Eat-and-Run
"Som-i?"
He'd stood there like an idiot, scanning the room, but there was no trace of her anywhere. Only the dress she'd slipped out of spun lazily in the washing machine.
He threw on his clothes and bolted outside, but she'd somehow vanished at impossible speed for someone with such small legs — not even her shadow remained.
Ha. She ran.
Hwi-young ran a hand over the back of his neck, hollowed out by the absurdity of it.
...It felt exactly like this.
sprawled across the bed in his childhood home, turning that day over and over in his mind, Hwi-young exhaled slowly and kneaded the dull ache throbbing at the base of his skull.
It had been over a month now, but whenever that day surfaced, it was always the same. The back of his head would go numb as if he'd taken a blow, the nape of his neck would stiffen, and some nameless heat would surge up his throat.
The woman who said she liked him and then ran. No — to be precise, the woman who drew a hard line at *liked, past tense*, scrambled his brains, and disappeared without so much as a glance back.
A crooked laugh escaped him. Thinking of how pathetic he'd been in the days that followed still made him want to groan.
He'd pulled every string he could to get Kwak Som-i's number and spent whole days clinging to a phone that never rang. Restless, he'd even wandered the female dormitory like a loiterer, but of course he never caught so much as a glimpse of her.
You said you liked me. No — you said you *used to*. So what, then? You're over me already?
Every thought under the sun gnawed at his mind. Thanks to that, his mood for the entire break had been an absolute wreck.
Did I just get eat-and-run?
He asked himself a hundred times, and no answer ever came. What remained was a mysteriously bruised pride, a sour discomfort he couldn't explain, and an unpleasant emptiness, as if something had been scooped out of his chest.
Girls like that had always swarmed around Hwi-young. Girls dazzled by his glossy exterior, scrambling to claim the seat beside him. The tedious, endless little entanglements of girls who didn't care whether he had a girlfriend and just wanted a taste of some casual flirtation.
He'd assumed, of course, that Som-i was different. No — she *had* to be different.
So in the end, you were just like them. Was I nothing to you but a toy for one night? And I let my mind slip like that, not even knowing.
Ha. You really know how to make a fool of a person.
He felt infinitely small. A cold wind blew through his chest.
For the rest of the break, Hwi-young tried to scrub the unpleasantness from his head. He strained to sweep away every lingering image of Kwak Som-i that wormed its way in at the slightest opening, but it was no use. The mouth that rattled off words in a quick, murmuring little stream and the soft, fluffy brown hair would pop up without warning the moment he let his guard down, tormenting him.
When the semester began and he spotted her crossing campus in the distance, checking over her shoulder as she went, he could only laugh at himself. Fine. You're clearly determined to pretend this never happened and bury it — what more am I supposed to do?
Anger simmered in his gut, but he played along anyway, acting as if nothing were wrong. He'd keep his distance just as she wanted — out of nothing but a twisted, childish spite.
And then. And then you—
I'm pregnant.
You're carrying my child.
Haha... I genuinely can't even be angry.
Where was all that discretion when you were confusing the hell out of me? You slipped away so smoothly, only to show up the second classes started, calm as anything, announcing you were pregnant with my baby. A sane man would have thought, *I'm screwed.* Instead, his mind had just gone blindingly white. It should have driven him out of his mind — and yet, absurdly, the corner of his mouth had twitched.
...You really can't bring yourself to pretend nothing happened anymore, can you.
As soon as the thought formed, a helpless laugh spilled out.
The voices of his parents, which had been ringing so noisily in his head just moments ago, had long since faded into the distance.
Only one thing remained.
I want to have the baby.
Kwak Som-i's eyes, trembling so hard she looked ready to cry at any moment, yet refusing to yield an inch. Pale and fragile-looking, but stubborn in a way that defied reason — the kind of eyes that kept tearing through him, turning everything inside him over.
Hwi-young rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand.
She really is incomparable when it comes to driving a man insane.
"Achoo!"
Recoiling from her own sneeze, Som-i shuddered as she cut across campus. Ugh, this nose. Something carried on the breeze had been tickling her nostrils all day long. If it was already this bad before the season change had properly begun, what on earth was she going to do when it hit in earnest? As a rhinitis sufferer, her worries were anything but small.
Still, the campus on the threshold of autumn was brimming with life. Sunlight that had shed summer's humidity and grown that much clearer, a breeze that stirred just enough, and the crowds thrumming with the first-week-of-semester energy.
Her steps would start to bounce without her noticing, and then — *ah, right* — she'd correct her posture.
Can't startle the baby.
Som-i rested one hand lightly on her belly and gave it a gentle pat, then walked more carefully than before.
Bzzt, bzzt—
The phone in her pocket buzzed. Feeling the relentless vibration pulsing at one- and two-second intervals, Som-i smiled faintly. She didn't need to look to know it was the Scene Stealers group chat.
It had started as a humble little club built on the grand ambition of becoming actors who stole every scene they were in, but in reality, a good eighty percent of their conversations were homework swaps, griping about professors, and "Kwon Hwi-young Observation Reports." It had gotten so bad that they'd exchange self-mocking jokes — *Scene Stealers, my foot; we only got the name because we're good at stealing bar snacks at parties.*
A summons to hurry over to the cafe near the Practical Training Building. Smiling, Som-i quickened her pace.
Bzzt—
Then another buzz came through, and she lifted the phone in her hand.
What?!
The moment she read the message, Som-i whipped around, picked up speed in the opposite direction like she was fleeing the scene of a crime, and frantically fired off a reply to the group chat.
A barrage of question marks came pouring back.
Yes, and that's exactly why I can't go!
Ever since Kwon Hwi-young had asked her for three days, Som-i had been doing her best to live as close to her ordinary routine as possible. Attending lectures, giggling with her classmates, perpetually glued to a tissue because of her rhinitis — the same mundane everyday life as always.
But it was easier said than done. When she'd first learned she was pregnant, the reins had been entirely in her hands. Whether to keep the baby or not. The hours of agonizing alone had been painful, but at least the decision was hers and hers alone. Yet the moment she'd laid it all bare to Kwon Hwi-young, the ball had sailed completely into his court.
All she could do now was wait. What he would say, how he would define the child in her womb. The fact that every single decision rested on his lips made Som-i feel like she was suffocating.
No matter how hard she tried to think positively, the conclusion was always a dead end. Would Kwon Hwi-young really allow his child to be born into the world? She'd wrung her brain dry all night, and the answer came back the same, over and over.
No.
To the flawless, glittering future stretching out ahead of Kwon Hwi-young, she and the baby would be nothing but an ugly little snag jutting out of nowhere.
The whole thing had gone wrong from the very start.
She had loved Kwon Hwi-young for years, but at some point, the ache of it had grown larger than the flutter. What began as a light, fan-crush sort of affection — the kind where simply watching from afar made you happy, where just hearing his name brightened your day for no reason — was a simple emotion at first.
But when does a heart ever stop there?
The wants crept in little by little. If only our eyes would meet one more time. If only he'd remember my name. If only he'd smile at me just a little more specially than he smiled at everyone else. Those trivial wishes piled and piled until, before she knew it, the feeling had grown into something she could no longer carry.
That was what unrequited love always was. You beat your own drum, threw your own one-person party, convinced you were happy — and then one day, your situation snaps into brutal focus, and you find yourself face-down in the mud. Som-i's crush had been no different.
Hwi-young had a girlfriend, and even if he hadn't, she knew perfectly well there was no crack anywhere for her to squeeze into. So she'd made up her mind: enough of this love that was eating her alive.
That was why she'd chosen the confession. Just say it and be done — blurt it all out, *I used to like you, but it's over now.* She'd planned to confirm-kill it once and for all, to rip the sprout called Kwon Hwi-young out of her heart root and branch so it could never grow again.
It truly was only that. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that confession would stir up a storm like this between them.
The sensations of that night were still vivid. The acrid sting of alcohol that flickered between their lips each time they touched, his face flushed redder than usual, the loose, unfocused look in his eyes. Anyone could see he was drunk.
And even so, Som-i hadn't pushed him away. Like a fool, she'd been swept along, and by the time she came to her senses, it was already far too late. In that moment, the disgust she felt toward herself had been unbearable.
And what if a sobered-up Kwon Hwi-young had awkwardly called it "a mistake"?
So she'd run. While he was in the bathroom, she'd gathered her clothes and scrambled out in a panicked rush. If she vanished first, at least it would hurt less. At the very least, she didn't want to be the one left behind.
And who could have guessed that running away that day would come back to her as this — a baby.