Seo Juhan made a displeased expression. He quietly moved his black mechanical pencil with a scratching sound.
「You’re a hypocrite, aren’t you.」
That’s how the written conversation began.
Two hands of clearly different sizes went back and forth. Scratch scratch. Only the sound of rapid writing echoed in the silent classroom.
「The hypocrite seems to be you, Ssaem.」
「How am I?」
「Think about it yourself.」
Seo Juhan raised one eyebrow like a mountain peak.
「Don’t you know what hypocrite means?」
「I do? But you’re a teacher, so you should at least think for yourself.」
Seo Juhan narrowed his eyes sharply.
……This rude bastard.
The young adult’s anger flared at the youngster’s outrageous defiance.
‘You figure it out yourself.’
However, Seo Juhan spoke silently and turned his back.
He had no intention of engaging in a low-level power struggle. Fights should be between equals—arguing with a mere twenty-year-old was beneath him. He was already dying from the heat, and getting worked up would only be a loss for him.
But he couldn’t help the hollow burning inside.
Seo Juhan unnecessarily walked slowly between the crooked desks. The ceiling fan spinning overhead disheveled his hair and cooled his sweat.
While soothing his mind with even the warm breeze, he pretended to observe the students with his hands clasped behind his back. He skimmed through the open books, but they were almost all full of doodles or completely new.
The timing was awkward to continue with the lesson. He was about to let them self-study.
He’d almost reached the teacher’s desk when a glossy back of the head suddenly caught his eye.
“Hey, Gichan-ah.”
“Yes?”
Kim Gichan, sitting in the very front seat, raised his head.
“If there’s anything you don’t understand, ask me.”
Instead of running to mommy to tattle.
“Ah, Ssaem. Then please teach me this.”
Kim Gichan waved his hand as if this was perfect timing, beckoning him over.
“Which one?”
Seo Juhan approached slowly and asked halfheartedly.
“This one.”
Kim Gichan pointed to a problem with the tip of his pencil.
Seo Juhan leaned over to check.
It was a problem he’d just solved, but the kid must have been distracted and not listened. He could see traces of struggling with it belatedly. Seo Juhan took out a pencil from Kim Gichan’s pencil case and lowered his posture.
“You’re integrating the product of x and -cosx. I told you earlier to use integration by parts when integrating products. If you differentiate x it becomes 1, and if you integrate cosx it becomes sinx, so it works out cleanly. Then you need to subtract the integral of -sinx from -xsinx.”
Instead of venting his anger on an innocent party, Seo Juhan maturely controlled his emotions. Though his bent back ached, he deliberately explained with sincerity.
“This is 0 anyway, and integrating sinx from 0 to π/2 is 1, and the next one is also 1, so adding them gives 2. Do you understand now?”
“Hah…… I still don’t quite.”
Kim Gichan scratched the back of his head with his pencil.
Seo Juhan patiently recited the solution step by step again. However, even after explaining several times, Kim Gichan blankly shook his head.
“What does cosine π – x equal?”
“…….”
“It’s minus cosine x, isn’t it. And if you differentiate x squared, what do you get?”
“…….”
“It’s 2x, 2x. How can you not know this?”
Seo Juhan scolded him and tapped the pencil down on the desk.
He wondered why the kid couldn’t understand, but it turned out his foundation was lacking. It seemed he needed to review from Math 1 and Math 2.
“I’ll try it once on my own first.”
Even when blatantly ignored, Kim Gichan the icon of optimism burned with determination. Fortunately, he didn’t cling on either.
“All right. Try it.”
Seo Juhan felt relieved inwardly and straightened his upper body. As if encouraging him, he tapped Kim Gichan’s shoulder with his hand and put the pencil back in the pencil case.
He took slow steps while pulling out his phone from his pants pocket.
Checking the numbers on the screen, it was near the end of class. Less than two minutes remained.
He was just about to end class like that.
“Ssaem.”
A single syllable spread heavily throughout the entire classroom.
Seo Juhan stopped in his tracks, phone in one hand.
“I don’t understand this either.”
A low voice like a contrabass came from behind. That voice grabbed his ankle and wouldn’t let go.
It’s not like I’m training a mutt…….
Seo Juhan, who’d agonized tens of thousands of times whether to just ignore it, finally put his phone in his pocket and turned around. The classroom was too quiet to pretend he hadn’t heard.
The mechanical pencil resting in the deep curve of Go Un’s left hand spun round and round.
“What.”
He deliberately made his voice curt as he looked down at the black head of hair.
Go Un silently tapped the problem with the back of his mechanical pencil.
Seo Juhan grasped the situation as soon as he skimmed the pencil marks.
It was obvious at a glance. After doing integration by parts, he hadn’t calculated the expression inside the integral sign and had just plugged in the upper and lower limit numbers.
It was a common mistake. Integration by parts was a bit more cumbersome than substitution integration because you had to include the minus sign.
“Give it here.”
Seo Juhan suppressed a sigh and snatched the mechanical pencil.
“You calculated this without integrating. Don’t just plug numbers into 2x over (1 plus x cubed) squared here—you need to integrate first. Which integration should you use between substitution and integration by parts?”
He paused the pen and waited briefly, but there was no answer.
“You need to use substitution integration.”
His patience exhausted, his voice was rough.
“You should solve it by substituting 1 plus x cubed with t, shouldn’t you?”
Seo Juhan continued explaining in a stream while scribbling with the mechanical pencil. He even wiped the sweat running down the back of his neck, giving it his all.
The bell rang before he could finish. The surroundings became bustling with people coming and going.
“But even without substitution integration, you need to see what the antiderivative is. If you differentiate (1 plus x cubed) to the -1 power, it becomes -2 power and -1 pops out in front. Then you differentiate the composite function and 3x squared pops out, so you need to attach 1/3.”
But with his damned sense of responsibility, he kept piling on explanations.
“Do you understand now?”
Go Un just nodded without even giving him a glance.
Seo Juhan straightened his bent upper body with a displeased look.
Because of the steaming heat, he’d quickly exhausted himself just from saying a few more words. His throat was parched. Yet he crossed his arms and waited silently.
He hadn’t particularly expected a thank you, but he was pissed off. So he glared at the guy irritably with half-closed eyes.
The round, black crown of his head was nonchalantly facing the window. He was silently protesting again. After calling him over, he was shamelessly treating him like he didn’t exist.
Indeed, he was acting like someone who’d grown up wanting for nothing.
A guy who’d never had to desperately crave affection and recognition. Obviously accustomed to abundance, unable to bear it if people around him didn’t fawn over him.
Why had he gone all the way there to see a guy like this?
“Un-ah.”
However, contrary to his fastidious eyes, Seo Juhan deliberately made his voice gentle. He was even pretending to be kind.
The black hair that had been called by name flinched, then stood on end as if charged with static electricity. His neck creaked as it turned.
Go Un, called by name alone for the first time, just blinked with confusion plainly visible on his face. He looked half out of it.
“There were those personal information protection consent forms I handed out before, right? There are still kids who haven’t turned them in.”
But the oblivious Seo Juhan spoke coldly.
“Collect them and bring them to the teachers’ office.”
“…….”
“By today.”
“……Yes.”
This was a kind of revenge for Seo Juhan. For someone who’d lived his entire life diligently, the only revenge he could think of was at most making him run errands.
Seo Juhan left the dumbfounded Go Un behind and strode away. He needed to hurry to not be late for his next class.
The morning schedule passed in a blur.
Seo Juhan ate an early lunch and returned to the Second Teachers’ Office.
Since he didn’t have a 4th period class, he’d eaten early, so no one was in the teachers’ office. The teachers’ office also didn’t have air conditioning so it was just as hot, but perhaps because of the lower population density, it was much better.
When he lifted the coffee pot, the water left at the bottom sloshed. He filled it with water from the water purifier and pressed the power button. He opened the cabinet and rummaged through the box containing instant coffee and tea. He took out a green tea bag and closed the cabinet.
The water bubbled and boiled. The coffee pot clicked off. A faint sound of a door opening in the distance mixed with the bubbling sound.
Whoosh. A stream of steaming hot water flowed into the tumbler.
Seo Juhan set the coffee pot back in its place. With the hazy steam rising like smoke as a backdrop, he tore open the green tea bag.
“What are you doing?”
Ah shit, you scared me!
Seo Juhan flinched in surprise at the voice right behind his shoulder. The square tea bag he was holding dropped with a splash into the hot water.
“Just barging into the teachers’ office like that…….”
He could tell immediately who it was without turning around.
“Don’t you know you can’t just barge in during the exam question drafting period?”
Seo Juhan whipped around and snapped coldly at the chest area in front of him.
In the guy’s hand was a bundle of dull-colored rough paper.
“……You already brought them.”
Even when he’d nagged him to bring them, there’d been no word, yet he’d collected them quickly.
Seo Juhan felt a bit displeased.
“Good work. You can go.”
Seo Juhan casually commended the vice representative’s effort while reaching out his hand. Inwardly scheming what other errand to make him run.
It was before his fingertips could even reach the target.
The bundle of paper whooshed upward. It was already behind those imposing shoulders.
What the…….
Seo Juhan, hand outstretched in the air, looked disapprovingly at the black pupils high above. He felt an inexplicable sense of déjà vu.
Go Un looked down at Seo Juhan dryly. The black eyes, neither warm nor cold, had a complex and subtle hue.
Their gazes clashed sharply at eye level.
“Ssaem touched my nose hair.”
That’s all he had to say in a sulky voice. What a waste of that bulk.
Seo Juhan quickly swept through the teachers’ office. It was quiet. To be precise, there were only the two of them. Which also meant there was no need to package himself with a mask.
“Why don’t you trim your nose hair before talking?”
First, Seo Juhan poked at his nerves with scratching words.
“Ah, really? It shows?”
Go Un covered his nose with his large hand, whether he actually believed it or not. The height difference could make one think that. Though he couldn’t hide the fact that he was lifting one corner of his mouth, finding it amusing.
“Yeah. You’ve got a fuck-ton of hair only in places where it doesn’t show.”
Though he couldn’t even see the short hairs hidden inside the nostrils, Seo Juhan deliberately made a disgusted expression.
“That’s why a lot of people like me though.”
Go Un shrugged his shoulders as he lowered his hand.
“What are you talking about? Who likes a caveman?”
“I’m overflowing with wild charm. Total bagel guy.”
Go Un confidently raised and lowered his thick eyebrows.
“Ugh…… Right. Overflowing with uncivilized charm.”
Seo Juhan glared as if he didn’t even want to engage and recoiled in distaste.
Go Un also chuckled, then gradually composed himself.
