“Good work. I’ll be in touch.”
“Alright, take care.”
After exchanging farewells, Sa-yoon sat back down. He lifted the cup, now filled only with melted ice, and chewed on the soggy paper straw. It had absorbed too much water, turning limp. A quiet sigh escaped him.
[Junior Seo Yeon-hee] [How was this one?] [Another no? A total miss again?]
The first thing Sa-yoon did after momentarily escaping reality was to continue his search for someone to appear in his graduation project video.
As he was talking with a potential candidate, a message from Yeon-hee popped up on his screen. He stared at it with a serious expression, then ultimately decided not to reply and turned off the screen.
[Junior Seo Yeon-hee] [What about Sa Shin-jae?] [Looked like it was going well, but did you fail the capture? T_T]
His phone, lying on the table, lit up again. Yeon-hee. She wasn’t going to stop until she got a reply, so Sa-yoon finally started typing. His response was short.
[Not doing it.]
Not doing it? That didn’t even begin to cover it. Sa Shin-jae had gone ballistic, telling him to fuck off and drop dead right to his face. But explaining that would require going over everything that led to those words in the first place. His mouth tasted bitter, even though the only thing he’d had was melted ice water.
After what happened that day, Sa-yoon completely gave up on Sa Shin-jae. There was no way he was going to beg someone for their participation after being met with that kind of misunderstanding and outright hostility.
It stung his pride even more because it felt like he’d given Shin-jae exactly what he wanted by walking away, but wasting any more time on this was out of the question.
Left with no choice, he went back to square one and reached out to every contact saved in his phone. If someone met the conditions, he immediately scheduled a meeting.
There had to be at least one person better than that bastard.
And today was just another continuation of that search.
There were still three more meetings left. Sa-yoon went to the counter, ordered another iced Americano, and returned to his seat, closing his eyes.
“Fucking clueless.”
“……Ah.”
The moment he let his guard down, the memory hit him like a truck.
“This is driving me insane.”
That day, after paying for the completely melted ice cream, he headed back to the bar. The conversation had technically ended there, but leaving things in a state of misunderstanding wouldn’t do anyone any good.
As soon as he stepped into the dimly lit underground bar, his eyes met Sa Shin-jae’s. Without hesitation, Shin-jae shot up from his seat and walked straight toward him.
The unexpected boldness made Sa-yoon tense up for a split second. Shin-jae gave him a brief once-over before speaking.
“Sa-yoon sunbae was really drunk, so he decided to head home.”
At drinking gatherings, it was practically a Korean tradition to latch onto anyone who tried to leave, dragging them back into the party. But this was a club setting, where hierarchy and seniority still held weight.
No junior would dare to hold back a senior’s senior.
Just like that, a wave of farewells surged toward him. Even Ha-rim and Myung-woo, who had been sitting at a corner table, came over to ask if he was already heading home. But neither of them looked like they intended to stop him.
Understandably so—both of them were already red in the face from drinking. There was no way he could clear up the misunderstanding in that kind of atmosphere.
“Sa Shin-jae.”
He called out to the person standing in front of him like a goddamn wall. Shin-jae must have heard him, but his massive frame didn’t budge an inch.
“Get home safe, sunbae.”
A flawless, unmistakable dismissal.
Just like that, Sa-yoon was kicked out of the drinking party.
It was the first time in his life that someone else had decided he was going home.
Usually, the moment his head hit the pillow, he’d be out like a light. But that night, the conversation kept replaying in his head. The torment followed him into his dreams as well.
No matter where he tried to run, Sa Shin-jae would chase after him, shouting “Don’t like me.”
A goddamn nightmare.
“This is driving me crazy.”
Days had passed since then, yet he was still like this. Every time his mind wandered, Shin-jae’s voice resurfaced.
“Sunbae, you like men.”
That comment had replayed in Sa-yoon’s head at least a hundred times over the past few days—probably more, if he exaggerated just a little. Thanks to the curse of repetitive learning, he could recall that moment more easily than breathing.
“Sunbae, don’t like me.”
The thick, humid air of a midsummer night. Lips that curved into a soft arc, yet eyes that looked at him as if he were some kind of filth. And himself, too stunned by the truth he’d stumbled upon to do anything but stammer uselessly. No matter how much he insisted otherwise, Sa Shin-jae wouldn’t listen. That disastrous conversation.
A flawless, textbook case of an utter humiliation.
Fuck. The moment the alcohol wore off, all that remained was a deep sense of injustice. In his drunken haze, Shin-jae’s words had sounded somewhat reasonable, which had left him unable to argue properly at the time. But looking back on it now, the whole thing was completely absurd.
“What the hell did I even do?”
Sure, if he was being honest, he had been nice to him. He could even admit that there had been a few moments that could have been misinterpreted. Like when he had gone out of his way to find him after class.
But aside from that? Nothing he had done was that out of the ordinary.
If all of that counted as flirting, then Sa-yoon should have the reputation of a shameless flirt hitting on every single person he interacted with.
Grabbing a meal together, swapping out a drink he didn’t like, making sure he didn’t black out from drinking too much…
No matter how hard he thought about it, everything he’d done was just basic kindness—things he would’ve done for any acquaintance. Okay, maybe he wasn’t that close to Shin-jae, but still.
“If he saw actual flirting, he’d probably faint on the spot.”
What a tragedy, not being able to distinguish between common decency and romantic interest. Just how barren were his social interactions?
“Just stop thinking about it. Don’t think about it—”
But the more you try not to think about the elephant, the more the elephant takes over your thoughts. The harder he tried to push it away, the clearer Shin-jae’s sharp, cold gaze came back to him.
And why the fuck did he drink so much that night? The fact that he had been too drunk to properly refute anything was eating away at him.
He had always thought dwelling on the past was useless, but now that he was in this situation, he couldn’t just let it go.
Checking his phone, the time flashed on the screen. And right below it, the date and day of the week stood out sharply.
Tomorrow was already Wednesday.
Since that drinking party on Friday, he had skipped both of his general education classes, which were held on Wednesdays and Fridays.
The same went for the theater club. He simply couldn’t bring himself to face Shin-jae.
But this avoidance was only a temporary fix.
According to school policy, three absences meant a D, and four meant an F.
His graduation had already been delayed enough due to that unexpected knee injury. He couldn’t afford to throw away a perfectly fine course when he was already pressed for time.
The same applied to the theater club. Just because he had a falling-out with some freshman didn’t mean he could drop out of a project he had already promised to do.
Honestly, had he even done anything wrong?
Yes, he had approached Shin-jae with an objective in mind.
But it wasn’t like he had even gotten around to asking him to be in the graduation project. How could he be criticized for something he hadn’t even done?
