The Coin's Shadow
‘……So this brightening gold aura is the satisfaction or relief they feel when their worries are resolved?’
Dong-oh’s eyes sparkled as he meticulously linked the real-time shifts in color intensity with Seo-yoon’s positive behavioral changes, building one inference after another.
“Senior, did you take Professor Kim’s class last year?”
“Yeah, second semester.”
“Oh! Then you must have done a presentation yourself, right?”
“I did. Stayed up all night making the PPT and everything.”
“Wow, what interesting topic did you choose? Tell me so I can use it as reference!”
When the question came, Dong-oh gazed into the air for a moment, trying to jog his memory.
Unfortunately, his mind was completely blank.
“……Sorry, I honestly don’t remember at all.”
“Ugh, you stayed up all night making it yourself and you don’t remember the topic? Liar.”
“It’s true. The second I saw my grade, I wiped it clean from my head. Forgetting everything once the credit’s secured is the survival rule of every college student.”
At Dong-oh’s painfully realistic answer, a small laugh burst from Seo-yoon’s lips before she could stop it.
As she giggled, a faint pink aura shyly wove itself into the golden current surrounding her, then shimmered and faded.
Dong-oh stared at that beautiful pink hue, utterly captivated.
It was exactly the same mysterious color that had bloomed all over her body the first time their eyes met in the café.
‘Is it amusement or joy……? Does it simply appear when something’s funny?’
It was a plausible hypothesis.
After all, the color had grown deeper when she laughed out loud, so it was highly likely to be tied to positive emotions like pleasure or delight.
Still, one thing remained unclear: why had that same pink aura risen alongside the gold the very first time she spotted him from afar and simply offered a light greeting?
“Pfft, that’s so you, Senior. Total pragmatist.”
Seo-yoon wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and spoke in a teasing tone.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s not an insult. You’re just the perfect specimen of a college student.”
“What else is a college student supposed to pursue besides grades? Scholarships?”
“Hmm…… I was thinking of something more lofty, like pure intellectual curiosity or the joy of learning.”
“Do you ever feel that?”
At Dong-oh’s pointed question, Seo-yoon pretended to ponder it seriously for a second, then shook her head vigorously where no one could see.
“……Sometimes. Very rarely.”
“You just said you feel it, but your head was shaking like it was trying to fall off.”
“Ah, caught me. Pretend you didn’t see that head shake, okay, Senior?”
Her playful coquetry made the pink aura thicken for a moment before it naturally melted back into the soft golden glow and blended with it.
Dong-oh unconsciously lifted the corners of his stiff mouth into a small smile.
Their conversation flowed surprisingly smoothly, never once hitting a snag.
What began with complaints about Professor Kim’s notoriously harsh grading standards naturally expanded into gossip about classmates, recent updates on mutual friends, and the latest news from juniors and seniors in the department.
“Speaking of which, who are you taking that class with this semester? Anyone you know in the department?”
“Min-ji and Soo-hyun. The three of us managed to register together.”
“Those two are still glued at the hip, huh.”
“Yep, total besties. Oh, and Ji-hye’s been hanging out with us sometimes lately too.”
“Ji-hye?”
“Come on, you remember—the short-haired girl who was in the same group as us for the major project last semester. She was in charge of gathering materials with me.”
Dong-oh furrowed his brow and rummaged through his memories for a long time before he finally managed to summon a faint silhouette of a short-haired female student.
“Ah…… that girl?”
“You didn’t remember, did you?”
“I do now.”
“It looked like you only remembered after I gave you every hint possible.”
Dong-oh simply shrugged lightly without bothering to deny it.
“Honestly, I’ve never been good at remembering names or faces of people in the department. I just don’t care enough.”
“That’s exactly why the rumor’s going around. Everyone says you hate them and look down on them.”
“Me?”
“They say even when people greet you cheerfully in the hallway, you just stare straight ahead with dead eyes and walk right past them like you didn’t see a thing.”
“……It’s not on purpose. I really just didn’t see them, or I was spacing out.”
“Really? Want me to explain that to everyone for you?”
“No need……”
Seo-yoon let out a small laugh and began tapping away at her keyboard again with light, playful fingers.
“That’s so you, Senior.”
Once again, the quiet remark that he was “so him.”
Dong-oh felt a strange hesitation rising from deep in his chest. He fiddled with his coffee cup and casually tossed out a question.
“……What about you? Did you think that at first too?”
At the sudden and rather serious question, Seo-yoon’s busy white fingers froze on the keyboard for a split second.
“Huh? Think what?”
“That I hated everyone in the department and kept my distance.”
“Um…… to be honest, when we first got matched for the group project last semester, I did misunderstand you a little. You barely spoke and your expression was kind of scary.”
It was the answer he had expected.
Strangely, however, even while she spoke of that negative misunderstanding from back then, no unpleasant purple mist appeared around Seo-yoon.
Only a calm, tranquil, lake-like transparent golden light hovered quietly above her shoulders.
“And now?”
“Not at all anymore. I realized you’re just someone who isn’t particularly interested in human beings as a species.”
“……Is that supposed to be a compliment? It sounds worse than thinking I hate them.”
“No, it’s a hundred times better than hating them. There’s no malice in it.”
Seo-yoon flashed another playful smile and lightly turned her gaze back to her laptop screen.
“Besides, Senior, even if you look like that on the outside, you help when people ask, don’t you?”
“Do I?”
“Don’t you remember? The night before our final group presentation last semester, when my PPT layout completely broke and I was about to cry, you stayed up late and fixed everything for me.”
“That was because we were in the same group.”
“You say that, but you even caught every typo in my personal script and rewrote my lines. In great detail, too.”
Dong-oh stopped making excuses and simply downed the rest of his coffee.
In truth, the memory was crystal clear.
That night, after seeing Seo-yoon’s tearful messages in the group chat as the deadline loomed, he had fought off his usual laziness, turned his laptop back on, and spent the early morning hours meticulously editing her part by hand.
At least, that was what he had told himself—that it had all been a coldly pragmatic calculation to ensure the group project succeeded.
The moment he recalled it, the golden current rising around Seo-yoon spread even warmer and richer, as if bathed in morning sunlight.
And from the center of that golden radiance, a shy pink mist once again bloomed and mingled with it.
To hide his warming face, Dong-oh pretended to fiddle with the empty coffee cup and quickly lowered his eyes.
‘……Are those colors gratitude and fondness?’
Only now did the surreal phenomena before his eyes begin to make logical sense.
When she first spotted him in the café and their eyes met—fondness and joy combined.
When they talked and she laughed out loud—delight and closeness.
When she recalled a past moment of gratitude and spoke from the heart—warm thanks and goodwill.
It seemed that all the warm, positive emotions humans felt appeared to his eyes as golden light or beautiful pink mist.
If so, then each color did not correspond one-to-one with a single specific emotion.
Just as displeasure, hatred, irritation, and rejection all burst forth as varying shades and shapes of dark purple, perhaps every positive feeling—goodwill, fondness, joy, gratitude—was manifested as these shimmering golden or lovely pink auras.
Dong-oh wanted to gather more data on this bizarre ability, to test and verify it further, but he couldn’t think of any more natural personal questions to ask Seo-yoon.
Right then, the smartphone Seo-yoon had placed face-down on the table lit up and began to vibrate.
She glanced at the time on the screen, then closed her laptop with a regretful expression.
“Ah, it’s already this late…… I should probably get going, Senior.”
“Next class?”
“Yes. The lecture hall is in the farthest building from here, so if I don’t leave now I’ll barely make it on time.”
Seo-yoon hurriedly packed her thick textbooks, laptop, and writing utensils neatly into her bag.
Without realizing it, Dong-oh found himself staring blankly at the large clock on the café wall.
It didn’t feel like that much time had passed since they sat down together, yet somehow nearly two hours had flown by as if by magic.
“Did I distract you by talking? You didn’t get any work done on your assignment because of me, did you?”
“Not at all! Actually, you helped me nail down the second topic so clearly that I finished the entire introduction outline super fast. You’re my savior.”
Seo-yoon slung the heavy bag over her shoulder and rose gracefully from her seat.
The warm golden afterimage still lingered softly around her, though its density had thinned a little compared to when she first stood up.
“I’ll head out first, then. See you, Senior.”
“Yeah, take care.”
“I will! And don’t be late to your own class—keep an eye on the time, okay?”
“My class still has some time before it starts. Don’t worry.”
“That’s exactly why I’m worried—you’ll zone out in some corner and miss the time again. I’m going!”
Seo-yoon gave him one last bright, beaming smile, bowed her head, and quickly made her way through the crowded café entrance.
Dong-oh remained alone at the table, silently watching her retreating figure.
The farther the physical distance grew between them, the more the mysterious golden aura enveloping her body faded and grew faint in proportion.
Only after her silhouette opened the café door, merged completely with the throng of students, and disappeared did Dong-oh finally relax his tightly focused gaze.
On the table, all that remained was a cold coffee cup whose ice had completely melted into clear water, now nearly empty.
Dong-oh slowly slipped his hand deep into the right pocket of his pants.
His fingertips brushed against the hard, cold touch of the 100-won coin he had felt that morning.
Only then did the existence of that dirty coin he had picked up as if possessed on the street in front of the main gate that morning flash strongly through his mind again.
‘……Could this really all be because of that coin?’
Dong-oh carefully took the coin out of his pocket and placed it on his palm beneath the fluorescent light.
No matter how many times he looked, it was nothing more than an ordinary, shabby 100-won Korean coin—tarnished from years of handling, edges nicked and worn.
Yet the undeniable fact that no scientific reasoning could explain was this: until he picked up that coin from the street this morning and began carrying it, he had never once in his entire life seen those strange colors or shapes of emotion floating around another person’s body.
After Seo-yoon left the café, Dong-oh soon stood up as well.
There was still over an hour and a half of boring time left before his next major lecture, but there was nothing to do sitting alone in an empty corner seat.
He slung his bag over his shoulder and walked out of the crowded café.
But the rest of the day’s routine flowed exactly as it always had—yesterday, last semester, every ordinary day before—tediously and uneventfully.
He entered the familiar lecture hall, quietly took his usual seat in the very back corner, and the professor who arrived on time projected the same boring lecture slides as always, reading the text in a lifeless voice.
The students in the classroom mechanically tapped at their laptop keyboards or scrolled through hidden phone screens, killing time in their own ways.
Dong-oh too pretended to take notes in his notebook for a while before the boredom won out and he simply stared blankly at the clouds outside the window.
At lunchtime he went down to the student cafeteria, picked the shortest line with the most average menu, and ate alone quickly. In the afternoon classes he couldn’t fight the drowsiness and repeatedly jerked his head up from the brink of sleep.
And most importantly, he never saw those strange emotional colors or auras around anyone again.
Yet Dong-oh didn’t feel any particular disappointment or pay much attention to their absence.
After all, he had never been the type to closely observe strangers he passed on the street, and he wasn’t the slightest bit curious about what nameless people walking by might be thinking or whether they were in a good or bad mood.
When all the lectures finally ended, he flowed along with the tide of students like a clockwork pendulum and walked down to the main gate.
He boarded the same-numbered bus at the exact same stop as that morning, gazed at the familiar night view of the city sliding past the window, and arrived home safely.
He threw together a simple dinner, took a shower, lay in bed, and scrolled through his phone.
If he were to summarize today’s routine in a diary, the only honest sentence would be that it was exactly the same as yesterday; there were no particularly noteworthy events worth recording.
The two exceptions were accidentally picking up an old coin on the street that morning and, thanks to an unexpected canceled class, sitting across from Seo-yoon in a café and talking for two hours.
Aside from those two things, his life continued to turn in its well-worn track without the slightest deviation—a gray, ordinary day.