“…….”
“…….”
How long had I been staring? The unexpected eye contact caught me off guard. Should I look away or not? It was only a split second, but my mind was racing.
It was Seon Eunhu who broke the eye contact first. Having bowed to the offering table and stood back up, he shoved his cash roughly into the pig’s mouth. Then, as he made his way back to his spot, he called out to the department rep.
“Jeongah, I think everyone who’s going to come up has come up — do we really need to keep going? The pig’s jaw is going to fall off.”
“Hmm, you think?”
“Yeah. So for the last one, let’s just call… you know. That one. Just that one last thing.”
“That one? What?”
Seon Eunhu tilted his head as if trying to recall something. Every Sculpture Department student there was watching his mouth. Seon Eunhu narrowed his eyes as though he wasn’t quite sure.
“That… full…?”
Then he tilted his head the other way.
“Scholarship…?”
He was pretending not to remember, but everyone knew it was just Seon Eunhu playing coy.
“The student who’s on a full scholarship?”
The department rep asked, and Seon Eunhu nodded in satisfied recognition.
“Oh, is that how you say it? Right. The student on a full scholarship.”
Everyone there knew he was maneuvering to drag me out. While I let out a small, meaningless “Ah…” through slightly parted lips, faces began turning toward me one by one. Among them, Seon Eunhu looked at me last of all. Those eyes, which grew gentle when he smiled, were staring me down with a force that was anything but gentle, as he said:
“Come up. Go Taeling.”
I hesitated and instinctively stepped back at the sudden call. The expressions watching me were varied. There was curiosity and puzzlement over Seon Eunhu singling me out by name — and there was also concern and sympathy over the fact that I, who had been quietly left out by unspoken agreement due to my background as an orphanage kid, had now been called up. And on the other hand, there were also voices marveling, having only heard the words “full scholarship” without knowing my circumstances.
“Ooh— Go Taerim. Come on up!”
I’d been hesitating, and only after the upperclassmen called out a few more times in a teasing way did I finally walk forward. I snuck a glance at Seon Eunhu and immediately looked away. Here was someone who’d told me not to acknowledge him, and yet he’d called me out in front of every Sculpture Department student — I couldn’t make sense of him.
I was alone in front of the mat, fumbling to take off my shoes, when —
“You should just get an exorcism done on yourself.”
Seon Eunhu passed by and murmured low enough for only me to hear.
“Though I’m not sure even that would reform you.”
“What do you mean…?”
Before I could say another word, Seon Eunhu had already walked off somewhere.
What on earth is he trying to do with me?
I was going to follow him with my eyes, baffled — but the department rep suddenly rushed over and urged me to hurry up and bow. Apparently the pungmul club members had just arrived. So I was practically shoved onto the mat, bowed, took the money out of my pocket, and put it in the pig’s mouth. The crumpled bill was visibly mine even from a few steps away.
I was hurriedly putting my shoes back on when the sound of a kkwaenggwari rang out from somewhere. From the direction of the sound, a line of samulnori performers came marching in their brightly colored traditional costumes. Starting with the kkwaenggwari, the janggu, jing, and buk joined in, and the atmosphere turned lively in an instant. It was a pretty decent soundtrack to be listening to after getting shaken down by a pig.
The performance went on for a while. Students from other departments who happened to be passing by joined together, clapping and cheering along. In the midst of that, I slowly clapped along too while looking around for Seon Eunhu. Even if he was a pervert who was desperate to show off his junk, he was at least easy to spot in a crowd with that frame of his — and yet I couldn’t find him anywhere.
I wanted to ask him — since he broke the rules first, does that mean the promise is now void….
But Seon Eunhu was nowhere to be found until the ritual was completely over, and he wasn’t even in the department building lobby where the drinking gathering was being held.
The department building lobby had low floor-seating tables lined up in neat rows, each set with drinks and snacks.
I went and sat with a group of female classmates from second year who had gathered at one of them. It wasn’t because I was close with them — it was because they’d claimed the most tucked-away spot among the familiar faces.
I was leaving my cup of alcohol untouched and filling my stomach with snacks when Kim Juhee, who had been eating bossam across the table, called my name.
“Taerim. Hey — are you close with Eunhu?”
It hadn’t even been long since the after-party started, and Kim Juhee’s face was already red with a flush. The moment she brought up Seon Eunhu, the classmates sitting around the table pricked up their ears. The sudden attention on me made me stop mid-bite and look flustered, so Kim Juhee lowered her voice and continued in a tone that sounded almost like an excuse.
“No, I was just surprised when he called you out of nowhere earlier. Going up there isn’t exactly a good thing, and you wouldn’t single out just one specific person unless you were close with them. So I was wondering if you two knew each other from before. I don’t think I’d ever seen you together.”
“We’re not close — we’ve just talked a few times. That’s it.”
I briefly hesitated over whether to blow the whistle on being one-sidedly harassed, but chose to brush it off instead. Seon Eunhu’s image was so favorable that telling the truth would obviously get me nowhere. There was nothing to gain and everything to lose — I’d just end up being the one who spread strange rumors about him while getting humiliated by him on top of it.
“Really? But he was calling you by a nickname and everything?”
“Nickname?”
“Earlier he called you something like Go Tae-ring or Go Tae-whatever, didn’t he.”
“Ah…. That’s nothing much either. More importantly, there’s a hair in your drink.”
“What? Oh, damn. Is my hair going to get dyed from this?”
She had been leaning in so far toward me with her intense focus on Seon Eunhu that Kim Juhee’s hair had fallen straight into her drink. As she rubbed it frantically against her sleeve and let out a stream of curses, the people around her laughed at the chaos.
“Kim Juhee, the way you completely lose your mind the second Seon Eunhu comes up is honestly hilarious. So what were you actually trying to fish out of Go Taerim.”
“Wow, you’re all so sharp. Was it that obvious?”
“How could it not be? Last year you were all over Go Taerim for a while, and after he told you he felt pressured you stopped talking to him. And now suddenly you’re being all friendly. What gives?”
“Hey. Are you allowed to bring up someone’s dark history right in front of them? It’s not my fault I was born an idol chaser. Cheers!”
Amid mischievous laughter, the cups came together in the center of the table and then scattered. I started moving my chopsticks again.
Ah… so that’s why Kim Juhee had been ignoring me for a while.
Not long after enrollment, Kim Juhee had kept striking up conversations with me, and eventually even followed me to the dining hall and started prying into my personal life — so I’d told her in a roundabout way that it was a lot to handle, and apparently that had rubbed her the wrong way.
I tried to say it as nicely as I could, but I guess it didn’t land.
While I was coming to that belated realization, the classmates’ conversation carried on.
“Anyway — so what else were you curious about when it comes to Seon Eunhu?”
“I mean, I heard he’s the type to date quietly but consistently, so I was wondering if he’d maybe gotten a thing going with someone by now. I was going to ask about that.”
The way she said his name so naturally without any honorifics made it clear she talked about Seon Eunhu a lot in everyday life.
I watched Kim Juhee shamelessly wiggling her eyebrows at me when our eyes met and smiled awkwardly. I guess I’m still the only one here who knows what Seon Eunhu is really like.
“What’s the deal with him and Dayeon lately? Wasn’t there something going on between them?”
“I thought so too, but apparently nothing’s happened since then. Dayeon just ended up embarrassing herself.”
“What? I thought with the way they were exchanging glances and making a whole thing out of the gummies, they had something going on — but apparently not?”
“Apparently not. It’s not like Seon Eunhu was stringing her along either, it seems like Dayeon just got ahead of herself. So anyway — do you know anything about that, Taerim?”
Kim Juhee seized the moment and asked in that slick way of hers. I put on my best apologetic expression and slowly shook my head.
“Yeah. Sorry, but I genuinely don’t know anything about that guy—”
“Oh, it’s Seon Eunhu.”
Whether she’d sensed that my answer was going nowhere even without hearing it out, Kim Juhee cut me off and hissed quietly. So I too pulled my neck in and looked in the direction they were looking. Sure enough, Seon Eunhu was standing in front of the third-year studio with Lee Jinseong and a few other upperclassmen. He must have come out from working — the maple-colored apron tied around his waist suited him surprisingly well.
What were they talking about. Seon Eunhu let out a low laugh and walked over to Lee Jinseong, throwing an arm around his shoulders. Lee Jinseong staggered under the force, and Seon Eunhu pulled him in close — and in doing so, the two of them ended up with their backs to us. Seon Eunhu had been ruffling Jinseong’s hair like he was a little kid when he suddenly said something and gave him a firm pat on the back. Whether physical affection was a regular thing between them, the upperclassmen around them showed no particular reaction to it.
Wouldn’t it feel uncomfortable to be that pressed up against someone? I was thinking that it looked a bit much between two men when the two figures, previously inseparable, finally parted. Someone passing by had stopped to greet them. Seon Eunhu’s face lit up and he pulled that person briefly into a light embrace before letting go. Whatever the man who’d been suddenly swept into his arms said, Seon Eunhu laughed in a teasing way.
“…….”
Every time I watched him, I felt it — Seon Eunhu was warm toward other people. Looking at him now, he seemed like someone liberal with physical affection too. Seon Eunhu seen from a distance was a completely different person from the Seon Eunhu I’d experienced.
Why is he only so inconsistent when it comes to me.
If he’s that great, fine — but why does he have to look down on and make life difficult for someone who’s done nothing wrong? In the end, we all turn into a handful of ash when we die, just the same.
