Prologue
Someone is orchestrating the harassment. And it’s probably either Woo Sihyun or Lee Seungwoo. Perhaps even both.
Of course, the movements to harass him, a professor, were more childish pranks than professional torment, so there wasn’t much impact… But he could sense the malice in their persistent, pointless efforts.
He didn’t want to judge the students’ level. The semester was coming to an end.
The students still wouldn’t respond to anything Ko Eungyo said, their presentations were in complete disarray to the point of being malicious, and they barely paid attention to the readings, but their grades would reflect the effort they put in.
Nearly half of the midterm exams were blank. But he didn’t lower the standards for the final exam. As a result, most students turned in blank answer sheets.
If they received an F for this, they’d have no right to complain.
‘Just retake the damn class.’
Some professors needed several teaching assistants because grading exams was such a headache, but not him. The grading was over in an instant.
There was a bitter taste in his mouth.
Inside his research office, he entered grades one by one into the university website based on the graded answer sheets, hoping that students would actually pay attention in the next class. At this rate, even if they retook the course, it would be difficult to get a good score.
By the time he finished entering the grades, the lighting had dimmed. He murmured about how late it had gotten and checked his watch. But not much time had passed.
There was nothing wrong with the office lighting. It had simply grown dark outside.
He stared blankly out the window. Storm clouds were gathering from the north.
As if following a natural sequence, the pain in his right ankle that he’d forgotten about flared up again. Joints that had been injured once always ached when the weather turned gloomy.
He massaged his numb ankle, thinking it would probably rain.
Did he have an umbrella? Not likely. He hadn’t heard any weather forecast about rain. To take the subway from here, he’d have to walk at least fifteen minutes. The damn Korea University campus was too large, and it was too far to walk in pouring rain. He couldn’t possibly walk in the rain with a limping, numb leg.
In that case… he should buy an umbrella now.
He quickly shut down his laptop, grabbed his phone and wallet, and went outside. He planned to stop by the convenience store in the dormitory building on campus to buy a disposable umbrella.
It was late, and with storm clouds rolling in, it was as dark as night even though it was only 6 o’clock. As he walked briskly, trying to recall where the dormitory building was, rough raindrops spattered against his cheeks. It was a fierce harbinger for early summer rain.
In the blink of an eye, the rain turned into a downpour.
“Ah!”
The ground was covered with all kinds of flyers left over from the recently ended festival. He suddenly slipped on one of them. Perhaps due to the impact of the fall, his previously numb right ankle now began to throb painfully.
Did he injure it severely when he slipped in the bathroom? He should have properly treated his ankle, not just his head. Back then, he was disoriented, having just awakened in this body.
As he placed his hands on the ground to get up, someone held an umbrella over him.
Instinctively, he thought it might be Nam Seonjae. There was no one else who would rescue him so appropriately.
“Ah, thank y—”
“You should be careful.”
“…”
“Professor.”
The raindrops that had been pelting down fiercely now seemed oddly absent. The black-haired man was bending at the waist, looking down at him from above his head, without even extending a hand.
Nam Seonjae was a male student with curly brown hair. So the man before him was definitely not Nam Seonjae.
He slowly inhaled and looked up at Lee Seungwoo.
“I was worried you might not have an umbrella.”
“…”
Worried?
His teeth clenched at those words. Though he’d slipped on a flyer through no fault of Lee Seungwoo, the thought that Seungwoo had been watching his unseemly state from behind filled him with shame-tinged anger.
It wasn’t because Lee Seungwoo could have helped but chose not to. It was the suspicion that Seungwoo had orchestrated all of this to see just how much he would suffer.
Yes, even this terrible weather…
That day, it was Nam Seonjae who had stopped Ko Eungyo from suspecting Woo Sihyun and Lee Seungwoo. He said he’d heard another student boasting about planning to do something to Ko Eungyo and had rushed over. So Woo Sihyun and Lee Seungwoo probably came there to save Ko Eungyo too. Before Ko Eungyo was hit by the panel, bucket, and all the paint inside it, becoming a complete mess.
In short, he was defending them.
How ridiculous. They had been walking at a leisurely pace, as if out for a stroll. Almost as if they wanted to watch what happened to Ko Eungyo.
Nam Seonjae pretended not to see that. Once he realized this, even the fact that Nam Seonjae had rushed to save him became suspect. It meant that Nam Seonjae normally hung out with them, and that he heard “another student” speaking ill of him.
Nam Seonjae didn’t even tell him who that student was.
At that point, it became unclear whether Nam Seonjae was trying to protect that anonymous student, or Woo Sihyun and Lee Seungwoo. He thought there was a high probability that they were the “other students” who tried to drop objects on him, or at the very least, they had “ordered” someone else to do it.
Since they were part of the student council, it would be harder not to socialize with peers, but he decided to abandon his expectations of Nam Seonjae at that point.
“You’ve been behaving quite well lately. Even though there’s no reward for stopping… So I’ve been wondering why you’re acting this way, Professor.”
“…What on earth are you talking about?”
Raindrops fell from the tips of his wet hair. He roughly wiped away the droplets streaming between his eyelashes and pushed his hair back. Still, the damp, fishy raindrops poured down mercilessly, dripping beneath his ears.
“Speak so I can understand.”
Lee Seungwoo stared intently at Ko Eungyo, whose head was soaked and whose face had turned pale with cold and fear, yet who still snapped with irritation. Ko Eungyo, who strangely gleamed like a jewel hidden in darkness.
“Fine.”
Suddenly, Lee Seungwoo revealed his teeth. In this deserted place, on the pitch-dark university grounds, he bent closer to Ko Eungyo. Almost as if his lips would touch his ear.
But skin never touched skin.
“Tell me, Eungyo. What do you want to have? You already had Woo Sihyun. Nam Seonjae? Do you want Nam Seonjae this time?”
“…”
“How long will you continue to be so loose?”
His eyelids trembled. It could have been from the cold. As he tried to stand up from the puddle-filled ground, a ruthless hand grabbed his shoulder and pushed him back down.
Water splashed upward. He tried to remove Lee Seungwoo’s hand in surprise, but his hand was merely caught on top of it.
Ko Eungyo thought for a moment that Lee Seungwoo’s expression had contorted.
He expected to be hit or at least have his hand flung away as if touching something dirty, but Seungwoo did neither. It seemed as if he didn’t want Ko Eungyo to escape from beneath him. Or perhaps he enjoyed the situation of dominating him.
How long will I continue to be loose?
“Unpleasant” was insufficient to describe his feelings. Anger flowed through his breath. Trying to suppress his ragged breathing, Ko Eungyo sharpened his tone.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Someone knowledgeable like you shouldn’t just cut off a conversation and leave.”
Lee Seungwoo apparently thought they were having quite a cordial discussion.
“This is a conversation?”
“This style of conversation seems to suit you.”
He looked up at Lee Seungwoo, not hiding his bewilderment. Yet he still couldn’t read Lee Seungwoo’s expression. In the dark rain, the area under the umbrella only brightened occasionally when lightning struck with a rumble. The only source of warmth here was Lee Seungwoo’s hand.
That fact was horrifyingly chilling.
When he pulled his hand away from Lee Seungwoo, Seungwoo likewise removed his hand from Ko Eungyo’s shoulder as if he had never placed it there.
“What answer do you want to hear?”
“Well…”
“Would you even believe me if I said no?”
“…”
At that, Lee Seungwoo’s eyes curved into half-moons. Ko Eungyo read the clear answer in that smile.
Damn it.
There were too many things he was experiencing for the first time as Ko Eungyo. This seemed to be one of them. The pain in his right ankle was getting worse.
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# 1. First order
Everything is being swept away. The heaviest and lightest things in the world mix together, floating weightlessly. Like dust. It feels as if he might soar without wings and scatter somewhere in the universe, leaving this world behind.
He has forgotten how to breathe. The feeling of air drawn in through his nose, lungs, and mouth is now distant. How did his heart beat? He wonders vaguely in his fading consciousness.
There is no pain.
As he rises, he realizes he is free. The red threads that bound every inch of his body loosen silently. The connections that existed to bind him to the earth all fall to the ground.
When I’m completely released, I will disappear. He thinks. But by gravity, by sheer gravity, he cannot prevent himself from vanishing. Did he have any lingering attachments? He wonders. No. What he desires is liberation and extinction. To completely disappear. To completely cease to exist. He doesn’t wish to leave anything behind.
At that very moment, something grips his ankle tightly.
No.
He thinks blankly.
As soon as he has the thought, everything that had floated away and dispersed rapidly returns. The released threads return to their places, and his body, which had become light as a feather, instantly grows heavy. Becoming heavier than gravity happens in an instant. He, who had been suspended in midair, is slowly pulled down, down.
Of the lost senses, the first to return is hearing. Soon after, the sound of wind, loud enough to split his eardrums, brushes past.
He is falling.
As if jumping from a cliff, as if dropping from a gliding airplane, as if a meteorite passing through the atmosphere racing at full speed to reach the earth, he is falling. He opens his mouth to cry for help, but no sound comes out.
The next sense to return is the persistent pain.
It hurts. His bones feel like they’re on fire.
Whether it’s because he’s falling too fast or because his senses haven’t fully returned, though he twists his entire body and screams, only the sound of wind reaches his ears. The wind is so loud that it drowns out his voice. But the confusing and painful time continues. Because time is continuous.
Just fall completely. Then it will end.
The end. What an end. Finally, with the end in sight… he’s afraid. Falling so long and so fast, when he completely crashes and hits the ground, extreme pain will pierce his entire body. Undoubtedly, his whole body will shatter. Even his soul will not remain, and his form will be crushed into fragments.
If only he could postpone the end even a little, he’d endure more pain. But the end always comes eventually.
Thud.
What is that sound?
“Huk…”
Gasping for breath, he opens his eyes to see slanted white tile floor. Beside it is a sticky, dried bloodstain. He instinctively touched the back of his head.
As soon as his fingertips made contact, his vision spun and his head throbbed. It hurt terribly.
Too scared to touch it further, he carefully sat up. Even just that made him dizzy and short of breath. Wincing, staying still was the only way to reduce the pain. Slowly repeating inhales and exhales, his vision gradually cleared.
He notices a bathroom slipper that looks as if it slipped off when he collapsed to one side. His gaze moves to a dented shelf and the slick bathroom floor.
Could it be that he slipped and hit his head after washing?
Come to think of it, not only his head but also his elbow and right ankle were aching.
He rarely did such foolish things, but his memory of how it happened was vague. Moreover, this bathroom was unfamiliar. At the very least, it wasn’t his home.
Wondering if it might be a friend’s place, or the home of a casual partner he’d stopped seeing, he slowly got up from the bathroom floor.
To begin with, he never knew how to maintain relationships of any kind for long. Even if it were a friend’s house, why hadn’t anyone come to check when someone hadn’t emerged from the bathroom? Judging by the dried bloodstain, quite some time had passed since the accident.
After staring at the bloodstain for a long while, he raised his head to see an unfamiliar man in the mirror.
He froze in shock. He hadn’t seen anyone enter the bathroom, so who was this man? How long had he been here? The moment he turned in alarm, the man in the mirror turned his body in exactly the same way.
“…Huh?”
Making a dumbfounded sound, he unconsciously approached the mirror. The man did the same. One side of the head of the ashen-faced man was matted with a dark substance.
He stood stupidly in front of the mirror for a long time.
“What is this…”
Me?
As he frowned deeply and took a step back, the man in the mirror also looked at him as if he were something strange and frightening, and moved one step away. Now that he noticed, even the voice wasn’t his.
As a test, he cleared his throat, making his vocal cords vibrate, and his expression became blank. The man in the mirror likewise had an equally blank face.
“What on earth…”
The sound of his voice talking to himself was so unfamiliar. It was the same even after tightly closing his eyes and reopening them. With a bewildered expression, he looked around the unfamiliar bathroom.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
