Chapter 36: The Unspoken Confession

To Yeon-chae’s surprise, Yoonwoo accepted the chocolate, only to hesitate for a moment before shaking his head. Eun Yoonwoo, refusing chocolate? It was an utterly unexpected sight. Yeon-chae’s eyes widened, round with astonishment.

“I appreciate the gesture, but I can’t accept this.”

“…Are you serious?”

“I simply don’t have the time to date. Could you return it for me? No, wait, I’ll give it back myself.”

“I’ll return it for you.”

“Oh? Wouldn’t that be a bit rude, though?”

“It’s perfectly fine. It would be far more awkward for them to be rejected directly.”

“Is that so?”

Yeon-chae snatched the chocolate box from Yoonwoo, who wore a troubled expression. She had to forcibly suppress the corners of her lips, which threatened to curl into a triumphant smile, almost causing a spasm. Yoonwoo watched Yeon-chae’s peculiar face for a moment before a laugh escaped him.

“Don’t make it so obvious. Were you afraid I’d end up in a relationship without you?”

“Mmm… Yes.”

“Wow. You’re not even trying to deny it anymore.”

Yoonwoo pointed a finger at her. The tip of his long, slender digit was a delicate, pale pink, much like the flush on his own cheek.

“Still, that chocolate looks delicious. What a pity…”

“You don’t just start dating someone because they offered you food,” Yeon-chae declared, her expression stern.

She thought, ‘He can fall for me, but no one else.’ It was a blatant double standard, and Yeon-chae knew it. Yoonwoo, however, looked utterly dumbfounded. He furrowed his brows, puffed out his cheeks, and then grumbled in a petulant tone.

“Hey, who said anything about dating? I just told you I’d refuse! What do you take me for, anyway?”

“I brought samgyeopsal gimbap. Will you eat lunch with me?”

“Really? Oh! Shall we go eat right now?”

Yoonwoo’s eyes instantly curved into charming crescent moons, reflecting his bright smile. Yeon-chae, startled by this sudden shift, instinctively flinched and recoiled slightly.

‘Why?’ He mouthed the question, his face as gentle and radiant as always. Yeon-chae merely shook her head, feigning indifference.

‘Please give me a warning before you smile; it’s detrimental to my heart.’ She couldn’t possibly blurt out the truth like that, so she held her tongue.

It was the first week of summer vacation. Yeon-chae accompanied Yoonwoo to the business department’s MT trip. This marked her very first overnight stay with him. Her heart pounded so fiercely, she felt as though a mere touch would cause it to explode and send her emotions spiraling out of control.

However, Yoonwoo, with his perpetually cheerful demeanor, once again dashed Yeon-chae’s hopes that day. By now, Yeon-chae was hardly surprised.

The circumstances had unfolded thus:

“I like Yoonwoo! Please date me!”

Drunken classmates, engaged in a peculiar “King Game,” had swarmed around Yoonwoo, their boisterous chatter culminating in an unexpected incident. Da-eun, who had been chosen as the King, abruptly confessed her feelings to Yoonwoo. While everyone else seemed to dismiss it as a mere drunken jest, likely to be forgotten by morning, Yeon-chae sensed the genuine sincerity in Da-eun’s words. A scorching jealousy flared within her.

“Are you going to date her?”

She struggled to keep her voice from cracking as she asked. She simply could not afford to cry here.

“I’ll refuse her.”

At Yoonwoo’s swift reply, her heart soared with sudden lightness,

“Just because someone confesses, how can feelings that weren’t there suddenly materialize?”

His subsequent words caused it to plummet, cold and heavy. It felt as if he were speaking not to Da-eun, but directly to Yeon-chae herself.

“You gradually grow closer, develop affection, and then there are moments when you wonder, ‘Could they like me?’ That’s when you naturally start a relationship…”

‘Would such a day ever truly arrive?’

‘Would she ever escape this shadow-like existence, unilaterally trailing behind Yoonwoo, forever gazing at his retreating back?’

Her throat felt parched and raw. Yeon-chae, half-despairing, posed her next question.

“What if that feeling—that ‘they might like me’—never comes at all?”

‘What does one do in such a scenario?’

‘If I continue to wait like this, will you ever truly see me?’

“Then, well, a confession wouldn’t naturally lead to anything, would it?”

Yoonwoo responded with an air of complete indifference. It was as though Yeon-chae’s heart, and all its complexities, held no significance whatsoever.

A month had passed since the summer vacation began, and Yeon-chae found herself simmering with anger towards Yoonwoo. She resented his implied dismissal of her confession (even if his words weren’t precisely that blunt) and seethed at the thought that he considered it fortunate her true feelings might be forgotten in a drunken haze (though this, too, was a slight misinterpretation). More than anything, Yeon-chae yearned for Yoonwoo to acknowledge her feelings, even a tiny fraction of them. Consequently, she resolved to wait him out, refraining from any contact.

Yet, despite a month of clutching her phone and waiting, no call or message from him arrived. Yeon-chae, whose insides had long turned to ash from the torment, would reluctantly send a message, only to receive a grudging, sparse reply in return, their communication a painful, intermittent ping-pong match.

When her longing for Yoonwoo became utterly unbearable, Yeon-chae finally boarded a bus destined for Tongyeong.

She harbored a fleeting worry that Yoonwoo’s parents might recognize her, yet a stronger conviction assured her they wouldn’t. As a child, Yeon-chae had been unusually small, but during her growth spurt, she had shot up so dramatically that her bones ached every morning, often bringing her to tears. Indeed, no one who had known the young Yeon-chae had ever recognized the woman she had become.

Unexpectedly, Yoonwoo’s parents were absent, but she did encounter Yoonwoo’s twin younger siblings. The “little squirt” she hadn’t seen in ages was no longer a child, yet he remained as irritating as ever. Recalling how, even as a babbling infant, he would squabble with Yeon-chae to claim Yoon-hyung’s attention first, Yeon-chae shot Jinwoo a hidden glare, unbeknownst to Yoonwoo. Thankfully, Kangwoo’s intervention allowed her to share a bed with Yoonwoo on their final night. With each new memory etched into her heart, a warmth spread through her chest, like a gentle fire igniting from within.

****

By the time the second semester commenced, Yeon-chae had acquired the reputation of being Yoonwoo’s “shadow” or “keychain” within their department. While Yeon-chae herself was entirely unbothered by this, Yoonwoo appeared subtly concerned.

“Yeon-chae, are your classmates bothering you? If anything happens, you absolutely must tell me. Don’t keep it bottled up inside, alright?”

“…”

Far from being harassed by her classmates, Yeon-chae was perpetually busy trailing Yoonwoo, and the constant invitations to hang out were actually giving her a headache. Nevertheless, Yeon-chae quietly affirmed with a ‘Yes,’ nodding her head obediently. She found a subtle pleasure in being the object of his concern.

Yoonwoo’s life was a constant flurry of activity. He approached every task with such zeal and diligence that Yeon-chae often wondered if such relentless effort was truly necessary. This was a stark contrast to Yeon-chae, who had always lived a life of languid ease and leisure. Yet, despite his unwavering commitment, he rarely seemed to achieve the grades he desired, sighing deeply with a gloomy expression each time he received his report card.

“Yeon-chae, what score did you get on your Intermediate Accounting midterm?”

“Ninety-eight points.”

She’d lost a few points due to her hurried handwriting on the essay portion. Upon her candid reply, Yoonwoo’s face instantly crumpled in dismay.

“I genuinely dislike you! All you ever do is sleep in the department lounge!”

‘She wasn’t truly sleeping; she was simply waiting for Yoonwoo.’ Yeon-chae felt a pang of injustice, yet she held her tongue, certain that revealing the truth wouldn’t prevent his scorn anyway.

“You said you were preparing for the CPA. When did you actually start studying?”

“At the beginning of the first semester.”

“So, are you taking the exam this winter?”

“No.”

The CPA exam was scheduled for February of the following year. To genuinely prepare for it, she ought to have been engrossed in her studies much earlier. Yet, since encountering Yoonwoo again at the start of the semester, Yeon-chae had been diligently “punching the clock” at the cafe where he worked part-time, her time consumed by stealing furtive glances at his face. There hadn’t been a single spare moment for her exam preparations.

Each visit to the cafe saw her spread several books across the table, yet not a single word registered; only Yoonwoo’s face danced before her eyes. If she carefully placed a complimentary cookie from Yoonwoo atop her textbook, he would invariably appear, suddenly, to tease her, asking if she was performing some kind of ritual.

As she indulged in a moment of wistful recollection, Yoonwoo’s voice cut through her thoughts, posing another question.

“So, are you going to become an accountant?”

“Mmm… No.”

She had begun preparing for the CPA, the accountant qualification exam, primarily because of her father. However, it wasn’t a field that held much interest for her. Her brief foray into exam preparation had merely been to side with her father.

Yeon-chae’s father was an accountant, and her mother a lawyer, and between them, with Yeon-chae caught in the middle, there was a subtle power struggle. Even after their divorce, they continued their silent battle over whom Yeon-chae resembled more or in which field she possessed greater talent. Yeon-chae, who had declared her intention to prepare for the CPA exam at the start of her freshman year, had been slightly irked when her mother found a new boyfriend.

“Then what will you do?” Yoonwoo asked, blinking his eyes.

Yeon-chae pondered for a moment. After meeting Yoonwoo, her feelings towards her mother had largely softened, leading her to believe that both she and her mother deserved to find their own happiness. Seizing the opportunity, her mother would often ask in a subtle tone, ‘Why don’t you consider law school?’

Still undecided, Yeon-chae turned the question back to Yoonwoo, “What about you?” Yoonwoo furrowed his small face, grunting in thought.

“I’m not sure. I’m just planning to go to whatever company accepts me.”

Yoonwoo stated that he wasn’t particularly interested in certification exams or specialized graduate schools like law school.

“I want to stop studying and start earning money quickly.”

Recalling Yoonwoo’s front door from his childhood, adorned with a yellow eviction notice, Yeon-chae quietly lowered her gaze. At the time, she hadn’t understood its significance.

When they had visited Tongyeong recently, Yoonwoo had revealed during a late-night conversation that his father’s business had gone bankrupt during his childhood. He and his siblings had grown up at their aunt’s house in Seoul, while their parents had, in a sense, fled to Tongyeong and worked in a factory for many years. Although their circumstances had improved now, the values he had formed during that period seemed largely unchanged.

“I noticed my brother gets paid a lot at his securities firm.”

“Are you planning to prepare for a securities firm?”

“I’m thinking about it. There’s that stock investment club, right? I might join it. But would they accept a senior? It’s already the second semester.”

The stock investment clubroom was located in the basement of Building 58. Yeon-chae had won several mock investment competitions hosted by securities firms, making it a club whose president, Yoon Jung-joo, had desperately tried to recruit her. Yeon-chae’s mind raced.

“I was actually thinking of joining that club myself. Shall we go together?” she calmly ventured. It was a statement that would have utterly astounded Yoon Jung-joo, who had been rejected by Yeon-chae at least fifteen times while trying to persuade her to join.