Chapter 67
He left a unique impression from our first meeting.
It was around the third week of the liberal arts class I was taking with Choi Kyung-won. I was rummaging through the bottom of my bag, looking for the handout from the previous class.
I usually just stuffed a Monami pen anywhere in my bag since it was a hassle to carry an entire pencil case, but I couldn’t find it, not sure where I’d lost it.
“Hey, lend me a pen.”
I had no choice but to clear my bag and reach out to Choi Kyung-won.
“This is all I have.”
“Ah, shit.”
Useless bastard. This is why guys are a problem. No sense of preparation whatsoever. Including me, of course.
“Borrow from someone else.”
“Okay.”
Who was sitting behind me? Was it a girl? I can’t remember clearly.
“Hi. Can I borrow a pen?”
I turned around and spoke to the student behind me. I thought it would naturally be a girl, but I was surprised to see a boy’s face.
Ah, does he not have a pen either? As expected of guys…
“Here.”
Just as my harsh prejudice against guys was about to kick in, the boy, who had hesitated for a moment, rummaged through his pencil case and held out a pen.
“Oh, thanks.”
I took the pen and turned back to face the front.
“Where did you borrow such a pen from?”
Choi Kyung-won snickered beside me. I rolled the pen around in my hand. It was a cute pen shaped like a strawberry tanghulu.
Why would a guy carry something like this?
“I don’t know. Want to try it?”
“Get lost.”
When I held it out to Choi Kyung-won, he pushed my hand away in disgust. Finding his reaction funny, I giggled.
“Waaah.”
As I pretended to bite the strawberry to show off, Choi Kyung-won clicked his tongue. Well, it is a design that’s hard for a guy to handle.
Only otaku-like guys use things like this. Huh, there are otakus in university too. Interesting.
“I’m done, thanks.”
After the class ended, I immediately returned the borrowed pen. He bowed his head deeply as he took the pen back.
That’s when I got a proper look at his face. But it wasn’t the otaku face I had imagined.
In all-boys school, otakus were the guys who watched weird animations and grinned creepily while talking to themselves. Unwashed smell and glasses were a must.
But this guy wasn’t like that. He still had some baby fat and looked obviously naive.
Ah, a freshman? If he was a high school student just a few months ago, it made sense that he’d carry around a strange pen. He’s still a kid.
I waved to him before leaving the classroom. Didn’t want to scare the freshman by being too stiff.
*
The following week. Like other liberal arts classes, the Culture and Arts Industry and Business Model lecture also assigned a group project.
“From today, decide on a business model for each team and research it. One person should compile the data and upload it once a week, and on the last day, we’ll replace the final exam with a presentation. Let’s see, should I make the groups for you?”
“Hey, how about Shin Ji-ye? We have the Cultural Heritage and History class together too, and she seems to take thorough notes and have a good personality.”
As soon as he heard about the group project, Choi Kyung-won quickly started looking for group members. He pointed his pen tip confidently towards where a female student was sitting.
“Do you know her well?”
“We’ve just greeted each other a few times. I borrowed her notes once, and she organizes them well and speaks well too.”
“I see.”
As soon as he made the decision, Choi Kyung-won went over to Shin Ji-ye and asked her to do the project together. Thinking three people would be enough, I played a game on my phone during the remaining time. But Choi Kyung-won still wasn’t satisfied.
“It would be good to have one more person.”
“I think so too.”
Shin Ji-ye, who had come over to us at some point, agreed with Choi Kyung-won.
“Why?”
“The three of us are… not a very careful combination.”
“What? Is that what you meant?”
Shin Ji-ye seemed to feel betrayed.
“Are you meticulous?”
“No?”
“See, it’s obvious that all three of us are careless types. And my grandmother said I don’t get along with odd numbers, so I should always choose even numbers.”
“If your grandmother said so, we should listen.”
“So let’s pick one more. Three is unlucky.”
“Bullshit.”
I muttered, looking at Choi Kyung-won. But he didn’t mind and quickly looked around to find a suitable group member.
And the person he brought back was that guy, the one who looked even more like a high schooler than a high schooler.
Whatever Choi Kyung-won said to persuade him, the guy quickly joined our group. So we became four members, just as Choi Kyung-won wanted.
“I’m Choi Kyung-won, a second-year in Business Administration, and this is Joo Kwon-oh, my classmate from the same department. And this is Shin Ji-ye, a freshman in Library and Information Science.”
“I’m Ryu Jeong-ha.”
Even without trying to listen, I could hear everything Choi Kyung-won and the new guy were saying. The new guy’s name was Ryu Jeong-ha.
And surprisingly, he wasn’t a freshman. He was a second-year art student.
“Joo Kwon-oh, come quickly. We’re going to decide on a topic.”
“Wait. Let me finish this round.”
At the sound of someone calling me, I turned my body to sit facing the new guy, no, Ryu Jeong-ha.
“But you really look like an art student.”
Choi Kyung-won’s words were true. Ryu Jeong-ha, carrying a childish pen, exuded a quiet and calm atmosphere like an art student, not an otaku.
It was a bit interesting because I had never seen a guy who looked so soft in my life.
“Shall we select a topic now?”
“Shall we?”
I turned off my phone and took out a notebook to write down the meeting contents.
Honestly, group projects had become tiresome after doing them countless times over the past year. Unlike doing assignments alone, I had to share every step with group members and couldn’t decide anything on my own from research and information selection to the presentation.
If opinions diverged in the middle, it took a long time to reach an agreement. It was inefficient in many ways.
But since most Business Administration classes adopted group projects as a method of grading, there was no choice but to follow along.
Fortunately, Choi Kyung-won and I got along well, and Shin Ji-ye also tried to match with us while expressing her opinions appropriately.
Ryu Jeong-ha kept his mouth shut during the meeting, so I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but honestly, it didn’t matter.
Based on experience, guys like him are useful for research, so we could just tell him what to do without asking for his opinion, and he would follow.
I felt like Ryu Jeong-ha’s gaze kept landing on me intermittently. But when I looked up, Ryu Jeong-ha would lower his eyes and just stare at his closed notebook.
“How about we each do some research and meet again tomorrow? If you can’t come to school, we can do it via KakaoTalk.”
The topic selection meeting for the liberal arts group project was postponed to tomorrow. I thought he would say he didn’t have time since he didn’t even express an opinion once and just sat there, but surprisingly, Ryu Jeong-ha said he would participate in tomorrow’s meeting too.
“Oh, then shall we see each other tomorrow?”
As soon as the meeting ended, Ryu Jeong-ha sighed as if relieved and relaxed his stiff expression. It’s not like he was held hostage and released. Did he hate the meeting that much?
“Ah. How’s it going with that person?”
Choi Kyung-won, who had returned to his seat, asked while organizing his writing materials. I tilted my head crookedly.
“Who? Seo Yu-jung?”
“I meant Kim Hye-ryeong. Is there something with Seo Yu-jung too?”
Choi Kyung-won asked with his eyes shining. This guy is always desperate to dig into other people’s love lives.
It’s a different kind of persistence from the dirty sex obsession of all-boys school guys. It’s not unpleasant, but it’s definitely annoying.
“There’s nothing for you to know.”
“You bastard. You just broke up not long ago. What’s with Seo Yu-jung now.”
One thing I learned after entering university: relationships between men and women are different. The former is all about what’s visible on the surface, while the latter is much more complex and subtle.
For example, among women, there were cases where they would establish an intricate relationship as if there had been something special between us, even if we weren’t dating or in a situationship.
So sometimes, my actions would be exaggerated or distorted and circulate around campus in the form of interesting rumors.
Of course, I didn’t bother to stop them. Was there a reason to? No man in the world would refuse a woman who comes to him. I was already experiencing all kinds of relationships with the opposite sex over the past year, ranging from dating, situationships, friendships, and beyond, like a game.
But as I realized that even male-female relationships, which I thought would be thrilling forever, were all similar, I gradually lost interest. Even things that gave me tremendous dopamine every day eventually became just lukewarm stimulation as time passed.
To think that this was all those sex-crazed primates trapped in all-boys school were desperately wishing for. I felt a sense of emptiness at the gap between the desires of those guys with penises and reality.
Anyway, for these reasons, I was staying away from dating these days.
“Why aren’t you answering? What is it? What?”
“I don’t know, you bastard.”
“But isn’t Seo Yu-jung exactly your type? You like that kind of… Huh? Looks like someone left this behind.”
As we were about to leave the classroom after the class ended, Choi Kyung-won picked up a notebook from a desk in the back.
“Isn’t this Ryu Jeong-ha’s seat? Ah, he even wrote his name on it.”
“He must have forgotten and left it behind.”
I looked down indifferently at the notebook in Choi Kyung-won’s hand. The meddlesome Choi Kyung-won looked around, searching for Ryu Jeong-ha.
“Should we take it to him? He probably hasn’t gone far.”
“Forget it, leave it there and he’ll come back for it himself.”
“I guess so. Well, I have an appointment and need to go right away. It’s not an iPad or anything, no one will steal it, right?”
Choi Kyung-won put the notebook back where it was originally.
At that moment, for some reason, I remembered a pale face hugging the notebook tightly to his chest. He seemed to cherish it quite a bit. Even during the meeting, he kept holding onto it preciously.
“Anyway, I’m going first, so I’ll see you at the department office later!”
As soon as Choi Kyung-won patted my shoulder and left, I rummaged through my pockets, planning to smoke a cigarette downstairs.
Thud.
But then I heard something falling behind me. When I turned my head, the notebook was suddenly sprawled on the floor. It seems the one Choi Kyung-won had put on the desk had been precariously hanging on the edge and fallen off.
I looked down at the notebook indifferently, its pages having opened as it fell.
Hmm. He’s an art student, so he’d drawn a bunch of pictures inside. Thinking I might as well look at his skills while picking up the notebook, I bent down to pick it up.
But the face drawn in pen all over the page looked familiar.
I turned the page with a strange expression. On the next page, the same face was drawn from a different angle. The next and the next page were the same.
“Fuck, it’s me?”
They say if something is so absurd, it makes you laugh. Seeing my face filling the notebook, a laugh escaped my lips.
At the same time, I remembered the small, white face that couldn’t even make eye contact with me and kept lowering his gaze.
Well, well, well.
