“Hey, Hae-yul. Eating alone again today?”
“…Oh. Hello.”
Kim Myeong-gyu set his tray down in the seat across from Hae-yul and greeted him with a strange smile. Since the day Hae-yul had put him in his place, they hadn’t run into each other once — so Hae-yul looked at him with a mildly sour expression.
He’d never thought of Kim Myeong-gyu as shameless before, but the guy seemed far more brazen than Hae-yul had given him credit for. Hae-yul’s hand, which had been moving slowly as he tried to collect his thoughts, picked up speed. He dunked all his rice into his doenjang soup and ate without even properly lifting his head.
“Why are you eating so fast? Are you uncomfortable around hyung now?”
Hae-yul swallowed the food in his mouth and looked up to find Kim Myeong-gyu grinning at him.
“Oh, don’t tell me you’re still hung up on what happened last time? You’re surprisingly petty, you know that. Hyung’s fine. It’s not like you did it on purpose to embarrass hyung. Hyung can totally understand.”
Hae-yul said nothing, just stared at him for a moment before moving his spoon again. Kim Myeong-gyu watched in silence, then scooped up some doenjang soup and asked,
“By the way, it must be nice not having parents around. Ah — don’t take that the wrong way, I mean it in a good sense. Hyung is genuinely just saying this because he’s jealous of you, Hae-yul.”
“…”
“No, I mean — maybe it’s because hyung is already on his third attempt at the exam? My parents call every single weekend. Every holiday I skip going home because I’m studying, they make such a fuss — begging me to come down, eat home-cooked food, recharge, and then study. But then the moment I actually go home, they nag me endlessly — and yet they still want to see my face, I guess.”
Even as his words continued, Hae-yul just blinked quietly, and the corner of Kim Myeong-gyu’s mouth curled upward.
“But at least you won’t have to deal with any annoying nagging, right, Hae-yul? Oh, did you maybe grow up in an orphanage or something? Or at a relative’s place? In that case, you probably don’t get any calls at all, do you? You know how in movies and dramas there’s always that scene where the director or a teacher at the orphanage calls once in a while?”
Kim Myeong-gyu’s eyes gleamed, intoxicated by the cheap victory he had savored through such a lowly method.
His intent was simple. He just wanted to wound Hae-yul by going after his weakest spot. Having grasped Kim Myeong-gyu’s ulterior motive without much difficulty, Hae-yul was honestly conflicted.
Hae-yul’s parents were alive and well. Just not in this world — but in the one he had originally lived in.
So in truth, Kim Myeong-gyu’s words didn’t cut very deep. The saddest and hardest thing for Hae-yul in living here wasn’t the absence of parents — it was simply how incredibly difficult and overwhelming it was to take care of himself with not a single person to lean on.
To Hae-yul, who had spent long nights after his transmigration unable to sleep properly out of anxiety that one wrong move could bring him the same death as in the original story, what Kim Myeong-gyu was saying was almost a little funny. But since it was obvious the guy was waiting for a response, it felt like he had to say something.
While Hae-yul was racking his brain to choose what to say, his phone on the table buzzed.
[Fail to answer: 5 billion won]
Hae-yul blinked at the unfamiliar contact name — then disbelief spread across his face. …5 billion won? Who decided that on their own?
Is he actually insane?
It was unmistakably Kwon Gyo-eon. No wonder he’d been smiling that scheming smile while saving the number. Hae-yul’s eyelids twitched as he swallowed his irritation, then grabbed his phone and tray and stood up from his seat.
“Hae-yul, where are you going in the middle of talking to hyung? You’re not done eating?”
“Something urgent just came up. We can talk again later.”
“No, hey. Hae-yul. How can you put off something this important for later — hey!”
A flustered Kim Myeong-gyu shot to his feet to stop Hae-yul, but Hae-yul, whose only thought was to answer before Kwon Gyo-eon’s call cut off, didn’t even register it.
Hae-yul quickly returned his tray and answered Kwon Gyo-eon’s call just before it stopped ringing.
“Hello?”
Then, glancing around at the people nearby, he left the dining hall and headed up to the rooftop where he could talk freely. A slightly sulky voice came through the receiver.
— Did you happen to change my name in your phone?
“No?”
— I was worried you might not answer my call. As you probably saw, I raised the fee — not 1 billion, but 5 billion.
“Actually, I have something to say about that. Why did you change it on your own without a single word of discussion? You clearly said 1 billion at the start. You gave me a hard time at the convenience store for reaching a conclusion on my own — so why is it okay for you to decide something like this by yourself? Are you really going to be this hypocritical?”
Hae-yul fired off without even pausing to breathe, and there was a brief silence on the other end of the phone — followed shortly by the sound of laughter. Hae-yul gripped the railing around the rooftop, his face burning with irritation, and kept pressing.
“What’s so funny? Do you have any idea how utterly absurd that amount is for someone as ordinary as me? You can’t possibly be expecting me to sell a kidney or something to come up with the money, right? How can a person immediately jump to 5 billion just because I missed one call without even giving me a chance — isn’t that too much?”
— …Pfft.
“Is what I’m saying that funny?”
— …Ah, sorry. I’m listening seriously, so keep going.
“Forget it. Forget it — just know that the contact name you set is invalid since you decided it on your own.”
— Alright, we can do that. When we meet next time, we’ll agree on one together. That’s fine, right?
“Sure, whatever.”
He wasn’t sure why the contact name even had to be decided in such a way, but his head was already cluttered with all sorts of things, so it was easier to just go along with it. Still, at least thanks to Kwon Gyo-eon, he’d been able to escape Kim Myeong-gyu’s nonsense.
If Kwon Gyo-eon’s call hadn’t come, who knows what he might have said to Kim Myeong-gyu. He might have accidentally said something that rubbed him the wrong way — and then Kim Myeong-gyu would have surely gotten worked up and made things several times more annoying than they already were.
“So why did you call?”
— I was curious what you were up to.
“Why on earth would you be curious about that?”
— We’re going to be seeing each other often — is it not okay to be curious? And aren’t you the one who has a lot of questions about me?
“Not really.”
He replied bluntly, and a low laugh came through the phone. Just as a flustered Hae-yul was about to snap back, Kwon Gyo-eon continued,
— Still, I’d like it if you were curious about me.
“…What do you—”
His voice had been fairly sincere, and Hae-yul couldn’t help but flinch a little. He still had no immunity against Kwon Gyo-eon acting in this embarrassingly earnest way.
“A-anyway. If there’s nothing else, I’m going to hang up. You’re not going to threaten me with 5 billion for hanging up first, are you?”
Laughter burst through the phone again. Hae-yul furrowed his brow, deliberating — and just as he was about to hang up, Kwon Gyo-eon’s voice came through.
— No. I have no intention of being that childish. And as for the contact name… I just thought you might avoid my calls, so I couldn’t help it.
“…Even without saving it like that, I probably would have answered fine.”
— But the way you say that, even you don’t sound confident in your own words.
“That’s… because there’s always the one-in-a-million chance.”
— Yes, that’s true.
For some reason, Kwon Gyo-eon readily agreed with his words, and Hae-yul tilted his head in puzzlement.
“Well… then I’ll see you Monday. And please don’t just show up before then.”
— That’s a conclusion you reached on your own.
“No — that was literally what I was going to say to you about what you did earlier!”
Hae-yul shot back heatedly, and Kwon Gyo-eon gave a small laugh before adding,
— I’m joking. If I do come by, I’ll contact you first. Get some rest.
“What? No, I— okay, fine. Take care.
— Yeah. Good night.
The call ended shortly after. Hae-yul stared at his phone displaying the contact name Kwon Gyo-eon had set, then let out a short, exasperated laugh. Whether to call it honest or call it sly, he wasn’t sure.
Maybe it was because of the way he acted — without realizing it, Hae-yul had been treating Kwon Gyo-eon with an ease that made all his earlier wariness seem pointless. The more they met, the more casually he found himself dealing with him. With a feeling like he’d been had somehow, Hae-yul scratched his cheek and headed back down from the rooftop.
As he slowly walked down from the rooftop toward the floor where his room was, Hae-yul suddenly tilted his head at the sound of whispering drifting up from the hallway below.
“Isn’t Kim Myeong-gyu actually insane? He was being so damn loud in the dining hall. Oh, were you not there?”
“Kim Myeong-gyu? Oh. I did see him earlier. You could hear it from outside the dining hall too. I’ve never seen the dorm manager get that angry. The dorm manager was louder than Kim Myeong-gyu? What happened in the dining hall?”
“That bastard threw a plate in the dining hall. The dorm manager was absolutely horrified. Apparently one more time and he gets a mandatory eviction?”
“Is he not right in the head? But honestly, I kind of wish he’d just get evicted. He’s so damn creepy.”
“Yeah, seriously. But weren’t Room 203 and Kim Myeong-gyu close?”
Hae-yul stopped in his tracks when he heard his own room number mentioned alongside Kim Myeong-gyu’s name.
It wasn’t exactly pleasant to have his name brought up in the same breath as Kim Myeong-gyu’s. On top of that, wasn’t Hae-yul involved in whatever had happened with Kim Myeong-gyu and that plate in the dining hall?
The whispering continued.
“Who’s Room 203? …Oh, that guy? Come on, honestly — does Room 203 look like the type to be hanging around Kim Myeong-gyu?”
“I feel a little bad for him. He got unlucky with Kim Myeong-gyu and the guy won’t leave him alone. Earlier too — the whole thing happened after Room 203 left.”
“Insane. Oh, but what does Room 203 even do? Civil service exam? Retaking entrance exams? Or like, some kind of trainee? Why would someone like that hang out with Kim Myeong-gyu?”
“You don’t know? Isn’t he just a regular college student? It’s like you only ever see him in the dining hall and barely anywhere else.”
“Fair enough. I guess besides Kim Myeong-gyu, there’s probably almost no one who’s actually talked to him. Oh, but that bastard Kim Myeong-gyu, last time he—”
The whispering gradually faded away. Hae-yul came down the stairs, turned the story about Kim Myeong-gyu he’d just heard over in his mind, and opened the door to his room. It seemed Kim Myeong-gyu was even more unhinged than he’d thought — it would probably be best to avoid him as much as possible.
At first, it had just been strange and curious how Kim Myeong-gyu seemed to harbor some odd sense of rivalry toward him — but as time went on, the way he spoke and acted had grown increasingly too familiar, and it was starting to grate on him.
It would be better to cut things off before he completely crossed the line.
