Campus Log - Chapter 83

The blunt question flew out without a single filter. I realized my mistake, but the water had already been spilled. This time, I averted my gaze and waited for Ryu Eun-seok’s reaction.

“What?”

Ryu Eun-seok’s mouth fell open. His eyes, fixed on me, trembled.

“What do you mean, ‘normally’? Do I go around doing this?”

His gentle voice, which had sounded like that of a legendary playboy, vanished, and Ryu Eun-seok stammered back.

“You’re saying I’ve seduced someone like this? Me? Who? I have very high standards, you know?”

The longer he spoke, the redder his forehead became. His eyelids, tensed, deepened his double eyelids, and his Adam’s apple bobbed busily.

Ryu Eun-seok looked genuinely wronged.

“Why are you treating me like trash? Do you think I’m that kind of loose person? You’ve been seeing me at that level all this time?”

I had only asked one question, but what came back was a rapid-fire barrage of protests. Ryu Eun-seok argued so passionately that I was at a loss for words.

But since I was already embarrassed, I mustered the courage to say everything I was curious about.

“Don’t you do this to girls like Kwon Ga-ram?”

“Oh, what does Kwon Ga-ram have to do with anything.”

Ryu Eun-seok wrinkled his face in disgust and scoffed.

“Even when I talk to her about assignments, it’s ‘buy me a meal,’ ‘where are you going,’ whining all day long. Do you think I want to risk getting strung up by accidentally brushing against even the tip of her hair?”

A subtle satisfaction rose from his answer. So he did find it annoying. He was just playing along with social niceties. I had thought he enjoyed the popularity, but he had his own struggles too.

It felt like a thorn stuck in my throat had finally been dislodged. But at the same time, I wanted to gag at how mercenary I was, needing this kind of confirmation for comfort. Was there really no other way to find reassurance?

“What about Yang Soo-bin?”

I knew very well that I had no right to ask such things. I wasn’t his family or his girlfriend. Wasn’t I in an ambiguous position, not even someone he could clearly call a friend?

“Why were you fighting with her that time?”

Still, I wanted to address it. Because I knew myself well enough that if I glossed over it, I would be tormented by the afterimage of Yang Soo-bin.

“She got mad because I didn’t celebrate her birthday.”

Ryu Eun-seok fumed, as if he was still furious just thinking about it.

“I’m not in any kind of relationship with her. How was I supposed to know it was her birthday? Acting like that in front of everyone, like a betrayed girlfriend—do you have any idea how crazy I almost went?”

His sharpened gaze flew toward me. I stiffened my shoulders, ready to take a scolding…

“I ended up being the only bad guy, and you just watched like it was none of your business. You didn’t even think about taking my side, and you just drew a line saying you don’t care.”

“You should have asked me sooner,” a small grumble followed. The man was overflowing with pent-up frustration, as if wondering how he had even endured it all this time.

I felt so sorry that I couldn’t say anything. The first mistake was misunderstanding the reason they were fighting based on my hasty assumptions.

The second mistake was not properly examining my own feelings—feeling annoyed and hurt by the scene. And the third mistake was taking it out on the innocent Ryu Eun-seok.

“Then what were you doing with that senior?”

Ryu Eun-seok, after catching his breath, asked out of the blue. I tilted my head at the disjointed question.

“Who?”

“You were walking with Senior Joo Seung-jae back then.”

His brow showed no sign of relaxing. It seemed he still had a lot bottled up inside.

“Oh, what was it? He said he’d give me past exams for Investment Theory.”

Joo Seung-jae, as promised, uploaded the past exam file to the business department group chat. But, making his kindness meaningless, the Investment Theory professor, who had suddenly made a big decision, completely changed all the questions this year. The students who had relied solely on the past exams had to swallow their screams upon receiving the test papers.

“See? I was right.”