Han Seorin
A week had already slipped by since I'd started school. Between course registration and the correction period that followed, the days had flown by before I could so much as blink.
And so, corrections behind us, Monday lunchtime arrived to kick off the first proper week of the semester.
"Senior? Did your course adjustments go all right?"
A voice called out to me just as I was slipping off campus after my morning class.
Her name was Han Seorin. A year my junior in age, yet a grade above me in school—a junior who was somehow also my senior. Quite the peculiar relationship, all things considered.
She was what you'd call the bespectacled model-student type. It showed in everything from her refusal to carry a mere backpack—she hugged her major's textbooks to her chest instead—to her yellow cardigan and jeans, a simple, studious outfit as typical as could be.
Her face, however, was anything but typical. Her eyes carried a faintly drowsy, languid look, and the corners of her mouth curved upward in a soft, unhurried arc. There was something hazy about her impression, and yet my gaze kept drifting back to her—as though someone had taken the image of a first love I'd never actually experienced and planted it right there in front of me.
Just one thing, though. That overly flashy platinum-blond hair color did nag at me a little...
"Yeah, I think I got through it fine, thanks to you. Word is, the classes I'd originally signed up for are supposed to be brutal on your grades?"
"Those were the fruits of experience I paid quite a price to earn. That's why I hoped you, at least, wouldn't have to suffer for them."
For all her seemingly introverted looks, she was the affable sort—the kind who played along with the smallest small talk and shared her precious classroom wisdom for the sake of a boy she barely knew.
"Thanks to you, my grades should come out fine too. So, you heading off to lunch now?"
"I... will, yes? Though I haven't decided what to eat yet..."
But for all her sociable manner, she gave off a strong sense of always being on her own.
Could it be because she was the Engineering Goddess? Holding down such a rare position within the department, she must have had plenty of people dying to get close to her. But with supply utterly failing to meet demand, maybe she paradoxically had few friends?
Except she wasn't merely coasting on some basic engineering-department buff. I'm hardly the most experienced man in the world, but I'd almost never laid eyes on anyone as remarkable as Han Seorin.
Well, aside from Joo Yeonwoo, perhaps...
"...?"
Let me rephrase that—from 'person' to 'woman.' The moment I switched the criteria, it became crystal clear just how remarkable a woman Han Seorin was.
"Don't you have plans or anything?"
"Usually not? College students on a Monday morning worry about what to eat, not who to eat it with."
"Fair enough, but..."
But you're Han Seorin, aren't you? The Engineering Goddess, whose leverage no one in the department could hope to match, blessed with a kind personality that endeared her to everyone. You'd think she'd be drowning in lunch invitations, yet here she was, oddly unoccupied.
"Then want to grab it with me?"
Maybe that was why the words shot out of my mouth before my brain had any say in the matter.
Though realistically speaking, there was no way Han Seorin would eat lunch with the likes of me...
"Should we? Have you been to the Second Student Cafeteria yet?"
"Not that far yet... Last week was still the correction period, so I just made do with gimbap."
"Perfect timing, then. Their chicken meat donkatsu is absolutely delicious."
"..."
If it's chicken meat donkatsu, isn't that just a chicken cutlet?
If only to verify it with my own eyes, I decided to tag along.
And so I found myself at the Second Student Cafeteria with Han Seorin. We ordered the chicken cutlet she'd recommended—or rather, the chicken meat donkatsu—and claimed a table.
"This is seriously good? I wrote it off as cafeteria food, but I guess they spring for decent chicken?"
"Right? Though, Senior, you don't seem all that amazed that there's chicken in a donkatsu?"
"..."
That's because it's a chicken cutlet...
Is it actually possible to make it past twenty without knowing chicken cutlets exist?
"Mentoring wearing you out? You have to chase down kids who can't adjust to school—people like me—and rescue them one by one, right?"
"Not... particularly? It's a great deal easier than my class rep days last year."
"So you were a class rep too? I don't know much about it, but you seem pretty devoted to school affairs. You don't have any official position this year, though?"
For a model student brimming with a sense of duty like Han Seorin, being run off her feet should have been the norm. She'd served as class rep last year, and someone of her caliber would have satisfied professors and students alike. This year, with expectations even higher, she should have landed at minimum the department rep spot, if not the vice presidency of the student council.
But the vice presidency had gone to one Seong Hanbin—the guy who'd phoned me.
"Well... people asked me to take on plenty, but I decided to stick to mentoring only."
"...?"
For an instant, a dull, earth-colored gloom surfaced on Han Seorin's face.
Like the look on Dad's face the day he bought Samsung Electro-Mechanics at 90,000 won a share.
He had, admittedly, held on for dear life and clawed his principal back. But then the stock went and slid all the way down to 30,000, and the depression laid siege to him all over again...
"I'm sorry, Senior! I let it show too much, didn't I?"
"I didn't think any such thing. With so many people coming to you for one thing or another, I figured it must be a hassle."
"You know me remarkably well? Have you been through it yourself, Senior? Having things you didn't want constantly passed off onto you until they became a burden..."
"..."
If I had to name one, it would be Joo Yeonwoo. As always.
That one, with his fragile little frame and a temperament like a girl's, had been tailor-made for teasing—the perfect toy.
Not that anything of the sort ever happened. Anyone who wanted to mess with Yeonwoo had to get through me first.
But then, a knight finds his motivation precisely when he has a noble lady to protect. Besides, wiping the ass of some kid who does nothing but play dress-up every single day gets old for me too.
"Nothing as grand as what you do, though. More like dropping coins into a pocket out of sheer habit, without ever noticing it has a hole in it?"
"What a hilarious example? If you'd come to OT, I'm certain you'd have made a great many friends."
"..."
Why does she keep prodding my sore spots...
Needless to say, I hadn't made it to OT.
Of all the possible moments, Hanbin's call had come while I was with Yeonwoo, who declared me immovable on the grounds of a sponsorship. There was, of course, no sponsorship.
When I demanded to know what on earth that meant, he answered with those indifferent eyes: "There was one. Then it disappeared."
"..."
Anyway—a heartbreaking tale of how I missed OT and spent two straight days entertaining Joo Yeonwoo instead.
"Something incredibly urgent came up, so there was simply no going. Did you attend OT?"
"I didn't particularly want to... but Hanbin begged so much that I ended up tagging along."
I supposed being part of the in-crowd wasn't all it was cracked up to be. What fun is there in a row of swarthy guys dripping like beef broth, waging line wars with soju bottles anyway?
But it seemed that, as last year's class rep, she simply hadn't been able to refuse a classmate's request.
"So school isn't just about hitting the books, huh?"
"It's a little different from high school? Still, I feel quite unburdened these days. Taking on freshman mentoring means I get to bow out of things like event planning."
"You've still got your share of headaches, though. Dealing with freshmen who don't even know how course registration works—people like me—doesn't it get so frustrating you have a full-on reality check?"
"Not really? If anything, since they don't know me, I can be straightforward with them, which I actually like."
"Huh? What changes once they get to know you?"
"I'm sorry?"
"..."
The thread of our conversation snapped in an instant.
She wasn't visibly startled, nor had she gone stiff or stern about it.
And yet Han Seorin froze up as though she'd committed some catastrophic slip of the tongue.
What on earth had I just said...
Riiing!!!
Thankfully, an icebreaker had arrived to smash through the glacier that had frozen over solid.
The problem was that the icebreaker in question was 'Joo Yeonwoo.'
"You're not... going to answer that?"
"It's nothing. Probably one of those survey calls."
"...?"
But the phone went right on: riiing... riiing...
Five calls in a row to a guy with nothing better to do than loaf around—this was no quest objective.
"It sounds like a very... urgent survey?"
"Haah..."
Out of options, I had to pick up the phone in front of Seorin.
The moment I hit accept, a thick, husky stream of profanity poured through the receiver.
"Fuck... how come you never answer your phone?"
"I was standing in line at the counter and didn't notice it go off. So what is it?"
"You eating?"
"Was 'serving line' not enough for you? Yes, I'm eating. Why?"
"With who?"
"W-with who? Who would I be eating with? I'm eating alone. College is where you eat alone, that's just how it is."
Before I knew it, I was sneaking glances at Han Seorin. She was staring dead at me, chopsticks still in hand, eyeballs swiveling left and right.
"You eat alone every day?"
"Looks that way for now. Thanks to a certain someone, I missed OT and don't have a single friend here."
"Should I come over and eat with you?"
"What is that even... the cause and effect there are completely divorced from each other, no? I'm doing just fine, so you go take care of whatever it is you do."
"I'm bored... hurry up and come film a video with me."
"Haah... I'll obviously film one when I'm back, so go find a hobby or something?"
"Filming videos with you is my hobby."
"Then how about joining a club or..."
"Why, you picking a fight? Fuck... we're eating dinner together later. I'm having mala hot pot today."
"..."
What, he can't hit his sodium quota without that damned mala?
I had apparently just burned a good three minutes on that call with my dining companion sitting right in front of me, and not one second of it had contained a single nourishing word.
"Sorry, Seorin. He's always been a bit of a chatterbox."
"Who is it?"
"Huh? Ah, how should I put it... a childhood friend, of sorts."
"A childhood friend? You mean the kind of friend who's lived right next door since the day you were born?"
Had she grown up in nothing but apartment blocks her whole life? Han Seorin showed a surprising appetite for the phrase 'childhood friend.'
Well, I'd had a childhood friend all along while forever dreaming of a childhood friend, so harboring a quiet fascination came with the territory...
"Whoa, hold on! You're not getting some strange misunderstanding right now, are you?"
"What misunderstanding?"
"Doesn't it show up in the romance novels women read? That same tired setup of tumbling into romantic feelings, years too late, with an old childhood friend..."
"All the time. Are you one of those cases, Senior?"
"As if. It will sound absurd, but my childhood friend is a boy. A guy with so much free time that his one and only hobby is phoning the kid next door during lunch hour."
So that was exactly what she'd been thinking. Not that I had any intention of doing anything with Han Seorin, but a misunderstanding still had to be corrected.
"I see..."
"...?"
Or were my eyes playing tricks on me?
Just now, Han Seorin had seemed to relax, if only a little...
"But isn't that a bit strange?"
"Huh? What is?"
The question came straight on the heels of the last, cutting off my thinking entirely—only to toss me far more to think about instead.
"It's just that, in cases like that, people don't usually use the term 'childhood friend.'"
"..."
Now that she mentioned it...
Why on earth had I been calling Joo Yeonwoo my 'childhood friend' all this time?
Probably because we had literally played house together, that's why.
With me, naturally, always the husband, and Yeonwoo the wife...
It had never once seemed strange to me until now, but here, Han Seorin's point landed dead center. People don't play house with their same-sex friend from next door!
"Th-that was just kid stuff, from when we were young and clueless. I mean, sometimes little boys like Barbie dolls too, don't they?"
"There are... people like that?"
"..."
It just kept getting worse by the second.
And it was all Joo Yeonwoo's fault.