Seeping In (1)
Over these past three days, going back and forth between school and home, one conviction had settled firmly in me.
Either something was wrong with my head, or Seolhwa had seeped into me completely. There was no other explanation for why her face rose behind my eyelids every time I closed them, or why the events of that afternoon kept replaying without mercy.
The symptoms had started three days ago—specifically, after I’d brought Seolhwa back to my studio apartment.
The night we’d done what we’d done, three new chapters had gone up on the novel she wrote. And the quality had jumped so hard it barely felt like the same author. The prose had tightened, but the heat and atmosphere of the work had only grown denser. The crude, overt descriptions from before were gone, and yet somehow it was even more obscene; every line dripped with that sticky, particular filth of hers, and each time I scrolled, my body answered from below.
So I’d taken care of myself three times a day for three days—nine times total. And still it wouldn’t settle. Why?
Because ever since reading her novel, the real Seolhwa I’d seen refused to leave my head.
She didn’t look like she worked out, so maybe it was just how she was built, but the smooth line of her nape had been something else. The faint ridge of muscle under the short hem of her T-shirt, her lower stomach, the curve of her hips beneath. Skin so sleek and soft that even a dolphin-print pair of shorts and a thin shirt couldn’t hide it; the springy give of it under my hands; the unmistakably feminine lines that showed clearly even through fabric.
…All of it kept rising up until I thought I would lose my mind. And the thought that, if things had only gone a little further, I wouldn’t have had to settle for imagination—that I could have looked and touched for real—made it even worse.
I should never have let her go. I should have forced the mood somehow and taken it all the way. A whole new world I had never experienced might have opened up.
Foolish regret and fantasy kept looping, and so Seolhwa came to mind at every hour of the day. During lectures, I thought of Seolhwa. While eating, I thought of Seolhwa. Even while I was recording the YouTube voice videos that doubled as hobby and side income, Seolhwa was there.
At this point it wasn’t lingering attachment—it was obsession, and a severe one. And half the blame for this state of affairs belonged to Seolhwa herself.
First offense: giving a guy without a girlfriend a stimulant like what had happened three days ago. Second: writing her novel so erotically that her own body kept surfacing in my mind. Third: taking my number and then sending nothing for days.
She’d asked if it was okay to message when she had free time. Would it have killed her to text first once when she had a moment?
I had no idea where she was or what she was doing. I hadn’t seen her on campus and hadn’t gotten a single reply. Three full days—seventy-two hours of silence that felt absurdly long.
“Hey, Hoyeong.”
If she didn’t contact me today, it would be day four with no word. Not seeing the face I’d expected to see every day left me strangely restless. So once again I’d barely paid attention in class, and even now I kept checking my phone every five minutes on the off chance a message had come—
“—Hey, Baek Hoyeong!”
“……Huh?”
“Wow, look at this guy. What the hell are you thinking about so hard that you don’t hear someone call you three times?”
“Ah……. Yeah? Sorry. Was just thinking about my part-time shift for a second.”
I waved a hand and brushed it off. Kim Hyenseok’s brow twitched.
“What kind of job is it, anyway?”
“Mm, just……. Something that uses the body?”
The vocal cords were a body part, so it wasn’t technically a lie.
Hyenseok seemed to misunderstand something, though, because the look he gave me turned faintly pitying.
“Ah, damn. You should’ve said so. I kept pushing the MT without knowing.”
“…….”
From the sympathy packed into his eyes, he clearly thought I was out every dawn unloading delivery trucks or something.
I considered correcting him—that I did voice work—then dropped it. Saying that kind of thing only made more trouble than it was worth.
“Hyenseok, the MT’s next week, right?”
“Yeah, next Friday. The day you said you had work.”
Unlike what Hyenseok believed, I actually had nothing scheduled next Friday. But in my current mental and physical state, going would only mean sitting there thinking about Seolhwa without enjoying any of it.
So I’d already decided to skip the MT as planned.
“Man, though, you’re something else. If it were me, I’d be so worried about my girlfriend I couldn’t even do my job properly.”
“She’s not my girlfriend, okay? You’ve been saying that since yesterday—”
……Wait a second.
The next words out of Hyenseok’s mouth iced over my brain.
“……Hyenseok.”
“Huh? What.”
“Is Seolhwa going to the MT?”
“Seolhwa? Who’s Seolhwa……. Oh, the girl you brought yesterday—her name’s Seolhwa?”
“Yeah. ……Is she really going?”
“Probably ninety-nine percent? I think I saw a two-syllable name starting with Seol on the participant list. Heard it in passing from Jehyeon, too.”
“Ah, okay……?”
In the cold quiet of my head, a single chain of assumptions lit up.
1. Seolhwa was going to the MT.
2. I was not.
3. Which meant Seolhwa would spend one night and two days with a bunch of other guys somewhere my eyes couldn’t reach……?
“……Hey.”
“Whoa—! What the hell, why’d you jump up like that?”
“I’m gonna step out for a bit.”
“What? Where, the bathroom?”
“Yeah, but it might take a while. If they call attendance for fourth period, tell them I went to the bathroom. Got it?”
“That’s easy enough, but……. You’re not ditching and making me cover for you, right? We both get an F if we get caught, you know?”
I clapped Hyenseok’s shoulder once in a if it comes to it, I’m counting on you way, then bolted from the lecture hall. After that I went room by room through the classrooms holding required first-year foundation courses.
Honestly, pride alone made me not want to do this. But this was not the time to nurse a scrap of pride.
“……Ah.”
All that running paid off—I found Seolhwa in the third classroom. Through the window I could see her chatting quietly with girls who looked like classmates; the way she laughed in between suggested it wasn’t anything important, so I yanked the door open and walked in.
The door slid hard on its track.
The moment it opened, every student looked at me. Seolhwa was among them, of course, and when she spotted me her eyes went round with surprise.
“……Oh?”
Three days—almost four—since I’d last seen that face, and I didn’t feel particularly glad. No: I was extremely glad. But this was not the time for leisurely greetings. I had important business.
As I approached her, the girls clustered around her and every other student in the room started watching us with open curiosity. I ignored all of it and stopped in front of Seolhwa.
“Seolhwa.”
A short breath.
Whether they whispered beside us or not, I looked only at her and said:
“Can you spare a minute?”
“……Ah.”
A faint flush rose in Seolhwa’s cheeks. One of the classmates beside her poked her shoulder and muttered under her breath.
“Seolhwa, he’s talking to you……?”
“Ah, y-yeah…….”
Seolhwa got up from her seat in a hesitant shuffle. When she started walking out too slowly, impatience got the better of me and I caught her by the wrist.
“O-Oppa……?!”
She clearly hadn’t expected that; she called out to me, flustered. At the same time her classmates started murmuring things like intense and cool, all of which I pretended not to hear as I strode forward.
We left the classroom with the door rattling shut behind us, and I headed for the empty emergency stairwell, glancing back once.
Seolhwa was following with her head ducked low. The second she lifted her face and our eyes met, her cheeks went red; she made a tiny sound and quickly looked away, pretending she hadn’t seen me.
“…….”
Anyway—a little farther and we reached the emergency stairs.
With elevators available, no one usually used them, but just in case I went down half a flight and stopped on the landing.
She must have been wearing heels; Seolhwa looked a little taller than yesterday as she tipped her face up at me.
“Seolhwa.”
“Yes, Oppa.”
“…….”
Lines like You got home okay, right? It’s been three days—your novel’s been great lately, I really enjoyed it. What have you been up to? Looks like you’ve been busy since you didn’t text…… hovered at the edge of my mouth, but circling around would only waste time, so I went straight to the point.
“Are you going to the MT?”
The words were barely out before Seolhwa let out a long sigh.
“Ah, yes……. I think I have to, because of the atmosphere.”
“Because of the atmosphere?”
“Yes, well.”
Her explanation ran long, but the short version was this:
Writing had been going so well lately that she hated the idea of leaving the house for even one night, but the three classmates she’d gotten close with right after enrolling were all going, and the conversation had turned into “you have to come with us,” and she simply couldn’t refuse.
“I really, really don’t want to go……. But what choice do I have? Unless I’m planning to never see my classmates or seniors again, I have to play along a little.”
She wasn’t wrong. When it came down to it, people got closer the more faces they saw. Skip department events and the distance only grew.
So for Seolhwa’s sake, the right thing was not to order her around.
But the thought of sending her alone into a place full of guys where I wouldn’t be made me uneasy.
……Even though Seolhwa and I weren’t anything to each other.
“…….”
I could feel my own face hardening.
Seolhwa watched me quietly for a moment, then asked carefully:
“Oppa, you’re not going to the MT?”
“Yeah, probably not.”
“Oh……. Why not?”
“Just don’t like crowds.”
“……I’m not really the type who likes crowds either, you know? But.”
Seolhwa lightly caught the sleeve of my shirt.
“If I went with Oppa……. I think it might be nice.”
Our eyes met, and a soft pink rose in her cheeks.
“And if I were with Oppa, I feel like there wouldn’t be anyone doing weird things……?”
“Has someone been doing weird things?”
“Mm, not often, but……. On middle and high school trips, there were always people who’d keep following me around. Asking where I lived, what school I went to, what my phone number was—then moving on to my shoe size, how many boyfriends I’d had, whether I could spit for them. Weird questions like that.”
“What kind of creeps even are those……?”
Calling it “weird behavior” was generous; that was basically sexual harassment.
I must have gone stiff without meaning to, because something soft closed around my hand.
“……So. So people like that won’t come near. ……I think it would be good if Oppa stayed beside me.”
Seolhwa looked up at me with a shy expression.
“Would that be…… not okay……?”
“…….”
The door rattled open.
“Huh? What, you’re back?”
“……Hyenseok.”
“Yeah, what.”
“About next week’s MT—if I want to join, I just call Jehyeon, right?”
“Mm, I think so? They’re only taking applications through today……. Wait, but you said you couldn’t come because of work?”
“I did, but circumstances changed. Looks like I can go.”
No—I had to go. Because I had made a promise with Seolhwa.
“Oh, for real? Nice. Free time rolls around, you can just go on a date with your girlfriend.”
“Free time? There’s free time?”
“Yeah, but it’s not long. Like two hours after the sports meet ends? People who want to rest rest, people who want to look around go look around. Then from eight we all gather at the pension and drink.”
“……That so?”
Interesting. I propped both elbows on the desk and laced my fingers. I was just starting to sketch a rough plan for the day in my head when—
A single notification chimed on my phone. I checked it and found a message from a name that was unfamiliar—well, not entirely unfamiliar, but one I was seeing for the first time on KakaoTalk.
“What, is that your girlfriend?”
“……She’s not my girlfriend.”
Hyenseok tried to peek at the screen, so I hastily hid it.
An advance payment, though?
Not a gift—an advance. Curious, I shifted farther away so Hyenseok couldn’t see and opened the messages alone.
A message stuffed with hearts—and a photo of her own breasts, taken who knew when.
From the background I could just make out, it looked like she’d shot it in front of a sink in a women’s restroom in the department building.
This little pervert of a girl. She’d been quiet for a while, and now……. Here we go again.
“…….”
Saying she wouldn’t do it outside meant she was going to do it inside…….
“……Huh?”
Barely three days had passed and she’d already written nine more chapters—was that even real?
Startled, I messaged back asking if she was serious, and Seolhwa replied by attaching six files of her latest novel chapters.
I downloaded them and checked. It was true. Seolhwa really had written nine more chapters in three days.
“Whoa.”
That was an insane pace. I was genuinely impressed when another message arrived.
No wonder. She’d taken my number and then gone completely silent; something had felt off, and this was the reason buried underneath.
If she’d been pouring her time into her actual work, that was fair enough.
Writing three chapters a day and only posting one was pure torture.
Banked? Like credit card points? The word choice was a little strange, but I replied that yes, that was right.
……Cute.
This was basically a reward I was giving her, so letting Seolhwa choose the time and place was only fair.
The day of the MT……?
Surely she didn’t mean she wanted to be touched after we arrived at the venue. She must mean before we left. The timing would be a little awkward, then.
But she wanted it herself. I sent a reply without overthinking it.
……I should not have done that.