Jubin
From nine in the morning until ten at night. The endless hell of the college entrance exam cycle—stretching unbroken from school to academy—had just completed one small loop.
A chaotic rush of footsteps poured out.
Watching the students spill from the lecture hall and head for home sent a faint chill down my spine. They walked on pure instinct toward the destination called home, like infected zombies; not a single pair of eyes among them belonged to the living.
“You seemed pretty focused today. That’s why you looked even prettier than usual.”
In the middle of that lifeless throng, one person alone still radiated vitality. He was tucked among the baby-faced students, yet something about him reeked of the working world.
Height around 180 cm? Slim but long-limbed, dressed in casual dress pants and a white dress shirt with the top two buttons undone.
A lightly curled leaf cut parted in the front. Flawless white skin and a sharply defined nose ridge.
Even rimless glasses couldn’t hide the handsome face of the young man underneath.
Why would a thrice-married guy raising a high-school daughter spare a second glance at a punk like that? Simple: the person he’d just spoken to was Eunju.
“I don’t think so. I was just forcing myself to stay awake the whole time.”
“So my class put you to sleep? I’m allowed to feel a little hurt by that, right?”
“Of course not. I just didn’t manage my condition well today.”
The fact that serious, earnest Eunju was trading banter with him told me they were closer than casual acquaintances. And from the conversation I’d just overheard, there was no need to doubt they were teacher and student.
A soft rustle of fabric.
Of course it wasn’t a simple teacher-student relationship. Because a second ago the guy had laid his hand right near Eunju’s neck.
While she startled at the sudden touch, he smoothly unfolded her folded collar for her.
“Ah…”
“Sorry. I just can’t leave something like that alone.”
“Don’t tell me I’ve been sitting like that the entire class?”
“Maybe the reason the lesson felt boring is because I was too busy staring at this. You didn’t notice I was looking only at you the whole time, did you?”
“Not at all. Now I feel terrible for the other students.”
Even I, seeing you two for the first time today, can tell how well you get along, so could you maybe wrap it up? I’ve been standing here waiting for you alone for over two hours already—spare a thought for my side of things, yeah?
“Eunju.”
“S-Senior? Why are you still here?”
“We had a consultation, remember?”
I finally couldn’t take it and spoke first. Eunju’s eyes went wide at my unexpected appearance; the man in the white shirt looked momentarily flustered and asked her,
“Who’s that? Don’t tell me he’s your boyfriend?”
“No way. He’s a school senior who said he wanted to enroll here, so I brought him along.”
“Ah… is that so?”
A faint crease formed at the corner of White-Shirt Guy’s mouth. Eunju might not have noticed, but I did.
That was the most instinctive display of wariness one man can send another.
“The consultation took this long?”
“I had a lot of questions. Actually it finished about twenty minutes ago, but since I’d come all this way I figured I’d wait and walk with you.”
“R-Really? Do consultations usually run that long?”
It was a complete lie, so there was no point simulating the real situation. The consultation had ended in ten minutes, and I’d spent nearly three hours of mind-numbing boredom calculating two to the fiftieth power.
Twice.
“I’ll be going now, teacher.”
“Sure. See you next class.”
White-Shirt Guy never took his eyes off us until the moment we stepped out of the academy. Feeling like he was picking a fight, I glared right back.
His mouth was smiling, but his eyes weren’t. He looked exactly like a male animal whose territory had been invaded, sniffing the air to identify the scent coming off me.
“I didn’t expect Senior to wait for me.”
The second we reached the bus stop right in front of the academy, Eunju spoke. Her tone was anything but friendly.
She was probably uncomfortable. My sudden appearance had drawn the eyes of not only the teacher she’d seemed close with, but every student gathered here.
“We live in roughly the same neighborhood anyway, so going together makes more sense, right? Do you always stay this late?”
“Only on days I have single-subject classes. Even then it’s just twice a week. I do get consulting on Saturdays, though…”
“Consulting as in college counseling?”
“Early-admission strategy, essay writing, that kind of thing. So have you decided to enroll here too, Senior?”
“I think I need to think about it a little more. Anyway…”
“Ah… the bus is here.”
“…”
This damn bus never shows up when I’m waiting forever, so why is it right on time today of all days? Once again the chance slipped away.
A dense crowd of bodies.
Unlike the ride over, the bus was packed solid with students. Well, a dozen or so had just climbed on, so of course there were no seats left.
A quick shuffle.
Still, exactly one seat remained. But another competitor was eyeing it, and he was ahead of me.
A light shoulder check sent him stumbling aside. While everyone else stared with wide eyes, I put on a completely shameless look of concern.
“Hey, kid, you’ve got to be careful on a swaying bus.”
“…!?”
No matter how wronged he looked, it was useless. I had something I absolutely needed to say to Eunju before she got off this bus.
“Sit here, Eunju.”
“…”
Eunju wasn’t stupid; she had to know exactly what I’d just done. But the second she opened her mouth to ask “Why?” she would become an accomplice.
A long sigh.
She exhaled deeply and sat down. I immediately pressed close beside her and grabbed the handrail.
Once the fallen student grumbled his way off, Eunju shot me a sharp glare full of complaint.
“What was that just now, Senior?”
“Kids are all like that. We teach them not to run on the bus, but they never learn until they actually fall.”
“That’s not what I— Fine. Just drop it.”
Eunju turned her head away as if she no longer wanted to talk. But that wouldn’t do. I still had something to say to her.
“Who was that guy earlier? He looked way too young to be an academy instructor.”
But. After shoving her into public embarrassment a moment ago, I suddenly lacked the courage to dive straight into the real topic. Of course, abruptly drifting into small talk wasn’t exactly normal behavior either.
“Teaching at the academy is just a side job for him. During the day he’s a regular university student.”
“A current undergrad? Isn’t that a little light on professional credentials for an instructor? What kind of school does he go to that he gets to teach you guys?”
“Cheonji University Medical School. He’s been a teaching assistant since his re-take year, so his experience is actually longer than most of the new instructors.”
“…”
Qualified enough to teach, then. Separate from that, the irritation in Eunju’s voice bothered me.
At this rate I still couldn’t bring up the campaign pledge.
“I’m jealous. I actually wanted to go to that school myself.”
“If you study hard, couldn’t you still get in even now?”
“It’s already impossible. To make up for my current grades I’d need to turn the clock back about eighteen years.”
“Do you even intend to study? March is almost over already.”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know how long these consultations are going to keep going.”
“…”
Because I still wasn’t sure whether I could get the words out before the day ended. Eunju turned her head away again, clearly done talking.
Why does it always end up like this? I felt bad about making a scene in front of her academy friends, but there was a reason for that too, you know?
“Haa… I’m sorry, Eunju.”
“Sorry for what?”
“Just now. You have your own social circle here, so doing that in front of your academy friends wasn’t right.”
“I don’t really care about that. But wasn’t that assault?”
“Strictly speaking I only applied a little force in the direction inertia was already taking him, so I don’t think it quite qualifies as violence. You know how when ketchup won’t come out you flip the bottle and tap the bottom? Nobody watches that and says you assaulted the ketchup…”
A soft click.
Eunju no longer even had the energy to answer; she immediately pulled out her AirPods case. Oh no. The second those noise-canceling buds went in, I could be gutting a tuna right in front of her face and she wouldn’t so much as blink.
“I actually had something I needed to talk about! But I couldn’t say it while we were standing apart, so I deliberately did that.”
“You think that’s an excuse? Then why didn’t you just get off the bus and ask to talk for a minute?”
“That… didn’t occur to me.”
Strictly speaking, I’d erased it from the list of options from the start. How many hours had I already been out of the house?
Even at this very moment Harin might be doing god-knows-what with her boyfriend. I couldn’t afford to delay getting home any longer.
“Huu… What is it you wanted to say?”
Thankfully Eunju closed the AirPods case and lifted her head. She was still angry at my rudeness, yet unlike Harin she was willing to hear me out to the end.
Good. Now I was really going to say it.
Somehow invent a reason I couldn’t keep that campaign promise so I could draw up a new strategy as soon as possible…
“Doesn’t that teacher seem a little off to you?”
But. I was just a worn-out thrice-married man wearing a school uniform. No matter how urgent the conversation, there were things an “adult” simply couldn’t let slide.
“Who… are you talking about? Lee Jubin-teacher?”
“I don’t know if it’s Lee Jubin or whatever—the part-timer who claimed he goes to Cheonji Med and was talking to you earlier.”
“That’s kind of ridiculous. Senior, you met that teacher for the first time today.”
“Once you’ve been around as long as I have, one look in a guy’s eyes tells you exactly what size he is. The lines he was feeding you… how should I put it? Way too slimy for a teacher-student relationship. If someone said that to my daughter I don’t think I’d just let it go.”
It wasn’t merely slimy—it was blatant flirting. If the girl standing there had been Harin instead of Eunju, I’d be riding in a police car right now instead of a bus.
“Ha… I never expected Senior to start worrying about a daughter who hasn’t even been born yet. I knew you were a little old-fashioned, but how can you say things even my own father wouldn’t?”
“I doubt that. I’m sure your father would say the exact same thing. And part of this is your responsibility too. Even if he’s a teacher, you need to be able to say no when something bothers you. Because you keep vaguely accepting it, he keeps crossing the line, doesn’t he?”
If it had only been Lee Jubin or Jo Jubin or whatever acting alone, I would’ve just muttered “crazy bastards these days” and moved on.
The problem was that Eunju herself seemed to accept the behavior as some kind of friendly bonding.
“First you arbitrarily treat a perfectly normal person like a criminal, and now you’re pinning the blame on me too? Did it never occur to you that we’re close enough that the usual formalities don’t apply?”
“Exactly how close are you with that guy?”
“At least closer than I am with Senior. He’s been teaching me since last year and even does consulting for me. He’s a good person.”
“Subject tutoring is one thing, but what does he know about consulting? He’s not even a college admissions specialist.”
“Do I only have to get consulting about college admissions? Giving advice as a senior in life—about future direction and vision—isn’t that consulting too?”
“So in the end you’re paying real money just to shoot the breeze? You’re not meeting him outside separately or anything, are you?”
“Like you said, he’s not even a school teacher, so what’s the problem if I do? And even if I were, why would Senior care?”
“…”
I’d never seen Eunju push back this hard. Senior in life, my ass.
When an elder who’s lived decades longer than that punk is speaking, you just nod and go along with it—what gives her the right to talk back every single time?
“That’s it. I’m calling your father right now and—”
“I’m getting off.”
“…?”
A hydraulic hiss.
In the meantime the bus had arrived in front of Eunju’s house. Only after watching her shove past me and head for the exit did I snap back to my senses.
What the hell am I doing? Letting two hours of waiting go to waste over some old-man lecturing?
Of course it was something an adult couldn’t just ignore, but did I really need to stick my nose in this far?
They were just kids a few years apart hanging out without much formality. Why was I role-playing someone else’s parent and throwing a strict-dad tantrum?
“E-Eunju, wait!”
And I still hadn’t even gotten the first letter of the campaign pledge out of my mouth. I immediately got off the bus and blocked her path.
“What are you doing, Senior? You don’t even live around here.”
“True, but our conversation just now never really finished, did it? Haa… Fine, I’m sorry for sticking my nose in so far. What I actually wanted to talk about was…”
“Why do you keep doing this to me? I openly ignored you, yet instead of getting angry you even helped with my election campaign. You followed me to an academy you have no intention of attending and waited for hours. And now, just because I looked close with Lee Jubin-teacher, you went and slandered an innocent person?”
“Uh… except for that last part, I actually have explanations for everything. So the reason is…”
“I really don’t want to listen to anything Wonhui says, but on a day like today I don’t think I have a choice.”
“Huh? What did Wonhui say about me?”
“Do I really have to say it out loud?”
“How am I supposed to know if you don’t tell me?”
Eunju’s face flushed as if to say I should have figured it out by now. But how was a guy who’d graduated high school over a decade ago supposed to understand teenage-girl code?
“Haa… Senior, you… like me— No. You’re just playing around with me.”
“…?”
Did she just abruptly change what she was going to say, or was that my imagination? Leaving that aside, what kind of games had I supposedly been playing with her?
Wait a second. So that “playing around” was Wonhui’s opinion, not Eunju’s?
Let’s think about what kind of girl Wonhui usually was. She was a romance supremacist who spun wild fantasies the moment a boy and girl so much as brushed sleeves.
She’d definitely found my unusual behavior suspicious today and tried to analyze every single action down to the nanometer. And if the words that came out of her mouth were that I was playing around with Eunju…
That meant she thought I was flirting with Eunju.
“Hey! Does that even make sense? What the hell do you take me for—”
“Kang Harin dumps you and now it’s Park Eunju?”
Oh for fuck’s sake, let me finish a sentence! I’d already been stonewalled all damn day and was pissed enough about ending up in this situation, and now Kim Hyeonji shows up out of nowhere spouting complete nonsense…
“Huh? Kim Hyeonji?”
Both Eunju and I whipped our heads around at the same time to identify the owner of the voice.
School uniform worn over a green tracksuit. A 170-centimeter frame held perfectly straight, glaring at us like she wanted us dead.
Even a blind person would recognize Kim Hyeonji. And true to her title as Queen of the Street, she didn’t forget to finish with a stylish line.
“Tch… people sure are easy, huh?”
“I’m going inside now.”
Eunju, caught red-handed on the spot, bolted straight for her house. Hey! An adult is talking—where do you think you’re going?
The situation was bad. Putting together the reason Eunju had been angry at me earlier and the words Hyeonji had just spoken…
It really did look like I was just playing around with her.