Announcement of the Nude Painting Class
One day, as summer crept closer, Kim Yuna, the student council president of our department and a fourth-year senior, summoned all the first-years to the painting classroom.
A murmur rippled through my classmates at the sudden call, but not a single one of us could refuse. When the student council president called, that call was a command.
In the corridor leading to the classroom, the female students clustered together in twos and threes as they walked, and I trailed behind them, alone, taking my time. It was always like this. Even when we were all headed to the same place, I was always alone.
"You're all here?"
I always tensed up standing in front of Yuna. She was the strictest of the seniors, and the first to raise her voice whenever we screwed something up.
Maybe because her technique for delivering smacks was so refined, even a single kick from Yuna left a bruise on your shin. The memory of being kicked last time for not cleaning the classroom properly was still vivid.
So while every first-year was gathered in the classroom, no one dared utter a word. There was no air conditioning in the room, and the summer heat pressed down on us all — but standing before Yuna, the tension made even the heat easy to forget.
"I called you all here because of the joint class starting next week. For one month, starting next week, the entire Painting Department will be taking the same class together."
I looked around at my classmates. Every one of them wore a tense expression. Something about the words joint class seemed to set off an ominous current, and they were stealing glances at one another, gauging each other's reactions.
And the moment they realized I was looking at them, their expressions soured dramatically.
It was always like this. Among the first-year freshmen in the Painting Department, I was the only man; the other six were all women.
And those bitches were ostracizing me. No — they regarded me as something less than human.
Even when the seniors treated us to a meal, my classmates would refuse to eat if I was included, and whenever I took a seat in a lecture hall, they always gathered at the farthest point away to attend class.
Whenever our eyes met, they would glare at me with contempt, just as they were doing now — like I was a wad of gum stuck to the bottom of their shoe.
'Fucking bitches. What the hell did I ever do wrong?'
I swallowed the curse and looked away.
"And as for the class starting next week—"
Yuna was still making her announcement while my mind wandered off. She paused for a moment and swept her gaze around the room, drawing out the suspense as though she were about to unveil something monumental.
"It's a nude painting class."
"Huh?"
The sound escaped my mouth before I could stop it.
And no wonder — did a month-long nude painting course even make sense? Our department's tuition wasn't exactly cheap, but the department itself never seemed to have much money. This was a department that couldn't even afford one air conditioner for its own classroom.
And yet they could afford to hire a model for a whole month?
"What? Kyungmin. Is something wrong?"
"It's just, senior... is it really going to run for a whole month?"
"Didn't you hear what I just said?"
Yuna's eyes narrowed. It had taken me three months to learn that this particular expression meant danger.
"I heard, but a whole month would cost quite a lot. Is that really okay?"
"What? Why are you the one worrying about that? That's for me to handle, as student council president."
"Ah... I'm sorry."
My pointless meddling had kicked in out of nowhere again, and I'd gone and said something useless. It was honestly a big part of why my relationship with the female classmates had soured in the first place.
Sometimes words would come out of my mouth without passing through my brain first, and I'd made several verbal blunders in front of the girls. Once, when one of them was showing off a brand-new bag, I blurted out, "That looks kind of fake..." It wasn't my real opinion, of course, but after that, their attitude toward me changed completely.
Sure enough, the female classmates were staring at me again like I was some kind of insect.
But then Yuna's next words froze everyone solid.
"Though, like Kyungmin said, our department doesn't have the budget to hire a model for a month. So, as per our department's tradition, the students take turns modeling themselves."
I wondered if I'd misheard. The air in the room suddenly seemed to grow heavy.
'Students — which students? Do they get a scholarship or something for modeling?'
"Anyone have questions?"
At that, one of the female classmates raised her hand.
"Who's doing the modeling? If it's students, do you mean students from our department?"
For once, she was thinking the same thing I was. It was a strange feeling — a girl who normally seemed to hate the very sight of me breathing was harboring the exact same question.
"Oh? Ah! I guess I didn't explain properly. Everyone in our department takes turns modeling. All of us."
"What!?"
Every one of us — me and all the female classmates — cried out at the same time.
The words I'd just heard weren't registering in my brain. The room went dead silent for an instant, then an uproar erupted among my classmates.
"Senior, does that mean... we have to model too?"
The female classmate threw the question at Yuna again. Her voice was trembling.
"Hmm... it's not so much that you can—"
Gulp.
I could hear every person in the room swallow. It was as if time itself had stopped inside the classroom.
"Everyone does it at least once. All of you! Not a single exception!"
My heart suddenly began to pound. Thump, thump, thump — the beating was loud enough to echo in my ears.
Our department had an unusual abundance of beautiful women. On top of that, most of the seniors worked hard on their figures, so there wasn't a single overweight person among them.
Come to think of it, though — over the past month, I'd been seeing the seniors dieting constantly, men and women alike. One senior had been replacing lunch with salad, another jogged around the school track every morning.
Which meant they had known about the nude modeling all along, and they'd already been preparing for it.
The thought that I might actually get to see, with my own eyes, the naked bodies of the very seniors whose pictures I talked to and used as wank material at home — my chest wouldn't stop thumping.
The voluptuous figure of Bagel-Girl Nagyeong, the third-year senior. The porcelain skin of Lim Jihye, the second-year, the very embodiment of innocence. And the enormous chest of student council president Kim Yuna herself. Even just imagining it was starting to make my pants uncomfortable.
"Senior. I don't understand. You're saying we have to be the nude models ourselves — right?"
The female classmate fired another question at Yuna. This time there was anger mixed into her voice.
"That's right. Is my Korean hard to understand?"
"No, but why? Why do we have to model nude? Just hire professional models."
"Did you not hear what Kyungmin said earlier? There's no budget for professional models. And you all know how essential nude painting is for learning to draw the human body. You think a few days of practice makes you any better? That's exactly why modeling in the flesh is a tradition in our department."
"No, wait... so you're saying you'll be modeling nude too, senior? Then... where are the classes being held?"
"You know the art studio on the first floor? That's where. And of course I'll be modeling too."
Yuna said it matter-of-factly, but my classmates' faces had already gone sheet-white.
"But you said we'd all be taking the class together. How are the men and women going to be separated?"
"Excuse me? Separate what? If you can't properly paint a nude — man or woman — you won't improve."
"What? You're saying we have to model nude in front of men?"
The classmate's voice rose sharply. Her face was bright red, and her fists were clenched tight.
After that, the shouting started. Even the classmates who were normally terrified of Yuna couldn't just let the nude modeling slide.
From "how is this even legal" all the way to "I'll report this to the school," the classroom descended into chaos. One girl would scream, another would chime in, and in seconds all six of them were hurling protests at Yuna.
The shouting war raged on for a long while — until, finally, Yuna slammed her hand down on the desk with a bang.
"Hey! You're all doing this because I've been letting you off easy. Do I look like a joke to you? Say that again! What was that? Call me a crazy bitch one more time and you're dead!"
The moment Yuna's genuine fury erupted, the voices of the female classmates shrank to nothing in an instant. There was real murder in her eyes. The classmates who had been protesting so fiercely just moments before cowered as if someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over their heads.
While I watched all this, I was calmly imagining the bodies of my female classmates.
Summer was approaching and everyone was dressed light, so it wasn't hard to picture them nude. The flash of armpit between a sleeveless top, the smooth thigh stretching down beneath a pair of shorts, the outline of a bra visible through a thin t-shirt.
And next week, the flesh underneath all of it might be laid bare before my own two eyes — the thought had my cock drooling precum without pause. The front of my pants was tenting up like a canopy, but thankfully everyone's attention was fixed on Yuna, so no one had noticed.
"If you don't want to do it, then don't! Every year there's always one or two girls who can't hack it anyway. And if you can't handle it, figure it out yourself — repeat a year, drop out, whatever!"
Having said her piece, Yuna slammed the desk one more time and stormed out of the classroom, grumbling all the way.
The door banged shut, and the sound of her footsteps faded down the corridor.
A heavy silence settled over the room. The female classmates stared at one another, shell-shocked. Some of them looked close to tears.
And me — stuck in the same room as those shell-shocked girls, their gazes scared me enough that I quietly slipped out of the classroom.
My cock — already a bit larger than average — was far too hard, so I held my bag in front of me to cover it and slipped out. Out in the corridor, the summer breeze brushed against my sweat-dampened neck, but the heat inside my body showed no sign of cooling.
Then I went home and slowly pulled down my pants.