The Gold and Pink Return
Dong-oh lay alone in his darkened bed, staring blankly at the white ceiling.
The room was silent.
Yet the mysterious colors of emotion he had seen around Seo-yoon at the café that afternoon replayed vividly in his mind.
The murky purple haze and sharp, thorn-like shapes that had surrounded her while she was forced to talk with that rude, oblivious man.
And the brilliant gold that had burst from her entire body the moment she spotted him from afar and smiled brightly.
During their long conversation at the small table, that faint pink mist had occasionally mingled shyly with the gold.
The colors had been far too vivid and realistic to dismiss as a simple visual trick or fatigue-induced afterimage.
Dong-oh pulled the blanket over his head and tossed restlessly.
Is it really possible… that emotions can be visualized as colors under certain conditions?
It sounded like something straight out of a fantasy novel—completely at odds with reason and scientific common sense.
Yet paradoxically, no one had wished more desperately than he had, throughout his entire life, for something supernatural and inexplicable to happen just once.
He reached out toward the jeans he had left on the nightstand.
His fingers searched the pocket until they brushed against a cold metal coin that had long since lost the warmth of the day.
Dong-oh carefully pulled out the coin and held it up in the faint glow of the streetlight filtering into the dark room.
In the darkness, the coin’s worn details were invisible; only its round silhouette glimmered faintly.
…Could all of this really have started because of this worthless 100-won coin?
He calmly retraced the chain of events.
Because his life had always been the same monotonous routine, it was easy to pinpoint the moment everything had changed.
Before he picked up the coin from the street, he had never once seen such strange auras around another person.
Right after picking it up, he had experienced a brief, eerie auditory phenomenon—as if all sound in the world had been perfectly cut off.
Then, right after flipping the coin in that childish heads-or-tails game, he received the class cancellation text, as if it had been waiting for him.
And inside the café, those strange emotional colors had appeared around Seo-yoon.
The chain of events was too tightly interlocked, like gears meshing, to write off as mere coincidence.
Yet there was still no scientific or objective evidence to definitively claim the coin had granted him any power.
Most troubling of all was the question of why, for the rest of the day after leaving the café, he had seen no colors or shapes around any of the countless other people he encountered.
Dong-oh recalled the faces of the many strangers he had passed in lecture halls, on the bus, and in restaurants.
The professor lecturing.
The students in the same class.
The countless commuters whose shoulders had brushed against his on the evening bus.
Not a single one of them remained clearly in his memory.
He had no idea whether they were in good or bad moods, or what burdens they carried—and honestly, he felt not even the slightest curiosity or interest in knowing.
They were nothing more than colorless extras in his life.
But Jung Seo-yoon—she was completely different.
When that oblivious man had approached and bothered her, Dong-oh had wondered what kind of relationship or feelings she had toward him.
When the man left and she spotted Dong-oh, he had wondered why she smiled so brightly.
While they sat across from each other for nearly two hours, he had wanted to know what emotions she was feeling.
…Don’t tell me the colors only appear when I’m ‘curious’ about someone?
The hypothesis flashed through his mind.
But the idea that a supernatural ability could turn on and off based solely on subjective interest or curiosity felt far too vague and abstract to be a proper rule.
He had no way of knowing whether a light curiosity was enough to trigger it, whether he needed to deeply recognize the target, or whether emotional exchange with the other person was required.
He wasn’t even 100% certain whether this phenomenon was truly a power granted by the coin or merely a temporary mental illness or brain trick.
Dong-oh clenched the 100-won coin tightly in his right palm.
The dirty metal, chilled by the night air, gradually absorbed his body heat and slowly warmed.
If he met Seo-yoon again at school tomorrow morning, he might finally be able to verify all these hypotheses and questions.
If the same strange colors appeared around her tomorrow, it would prove that today’s events had not been a hallucination or trick of the mind.
And if that brilliant gold and mysterious pink mist once again bloomed beautifully around her…
Dong-oh slowly closed his heavy eyelids.
…What kind of feelings did those colors represent?
At the very least, they were nothing like the rough, murky purple discomfort he had felt from the other man.
That much, he could say with certainty.
The clear fact warmed his chest in a strangely pleasant way as he lay alone in the dark room.
Dong-oh carefully placed the coin he had been holding on the edge of the nightstand.
Today had been another unbearably ordinary, routine day, just like yesterday.
Yet strangely, he felt a pleasant premonition that tomorrow would be nothing like the days before.
The next morning.
Dong-oh woke to his alarm at exactly the same time as yesterday.
He turned it off, washed his face with cold water in the bathroom, and put on his usual plain clothes.
As he was about to open the door with his heavy bag full of major textbooks, he suddenly stopped, hand on the doorknob.
On the corner of the white desk sat the old, dirty 100-won coin he had left there last night.
After a moment of serious deliberation, Dong-oh set his bag down and walked back inside.
He picked up the coin with his thumb and slipped it deep into the right pocket of the pants he was wearing today.
It wasn’t because he was 100% convinced the coin possessed some great magical power.
He simply judged that, if he wanted to objectively confirm and verify the cause of yesterday’s strange phenomenon, it would be better to keep the object on him for the time being.
At least, that was the rational excuse he used to convince himself.
The bus to school arrived at the stop at exactly the same time as yesterday.
Inside, exhausted-looking university students and office workers sat packed in similar postures, just like always.
Some nodded off with their bags in their arms, others stared blankly at their phones, and still others gazed out the window as if lost in thought.
Dong-oh quietly took an empty middle seat.
Once again, no strange colors or auras appeared around any of the many people filling the bus.
While fiddling with the coin in his pocket, Dong-oh tried to force himself to feel curious about the moods of complete strangers in order to test his hypothesis.
He stared at a middle-aged man in the seat ahead who was frowning deeply and tried to genuinely wonder why the man looked so displeased.
But soon fatigue and instinctive rejection rose up, and his curiosity quickly faded.
Probably hates his commute, or didn’t sleep well last night, or got upset checking stock prices.
Either way, it was just the meaningless daily life of someone he would never cross paths with for even a single second.
The bus followed its usual route and arrived at the main gate of Hankuk University with a loud rumble.
Dong-oh was swept along with the crowd as he stepped off the bus.
When he passed the sidewalk in front of the main gate where he had found the mysterious 100-won coin yesterday, he paused for a moment and looked down at the ground.
As expected, there was nothing there now—just empty concrete.
Finding a single coin hadn’t suddenly changed the physical laws of the vast world around him into something out of a fantasy movie.
Stepping inside the main gate, Dong-oh trudged up the gentle slope toward the Humanities Building where his first lecture was scheduled.
Just then, among the many people walking ahead in the distance, one particularly familiar silhouette caught his eye.
Long, flowing hair.
A cute bag slung over one shoulder.
And beside her walked another female student from a different department, arm linked affectionately with hers.
It was Jung Seo-yoon.
Dong-oh’s steps slowed almost imperceptibly.
He had never expected to run into Seo-yoon again so soon, on the morning commute.
Although they were in the same department, they had no classes together this semester.
Because they were in different years, their major class times barely overlapped, and Dong-oh was not the sociable type who frequented the department lounge or student council office.
He rarely showed up to department events or drinking gatherings either.
So the chances of the two of them running into each other by chance on this large campus without any prior arrangement were extremely low.
After last semester’s group project officially ended, they had occasionally exchanged messages, but they had met face-to-face on campus only a handful of times.
That was why, after yesterday’s café meeting, he had vaguely assumed it would be at least a few days or a week before he saw her again somewhere on campus.
Perhaps they wouldn’t meet privately again until the semester ended.
Yet here she was, the very next morning, walking right ahead of him on his way to school, as if she had been waiting.
…What an incredible string of coincidences.
Feeling his heart pound without realizing it, Dong-oh quickened his pace—just enough not to look like a stalker following them.
He gradually closed the distance between them.
The female student walking beside Seo-yoon gestured animatedly as she told some amusing story, and Seo-yoon nodded and responded brightly.
Then, after replying briefly, Seo-yoon’s shoulders shook lightly as she let out a small laugh.
Strangely, however, no unusual colors or auras appeared around her body.
Neither the brilliant gold that had shone so radiantly yesterday at the café nor the faint pink mist that had tickled his heart could be seen.
Dong-oh narrowed his eyes and focused intently on the space around her shoulders.
The distance between them was now only about five meters—close enough.
It was not much different from the distance at which he had first witnessed her purple emotions in the corner of the café.
…So yesterday’s sightings must have been a temporary illusion after all.
The childish expectation that had kept him awake all night—the hope that he might have gained some special ability—suddenly sank like ice water and faded away.
The scientific possibility that the café’s fancy lighting combined with strong sunlight had temporarily created strange afterimages on his fatigued optic nerves was overwhelmingly high.
The coin he found on the street was just an ordinary coin someone had dropped, and the class cancellation text was nothing more than a coincidental timing that often happened during the semester.
Dong-oh felt a little embarrassed and ridiculous for having gotten excited over such an unrealistic fantasy, even for a moment.
At his age, as a university student, to mistake a mere afterimage of light for some special ability like the protagonist of a fantasy comic—he let out a self-deprecating chuckle.
He gave up on any further expectations, looked away from Seo-yoon’s back, and continued walking in silence.
He had no intention of approaching her first and greeting her.
Seo-yoon was currently walking to school affectionately with her close friend, and he had a lecture starting soon.
It would be fine to simply pass them naturally.
Just as Dong-oh was about to overtake the two with quick steps, the female student walking arm-in-arm with Seo-yoon seemed to sense his presence and glanced back.
Their eyes met briefly in the air as he tried to pass by.
The girl looked at the large Dong-oh with a wary gaze for a moment, then turned to tap Seo-yoon’s shoulder and whispered something about him in a low voice.
At her words, Seo-yoon also turned her head with a puzzled expression and looked at Dong-oh’s profile as he passed.
Finally, their eyes met directly under the morning sunlight.
“……Huh? Senior?”
Seo-yoon’s round eyes widened slightly at the unexpected appearance.
And in that very instant, the phenomenon that had taken his breath away unfolded before his eyes once more.
From the space above her shoulders, thin, thread-like strands of brilliant gold aura began to rise.
At first, it looked like a faint afterimage caused by morning sunlight reflecting off the tips of her hair.
But the moment Seo-yoon clearly recognized that the man passing by was Dong-oh and broke into her characteristic bright, gentle smile, those faint golden lines slowly rippled and spread warmly in all directions.
And between the golden currents, the same faint pink mist he had seen yesterday mingled shyly once more.
It was exactly the same kind of color that had emanated from her body when she smiled brightly at him from the corner seat in the café yesterday.
Dong-oh came to a complete stop and stared at her in a daze.
This was no optical illusion caused by his eyes or temporary distortion from lighting.
The location was completely different—an open outdoor road—and the time of day, lighting, and sunlight conditions were all different from yesterday.
No flimsy scientific hypothesis about café lighting or sunlight reflecting off glass windows could explain this phenomenon.
The female student standing beside Seo-yoon also stopped walking and looked back and forth between the two with curious eyes as a strange atmosphere flowed between them.
“Ah, hello.”
Seo-yoon greeted him first, clutching her bag strap and bowing her head politely.
“……Oh, yeah. Hi.”
Dong-oh replied in an awkward voice, a beat later than usual, still reeling from the shock as if his brain had frozen.
His eyes remained fixed not on her greeting, but on the gold and pink auras gently rippling around her body.