Pink Glow Once More
Pink light flickered again.
There was no conversation during the walk back from the cafe to the faculty building.
They simply matched their steps as they walked side by side.
The only sounds were the clinking of ice cubes inside the cups and the soft footsteps of the two of them echoing across the quiet campus.
Seo-yoon opened her lips several times, yet she said nothing and only took a sip of her coffee.
They had reached the faculty building and were standing in front of the faculty room when Seo-yoon finally stopped walking.
“Senior.”
“Mm.”
“I’m sorry again for what happened just now.”
Seo-yoon said, still holding the cup with both hands.
“It was a bit sudden because I thought he would keep talking…”
“It’s fine.”
“Still, you ended up saying he’s your boyfriend.”
The pink light grew thick around her face.
Dong-oh gazed at that color.
It could have been embarrassment.
She might have been regretting her sudden action.
But that alone didn’t explain it.
The gray light that appeared when she felt embarrassed was almost nowhere to be seen.
The purple that showed discomfort was absent too.
Right now, what enveloped Seo-yoon was nothing but warm, clear pink light.
When he had first seen her.
When he had looked at her clothes and body.
When they had sat close together and their arms brushed.
And right now, when she had hugged his arm and called him her boyfriend.
The same color had appeared in all those moments.
Even though the situations differed, there was one clear common point.
The moment she recognized Dong-oh as a member of the opposite sex.
The feelings of excitement, shyness, and the desire to get closer while still not wanting to be caught.
Dong-oh finally understood what the pink light meant.
Attraction.
More specifically, romantic attraction.
When the feeling hit him, the shape of the pink light became even clearer than before.
It was no longer a vague mass of color.
The light had begun near Seo-yoon’s chest and spread softly in rhythm with her heartbeat.
The color grew slightly brighter every time she looked at Dong-oh.
It was as if her trust in him had deepened by one level.
Dong-oh found himself staring at Seo-yoon for a long time without realizing it.
“Senior?”
He quickly averted his gaze.
“You really don’t have to worry about it.”
“…Yes.”
Seo-yoon answered quietly.
The pink light never disappeared.
Dong-oh opened the faculty room door.
Seo-yoon stepped inside first, and Dong-oh followed behind her.
They sat back down side by side in their usual places.
The laptop screen still displayed the presentation materials they had been reviewing a short while ago.
Yet neither of them could bring themselves to look at the screen.
Dong-oh took another sip of coffee while watching the pink light.
Seo-yoon pretended to check the laptop, but she kept stealing glances at Dong-oh and then hurriedly looked away.
Each time, the pink light grew a little thicker.
Dong-oh took another sip of coffee.
Even though the cold coffee slid down his throat, his head refused to cool down.
“Then… how far did we get?”
Dong-oh finally spoke.
“I think we were here.”
Seo-yoon pointed at the screen.
Her fingertips trembled slightly.
Dong-oh glanced at her hand, then quickly looked away.
“Maybe we should move this part to the back.”
“Back?”
“No, more like… not exactly back.”
Dong-oh momentarily forgot what he was even saying.
Normally he would have explained it without any trouble.
But right now, even organizing one sentence felt unbearably difficult.
He cleared his throat once and then turned back to the screen.
“In the introduction we need to pose a problem, then give background, but the background here is too long. The listener might get bored before they even understand the main topic.”
“Ah, yes.”
Seo-yoon nodded.
“So we can leave just a bit of this at the front and move the rest to the back?”
“Mm. And we can use only one of these materials.”
“If we use both it will be too much?”
“If the presentation is fifteen minutes, it will be.”
“I see.”
Seo-yoon took notes.
Her typing speed was slower than usual.
She kept making typos and deleting them repeatedly.
Dong-oh didn’t point it out.
He had gone through the same slides twice before he noticed.
“Senior.”
“Mm?”
“That slide we just looked at… wasn’t it the one we saw earlier?”
“…Yeah, I guess so.”
Seo-yoon pressed her lips together as if trying to hold back a smile.
Pink light bloomed again.
Dong-oh flipped the slide forward for no reason.
“Focus.”
“On the senior?”
“On both of us.”
“Okay.”
The conversation continued as usual, yet something was slightly off.
Whenever Dong-oh pointed at a sentence on the screen, Seo-yoon became aware of his hand.
Whenever Seo-yoon leaned closer, Dong-oh had to control his breathing.
Still, time passed.
The tangled materials gradually took shape.
The introduction grew shorter, and the scattered information was organized into three core points.
The conclusion became much clearer than at the beginning.
At first they had merely collected a lot of vague material, but now the flow of a presentation was visible.
Seo-yoon stared at the final slide and let out a small sigh.
“This should be enough… I think something has definitely come together.”
“You still need to refine the details yourself.”
“Of course. But just having a direction is already a huge improvement.”
Seo-yoon saved the file on the laptop screen.
Golden light shimmered faintly around it.
Gratitude.
Relief.
Comfort.
The emotions seemed mixed together.
Even in between them, faint pink light lingered.
Dong-oh toyed with his coffee cup while looking at the color.
“As long as the presentation doesn’t get ruined, everything will be fine.”
“If it gets ruined?”
“Then today’s effort will have been meaningless.”
“That sounds like too much pressure.”
Seo-yoon’s eyes widened.
Dong-oh smiled briefly.
“It was a joke.”
“Senior’s jokes aren’t really jokes.”
“You’ve heard that a lot.”
“If you hear it often, shouldn’t you fix it?”
“Why bother?”
Seo-yoon laughed as if the comment was ridiculous.
It was a much more natural laugh than before.
Dong-oh felt a little at ease too.
The awkwardness from when they first returned to the faculty room hadn’t completely vanished, but at least it wasn’t suffocating anymore.
Seo-yoon checked the saved filename on the laptop before closing it.
“Senior.”
“Mm.”
“If the presentation goes well, I’ll treat you to dinner.”
“We already bought lunch today.”
“That was just a small thank-you.”
Seo-yoon hesitated for a moment, then continued.
“If it goes really well, I’ll treat you to something delicious.”
Dong-oh looked at Seo-yoon.
Pink light slowly spread between the golden light.
Seo-yoon tried to avoid his gaze but ended up lowering her eyes to the laptop screen.
“Because you basically helped me prepare the whole structure.”
“The presentation is your work.”
“Still…”
“If the result is good, tell me then.”
“Then it’s a promise?”
Dong-oh simply packed the laptop bag instead of answering.
Seo-yoon stared at him fixedly.
“Senior.”
“Why?”
“You didn’t answer just now.”
“If you do well on the presentation…”
“Then if I do well, I get to eat dinner?”
Dong-oh stayed silent for a moment.
There was no reason to avoid such a simple answer.
“Sure.”
It was a short reply.
Yet golden and pink light brightened around Seo-yoon at the same time.
At that moment Dong-oh realized belatedly what promise he had made.
If the presentation went well, they would eat dinner together again.
Not like today’s lunch, but something delicious.
The excuse was gratitude.
But Dong-oh already knew there was another expectation hidden behind it.
He didn’t know if that expectation belonged to him alone.
A few days later.
The rumor spread faster than anyone expected.
More precisely, it wasn’t so much that it spread on its own, but that someone deliberately kept leaking it.
“I heard Jung Seo-yoon has a boyfriend.”
“From the same department senior?”
“I heard they were alone together in the faculty room on the weekend.”
It had begun as gossip about the general education class.
The man who had kept talking to Seo-yoon had told someone what he heard, and the story had grown with added details and passed to others.
He left out the part that he had been rejected every time.
Instead he said Seo-yoon had suddenly brought a boyfriend to make him feel awkward.
The stories about Dong-oh didn’t fare much better.
No words, dark expression, senior who didn’t get along well with people in the department.
Such a person being alone with Seo-yoon in the faculty room on the weekend was more than enough to spark wild imagination.
“You’re really dating that senior?”
On Monday at lunchtime.
Seo-yoon sat with her friends in the student cafeteria when she heard the words.
Min-ji asked carefully, and Su-hyun beside her looked at Seo-yoon with a worried expression.
Seo-yoon set her spoon down.
“No.”
“Then why did you say he’s your boyfriend?”
“That guy kept bothering me, so I just made something up.”
“The person who saw us at the cafe?”
“Yeah.”
Seo-yoon’s expression stiffened.
Just recalling it made her feel unpleasant.
Min-ji let out a small sigh.
“He is kind of strange, but the rumors are spreading in a weird way.”
“How?”
Su-hyun glanced around, then lowered her voice.
“People are saying whether you’re dating that senior or not, and that you were alone in the faculty room with him on the weekend.”
“I was just helping with the presentation materials.”
Seo-yoon’s answer came quickly.
“Because of Professor Kim’s class presentation.”
“I know that, but people don’t just hear one thing.”
“And that senior is a bit…”
Min-ji trailed off.
Seo-yoon looked at Min-ji.
“What?”
“No, I don’t know him directly. He doesn’t talk much in the department and wanders around alone. His expression is always gloomy too.”
“That’s true. Are you okay?”
Su-hyun added.
“Maybe that senior bothered you?”
The smile vanished from Seo-yoon’s face.
“It’s nothing like that.”
“We’re worried about you.”
“I know.”
Seo-yoon understood that her friends weren’t trying to see her in a bad light.
Min-ji and Su-hyun were genuinely concerned.
But it was strangely hard to stay quiet about anything related to Dong-oh.
“Senior Dong-oh isn’t like that.”
