Should We Get Married?

Hwi-young ducked his head without warning, bringing his eyes level with Som-i's.

"Ah, sorry. I was so thirsty, this was the only thing I saw."

"……."

"And here I thought it was just beer — turns out it was somaek. Wow, that ratio was insane."

He was smiling, but there was an edge to it somewhere. The atmosphere was nothing like the Kwon Hwi-young she knew, and all Som-i could manage was a dry swallow.

"You have the prop room key, don't you, Som-i?"

"Th-the key?"

Caught off guard by the out-of-nowhere question, Som-i couldn't answer right away, her eyes darting. The prop room key? She'd never even laid eyes on such a thing.

"The directing team can't get the door open right now. They're waiting out in the hallway."

He scooped up her backpack, crumpled carelessly in the corner of a chair, and tilted his head toward the door.

"What are you doing, Som. Let's go."

Som-i, still frozen half-risen from her seat, scrambled to follow him. The moment they pushed open the door to the pub, a murmur rose up behind them, but the two of walked out pretending not to hear a word of it.

The second the door closed, Hwi-young spun around to face her. His gaze dropped straight to her wrist. Where Park Gye-beom had grabbed her, red fingermarks were already blooming across the skin. Without a word, Hwi-young stared at those red marks. His look was so relentless, so strange, that Som-i instinctively shielded her wrist with her other hand.

"……Ha."

Wiping his face down once, twice, as if doing a dry wash, Hwi-young finally spoke.

"Can we talk?"

Then he started walking ahead without waiting for an answer. Som-i stared blankly at his broad back for a moment before hurrying after him. This was the Kwon Hwi-young who would normally have waited patiently for her reply. Something about him seemed unusually sharp-edged tonight, and it left her feeling strangely anxious.

What could he want to talk about? Had that moment really come at last? Did she need to brace herself?

After walking in silence for a long while, the two of them stopped behind the women's dormitory, at a bench where foot traffic was scarce.

The night air seemed a touch cooler than usual, and it tickled the tip of her nose. Her rhinitis was apparently warming up its engines. When Som-i sniffled and hunched her shoulders, Hwi-young asked,

"Cold?"

"No, I'm fine."

But her answer went unheeded — Hwi-young shrugged off the shirt he'd been wearing draped over his shoulders and laid it across hers, then casually tucked the fabric closed all the way down to the hem. Along with an unfamiliar warmth, a faint scent brushed past the tip of her nose.

What kind of man smells this good on top of everything else….

Her heart went haywire at his rippling fragrance. To hide her flushing face, Som-i ducked her head deep and let her eyes wander elsewhere.

As it happened, a thickly overgrown thicket was blocking just enough of the streetlight. Thanks to that, she was spared from any onlookers, but being alone with Kwon Hwi-young in a place like this was still awkward enough to feel unreal.

"Why didn't you answer your phone?"

"My phone?"

Som-i's eyes wavered wildly.

That call earlier, from the unknown number? She hurriedly fished her phone out of her pocket.

"That call just now — was that you, sunbae? This number?"

She held the screen up toward Hwi-young, the unsaved number glowing on it. He glanced over the display and nodded.

"Yeah. It's Ji-na's number, but I was the one calling."

Ji-na? Oh — Ham Ji-na, his classmate.

At those words, her shoulders deflated for some reason she couldn't name. The glamorous constellation of connections that always orbited Kwon Hwi-young, and the women at its center. That obvious fact scored fresh claw-marks across a corner of her chest.

"And that wasn't the only time. I kept trying. From my number."

"…Sorry? I didn't get any calls."

When Som-i blinked her round, wide eyes, Hwi-young, who had been watching her quietly, let out a hollow laugh. One eyebrow crooked at an angle, his face wore an expression impossible to read.

"You really don't answer your phone, do you. You could give a person anemia."

Unable to make head or tail of it, Som-i scrolled through her call history again and again. The only missed call was the single unknown number from moments ago. As she tilted her head, her finger drifted absently toward the spam-blocked list.

Among numbers that anyone could see were surveys and ads, the same single number kept appearing, over and over.

And there were a lot of them. How many times had he called? Even a rough glance turned up well over twenty.

He tried this hard?

Som-i was staring at the screen with a slightly dazed face when Hwi-young's head suddenly loomed into view between her and the phone. His eyes narrowed as he looked down at the display.

"…You blocked me?"

"No! That is, I didn't do it on purpose—"

"So you blocked me. Me."

His voice was somewhere a million miles away.

Hwi-young stared at the phone screen with a blank look, as if he simply couldn't believe it. Then again, he'd probably never once in his life been rejected or blocked by anyone.

"Ah… so that's why you weren't picking up. And here I was, not knowing a thing…."

Hwi-young slumped back against the bench and let out a defeated laugh.

But Som-i was just as flabbergasted. Why on earth was Kwon Hwi-young's number buried at the bottom of her spam folder? She couldn't figure it out at all.

Hwi-young raked a hand through the hair at the back of his head and bowed it low.

"I called dozens of times, Som. I was worried you were avoiding me, so I even borrowed Ji-na's phone. And the whole time, my number was sitting in the trash, lumped in with loan offers."

"No, it wasn't me — it must have been the automatic filtering—"

"So it was automatic. I was being filtered out automatically."

He murmured it vacantly. The moment that handsome face turned as pitiful as a dog caught in the rain, cold sweat broke out all over Som-i. Where on earth was this bizarre guilt coming from, the kind that made her feel she ought to drop to her knees right that second?

"I'll unblock it right now."

Som-i's fingers moved in a flurry. Hwi-young, still sprawled across the bench, added in a voice drained of all soul,

"Don't bother. I'm already wounded."

After lying there for a while, he pushed his hair back roughly and spoke.

"I looked for you all day. Waited outside your lecture hall, poked my head into the practice rooms, and when that wasn't enough, I even went by the dorm."

Som-i felt as if she'd been struck across the head. Kwon Hwi-young — lurking around the women's dormitory, borrowing other people's phones, wandering in search of her.

"Why were you looking for me? It's only been two days."

Som-i's voice trembled faintly as she asked. Hwi-young, who had been gazing at some distant point, turned his head to look at her. Unreadable eyes trailed slowly over her face.

"Yeah, that's true. But with things like this, the sooner you sort them out, the better."

Sort them out. At that bland word, something in Som-i's chest clenched tight.

Sort out? Surely he didn't mean dragging her off somewhere right now and… operating.

Dread surged up out of nowhere. A wild, terrifying image clawed through her mind — a car parked near the dormitory wall, engine running, waiting. The grip she had on the edge of the bench went white-knuckle tight.

Chewing on her lip, Som-i finally couldn't bear the pressure and the words came pouring out.

"I'm not getting surgery!"

"…What?"

"I can take responsibility for this on my own. So even if you say scary things about sorting things out or whatever, my mind won't change!"

In an instant, tears welled up in Som-i's eyes.

"Who said anything about surgery?"

"…I'm sorry, what?"

"When did I ever say that, Som?"

The momentum with which Som-i had been about to burst into tears drained away. She blinked, dashing the tears loose.

"Then why did you…."

Hwi-young let out a sigh and leaned back against the bench.

"Honestly, I don't even know if I'm thinking straight right now."

After a brief pause, he turned his head toward her. Those eyes, always so leisurely, were wavering precariously tonight.

"But with you out of reach like this, every kind of thought crossed my mind. I kept thinking — what if I've dragged my feet too long and lost my chance at this."

…Lost it? Som-i tilted her head, her face a giant question mark. Instead of answering the confusion written across her face, Hwi-young rubbed the end of his chin thoughtfully.

"So I made up my mind."

Holding her breath, Som-i stared fixedly at his lips, haloed in the yellow glow of the streetlight. She resolved, and resolved again, that no matter what came out of his mouth, she would not waver, crushing their clasped hands in her own.