Chapter 05
Yeonjae stood up from the swing and walked straight to Dohan.
Then she said without hesitation,
“Hello. I’m Shin Yeonjae from the nearby girls’ middle school. A girl in my class likes you. She wants to ask for your number, but she’s too shy.”
The words came out without trembling even once, fast like rapid-fire rap.
Dohan stopped with a surprised expression. He quietly waited until she finished speaking.
There was a short silence.
Yeonjae swallowed. She was afraid he might refuse to give his number.
After a long pause, Dohan finally spoke.
“Then why didn’t your friend come herself? Why send you?”
He sounded genuinely curious. When Yeonjae hesitated, Dohan gestured toward the swings with his chin. Before she realized it, she was sitting on the swing with him—the same one she had been sitting on alone.
She worried that other girls might be watching this scene.
It looked exactly like the kind of situation where someone could be called sly.
The swing Dohan sat on moved slowly. Yeonjae stared only at the front of her shoes.
Dohan didn’t say anything. She wondered why he had suggested sitting there at all.
While they stayed silent, the sun went down. Streetlights turned on one by one, and lights lit up in the apartment windows.
After a long silence, Dohan asked,
“If I don’t give it, will that put you in trouble?”
Yeonjae couldn’t answer.
Maybe her silence was enough of an answer. Dohan turned his backpack to the front and opened the largest zipper.
“I don’t see any paper.”
After searching for a while, he took out a pen and looked back at her.
“Can I see your fist?”
When Yeonjae held out her fist with her fingers facing down, Dohan gently grabbed her wrist and turned her hand over so the back of it faced up.
Then he wrote eleven digits on it.
That was why.
From that day on, Yeonjae’s goal was always Dohan.
She studied with Dohan as her goal. She chose her university because of Dohan. She even repeated a year to enter the same university as him.
Finding out about Dohan wasn’t hard. He was well-known in the neighborhood. If she searched through seniors’ social media, she would always find a picture of him in the background.
But she couldn’t tell Hyunoh all of that.
Avoiding his gaze, she gave a filtered version instead.
“When I was going through a really hard time, Dohan sunbae reached out his hand to me. It was probably something small that he doesn’t even remember. But for me, it meant everything. That’s why. That’s all.”
Hyunoh stayed silent for a moment. After quite some time, he spoke.
“Well, that’s how one-sided love is. Just looking at the tip of their fingers can make years pass by.”
“You’re talking like someone who’s mastered it. Are you… in one-sided love too?”
“No.”
Ugh.
Yeonjae took a step, then stopped. Suddenly, she became curious.
“But isn’t it a bit strange?”
“What is?”
“I’m basically a stalker.”
After hearing it so many times today, the word came out more easily.
Noticing her tone was different from before, Hyunoh’s expression also became serious.
“If you know that, why did you stalk him?”
Stalk.
Honestly, Yeonjae had thought that herself before.
Am I acting too much like a stalker?
But it had only been a half-joking thought.
Hearing Hyunoh directly call her that several times today made her realize that maybe this one-sided love really did look that way to others.
Even so, his question was hard to answer. She carefully thought about what to say.
After thinking and thinking, the words she chose were—
“…Because even like that, I want to know about him.”
Confessing love—even to a third party—required a lot of courage.
Embarrassed by her own words, Yeonjae quickly changed the topic.
“A-Anyway, you said you’re close with Dohan sunbae. Are you really close?”
“Yeah. We’re close. You should know best. You wrote a whole page about me. If you don’t believe me, should I call him right now?”
With exaggerated movements, Hyunoh pretended to make a call.
She thought it was just an act—
But from the phone, on speaker, came a voice she knew very well.
“Hello.”
Just four syllables, and her heart started racing.
“Hey, Dohan. Where are you?”
Yeonjae stared at Hyunoh in shock. She mouthed silently,
Hang. Up. Now.
Finding her reaction amusing, Hyunoh teased her a few more times. Even while dodging her attempts to grab the phone, his voice stayed calm.
“Yeah. I’m with someone right now. We’re heading back to school~ Just called to see where you are~”
She knew it was his way of lightening the mood, but she was completely flustered.
Hang. It. Up.
“I’ll call you later.”
The call ended. Hyunoh looked at her again and said proudly,
“So? Is that enough proof? That I can be an excellent helper?”
Proof or not, Yeonjae barely heard him. She was still calming her racing heart.
“I still don’t understand. Dohan sunbae isn’t unpopular or anything. Why me…? I’m not even that pretty…”
Hyunoh didn’t answer immediately. He just stared at her like he couldn’t believe what she said.
“When you wash your face, you take those glasses off, right?”
“Huh?”
The reply came after a long pause, and she couldn’t immediately understand what he meant.
She asked again, but he didn’t explain further. And she didn’t ask again.
She only thought, He’s such a strange person.
They walked again in awkward silence.
Hyunoh, swinging his empty plastic cup, suddenly stopped.
Closing one eye like he was aiming at a target, he adjusted his position a few times and threw the cup.
It flew in a half-moon shape and landed perfectly in the recycling bin labeled for plastic.
But the straw he threw next fell right in front of it.
“Ah.”
He sighed in disappointment. She thought he would just leave it—
But he walked forward, picked up the straw, and put it properly into the bin.
From a short distance away, Yeonjae watched him, slightly surprised.
She could have used that moment to leave him behind.
But she didn’t.
For some reason, she didn’t think he was such a bad person.
Eventually, they stopped when the path split toward different buildings.
“Give me your phone.”
When she hesitated, Hyunoh casually took it, entered his number, and even made a call to save it.
“Contact me.”
He turned his back first.
Watching him walk away, Yeonjae made a firm promise to herself.
That Americano tasted awful. I’m never going to that café again.
Then she realized, a beat later.
It was the first time she had eaten with someone during a free period.
The Korean Literature lecture room was already partly filled.
Yeonjae avoided people whose faces she knew but knew nothing else about and sat in an empty seat.
The girls who arrived earlier were already chatting in small groups.
“I wonder what the GPA cutoff for scholarships will be this year?”
“I gave up. I had 4.1 last time and still didn’t get even the 30% scholarship.”
“But who’s first in the department? I checked scores and figured out second place. But I can’t figure out who’s first.”
Hmm…
Yeonjae felt awkward and fixed her gaze on her textbook.
She was a Korean Literature major, but when she entered university, she had no special interest in it.
How many Korean students truly choose their major out of passion?
Back then, her only goal was entering the same university as Dohan. The major didn’t matter at all.
But as she studied, she found parts of it enjoyable. So she worked hard.
And before she knew it, she was first in the department.
People liked talent. But Yeonjae believed effort had value too.
In fact, she was loving someone with that same mindset.
Compared to one-sided love that never went her way, studying—where effort brought results—was much easier.
As she absentmindedly spun her pen and thought about everything that had happened that morning—
“Excuse me.”
Someone tapped her back.
Yeonjae turned around.
A girl with long brown straight hair neatly tucked behind her ear smiled at her.
She knew this girl.
Choi Sieun. Second-year vice representative. The “pretty girl” of the Korean Literature department.
They had briefly met at a department event before, but weren’t close.
Sieun looked like she had something to say.
Is she going to ask about grades?
Without greeting her, Sieun asked directly,
“Are you close with Kang Hyunoh oppa?”
