No Matter How You Twist It, an Assa Is Still an Assa
No matter how much you twist and turn your whole body, an assa is still an assa.
“Ah. I’m gonna die.”
The next day at lunch, I dragged my completely wrecked body—suffering from the first hangover of my life—into the lecture hall. The reason I was sitting in class the day after the MT was simple.
Our department’s trip had been a one-night, two-day event from Thursday to Friday instead of Friday to Saturday, and I still had a Friday afternoon lecture.
Ah, but then again.
From what I’d seen on the school community, other departments apparently canceled Friday classes when the MT fell on Thursday and Friday, just to be nice to people with packed schedules like me.
But the professor for this course was FM personified, so that kind of mercy didn’t exist. I should have listened back when the community was screaming that this liberal arts elective was brutal and to avoid it at all costs.
Seriously.
Why on earth had I thought that once I returned to school I’d live the college life more passionately than anyone and pull a perfect 4.5 GPA? I genuinely wanted to stab the version of me from a few weeks ago who had signed up for this class, still riding the high of getting discharged.
And I mean that literally.
“...Ugh.”
A dry heave slipped out before I could stop it. Whether it was the hangover or not, my stomach was churning even though I was just sitting still, so I kept my hand clamped over my mouth.
-Scraaape!
The sound of a chair dragging came from the seat beside me. Then—
“What the hell, are you pregnant?”
Some insane nonsense came flying in with it.
...What?
Who the hell would say something like that to me? The voice sounded oddly familiar, so I glanced over. And of course—
“Why the sudden puking?”
There stood my one and only female friend. Han Sara, same-department classmate with bright yellow blonde hair that reached her shoulders.
The notable detail was that she, like me, looked like she’d just rolled out of bed—messy hair, gray hoodie, and the truly inspired choice of gray dolphin shorts.
“What are you talking about? Have you ever seen a guy get pregnant?”
Even though my stomach was killing me, I shot back first.
“Yeah. It happens sometimes.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, it’s not bullshit. For real. The male lead got pregnant in a webtoon I read recently.”
Fuck.
What kind of webtoon even had a plot where the male protagonist got pregnant? I almost asked for the title before my brain caught up and I clamped my mouth shut. I did not need that kind of garbage information taking up space in my head.
Han Sara looked me up and down, then let out a small snort of laughter.
“So why were you making those dying noises? It can’t be a hangover, right?”
“Why couldn’t it be a hangover?”
“Why? Sunwoo, you drink like a fish.”
She answered with a face that said why are you even asking something so obvious?
Hmm.
She wasn’t wrong. I really could down four or five bottles of soju and still be fine. But even I had my limits. When they kept forcing penalty shots on me with every ridiculous excuse imaginable, I eventually broke. After twenty-plus glasses, I honestly don’t remember how much more I drank.
“Yeah, but it is a hangover. I drank until I blacked out at the MT yesterday.”
“Oh, for real? Yesterday was the MT?”
“Yeah. Yesterday was the—wait, what? You didn’t go?”
“Nope. I had a shift at my part-time job.”
Ah. No wonder I hadn’t seen her face yesterday. If she hadn’t gone to the MT, it made perfect sense that she wouldn’t know why I looked like a zombie.
I was nodding in understanding when she muttered to herself.
“So it was the MT… Did you at least have fun?”
“......”
Fun? The question made me replay yesterday in my head.
......Drinking. More drinking. Then even more drinking.
I had literally just sat in a corner and poured alcohol down my throat the entire time. There was no way I could say it was fun, even as a lie. I kept my mouth shut and stared off into the distance. Han Sara clicked her tongue beside me.
“So it wasn’t fun.”
“......”
“Heh, well, obviously.”
She laughed with a strange lilt in her voice.
“What kind of fun could assas like us possibly have at an MT? We just end up drinking nonstop. Exactly like you did.”
“............No.”
Well, she wasn’t entirely wrong, but it wasn’t like I had only been drinking the whole time. After all, I had stepped up as Mo Yuna’s Black Knight.
“Hey, but I actually—”
I was just about to drop that incredible, once-in-a-lifetime drinking story on her when—
-Scraaape!
The front door of the lecture hall opened and the evil bald professor who hadn’t canceled class even on the day after the MT walked in.
“Oh dear, everyone’s faces look like death.”
The bald professor greeted us with a warm smile, but the only response he got was half-hearted grumbling.
Every student who had made the mistake of taking this class was a half-corpse, just like me. Well, except for the weirdos like Han Sara who hadn’t gone to the MT at all.
“I’ll take attendance now. Kim—”
Oh.
My mood lifted slightly at the professor’s announcement. Honestly, the only reason I had dragged my wrecked body to school today was for this exact moment.
This professor only took attendance when he felt like it, so I’d been praying he would today. Attendance made up a pretty big chunk of the grade in liberal arts classes, after all.
Jackpot.
I was happily grinning as the professor called out names one by one when—
“Mo Yuna.”
“Yes.”
Twitch.
The corner of my mouth twitched on its own. I hadn’t expected to hear that name right then.
Mo Yuna?
Wait, she was in this class too?
......Yeah, she is.
Now that I thought about it, of course she was. The reason I’d forgotten was simple: Mo Yuna was so beautiful and such a perfect inssa that even the upperclassmen knew her, while I was just a forgettable assa with zero presence. We had no points of contact, so I had never even registered that she was here.
“Lee Sunwoo.”
“Ah, yes!”
I quickly shot my hand up when my name was called. I wasn’t in elementary school anymore, and the lecture hall wasn’t that big, so it wasn’t necessary. But because of that unintentional attention grab, my eyes met Mo Yuna’s. She was sitting in the front row.
“......Huh?”
Her eyes widened slightly when she spotted me.
......This probably wasn’t the time for such thoughts, but seeing her with her perfectly styled hair and neat outfit made me realize something.
Even I, whose place was right in front of campus, had shown up looking like a mess. So how was Mo Yuna—who definitely lived farther away—able to appear so flawless?
“......”
“......”
But why was she staring at me so hard? She didn’t seem to have any intention of looking away. The intense gaze started to feel burdensome, so I quickly averted my eyes. When I did, I found Han Sara staring straight at me.
“What?”
“......”
We were both girls and our eyes had met the same way, so why did it feel completely different? I was trying to figure out where that massive gap came from when the professor, finished with attendance, clapped his hands lightly.
“...!!”
The words hit me like a bomb. The midterm substitute was a group project… and we had to form the groups ourselves with four people we actually clicked with…?!
...Fuck.
A curse burst out from deep inside me. Telling an assa like me to “just form a group with people you get along with” was basically the same as telling me to drop dead…!!
My hands and feet began to tremble uncontrollably, and a cold sweat slid down the back of my neck.
...Ah. Wait!
Hold on. I still had one last bastion…?!
I whipped my head around toward Han Sara.
“Hey, Han Sara!”
“Hm?”
She turned at my call. I tried to speak as calmly as possible even though my whole body was shaking.
“Let’s do the group project together!”
Then—
“Ah, sorry. I already have people I’m grouping with.”
Han Sara delivered the blow to the back of my head with a completely casual face.
“...What?!”
“I said I already have people. Go find someone else.”
...No. You damn traitor. Weren’t you an assa too?!
Why did an assa have friends lined up for group projects?! The thought screamed inside my head, but I tried to stay calm.
“Hey, you backstabber! Just because you have people, that’s it?!”
Okay, I didn’t stay calm at all. At my desperate cry, Han Sara answered indifferently.
“What are you on about? It’s not like we made a promise beforehand to do group projects together.”
“......”
She was right. I had no logical comeback, so I shut my mouth.
“Well, if you look around, there are probably a few other people like you who don’t have anyone to group with.”
Han Sara glanced around the room and spoke like it had nothing to do with her.
“Ugh, don’t talk about it like it’s someone else’s problem! Help me look too!”
Even though I knew she was right, I snapped at her anyway. Being betrayed by my fellow assa comrade had seriously soured my mood.
“Why should I? The thirsty one digs the well.”
“That’s why I’m asking you to dig it with me!”
“No thanks. My hands would hurt.”
Anyway. While Han Sara and I were busy bickering—
“Hey, are you seriously going to be like this? Last time when you couldn’t do the assignment because of work, I even—”
I was just about to pull out my treasured cheat code to get the indifferent Han Sara to cooperate when—
“Um, Senior.”
Suddenly, a soft, sweet fragrance washed over me.
“By any chance…”
Mo Yuna. The girl whose black hair carried the faintest hint of blue, whose feminine outfit and delicate way of speaking made her the very image of a heavenly maiden.
“Have you found people for the group project yet?”
She tucked her hair behind her ear as she spoke to me.
“......”
So I.
“......”
“......”
Just sat there completely spaced out for a long moment.
“-Hey. What are you doing?”
Thanks to Han Sara nudging my arm, I finally snapped back to reality.
“Huh? Oh, no… I haven’t found anyone yet…”
“Oh, really?”
Despite my weak answer, Mo Yuna smiled brightly. Her smile was so cute that I genuinely thought her smiling face was beautiful.
“Then, Senior. Would you like to do the group project with us?”
She had just thrown me a lifeline.