Semantic Error

Jaeyoung grinned when their eyes met.

“Don’t you have any compliments for me?”

“Did you erase all the swear words?”

Jaeyoung replied that he had gotten rid of them. However, Sangwoo couldn’t just take his word for it, so he called the professor over, who had been passing by, and asked her to check the revised script. She accepted the script with a suspicious look on her face, and read it. The corner of her mouth gradually raised before she burst into laughter.

“What do you think, professor?” Jaeyoung asked her while spinning a pen between his fingers.

“The script was filled with vulgar lines last time, but you fixed it well. Anyway, I have a feeling I’ll see a masterpiece. I’m wondering if I should bring the camcorder.”

“Sangwoo did everything.”

“You also said that Sangwoo did everything last time. How would he know such nasty swear words? You probably would, though.”

“Hey, you’re so mean to your own student? That’s too much.”

The professor put her hand on Sangwoo’s shoulder and said: “Either way, I’ll be looking forward to next week, both of you.”

Sangwoo frowned. He couldn’t deny it any longer: something was off.

The error, Jaeyoung, had become kind.

return 0;

When the second period ended, Jaeyoung stood up as straight as an arrow while yawning and stretching at the same time. He had been sleeping throughout the ‘Algorithms’ class, but just as if he had accomplished something great, he then said: “I must eat.”

By now, Sangwoo had gotten used to walking with him in the hallway of the engineering college.  Also going to the stairs at the same speed. And walking to the restaurant together and eating side by side. Today however, Jaeyoung stopped Sangwoo in front of the engineering college.

“Sangwoo, I have an appointment today.”

He had said something completely unexpected. More than that, it was an odd situation. They didn’t have the type of relationship where they’d promised to have their meals together, yet Jaeyoung was acting as if Sangwoo had been waiting for him. Sangwoo pretended to be happy in order to break Jaeyoung’s delusion.

“Wow…”

Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap. He clapped his hands five times and sneered at him. Jaeyoung grabbed a canned coffee out of his bag and put it in Sangwoo’s hand. He looked at Sangwoo with a pitiful expression, the same way a grandmother would look at her grandson.

“Eat well, don’t get indigestion, make sure to drink water, and don’t follow strangers, ok?” Jaeyoung said, as if Sangwoo were disappointed.

“I’ve always wondered, are you nuts?”

Jaeyoung gave him a look. Without dodging him, his hand touched the top of Sangwoo’s head and then dropped.

“…”

By the time Sangwoo had decided to say something, his back was already receding into the distance.

‘Are you broken or what?’

Sangwoo recalled what Jaeyoung had said during first period. Those words were much more critical than his poor Chinese pronunciation or even the prediction they wouldn’t get a perfect score on the skit if he kept going on like that.

Starting at some point, Jaeyoung had frequently gotten closer than necessary to Sangwoo. Sangwoo wasn’t used to stuff like that. He had become accustomed to instantly stopping accidents from occurring in such moments, as if he were literally broken.

‘Next time, I’ll have to get angry again.’

He felt quite upset. He was so upset that he was out of breath. Sangwoo walked along campus while feeling furious inside.

Jaeyoung, who had gone quite far, had stopped in front of a bench at some point. He was with a male and a female student. When Jaeyoung said something, the female student hit his back hard while laughing. It must have been a really funny joke or something, because the male student completely fell down laughing. When Jaeyoung teased him by wrapping his arm around his neck, he completely sprawled out on the ground and laughed even louder.

‘I feel good,’ Sangwoo muttered inside, while taking his eyes off them.

He had to feel good. He thought that they would eat together, but Jaeyoung left on his own volition. He could eat on schedule without worrying about getting interrupted or getting an upset stomach. That’s really how it was.

The mealtime where nothing happened was very serene. Sangwoo got up after quietly eating at a table that was empty except for a female student. He cleaned his tray and exited at 12:28, perfectly on time.

For the first time in a while, he left the restaurant at the usual time, and opened the canned coffee that Jaeyoung had given him. The usual time, the usual taste, and the usual air. His walk while sipping on the coffee was pleasant. By the time he had finished one round of his walk, it was 12:41. Sangwoo threw the coffee can into the second trash can in front of the College of Natural Sciences and headed towards the library.

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‘I feel good. Really I do.’

The library wasn’t densely populated that day, so there was nothing to distract him from his studies. Sangwoo sat down after checking out some new programming books he had requested.

‘Will I be able to read all of this?’

Recently, for some strange reason, even just studying for his major had become too much for him, so he thought he needed to get counseling. However, he put the thick book in his backpack and grabbed another textbook for his subject major, which he had to use at that time. There was not a single student at his table. Sangwoo vacantly looked at the empty space and turned to his book.

Condenser, capacitor, inductor, direct current and alternating current. His gaze kept shifting away from each word. He was clearly deciphering each letter, but he couldn’t grasp the meaning even after reading it several times.