The Crowd
Let me rewind a little.
Up to this point, my daily life had been painfully monotonous. Ever since I'd opened my Pinbox account, drawing comics had kept me too busy to even breathe. The moment school let out, I'd bolt straight home and fall into the same loop: sketch, draw, sketch, draw. Spend a day rendering Geumtaeyang's massive cock and a heroine built to kill, and the hours vanished before I knew it.
And that wasn't all. Between the commissions that trickled in and the sex with Seong A-rin, entire days could disappear without a trace. Whenever that happened, I'd work myself into the ground trying to patch the lost time back together. Living like that made it pretty hard to spare attention for anything else.
That was probably why I hadn't hung out with Lee Eun-byul one-on-one lately.
The last time we'd gone out together had to have been over three weeks ago, and even so, I hadn't carved out any time for her since. Not that she hadn't been inviting me out for drinks. If anything, Lee Eun-byul had been asking pretty often — whenever we ran into each other at school, or over chat.
But I had to turn her down every time. I was busy, for one. Feeling the squeeze on my bank account, I wasn't exactly flush enough to throw drinking on top of everything else.
Honestly, it'd been a long time since I'd had a drink, and I wouldn't have minded pouring some alcohol into my stomach for a change. I just wasn't about to shave years off my life at five thousand won a bottle.
Seong A-rin's existence played a big part, too. The old me would've forced himself to go out drinking just to get a look at some pussy. Now I had a fuck buddy I could blow off steam with whenever I wanted. There was less and less reason to split my attention as far as Lee Eun-byul.
Which is to say: we hadn't hung out in over three weeks.
And from there, a fairly obvious conclusion presented itself. If I'd been that neglectful, hadn't things gotten awkward between us?
Fortunately, I could answer that one with a clear conscience.
Surprisingly enough — they hadn't.
I let out a yawn. The breath that left my mouth hit the air and scattered instantly. It wasn't winter yet, so you couldn't see the vapor, but I could just barely feel the temperature shift around me.
Early morning. Something that happened at school.
I'm so sleepy.
I'd gone to bed late, and my eyelids kept trying to shut on their own. I wiped away a tear the yawn had squeezed out and left it at that.
Someone in front of me asked a question.
"Sleepy? You look exhausted."
Lee Eun-byul. Same as always, baseball cap on, looking at me with a faintly puzzled expression. Dark navy hair fell all the way to her waist.
I answered without much thought.
"Yeah. Stayed up late washing the mattress."
"The mattress? Why would you suddenly wash that?"
"...I spilled some water on it yesterday."
"Water dries pretty fast, though."
"Ah, well. It wasn't exactly water. Something a little stickier."
She tilted her head at that, just for a moment. Then she seemed to arrive at her own conclusion. She'd probably just assume I'd spilled a drink or some coffee. What I'd actually spilled was the squirt Seong A-rin had left all over it, but she didn't need to know that.
"You should be more careful. Mattresses are a pain to wash."
"Luckily it didn't soak through. I was gonna buy a waterproof cover anyway."
And just like that, the conversation kept going. There was nothing awkward about it. If anything, it felt easy. The more time you spent around someone, the more comfortable talking to them became. We might not have hung out in three weeks, but we'd had plenty of chances to run into each other. We went to the same university, and our lecture halls were often on the same floor.
Whenever she had a spare moment, she'd come find me — like she'd decided that if we couldn't hang out properly, she was at least going to talk to me here. I had no reason to turn that down, so I played along. Staring at my phone by myself got boring anyway. Having someone to talk to was a net positive.
I didn't have any friends in this lecture hall, after all.
...That's kind of sad.
"Oh, what? Eun-byul, when did you get here?"
Well. One thing had changed, at least.
Right in the middle of our conversation, a girl slung an arm over Eun-byul's shoulder and parked herself beside us. Yu Bo-ram. Eun-byul's friend, and a girl in my department. She had a distinctly skinny, sharp-edged look that stuck with you. A faint smell of cigarettes clung to her — she'd probably just finished a smoke before walking into the lecture hall.
Eun-byul pinched her nose and made a face.
"Ugh, I got here a while ago. You stink — get off me."
She smacked the arm off her shoulder. The kind of brush-off that should've stung, but Yu Bo-ram just stood there grinning. I'd gotten pretty used to the sight by now.
Whenever I was talking with Lee Eun-byul like this, other people had a habit of inserting themselves. When things are awkward, three is always more comfortable than two. That sturdy wall known as the friend shield did a fine job of sanding the awkwardness down even further. Even if your own conversation died mid-sentence, someone else could pick it right back up. Numbers were comfort.
After a moment, Yu Bo-ram grinned and greeted me.
"Good morning. Nice to see you."
"Ah. Yeah. Morning."
Honestly, to a night owl like me, morning was just a shitty time of day. But I returned the greeting anyway. No point being cold to someone who'd gone out of their way to come over. I lifted the corners of my mouth a fraction and put a measured warmth in my eyes. That alone loosened the air considerably.
Yu Go-un wasn't the only one who liked to join this little crowd, either.
"Yo, Yu Bo-ram! Why're you so late?"
"She was out smoking again, I bet. Girl's a fucking chimney."
The girls in the row behind us spotted her and started drifting over, as if they'd been waiting for her to show up. The more friend shields, the better. The more people there were — the more chaotic the vibe — the easier it was for any single person to fade into the background. The crowd swelled in no time.
Energetic girls began clustering around me and Lee Eun-byul. Some came just to talk to their friends. Some came simply because everyone else was heading this way. But the biggest reason, more than anything, was to get closer to me.
All kinds of glances kept flicking my way. They pretended to be absorbed in conversation with their friends, but it wasn't exactly hard to catch their eyes drifting toward my chest now and then. Another guy might've frowned at that.
Honestly, I was enjoying it. Women's lust-tinged gazes felt pretty damn good. And this time it wasn't even Shimura Ajame — these were college girls in their prime. I could feel the corner of my mouth ticking up.
Lee Se-won, what even are you...
This is narrative convenience? This is the power of a pretty face?
Of all the things the original Lee Se-won had done, this one I actually appreciated. Watching him say fuck it to rent and school had pissed me off plenty, sure. But he'd poured the other half of that energy into his looks, hadn't he? Thanks, Lee Se-won. I'm still carrying on the sacred tradition of your moisturizer and face packs, so rest easy and move on.
Still...
It wasn't all good.
This is uncomfortable.
I, Lee Se-won, certified loner shut-in. Classic bully-the-weak, fold-to-the-strong type: a menace to anyone who looked even slightly more timid than me, and a complete freeze-up the moment I got dropped among high-energy popular people. Honestly, it was fucking awkward.
"Hey, so did you actually study for the exam?"
"Study? I just played games the whole time."
Girls were chattering about every topic under the sun. At a glance it felt like standing in a flower field. In reality, it felt like picking my way through rose thorns. My mouth got heavier on its own, and I suddenly became painfully aware of every little thing I was doing with my body. The chronic affliction of the socially inept: too much attention and they short-circuit. Thanks to that, I felt like a deserted island floating in the middle of this crowd.
Conversation flowed endlessly in every direction. Topics I actually knew something about came up more than once. And yet I was too chicken to jump in. The irony of my own pathetic display almost brought tears to my eyes.
Just stay quiet.
So I went with a blank expression. Better to erase my presence by sitting still than to open my mouth and make everything worse. A blank face was a useful thing. Fake enough composure and you could hide the fact that you were panicking.
...Not that I was completely stranded.
"Oh, by the way — do you play games too?"
Every so often, a kind soul would throw me a line.
"Why would you even ask that? Guys don't really play games."
"Come on, they might. That's just sexist."
I answered carefully.
"I... yeah, I do play."
In moments like this, I made a point of actually engaging. Someone had gone out of their way to come over. I wasn't going to swat them down.
The girl who'd asked lit up.
"Oh! Really? What lane do you usually play?"
"Usually... top."
"Oh, top's fun."
I used what little sociability I had left to keep it going. Luckily, I had a few decent conversational tricks in the bag. Last year I'd bounced between part-time jobs and hard labor, and the social skills I'd forged there were enough to sand down the awkwardness.
"Yeah. Ripping apart the badgers that wander into top lane is pretty much my joy in life."
"Ah? Ah... I see..."
Probably.
"Hey! Back off a little. Can't you see he's uncomfortable?"
"Eun-byul, where'd you get those leggings? They look hella comfy."
Lately, this had been the pattern. I'd be talking with Lee Eun-byul, and before I knew it her friends would use her as a bridge to come over. The space around us would fill up, and every so often a conversation would get tossed my way. That was most days. It was still awkward, and striking up conversation still felt uncomfortable, but we were getting closer, bit by bit.
If things kept going like this, I might actually make something called a friend.
Ah, friends. What a beautiful word. With this, I'd be taking my first step into the world of people who had lives.
But as with all things in this world, nothing ever broke my way for long.
Through that noisy crowd, a figure suddenly pushed his way in. And the one who'd wedged himself into this sea of girls was, surprisingly, a guy.
"What're you all talking about?"
Han Ho-cheol. The most outgoing of the guys who sat in the front row. He planted himself in front of us with an easy, good-natured smile — after shooting me a sidelong glance.
...Why is he staring at me?
For some reason, he was looking right at me. And not in a friendly way.