A Taste to Spit Out - Chapter 27
“Our bad relationship is very tough.”
It’s damp like a swamp and persistent like a snake’s skin. “Kang Yeol-jin and I were like thistles stuck together, messy and sticky.”
The path along the campus is always bustling. “My gaze flickers to one side.” It buzzes like a swarm of flies over rotting fruit in the midsummer.
“Hey, hey, there’s another one over there…”
Kim Jae-soo, my classmate from the same department, casually tapped my shoulder and put his arm around me. “To be honest, I wanted to walk alone, but I didn’t have the wits to refuse someone who wanted to come along.”
As a result, whether I wanted to or not, the buzzing stories from around me flowed into my ears. “For example,”
“‘That guy always follows you around gloomily.'”
That’s the kind of talk about Kang Yeol-jin.
At the end of those gazes, a pitch-black car lurks like a bat, rumbling ominously. “With eyes wide open, like a hungry predator hunting for prey.”
And soon a huge figure steps down from the driver’s seat. As he got out of that large body, the car shook almost violently.
Even in the sweltering heat of midsummer, he wore a black leather jacket and dark sunglasses. And beyond that, his eyes sparkled. It felt like I was seeing a ghost.
“Wow, did you see that?”
Kim Jae-soo kept joking around.
“That guy is really creepy. Is he acting like that just because he touched your shoulder?”
He said it was so scary he felt like he might wet himself, shaking his body.
“Girls say those sharp eyes of his are really sexy, but what… he just looks like a total jerk.”
I stared at Kang Yeol-jin blankly. He was like my father’s dog, following me around like a dark shadow. The mouth of that black dog twitched.
“That omega bastard…”
I didn’t need to say more; I knew exactly what he meant.
He was probably mumbling some nonsense about how an omega would never submit to a beta in such a lewd way.
I immediately stiffened my whole body. What if, just what if, the news got to my father… If the story viewed through Kang Yeol-jin’s eyes, mixed with his subjective evaluation, were to be relayed.
I would surely lose all my brushes and paints. I wouldn’t be able to attend school or classes, and I would be confined. All under the filthy guise of discipline.
“Get away from me.”
I quickly shrugged off my shoulders. There shouldn’t be anyone approaching me. I had to be thoroughly alone, and I was more comfortable being by myself.
Yeah, until I met Sun-woo.
“This is better than that.”
As I was trying to enter the school studio with a triangle kimbap I bought from the convenience store, a male student I had never seen before struck up a conversation.
“Oh, um…”
He had a white face with freckles. Other than his wide mouth, which accentuated his smiling lips, he looked very ordinary.
“You don’t know me. I’m in the same year as you.”
“Oh, sorry… I’m not really involved in the department activities.”
That’s understandable. As he scanned the barcode, he smiled. Out of kindness, he handed me an extra banana milk as I awkwardly apologized.
How many times did we brush past each other after that?
On a night when it rained heavily, I realized I had left my cooking pot at the convenience store while eating instant noodles and triangle kimbap.
“Um, excuse me, is there…!”
What on earth was I thinking? As I hurriedly returned to the convenience store, Sun-woo greeted me with a big smile.
“Are you looking for this?”
Only after seeing the cooking pot nestled in his arms like a puppy could I finally breathe a sigh of relief. If I had lost that… I wouldn’t have been able to go outside for at least a month.
“Isn’t this really expensive?”
His short hair fluttered.
“…It was just my father who bought it for me.”
At that moment, I felt somewhat embarrassed. He already knew that I worked part-time at the convenience store regardless of whether it was early morning or late night.
“It’s raining outside; take this umbrella.”
Sun-woo readily offered me a plastic umbrella as I got soaked by the rain.
Watching me hesitate, he urged me to take it.
As his hair brushed against me, it smelled like shampoo. His worn-out green shirt carried the scent of well-dried sunlight.
It was a gray day. Heavy, damp, and uncomfortable weather. Yet, for some reason, I couldn’t take my eyes off his bright face, as if the sunlight had pushed through the dark clouds.
