Looking down at Jei where she lay on the kitchen island, Iheon found himself remembering a lecture hall from a long time ago.
He had never put much faith in first impressions.
A first impression was mostly a visual sensation, something separate from rational judgment.
People let themselves be taken in by a mild face, a warm way of speaking, neat clothes, and only later realized that what they’d been looking at wasn’t character at all, just attractive wrapping paper.
Iheon had been known to sneer at that sort of hasty misreading.
When you looked at a person, appearance was not the first thing to check.
Where the eyes went when a question was asked. How the lips moved when words failed. Where the hands went when an uncomfortable subject came up. Which way the body leaned once a conversation ran long.
Small reactions like those were far more accurate than any manner a person put on.
Lee Jei first snagged in Iheon’s field of vision ten years ago.
Introduction to Criminal Psychology, one of the major courses in Hanguk University’s psychology department.
Iheon was the teaching assistant for that class, and Lee Jei was an outsider who’d wedged herself onto the roster out of nowhere on the last day of add-drop. The department listed beside her name on the attendance sheet read Media and Communication.
Taking a major course from another department wasn’t common unless you were doing a double major, but it wasn’t unheard of either, so at first he thought nothing of it.
For psychology students the class was a requirement, which was why most of them sat there wearing the face of people who had no choice.
Blank-eyed, they let the professor’s words go in one ear and out the other, scratching down in their notebooks only the parts that looked likely to show up on an exam.
They had come in expecting roll call and nothing more, it being the first day, and the lecture ran the full three hours instead, leaving them visibly deflated.
Lee Jei, though, was different.
Not only did she stay locked onto the class from start to finish, but as the long, dull lecture wound down she shot her hand up to say she had a question.
“If understanding a criminal’s environment matters so much, then how far is the victim’s suffering taken into account?”
The question itself wasn’t rude. Her voice wasn’t loud, either.
It was just that the tone was brash in a way that didn’t match that demure exterior at all.
That was the moment the corner of Iheon’s mouth tilted up, where he sat observing from the very back of the tiered lecture hall, beside the door.
The pretty face played its part, but the nerve of her, something you’d never have guessed from the outside, was refreshing.
She might look like that and still be the hardest sort of hard case.
After that day, Jei caught Iheon’s eye more than once.
For a man who took very little interest in other people, it was a fairly unfamiliar thing.
Not that he was making any effort to notice her, of course.
She simply kept turning up in his line of sight.
Between the brilliant mind and the ridiculously good looks, Iheon was the subject of plenty of talk, but his stiff-as-a-board way of speaking and his indifferent nature meant few students ever approached him easily.
Hanguk University’s top graduate, the man the professors spoke of as the rising star of criminal psychological analysis, had interest to spare for violent offenders and nothing else.
The kind of man who personally disproved the old saying that a rice cake that looks good tastes good, you might say.
It happened on the third occasion Iheon sat in on the class.
The second the lecture ended, the worn-out students streamed out of the hall in a mass.
Iheon was at the podium, sorting the leftover materials. That was when someone came quietly up to him.
“TA.”
Iheon raised his head at the sound of being called. The girl who had kept snagging his attention one way or another was standing there with a thick textbook and a laptop clutched to her chest.
Up close, her face was even prettier and gentler than it had looked from the back of the room. But if there was one place a person could never consciously hide, it was the eyes.
“I have a question.”
Brown eyes carrying a strange glint he couldn’t quite define held Iheon’s gaze. Looking straight into them, he tipped his chin.
Wordless permission: if you have something to say, say it.
“The professor said the causes of crime are traced back to an individual’s pathology or their upbringing. So within the same case, are the victim’s experiences and reactions left out of the analysis entirely?”
Students came to the teaching assistant to ask about attendance, assignment length, exam scope. A student asking something like this was a first.
She was definitely not like the others.
At her question Iheon stopped sorting the papers and leaned loosely against the edge of the desk. He scratched at the inner end of his eyebrow with his middle finger and spoke.
“They aren’t left out. They belong to a different concept.”
“Different how?”
“Criminal psychology analyzes the offender’s motive, cognition, impulse control, behavioral patterns. It’s closer to identifying causes. Why the crime occurred, under what conditions it’s likely to repeat.”
“If I wanted to know more about victims as well, not just the psychology of criminals, what course would be good to take?”
Psychology looked respectable enough from the outside, but it was not the romantic discipline its name suggested.
If anything it was closer to statistics: pile up data through research, then analyze the data.
The number of human beings on this planet came to roughly 8.3 billion.
With races and cultures and dispositions and temperaments beyond counting, the amount there was to learn was beyond counting too.
And this wasn’t even her major. It was an exhausting field to take up on nothing but curiosity.
“I believe your major was Media and Communication...”
“Oh. Well, I figured anything I learn will come in useful someday.”
Really? Unless you’re planning to become the con artist of the century, do you need to study victim psychology too?
But instead of offering advice no one had asked for, Iheon answered her question plainly.
“Trauma Psychology and Victimology would help. Add-drop is over, so you won’t be able to take it this semester.”
“Oh. Right. Thank you.”
Iheon straightened up off the desk to finish what he’d been doing.
“Um... I have one more question.”
When Iheon only went on looking at her in silence, Jei swept her thumb once along the corner of the laptop in her hands.
“Ah... it’s...”
For someone who’d been firing off questions without a shred of hesitation a moment ago, she was oddly reluctant now.
Which told him something.
The first question had just been a way to get her mouth open. This was the one she’d actually wanted to ask, wasn’t it?
Iheon kept his interest off his face and waited for her lips to part.
After a brief hesitation, they finally stirred.
“This idea that criminal psychological analysis lets us understand the perpetrator... what do you think about that, TA?”
“...”
“Once you know the perpetrator’s unfortunate backstory, does the crime ever start to look like something they couldn’t help?”
For some people, that question might be a genuine dilemma. For Iheon, it was trivial nonsense.
“I’m not sure what kind of answer you’re hoping to get out of me.”
Not everyone with a wretched past turned criminal, and besides, how remarkable could any such story really be? Remarkable enough that a criminal had to be defended?
“Understanding isn’t absolution, and pity isn’t analysis. My position is that the two must never be confused, and never be allowed to become an excuse.”
Jei said nothing for a moment, then shifted the things she was holding against her chest and dipped into a quick bow.
“Thank you for the answer.”
He thought that was the end of the conversation. But at the lecture hall door, Jei suddenly turned to look back at him.
“That’s a relief.”
Iheon gave her a puzzled look.
What exactly was a relief?
But before he could ask what she meant, Jei smiled first.
Not the face that had stayed quiet through the entire lecture, and not the dogged face she wore when she asked her questions.
The instant she smiled, her eyes folded into half-moons and the corners of her mouth curved up so prettily that she looked fresh and bright, like a young girl.
It was a clear, guileless smile, and it suited that pretty face far too well.
Iheon, though, watched her with his brows drawn tight, chewing over a meaning that seemed just within reach and wouldn’t come.
And while he did, the sound of black sneakers padded away down the bustling corridor.
A Korean proverb (보기 좋은 떡이 먹기도 좋다): what looks good is good, i.e. appearance matters.
