Contract Dating (3)
I'd come back to the dorm with her contact info in hand and was lying on my bed. It still didn't feel real. Staring at Amelia's number saved in my Academy Watch only made it feel even less so.
Was this a dream?
The faint, lingering sting in my cheek — she'd hit me pretty hard — was the only thing insisting this wasn't a dream.
"This really does feel like a dream..."
Even so, the whole situation felt like something out of a dream. They say you bury one shock under a bigger one, and maybe that was true — the pain of getting dumped barely registered anymore.
That wasn't quite right.
Still, that hollow emptiness from before was gone.
But what the hell was that reason she couldn't tell me?
What was the secret Amelia had been so determined to hide, her face going completely serious? The more earnestly I turned it over, the darker my imagination ran. The kind of secret that, if I ever found out, might get me killed...
That doesn't make any sense. Haha... listen to me.
I'd try to brush it off, but those were the only thoughts that kept coming.
Is that actually the reason?
At first I'd dismissed it as ridiculous, but the more I sat with it, the more convinced I became that this was it.
Bottom of the Academy rankings. A civilian. An orphan with no connections.
Wasn't this the perfect setup for getting disposed of? I checked every box of a conspiracy-theory target from every movie and internet rabbit hole I'd ever fallen into. Maybe that old joke of mine — Canned Human (Specimen: Park Yeonho) — was about to become reality.
"Ugh, I've got chills..."
So what was I supposed to do now?
I'd asked myself the same question a dozen times, and I still didn't have an answer. Between one grim fantasy and the next, sleep never came.
"Ah. It's morning..."
Time to go to school... haah...
"What's even going to happen when I get there..."
I'd broken up with Areum, and now I was dating Amelia. It was a fake relationship built on a contract, sure, but the news would still be the same: I was dating that Amelia. Which meant I had officially become the bastard who'd dated — and was dating — the Academy's most famous beauties.
An Academy student? What's his rank?
Third from the bottom...
Pfft, lmao. Has he ever even dated anyone?
Ex-girlfriend: Kang Areum. Current girlfriend: Amelia.
You son of a bitch!
I could see the whole thing coming from a mile away. The problem was that the people who'd scream you son of a bitch! and try to kill me wouldn't be one or two.
Even back when I was dating Kang Areum — who was now my ex — there'd been the Nutjobs who picked fights the second she wasn't around, and the Lunatics who picked fights even when she was. Those completely unhinged nicknames were a Kang Areum original. She'd probably figured that calling them something that stupid would make me feel better...
We'd broken up now, though.
If I walked into the Academy and said something like, I need some time alone!, they'd turn me into a canned human on the spot. And then they'd say something like, You can think as long as you want in there. Nobody'll bother you.
Except there's nobody to let me out, you bastards.
I have to go to the Academy either way...
I finished a quick shower and sat on the edge of the bed. Kim Seongchan's snoring face was deeply, personally offensive.
"This asshole is out cold while I'm over here stressing about a life-or-death problem...!"
The contrast was infuriating. I hadn't slept a wink, and this guy was sawing logs, scratching his belly, dead to the world. I launched a smash at Kim Seongchan's forehead.
CRAAACK!
"That's the stuff!"
"GWAAAAH!"
He shot upright with a sound like a wild boar.
"Hey, quit your bullshit."
This asshole wasn't even hurt. He just screamed like he was dying. I had a feeling this wasn't really about the pain, but still — he was pissing me off!
"Ugh, fuck... it's morning already...?"
He asked it while still rolling around on the bed, so I answered him.
"Nah. It's seven."
"You fucking asshole...! You son of a bitch!"
Go on. Be the sacrificial lamb for my mental health.
"Hey. What do you think would happen if Rosemary got a boyfriend?"
"Rosemary...? Who? The top student?"
"Yeah. The top student."
"What, you see her get confessed to or something? That's just a regular Tuesday for that girl. She probably gets ten of those a day."
She hadn't been receiving a confession. She'd been making one.
To me.
"Ah, whatever. I'm going back to sleep."
He burrowed back into the blankets and deployed a classic just five more minutes, but I didn't wake the sooo grateful bastard a full hour early just because he'd used comforting me yesterday as an excuse to indulge himself.
"It's actually eight."
Once I got my own head on straight, I realized it was eight. I'd finished my shower and come out to find it was eight.
"Fuck!"
And Academy start time was eight-thirty. On top of that, the Academy grounds were ridiculously huge.
"If you don't leave now, you're late. Good luck."
"YOU FUCKING BASTARD!!"
Who held a knife to your throat and made you sleep in? Lmao.
I could practically see the letters floating over my head as I set off in a relatively good mood — and then a voice that had spent the entire night shaking my sanity showed up, attached to a strangely off-kilter mix of formal and casual speech.
"Yeonho, good morning."
"Amel... ia..."
I felt the terrifying power of rote memorization kick in and returned the greeting on reflex.
"Yes! Yeonho, it's a lovely morning."
The way she answered, smiling so happily, anyone watching would have sworn we were a real couple.
But it was fake.
The faint flush blooming across both her cheeks would have looked, to anyone watching, like she'd just run into her actual boyfriend.
But it was fake.
That still left the question of why Amelia had come to the men's dorm in the first place.
"What brings you here?"
"Yeonho, don't use formal speech with me. Not between us."
What even IS our relationship, you—!
She puffed her cheeks just slightly, as if she actually had a grievance, and set a finger lightly on my lips as she told me not to speak formally. Anyone watching would have sworn they were looking at a couple.
But it's fake... right?
I knew this was contract dating, and I was still starting to get confused.
"So what are you doing here..."
If I finished that sentence, the honorifics were coming out whether I wanted them to or not. Better to cut it short.
"I came to pick you up."
Pick me up? How would she know when I left, or which way I went?
"I know you always walk or run around this time. Am I wrong?"
I had no idea how she knew my commute time and method, but she wasn't wrong. Not that I always walked or always ran. Walking was for the days I met Kang Areum and we went together. Running was for the days I hadn't prepped my gear. Areum had always texted me, so I'd never had to worry about being late.
Those had been the days.
I'm getting gloomy...
Fake or not, though, I wasn't about to sit there moping in front of my girlfriend.
"You're thinking about Kang Areum right now, aren't you."
"Ah— no... I was just..."
Terrifyingly accurate. So this was what they called a woman's intuition. I'd actually done something wrong, so if I was going to get scolded, I had to take it. And if I didn't take it, then what? What was I going to do about it...
"Fine. I don't know how many lovers you've had until now."
How many lovers...
In this girl's eyes, I apparently looked like a complete player. I had a dating history of exactly one, and I was a nobody.
"From now on, I alone am more than enough as the lover inside you. Understood?"
She leaned her face in close as she said it, and the look was so alluring I moved back without meaning to and nodded.
"Y-yes..."
Bewitched. That was how attractive she was in that moment. Whatever resistance I'd built up until now had gone somewhere else entirely. I was completely defenseless.
I was pretty sure I'd just heard something terrifying. I'd been too busy wondering when I'd become this weak to women to catch it properly, but it had sounded like something I really shouldn't have missed.
"Is something the matter?"
Looking at Amelia's face as she gazed at me so calmly, I started to think I might have imagined it.
Ah. That other time wasn't a hallucination, though, was it.
"It's nothing."
And given my current position, even if I had heard something, I was in no position to have heard it. Better to just shut up and stay still...
"So you walked all the way... here?"
The honorifics had almost slipped out on instinct, but I fought to keep it casual. Strangely enough, I had the feeling she liked it when I talked to her comfortably.
"I came by car, of course."
"Drop me off... nearby."
I didn't know how she'd take it, but I said it anyway. Honestly, I wasn't ready. I wasn't the kind of guy with the guts to roll up beside a girlfriend this spectacular — fake or not. Facing the stares that were about to hit me, and the dangerous types that came with them, was more than I could handle.
"Mm. I understand. Let's take a little more time, then."
Whether she could read my mind or not, Amelia offering to give me more time made me genuinely grateful.
"Whew. Thanks..."
The tension drained out of me all at once, and a sigh of relief slipped out on its own.
"I'll let you off here, then."
"Amelia. Thank you."
"Don't mention it."
On foot, it was a stretch that took more than twenty minutes. Riding in the car Amelia's chauffeur was driving, it felt like less than three. And even those three minutes were probably just my nerves stretching the time out.
As for comfort — I might as well have been sitting in a chair designed by an ergonomics lab.
"A nice car really is different..."
The speed and the ride were nothing like the buses I occasionally took. Amelia must have heard me, because she left one last remark just before the window finished rolling up, and then she was gone.
"You'd do well to get used to it. You'll be riding it every day."
Without waiting for an answer, the car shrank to a speck and vanished. Its color was rosemary.
It was white.
What's the connection between white and rosemary?
I had no idea. Maybe I was just drunk on the atmosphere. All of a sudden, I wanted to know what rosemary meant.
"Is there a flower with the same name as rosemary?"
There was.
Fidelity. Constancy.