I Hate Broken Promises
Yesterday afternoon, the group chat had been perfectly fine….
“…….”
Ji-eum fidgeted with a fallen leaf on the wisteria table, eyes darting around. Kwon Beom-ju sat with his arms crossed, and his expression was anything but ordinary.
His cold gaze fixed on his phone’s clock, mouth set in a hard, menacing line. After a long stretch of that, Beom-ju finally huffed out a breath like a rice cooker about to finish cooking, steam pouring from his nostrils.
This is bad….
Everyone’s first impressions had seemed decent enough that she’d thought this would be a group project without any holes. But maybe you really did have to live with people to know them. It was already 2:24. The appointed time had come and gone a while ago.
Ji-eum held her breath and scrolled down the chat.
Hong Ga-hui vanished without another reply, and Oh Gi-hyeok never answered at all. There were only four members in the group, and two of them were missing. Group projects were usually built around one or two people hard-carrying while the rest played villains, but ditching from the very start wasn’t exactly common.
Back when they’d registered for the course, the syllabus had said it was suited for students who already had basic economic knowledge and stock-trading experience, and who could invest time consistently.
Ji-eum herself had signed up without knowing much about investing or economics, but she’d been trying hard to keep up. This wasn’t a solo assignment—it was a team project. Didn’t that mean shared responsibility?
A post she’d seen last night while scrolling on her phone before bed suddenly floated into her mind.
She’d thought everyone was overreacting, but maybe she’d just been lucky until now. She was this angry herself—so of course Beom-ju, the team leader, was boiling over.
“These fucking….”
He muttered under his breath, voice dark and ominous as he fought to keep the overflowing rage in check. Ji-eum, reading the room, carefully opened her mouth with a suggestion.
“Maybe we should just meet next time…?”
Instead of answering, Beom-ju jerked his chin toward the half-finished water bottle she’d been drinking from.
“Gimme some water.”
“Huh? Oh…. Finish it.”
The remaining half of the water disappeared down Beom-ju’s throat in rapid gulps. Ji-eum stared blankly. Why’s he drinking with his mouth on it? My lips touched that….
Ugh, it’s bothering me. She was still unsettled when Beom-ju, looking completely unfazed, crushed the empty bottle with a loud crunch.
“How am I gonna fuck them up….”
Clearly the option of meeting next time didn’t exist for Beom-ju.
“This won’t do.”
He suddenly stood as if he’d made up his mind about something. Ji-eum’s head tilted up after him.
“…Where are you going?”
Beom-ju pressed down on Ji-eum’s shoulder as she half-rose to follow, sitting her firmly back down. Her round head sank into the bench.
“Lee Ji-eum. You wait here a minute.”
Before she could answer, Beom-ju was already gone, phone to his ear as he strode off. His steps headed toward the smoking booth in front of the engineering building.
A few people were already lined up there, exhaling cigarette smoke.
“…Cigarettes?”
Judging by how he’d been biting his lip and holding in his anger, maybe he’d gone to smoke.
Ugh, I hate guys who smoke the most. Come to think of it—did he smoke?
She’d never seen it. Not in that flashy blue car, not at his place, not even when they were close. She’d never caught even a faint whiff of cigarette smoke.
If anything, his scent was strong. It wasn’t like the soft fabric softener fragrance that brushed her nose. It was intense, the kind that made you feel his presence like a beast marking its territory.
Back when she’d part-timed at a beauty & health store she’d smelled countless perfumes, but Beom-ju’s scent was unique. It wasn’t ordinary cologne. It mixed strangely with his skin smell into something raw. Somewhere deeply primal….
Ji-eum lifted the back of her hand and sniffed, wondering how it differed from Beom-ju’s skin scent, then flinched and shuddered.
“…What the hell.”
Why am I thinking about Beom-ju’s smell?
Crazy… I’m losing it.
She took a long, steadying breath and killed time by doodling on the printouts Beom-ju had prepared.
The weather was so nice that waiting didn’t feel boring. The sunlight filtering through the wisteria was warm, and even the gentle breeze carried the scent of spring. Thinking about how the cherry blossoms would soon be in full bloom made her chest tickle strangely.
Scratch, scratch….
Without thinking she drew a circle and added eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Mildly folded eyes and a mildly upturned mouth. The bland smile looked a lot like her own face right now.
She’d been about to redraw it with a brighter smile when Beom-ju’s words from the new building cafeteria suddenly came back to her.
“Why. You’re happy right now, aren’t you?”
Her face hadn’t changed much since then, but the only bright smile she had left was the one on her student ID from when she was twenty. Yet Beom-ju said she looked good now. Well… he wasn’t the type to say empty things, so it didn’t feel bad.
Ji-eum didn’t erase the bland smile. Instead she filled the space beside it. A cozy little house, a small compact car, a sturdy fence, and so on.
About ten minutes had passed like that when the surroundings grew noisy. Loud shouting suggested a fight had broken out.
Where, where. Ji-eum set down her pen and turned her head toward the sound. No fight was visible, but something was approaching fast. It was Beom-ju.
“Huk….”
He wasn’t alone. Hong Ga-hui and Oh Gi-hyeok, faces full of terror, were being hauled along in his massive left hand as if being dragged.
“Hey, let go. This is embarrassing as hell!”
“Please let go. The department president’s a close friend so I couldn’t just cut him off and leave. And I told you in advance!”
Hong Ga-hui protested the moment she sat on the wisteria bench, but under Beom-ju’s fiercely twitching brows she snapped her mouth shut.
“One of you was late picking an MT location with the department president.”
“That’s why I messaged the chat beforehand….”
“And one of you was playing soccer on the field.”
“I told you the match ran long! Hey, what’s your problem, being so annoying? Just ‘cause you’re the leader? Talking like that to your hyung.”
Oh Gi-hyeok jabbed a finger toward Beom-ju’s face and yelled. Beom-ju let out a hollow laugh and twisted that finger in his grip.
“You? How old did you say you were.”
“I’m a freshman but I took the CSAT three times, did my military service, worked, and came back—I’m twenty-nine.”
“Ate your fill of years and still.”
“What…?”
“Can’t act your age?”
The icy voice that came with the flung finger made the air under the wisteria feel like an air conditioner had kicked on. Oh Gi-hyeok chewed his lip and glared at Beom-ju with a wronged expression, but the size difference kept him from pushing further.
They won’t fight anymore here…. Ji-eum held her breath and watched. Hong Ga-hui and Oh Gi-hyeok had already lost their momentum and were reading Beom-ju’s mood. Beom-ju swept a chilling look over the two of them, then spoke in a low, heavy voice.
“Don’t piss me off. I hate broken promises the most.”
Wow, that guy….
So that temper of his came out in front of other people too. From now on she absolutely must never break a promise with Kwon Beom-ju.
Ji-eum quietly made the vow to herself.