With not much time left, he could finish quickly when he concentrated all his attention in his anxious state. After completing submission by email and checking the time, it was much earlier than expected. Jae-min put an ice cube from the cup in his mouth, stretched his body fully, and yawned.
“Ah, the view here isn’t good.”
Coincidentally, the window seat had a good view of the athletic field. He’d just realized that. Though he couldn’t see features or expressions clearly one by one, he could still definitely distinguish which one was Hyun-woong. The darkest, biggest man.
Whether the match had just ended, people cheered and jumped around. Hyun-woong picked up a t-shirt and roughly wiped his sweat-drenched face with it. Because of that, his bare skin was fully exposed. As Hyun-woong said something to his friends and turned to the side, the shape of his bulging chest muscles stood out even more.
If water were poured from above, it wouldn’t even reach below his chest but would flow down following the curves of his upper chest and drip drop by drop from his nipples. That’s how large his pectorals were.
‘Does that bastard just eat and work out?’
Jae-min, who had been looking outside with an indifferent gaze, crunched the ice and got up from his seat. It was time to slowly head out to his major class. After that class ended, next would be a general education course. It was a class that included group projects Jae-min wasn’t keen on, but he’d registered for it unavoidably because it was a required general education course.
‘Wait, come to think of it?’
While moving his steps, suddenly realizing where else he’d seen Hyun-woong’s name, Jae-min swallowed a curse inwardly.
⁕⁕⁕
The most important thing to Jae-min was himself, and second were women who fit his tastes. He really had no interest in other males. No matter how famous someone was on campus, he only noticed women and couldn’t even remember men.
Moreover, even when someone approached to become close, he usually pushed them away. He already had people he got along with moderately well in his department and hobby activities anyway, and he didn’t particularly feel the need to expand his social circle and meet new people during college life.
Anyway, though Jae-min had no interest in others like that, he did know about one man who took the required general education course ‘Writing and Logic.’
‘Kang Hyun-woong also takes this class.’
Though he’d completely forgotten, when he thought about it carefully, his name remained in his head. It was because Hyun-woong’s surname was ‘Kang,’ so he was at the very top of the attendance list.
On the first day of class in the first semester, his gaze had gone there involuntarily because of his particularly large build. But he’d only perceived his existence along with the impression that he was big, with nothing particularly memorable. But now the situation was different.
“Then I’ll end class here.”
The professor who finished the lecture left first, and most students had also left the lecture hall. Jae-min, who had been slowly packing his bag, stared at the back door with a displeased expression.
“Um, Hyun-woong…!”
A woman with half-tied hair wearing an innocent dress stood in front of Hyun-woong, who was sitting right by the door. Jae-min raised his eyebrow crookedly. As Hyun-woong, who had been rustling around organizing his desk, raised his head, the woman suddenly held something out.
“You work out, right? They say this is really good for building your body!”
What landed with a thud on the desk was a pink box. It looked vaguely like diet pills but seemed to be a muscle enhancement supplement. Hyun-woong picked up the box with a bewildered expression and examined it from various angles.
“Is it a gift? It’s not my birthday today though?”
“The one-plus-one event was on, so I ended up buying too many. I can’t finish them all by myself because of the expiration date. Help me out a bit.”
It was obviously a lie. Jae-min clicked his tongue quietly enough that only he could hear. That girl who clearly seemed very interested in Hyun-woong didn’t seem to know that this guy had been dating Yun-ji since yesterday.
Whether he knew or didn’t know the goodwill clearly felt from the girl’s reddened face and twisting body movements, Hyun-woong didn’t even glance at the other person once and only read the description written on the box.
“The name is…”
“Ah, I’m Lee Chae-hui. I told you before.”
“No, this name. ‘Buffalo Muscle Buster’?”
At the indifferent response, Chae-hui’s face flushed bright red. The deep pink medicine looked no different from the box. Even Jae-min watching felt embarrassed along with her.
“Mmm! It’s a supplement that people serious about fitness take. There are a lot of ads for it on SNS lately. You’ve seen it too, right?”
Hyun-woong frowned and made an ambiguous expression. At least it definitely wasn’t an affirmative smile.
“Well… thanks. I’ll take it well.”
Whether he’d finally finished reading through the supplement’s description written densely on one side of the box, Hyun-woong belatedly opened his mouth and bobbed his head. Only then did Chae-hui smile brightly.
Hyun-woong indifferently stuffed the pink box into his unzipped bag. Jae-min quietly watched his behavior.
He seemed to have absolutely no interest in the woman who’d just given him a gift. Though she was a different style from Jae-min’s taste, she was still pretty. It was annoying from the start that he had no interest in the other person’s appearance or intentions and was seriously looking at something like muscle enhancement supplement descriptions.
‘Unlike me, he’s the straightforward type? When he has a lover, he doesn’t even glance at others around him?’
Words Yun-ji had spat out kept circling in his ears—that once you become an adult, different styles are more popular, that Hyun-woong was a real man, and so on.
It was when he was glaring at Hyun-woong with a gaze full of irritation. Hyun-woong, who had silently zipped up his bag, propped his hand on the desk and raised his body, and as he lifted his head their eyes met directly.
From before, when his gaze overlapped with someone’s, he hated being the first to look away because it felt like losing whether the other person was male or female. So Jae-min stared at Hyun-woong without withdrawing his emotional gaze.
But Hyun-woong’s reaction was somewhat peculiar. The moment their gazes entangled, Hyun-woong stiffened his body rigidly.
“What…”
The reaction seemed unusual, like he might pick a fight, so Jae-min spoke first, but as soon as he did, Hyun-woong quickly turned his body away again.
Though their eyes had definitely met for only a brief moment, strangely to Jae-min those few seconds felt quite long. As if he’d been observed by Hyun-woong for quite a while.
“Hyun-woong, are you going home now?”
Chae-hui, who had just given Hyun-woong a gift and been standing there restlessly, hurriedly followed behind him. Jae-min watched the two people leaving the lecture hall until the end, then lowered his gaze to the phone he was holding.
‘Even if he has a lover right now, his attitude toward women is really blunt and not great. He’s popular? He’s not even that handsome to begin with, is he?’
While badmouthing Hyun-woong inwardly, Jae-min naturally entered SNS.
Though he hadn’t intended to, Yun-ji’s face appeared first in his feed. He entered Yun-ji’s account thinking to unfollow her. But suddenly her follower count caught his eye.
Though he didn’t remember exactly how many it had been, it had subtly changed. After hesitating, he skimmed through the follow list.
There was an account he’d never seen before. Looking at the name, it was Kang Hyun-woong.
“When did they mutually follow?”
Shocked, Jae-min narrowed his brow. He immediately entered Hyun-woong’s account. The follower count wasn’t much.
His profile was a sky photo, but balloons familiar to Jae-min’s eyes were visible in the bottom corner. Seeing the words ‘Daedongjae’ written, it seemed to be a photo taken during last year’s festival.
“Even the feed is boring…”
He wondered if maybe he’d posted some good selfies, but there was nothing like that. There were only five photos total.
Moreover, even those were all blurry photos. The moon, a river, the ground. All of them looked like they’d been carelessly snapped while running somewhere.
Jae-min, who had been spying on the feed, clicked his tongue irritably. He’d tried to find something to badmouth but it ended in complete failure. There were no photos commonly seen on male classmates’ accounts, like showing off their bodies at the gym or stacking up several empty soju bottles to boast about their drinking capacity. It was just plain and proper.
Then Jae-min accidentally entered the tab that collected photos where Hyun-woong was tagged. There were quite interesting photos there.
Among them, the most eye-catching was a photo posted by a female student—though he didn’t know who she was, her breasts were definitely Jae-min’s taste.
A woman with dark skin and bleached yellow hair with a tomboy-like impression was wearing a baseball jacket the department had ordered as a group. Looking at the jacket color, like Hyun-woong she was a Physical Education student.
Next to her was only the robust arm of a man who had rolled up his short-sleeved shirt to his shoulder, and Hyun-woong’s ID was tagged there.
[Is it real that Woong’s forearm is bigger than my face?]
Seeing the comment with a blushing girl emoticon, Jae-min’s face scrunched up deeply.
“…This kind of guy is really women’s taste?”
It wasn’t even just this one post. As he scrolled down, there were quite a few posts where pretty women had tagged Hyun-woong.
“Even if the face is a potato, a good body is better?”
