#70
“Oh, hello, hyung! You look great today. But wait… is that for me?”
Kim Minhwan was also eyeing the coffee. He reached out towards the cup, chuckling shyly.
“I’m not good at drinking what I’ve written, but since you’re giving it to me-”
“No. It’s for Seonwoo.”
Kang Jihan lightly snatched the coffee and held it out to Nam Seonwoo.
“Drink it.”
Kang Jihan smiled slightly at the look that seemed to ask what he was doing. It was as if he was saying, “Because I’m your Manito.”
“…What? Hyung, weren’t you my Manito? Then what was that message you sent me? Was I just a passing dongsaeng to you?”
Ignoring Kim Minhwan, who was whimpering like an ill-fated protagonist, Kang Jihan sat down next to Nam Seonwoo. It was the same seating arrangement as before. Nam Seonwoo spoke quietly.
“This isn’t our assigned seat.”
“You’re not wearing your hat.”
Puzzled by the irrelevant response, Nam Seonwoo made a bewildered expression. Kang Jihan suddenly asked,
“Why don’t you just wear it?”
“…Hey. I don’t want to see your face either, you know?”
“I like it.”
Just as Nam Seonwoo was about to ask what nonsense he was spouting, the professor entered the lecture hall with a lively greeting. It was rather fortunate that the useless conversation was interrupted. As Nam Seonwoo opened his textbook, a low voice came from beside him.
“It’s because I don’t like other bastards seeing it.”
Ignore it.
Don’t think about what it means, don’t even look at him. Nam Seonwoo focused his gaze on the page densely packed with text, brainwashing himself.
“It’s all gone now.”
The gaze fixed on his nape was blatant, but he stubbornly read the text. Although he didn’t understand the content at all, he even turned a page for no reason.
“I noticed it before too, when there were marks on your wrist.”
…Before? If it’s about the wrist, was it that day when Kang Jihan prevented him from going home? It seemed to be on the summer vacation ceremony…
‘No, Nam Seonwoo, please.’
It had been just a few seconds since he decided to ignore it. He closed his eyes tightly and reflected, but as if it wasn’t his concern, Kang Jihan’s voice continued.
“Your skin is really delicate.”
“…”
His throat was parched. Nam Seonwoo grabbed the coffee Kang Jihan had placed, with ice floating in it, and downed it. Even though he poured the bitter cold coffee directly into his mouth instead of using the straw, his throat still felt like it was burning. As soon as he put down the half-empty coffee cup on the desk with a thud, a hand from the side took it.
Kang Jihan drank the coffee naturally as if it was his own. Even though there was an unused straw, he deliberately put his lips where Nam Seonwoo had drunk and slowly moved his Adam’s apple.
It seems Nam Seonwoo’s fists were trembling. Kim Minhwan intervened with a worried voice.
“Um, Jihan hyung. What’s your blood type? Seonwoo hyung is quite sensitive about such things.”
Kim Minhwan pointed to his mouth area and trailed off, saying, “Since saliva might have mixed…”
“I’m fine with it.”
“Ah! Are you O type too, hyung?”
“No, I…”
Nam Seonwoo froze at the gaze suddenly thrown at him. Looking at that subtle gaze, he had a sudden thought. Kang Jihan opened his mouth without taking his eyes off Nam Seonwoo.
“We’ve mixed even more-”
“-AAAAAH!”
For a moment, silence fell over the lecture hall. The startled professor had even dropped the microphone.
‘…Shit.’
Nam Seonwoo repeatedly bowed his head towards the professor and students, inwardly shedding tears of blood. Even so, he absolutely did not look in Kang Jihan’s direction.
There was a brief commotion, but thanks to the professor’s good nature, it passed without much incident. Kang Jihan also kept his mouth shut after that. It seemed he had some conscience.
‘Kang Jihan, that guy. He’s become a complete delinquent.’
He thought they were quietly moving past what happened that night since he had been quiet until now, but he didn’t expect him to openly run his mouth like this. And in the lecture hall, no less.
The harassment, so unlike Kang Jihan, was dizzying just to recall. He could almost imagine how Kang Jihan would act during every liberal arts class from now on.
Nam Seonwoo closed his eyes due to the throbbing headache. From the lighter to the same team project in the same liberal arts class, the damn Manito, and even the one-night stand. Somehow things had become intertwined, but what could be cut off needed to be cut off. If there was something that could be dealt with right now, it was the lighter.
Remembering Kang Jihan’s iron-clad attitude of clear give-and-take, Nam Seonwoo waited for the lecture to end.
50 minutes passed without him knowing how. When the professor announced the end of the lecture, the classroom quickly became noisy with the sound of chairs scraping. Kim Minhwan seemed unaware that the class had ended, absorbed in his phone.
Kang Jihan also didn’t stand up. Nam Seonwoo looked straight at him and asked,
“How much? The lighter.”
If he cleanly paid back the cost of the lighter, this bastard would have less reason to talk to him. Of course, it looked quite expensive, but it was still just a lighter. As he was mentally preparing for about 200,000 won, Kang Jihan replied bluntly.
“I don’t smoke.”
“Who cares about that? I asked how much the lighter costs.”
“I don’t know. It was a gift.”
Nam Seonwoo swallowed a curse. Nothing was going right. He had thrown away a gifted lighter, so instead of resolving the entanglement, his sense of debt had doubled.
But if it was such an expensive-looking lighter, the person who gave it as a gift probably wasn’t a peer… The only adult that came to mind around Kang Jihan was his mother.
“…”
The moment he thought of Kang Jihan’s mother, his throat closed up and he couldn’t say anything. At that moment, Kim Minhwan intervened with good timing.
“Hyung, hyung, Seonwoo hyung.”
“What?”
“Are you interested in a group blind date?”
Nam Seonwoo looked at Kim Minhwan suspiciously. This blind date probably wouldn’t be between people of the same gender, which would mean this Kim Minhwan was heterosexual… Having heard rumors about a same-sex student in his previous life, there was a slight cognitive dissonance.
Kim Minhwan waved his hands, perhaps thinking Nam Seonwoo was looking at him contemptuously.
“I’m not the one arranging it! A high school classmate set it up, and I just heard that everyone’s nice and decent…”
“I’ll pass. What blind date at this age.”
“Uh, aren’t you twenty-one…?”
“…”
“I know, I know. Actually, I’m not that interested in these things either. It seems a bit immature, right? But shouldn’t we enjoy our youth at least once?”
When Nam Seonwoo didn’t respond and started packing his bag, Kim Minhwan began to act cute in a cringeworthy way.
“Hyuuung, let’s go out just once. Okay?”
“I said I don’t want to. Just take someone else.”
“No. It has to be with you for more…!”
Kim Minhwan, who had been speaking fluently, suddenly closed his mouth. Tilting his head like someone who didn’t know what he was about to say, Kim Minhwan continued.
“Fun! I mean it would be more fun!”
‘What’s he on about? He’s gay too.’
It seemed Kim Minhwan hadn’t yet realized his own sexual orientation. Come to think of it, during the time they were junior-senior partners, Kim Minhwan seemed to have changed girlfriends a few times.
“Let’s go, let’s go. Last time I saw you talking well with people from our department too! Huh? Hyuuung!”
Kim Minhwan grabbed Nam Seonwoo’s arm and clung to him, apparently intending to whine until he agreed to go. Just as Nam Seonwoo was about to scold him, thinking he might have spoiled him too much,
“He said he doesn’t want to go.”
Kang Jihan suddenly interjected.
“He’s not a kid.”
It was a strangely familiar phrase. As Nam Seonwoo unconsciously searched his memory, he bit his lower lip at the scene that suddenly came to mind.
‘Stop acting like a child.’
It was what he had said on the snowy graduation day.
Kim Minhwan closed his mouth at Kang Jihan’s dismissal. His drooping corners of the mouth almost touched his chin. Although it didn’t look particularly pitiful, Nam Seonwoo changed his mind.
“I’ll go.”
It was also an answer to Kang Jihan constantly bringing up things from two years ago.
“Is it today?”
If he was going to act like this even after Nam Seonwoo had made it clear he was meeting someone, it might be more effective to just be preserved as trash. The kind of trash that goes around meeting various people, regardless of gender. To cleanly cut off any remaining affection for Nam Seonwoo as a person.
“Hee-hee, as expected, only Seonwoo hyung will do.”
Kim Minhwan, thinking his aegyo had worked, put on another strange act of cuteness.
“It’s today, and it’s three on three! They say it’s with the music department of Sunghan University, and everyone’s nice. They’re in the same year as us…”
Letting Kim Minhwan’s chattering voice go in one ear and out the other, Nam Seonwoo shouldered his bag. Kim Minhwan also stood up. Although it was a spontaneous decision, it seemed to be somewhat successful as Kang Jihan remained quiet.
A group blind date, of all things. Nam Seonwoo chuckled softly. In his previous life, his entire college experience had been all about Kang Jihan, so he had never been on a group blind date. Although he felt a bit guilty about going out with the purpose of avoiding Kang Jihan, as Kim Minhwan said, it was just a common college experience. A blind date wasn’t necessarily about finding a partner; it could just be seen as meeting various people.
Yeah, let’s think of it as a kind of refresh.
Consoling himself like that, Nam Seonwoo left the classroom, once again as if he was running away.
* * *
Refresh my ass.
Nam Seonwoo swallowed a curse. The seating arrangement, squeezed between two large bodies just like in the Contemporary Society lecture hall, felt more than familiar – it was identical.
Kang Jihan.
Why the hell was he here?
