It was the early hour when the stars of dawn were gradually being obscured by the morning sun. At the warmth felt on the back of his hand, Seonwoo suddenly opened his eyes. Everywhere was still dark, but he didn’t feel alone. It was because of the regular breathing sounds in his ear. Right next to him was Yoonjo.
Letting out a sigh of relief knowingly or unknowingly, he turned his body slightly. Yoonjo, sleeping deeply with soft snores, was tightly holding Seonwoo’s hand.
After tracing Yoonjo’s face with his eyes for a while, he carefully got out of bed. After tidying up the slightly disheveled blanket and coming out to the kitchen, he drank a glass of water while quietly looking at the high ceiling.
The newly found house still felt unfamiliar and awkward. There were too many parts that needed to be dealt with to return to Seoul. One of them was precisely the house.
He struggled a bit at first because there was no place he liked. He urgently found a house in a not-bad location and repaired the entire interior. Though the time of one week was quite tight, the result alone was decent.
The one who was most pleased when he disposed of the apartment that was like a tomb and found a new house was none other than Woojin. Though he didn’t hide his excited demeanor, adding that starting anything anew was good, unfortunately Seonwoo had no such thought at all.
It was just work that started from the desire for Yoonjo to stay together in a good place, at least during the time he spent in Seoul.
At first, Seonwoo thought he could send Yoonjo off well. Since university students’ vacation periods are all similar anyway, he thought Yoonjo would leave when the time came. But the problem was that he realized too late that this was merely a vague thought, and that he wasn’t really mentally prepared.
The dormitory application. It was like a signal flare that Yoonjo really had to leave Namhang now. After coming to his senses, Seonwoo was looking for a house and doing repairs. While fixing up the house, Seonwoo had to experience every moment what it meant to be anxious.
He had never acted impulsively in his life. Just living as others told him to, as things flowed—that was Ki Seonwoo’s life.
In fact, going down to the countryside was like that from the start. He had only gone unable to refuse the request from his manager Woojin, who said if he stayed like this he would die, and to please come outside.
Even while breathing the stuffy rural air, Seonwoo thought as always that he would stay quietly and disappear quietly. Since there was no one interested in the crouched Ki Seonwoo, it was a natural assumption if it was natural.
But after meeting Yoonjo, there wasn’t a single thing that wasn’t impulsive. Perhaps he’d been swept up by Yoonjo, who rushed at him without hiding any of his feelings.
That child who smiled brightly, sometimes poured out tears profusely, and rushed at him saying he liked Seonwoo.
Ji Yoonjo.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t suspected. Since most people had something they wanted from Seonwoo and approached him for that purpose, this was a rational thought.
But Yoonjo was different. Even with the attitude of pushing away and ultimately not accepting him, he just charged in. He should have rejected him more firmly, but he couldn’t and spent ambiguous days.
When he came to his senses, he was doing everything together with Yoonjo. Though awkward situations came once in a while, in most cases Seonwoo laughed happily. How long had it been since he laughed without any thoughts…. The heart that had tried to push him away ambiguously crumbled little by little.
Seonwoo had been getting through each day curled up to avoid the pouring downpour. The moment he met Yoonjo and held that child’s hand, the shower that had been constantly falling in his heart subsided. At most it had become a light drizzle. Small courage welled up that he could walk in this much, couldn’t he? Like that, Seonwoo looked at the sunlight wetting his toes and moved his steps toward the outside.
He passed the bumpy asphalt road and stood on the muddy wet dirt path. Seonwoo, who was stepping on the same path Yoonjo had walked first, suddenly noticed his shoulders were thoroughly soaked.
Though he tried to put up an umbrella belatedly, the thin rain threads had already soaked not only Seonwoo’s shoulders but his heart as well.
That was Yoonjo’s heart. The sincerity that poured straight toward Seonwoo had already wet him.
It was a continuous series of situations quite different from the past when he lived hiding in a corner to avoid just one immediate downpour. Only then could Seonwoo realize. That an umbrella wasn’t needed from the beginning.
In the place where the rain that had poured for a long time had stopped, gentle sunlight was pouring in.
For the first time in his life, Seonwoo took steps according to his own will. That is, toward Ji Yoonjo.
***
The lecture hall he saw again after a long time was still the same. It was still a place where sunlight came in well and evoked a warm feeling. It was a perfectly good day. It was as if blessing the days to come. Yoonjo grinned and put down his bag, then immediately picked up his phone.
「Hyung, I arrived at the lecture hall. How about you?」 11:23am
The answer didn’t come right away. He seemed to be driving. Yoonjo glanced at the top of the screen wondering if a message notification would appear, and scanned the class schedule.
Since it was the first day of the semester anyway, most subjects would conduct orientation instead of regular classes, but it wouldn’t hurt to familiarize himself with the schedule.
Yoonjo, who was looking at each subject one by one, paused for a moment at the subject name “Cat in a Box.” Yoonjo, who had been staring intently at the suspicious subject, raised his head at the hand tapping his shoulder.
“Yoonjo, how have you been? How was your hometown? Was it hot?”
It was his classmate Gamsung Hyeon. Yoonjo moved the bag he’d put on the chair to the inside and replied.
“It was super hot. How’s your relationship going?”
“I balanced work and love all vacation long. It’ll probably be like that during the semester too. Ugh, this lecture hall is really humid. Is this Harry Potter? Feels like a basement. If you study in a place like this, your personality will get bad. That’s why our department kids are weird.”
What nonsense. Where else is there such perfect temperature, humidity, and lighting? Yoonjo looked at Seonghyeon as if glaring and answered.
“It’s weird? This is a totally good lecture hall. Anyway, that physics… journalism you told me about. It doesn’t seem to be there this year.”
“Huh? That’s there. I naturally thought you’d put it in.”
Seonghyeon, who moved his fingers a few times as if searching for something, showed Yoonjo the screen. In the screen, there was no physics journalism. Only Understanding Physics.
“Why on earth are you coveting someone else’s major subject?”
“What are you talking about? This is a liberal arts… Ah, wow. It really is.”
Leaving the flustered Seonghyeon beside him, Yoonjo stared at his phone. Wondering if there was a problem with the data, he pointlessly turned his phone off and on repeatedly. Or was the messenger strange…. Yoonjo, who had tried typing and sending anything with the ‘send to me’ function, stuck out his lips.
There was nothing wrong with the data or the messenger. Nevertheless, no answer came back from Seonwoo.
It wasn’t something to be disappointed about, it was a part that should be understood, but it kept bothering him. Not even a week had passed since he resolved to be someone who gives trust, yet his behavior was no different from a petty person.
“Ah, Yoonjo-ya. Let’s eat lunch separately today. I have to eat with my girlfriend.”
“Do as you please….”
When he muttered gloomily, Seonghyeon’s expression twisted strangely. He tapped Yoonjo’s shoulder and said.
“Put it back in. You’ve become a pufferfish.”
“I’d rather become a fish….”
Then at least he’d be swimming splish-splash in Seonwoo’s fish tank. A caught fish at least gets its heart eaten, but right now Yoonjo was in a state of neither here nor there. Feeling gloomy, Yoonjo let out a sigh with his chin propped up.
Seonghyeon, who had been watching from the side, teased him.
“You know you’re totally funny right now? Hey, I should take a picture of this.”
“You came faster than I thought? Yoonjo, when did you come up to Seoul?”
At the voice that suddenly cut in, Yoonjo’s and Seonghyeon’s heads turned to the side. Heewon putting down his bag was visible. Heewon looked at Yoonjo’s protruding lips, then pressed both cheeks firmly. The lips protruded more.
“I came up to Seoul not long ago. Before that, you probably wouldn’t have gotten through anyway.”
At Heewon’s action, Seonghyeon twisted his lips for a moment but soon said nonchalantly.
“Heewon-ah, listen. I thought Yoonjo was joking, you know? I called about dating… no, about the class schedule, but no matter how much I called, he didn’t answer. But it really was that he couldn’t receive calls.”
“What would I gain from making such a joke? I told you it really doesn’t work.”
Yoonjo, who answered languidly, looked at Heewon who was still holding his cheeks. He was the same. In the first semester, it was embarrassing to see how much he fussed, but people really don’t change easily it seemed.
“Did you make your schedule well? And Heewon-ah, let go.”
“Half successful. I snagged one easy subject and made Thursday-Friday free days. It’s at a level where I should totally turn back time.”
“The Han River water is cold, let go.”
“Okay.”
Grumbling Heewon went inside and plopped down next to Yoonjo. At Heewon’s such behavior, Seonghyeon’s face twisted strangely.
“Kang Heewon, seriously tell me the truth. You’re doing this to drag Yoonjo into the club, right? What was it… that, rainbow something.”
“Necessarily…? Yoonjo isn’t even into that, so there’s no need to force him…? Anyway, when he sticks out his lips like that, it reminds me of my youngest sibling. Honestly, he’s cute.”
“Could you not say things like that in front of the person? Do you both really want to see the bottom of the Han River without a life jacket?”
Being told he was cute by Seonwoo felt like a compliment, but hearing it from his classmates felt like an insult. Yoonjo, who thought carefully about the reason, concluded that this was the greatness of love.
Gathering courage, he checked his phone again, but soon Yoonjo collapsed with his cheek on the desk like a deflating steamed egg. He could smell the damp lecture hall scent at the tip of his nose. When he sneakily turned his eyes, he saw the gloomy gray wall.
“Ha….”
Both the notification window and the top bar were completely clean. Thanks to oddly avoiding the commute time, the roads would have been wide open too, yet somehow there wasn’t even a simple reply from Seonwoo.
Yoonjo, who had tried to send messages to Seonwoo several times, gave up. He didn’t want to seem like a narrow-minded person.
