do Jihoon is precious to me, but it felt like I’m not that precious to him. So I felt hurt.”
I poked at my rice with my hand and let out a sigh as I answered. For some reason, it suddenly went quiet around me. When I lifted my head, the guys were staring at me like I was a stray cat that had been abandoned.
“What’s with those looks?”
“I see……. It was a lovers’ quarrel…….”
“Do Jihoon does have that cold image.”
Their reactions were extremely strange. I hurriedly added an explanation.
“No. I think you’re misunderstanding something……. It’s not like that…….”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry. We won’t tell anyone. Yuri, you must’ve had a hard time.”
I ended up receiving sympathy votes. It was so absurd I nearly choked. Lee Daeju poured me some water and brought it over. The pitying look in his eyes was a bonus.
“Yeon Yuri, you look like a gumiho, and yet. If it comes down to it, just spray your pheromones and pounce on him!”
“Are you crazy? That’s a crime, you psycho.”
Still, after getting comforted by them, I did feel a little better. We joked around as we passed by the water fountain.
That was when a deep rose scent drifted nearby. It was my pheromone scent.
“…….”
“…….”
As if by instinct, my head turned. And my eyes met Do Jihoon’s, who was looking straight at me.
There were a lot of people around Do Jihoon who seemed to be our classmates. Regardless of trait, they were all looking at him and talking to him.
He said he didn’t have friends. Lying bastard.
My expression hardened and I sharply turned my head, leaving the student cafeteria. I should’ve just eaten at the College of Engineering cafeteria. I only came all the way to the student dining hall to commemorate my first campus meal.
Together with the guys, I gloomily went back to class. Even though it was the first day of General Physics, they pushed forward with the syllabus. By the time I got home, I couldn’t remember a single thing we had learned that day.
“……What the hell is his problem?”
I rolled around on my bed, thinking about Do Jihoon. I genuinely couldn’t understand why he got so angry.
There was something unpredictable about him. He’d play along with all my ridiculous jokes, but then suddenly reveal his filthy temper in the strangest places.
I didn’t want things to stay like this with Do Jihoon. I wanted to make up. But this time, I didn’t want to be the one to reach out first. It was just my petty pride.
First, I needed to figure out why he was angry. There was no way I could do that on my own.
I decided to enlist reinforcements. I picked up my phone and dialed a familiar number.
I briefly worried that if he was busy flirting, he might ignore my call—but he picked up quickly.
“Moshi-moshi. This is Kim Bo-jin-desu.”
“I’ve got a problem, Bo-jin.”
“You’ve dialed the wrong number. I’ll be hanging up now.”
“Hey! You owe me, remember? Think about that?”
“…….”
In the end, Kim Bo-jin was caught and forced to listen to my situation.
“What is it?”
“No, listen to the situation first. It’s about me and Do Jihoon…….”
I explained everything to him. We were having a perfectly pleasant walk, and then out of nowhere he got pissed and flooded me with pheromones. Then just because I called him honey, he threw a full-blown tantrum. Even though he’d threatened to hang up, Kim Bo-jin actually listened seriously.
“So that’s what happened?”
“……Yeah.”
“Excluding the fact that Do Jihoon’s personality is wrecked, describe the problem that has arisen in this situation in about 500 characters.”
“Please give me some time.”
“Okay.”
He pondered for a while. I was staring out the window, watching clouds drift by.
Finally, Kim Bo-jin responded.
“Maybe he just doesn’t like you?”
“Fuck. I thought that too.”
“Then it’s basically confirmed.”
“No, but listen.”
“Speak.”
“This bastard says he doesn’t like stuff, but he still goes along with everything I suggest. And he plays along with all my dumb jokes.”
“Really? That’s not something an average person can do.”
“…….”
“Then he probably doesn’t hate you. So why?”
“Right? Sometimes his fuse just blows, but I have no idea why.”
Kim Bo-jin and I put our heads together again. But even with his sharp instincts, he couldn’t give me a clear answer.
“Hey, hey. My flirt is calling.”
“You’re not seriously going to ditch your friend for some alpha, right……? Right……?”
“I pray for you. Bye.”
Click. The call ended. Kim Bo-jin was a real piece of shit.
“…….”
There was no answer after that. Before I knew it, the phone screen only showed the wallpaper I saw every day. Life was fucking lonely.
***
“Of all days, it had to be our day off, and we have to come all the way out here…….”
Lee Daeju grumbled as he pulled his collar tight. I agreed. The only reason I hadn’t dropped out was because they had scheduled our Friday free period just right—but since the department welcome party was on Friday, we had to come back near campus again. And by painfully riding public transportation, no less.
It had been four days of cold war with Do Jihoon since Tuesday. The check-in messages that used to come every other day had stopped completely. Last night we even had a class together, but he didn’t come to pick me up and just drove back alone.
Tomorrow I had to move my things into the apartment. I could only sigh.
As we walked together, we soon arrived at the pork barbecue restaurant for the after-party. We went inside and sat next to Kwon Jisoo and Shin Gi-hyeok.
“You look gloomy again today.”
“He’s still in the middle of a lovers’ quarrel.”
“It’s not like that, you bastards…….”
Looking around, the spacious restaurant was packed. I could see the seniors who had told us about department life at school, and our classmates sitting awkwardly among them.
“Let’s just drink.”
“Yeah.”
With alcohol and meat, there was nothing to fear. We made toasts for all sorts of reasons—Lee Daeju getting a boyfriend, Kwon Jisoo adopting a puppy, Shin Gi-hyeok getting dumped by his girlfriend, and so on. The last one was for me.
I looked at Lee Daeju, who was hyping up the mood, with uneasy eyes. He grinned at me and opened his mouth. I had a really bad feeling about this.
“For the smooth reconciliation of Do Jihoon and Yeon Yuri!”
“You bastard, shut up. Lower your volume!”
As expected, my instincts were right. Lee Daeju’s voice carried far too well, and one by one the classmates sitting around us began turning their heads toward me.
“Alright, alright. Time to rotate tables! Two people from each table, stand up and move to another table.”
A second-year senior clapped loudly as he shouted. I stared at him blankly. The timing couldn’t have been worse.
At our table, Shin Gi-hyeok and I stood up. Lee Daeju and Kwon Jisoo looked at me pitifully.
Inside the restaurant, classmates and seniors bustled about. While awkwardly trying to decide which table to approach, one table called us over.
Shin Gi-hyeok and I went and sat there. They were familiar faces from orientation. Once we sat down, the classmates at the table greeted us.
“Hello. Should we introduce ourselves first? I’m Kim Hyun-jung. I’m 20.”
“I’m Woo Hyun-woo, 21.”
I had bragged to Do Jihoon that I’d make tons of friends, but the truth was I was a little shy. I was fine one-on-one, but in situations like this with a group, it was hard for me to start talking first.
Instead, Shin Gi-hyeok introduced both himself and me.
“I’m Shin Gi-hyeok, and this is Yeon Yuri. We’re both 20.”
“If you two are okay with it, should we drop formalities?”
Woo Hyun-woo, the oldest at the table, suggested speaking casually first. We nodded.
At this table, various conversations flowed. Which schools we graduated from, how the first week was, and so on. Woo Hyun-woo, who had repeated a year, knew a lot of drinking games and even merged our table with the one next to us to play games together.
One by one, people started getting drunk. Each time I drank a little more, I struggled to steady my fogging mind. If I caused a drunken scene one more time, I wouldn’t be a human—I’d be a dog.
We were in the middle of playing the tofu game when an alpha sitting at the next table, apparently drunk, released a thick mocha pheromone scent and pointed at me with his finger.
“Yeon Yuri, your father’s the chairman of Bumong Pharmaceutical, right?”
“…….”
At those words, the table fell silent. After a few seconds of stillness, the other classmates—apparently curious about whether it was true—began asking questions one after another. I let out a quiet sigh and answered.
“Yeah. That’s right.”
The alpha who had pointed at me laughed loudly, saying, “I knew it.”
I felt a little bewildered and irritated, but he was drunk, so I told myself to just let it slide.
