Today’s morning class was iron welding.
The large iron workshop set up beside the Sculpture Department Building was equipped with various welding machines. Arc welders, oxygen welders, gas welders — machines that each worked differently depending on the material. I was familiar with all of them, having used them all throughout last year.
The students were spread out working separately for safety, all dressed in full-body work suits with welding masks on, making it hard to tell who was who. You could only figure out who someone was by looking at their work piece.
I was armored up just the same. Pulling the welder over while wearing a full-body welding suit that weighed quite a bit took twice the effort.
I picked up the cutting torch attached to the welder, opened the LPG valve, then held a lighter flame to the tip of the torch nozzle — and a palm-sized burst of flame shot out with fierce, bird-like force. Keeping my eyes fixed on it, I turned the oxygen valve and the roaring flame stretched long and narrow. I then alternated adjusting the gas and oxygen until I produced a blue neutral flame ideal for cutting. It looked tame compared to the earlier burst, but this neutral flame, burning at over 3,000 degrees, was a terrifying thing capable of slicing cleanly through anything. All I had to do now was focus and cut the steel plate safely.
I lowered the welding mask I’d been wearing tilted on my head and covered my face. After checking where to cut through the lens, I brought the torch over — and I could clearly see the steel plate melting and splitting apart in the blue flame. With so many layers of protective gear on, it felt less like I was actually welding and more like watching a video on a screen. But since losing focus could lead to a serious accident, I had to concentrate carefully on the work.
I had just cut through about three steel plates when it happened.
“Uh….”
I felt a vibration in my pocket. At first I thought it was a message, but the vibration kept going, so I realized it was a call.
It nagged at me, but I decided to ignore it. A call coming in just past 9 in the morning would be spam or a survey at most. I was in the middle of working, and I had no intention of resetting the oxygen welder settings just to answer something like that.
The vibration, relentless and long, eventually cut off after a while, and in the meantime I finished checking the blueprint. I was bringing the welding torch back to the steel plate, as focused as I could be, when my pocket buzzed again.
Is it not spam but a delivery person?
But I hadn’t paid for anything recently, so there was nothing to be delivered. A building manager then? I figured I should finish this plate and then take the call.
I moved my hands calmly and unhurriedly to finish the cut, and by the time I was done, the second call had already ended too. I turned off the welder and removed my welding mask before the reddish cut edge of the steel plate had even cooled. Then I took my phone out of my pocket to check who had called.
“Huh?”
The number that appeared alongside the [2 missed calls] notification was unsaved, but the digits were strangely familiar. Who did I contact with this number again….
I was rolling my eyes and racking my brain when the phone started vibrating in my hand again. A third call from that familiar number.
I couldn’t take a call inside the workshop with the professor present, so I hurried out of the iron workshop first. Even as I walked over to the nearby woodworking workshop, my phone kept vibrating without pause. I arrived at the woodworking workshop, hunched against the lingering late-spring chill. The moment I saw the empty workshop, I realized who the familiar number belonged to. The memory of Seon Eunhu’s low voice, reciting his number to me several times in this very spot, came back to me clearly.
…Did something urgent come up?
The persistence of Seon Eunhu’s calls rattled me with a sudden jolt of fear. News important enough to deliver right this instant was unlikely to be good news.
Out of nowhere, for the first time in a long while, I thought of my grandparents’ faces. The eyes that had lost all focus the moment they received the call saying their child had finally passed — those eyes pushed up through my fog-like memories and surfaced before me.
I braced myself to receive bad news. I wrapped my heart in protective gear, determined not to be shaken by whatever he had to say, and only then pressed the answer button.
“Hello.”
— Ah, you’re really….
“Yes?”
— Haah….
I’d expected the purpose of the call to come pouring out the moment I answered, but all I heard from the other end was the sound of labored breathing. I thought I caught the faint echo of a curse word, but a grinder going off somewhere in the distance made it hard to be sure.
“Did something happen…?”
— Where are you.
“I’m at the iron workshop right now. I came out to the woodworking workshop just to take your call, but — why?”
— Ah right, the iron workshop. So our junior Go Taerim was hard at work in the department building I was just in, more diligently than anyone else. Much more mature than a re-enrolled student who has no idea how precious time is and just sits around glued to his phone. I should learn from my junior, really.
Just from his voice, I could tell Seon Eunhu was in a very irritable mood right now. The fact that he launched straight into sarcasm — did that mean it wasn’t an urgent situation? I had no idea why he’d gone to the trouble of calling first thing in the morning just to pick a fight, but at least it seemed like nothing was seriously wrong.
I let out a relieved breath, and the tension I’d been holding in my lungs left with it. Well, Seon Eunhu was someone who operated outside the bounds of common sense. I’d been an idiot to apply normal-person logic to someone like him in the first place.
Then I caught on to something Seon Eunhu had just said — that he’d been in the department building until just a moment ago.
His phrasing was past tense, which meant he was somewhere else now, and I had a feeling that whatever had happened in between was the reason Seon Eunhu was so sharp-edged right now.
So I asked him calmly.
“Where are you right now?”
— I was on my way to absolutely destroy the Rainbow Bridge.
“What? Which one?”
— Anyway, forget it. Come to the third-year studio at three o’clock and don’t be late.
“Okay. But what did you call to talk about?”
If all he’d wanted was to confirm the appointment, a text would have been enough. I was curious why Seon Eunhu had called so obsessively like this. So I waited for an answer, but no matter how long I waited, there was nothing. I kept listening patiently for a good while after that, and then I realized he had hung up long ago.
That’s it? He called just to be angry at me?
I couldn’t hide my bafflement as I stared at the peaceful screen of my phone. It had been a strange call — I’d done nothing but ask questions, and Seon Eunhu had done nothing but be irritated. To think I’d dropped what I was working on and come all the way out here for this pointless call….
I glared at the words “Call Duration 0:23” logged on my screen as if they were Seon Eunhu himself, then jabbed at the screen to save the number.
[Seon Eunhu]
I deliberately left off the word “senior” and looked at the three bluntly written characters of his name. Even staring at it, the absurdity didn’t fade easily.
The moment my liberal arts class ended, I headed to the Sculpture Department Building. I waited for a cancellation text from Seon Eunhu all the way until I reached the building entrance, but no further message came.
The door to the third-year studio was half open. I lingered outside it, looking for the right moment to go in. Voices of seniors drifted out from inside, but there was no male voice among them, so I couldn’t be sure whether Seon Eunhu was in there or not.
“Um….”
I knocked cautiously and stepped inside, and the seniors gathered in the center all turned to look at me at once. They each had a white chunk of plaster in their hands.
“Oh? Taerim, what brings you here?”
“What are you here for? Coming all this way.”
“Can we help you with something?”
The seniors greeted me warmly, even though I’d only ever given them an awkward nod in passing. Their genuine offer of help hit me with an unexpected wave of feeling — touched and grateful.
“No, it’s not that—”
“You’re here?”
At that familiar voice, I finally spotted Seon Eunhu sitting in the corner of the studio.
He was looking over at me in a black short-sleeved shirt and work pants, legs crossed, and he did not look particularly pleased to see me. The other seniors were welcoming an unexpected guest, while Seon Eunhu — the one who’d actually called me here — wore an indifferent expression.
It was completely at odds with the relentless phone calls from this morning.
“Yes. Hello.”
So I greeted him with equal indifference. We were stiff enough with each other that anyone watching would think we’d been forced into this meeting.
The third-year studio was arranged like any other year’s studio, with worktables lined along the walls. The shape and size of each table differed according to each third-year student’s personality and working style, but Seon Eunhu had pushed two desks together in an L-shape at the corner of the room, claiming a wide workspace for himself. A privilege only possible for whoever occupied a corner of the studio. The fact that he was one of the more senior students even among the third-years made itself felt in little details like this.
“Did you call Taerim here?”
One of the seniors gathered in the center asked — it seemed strange to them that I’d slipped into the studio and was making my way to Seon Eunhu’s corner.
“Yeah. Sit here and wait. I still need to finish up — the surface isn’t done yet.”
He answered the question in a way that made it hard to tell whether he actually had, his words trailing off loosely. He pulled the chair next to him over, jerked his chin at me to tell me to sit, then turned back to his worktable.
Is he in a slightly prickly mood right now?
He didn’t take his eyes off his work and only said what needed to be said. He looked sharp. I had a feeling that doing anything annoying right now would get me roped into another pointless argument, so I sat down obediently in the chair he’d brought over.
And the moment I looked at his work, I couldn’t help it — my mouth fell open and my gaze was stolen away completely. A hand-shaped sculpture sitting on his worktable was so strikingly excellent it drew an involuntary sound of admiration.
Made of clay, it was posed in a dynamic shape, as if reaching out to grasp something. Despite being roughly ten times the size of an actual hand, every line and crease of the palm was rendered with precise detail.
It already looks finished to me, and he says he still needs to work on it….
I guess someone with an exceptional level of obsessive energy has an equally obsessive work ethic.
I was quietly marveling to myself when a flat, amused laugh drifted over from one of the seniors.
“Someone might think Taerim came as your assistant.”
The tone carried a certainty that I couldn’t possibly have come as Seon Eunhu’s assistant.
I was starting to wonder why she was so sure of that, when Seon Eunhu, still with his back to them, opened his mouth unhurriedly. His hands working the clay didn’t stop for a moment.
“He is my assistant.”
“Yes. …Huh? What did you say?”
“He came to help with my work, so let him in and out of the studio today. Should be done in about three hours.”
“What? You’re using an assistant?”
The seniors gasped and all looked over at once. But since Seon Eunhu was the one with his back turned, working, I was the only one receiving their stares. I pulled the corners of my mouth into an awkward smile.
