Club Activities (2)
The moment Han Jaewook stepped into the club room, his face announced his foul mood to everyone present.
I wasn't much different, to be honest. Not that I went around advertising it like an idiot the way he was.
"Oh... Jaewook, you're here?"
Im Yujin, being the social butterfly she was, was also quick to pick up on other people's emotions. She answered with a faintly awkward look on her face.
It should have been the obvious reaction — the man had walked in scanning the room with a sour expression, after all — and yet Han Jaewook somehow took it as license to strut right up to the desk where Im Yujin was sitting.
"Noona, why are you sitting all... no, why are you sitting all cozy with this guy?"
"...Excuse me?"
"I'm asking why you're grinning next to this loser, noona."
...Is this guy actually brain-dead?
Apparently he'd convinced himself that the brief moment Im Yujin's expression stiffened earlier had been her being caught enjoying my company. Which meant his current posture — the brazen, shameless intimidation act aimed directly at Im Yujin — was, in his mind, a perfectly logical response.
Of course, in reality she'd only gone stiff because his expression had suddenly turned sour the moment he walked in. There was no way in hell Im Yujin would look kindly on a guy who opened with profanity out of nowhere.
"Hey. Han Jaewook. What did you just say?"
"...What?"
"You walk into a club room and the first thing out of your mouth at a junior is 'this guy' and 'this loser'? Where exactly did you learn your manners?"
"N-no, noona, I just... you seemed to be getting way too close with him, that's all..."
"Oh? Am I not allowed to be friendly with my juniors? Who the hell are you to start policing my personal life out of nowhere, Jaewook?"
"I— I wasn't... I only..."
See, this is why you don't charge in like a lunatic. He's going to fold the second she pushes back a couple of times anyway.
If the two of them were actually dating, or even in the early stages of something, things might have played out differently. As it stood, his shameless attitude was doing nothing but backfiring.
Im Yujin and I had exchanged nothing more than perfectly innocent senior-junior small talk, while Han Jaewook had overreacted for no reason and hurled insults at me in front of everyone. That was the whole story.
'He's digging his own grave without any help from me. No need to interfere at all.'
Ever since I'd joined the club, Han Jaewook had been single-handedly demolishing his standing with Im Yujin without me lifting a finger. Honestly, watching that attitude of his, I was starting to doubt whether his favorability had ever been in positive territory to begin with.
For me, on the other hand, this was a golden opportunity to earn Im Yujin's goodwill. I had zero reason to hesitate.
"It's really fine, sunbae. Please don't let it bother you either, Yujin-sunbae."
"No. This is the kind of thing you nip in the bud. Senior or not, there's a line you don't cross. I have no idea what got into you, Jaewook, but cursing out a junior you've known for barely a week — does that sound reasonable to you?"
"..."
"Let's hear why you're even upset. What, something didn't go your way somewhere, so you're taking it out on an underclassman?"
"...W-well, noona, the thing is..."
Faced with a visibly furious Im Yujin, Han Jaewook glanced around nervously, looking for all the world like he was about to blurt out his true feelings.
Enough was enough — this needed to be shut down before it went any further, so I eased into the conversation and steered it toward a close.
"I honestly don't mind, sunbae. It was probably just a small misunderstanding."
"Hmm... When a junior puts it that way, it does make me soften a little..."
"The Combat Support Department gets misjudged over every little thing, you know how it is. So I've learned not to care. Really, don't worry about it."
While playing the peacemaker, I slipped in a subtle reference to how support-track students were usually treated. Framed this way, I came across as magnanimous — while quietly building a private bridge of sympathy between me and Im Yujin.
She was the top student of the same Combat Support Department as me, which meant she'd surely accumulated her own share of misunderstandings and slights over the years.
She was the most difficult character to read in this entire story, so I needed to squeeze every last drop out of even the thinnest points of contact we had.
"I— uh..."
His words caught in his throat, and with his back against the wall, Han Jaewook could only glare at me with a flustered expression.
Glaring wasn't going to change the power dynamic one bit, so I waited calmly for his next move.
"...Yeah. Sorry. I think I jumped to conclusions for a second there."
Looking away as if the words cost him something, Han Jaewook offered me a grudging apology.
"No hard feelings, sunbae. It happens."
"...Whew."
I played the gracious one with deliberate ease, and Han Jaewook let out a long sigh and averted his eyes.
And before long, my other target — Ma Nayeon — walked into the club room at exactly the right moment.
"What's going on? Why's the atmosphere so weird?"
"It's nothing. Just a small misunderstanding, that's all."
Ma Nayeon cast a wary glance around the unsettled room, and I answered with a deliberately unbothered air, as if nothing had happened at all.
Thud.
"...Stop blocking the door. Move."
Han Jaewook shoved past Ma Nayeon — apparently concluding that sticking around any longer could only hurt him — and fled the room like a man running for his life.
"Hey! Han Jaewook! Are you going to take it out on Nayeon again?!"
"...I'm fine. Really, it doesn't bother me."
As the temperature in the club room plunged toward absolute zero, I was the only one quietly savoring the situation, smiling on the inside.
Me, Im Yujin, and Ma Nayeon.
The moment lunch hour arrived, Han Jaewook had abruptly bolted out on his own, so our lunch naturally settled into a party of three.
"Sorry about that, Seonho. You must have been startled."
"Not really. Getting picked on for being bottom of the class is just part of my daily routine at this point. Doesn't really register anymore."
"You get that too? You're the bottom of your year?"
"Bottom of the year is exactly why I get it. 'How did a Combat Support kid rank last,' 'he must have cheated,' 'his family bought his admission' — I hear the greatest hits on rotation."
"Hm, I suppose that cuts both ways. Honestly, I'm ranked twentieth overall and people still pick weird fights with me just for being in the support track. What about you, Nayeon? You get those types too?"
"...I guess."
At Im Yujin's question, Ma Nayeon averted her eyes with an unreadable expression and clipped off a two-syllable answer.
Anyone could see what was wrong with her: Han Jaewook was gone, and she was moping about it. She'd come all the way to the club room hoping to share a meal with the man she liked, only for him to vanish for who-knew-what reason, leaving her stranded in the middle.
That said, her expression stayed perfectly flat whether she was happy or miserable, which was honestly fascinating. Even Choi Marie — a kuudere in her own right — showed more range than this.
'Must be because she's a taken woman. Definitely a harder nut to crack.'
Well, "taken" wasn't quite accurate — more like hopelessly infatuated.
Then again, that crush had only sprouted because they were in the same academy cohort and happened to share a few early classes. It wasn't some deep, decades-old devotion yet. Ma Nayeon simply had no immunity to men, so with no one to compare Han Jaewook against, he'd become her entire world by default.
If I took her out on a few dates under the pretext that it was "necessary" for winning over Im Yujin, peeling that beanpod of a delusion right off Han Jaewook's shoulders would be no trouble at all.
"Still, you're remarkably level-headed, Seonho. In a situation like that, most people would blow up or panic."
"Getting angry back would just make everyone feel worse. If I swallow it, I'm the only one who comes out unscathed."
"The fact that you can even think that way is what makes you level-headed. Wait a second — you're not on your second playthrough of life or something, are you?"
"Hard to say. I'd guess it's more that I'm a once-in-a-millennium genius without rival."
"You're still doing that bit?!"
Even as she protested in exasperation, Im Yujin couldn't quite hide the giggle creeping across her lips.
I had no feel for her conquest route yet, so for now my only option was to keep stacking goodwill through this kind of banter while experimenting with different approaches. A mountain of accumulated favorability would also cushion the blow if any scheme went sideways.
...And, well, building rapport with Im Yujin wasn't exactly useful only for her route, either.
"...?"
From the seat across from us, Ma Nayeon was watching me with a faintly puzzled look in her eyes.
Her route would only open up at the moment she took the bait — the hook I'd planted to push my relationship with Im Yujin forward.
There sat Im Yujin, shoulder to shoulder with the new member Lee Seonho, laughing her head off and clearly having the time of her life.
Ma Nayeon's face betrayed nothing, but inside, she was genuinely flustered. Their club president looked nothing like her usual self.
'Was Yujin-unnie always this quick to laugh at other people's jokes?'
She'd always known Im Yujin as the type whose brightness lifted the mood of everyone around her — a year of club activities alongside Han Jaewook had made that plenty clear.
But this was close to the first time she'd ever seen Im Yujin enjoying herself this sincerely. No wonder the sight threw her off balance.
'...Jaewook always said she either got mad at him or just laughed awkwardly.'
With Lee Seonho beside her, Im Yujin looked genuinely, unfeignedly delighted.
It wasn't as though he came across as some silver-tongued charmer, and yet somehow, inexplicably, his conversation meshed perfectly with Im Yujin's rhythm.
"The cafeteria's been handing out nothing but oranges lately. Do you like oranges, junior?"
"I do. But my favorite fruit is the cucumber."
"A cucumber is not a fruit!"
"Botanically speaking, a cucumber is a fruit, not a vegetable. Apparently the line between fruit and non-fruit isn't sweetness — it's which part of the flower develops into the thing you eat."
"Wait, seriously?"
"Kyo-Kyo! And you call yourself club president, not knowing that!"
"Kyukei! You got meee!"
"..."
...Honestly, I have no idea what part of that was supposed to be fun.
It felt like the two of them had wandered off into a private little world of their own. Their conversation was baffling from the outside — but they were clearly enjoying it, and that was what mattered.
On pure conversation skill alone, he was definitely better company than Han Jaewook. ...Still not as cool as Jaewook, though.
'Seeing them hit it off like that... the story about him coming here to court Yujin-unnie doesn't sound like a lie after all.'
When Lee Seonho had first offered to help her last week, Ma Nayeon hadn't known what to believe.
He might have been pretending to pursue Im Yujin while quietly making moves on her. Or the whole thing could have been a malicious prank designed to drive a wedge between her and Han Jaewook. The proposal had come from a junior she'd known for less than a day, after all, so her plan had been to simply observe in silence until she understood his real motives.
But watching him and Im Yujin get along today had shifted her thinking.
'That offer he made... maybe it actually is possible.'
His proposal: if she helped things go well between him and Im Yujin, he'd help her win Han Jaewook in return.
She'd been too flustered to refuse at first — but now, for the first time, a thread of trust was beginning to form around that offer.
'...For now, let me just keep watching a little longer.'
Observing the two of them trading jokes and laughter, Ma Nayeon found herself quietly turning Lee Seonho's proposal over in her mind once more.