Campus Log - Chapter 27

More than the fact itself—that my calm wavered at each and every glance from Ryu Eun-seok—I was afraid it might show on the surface. So I stopped clapping altogether.

The basketball game ended with a victory for the Department of Business Administration. The finals were scheduled to take place after lunch.

Thanks to the capable student council, the sponsored lunchboxes were fairly lavish. I stayed seated, planning to go get mine later once the line thinned out.

“Eat this.”

But Ryu Eun-seok returned to his seat and handed me my portion of the lunchbox. It seemed he’d picked it up right after finishing the game. The murmured thanks that slipped from my mouth didn’t sound particularly pleasant.

I wondered why Ryu Eun-seok insisted on eating beside me. A junior had invited him over earlier, and now that he’d won the game, plenty of people would be looking for him—so why was he choosing to play the loner?

Could it be… that he pitied me for being alone? Just as I had felt sorry for Eun-seok after his circumstances changed, maybe he, too, was feeling sympathy for Hong Sang-hee, who always went around by herself.

I’d tried not to care much about whatever people said about me, but the moment I thought Ryu Eun-seok might be looking at me with pity, all the strength drained from my fingertips.

Earlier, I’d deliberately focused on negative thoughts; now, I genuinely felt bad.

The weather was bright and clear—was there really any need for my emotions to swing up and down like this?

“Ah, it’s hot.”

Ryu Eun-seok wiped the sweat off with a towel and gulped down the ion drink that had been sitting on the chair. It didn’t seem very refreshing.

It probably wasn’t even cool anymore, but he swallowed it anyway.

Ryu Eun-seok bustled about, tidying up and tearing open the lunchbox packaging, and his forearm kept brushing lightly against mine before pulling away. The heat of his body—still warm from having just run—was transferred to me. It spread like a bonfire lit right beside me, radiating a stifling warmth.

The toes hidden inside my sneakers wriggled for no reason.

I should’ve thrown on a shirt. I’d come out wearing nothing but the matching green short-sleeved T-shirt, so sitting this close led to the unfortunate situation of our bare skin touching.

No—if I’d just sat somewhere else by myself from the start, I wouldn’t have had to worry about this kind of contact at all.

“Did you see me play?”

Ryu Eun-seok asked. His elbow kept brushing against me, making my posture grow stiffer by the second. I nodded while snapping the disposable chopsticks in half.

“So? What did you think?”

He turned halfway toward me. His knee poked into my thigh.

“What do you mean, what did I think?”

“I did well, didn’t I? And you don’t have a single thing to say?”

He’d already been showered with praise on his way back to the tent—did he really need more?

I tucked my legs in neatly and cast a brief glance down at the hand holding his lunchbox.

The smartwatch fastened around his left wrist seemed to still register that he was exercising—the numbers counting time inside the square screen kept steadily increasing. The heart rate marked by a red heart was also fluctuating around 100 bpm.

“Good job.”

After giving that curt response, I chewed on the tteokgalbi. Eating without a table made it hard to get a proper posture no matter what I did. When I lifted the lunchbox higher, afraid I might drop the side dishes, my bare skin brushed against Ryu Eun-seok’s.

“That’s it?”

Ryu Eun-seok let out a sigh mixed with a dry chuckle and started eating. Maybe he’d run too hard and lost his appetite—his chewing was slow.

He set the lunchbox down on his thigh and leaned back comfortably against the chair. Because he sat at a slant, my space felt narrower than before. The area where our arms touched grew wider.

Ryu Eun-seok’s smartwatch, still changing numbers, caught my eye. His heart rate had climbed to 120 bpm. His face, sitting there at ease and gazing out at the field, didn’t match the heartbeat the watch was reporting at all.

Does your heart usually beat that fast when you eat?

Ryu Eun-seok closed the lunchbox lid after barely eating half. I’d meant not to pay him any attention, but the words slipped out before I could stop them.

“That’s all you’re eating?”

“The finals are right after lunch. If I eat too much, my side will start hurting when I run.”