“Ah... okay.”
As I stepped aside, those clear eyes followed me. Wondering why, I scratched my chin awkwardly, and Seon Eunhu’s gaze dropped to my fingers, then landed a little lower. Somewhere around the ugly, stretched-out sleeve.
Embarrassed by it, I put my hands behind my back, and Seon Eunhu blinked slowly and looked at my face again. My cheeks stung so much it was like it wasn’t his gaze grazing them but a round, spiky chestnut burr.
For all my nerves, Seon Eunhu passed me by without a word. In his back as he joined the group and moved off, there was no trace of that sharp reaction anymore. The voice that drifted over now and then was gentle too.
...Was I imagining it?
I think I was imagining it. All I’d done just now was say hello, so there was no way I’d earned his dislike for no reason.
Right before going into the office, I suddenly remembered he was an alpha and took a big breath in. But naturally, all a beta could sense was the sweet lingering trace of his cologne, not an alpha’s pheromones.
What does it mean to live?
I hadn’t fallen into this profound anguish when my parents died, nor when I lost the grandparents who’d taken me in and raised me only a few years later, in an accident. Up until then I’d been too young to really understand what death meant.
They’ve gone on a far-off trip, so someday you’ll get to see them again. They’re watching over you from heaven.
I’d swallowed whole the lies the grown-ups told to comfort five-year-old me.
Then one day, when the snail we were raising at the orphanage died overnight, I felt a loss like my whole body was being torn to shreds. Only then could I make out the message that had been hammered into me over and over.
Is life still meaningful even so?
Even so?
Even so?
...
The snail’s death, which I’d experienced with a bit more of a grown head, kept driving me into a corner. It felt like all the death surrounding me was my fault, so to keep from blaming myself, I read and meditated on anything I could get my hands on. And little by little, I came to accept it. That life has no meaning to speak of.
Death is fairer than life, and death is also the beginning of another life.
Death is not the end.
Only after reaching that realization could I find some psychological peace. And I secretly dreamed. Of living quietly like grass, and then, on some tired and difficult day, vanishing without a trace like the wind.
“Hello.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
I’d been sunk in the most harmless of musings, waiting for woodworking class. A few seniors came into the woodshop and drew everyone’s eyes. Having accepted my greeting with a lazy wave, they settled into the corner opposite me.
Woodworking was included only in the sophomore curriculum, so it was a required course for the male returning students who’d skipped their second year for military leave. Which meant-
“Hello.”
“Hi, kids.”
It meant our department’s one and only alpha, returning student Seon Eunhu, was taking the same class.
Answering back in a casual department jacket, a black backpack slung loosely to one side, Seon Eunhu was the second time I’d seen him since the opening-semester meeting.
With that fine face and an easy smile hung on it, it was impossible to look away no matter how I tried. Possessing both a pure look and good looks, even the texture of the skin on his forehead, glimpsed through the gaps in his bangs, was clean.
“Huh?”
Seon Eunhu, striding past the front of the lecture room, stopped when he saw someone in the very front row.
“You’re taking this class too? Ah... right, this is a sophomore major.”
“Yes! Hello.”
“Hold on.”
Seon Eunhu shifted his bag to the other shoulder and pulled something out of his pocket. Inside the colorful wrapper were gummies.
“This is all I’ve got to give you. Share it.”
“Wow! Thank you. I really love these gummies!”
The classmate who took the gummies made a fuss, delighted. Not just her, but the friend sitting beside her, and the classmate one seat over from that, their faces all lit up with color too.
“What? It’s embarrassing you’re this happy over something so small. Let’s go get a meal sometime. My treat. Thanks to you yesterday I saved on hospital bills.”
Seon Eunhu gave a light smile to the girl nodding vigorously, then headed for the section where the other seniors were seated.
Do they know each other? He’s only been back a little while, how’d they get that close?
To say he’d handed over worm-shaped gummies just because she was an underclassman, well, Seon Eunhu had looked at me a few days ago like I was an actual, literal worm. Had something happened between the two of them? And what was that about hospital bills...
I was so curious that my gaze turned persistent, and soon my eyes met Seon Eunhu’s.
But it was only a flash. Before there was even room for a change in expression like before, his gaze just skimmed past me. To the point I wondered if the contempt I’d felt in front of the office had been my imagination, he looked completely uninterested in me.
“Hey, this is really good. You try it too.”
Chewing on a gummy, the girl held the whole bag out to her friend beside her. The friend, who then fished a single worm out of it and ate it, immediately expressed the sourness with her entire face.
“Ugh, so sour!”
Complaining that it was sour, they kept picking at the gummies. Matching the movement of the girl’s lips, I gave my own mouth a small chew too. Maybe I’ll buy a bag to eat on the way home. Just imagining the sourness made my mouth water.
“But why’d Eunhu-hyung give you these? Did something happen between you two yesterday? Why’d you save him hospital bills?”
The friend who’d been chomping on a gummy lowered her voice and asked. As long as Seon Eunhu didn’t hear, it apparently didn’t matter, because it was loud enough that I could easily catch it from my seat.
“Ah, that’s...”
“What? Why’s your face going red? Did something really happen between you two?”
“No, no! It’s not like that!”
The two of them bickered, then burst into giggling laughter.
“Seon Eunhu-, got anything else to eat?”
At the same time, a voice flowing out from the seniors’ section brushed my ears. Like a spider scuttling toward prey caught in its web, my gaze reflexively sprang toward the source of the sound.
“Give me one gummy too. I’ve been low on sugar and running out of energy.”
“Yeah? Hold on.”
Seon Eunhu slipped a hand into his department jacket pocket. As his right hand rummaged around inside, the muscles of his wrist kept flexing. While my eyes were stolen away by that wrist, hard enough that you could sense its firmness with the naked eye, the girl in front’s voice came into my ears.
“Honestly it’s nothing much... it rained yesterday, remember? I ran into hyung by chance at the liberal arts building and he said he hadn’t brought an umbrella, so we shared mine to the major studio. He joked that he’d have caught a cold if it weren’t for me. That’s all it is. Nothing much.”
While I was picking up their conversation, Seon Eunhu kept rummaging in his pocket, and the other senior kept his hand held out. All at once, a playful smile rose at the corner of Seon Eunhu’s eyes. Only then did the senior draw back the hand he’d been holding out until it ached, going “Aish.”
“What, Eunhu, you’ve got nothing in your pocket, do you?”
“Ah- shame. I could’ve kept this up till sundown, but your face was so damn funny I couldn’t hold it in.”
“Hey, you crazy bastard.”
The senior laughed and gave Seon Eunhu’s arm a light shove. At that, Seon Eunhu widened his eyes and asked, “Huh? You’re not gonna eat it?” and the senior switched gears and quickly held his hand back out. Only after waiting a good while as Seon Eunhu shamelessly went through the same motion of pretending to rummage his pocket did the senior realize he’d been fooled again, and laughing, he threw an arm around Seon Eunhu’s shoulders.
Seon Eunhu laughed along too. Then he lifted the arm slung over his shoulder off him and, in return, dropped his wrist onto his friend. Calling it a shoulder-hug would be generous, since it was only halfway draped.
“If you wanna eat it, go buy it yourself, you bastard.”
When Seon Eunhu folded the corners of his eyes into a long crease and grinned mischievously, the sound of others laughing along came from all over. Most of the students in the woodshop were watching their antics.
I watched them warmly too. Now that I knew the reason Seon Eunhu had given the gummies to an underclassman was simply repayment for a kindness, I felt clear. To say it lifted a weight off me would be a stretch when it had barely sat on me five minutes, but at any rate, that’s how relieved I felt.
It wasn’t that Seon Eunhu thought of that friend as special. It was simply the organic interaction between humans. To put it plainly, if I’d been the one at the liberal arts building yesterday instead of her, I’d have been the one to get the gummies.
The steps the two of them took sharing an umbrella from the liberal arts building to the major studio came to about three thousand, no, they’d have walked fast in the rain, so maybe two thousand or so. In the grand cycle of being born and dying over and over on this earth, walking together that much was briefer than a solar eclipse.
The reason I was so fixated on the relationship between Seon Eunhu and that classmate was simply because he was an alpha.
With their strong reproductive drive, alphas were predators at the top of the human food chain. So the instant alpha Seon Eunhu returned to school, I’d instinctively worried he’d made that kid a target to reign over the sculpture department.
Of course, since that too was the providence of nature, we betas ought to submit to it.
Amid the heartwarming mood, I smiled faintly too and imagined Seon Eunhu. Seon Eunhu, students piled up like a mountain, climbing atop them in conquest and waving a flag. Arm muscles writhing imposingly, a thick ribcage, just as befit a reproductively powerful alpha. And between his two legs, standing there flaunting its magnificence in all its grandeur, the... dick?
Huh.
I had no idea how a penis had wormed its way into my mind map of Seon Eunhu, but at any rate, the Seon Eunhu in my imagination was stripped from the waist down.
“Seon Eunhu, look. All the underclassmen are staring at you. From now on, if you’ve got gummies, don’t play favorites with the juniors, hand them out one by one.”
At another senior’s teasing tone, laughter broke out here and there. At the words that everyone was looking at him, Seon Eunhu glanced our way and smiled thinly, a little embarrassed. Then his eyes met mine. In my head, a video starring him was playing out splendidly.
“...”
“...”
In that moment, I was certain. That the contempt-laden gaze I’d felt in front of the assistant’s office a few days ago hadn’t been my imagination.
It was a minute change of expression, but the party who’d once again been turned into a literal worm could recognize it clear as day.
