The Kindness He Gives to Everyone

Som-i bit down hard on her lip.

Regret came flooding in now. Maybe she shouldn't have said anything. She was going to have the baby and raise it alone anyway — did she really have to tell him? Her head spun with thoughts chasing their own tails, one after another.

And so, for the entire day, Som-i threw every ounce of her energy into dodging Kwon Hwi-young. Probably because she didn't want to find out — didn't want to hear the reasonable, cruel words of rejection he'd deliver with that handsome brow furrowed.

I'm sorry, Som. But the more I think about it, this just isn't right.

In her imagination, Hwi-young had already pushed Som-i and the baby in her belly away more times than she could count.

Scenes of him holding out an envelope and saying, Here's money for the procedure. I'm sorry. Or turning his back coldly with, I never asked for some illegitimate child. So get rid of it. Now.

Som-i wounded herself in advance, scripting the worst-case scenarios all on her own. It was the only way she could imagine it hurting a little less when the real words finally came.

Besides, Hwi-young had asked for three days. She wanted to spend that time at least banishing all thought of him and living in peaceful, ordinary routine. Rather than pacing and trembling with anxiety, she just wanted to put one step of distance between herself and Kwon Hwi-young and hide inside the rhythm of a normal day.

But her fellow Scene Stealers, who knew all too well her track record of materializing wherever Hwi-young happened to be, couldn't help finding her current behavior baffling.

Only after she'd laid out one bedraggled excuse after another did the group chat's suspicions finally subside.

And yet, it was all so strange. Here was a man who'd suddenly shoved his face into a lowerclassman's required course, claiming he needed the credits, and who had materialized in the campus cafeteria despite never eating there in his life.

Hah….

Why was it that whenever she wanted to run into him, he was nowhere to be seen — but now, of all times, he kept cropping up right in front of her without a shred of hesitation? It was almost spiteful.

On the Practical Training Building stairs, in the cluttered hallway outside the Prop Production Room. Their paths overlapped so often it felt deliberate.

Each time, Som-i's heart plummeted. What if he grabbed her and said, Let's talk for a second? What if the words she'd been so desperately trying not to hear finally spilled out?

After a full day of playing tag with him, she was utterly drained.

A soft, soapy scent lingered at the tip of her nose — that lazy, wistful fragrance that clung to a freshly pressed shirt. Som-i sniffled happily at it and slowly opened her eyes.

Oh….

Kwon Hwi-young filled her blurring field of vision.

This must be a dream. Nothing else could explain Hwi-young being this close. The moment her eyes met his, gazing down at her, her mouth fell helplessly open. Som-i, delighted by the dream-version of him, found herself smiling an unknowing, bashful smile.

In that instant, Hwi-young's eyes flickered violently.

Hm?

Perhaps it was because the ripple of emotion in those eyes felt so vivid.

"…!"

Suddenly, reality crashed over her. It took several dazed blinks before Som-i snapped wide awake. As she hastily pushed herself upright from where she'd been slumped on the sofa, Hwi-young, who had been bending over toward her legs, drew back slightly.

"Did I wake you? Sorry."

What — it wasn't a dream? And I just grinned the second I saw his face? Kwak Som-i, get a grip.

Too flustered to know what to do with herself, Som-i looked down at her own feet. In Hwi-young's hand, the undone laces of her sneaker were held in two neat strands. Beside it, a lone pen lay on the floor.

"I was picking up a ballpoint pen and noticed your laces had come undone."

Embarrassed, Som-i tried to slide her foot back, but Hwi-young already had the laces firmly in his grasp.

"Don't move. Almost done."

He smiled, unbothered, and began tightening the laces again. Som-i held her breath, watching those long, pale fingers work at her shoelaces.

"You'd trip if you stepped on them while walking."

Whatever turmoil was churning inside her, he finished off a tidy ribbon bow before letting go. Kwon Hwi-young flashed an easy grin, straightened his bent knee, and rose. As Som-i stared blankly up at that long silhouette climbing upward and upward, it dawned on her that the room had grown suspiciously quiet.

She sneakily rolled her eyes — and found every gaze in the department lounge pinned on the two of them.

Ye-ji, seated right beside her, was especially busy waggling her eyebrows in a lewd, insinuating signal. At that look, Som-i's mind snapped fully alert.

"Th-thank you."

Quickly, she tucked the foot he'd just tied behind its other heel, hiding it away. Then she hurriedly swept her fingers across the bangs that had gotten mussed in her sleep.

"Som-i must have been exhausted. We came in making all that noise and she didn't stir at all?"

At Jina's remark — one of Hwi-young's classmates — Som-i lifted her head, only to meet Kwon Hwi-young's eyes dead-on. Her gaze wobbled as she let out an awkward laugh.

"I had trouble sleeping last night."

All she'd done was chatter with the girls and let her eyelids drop for the briefest moment. To think she'd actually fallen asleep in that sliver of time.

Fortunately, no one in the lounge seemed to care much. It wasn't as if she were the only one — Kwon Hwi-young was, by nature, the sort of man who, upon spotting anyone with undone shoelaces, would chase them down and tie them, no matter what.

I know. I know this kindness isn't special.

At one end of the long table cutting through the center of the lounge, the seniors had their heads bent over a single laptop, trading opinions as they reviewed an edited video assignment. Hwi-young was mixed in among them, frowning seriously down at the screen.

He stood with one hand braced on the table, leaning against it at a slight angle. Each time he swept back the hair falling into his eyes — apparently finding it a nuisance — his straight, cleanly cut features flashed into sharp relief.

Som-i scrolled idly through her phone, sneaking sidelong glances at him. Her eyes were fixed on the screen, but every nerve in her body was, naturally, trained on Kwon Hwi-young.

He'd thrown her a three-day grace period, and while she was burning up inside with a thousand tangled thoughts, he looked utterly serene. Watching him, a strange bitterness and unease welled up in her.

Just then, a senior sitting across from Hwi-young let out a jaw-cracking yawn.

"Haahm — god, I'm dying. Couldn't sleep a wink all night thanks to that bastard Choi Jun-young snoring."

"Wait, why were you sleeping next to Jun-young?"

At Jina's question, he answered with a scowl of disgust.

"He adopted a puppy last month, remember?"

"Oh, the one he got from that rescue group?"

"Yeah. He swore he'd take good care of it, then came whining that it whimpered the second he got home and stank the place up, asking me to put him up for just one night."

Clicking tongues erupted from every corner of the lounge.

"Why adopt it if he can't handle it? Who even keeps a dog in a one-room rental to begin with?"

The senior who'd started it all yawned hugely and added,

"So I told him to just send it back to the shelter, and then that's not allowed either — total meltdown."

"It's already adopted. It's not like that's easy to undo."

At that point, Kwon Hwi-young — his gaze still locked on the laptop screen — tossed out flatly,

"If you can't handle it, better to wrap it up fast."

At that one offhand remark, Som-i's body turned to stone. The fingers wandering aimlessly across her phone screen began to tremble. In the darkened glass, her own face reflected back at her, drained ghost-white.

Wrap it up. It felt as though the baby in her own belly might be included in the range of things he meant to wrap up — and the world tilted under her.

Just then, the lounge door burst open.

"Whoa, what's going on — why's the lounge so crowded today?"

The kids who came through the door grinned and plunked the black plastic bags they were carrying onto the table.

"Sounds like everyone's owed a treat. We brought sundae and tteokbokki. Dig in before it gets cold!"

At that call, the students scattered around the lounge drifted toward the table as if pulled by a magnet. Som-i too, hauled along by Ye-ji, shuffled halfway out of her seat.

She watched Hwi-young take a seat across from her. And into the spot beside him, Jina settled herself with practiced ease.

The crowd swarmed the bags like hornets, tearing them open.

While giving adequate replies to Jina, who chattered away at his side without pause, Hwi-young snapped a single pair of wooden chopsticks apart with his hand. Then, with perfect nonchalance, he set the chopsticks down in front of Som-i.

Thud — her heart dropped helplessly to the floor yet again. Wrestling down a mind in wild tumult, Som-i quietly picked up the chopsticks he'd laid down for her.

She was fiddling with them for no real reason when another crisp snap sounded in front of her. Having separated another pair, Hwi-young set them just as naturally in front of Jina this time.

Watching this, Som-i pressed down hard on the soft flesh inside her cheek. It was nothing more than a habitual courtesy he extended to everyone, meaningless in the end. And yet her heart had stirred over it. Again.

…Pathetic, really.