HMN C5

Chapter 5

 

He ruminated. “Pair up front-to-back. Good chance to make new friends. Go on and introduce yourselves.”

For someone suggesting friendship, his face was downright stony, and the feeling of doom was left to the students. Group work already cropped up often enough in the major, bringing cycles of cutting ties, pain, and schisms; and now even a gen-ed wanted teams. Wouldn’t it be better to just volunteer as a whole class and be done with it?

“Exchange numbers and student IDs, then email them here.”

Contrary to that airy instruction, paper rustled and everyone busied themselves peering around. Daeyoung silently turned and fixed his eyes on the guy in the seat ahead. The human screen who’d been so useful for sneaking phone time pushed up thick horn-rims and puckered his lips, displeased with something about the situation. He muttered, barely audibly:

“What the f—. Not a girl….”

Blink. Blink.

Blindsided by abuse, Daeyoung went blank. The voice was tiny, but the meaning was crystal clear. He swallowed the sigh swelling in his chest. With an attitude like that, the project was doomed. In a way, it was lucky he, not some woman, had gotten paired with the guy. Time to throw himself on the grenade. He was about to greet him when—

“Excuse me.”

The man in front of the big guy grabbed him by the sleeve. Likely a phys ed major—his varsity jacket blared Department of Physical Education across the back—and his hair was shaved so close the scalp showed, making him look far more intimidating than the bulky one.

“You’re paired with me.”

“Ah….”

At that, the big guy shrank and nodded, speechless. He must have turned around to dodge the tough-looking guy, then complained when even his fallback wasn’t a girl. Wow. A genuine stroke of luck.

Daeyoung glanced back; no one sat behind him. Somehow he had ended up the odd man out.

“Anyone still without a partner?”

At the TA’s question, glasses flashing silver, Daeyoung slowly raised his hand. Attention was uncomfortable in every way, but there was no helping it.

“Name?”

“…Ahn Daeyoung.”

A ripple of low commotion passed through the room. The sidelong glances were familiar. He knew why. The name. There was no other reason for people to look his way. At first listen it was ordinary, but tilt it and it turned ridiculous. Ahn Daeyong, Ahn Daeyeo, Ahn Daehyo—his childhood had been pelted with pun after pun, and he could guess the rest easily.

Abruptly, a hand shot up from the far side of the lecture hall. This time eyes swung that way.

“Oh, there’s another. You can pair with Daeyoung.”

Again the same murmuring. What was this. The person sat far away on the diagonal; he couldn’t see the face. Then the guy turned his head toward Daeyoung, and their eyes met.

“Ah, f—.”

This time, the sigh came from Daeyoung.

Striking features. The reaction in the room was clearly for that face, not for a name as easy to mock as his. Handsome. Even crammed into a single-seat desk far too small for him, his long legs couldn’t find room; the height was obvious without measuring. The hair looked unstyled yet refined, thanks to those features, sharp enough to drop like cut glass.

Under clean, bold brows, the eye sockets sat deep; the bridge of his nose stood from the brow ridge like a ridge line, sharp enough to make one idly wonder if a clothespin could catch that frown line. Below, a straight, closed mouth curled at one corner.

That was why Daeyoung’s face contorted.

The famed prince of the business department—and the first nemesis of his not-long life.

Nemesis: a relationship of harbored grievance and mutual loathing. Perhaps not a perfect match to the dictionary definition, but at least on his side, the grudge was real. Freshly twenty, dumped right after entering university, snot bubbling as he begged over the phone—the guy who’d caught him like that, and the very one his first love had liked.

He’d hoped it would end as a one-off coincidence. Regrettably, it was the beginning of a long bad thread.

Before enlistment, a photo of him, nose sniffling as he got his hair buzzed at the salon off campus, spread among classmates. The main subject in the shop window was that man; the sniveling boy rubbing his nose on his sleeve behind the glass—red-eyed and pathetic—was Daeyoung. Someone had uploaded the shot to gush about the “best-looking guy on campus these days,” and there he was, bawling in the background; naturally, he became the real spectacle. With enlistment only days away, he could run until it faded, but even then his unread messages ballooned.

There was more. One sweltering summer day, he smeared ice cream on his pants and tried to wipe it off, only to be mistaken for a pervert; the guy was right there. Another time, a student from a neighboring school, thinking Daeyoung had stolen his girlfriend, grabbed him by the hair in the street; that guy saw that too. Once, he’d sat peaceably on a bench; the guy laughed, and Daeyoung thought he must be the sort who sneers at strangers—until he realized the pen in his own mouth had leaked, staining his lips blue.

An infuriating bastard without cause. That guy was present at every last one of his darkest, most mortifying moments. If they had merely brushed past each other in the same places, it would have been simple embarrassment and nothing more; the problem was his attitude.

“You little punk! What are you doing, kid?!”

He’d been there when a drunk uncle grabbed Daeyoung by the collar, accusing him of doing something obscene on the street—never mind that he’d only tossed the ice cream wrapper and turned back, unaware of the drip down his pants—and their eyes had even met twice, but the guy said nothing. Even when Daeyoung called to him in a panic to be a witness.

“You know that’s ice cream!”

“Didn’t see. Are you sure you weren’t jerking off?”

But Daeyoung knew he’d seen. As the guy turned away, feigning ignorance, one corner of his mouth crooked up.

No embellishment: he had been there at every shameful instant. There was a time when even the slightest misstep made Daeyoung scan the area to see if that bastard was around. A leave for military service, not seeing the face, had brought him peace. He had nearly forgotten the man’s existence—and then, astonishingly, on returning to school, they reunited in the same class.

Now, the man stared forward, face utterly unruffled, while Daeyoung’s gaze, sharpened to a triangle, bored into the back of that flawless head.

Should he change his timetable? Better to suffer a first-period on another day than to become acquainted with this unlucky prick….

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“So many different ways to make a spectacle.”

A sudden prickle of memory throbbed in his palm under the bandage.

“Gasp.”

He sucked in a breath without meaning to, and a few students nearby glanced over. He hunched, cupped his hand over his mouth.

Gooseflesh rippled. A memory slunk back: a few days ago, drinking, then collapsing in an alley. Yes—he’d seen a black cat, lunged with chicken breast in hand, then fallen. And the one who witnessed that debacle was this man.

Who else would it be.

His luck was abysmal. He didn’t expect the guy to relish watching someone else’s screwups, but in basic human terms, that attitude—before a person sprawled on the pavement, bleeding—was too damned cruel.

Wait. Was he the one who filmed and uploaded the video?

Daeyoung’s face knotted. Where had he been standing then? Did the angle match? The details wouldn’t surface, but combing the blur of memory, he was certain: no one else had been in that alley.

Of course, why would he? What would he gain from posting Daeyoung’s photo? Nothing. There was no evidence. Only suspicion, pure and simple.

Heat shimmered. Shame and anger, purposeless and burning, drifted through the wide lecture hall. So much so that he barely heard a word of the TA’s explanation before the short class was nearly over.

“Haah.”

There was little time left for hand-wringing. If pairs were a must, then if he planned to drop the class, he had to say so fast. And yet he didn’t want his neat timetable wrecked by that bastard. What to do. What to do.

Despite the churn inside, he packed his bag as slowly as possible. If the guy didn’t speak to him and simply left the room, that would be a kind of avoidance. He could buy time until the add/drop period, and with the man out of sight, stay rational….

Slide.

Contrary to his wish, a vast shadow fell across the edge of his desk. Instinct said who it was. The creeping stares. The oncoming distaste. The entrance of the haughty prince.