Chapter 22
“Hello.”
“……”
When Kwon-ju looked up, a face with clean-cut features was looking down at him. Why it appeared so clearly was still a mystery. From the light eyebrows neatly positioned as if drawn with a pencil, to the thin double eyelids with horizontally elongated eyes, and the cleanly defined nose tip. Still half-asleep, Kwon-ju frowned and checked the color of the line on the pocket. Green. Seemed like he was a third-year.
“You’re Jang Kwon-ju, right?”
“…Yes. But why?”
“Why didn’t you come all this time? I was waiting.”
What waiting? Feeling annoyed at being woken up, Kwon-ju answered somewhat sharply, but the senior showed no sign of being offended.
“You sleep well in this heat. Even wearing a long-sleeved shirt.”
He seemed to find it odd that Kwon-ju was still wearing his spring/fall uniform despite summer approaching. Staring at the long, pale arms revealed beneath the cool-looking short-sleeved shirt, Kwon-ju suddenly realized something strange.
Despite being this close, oddly enough, there wasn’t any of the unpleasant odor commonly found among male students of this age. Being sensitive to body odors, Kwon-ju usually avoided places where students gathered and couldn’t even enter the classroom for a while after PE class. To Kwon-ju, the senior standing before him was an extremely rare type of person in this school.
It didn’t seem like he just washed well. It didn’t seem like perfume either. There was a strangely fresh scent that seemed to tickle his nose. Anyway, he didn’t dislike people who paid attention to their scent. Having made this judgment, Kwon-ju’s guard lowered a bit.
“Your hair color is pretty. Don’t you get penalty points?”
“……”
“Anyway, let’s get along well.”
The senior complimented his faded yellow hair, but Kwon-ju didn’t respond. Despite the junior not answering and keeping his mouth tightly shut, the nameless senior didn’t seem bothered and abruptly extended his hand. It was a beautiful, long hand that made one wonder if he played the piano.
“Ah, want one?”
After offering a handshake first, he withdrew his hand before Kwon-ju could take it and rummaged through his pocket, handing over a chocolate. Chocolate was irresistible, so Kwon-ju bowed his head slightly, quickly accepted it and ate it. As he did, his senses gradually returned. A smiling face filled his vision.
“So, why haven’t you been coming until now?”
“I didn’t want to.”
“Why? Our club doesn’t do much. Just watch movies, write a few lines of review, and you’re done.”
Because I don’t like meeting new people. Figuring the senior was the type who wouldn’t understand anyway, Kwon-ju held back. Even now, facing this senior he’d never met before wasn’t exactly pleasant. That was definitely true.
“You can text me if you’re bored.”
By the end of lunch period, when Kwon-ju came to his senses, they had already added each other on KakaoTalk. Looking at the profile whose “Add Friend” button had disappeared—the only one among the club chat members—Kwon-ju flipped his phone over. This was the first time since enrolling that he’d had such a long conversation with one person.
Somehow his social skills seemed excessively good, and looking at the notices he posted, it seemed he was the club president. His name was Han Ji-won. …It suits him. After defining him in three sentences, Kwon-ju rested his head on his arm and stared at the receding back. Tall, he thought.
There was a change of heart, and he attended the next club meeting. Despite being scolded for just sleeping through the first session and submitting a review with only one line, he still went again. While blankly staring at the screen, one head sitting in the front row would catch his eye, and by the time he came to his senses, the movie would be over.
Though he understood the overall content, he still didn’t feel like writing. Accepting his own avoidant nature of never attempting things he wasn’t good at, Kwon-ju put down his pen. At that moment, someone suddenly appeared.
“Didn’t you watch the movie? You turned in a one-liner last time too.”
“I don’t have writing skills… It’s worse than not writing at all.”
“I can’t write well either. Want to see?”
Without any shame, Ji-won readily held out his movie review for Kwon-ju to see. The extremely simple sentences seemed like they could have been written by an elementary school student. Still…
“I write worse than you, senior.”
It would be a parade of surprisingly low-level sentences. But Ji-won spoke as if he genuinely couldn’t understand Kwon-ju.
“Why? Everyone has things they can’t do. No one will say anything, so just write. It’s just for activity tracking… The person sitting behind you is just writing out the plot.”
“Of course a review should include the plot. Writing a lot is a skill too,” protested a senior sitting behind him, waving his review paper angrily. Looking away from Ji-won, who was conversing with a smile, Kwon-ju slightly bit the edge of the paper with his lips.
Everyone has things they can’t do. It was an unfamiliar statement to Kwon-ju, who had always hung back passively during music and art classes, not having anything he was good at. He’d heard “if you can’t do it well, don’t do it at all” before, but…
He really meddles too much. Most people wouldn’t care how many lines someone else writes. Though he thought this, he didn’t feel particularly bad, so after a long time, he gripped his pen and moved it for a while. That way, he wrote exactly six lines and received praise from Ji-won. He’s really not my type of person, he redefined him, but strangely, it didn’t feel negative.
“You’re here early?”
“I didn’t have cleaning duty today.”
“I see, I finished cleaning the stairs really quickly.”
Ji-won regularly visited the club room alone when everyone else was in study halls, reading rooms, or academies. From what he knew, third-years had freedom regarding club activities and rarely participated, but for some reason, Ji-won was in charge of key management and diligently found movies to watch for each club session.
Sometimes he would eat bread or snacks, sometimes he would open a workbook and study, and Kwon-ju was almost always with him. Even though they hadn’t made plans, somehow his footsteps kept leading to the club room. Then Ji-won would talk to him and share what he had bought, and Kwon-ju would pretend to give in, accepting them while responding or quietly watching him study from behind.
Doesn’t he feel rushed with the college entrance exam so close? At first, Kwon-ju thought maybe his grades weren’t good enough for the study hall, or he couldn’t afford a reading room, but that wasn’t the case either. Despite looking like someone who wouldn’t study and just play around, he had upper-rank mock exam scores, and his family was middle-class or above.
What are this person’s shortcomings? Kwon-ju suddenly became curious. Good looks, above-average height, healthy personality, good grades, well-off family…
He discovered his flaw after they became a bit closer. It was probably early July, not long before summer vacation. It was a day no different from usual when, instead of going straight home, Kwon-ju headed to the empty club room to spend time with Ji-won before he went to his academy.
“Now that it’s getting hot, I really want to play games. As soon as the CSAT is over, I’m going to get my computer back out first thing.”
“You must like games.”
“Yeah, totally. I played until last year, but I failed a mock exam and got scolded, so I quit.”
As it turned out, he was a serious gaming addict. He claimed he just played enthusiastically, but by all accounts, this was addiction. It was surprising he hadn’t talked about games during their past two months together. Kwon-ju had thought his beautiful hands were from playing the piano, but now it seemed they came from typing a lot on a keyboard.
“What kind of game?”
“Arc Serenity.”
“What kind of game is that?”
“Are you interested? Want to play together?”
“Just asking…”
“If you’re thinking of playing later, create a character on the Asuka server. I’ll make it really fun for you.”
His confident smile was so pretty that Kwon-ju lost the will to respond. Pretty? Am I crazy? Thinking he had finally gone mad from living too passively, he made an excuse about being tired and packed his bag more quickly than usual to go home. I should organize my thoughts and avoid the club room for a while.
But contrary to his intentions, his body was already seated in the empty chair of the club room. I decided not to come today. Though he scolded himself repeatedly, he had no intention of getting up. In the end, he missed his chance to escape and had to face that face again.
“Here, drink this.”
Once again, as soon as he arrived, he received a drink from him. Ji-won seemed to always stop by the school store before coming to the club room, and he kept bringing similar things. Today it was apple juice. Yesterday was mango juice. Looking at the juice swirling in the transparent bottle, Kwon-ju asked:
“You must like these kinds of drinks.”
“I don’t like carbonated drinks or milk. Don’t you like it?”
“No. Thank you.”
Actually, he didn’t like anything with fruit in it, but somehow he felt he could gladly accept and drink even fresh fruit juice. Watching Kwon-ju neatly insert the straw, Ji-won leaned back in his chair and asked:
“I feel like I only talked about what I like yesterday. What do you like? Games? Webtoons?”
“I just…”
Despite it being an ordinary question, he was at a loss for words. He didn’t have any hobbies he could casually share with others. After school, Kwon-ju usually slept. His routine was to arrive home, eat dinner, take a one-hour walk, leisurely shower, and then lie in bed around nine, waking up at seven the next morning.
Unlike other Korean high school students who valued every minute and second, Kwon-ju, who had no particular goals, sense of urgency, or friends, found his excess time merely tedious and long. Faced with this innocent but difficult question, he finally pulled out his all-purpose answer.
“Movies.”
“Fitting for a film appreciation club member. What kind of movies?”
“Just, everything. I’m not picky.”
“But you must have genres you prefer, right?”
If someone else had pressed him like this, he would have put them in their place and told them to back off, but somehow he couldn’t do that to Ji-won. Kwon-ju earnestly considered an answer to the question. What would be the best response? For some reason, he couldn’t keep his hands still under the desk.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
