“Woohyun-ah. How many times do I have to say it, you just need to memorize this. You don’t need to use your brain.”
The guy who always called me ‘Nam Heejae’ now saying “Woohyun-ah” made me get goosebumps for no reason. Since it was a body I’d come to possess without knowing why, I hadn’t wanted to interfere with the original owner’s life. But somehow, gradually, it felt like Nam Heejae’s life was becoming Jang Woohyun’s life.
It wasn’t a particularly pleasant feeling, but before I could ponder deeply, Baek Sahyun’s glare poured down. When he called me Jang Woohyun again, I answered in alarm.
“I, I memorized it. No, fuck! I’m memorizing it.”
“Twenty minutes have passed and you’re still memorizing this? Even excuses should have limits.”
“It’s not an excuse…”
“It’s not like only your brain is made of rubber clay or corn stalks.”
“It could be.”
The Spartan education taking place in the spacious room was too burdensome.
Although Baek Sahyun had rolled up his sleeves saying he’d teach me relatively easy-to-understand major subjects first, the more he confirmed my wondrous intellectual abilities, the sharper his gaze became.
“This won’t work. Just don’t understand it. Memorize while writing. Quickly write it 3 times, in front of me.”
“Hah.”
“Jang Woohyun. Not writing?”
“Look carefully. I’m writing now.”
Thanks to that, I really wanted to cry. It’s not like I wanted to spend 20 minutes memorizing one sentence like ‘one of the causes of subprime mortgages is derivative financial products blah blah blah…’
The last time I properly utilized my brain was in elementary school when I learned arithmetic. Having honed only physical strength instead of intellectual power for over ten years, wasn’t it natural for my brain to stiffen?
I’d rather win first place in a fast package delivery competition. Or maybe a fast chicken delivery competition. If not that, then a table polishing competition?
However, Baek Sahyun, who couldn’t understand my previous life’s identity, only gave firm advice. Continue. Don’t rest. Do it again. Such orders were repeated daily in the secretly locked room.
It seemed rumors had already spread among the people working at Baek Sahyun’s mansion.
“Young master, are you still studying? The chairman is worried that you haven’t been showing your face much lately…”
“No need to worry. I’ll handle it myself, so please go.”
It was hard, but I tried to endure it since it was all for me. However, the more frequent the knocking on the door became, the more my conscience pricked. How should I put it, I felt exactly like a leech clinging to a busy third-generation chaebol.
Baek Sahyun was the one holding on and not letting go, yet somehow it seemed I was being misunderstood.
“Sahyun-ah. But don’t you have other work? It seems like they keep calling you, shouldn’t you go see them?”
“Turn off your attention and finish writing. Don’t try tricks while spouting nonsense.”
“No, dude. If you’re a third-generation chaebol, you must be incredibly busy, so I’m asking. Why are you so obsessed only with my studies? Huh?”
I put down my mechanical pencil loudly and persistently threw questions at him. I wanted to catch my breath for a moment taking advantage of the loosened atmosphere, and I was also curious why he was assisting my studies while setting aside all his busy schedule.
I also wanted to find out if there was some hidden motive he hadn’t told me about.
Still keeping his gaze on the tablet screen full of numbers and graphs, Baek Sahyun answered indifferently.
“In this state, you can’t hang out with me. We need to match our levels.”
Low-prescription glasses and the smoothly extending bridge of his nose between them formed an intellectual atmosphere. Looking like that, Baek Sahyun seemed like a professor teaching me. A very young and handsome professor. But definitely not easygoing.
My anger fully drawn, I asked:
“What’s wrong with my state?”
“You barely escaped amoeba level.”
“…You really have something that makes people go crazy. Share where you learned it. So I can go too.”
I’m the idiot for expecting an answer. I shook my head down and picked up my mechanical pencil again. To hang out with the noble young master, right, it was correct for me, a primitive man, to cultivate refinement.
Just as I was grinding my teeth thinking I should quickly regain an intellectual image and break that guy’s pride, I heard a deflating sound from beyond. Baek Sahyun, who let out a chuckle, tilted his head toward me.
A low, soft voice rang in my ears.
“You said you had no proper job and only spent your life taking care of your younger sister.”
“……”
“You want to properly experience university life, don’t you.”
The true feelings I probably revealed while drunk weren’t entirely welcome. Though there was nothing wrong with what he said, it felt strange to have my life blatantly pointed out by a guy much younger. Especially from someone I’d rubbed shoulders with for quite a long time, not a passing stranger. If he were just a passing stranger, it wouldn’t be like this.
“Do you perhaps pity me?”
I asked in a somewhat cold tone. If Baek Sahyun’s enthusiasm shown so far was just because of the cheap emotion called sympathy, I had to apply the brakes as a hyung a few years older. Relationships that start with one-sided sacrifice are bound to end badly. Whether I wanted that sacrifice or not.
“Why do you ask such a question?”
Baek Sahyun, who asked back, rolled his eyes tepidly, then soon let out a small scoff.
“Woohyun-ah. When did you recite your life story line by line acting pitiful, and now you don’t like that I pity you?”
“……”
“Then why did you appeal your past like that?”
“……”
“If you want to lament your circumstances but don’t want sympathy, haha. Isn’t that just having pride for nothing?”
Like the smart guy he was, he picked out and threw only the right words. Right. Rather, I should be satisfied that he’s giving kindness without compensation, I couldn’t demand that he carefully caress my feelings too.
Baek Sahyun… probably just pitied me since it seemed like a life worthy of pity. Due to being born with a temperament drawn only by interest, he was even personally teaching regardless of whether his time was being consumed.
Is this fun? This situation.
However, no matter how much I thought about it, an unpleasant feeling rose from within. In the first place, I wasn’t the type to rely on vague goodwill. Eventually, I put down my mechanical pencil as if determined and notified him.
“Are you a philanthropist or something? Pouring out both money and time because you feel sorry.”
“……”
“You don’t need to do this much from now on. Handle your schedule first, got it? Please reduce contact too.”
I said it mixing in playfulness so the atmosphere wouldn’t become awkward. After lightly ruffling the hair of the guy frowning, I hurriedly packed my bag.
But from when I said I was leaving until I left through the door, there was no voice to be heard.
From that day on, Baek Sahyun didn’t contact me. Rather than worrying, I passed it off as insignificant.
He’s listening well for once, I also thought this on one hand. I shed one burden of discomfort and struggled to navigate university life alone.
While busy making up for missed attendance, the notorious midterm exam period finally approached. Thanks to that, I had to become a library ghost, which was not in my destiny.
“What is this saying. Huh? What are you saying, Nam Heejae’s brain, put in some effort… You’re not really made of corn stalks. You must have been smart originally.”
I wrestled with major textbooks for over 5 hours every day, but it was impossible for logic circuits that had been disconnected for over 20 years to suddenly ignite. Just turning my brain made me breathless and sweaty, as if I’d returned from chemical warfare training.
Is the brain like this, changing depending on who uses it? I wondered if there could be such a case.
But I didn’t give up and burned my challenging spirit. In other words, it was also perseverance. Because I thought maybe I could somehow break through if I competed with quantity. Though it wouldn’t be easy to do well on exams among Korea University students.
Amazing things unfolded in between. It seemed Nam Heejae’s outer shell was truly excellent—when I briefly went to the bathroom, I’d return to find a drink with a note on top of my study table.
Please drink this and study hard! haha
Below the simple encouragement phrase was also a phone number starting with 010-8. Since it was the first time in my life I’d received someone’s contact information except when being recruited for manual labor, it was fascinating yet embarrassingly ticklish.
“Should I reply when I receive something like this?”
But thinking about it, how could I reply when I didn’t even know who left it? Instead, I went outside the reading room and drank the beverage. Maybe because it was an ion drink, it quenched my thirst nicely.
“I wonder if Jang Haesu received things like this too?”
As expected, thoughts of Haesu came to mind today too. While attending university, I came to miss Haesu even more. That’s because this place was the famous Korea University.
Although it was Korea University inside a novel, my younger sister Haesu also attended Korea University. So whenever I heard the surname Jang while passing by, I’d flinch.
“I wonder if Jang Haesu would date.”
At that thought, I couldn’t help but laugh with a “puhaha.” Jang Haesu, who extremely hated romance. Though she did buy this hopeless gay novel, anyway it was true that she was poisoned against romance.
If she was really having a fresh romance befitting that age, I hoped she’d keep just one thing in mind.
Fuck. Absolutely never meet a bastard like Baek Sahyun. If anything, only meet men like Chae Eunwoo.
They say even tigers appear when you talk about them. It was a day like any other when I was buried in major textbooks tearing at my hair. A man who put down a book with a thud at the seat next to me suddenly spoke to me.
“You just need to redo the partial fractions for this. Should I solve it for you instead?”
Crazy…? It was a face I’d forgotten, Chae Eunwoo.
