12. Off Leash

"So apparently it was one of those group-dating mixers, and both of those idiots fell for Cha Hae-soo on the spot."

When the suspicion he'd been nursing turned out to be dead on, all Yeol could manage was a hollow laugh. He twisted his face into the ugliest expression he had and delivered his verdict with acid.

"What a pair of jackasses."

However starved for women they were, this wasn't some casual hobby—these were men who intended to make a living off of it.

Yeol spat it out with finality, as if there was nothing more to hear. Hyeon-seok, by contrast, wore a noncommittal look that only half agreed.

"Well, from the sound of it, the guy figured this was his golden chance and walked out of there with one in each hand."

"Played them both?"

"Yeah. He got roasted so badly for it, he even posted about it on social media at the time. It's been a while, so I don't remember exactly, but the gist was basically 'I got played.' Stuff like, don't toy with people's feelings, be honest about where you stand—words to that effect."

"Pathetic."

"That it is... but if it's true, didn't Cha Hae-soo have a hand in it too?"

As the conversation stretched on, Hyeon-seok's throat seemed to be drying out, and he took a long pull of his coffee. His gaze, laden with regret—interested, but with too many complications—drifted toward the back of the girl's head.

It wasn't as if he was picking a wife. Yeol sneered inwardly at the way the man was picking everything apart.

"Anyway, after that whole mess she became the whipping girl of the entire campus. Went from goddess of the English department to public enemy number one overnight."

"......"

"Fished in every pond in sight until it finally blew up in her face."

Listening to Hyeon-seok's crude chatter, Yeol studied the scene at the front of the lecture hall.

The man who had pulled out a chair beside the girl spoke carefully, offering her a book with a tentative air; the girl shook her head. An embarrassed smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. She propped her elbow on the desk, leaned her temple against her raised hand, and turned her face away from him toward the other side—her expression brimming with fatigue and irritation.

"What? Interested?"

He'd been watching for a while, so Hyeon-seok asked, offhand. Yeol pulled his eyes away.

"Not really."

But the following week, as Yeol stepped into the cavernous lecture hall packed to bursting, he found himself idly scanning the faces that had claimed the front rows, one by one. Nothing but unremarkable eyes, noses, and mouths, all uniformly mediocre.

Has she not come yet?

Yeol sat in the very last row and watched the door every time a new student filtered in. The girl with the damp hair and the English department jacket never appeared, all the way until class let out.

Either she was absent, or she'd switched her schedule during the course-change period. One of the two.

He was just thinking that, for some reason, he hoped it wasn't the latter, when he ran into Hae-soo in another class—a three-credit mandatory business course called International Business.

When she walked in, that flimsy body swallowed up in the same shapeless jacket, the men in the room stole glances at her under the pretense of not looking at all.

Unwilling to be one of them, Yeol simply stared, openly. Wasn't being drawn to a beautiful thing human nature? He saw no reason to hide it, ration it, or be ashamed of it.

He looked at her the way one looks at a masterpiece or a jewel laid out at auction—with an appraiser's covetous, aestheticizing gaze. He would have liked their eyes to meet just once, but Cha Hae-soo, whether genuinely oblivious or feigning it, kept her lashes lowered all the way to her seat.

He watched the back of her head, round and smooth, for a long stretch before the professor arrived. True to form for a business school course that began and ended with group projects, teams were assigned. Ignoring the chorus of student protest over why they couldn't choose their own groups, the professor held a lottery.

The result flashed onto the screen.

A dull group assignment where it didn't matter who you were stuck with. Up to that point, Cha Hae-soo had been nothing more than a piece of eye candy he'd lucked into.

Yeol observed Hae-soo freely at every meeting. What he discovered during those observations was that there was nothing the least bit deliberate about those languidly fluttering lashes that seemed designed to entice.

"Si-yeon, this one doesn't have a source listed. Could you check on it for me right now?"

Even when she was looking at Si-yeon, Cha Hae-soo wore those same eyes. To borrow Hyeon-seok's phrasing: the very eyes that radiated a baffling, unmistakable allure.

When he wondered why and looked more closely, the answer was simply that her eyes were enormous. Where anyone else could manage a crisp little blink, Cha Hae-soo had to execute a full, languid bli-i-ink before her lids could complete their arc. It was nothing more than a trait born of the architecture of her face.

Whether they knew it or not, Noh Woo-chan and Nam Do-yoon went bashful every time their eyes met hers. Woo-chan at least pretended to conceal it, but Do-yoon was too young and transparent for that; the boy practically glued himself to the seat beside her, gulping audibly—it was almost painful to watch.

"Sunbae, want this? A friend gave it to me, but I don't really like chocolate."

"Ah, sorry, I'm not big on sweets either."

Do-yoon fidgeted at every meeting, desperate to manufacture points of contact with Hae-soo. He'd hand her snacks—obviously bought at the campus store—as if he'd stumbled into them by chance, or mention that he'd come across free movie tickets and suggest they go together.

Cha Hae-soo didn't stir an inch at these flimsy ploys. With a smile that said this is exhausting, she deflected him every time.

Once. Twice. Three times... It repeated, day after day.

At first Do-yoon only hovered around her before and after project meetings, but as time passed he began orbiting her during class as well. Behind her one day, in front of her the next, until at last he claimed the seat right beside her.

The girl seemed flustered, but she took no further action. Had he confessed outright, she could have rejected him; but he just sidled up to her flank, wagging his tail like a puppy, and apparently she found him hard to shove away.

"Sunbae, this is the book you were talking about the other day, right?"

"Huh? Where did you find this?"

"The library near my house. I wasn't sure, so I checked, and it was there."

"Oh... thank you. I'd had a hold on it and never heard back, so I'd given up."

"If you're really grateful, you could buy me a can of coffee."

"Sure. I was about to head to the store anyway. What kind should I get you?"

"Mm, I'll pick when I see it. Let's go together!"

As Yeol watched this sequence of developments unfold, his feelings underwent a complete change in character from the early days. The version of him who had once looked on Do-yoon's deflated little self with pity and disdain was gone without a trace.

Why does this irritate me so much?

At some point, merely laying eyes on Do-yoon had begun to trigger an instant, reflexive scowl. When the two of them walked into the study room together, the urge to abandon the project—abandon everything—and walk out was nearly overwhelming.

"You should come too, Yeol. We won't get everyone together again for a while after today."

On the day of the final meeting, when Si-yeon proposed a group dinner, Yeol was looking back and forth between Hae-soo and Do-yoon, who had settled into the seat beside her as though it were his by right. Inexplicably, the words "sure, I'm in" came out of his mouth. Even as he said it, he wondered what on earth he had just agreed to.

That unbearable sight continued at the grill restaurant. Sitting side by side, Hae-soo and Do-yoon lowered their voices and whispered to each other. As the unpleasantness thickened, Yeol saw Hae-soo pick up her phone and head out of the restaurant. He felt no need to sit there a moment longer.

And so he ran into Hae-soo in that filthy, cramped little alley.

How it had felt, when he'd suddenly brought up contacting a woman he'd only ever enjoyed with his eyes, was the same species of feeling as buying a painting that had caught him at a gallery.

I have to take that off the wall here and hang it on the wall of my room—a thirst for possession, for exclusivity.

"Let's keep it simple. We say hello when we run into each other on campus, and that's it."

But a woman was not a commodity to be bought and sold with money, and winning her would not be as easy as acquiring a painting. It would take time. It would take smiles. It would take hands. Hyeon-seok defined that whole process with a single term.

"Guess you're enjoying the game, sunbae."

"What? The game?"

"Are you kidding? You buy her drinks so she doesn't get thirsty, you buy her shoes so her feet don't hurt, and class ended ages ago but you're still hanging around campus—"

"Hold on. When did I ever tell you about the shoes?"

"You made that whole scene and expect nobody to know? You told her to bring in her dress shoes by type. It's all over the group chat by now."

"What rumor?"

"That Seo Moon-yeol got bitten by some gold-digger."

A genuine laugh escaped him. All that, over a single pair of two-hundred-and-sixty-thousand-won shoes. Especially when she'd scrambled so fast to return them.

"Cha Hae-soo would find that pretty unfair if she heard it."

"Hm? What was that?"

"Nothing, never mind."

If he mentioned getting his shoe money back, he could predict the next rumor already. That Seo Moon-yeol was so petty he begrudged spending 260,000 won on a woman. That he was a lowlife who gave and then snatched back. Something like that. Whatever the truth was, there would always be people gleefully grinding their gossip mills. It was simpler, and easier on the nerves, to simply stay out of their line of sight.

"So, is it true?"

"Is what true?"

"That she's got you playing the fool."

Yeol tried to brush past it, but Hyeon-seok clung on annoyingly. He swallowed the irritation, though a sigh escaped him anyway.

"Playing the fool, my ass."

"Then what is it? Are you actually dating her?"

"You just called it a game."

"Ha—"

"Yeah. That's exactly what it is."

Whether it was a game or a relationship, or some other nameless thing entirely, the label didn't matter. What mattered was that he desired her. Because he desired her, he would have her; and once he had her, he would feast his eyes on her until he was sick of it.

The same way he had with every one of the artworks that graced a corner of his master room.

Yeol smiled, confident as ever. As always, he had not given the slightest thought to what he would do with her once the enjoyment was over. Just as he'd resold or locked away pieces in storage, he trusted that a woman's value, and where she would end up staying, would reveal itself on its own when the amusement ran its course.

Twenty-three years old. It was the desire of a boy who knew nothing yet.