I struggled fiercely, but Seon Eunhu snatched the bag away from me with almost no effort. Then he wrenched the opening apart so wide it was a miracle the plastic didn’t tear.
“Tiny thing, acting all bold with no fear — where’d you even pick up the nerve to carry something like this…. …Wait, what’s this?”
He seemed to be looking for something specific inside the bag. Eunhu’s brow furrowed as he shook the small bag and rummaged through its contents, the thin plastic crinkling pathetically with every shake.
“You… what is this.”
“It’s spicy tuna.”
“That’s it?”
“And chopsticks.”
“Huh…. That actually sounds damn good.”
“…….”
“…Do you have rice at home?”
He was trying to act unbothered, but the flustered look on Seon Eunhu’s face was impossible to miss. He gave a small awkward cough and held the bag back out toward me. When I just stood there looking unimpressed, he forcibly grabbed my hand and made me take it.
I stood there gripping the bag, staring up at him. One second he’s looming over a junior and trying to strong-arm me out of my groceries, and now he’s suddenly worried about whether I’ve eaten — no matter how great a returning senior he thought he was, this was beyond what anyone could chalk up to normal behavior.
“What exactly do you want from me? Why are you doing this? And another thing—!”
I was about to let my temper loose when a sudden thought crossed my mind and I glanced down at his crotch. I was curious whether he might actually be erect right now. He stores to the right, doesn’t he. The shadow made it hard to see clearly, so I squinted — and Seon Eunhu’s hand appeared, covering the relevant area.
“Shit. How did I end up like this, with someone like you.”
The expression on Seon Eunhu’s face as he muttered that self-deprecating curse was sour. Looking at his face, so heavily saturated with something like revulsion, I almost wondered if it was me who had followed him here and not the other way around. Who asked you to follow me? He’d stalked after me like some kind of creep and now he was acting like iron shavings that had been helplessly dragged by a magnet. It was absurd.
“I’m not exactly thrilled about you either, seni—”
“But you’re not some complete stranger, so I can’t exactly just ignore it and walk away. Can I?”
“What?”
“I followed you because I didn’t want to be left with guilt for nothing. I don’t want to leave something behind that I’ll regret for the rest of my life.”
I stared at him wide-eyed at those cryptic words, but Seon Eunhu just kept looking at me with that same displeased expression.
I couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was saying, so I turned it over in my mind and found the one part that made even a little bit of sense.
“Are you here to apologize for telling me not to look at you?”
“Apologize?”
This time Seon Eunhu turned his head and laughed like the word itself was absurd. His mouth opened wide and easy, the sharp line of his jaw cutting clean below it, and further down the curved line of his throat — I had just been trailing my gaze along each of these in turn when his eyes snapped back to me directly. The downward tilt at the outer corners made his eyes look sharp one moment and soft the next, and it was impossible not to find yourself watching his expression for cues.
I’d expected him to start picking a fight again after that scoffing laugh — but to my surprise, Seon Eunhu began to apologize.
“Yeah. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t realize that something I said out of frustration would hurt you as much as it did, and it was immature of me to act that way as your senior. There’s nothing to argue about — it was clearly my fault. I’m sorry.”
It didn’t sound forced. For the first time, the way he spoke to me was gentle and measured, and the slow rise and fall of his eyelids looked unhurried and sincere.
I was slow to react, caught off guard by the unexpected softness. Seon Eunhu continued.
“So don’t go having stupid thoughts.”
There it is. I’d wondered what the sudden apology was for — so the whole point was to mock me by calling me stupid.
This was the first time I’d ever seen someone mock another person with such gravity and seriousness. Or wait — was it not mockery, but a warning? What did he see in me, and how did he leap to whatever conclusion made him say something like that?
The conversation was moving in a direction I couldn’t follow and I was deeply confused. I’d felt it before — talking to Seon Eunhu always left me with questions. It wasn’t the kind of conversation where you build understanding together step by step. It was scattered and unpredictable, jumping in every direction at once. It felt like climbing a staircase two or three steps at a time without knowing where it led.
While I was trying to make sense of him, Seon Eunhu watched me quietly from above. Then, after a moment, he let out a soft exhale. His broad shoulders dropped slightly with the breath.
“Anyway. I’ll take back all the childish things I said. Whether you look at me or not — whatever you’re thinking while you do, or… whatever expression you’re making — I won’t care. I’m sorry.”
“…So you’re saying I can look at you comfortably now?”
“Do whatever you want.”
“And regardless of how I act, you’re saying I won’t get dragged into your hobby?”
“My hobby?”
Eunhu repeated it back with a slightly scrunched expression, and I nodded. There probably isn’t another person in this entire country whose hobby is showing off the size of his dick, I thought to myself.
Seon Eunhu, who had been staring at my face like he was studying it, turned his head and let out a short laugh. Turning his head to the side when he laughed seemed to be a habit of his.
“I quit that hobby. Don’t even dream about it.”
“I — I never dreamed about it. I’d hate to, which is why I’m even bringing it up—”
The rest of the sentence died as the elevator doors suddenly slid open. The plain silver doors parted and people stepped out.
I moved aside to let them pass, then slipped in the moment the elevator was clear. I stood in the corner to leave room for Eunhu — but Seon Eunhu didn’t get in. He simply stood in the same spot, looking straight at me.
“…Why aren’t you getting on?”
“What are you doing tomorrow?”
Seon Eunhu reached out a hand to stop the elevator doors from closing. Even with the entrance wide open, I felt like a mouse trapped in a jar. Maybe it was because he was an alpha — the energy coming off Seon Eunhu was overwhelming.
“I have class tomorrow. Why?”
“Then you….”
Seon Eunhu let the end of his sentence trail off and bit down on his lower lip. The lip went white along the path his teeth dragged, then flushed back to its natural red as if nothing had happened. It all passed in an instant, but it was vivid and sensory enough to leave a sharp impression in the mind.
Perhaps it was the contrast — the composed voice that followed against all that color. Whatever it was, the next words felt oddly stimulating to hear.
“Come help me with my work tomorrow.”
“…What kind of work…?”
“Come assist with my sculpting project. Have you done much polyurethane casting since starting school? I’ll teach you that alongside plaster casting — come by after class.”
“I already know how to do both plaster and poly casting.”
“Who taught you?”
“My classmates learned from upperclassmen and I just watched and copied them.”
“I’ll teach you properly. No one currently enrolled can do it as well as me.”
“Oh, but I have work tomorrow.”
“What time do you go in?”
“Seven.”
“What time does class end.”
“…Three.”
“Then I’ll see you at three.”
Seon Eunhu didn’t budge a single word, as though he’d received a divine calling to pass on his craft to a junior. The way he pushed so relentlessly to pin down a plan made it seem like he had some kind of ulterior motive.
Because of that, I couldn’t bring myself to answer easily — and Eunhu, who had been waiting, shifted into that crooked posture of his. Irritation crept into his handsome face.
“It’s not like I enjoy doing this either. Like I said before, I’m doing this so I won’t end up feeling guilty later — so just agree already. Let me worry about you for just this one day. Yeah?”
Those sharp eyes dug into mine. The gaze was so heavy I lowered my head — and Seon Eunhu said “Yeah?” again, pulling my attention back.
“Go Taerim.”
“…….”
“See you tomorrow.”
“…Okay.”
Only after wringing that reluctant answer out of me did Seon Eunhu finally let go of the hand he’d been holding against the door. The elevator doors hadn’t even finished closing before he was already gone — but the questions he left behind remained.
Are all alphas like this?
He had followed me all the way here, tried to forcibly snatch my spicy tuna from me, then out of nowhere delivered an apology I hadn’t expected, made plans with me, and started talking about guilt — not one single part of any of it made sense.
The one silver lining was that Seon Eunhu had apparently quit his hobby. He couldn’t be trusted a hundred percent on that, but the way he’d visibly recoiled when it was brought up made it feel like it might actually be true.
Just as someone born into a faith finds it hard to abandon their religion, Seon Eunhu wouldn’t have found it easy to change a nature he’d been born into as a pervert — so what sudden change of heart had made him give up the hobby? He’d bowed in front of the offering table a few times earlier — had the spirit of lewdness actually been exorcised?
In the roughly ten-pyeong officetel room, eating dinner, he kept turning Seon Eunhu’s incomprehensible behavior over and over in his mind. Maybe it was because it had almost been taken from him — the spicy tuna eaten alongside instant rice tasted better than usual today.
After finishing the food and cleaning up the dishes, he suddenly remembered — he had meant to die today.
Should I go through with it now.
“…….”
He mulled it over for a moment, then quietly tidied up after himself again. He wanted to die, but the thought of the pain frightened him. He didn’t have the courage right now, and his body was exhausted — it was better to put dying off for another time.
Dense lectures followed by the chaotic start-of-semester test, and then the physically draining part-time shift on top of it all — he was completely worn out.
Come to think of it, being summoned as a senior’s assistant was the first time it had happened since he enrolled — was there anything he was supposed to prepare? What had his classmates said back when they used to get called around by upperclassmen…?
He finished showering and lay down in bed, carefully trying to retrace the memory — but somewhere along the way, sleep swallowed him whole, and his thoughts dissolved unfinished.
