“What’s up, hyung? Is something wrong?”
The man looked at him and asked, then glanced at Jang Juwon intently. Apparently his shout had been heard inside.
“No, nothing.”
“Oh, yeah?”
When Baek Iseon shrugged and answered nonchalantly, the man scratched his head looking a bit awkward.
“Go in first. I’ve got one puff left.”
Baek Iseon showed the cigarette he was holding in his right hand.
“Okay. Come in quickly. Everyone’s making a fuss looking for you, hyung. Especially the girls…”
“Alright, alright.”
Baek Iseon cut off the man’s words and pushed his back toward the inside of the shop. The man hesitated slightly, then soon disappeared inside the shop.
Baek Iseon sucked in the remaining puff and didn’t take his eyes off Jang Juwon. Jang Juwon also didn’t back down and glared at him with all his might.
“…”
“…”
Having finished smoking, Baek Iseon flicked the cigarette butt into the trash can. He stood for a moment rummaging in his back pocket, then pulled out a small piece of paper. Then he thrust it at Jang Juwon without hesitation. Jang Juwon shot a look at Baek Iseon asking what this was.
“Take it.”
“I don’t want to.”
Then Baek Iseon snatched Jang Juwon’s hand and pressed the stiff paper into his hand. Jang Juwon frowned and roughly pulled his hand away.
“You’ll need it?”
He smirked and turned his back toward the shop. When he turned around, Jang Juwon read the paper in his hand. Baek Iseon, H.P… It was a business card. And one with only a name and cell phone number written on it at that. For a college student, it was extremely obnoxious.
Just before entering the shop, Baek Iseon briefly turned his head and made eye contact with Jang Juwon. The corners of Baek Iseon’s mouth were soaring toward the sky. His eyes thickly scanned Jang Juwon’s body. Jang Juwon felt as if he was saying this to him.
‘You’re going to do it with me, you know?’
Principles or whatever, there would absolutely never be a time when he’d sleep with that obnoxious bastard again. Jang Juwon clenched his fist tightly. Thanks to that, the business card was mercilessly crumpled.
***
When classes began in earnest, everyone was groaning within just a few weeks. The major professors had no mercy. Every subject assigned practice problems as homework every week, and quizzes continued every class. Most of all, the most fucked up thing was the lab experiments. As experiments done by undergraduates usually go, numbers completely different from theory came out, and the reports were naturally a complete mess.
So all of this came as an even greater pain to Jang Juwon, who had completely blown last year’s grades.
“I don’t know… I don’t know…”
Inside a small cafe in the university district, Jang Juwon buried his head in a thick major textbook.
“Tsk tsk, expulsion is just a matter of time.”
Shin Jisu, sitting across from him, clicked her tongue and sneered. Jang Juwon quickly raised his head and sharply glared at Shin Jisu, then looked at her notebook. However, Shin Jisu’s notebook was also just scrawled full of curses toward Bernoulli, not much different from Jang Juwon’s.
The two people simultaneously looked at Choi Yeonho. Choi Yeonho tried hard to pretend not to notice their intense gazes, but eventually couldn’t resist and slid his notebook forward.
“…Fine. Look, look. You blockheads.”
“Thank you, Yeonho-nim!”
“Thanks, my friend!”
The two people hurriedly began copying Choi Yeonho’s notebook. Homework could somehow be done this way, but the problem was the quizzes. If even the practice problems were this difficult and troublesome, there was no way they could solve quizzes well. Moreover, there were four subjects like this… That’s not to say the remaining two subjects were easy either. One was a lab, and one was practical training.
“Fuck… Why did I come to such a shitty department?”
Having transcribed all of Choi Yeonho’s homework, Shin Jisu threw down her pen and lamented her fate. Jang Juwon also scribbled with his pen while earnestly nodding his head. Choi Yeonho propped his chin and looked at his friends affectionately, no, pathetically, and said.
“Still, study a bit before you go. The Applied Fluids professor supposedly gives F’s if you turn in blank quizzes more than twice.”
Jang Juwon and Shin Jisu simultaneously whipped their heads around and glared fiercely at Choi Yeonho. For a moment, Choi Yeonho felt like he’d become the protagonist of a horror movie. No, protagonist was too much. Maybe more like a supporting character who meets death first?
“What? Fuck, why are you only saying that now?!”
“We’re fucked…”
“…You guys already turned them in blank…”
Jang Juwon and Shin Jisu simultaneously nodded their heads slowly. Choi Yeonho saw the souls leaving the two people’s bodies. A moment of mourning silence flowed over the table.
“Hey, aren’t there study guides or something for quizzes? How the hell do other kids solve these? Those bastards definitely got study guides.”
Shin Jisu muttered. Jang Juwon flinched for no reason at the word ‘study guides.’
“There probably aren’t study guides for quizzes? Even if there were, what sunbae would give study guides to loner bastards like us? Shin Jisu, if only your personality was a bit nicer, there would have been so many sunbaes willing to be pushovers for you.”
“Choi Yeonho, I told you I don’t talk to ugly men.”
“How great, yeah.”
Choi Yeonho and Shin Jisu blamed each other and bickered amicably. Jang Juwon couldn’t say anything and buried his head down, pretending to copy the notebook more diligently.
“But did you see? There was one fucking handsome sunbae at the department MT.”
Flinch. Jang Juwon’s body jerked on its own. As expected, he couldn’t be left out of her interests.
“Ah, the one who came in when our little attention-seeker Juwon yelled?”
“……Don’t say it’s small.”
Jang Juwon said through gritted teeth. When they were the ones who were ridiculously big. He was just a bit bigger than average at most.
“I did some research, you know?”
“How did you? Did you ask the girls?”
Shin Jisu had gotten along very poorly with male classmates since freshman year. This was inevitable. It was a fantastic collaboration between guys who kept attacking her with confessions and a woman who didn’t know how to reject them nicely. So at most, she occasionally exchanged words with female classmates.
“Yeah, you bastard.”
Shin Jisu retorted fiercely.
“But he’s not just handsome.”
“What else?”
Choi Yeonho asked. Jang Juwon was pretending not to be interested, but his head was naturally turning slowly and the speed at which he moved his hands was gradually slowing down.
“His family is fucking loaded too.”
“Ooh.”
Choi Yeonho gave a soulless response.
“And also……”
Shin Jisu paused for a moment. Before she knew it, Jang Juwon had put down his pen entirely and was listening intently to Shin Jisu’s story.
“He was top of the department from freshman year until he took his leave of absence.”
“Wow……”
Choi Yeonho clapped dryly. However, Shin Jisu’s words didn’t disappear from Jang Juwon’s ears and kept circling around. Top of the department, the whole time.
“So there are lots of people dying to study with that sunbae, but he likes being alone or something. He absolutely doesn’t do study groups or anything and doesn’t lend out his notes either.”
“Hmm…… I kind of understand that feeling somehow.”
Choi Yeonho looked back and forth between Jang Juwon and Shin Jisu and slowly nodded his head.
“Yeonho-ya, you……”
Jang Juwon stroked his head with an affectionate touch.
“You can’t escape us…… Give up……”
The corners of Choi Yeonho’s mouth drooped down. Shin Jisu, who was watching that sight, nodded her head with a satisfied smile.
Returning to his studio apartment, Jang Juwon flopped onto the bed and fell into deep contemplation. It was a very serious concern he couldn’t confide to either Choi Yeonho or Shin Jisu.
Jang Juwon just lifted his head and glanced sideways at the desk. On the desk lay a crumpled small piece of paper all by itself. It was Baek Iseon’s contact information that he ultimately couldn’t throw away.
“……”
A two-armed scale appeared in Jang Juwon’s mind. Weights were placed on each side of the scale. On one side were pride and principles, and on the other side were grades.
‘Applied Fluids, if you turn in two blank papers you get an F.’
The moment Choi Yeonho’s words came to mind, a weight in the shape of F dropped onto the scale with a thud. In an instant, the scale tilted to one side. Unable to overcome the tilt, the weight of pride fell straight to the floor.
“……Aaaaargh!”
Jang Juwon let out a scream filled with pain as he tore at his hair. His body sat up bolt upright on its own. His legs moved faster than expected. Before he knew it, Jang Juwon was standing in front of his desk. His hand snatched up the crumpled paper. His other hand was frantically tapping on his phone. He had to finish the task quickly before his brain returned to its senses. In the end, his thumb succeeded in pressing the send button hard.
oh man