New Semester, With Lua
Morning came.
It was one of those unsatisfying mornings, the kind that left me feeling less than refreshed, but I still got up, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and took a shower.
When I stepped out, a glass of misutgaru Mom had prepared as a breakfast substitute was waiting for me.
I downed the whole thing in a few gulps, then went straight back into the bathroom and brushed my teeth again until everything felt clean.
With the conviction that every last preparation was perfect, I returned to my room, put on my school uniform, and packed my bag.
I checked myself in the mirror one more time, then called out right away.
“I’m off~!”
The door clicked open with a creak, and I stepped outside, rode the elevator down to the first floor.
The moment I arrived at the ground floor and stepped out through the front entrance—
“Jinwoo, good morning.”
As if it were the most natural thing in the world, Lua was waiting for me.
I walked over and stood beside her without a second thought, and we fell into conversation.
“Morning. Did you sleep well last night?”
“I did. What about you, Jinwoo?”
“I slept pretty well too.”
It wasn’t just “pretty well.” I had slept so deeply that I seriously doubted I could sleep any more soundly than that.
Lua smiled softly, as if my answer pleased her.
“That’s a relief.”
With her smile still lingering, I started walking, and I sent her the video I had prepared.
“Lua, take a look at this. What do you think?”
The clip I sent her was none other than a Kuroa Ruru video edited by Seo Jinwoo himself.
Yesterday, separate from the clips I had cut as Mangjjonku, I had also made one as Seo Jinwoo.
Mangjjonku could go wild with the spicy jokes and meme spam precisely because he was unofficial. Seo Jinwoo, on the other hand, deliberately stripped all of that out and instead pushed the pure entertainment value of the original footage as far as it would go.
Lua had wanted to see a clip I made. More precisely, she wanted to see the kind of video that would go up on her official channel.
Kuroa Ruru’s channel already had a new editor, but as far as I knew that person was only temporary—filling in for about a year.
Which meant I needed this video to earn her seal of approval. Kuroa Ruru’s approval.
I watched her and my phone in nervous alternation while she stared at the screen and started watching.
After she finished the entire eight-minute video, she asked me a question.
“Why did you make it eight minutes long?”
The interview had begun without warning, and I answered like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“You can fit two mid-roll ads in.”
“You know your stuff. Think you could make it longer than that?”
“Yeah. There were quite a few scenes I cut.”
“And you’re confident you can make those scenes just as fun as this?”
The way she said “just as fun as this” told me everything I needed to know.
She liked the video. She liked the way I had held the line—keeping the memes and jokes in check—while still editing it to be as entertaining as possible inside that restraint.
“I am.”
“Really?”
“…Probably.”
Honestly, I wasn’t confident at all.
Every editor has their own style, and that style only hardens with time.
Learning something new and applying it is easy enough, but even the new things gradually get absorbed into your existing style.
And my style was already pretty well established.
Editing in a completely different style under those conditions had been a real challenge for me—and a real gamble.
Whether she took my hesitation as humility or not, Lua nodded as if she were satisfied.
“Honestly, with this level of skill, I think you’ll be fine. How long did this take you?”
“…Two days.”
I said two days, but the truth was it had taken closer to a week.
Not that I had a choice. I had been editing Ruru’s clips and Elia’s clips too, squeezing this one in during whatever scraps of free time I had left. A week was only natural under those conditions.
Lua seemed to catch the lie right away. She stepped a little closer and looked up at me.
“Really? Only two days?”
“…It took a bit longer than that.”
“Were you busy?”
I didn’t say anything. I just nodded.
Lua looked at me, then lightly jabbed a finger into my side.
“Ow.”
“…If you were busy, you didn’t have to do it.”
“You said you wanted to see it…”
“That’s one thing. This is another.”
The thoroughly sulky look on her face made me feel weirdly guilty.
“…Sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing to me? You should be apologizing to yourself for how tired you must be.”
She kept grumbling for a moment, then finally looked at me and said,
“Don’t force yourself. I don’t want to force you, either.”
“I wasn’t forcing it. I wanted to do it.”
“For real?”
“For real.”
This time my answer seemed to earn her trust. Lua nodded.
“Okay. I’ll believe you.”
“Thanks.”
“But from now on, if it looks like you’re going to overdo it, just don’t. Got it?”
“Got it.”
When I nodded, Lua held out her arm.
At the same time she offered her pinky.
I hooked mine through hers without thinking, and we both curled our fingers tight, locking them together in a firm pinky swear.
Come to think of it, Lua’s hands were incredibly small. Her fingers were small too—soft and plush in a way that felt almost unreal.
Was this just what a girl’s hand felt like?
But Lua’s hands especially seemed pretty. If anyone ever needed a hand model, I would have wanted to cast her.
I was still cataloging private thoughts about her hands when Lua pulled hers free and started glaring at me.
“Lua?”
“…Just now, you looked like a total pervert.”
“Out of nowhere?”
“You looked super pervy. Staring at my hand like that.”
“Me?”
Lua nodded and launched into her usual round of insults.
“A pervert who stares at people’s hands. Degenerate.”
“No, it’s not like that…”
“Get away from me, pervert.”
She stuck her tongue out lightly while roasting me, and I offered a half-baked defense.
“Your hands are just so small I got curious and looked.”
“My hands are average-sized, you know? You’re the one who’s too big, you pervert.”
“I’m not that big either.”
Truthfully, even my hands weren’t especially large for a guy.
My feet were on the bigger side, but my hands were a little small. That imbalance always felt kind of ridiculous to me.
Lua suddenly took my hand in both of hers and started playing with my fingers.
Then she nodded and looked up at me.
“Yeah, you’re right. Jinwoo’s hands are a little smaller than a typical guy’s.”
“Right?”
“Mm. Comparing them to my dad’s makes it even clearer. His hands aren’t that big either, but they’re about the same size as yours.”
“I see…”
I was nodding along like an idiot when Lua’s expression caught my eye.
There was something quietly amused about it, something quietly happy, and it seemed to glow softly in the morning light—
Thump!
My heart started pounding before I even realized it.
“Jinwoo, let’s just hurry up and get to school.”
“Uh… yeah. Let’s do that.”
And so I ended up walking a little faster toward school with Lua at my side.
When I walked into the classroom, the seats had already been assigned.
We had to sit in number order, and my seat and Lua’s ended up surprisingly far apart.
In theory, Seo and Im should have been able to sit close if we wanted to. The numbers could easily have worked out that way.
But there were so few boys in the class, and the boys took up all the early numbers. Whenever we ran into a teacher who refused to mix genders, the distance between us was inevitable.
Apparently this year’s teacher was one of those people.
“For this month, let’s sit like this for now. Is there anyone who needs to cluster together for the same university or the same type of major?”
Three kids preparing for physical education entrance exams raised their hands, and the teacher sent all three of them to the very back row.
None of the PE-track kids were aiming for universities that also looked at grades, so the teacher left them with a simple instruction: sleep if you need to recharge, just don’t disturb anyone else’s studying.
The second I heard that, I was sure of it.
Yep. This was definitely a third-year classroom.
The fact that the teacher was willing to allow sleep for the sake of conserving energy—as long as no one interfered with studying—made the weight of college admissions feel suddenly, sharply real.
Not that I had any strong ambitions about university myself. I was already more or less locked in as Kuroa Ruru’s editor, after all.
On top of that I was currently freelancing as Elia’s editor too, so my path was basically set either way.
Even so, I wanted to study hard. I wanted to properly put to use the study habit I had managed to build thanks to Lua.
But…
“…Something’s just not working.”
Something was off.
“What did you say?”
“Ah… nothing. Sorry.”
I apologized to the girl sitting next to me, then went back to staring at my book.
It wasn’t that I didn’t resent the teacher for launching straight into a full lesson from the very first period, but I resented myself more for being unable to concentrate right now.
I used to think my focus was pretty decent. I could even get pretty deep into immersion when I wanted to. So why was studying suddenly this hard?
Had I really reset my study habit by not doing enough over the break?
I spent the period flipping back and forth between the textbook and the teacher’s lecture in a daze, and before I knew it the class was over. And as for me…
“…I’m screwed.”
It felt like I had completely forgotten how to study.