#Side Story 02
However, driving on a dark road at night wasn’t something Hwi-kyung was particularly fond of.
Due to sixteen regressions, Hwi-kyung had become a good driver. Having worked in the sales team, he couldn’t be bad at it. Moreover, since Seoul, where cars dominated the roads during rush hour, was Hwi-kyung’s main residence, he could be classified as a best driver if one had to categorize him.
Unlike Gyo-ha who frequently made sudden stops on the road, Hwi-kyung was a best driver who properly maintained safe speeds and moved according to road conditions… but he suddenly stopped his car on the road because of a wild animal that appeared out of nowhere.
“How can I be… this unlucky?”
The animal, whether a deer or something else, quickly crossed the road and disappeared into the foothills. Only Hwi-kyung, who had stopped his car on the curved road after seeing an animal with glowing eyes in the night, seemed to feel a threat to his life.
The tire seemed to have punctured from spinning on the road as he sharply turned the wheel to avoid hitting the guardrail. Even with the naked eye, the front tire looked loose.
It would have been fortunate if his car was good enough to carry spare tires, but Hwi-kyung’s car was an inexpensive model from H company. He had made a patriotic choice for a car he would drive briefly in America, so he had no regrets about his selection.
The problem was that if a tow truck showed up here, he would be charged an unmanageable fee. Even though he was dating a chaebol heir, Hwi-kyung was a typical ordinary citizen. He wanted to avoid being charged for an unwanted tow.
Stranded on the road while heading to university to check if his boyfriend was cheating? Getting a bill for hundreds of dollars because of that? Just imagining it all contributed to raising Hwi-kyung’s stress level.
Hwi-kyung contemplated briefly. If he wasn’t going to spend the dawn on the road, he needed to call someone. If he waited quietly, other cars passing by would stop and ask what was wrong, but such kindness was more dangerous in unfamiliar places.
Since becoming someone who could die, Hwi-kyung had become cautious about everything. Now he was a normal employee who would take half a day off even if he felt slightly unwell. With the system window gone, there was a need to doubt and be careful about everything, especially abroad. An Asian man with a flat tire on the road was perfect for getting robbed.
When his thoughts reached that point, Hwi-kyung decided to call someone he knew for help. If he called Gyo-ha, he would come right away, but Hwi-kyung didn’t want to bother someone who was so busy lately that it was difficult to see his face. Above all, he didn’t have the confidence to explain in detail that he had gotten into a minor accident while driving to see him late at night.
So Hwi-kyung called Liu, his workplace colleague. Liu, a Malaysian of Chinese descent, was Hwi-kyung’s closest colleague at work. Even though they rarely contacted each other outside of work, Hwi-kyung judged that the meddlesome Liu wouldn’t ignore a stranded coworker.
That judgment was accurate. Liu, who answered the phone with a locked voice, perhaps woken up by the call, willingly offered to come when Hwi-kyung said he had an accident on the road. Following Liu’s advice to stay in the car with the windows and doors locked, Hwi-kyung didn’t move from the car until Liu arrived.
In less than 30 minutes, Liu appeared driving a large SUV. Despite having drowsiness plastered all over his face, Liu naturally took care of Hwi-kyung first. Liu’s basic principle was that a punctured tire could be replaced anytime, but an injured person is difficult to recover.
[You say a deer jumped out? It’s heavenly luck that you didn’t hit anything.]
[I know. It would have been terrible if the deer had been hit by the car.]
[Terrible indeed. Usually, when a deer and car collide, the person dies.]
[…You’re joking?]
[It’s true.]
In reality, if you hit a wild animal crossing the road with a car, eight out of ten cases end with the car being scrapped. Hwi-kyung stroked his startled chest after hearing Liu’s words. Still, it was fortunate that he hadn’t hit the deer and ended up in the worst situation.
[But where were you going at this hour?]
[I had personal business at a nearby university….]
[Ah, you were on your way to see your lover?]
Liu, who had taken out a spare tire from his own trunk, replaced Hwi-kyung’s car tire quite skillfully. Changing the tire didn’t take that long, but Liu didn’t forget to advise that since he wasn’t an expert, Hwi-kyung should go to a car center for another check when it got light.
[Let’s park this car somewhere nearby for now. I’ll take you home in my car.]
[I feel bad just receiving help.]
[Don’t worry. Fellow foreign workers should help each other.]
Hwi-kyung was greatly moved by Liu’s kindness. He was the best person Hwi-kyung had met in America.
So without much thought, Hwi-kyung decided to follow Liu’s advice and park his car in a nearby parking lot, stop by Liu’s house, and then go to the car center together when it got light. Completely forgetting his original purpose for going out….
* * *
Here is an unhappy graduate student.
It’s deceptive to say you’re unhappy because you’re crushed by the graduate school you voluntarily entered. Who would look kindly on someone who goes of their own accord and then complains about dying?
But people usually jump into fire pits of their own volition. Just as job seekers dream of getting hired even knowing they’ll suffer after being employed.
Lee Gyo-ha had been through graduate school more than thirteen times since the sixteenth regression. Whether it was fourteen or thirteen times, he couldn’t remember exactly, but except for one or two cycles, Gyo-ha had always suffered in graduate school.
Still, the graduate school he attended during similar periods wasn’t that bad. Based on his struggles in early cycles, he just had to see the same professors again and write the same dissertations again to steal a degree.
However, in the sixteenth cycle, his final graduate school, he chose the wrong time to enroll. Not only was there a completely unknown new professor instead of the faculty Gyo-ha knew, but he also caught the professor’s eye and was given the position of university-industry cooperation researcher.
Gyo-ha thought the professor couldn’t distinguish between being scholarly and being an otaku. They say only top-level academic otaku in a field can become professors, but Gyo-ha’s major professor seemed to mistake Gyo-ha, who was just interested in subculture, for a scholarly cultural researcher like himself.
[How about you prepare the seminar for this academic conference?]
[…Me?]
[Yes. Representing our lab. I and other teaching assistants can help you with topic selection.]
[……]
[Having conference experience would help you graduate faster, wouldn’t it?]
Far from early graduation, it looked difficult to graduate on time.
Despite thinking this, Gyo-ha had to devote time to conference preparation. He was a chaebol who didn’t have to do things he didn’t like, but with a major professor who couldn’t be bribed financially, he couldn’t just lie down and say he couldn’t do it.
Graduate students are beings who would at least try if a professor told them to fold an elephant into a refrigerator. Gyo-ha, who had initially questioned “Why do I have to do this?” also eventually complied with the professor’s orders. Even corrupting the youngest son of a chaebol family into a teaching assistant… graduate school is such a terrifying place.
In fact, studying wasn’t just painful. Gyo-ha, who showed great interest in subculture, increased his concentration when listening to interesting lectures.
After all, liberal arts history lectures, famous for not making money, were fun both in Korea and America. For Gyo-ha, whose mathematical mind didn’t work well, subjects like “Advanced Economics” were poison, but “Reading Historical Backgrounds Through American Literature” or “Medieval English Based on Linguistics” were attractive enough to audit once or twice. Originally, content that doesn’t make money is the most fun to learn.
So Gyo-ha was adapting to graduate student life despite his tight schedule. The professor who assigned unreasonable tasks was unpleasant, and early graduation seemed non-existent like the mythical unicorn, but the new graduate school life stimulated his peripheral nerves. Wow! Even graduate school feels new around the sixteenth cycle!
But no matter how fun graduate school was, it couldn’t be more fun than the lover waiting at home.
Gyo-ha hurriedly returned home around 3 AM. Despite being too busy to even look up due to conference preparations, he had to come home to see Hwi-kyung’s face at least once more before leaving.
Even if he only saw his sleeping face before leaving, today he needed some Hwi-kyung transfusion. With that mindset, he returned home, but all that greeted Gyo-ha was the chilly air inside the empty house, not Hwi-kyung.
“Hwi-kyung?”
No matter how many times he turned his phone off and on, there were no messages from Hwi-kyung. The last message he sent was to eat dinner even while writing his dissertation. There was no mention of working late or going out.
He called Hwi-kyung, but only the dial tone continued without anyone answering. It was unbelievable that Jung Hwi-kyung, of all people, would venture out at this dawn, in America, not Korea.
“Could this be… infidelity?”
They say lovers become alike. Gyo-ha covered his mouth after having the exact same thought as Hwi-kyung.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
