[Monday, 5 PM!! Opening-semester general meeting in the seminar room!! Attendance mandatory]
Standing in front of the sculpture department building, I checked the text message on my phone one more time and picked up my pace. All the while thinking that if I’d known there’d be this many department events, I never would’ve gone to college. Starting with the entrance ceremony, then the opening-semester meeting, the freshman welcome party, the senior-junior meet-and-greet, the MT, the festival, and on and on. Last year, spent draining every ounce of energy attending the endless onslaught of events, flashed before my eyes. Now that the first semester of sophomore year had begun, I’d have three more years of repeating all this.
The road ahead was long, but I figured I’d at least make it to graduation.
I decided to keep putting a little more faith in what my homeroom teacher back in high school had said, that once I graduated college, my circumstances and values would be a lot different. If they changed, great, and if not, I’d just leave without any regrets.
Picturing the far-off graduation, I headed not for the seminar room where the meeting was being held but for the restroom. I’d belatedly noticed that broth had splashed onto my sleeve while I was wolfing down a cup of instant noodles. The orange stain had soaked so deep into the white fabric that I worried it might not come out.
And so, in that restroom I’d walked into, I found upperclassmen standing side by side at the urinals.
“Hello.”
When I offered a greeting, the seniors, hands still holding their waistbands, turned their heads to look. Mischief mixed with delight on their faces.
“Oh, if it isn’t Go Taerim-”
“How’s our Go Taerim been? How’s it feel being a senior now, Go Taerim?”
“You’ve gotten even cuter since I saw you last, Go Taerim.”
The name they’d started tacking my surname onto as a joke back when I was a freshman had, by now, become a nickname. The way of speaking I’d forgotten over the long winter break was welcome enough that I gave an awkward smile. Glad to see them, sure, but I didn’t have anything in particular to say.
I went over to the sink and stood with my back to the seniors. I stretched out my sleeve, gripped it, and held the dirtied part under the stream of water, and the wide patch soaked through in no time. I’d probably just have to accept that the fabric would stretch out.
“Hey. Speaking of which, what’d you even do over break instead of getting circumcised?”
The seniors cackled and went on with the conversation they’d been having among themselves. Because the restroom was cramped, their voices carried loud, like they were talking right into my ear.
“What circumcision, at my age, you bastard? I told you I’m not doing it.”
“What’s age got to do with peeling back the skin? Find a good doctor and they’ll sculpt it real pretty, so hurry up and get yours done too. Saw it on YouTube, they say the surgery makes it look bigger from the optical illusion too.”
“Why do you care whether some other guy’s dick gets prettier or not? Do you even know they cut off all the nerve endings when you get circumcised?”
“Cutting them off still feels damn good, though? Hey. And anyway, it’s not like you’ve got any use for all those nerve endings.”
“Wow, this bastard gets a girlfriend and starts crossing the line?”
The vulgarity of the conversation had me scrubbing at my clothes faster. Rather than listen to this, I figured I’d be better off wrapping up after the meeting, even if the stain came out a little less. Setting aside how nice the seniors were to me, I didn’t want to get tangled up in the mood of an embarrassing conversation.
Sure, the seniors were living creatures too, so of course they had reproductive urges, but I couldn’t see the point of saying stuff like that in a restroom full of nothing but males. It wasn’t like they were alphas or omegas in a rut.
“Hey, quiet down a sec. I’m getting a call.”
“From who?”
The question wasn’t even aimed at me, but I found myself reflexively glancing over at the seniors before quickly looking away. The face of the senior who’d seemed perfectly fine a moment ago now looked to me like an uncircumcised dick.
Our brains have a simple streak to them, this flaw where the second a stimulating word gets in, they fixate on it. Mine was clearly already being infected by these guys’ vulgar energy.
So I moved off like I was being chased, but of all things, the seniors had voices as strong as their pronunciation, and the phone call carried clearly even as I was leaving the restroom.
“Hello? Where are you? Still? Ah, hurry up. You’re gonna be later than the meeting start time at this rate.”
“I said who is it?”
“Seon Eunhu. Says he just woke up from a nap.”
“What? He’s already pulling the returning-student card? Hurry up- Seon Eunhu!”
It was only well after I’d left the restroom that I could no longer hear the seniors’ voices. With lungs like those, wouldn’t everyone know whether they were circumcised or not?
Feeling like a fact I hadn’t especially wanted to know had lodged itself pretty deep in my head, I shook it off hard and went into the seminar room. The freshman juniors welcomed me with a booming greeting. Someone must have really put the fear into them, because the new students were stiff with nerves.
“Mind if I sit here?”
I went to an empty spot among the sophomore seats and asked the guy beside me. At that, he, one of the ones who’d greeted me warmly, cleared his bag off the desk for me.
We’d only talked a few times last semester, so the moment we’d exchanged our awkward hellos, both of us pulled out our phones and started fiddling with them, neither one taking the lead. We kept opening and closing this app and that, pretending to be busy with something.
The wet sleeve against my wrist was unpleasantly damp.
The opening-semester meeting wasn’t anything special. About the same as the department meetings we held periodically, the only difference being the introduction of the new teaching assistant who’d joined this year and the class representatives for each year.
But that was only a difference to them. To a rank-and-file member who just sits there nodding along and then leaves, it was a meeting no different from usual. I only just learned who this year’s department rep was, and I fulfilled my duty for the day by giving my third round of applause.
The introduction of the class reps for each year wrapped up quickly. When the teaching assistant running the meeting picked up the mic, the restless atmosphere settled. Now all that was left was to rattle off the events scheduled for the semester and give the perfunctory announcements.
“All right. Let’s wrap up the introductions here...”
Just as the assistant started to speak, a tall figure appeared at the window by the entrance, and the door slid open.
“Sorry.”
The man came in with his head bowed, clearly trying his best not to disrupt the meeting, but laughter burst out from the seniors’ section and broke the flow. Even without seeing his face, they seemed to have recognized who he was.
Same went for the teaching assistant. His face filled with a pleased look, and he crooked a finger at the man who’d just walked in.
“Where do you think you’re going? Come here.”
“Huh?”
“This year let’s introduce the returning students too.”
“Ah, hyung.”
“All right. Returning students this semester, all of you come up front. What’s there to be shy about? A shy returning student is a gross thing, you know. Come on, come on, hurry up.”
At the assistant’s direction, six or seven students came up and stood at the front. Among them, the man who’d just come in and stood alone holding his bag smoothed down his bangs, looking a little sheepish, then at some point grinned toward the seniors’ section.
“...”
Maybe it was because my first impression of him was that smiling face. For a moment, he stole all my attention.
It wasn’t love at first sight. To give an example, it was like how, among a row of pencils lined up together, your eyes go first to the one sharpened the prettiest. Sure, if that person had been a woman I might’ve admitted I’d fallen for him, but at any rate that returning student was a man, so there was no reason to argue over whether I’d fallen or not.
The returning students’ greetings went in the order they stood. When it finally came to his turn, the seniors who’d been sitting there cheered as if they’d been waiting for it. The man pressed an index finger to his lips and mouthed, without a sound, “Quit overreacting.” He didn’t look embarrassed.
“Hello. I’m Seon Eunhu, student ID XX, returning as a junior. Nice to meet you all.”
Oh... his voice is nice too.
I was clapping along with that favorable impression when the seniors shouted something over the commotion.
Seon Eunhu, who’d been silently raising an eyebrow, caught what they’d said and frowned. Then, as if he had no choice, he added,
“Yes. I’m an alpha. So be nice to me, okay?”
The confession filled the seminar room with laughter-laced cheers. It was the moment the freshmen and sophomores, myself included, finally learned that this person was the alpha everyone talked about.
