Wondering if maybe another reply would come, I checked my phone here and there while I worked, but there were no new messages. When it buzzed once in the middle of everything, my anticipation shot up terrifyingly high, like Jack’s beanstalk, only to shrivel right back down to the size of a single bean sprout head the instant I confirmed it was just an ad.
After that, I consciously tried not to think about Seon Eunhu until my allotted time on the pig’s head was up. Whatever misunderstanding had the alpha senior disliking me, it was none of my business. There was no need to pay any mind to negative energy, and I didn’t have the capacity for it anyway.
So I just kept pressing the clay firmly with my fingertips. For no reason, my fingers felt heavier than before.
“Isn’t it kind of lonely now that all the guys have gone off to the military? No one to hit up the pojangmacha with and pick up numbers...”
An Seunggyu, back from a smoke, grumbled as he dropped into his chair. At the acrid smell wafting off him, I unconsciously held my breath a moment before answering belatedly.
“...I guess so.”
“Ha, even this, me talking about this stuff with you, is funny. Anyway, the guys who are left all look like goody-goodies, so damn boring. I should’ve just gone to the army with the others instead of pointlessly putting it off a semester.”
Bored, apparently, from sitting still and working for hours, An Seunggyu rattled off things I hadn’t even asked about.
Wondering what he wanted me to do about any of it, I didn’t respond, and An Seunggyu let out a heavy sigh. The glasses he’d pushed up three seconds ago slid right back down.
“Hey. You got a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Ah, shit, me neither. I wanna date someone who’ll wait for me before I enlist in the fall, but there’s no pretty girl among this year’s freshmen. I wanted to be a campus couple with a twenty-year-old.”
“...”
“Our freshmen are a bust, should I scope out other departments?... Hey. So if you don’t go to the pojangmacha and don’t have a girlfriend, how do you deal with your sex drive? You hit up the parlors? Or do you at least have a fuck buddy? If you’ve got something good, hook me up. Don’t keep it to yourself.”
The longer An Seunggyu talked, the more my brow furrowed. Judging by the ideology peeking through every single word he used, An Seunggyu was decidedly not the sort I wanted to get close to.
Unable to hide my discomfort, I ended up blurting out something I hadn’t properly filtered.
“What am I, an animal? I don’t do that kind of thing.”
“Huuh?”
This time An Seunggyu seemed to be thinking the exact thing I’d just been thinking. He even peeled his hera off the clay and stared at me with a slack-jawed look.
“Right, so I’m the only trash again? We’re not in front of women here, let’s be a little honest. Why do you think sex drive is one of the three great human desires? We treat appetite and sleep as important, so why look down on the sex drive? The sex drive exists to be relieved. That’s how the mental circuits run normally, and that’s how you don’t get sex crimes.”
“You’ve got to be able to hold that urge back to be called human. Do you go eat a person because you’re hungry? Do you lay out a blanket in the street and sleep because you’re too tired? You’re not an alpha or an omega, you can hold back a little sex drive. And if you really can’t stand it, you take care of it yourself.”
“Hey, compare things worth comparing. Jerking off and sex feel completely different, what kind of nonsense... Don’t tell me you’ve never once done it with a woman?”
An Seunggyu stared like he couldn’t believe it. Superiority peeked out from that condescending gaze beyond his lenses.
Any more conversation was a waste of energy.
“Forget it. I have to go now.”
My shift happened to be coming up, so I had to get up. I took off my apron and tidied it, then misted the parts I’d worked on so the clay wouldn’t dry out. An Seunggyu leaned back to dodge the spray.
“Wow. A natural monument was sitting in front of me. Yes, yes. You’re still a virgin, so I acknowledge every one of your statements. Let’s talk again when you’re a grown-up, our little baby.”
“Take it easy.”
Leaving An Seunggyu’s cackling behind, I stepped out of the practice studio. After listening to that vulgar talk, it felt like my ears were rotting off.
According to common scientific wisdom, generally the smaller a person’s genitals, the more they enjoy that sort of talk. Supposedly the deficiency that comes from a small dick shows itself as a promiscuous sex life.
It’s not baseless either, because I once happened to witness An Seunggyu’s goods in the restroom, and its appearance was so pitiful compared to his facial bone structure that I was startled. Calling it “goods” felt like a stretch. “Some thing growing between his crotch.” “Shorter than a finger but longer than a toe.” Those pronouns suited it. No, at that size, should I call it not a pronoun but a puny-noun?
Watching An Seunggyu haul around that useless little thing and call it a sex organ, the truth is I’d worried over his reproductive troubles and pitied him. But going by this conversation, it seems it’d be better for nature if An Seunggyu’s seed just got wiped out entirely.
“Heey. Go Taerim!”
As I crossed the department building lobby, wrestling my temper down, someone called me. Turning around, I saw the third-year senior Lee Jinseong and Seon Eunhu approaching.
The instant I turned toward them, Seon Eunhu glanced at Lee Jinseong beside him, then looked straight at me again.
“Ahh, you’re Go Taering?”
Tilting his head as he said it. I don’t know why I felt so on edge. Was it because I was afraid he’d be disappointed to learn I was the one he’d traded those laughing messages with? What’s wrong with being disappointed. There was no reason for me to make a good impression on Seon Eunhu, yet strangely it was hard to lift my face, so I pointlessly avoided looking at them head-on.
So senior Lee Jinseong answered in my place.
“Huh? No. Not Go Taering, Go Taerim! You don’t know our Taerim? This kid hasn’t missed a full scholarship since the day he enrolled. Isn’t that killer?”
“Full scholarship?”
At Seon Eunhu’s echoed question, I lifted my head sharply. Contrary to what I’d dreaded, I couldn’t feel any emotion, disappointment included, in the gaze looking down at me. Counting that as a mercy, I quickly waved my hands.
“It’s not all from grades! The national scholarship gets added on too. I came in through that kind of admission track.”
“Either way, it’s true you go to school for free. This kid works really hard on his practical stuff too. There are plenty who pay expensive tuition and just coast, but this kid’s glued to the department building all day, working intensely. Kids like this are the most lovable. Right?”
Lee Jinseong looked at Seon Eunhu, fishing for agreement. But Seon Eunhu, apparently not particularly interested, gave a lukewarm response.
“Kids are kids, depends on the kid. Let’s hurry up and go, I’m starving.”
“Oh, right. Taerim, did you eat? We’re about to go grab food, want to come along? My treat.”
Seon Eunhu looked at Lee Jinseong, who was making the offer without a word of consulting him, then sent his gaze to me.
The tea-brown eyes left me confused whether they were pressing me to hurry up and answer, or hinting that I should refuse.
“No... I’m on my way to my part-time job right now.”
“Yeah? Didn’t your class just end? Taerim, you’re not working part-time without even the leisure to eat, are you?”
“Class ended earlier and I’ve been making the pig’s head this whole time since. I’m not especially hungry, so I don’t even feel like eating.”
“All right, got it. Don’t skip meals. But did you make the pig alone?”
“No. With Seunggyu.”
“Ahh, An Seunggyu, that sleazeball?”
Jinseong asked it back as if he knew something about An Seunggyu. Then he exchanged a certain look with Seon Eunhu and twitched his lips like a man itching to talk.
It felt awkward to ask what was going on first, so I was just reading the room when Lee Jinseong, in the lobby with no one but us, playfully whispered.
“Don’t get close with that guy.”
“What?”
“Innocent kids should play with innocent kids.”
Lee Jinseong gave my back a pat-pat and took the lead with a “Let’s go.”
Following behind the two of them, I picked up the nuance.
As I’d figured, An Seunggyu’s reputation among the seniors was bad. Naturally. Low-quality kids, no matter how well they conduct themselves, tend to give themselves away after just a few words.
Even that alpha Seon Eunhu, who goes into rut periodically, carries himself neat and tidy, so for a mere beta who isn’t even anything to go around spouting filth everywhere, there was no way the rumors would come out good.
“That restaurant’s by the back gate, right? Ah, hold on, let me check the location.”
“No, we’ve got to go to the front gate. That way.”
While the two of them got their bearings in front of the department building entrance, I, having stopped along with them, was lost in another thought.
Do these two also know that An Seunggyu carries around a penis so pathetic compared to the things he says?
If the seniors saw An Seunggyu’s whatsit too, they’d definitely be shocked. Maybe they’d mistake it for a pimple growing between his legs... Seon Eunhu especially seems like he’d be flabbergasted. I don’t know Seon Eunhu’s exact size, but still, he’s an alpha, for crying out loud. Wouldn’t there be more than a twofold difference in length or girth?
With that question, I imagined Seon Eunhu and An Seunggyu pressing their dicks together to measure length. In my imagination, An Seunggyu was so overwhelmed by Seon Eunhu’s erect dick that he couldn’t move a muscle. It was a pretty gratifying sight.
“We’re going that way, so where are you...”
Seon Eunhu, turning around, spoke to me for once. But the instant our eyes met, the tail end of his words cut off clean. Like a man who’d witnessed something, his straight brows twitched, and the warmth drained from his ruddy face.
Just as I was bewildered by Seon Eunhu trailing off mid-sentence, he strode toward me.
“...You said you’re busy right now? Even if you’re busy, you’ve got time to exchange a word or two, don’t you? Huh?”
Then, to me as I stepped back and faltered, he murmured low.
“Let’s talk for a sec. I won’t take up much of your time.”
“...”
...Why is he suddenly talking through gritted teeth?
Some change of heart in that brief span, and suddenly Seon Eunhu was baring hostility.
