Jungwon’s POV
The freshman welcome party for the first semester of our third year was on the second floor of the pub across from campus.
I sat in the seat I always sat in.
The corner by the window, half hidden by a pillar.
I never skipped department events, but I’d never sat in the middle before.
It wasn’t that I hated noise. I just never knew what to say.
"Yang Jungwon, you’re there again."
Seunghun shouted from the table across from me.
I just lifted my beer glass at him.
The freshmen started coming in one by one.
The department rep called out their names, applause broke out, and they introduced themselves one after another.
I drank my beer while looking out the window. It was the same scene every year.
Someone came running up the stairs, gasping for breath.
"Sorry! I took the wrong way……"
I turned my head purely because of the voice.
But after that, I couldn’t look away.
It was a girl with flushed cheeks.
She kept pressing down her wind-tossed bangs with her hand, smiling even while out of breath.
She looked less like someone sorry for being late and more like someone thrilled to be here.
She smiled and bowed her head.
Once at each table.
The pub was noisy.
But strangely, for that moment, I couldn’t hear a thing.
"Any seats left? Ah, there’s an open spot in the corner."
The department rep pointed to the seat next to me.
She squeezed between the tables and walked over.
The closer she got, the less I knew where to look, so in the end I just stared at my beer glass.
"Can I sit here?"
"……Yes."
She sat down beside me.
It was a seat so close our shoulders could touch.
"I’m Kim Yeoju, class of ’23!"
"……Ah, I’m Yang Jungwon, class of ’20."
I was about to say nice to meet you too, but she bowed first.
"Nice to meet you, senior!" I missed my chance and just bowed back.
There was a plate of fries on the table.
I felt like I should say something, so I nudged the plate a little toward her.
"Oh, thank you!"
She picked one up and ate it.
I pushed the plate a little farther.
She ate another one.
I pushed it again.
By the time I came to my senses, the whole plate of fries was in front of her.
She looked back and forth between the plate and me, then gave a face like she was trying not to laugh.
"You should eat too, senior. I’m going to end up taking all of these."
"……Ah, sorry."
I picked up a fry.
She looked out the window, then looked back at me.
"But why are you sitting in the corner, senior?"
"……It’s comfortable."
"Ah, that’s why."
She leaned toward the window.
Outside, the lit-up front gate and the hill road to campus were all visible at a glance.
"Wow, this is a prime spot. You can see the whole school!"
And she laughed.
A smile that bent her eyes into half-moons.
For two years, I’d sat in that spot without ever really looking out the window.
That day was no different.
Instead of the window, I only looked at that smile.
That day, I couldn’t even finish half a bottle of beer.
*
After that, Kim Yeoju kept catching my eye.
I wasn’t trying to look for her.
But whenever I opened the department office door, she was there.
At the library reading room window seat, too, and at the very end of the line in the student cafeteria. She always had a coffee cup in her hand.
Inside the cup, caramel sauce was drizzled in a lattice pattern.
During exam period, and even when it wasn’t.
Caramel macchiato.
When we ran into each other, I always greeted her first.
"Hello."
"Ah, senior! Hello."
She always responded warmly.
And that was the end of it.
While I was looking for something else to say, she was already being called away by her friends.
Usually Park Jongseong was beside her.
Same class year. The two of them had stuck together since they entered school.
They ate together, took classes together, and whenever Jongseong messed up her hair, she hit his arm.
I watched that from far away.
And I tried not to think about why I was watching it.
"You’ve been weird lately."
One day Seunghun said that as he set down his cafeteria tray.
"How so."
"Why do you keep coming to the department office? You usually go straight home after class."
"……It’s exam period."
Instead of answering, Seunghun looked where my gaze ended.
At Kim Yeoju, standing by the window with a cup in her hand and smiling.
"Oh."
Seunghun only said that one syllable and kept eating.
I don’t remember what the cafeteria food tasted like that day.
*
In October, it was Yeoju’s birthday.
I only found out because of the department office blackboard.
Someone had written it in big chalk letters.
Today is Yeoju’s birthday! Department office at 6!
I didn’t go to the department office at six.
Instead, around six ten, I passed by the hallway in front of it.
I really had only meant to pass by.
Song burst out from inside the department office.
Happy Birthday. Through the crack in the door, I could see a cake with candles on it being carried in.
And then the door flew open.
I collided head-on with someone who had rushed out toward the restroom.
Before the light body could bounce away, I instinctively grabbed her shoulder.
It was Kim Yeoju.
Her face was bright red.
"……Sorry!"
"Are you okay?"
"No, I’m not okay."
She covered her face with both hands.
"I really can’t stand stuff like this. Everyone staring and singing…… ugh, seriously."
From inside the department office, I heard, "Yeoju! Where did Kim Yeoju go!"
She used me like a shield and hid behind me.
"Senior, I’m not here."
I burst out laughing.
I tried to hold it in, but I couldn’t.
The birthday girl had run out into the hallway to escape her own birthday cake and was hiding behind the back of a department senior she wasn’t even close with.
I couldn’t stop laughing.
Behind my back, she peered out. Her eyes were round.
"So you can laugh, senior."
"……Huh?"
"You’re always expressionless in the corner. This is the first time I’ve seen it."
She stared at me for a moment, then laughed too. Her eyes bent into half-moons.
It was the same smile I’d seen that March at the pub.
That was when I realized it.
All the times I’d stopped by the department office, all the times my steps slowed whenever I passed the library window seat, all the times I’d forgotten what the cafeteria food tasted like whenever I saw her beside Park Jongseong.
It had all started the moment I saw her running up the stairs that day in March.
"Yeoju! You are in there, aren’t you!"
Her classmates spilled out into the hallway.
She was dragged back in, screaming.
Just before the door closed, she looked back at me and mouthed,
Thank you.
I stood in the hallway for a long time.
*
The following May was the school festival.
Booths lined the sports field.
Seunghun dragged me out, and I was walking through the crowd.
Then I stopped in front of an accessories booth.
Kim Yeoju was there.
Now a second-year, she was crouched in front of the display stand, staring at something for a long time.
It was a cat keychain.
A set of two black cats with their tails curled into circles, attached side by side.
If you put the two together, they formed a heart.
She picked up the set, then put it down.
Picked it up again, saw the price tag, and put it back down.
"Yeoju, hurry up! They said the performance is starting!"
It was Park Jongseong’s voice.
She stood up with a disappointed look and ran off.
I stayed there.
"What are you doing? Let’s go."
"……Go on ahead."
Seunghun gave me a puzzled look and walked off first.
I went up to the booth.
"I’ll take this, please."
Only after buying it did I realize.
I had nothing to give it with.
What was I supposed to say while handing it over.
This looked like what you were looking at earlier? If I could say that, then we would’ve picked it together from the start.
The two cats later went into my desk drawer.
*
July, the day final exams ended.
The sky that had been clear all afternoon turned dark in an instant. As I left the library, a sudden downpour started.
I took an umbrella out of my bag.
A yellow long-handled umbrella. Mom had bought it for me, saying it had to stand out.
Seunghun teased me that it looked like a chick every time he saw it.
I stopped by the humanities building to get the book I’d left in the department office. At the end of the second-floor hallway, someone was standing in front of the department office.
It was Kim Yeoju.
She seemed to be without an umbrella.
She looked out the window, then at her phone, then out the window again.
She tapped the floor with her toes.
Like she was stomping in place.
I stopped at the corner of the hallway.
Should I tell her we could share my umbrella. I’ll take you to the station.
Those words rose all the way to my throat.
But I couldn’t think of what came after that.
What I’d say during the fifteen minutes it would take to get to the station sharing one umbrella.
She walked toward the restroom.
I rummaged through my bag.
There was a small envelope I’d taken out of the drawer months ago and only kept carrying around.
I peeled off one of the cats and attached it to the umbrella strap.
My hand trembled a little.
I clipped the other one onto my keyring.
Then I took a Post-it from the front pocket of my bag and wrote one line.
Take it.
I didn’t write my name.
I hung the yellow umbrella on the department office doorknob and stuck the Post-it to the handle.
As soon as I stepped out of the humanities building entrance, the rain hit my face.
The student union building, where the club room was, was 바로 across the sports field.
If I ran, I’d be there in no time.
So I ran.
Rain poured down behind me.
My shirt quickly stuck to my back.
Still, for some reason, I felt like laughing.
Because I kept thinking of the look on her face when she found the umbrella hanging on the doorknob.
That day, I never once looked back at the window at the end of the second-floor hallway.
*
Three days later, a post went up on Everytime.
Yellow umbrellaLooking for the owner
To whoever left a yellow long-handled umbrella on the doorknob of the department office on the second floor of the humanities building last Friday…… Thanks to you, I got home without getting rained on at all. It’s the one with the cat keychain attached!
I really want to return it! I’ll buy you coffee too. Please leave a note for the ownerㅠㅠ
I opened that post over and over. During class, before bed.
I clicked send a note. The cursor blinked.
It’s mine.
Once I wrote that, what was I supposed to say next.
What would I talk about while getting treated to coffee.
If she asked why I’d just left the umbrella there, what would I answer.
I erased the words one by one.
It rained the next week.
Through the classroom window, I saw a yellow umbrella crossing the sports field.
The small black dot hanging from its strap swayed.
I ran a finger over the black cat in my keyring once. 」「That was enough, I thought then.
