It was only after shedding a few tears that the thin lens finally settled onto his eye. After blinking several times and wiping away the tears caught between his lashes, he was finally ready to go out.
After putting on his shoes, Eunseo stared for a long time at the paper bag he couldn’t quite bring himself to throw away, then belatedly headed out the door. He’d meant to eat it for breakfast, but it was all mixed together and ruined — he felt bad letting it go to waste.
The whole bus ride, other people’s eyes kept landing on his face, then dropping away long after — over and over. If he’d been sitting, he could at least have pretended to sleep, but standing made that hard. The moment he got off the bus, Eunseo rushed into the building as if fleeing — and ran right into Jin Seunghu at the main entrance.
“…Shin Eunseo?”
“…Hello.”
At his whispered greeting through the mask, Seunghu strode over, looking furious.
“Your face… what is this.”
“Ah, well…”
“Your father again?”
“………”
“Talk about a jinx.”
Seunghu clicked his tongue. He looked as though he regretted having brought up Eunseo’s father with such concern at yesterday’s dinner.
Eunseo wanted to shake his head and say that wasn’t it, but with fury blazing to the top of his head, there was no telling whether he’d even taken that in.
“Mask down. Let me see.”
“I’m fine.”
“Your speech sounds off too.”
“…I’m really fine.”
“What’d you do with your glasses, pawn them?”
“I… lost them.”
“You’re blind without your glasses — and you lost them?”
With a firm hand, Seunghu pulled Eunseo’s mask down to look, then carefully pulled it back up just as it was. Every split and swollen and bruised part of it looked painful just to see.
“Han Jaeheon wasn’t with you?”
“…What? No.”
“Right — if that bastard had been with you, you wouldn’t look like this.”
Even if Han Jaeheon had been with me, it’s not like my father would have hit me less or spared me the verbal abuse… That was out of the question. He’d long since thrown away every shred of social decency — he wouldn’t care about appearances, his or anyone’s.
What would Han Jaeheon have done if he’d been in that situation? Eunseo wondered for a moment, then shook his head to scatter the idle thought. It had nothing to do with Han Jaeheon at all, and no matter what he did, it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference.
“Don’t you dare leave the lab today. For real.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll cover your TA duties.”
“…You, senior?”
The students would hate that… Eunseo barely swallowed the retort, but Seunghu seemed to read the thought as it flickered across his eyes.
“I’ll just call attendance.”
“You only need to pop in midway and check seats.”
“No way. I always call it myself.”
“But then there’ll be complaints later. I wrote in the syllabus that seat checks happen thirty minutes into class.”
“Why’d you even write that in the syllabus. Then I’ll tell the professor and call it in the middle of class.”
“…Do whatever you want.”
Eunseo started to laugh hollowly at Seunghu — stubborn as a child, pulling out every kind of stubbornness there was — then stopped short. His mouth, his lips, his throat all hurt; laughing was out of the question. Seunghu, gazing at his large pupils and clean-cut eyes now laid bare without his glasses, grabbed the arm of Eunseo — who was about to head into the lab — and dragged him outside.
“Let’s go get your glasses fixed. There’s an eyeglass shop in the student center, right?”
“Ah, I…”
“I’ll pay for them.”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll go during lunch later.”
Only after nodding repeatedly to Seunghu, who earnestly impressed upon him that he really must go get new glasses later, could Eunseo finally enter the lab. He already felt worn out.
A while later, Seunghu left in high spirits, saying he was off to call attendance and sit in on the meeting. In the stillness, Eunseo slipped his mask down slightly. It had been stifling, hard to breathe. He let out a sigh, then quietly picked up his phone and opened Han Jaeheon’s chat window — the one he’d been pointedly ignoring. Twenty unread messages filled the screen in an instant.
“TA”
“What are you up to?”
“In the lab?”
“Gonna buy a salmon sandwich on my way over”
I can’t read any more of this. Eunseo rubbed the middle of his chest and slumped over the desk. Han Jaeheon was the one who’d shut down his confession with “I can’t have sex with a dog,” cutting him off so completely he couldn’t get another word in edgewise — so why was he the one feeling guilty? He exhaled deeply, and no sooner had he set the phone down than his phone
It buzzed as if it had been waiting.
“TA, Jin Seunghu came by and took attendance.”
“Is something the matter?”
Eunseo rolled the phone in his still hand, then tapped out a reply — that he was really feeling ill today, so studying that evening would probably be hard — and sent it off to Yeji. And a reply came almost immediately. Apparently Han Jaeheon did absolutely no studying during lecture hours, as expected.
“What’s not feeling well?”
“I think I’ve got indigestion.”
“You got indigestion from chicken? Two pieces?”
Just what exactly had Han Jaeheon seen yesterday, and how much of it? Eunseo stared at the words “two pieces of chicken” for a long time before simply agreeing.
“Yeah, something like that.”
“You didn’t even look like you ate anything.”
While Eunseo was swapping out the sample, the phone kept buzzing nonstop. With practiced fingers
he dealt with them quickly, but by the time he got back, three more messages had already come in.
“Wouldn’t burping make it go away?”
“Want me to burp you?”
“TA?”
The moment he arrived, Eunseo checked his phone and tried to hurriedly reply that there was no need for that — but the door opening behind him was faster. Startled, he dropped the phone. Han Jaeheon, already inside the lab before the bending Eunseo, picked it up first.
“Class time—”
“What’s wrong with your face?”
The scolding he’d been about to give Han Jaeheon for barging in before class was even over got buried under his demanding expression and his “why” question. Eunseo realized he wasn’t even wearing a mask and tried to pull up the one hanging off his chin, but the hand unhooking the mask strap from his ear was faster.
“Ah, that’s—”
Seunghu already knew the situation, so no explanation was needed for him, but Eunseo had no idea what to say to Han Jaeheon. Eunseo bit his already-split lip and only stopped when he saw blood again.
“A robber…”
“…A robber?”
“Yes, I ran into a robber.”
“Your place is only like ten steps from there, TA.”
“…How do you know that?”
With a look that said Why would I not know that?, Han Jaeheon turned Eunseo’s face this way and that. The hand gripping his chin had no strength in it at all, but every touch hurt, and Eunseo frowned without meaning to.
“If it was a robber, they’d have hit you once or twice — this looks like at least five hits.”
“The robber was a bit rough—”
Han Jaeheon pressed his thumb onto Eunseo’s split lip, cutting off the rest of the sentence. His fingertip dug into the torn wound.
“So I’m just supposed to believe it was a robber?”
“…Yes.”
Han Jaeheon narrowed his brow as if thoroughly displeased, then slowly let go of Eunseo’s chin. The moment his hand fell away, Eunseo put his mask back on and cautiously studied Han Jaeheon’s expression. He didn’t look in a good mood at all.
“Did you go to the hospital?”
“For something like this, the hospital…”
“You’d get at least four weeks of treatment out of this.”
“It’ll be fine if I just put some ointment on it.”
He soothed Han Jaeheon with the habitual “it’s fine.” He looked a little rattled — at himself for getting angry, and at the person that anger came from. He was someone Eunseo had never once thought of as young, but he looked just the tiniest bit young then, and before Eunseo knew it he’d raised his hand and set it on top of Han Jaeheon’s head.
He’d expected to be rejected, but Han Jaeheon let Eunseo do whatever he wanted. Eunseo gently stroked his hair, barely even touching it.
Eunseo had no experience whatsoever stroking someone else’s hair. The black hair, tinged with brown, was fine and incredibly soft — it felt like petting a big dog. He could see why Seunghu liked having his head petted so much.
“…Ah, sorry.”
Eunseo, who had been curiously fondling it away, pulled his hand back in surprise at the realization that he’d touched someone without permission.
“It’s fine.”
“……..”
“You can keep touching.”
Han Jaeheon is really trying to kill me. Eunseo thought that, looking at the crown of Han Jaeheon’s head as he bent his waist, inviting more touching. Han Jaeheon was definitely trying to kill him with cardiac arrest.
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