Chapter 06
Yeonjae, who had gotten off the swing, walked up to Dohan. Then she blurted out without any warning,
“Hello. I’m Shin Yeonjae. I go to the girls’ middle school nearby. A girl in my class likes you. She wants to ask for your number, but she’s too shy.”
She said it all in one breath, without a single tremble—like rapid-fire rap.
Dohan stopped, looking flustered. He quietly waited until she finished speaking.
A brief silence passed.
Yeonjae swallowed hard. She was afraid she might fail to get Dohan’s number.
After a long pause, Dohan finally spoke.
“Then why didn’t she come herself? Why send you?”
He sounded genuinely curious. When Yeonjae hesitated, Dohan tilted his chin toward the swings. Before she knew it, she was sitting beside him on the swing where she had been alone just moments ago.
She worried that other girls might be watching this scene.
It was the perfect situation to be misunderstood as a sly fox.
The swing Dohan sat on swayed slowly. Yeonjae stared only at the tips of her shoes.
Dohan said nothing. She wondered why he had asked her to sit if he wasn’t going to talk.
While they sat there, the sun set. The streetlights flickered on, and lights began glowing in the apartment windows. After another long silence, Dohan asked,
“Would it be a problem if I don’t give it?”
Yeonjae couldn’t answer.
Taking her silence as an answer, Dohan swung his backpack around and opened the largest zipper.
“I don’t see any paper.”
After rummaging around for a while, he pulled out a pen and looked at her again.
“If it’s okay… can you make a fist?”
When Yeonjae held out her fist with her fingers showing, Dohan gently grabbed her wrist and turned her hand over so the back faced up.
Then he wrote eleven digits with his pen.
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 him. She even took an extra year to retake the college entrance exam just to get into the same university as him.
Finding updates about Dohan wasn’t hard. He was well-known in the neighborhood, and whenever she scrolled through seniors’ social media, she would inevitably find a photo of him from behind.
But she couldn’t confess all of that as it was.
Avoiding Hyeonho’s gaze, Yeonjae carefully filtered her words.
“When I was really struggling, Dohan sunbae reached out his hand to me. It was probably something so small he doesn’t even remember it, but to me it meant everything. That’s why. That’s all.”
Hyeonho was silent for a moment. After quite some time, he spoke.
“Well, that’s what one-sided love is like. You can spend years just looking at the tip of someone’s fingers.”
“You’re talking like you’ve mastered it. Are you… in unrequited love too?”
“No.”
Ugh.
Yeonjae was about to walk away but stopped. Suddenly she was curious.
“Isn’t it kind of… weird?”
“What is?”
“I’m basically a stalker.”
After hearing the word several times, it came out of her mouth more easily now.
Noticing her answer had changed from earlier, Hyeonho’s expression turned serious.
“If you know that, why did you stalk him?”
Stalk.
Honestly, Yeonjae had thought that herself before.
Am I acting like a stalker?
But it had only been a half-joking self-criticism.
Hearing Hyeonho directly call her a “stalker” several times today made her realize that maybe her one-sided love really did look that way to others.
Still, his question was hard to answer. She thought carefully.
After much hesitation, the words she finally chose were—
“…Because even like that, I want to know more about him.”
Confessing love—even if it’s to a third party—required enormous courage.
Embarrassed by her own words, Yeonjae quickly changed the subject.
“Anyway… I heard you and Dohan sunbae are close. Are you really that close?”
“Yeah. We are. You should know best, shouldn’t you? You wrote pages about me. If you don’t believe me, should I call him right now?”
Hyeonho exaggeratedly pretended to make a call.
She thought it was just an act, but suddenly Dohan’s familiar voice came through the speaker at full volume.
“Hello.”
Just four syllables were enough to make her heart pound.
“Hey, Dohan. Where are you?”
Yeonjae stared at Hyeonho in shock and mouthed,
Hang. Up. Now.
Finding her reaction amusing, Hyeonho teased her a bit longer. Even as he dodged her attempts to grab the phone, his voice remained casual.
“Yeah, I’m with someone right now. Came back to school and wondered where you were, so I called~”
Though she knew it was just his way of lightening the mood, Yeonjae was mortified.
Hang. Up.
“I’ll call you later.”
After the call ended, Hyeonho looked at her proudly.
“Now is it proven? How great of an assistant I can be?”
Proven or not, Yeonjae could barely hear him over the pounding of her heart.
“But I still don’t get it. Dohan sunbae is popular. It’s not like he has no options. Why me…? I’m not even that pretty…”
Hyeonho didn’t answer right away. He just stared at her as if dumbfounded.
“When you wash your face, you take off your glasses, right?”
“What?”
It took her a moment to grasp what he meant.
He didn’t explain further, and she didn’t ask again.
She simply thought he was strange.
They resumed walking in awkward silence.
Hyeonho, swinging an empty plastic cup, suddenly stopped. Closing one eye like he was aiming at a target, he adjusted his stance and tossed the cup.
It drew a half-moon arc and landed perfectly in the recycling bin labeled for plastic.
But the straw he threw next fell to the ground in front of it.
“Ah.”
He sighed in disappointment—but instead of leaving it, he walked forward, picked up the straw, and put it properly into the bin.
Watching from a short distance, Yeonjae found it unexpectedly decent of him.
She could have used the moment to leave him behind, but she didn’t. For some reason, she felt he wasn’t such a bad person.
They finally stopped walking when their paths split at different buildings.
“Give me your phone.”
When she hesitated, Hyeonho lightly snatched it, entered his number, and even called himself to save it.
“Text me.”
He turned his back first.
Watching him walk away, Yeonjae muttered inwardly,
That Americano was disgustingly bad. I’m never going to that café again.
A beat later, she realized something.
It was the first time she had ever eaten with someone during a free period.
The Korean Literature major lecture room was already partially filled.
Yeonjae avoided people whose faces she vaguely recognized but knew nothing about, and took an empty seat.
A group of girls who had arrived early were chatting.
“I wonder what the GPA cutoff for scholarships will be this year.”
“I gave up. I had a 4.1 last time and still didn’t even get the 30% scholarship.”
“But who’s the top of the department? I figured out up to second place, but I can’t find out who’s first.”
Hmm…
Yeonjae awkwardly fixed her gaze on her textbook.
Although she was a Korean Literature major, she hadn’t had any real interest in it when she first entered university.
Not that many Korean students choose their major out of pure passion anyway—but at the time, her only goal had been getting into the same university as Dohan. The major didn’t matter at all.
But as she studied, she began to enjoy parts of it. So she worked hard.
And before she knew it, she was the top student in her department.
People love geniuses, but Yeonjae believed effort had value too.
Just like my one-sided love…
Compared to love that didn’t go her way, studying—where effort led to results—wasn’t that hard.
As she absentmindedly twirled her pen and thought about what had happened that morning—
“Excuse me.”
Someone tapped her back. She turned around.
A girl with long brown hair neatly tucked behind her ears smiled at her.
Yeonjae knew her.
Choi Sieun. Second-year vice representative and the “pretty girl” of the department.
They had met once at a department event, but weren’t close.
Sieun looked like she had something to say.
“Are you close with Kang Hyeonho oppa?”
