Campus Log - Chapter 67

“First, let go of this. I’ll walk on my own.”

Ryu Eun-seok’s long legs matched my pace.

“Are you going down tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“My parents are coming.”

“Really? If they’re busy, I could give you a ride.”

I looked up quietly at Ryu Eun-seok’s profile. Having a conversation like this, it felt as if there had never been a single moment of distance between us during the entire exam period.

Is this how things naturally flow back to normal? How do other people become close again with friends they’ve grown apart from?

“What? It’s close to my neighborhood.”

Ryu Eun-seok seemed to have found a different reason for why I was staring.

“It takes an hour, how is that close?”

I had once searched up the distance Ryu Eun-seok had driven to pick me up from Cheonan. Even at the shortest, it was 45 minutes. How on earth did he come up with 30 minutes?

“You looked that up too? Just let it slide.”

As expected, it was a lie.

“I’m trying to be considerate here, but if you point out every little thing like that, should I just make it obvious from now on?”

“Fine, go ahead and make it obvious.”

That way, I won’t readily accept your kindness.

“Honestly, you have a bit of a pushover tendency.”

“I’m a pushover?”

Ryu Eun-seok pointed at his own chest and asked back loudly.

“I’ve never heard that in my life.”

“You said people see you as a key ring. Key ring or pushover, same difference.”

At my blunt observation, Ryu Eun-seok’s face went blank.

“I’ve been collecting key ring usage fees all this time. You just don’t know about it.”

The man with great pride didn’t back down an inch.

“I guess I’m just a pushover for one person.”

Ryu Eun-seok murmured in a barely audible voice as he walked down the hill. I barely escaped from the hand pushing my waist, now his hard forearm bumped against mine. Tapping and brushing, sometimes pressing firmly then pulling away—it repeated.

Although I felt uncomfortable, I didn’t avoid it. I told myself it was fine since our bare skin wasn’t touching, but that was just a cover. In truth, I let it be because this contact felt like proof that things between Ryu Eun-seok and me were okay again.

I deceived myself into thinking I didn’t need a reconciliation, but more than anything, I missed the times when I exchanged trivial conversations with Ryu Eun-seok.

I missed him showing interest by asking me various questions when I, unable to contain my excitement, poured out stories about pandas all at once—rather than being burdened by it. I also liked that sometimes, when he grumbled about not being able to adjust to living alone, I could pretend to be the more mature one and give him advice.

Throughout the exam period, holed up in my dorm room with my eyes on my books, I was for the first time since coming to college consumed by a feeling of loneliness.

No notifications popped up on my phone calling me “Sang-hee-hee-hee,” and there was no one to show cute panda pictures to. Sometimes I sat under the acacia tree to take a breather, but my ears stayed perked up, waiting for a familiar presence that never came.

And when I entered the dorm cafeteria, I would glance around. Whether to avoid someone or to look for someone, the purpose was unclear.

As the saying goes, you don’t know a filled seat but you know an empty one—the spaces where Ryu Eun-seok had briefly stayed then left kept stealing my attention, swept by a strong wind. I would blankly stare at the name “Ryu Eun-seok” in my phone’s contact list, or waste time uselessly snooping to see if any new photos had been uploaded to his account.

So I liked that he was walking next to me now. Both the walk to the end-of-semester gathering, and we were both grateful for the consideration he showed by talking to me as if nothing had happened between us during that time.