Please, Eat Me Just Once

Seo Jian was just about to step into the bar when the acrid smoke rising from the alley beside the back entrance made her wrinkle her nose.

"That freshman, Mina? She's pretty decent, isn't she?"

"I liked Jihyun best."

"Not Jihyun, you moron. Jiyoung."

She let the men's idle snickering slide in one ear and out the other, and was about to slip quietly inside when a familiar name stopped her cold.

"Hyung Dou, it's been almost two weeks since you came back, and you're still holding out?"

Jian's legs locked where she stood.

"Hard to say."

The voice was so low that the noisy world around her seemed to fall still.

Wanting to hear him more clearly, she crept closer to the mouth of the alley.

"It's not like you're breaking the law. What's the big deal? Letting a face like yours go to waste is the real crime."

Someone's light, shameless tone drew a round of snickering that rang back through the alley.

"But hyung, you've been with plenty of women. What do you think of Seo Jian?"

Me? Out of nowhere?

Her own name, dropped without warning, left her looking a little dazed. Her chest rose and fell in a steep, immediate rhythm. Bracing for whatever verdict he was about to hand down, she wiped her sweating palms on her thighs and swallowed dry.

"……Seo Jian?"

Dou's answer came a beat late. Unlike the easy voice from a moment ago, this one had sunk and sharpened until it sounded bitterly cold—exactly like someone who couldn't have cared less.

She had expected as much. Even so, the light that had filled her eyes with hope went out.

"Yeah. Don't tell me you don't even know who Seo Jian is."

"……Why her."

"Wow. You really don't know. I figured the second you got out of the service you'd start scanning the girls."

A whistle went up with his reply, and a chorus of impressed voices followed.

"Forget the freshmen. There's a girl in our year who looks stupid hot. Her eyes tilt up a little, so she gives off this aloof vibe, but she's got a tear mole under one of them, so she looks proud and somehow pitiful at the same time."

She had been waiting for Dou's voice to come back. Disappointingly, it was that flippant one that seeped into her ear instead.

"Right, Seo Jian. Her face isn't the official beauty-standard type, but there's something about it. Like a weird kind of sexiness just leaks off her."

"She looks exactly like a cat, and her personality's just as stuck-up. She doesn't even hang out with people. Always sits in the very front, listens to the lecture, then vanishes. Pretty sure a decent number of guys confessed and got shot down."

"Ahem."

"What, don't tell me you confessed too?"

"Shut up, asshole. That was forever ago."

The burst of anger was followed by a string of snickers. She had been confessed to a few times at the start of the semester, but she had turned them down without really looking, so none of the faces had stuck.

So that was how they saw her. Jian swept an awkward hand over her own face. Did Gam Dou look at her and think something similar? His voice still hadn't come back, and she was biting her lip, restless, when—

"Come on, hyung Dou. To celebrate coming back, why don't you sweet-talk her and have a taste? With your face, there's no woman who wouldn't fall."

At the sudden words, Jian's heart gave a hard kick.

"You really think even hyung Dou could land her? She doesn't seem interested in men at all."

"That's just because she's not interested in you."

"Fuck it. Want to bet?"

"You're on. I'm putting a hundred bucks on her falling. How much are you in for?"

"Two hundred that she doesn't."

They were gossiping about someone who wasn't even there, and Jian's face hardened by degrees.

They're betting on me? And egging him on to sleep with me while they're at it?

Strength flooded her hands until they trembled. She clenched her fists and bit down on her lip hard enough to draw blood.

"You're gonna do it, right, hyung? Just picturing that stuck-up girl losing her mind over you is already satisfying."

"Hilarious. She is never going to fall for it."

"Pride and all that doesn't work on hyung Dou. Our pride's on the line! Hyung, you're in, right?"

She could feel every one of them waiting on his answer. Jian held her breath too, ears strained, desperate to know what Dou would say. Aside from the loud drum of her heart, the whole alley had gone quiet.

Please. She prayed with everything she had that the answer she wanted would come.

"The bet……."

And then, at last, he opened his mouth.

"But if hyung actually sleeps with her, the rest of us won't even be allowed to look after that. Honestly, hyung Dou is on another level, face and size both. Once she's been with you, is any other guy even going to register?"

"……That's true. Why are you suddenly hitting us where it hurts, you little shit. Hyung, just forget the bet—"

"Maybe I will, then."

"What?"

"I'll have a taste. Seo Jian."

Her heart dropped all the way to her toes, and a groan slipped out of her on its own.

"Hah……."

"Oppa, what's taking you? Everyone's waiting."

The bar door opened, and one of her classmates popped out. Jian, plastered to the corner of the alley, snapped back to herself, gathered up her fallen heart, and bolted the other way.

"Hah—hah—"

She didn't know how far she ran. Gasping, she leaned against the wall of an empty alley and pressed a hand hard over the heart that felt ready to burst out of her chest. She let out a long breath, bowed her head, and replayed what had just happened, biting her lip the way she had before.

But no amount of pressure on her mouth could stop the laugh from leaking out.

"……Heh. Hehehe."

She lifted the fist she had been clenching and swung it wildly through the air.

A bet to eat me? Gam Dou?

God. This was getting exactly what she wanted without lifting a finger.

"This is too good. I might actually get to sleep with Gam Dou."

Wearing the face of someone who had the whole world in her hands, Jian grinned and pressed her palms together, wishing with everything she had.

Please. Just eat me once, Oppa.

Someone once said it was wrong to call a senseless, filthy human being trash. Think about it, they said: every piece of trash in the world had already been used hard somewhere.

"That returning-student sunbae just coming in the front door—he's the famous Hankuk University trash."

Trash?

First semester of senior year. Jian had only just sat down for her first lecture when those astonishing words reached her. She had been about to get up and throw away a leftover bread bag and an empty water bottle; instead she followed the whisper from the row behind and turned her head, still clutching the things that had filled her hunger and, a moment ago, turned into trash.

"No way. That guy who looks like a celebrity? That doesn't make any sense. Why would a face like that get a nickname like that?"

That was exactly what Jian wanted to say. For someone they were calling trash, he was handsome enough to wear a halo, and even the way he walked was elegant.

"Don't let the face fool you. You know what that sunbae's hobby is?"

"What?"

Jian pressed her hips flat to the chair and leaned her back as far as it would go, straining to catch every word.

"Playing with women. More than one or two people have seen him in and out of hotels. And this is a secret, but a girl in a club, a friend of a friend of mine, had a one-night stand with him, and she said it was no joke."

"What wasn't?"

"Nothing like that gentle face. She said he was so big and so rough that her mouth and down there both tore. It hurt, and she told him so, but he just wouldn't stop. She thought she was actually going to die, so she ran."

"God."

Jian, listening in secret, flinched too.