Chapter 1: The Caprice of June

I unbuttoned two of the top buttons that had been neatly fastened.

If I had just remembered my cigarettes, I wouldn’t have had to come back to the classroom.

Though I was trying to head home while the sun was still up, heat rose through my body just from walking across the playground.

It was June; summer was right around the corner.

The kids who were sensitive to the early heat had been roaming the campus since the start of June, wearing only the white short-sleeved t-shirts they layered under their summer uniforms.

Despite the shouts of the student dean—who cracked down in the hallways at every opportunity, demanding they dress properly—the buttons of the students’ uniform shirts were never correctly fastened.

Even the homeroom teacher’s nagging, asking how they would cope once summer actually began if they were already losing energy, was useless.

Perhaps what the kids couldn’t endure wasn’t just the mere heat of the weather, but the fever boiling inside them in the prime of their youth.

The boys were busy rushing out in groups to play, clutching a single ball while complaining about the heat.

So, just as the teacher said, it was only natural that the backs of their necks were already stained dark before summer had even arrived.

Tan, blackened skin and the pungent smell of sweat; that was the typical June scenery of an all-boys high school.

“Not going home?”

“…Uh?”

Among them, the guy wearing an ivory-colored cardigan—looking as if he alone had been preserved in white—was a truly peculiar and unusual breed.

There wasn’t really a reason to be that surprised.

I had intentionally dragged my feet down the hallway to make noise, thinking he might be startled otherwise.

And yet, his eyes flew wide open as if he truly hadn’t known I was coming.

“I asked if you’re not going. There’s no night self-study today.”

“Ah… in a little while.”

“Is that so.”

It was a June in Sodong where the acacia scent, blooming unusually late, spread everywhere.

They say those flowers are in full bloom by May, but the way they kept wafting their sweetness into June didn’t suit an all-boys high school at all.

Just like that guy.

I hadn’t exactly reacted in a way that required a response, but his silence made me feel awkward.

Despite how he’d just met my gaze with surprised eyes, he now drew a sharp line with a blank face.

That strangely got under my skin.

The thought of just grabbing my bag and leaving the classroom changed direction.

I sat down, pulling my chair out with a deliberate noise, and only then did I see a sideways glance flicker over toward me.

The movement was so small and quiet that I wondered if even a trivial shift in position needed to be that hushed, which made it all the more irritating.

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“…Me?”

“Who else is here besides you and me?”

When I added that extra remark for no reason, his eyes flew wide again over his clear face.

It was a look I hadn’t seen in the three months since we became classmates.

A hint of ‘why are you asking me that?’ flashed across his pale, vacant face.

If that puzzled expression had turned into a look of discomfort, I would have picked up my bag and left the room without hesitation.

But in his eyes, there was no discomfort, only a pure question mark.

“You’re not very good at hiding your expressions, are you.”

“…I’m not hungry.”

His reaction held just enough warmth to show how awkward it was for such a conversation to take place between people who hadn’t shared a single word until June.

Still, the way he answered every single question was quite funny, so just as I was about to pretend to be a little friendlier, the vibration went off in my uniform pants pocket.

[I heard there’s no dinner today]

The text, sent without even a question mark, seemed to capture the sender’s voice perfectly.

As soon as I put the phone back in my pocket as if I hadn’t seen it, the vibration continued.

The sound of the vibration must have been quite grating to the ear, as I saw his head tilt slightly.

Was he curious? Or was it bothering him?

He hadn’t asked anything, but I felt like I should give him an answer.

It was curiosity disguised as kindness.

“I’m hungry, so I’m leaving.”

“…….”

“I said I’m leaving.”

“Goodbye.”

What difference does it make to pull out a sense of wariness now when it wasn’t there at first? We’ve already started talking.

Ignoring the text that was clearly urging me to hurry, I slung my bag over my shoulder.

In the meantime, he never took his eyes off the bookshelf.

Thanks to that, his white nape was revealed above the stiffly ironed collar of his uniform shirt.

“…….”

“…….”

My gaze lingered for no reason.

The guy, who seemed to want me to leave this space quickly, noticed the brief silence and looked up.

I quickly grabbed the back of the chair and pushed it toward the desk, but the slight time lag actually contradicted some kind of innocence.

“Aren’t you going?”

“…See you tomorrow.”

“…Yeah.”

Leaving behind the guy who responded to my farewell even as he practically kicked me out, I escaped the classroom as if running away.

A pale, blank, and quiet stranger.

He was a person from a different world, someone I could have just lived my life ignoring, yet he was an existence my eyes kept wandering toward.

Coming out after even giving a “see you tomorrow” to someone I had no intention of becoming friends with—

It was the caprice of June.

So, it was as June approached that I began to get curious about Song Yun Jae.

Thanks to the kids who weren’t satisfied with running four or five fans at once and had opened all the windows, his hair was always a mess.

He spent his class time busy, holding down pages that flipped left and right because of the fan’s wind and alternately grabbing the curtains that tickled his shoulders.

Because of that, he didn’t even seem to notice his own hair, which was disheveled by the wind every time.

In that case, he could have just closed the window on his side, but whether he was foolish or kind, he endured his own hardship every time.

To the point where anyone watching would have their gaze stolen for a long time by the sheer frustration of it.

Not liking the way he busily fought his lonely battle, I once tied up the window curtains early in the morning.

Whether or not he knew that the piece of cloth that used to torment him along with the wind was gone, he was just staring at the blackboard with a vacuous face.

Since I didn’t have to see his unsightly appearance, I didn’t need to feel frustrated, but that didn’t mean he didn’t stand out.

After staring at his profile for a long while, I felt a slight sense of regret.

From the next morning, I untied the curtains again.

“Hyun Uk! Basketball?”

“I don’t have clothes to change into.”

“I’ll lend you some!”

“I don’t wear smelly things.”

“You’re f*cking too much. Hey, hey, don’t push, me!”

Voices calling me as they threw open the classroom front door caused my hands to move faster than my words.

Even though I waved my hand as if telling them to go away, the classroom became noisy with the crowd that followed and pushed in.

It was only in the late afternoon, as the sun began to tilt, that I could feel the cool charm of a June evening.

This was exactly the temperature that the kids who roamed the playground during dinner time liked the most.

The kids who had been rolling soccer balls while grumbling about why it was already so hot during the day were now bouncing basketballs with smiles in the cool evening breeze.

While the kids packing their basketball shoes opened the windows and warmed up their bodies, he sat still in his seat.

When the semester had just started, I wondered if he was being bullied looking at him like that, but as I kept watching, it wasn’t like he had no conversation with the other kids at all.

“Hey, Song Yun Jae. We’re short one person, you want to play?”

“No.”

“Hah, jeez, you little nerd.”

Even when night self-study began with the smell of sweat that had turned sour, he alone maintained the scent of fabric softener coming from his fluffy cardigan.

No matter how thin it was, covering the skin with clothes was the same, but it was as if he had no pores in his skin or his blood wasn’t circulating; no smell of sweat came from him.

He might be comfortable himself, but frustration arose in the eyes of those watching.

Even though all that was left was the upcoming swelering heat, he sat by the window stubbornly wearing a thin cardigan all through the transition from May to June.

Of course, he had stood out since the opening ceremony in March.

The soft, light beige cardigan he wore over his school uniform jacket from the first day of school was not a very suitable combination for a grown eighteen-year-old.

A puffer jacket if it was cold, or a zip-up hoodie if it was ambiguous. That was the standard for kids this age.

In a crowd unified by mouse-colored jackets, grays, and blacks, it wasn’t a great thing to stand out like a person of color by nicely ignoring the standard.

I was staring at the beige cardigan for a long time as if it were a Magic Eye picture, and while we were standing in a straight line in the auditorium listening to the principal’s admonition, someone tapped him on the back.

‘Song Yun, aren’t you cold?’

‘This is warm.’

‘It looks like something women wear.’

‘It’s my mom’s.’

‘Sht, should I call you a mama’s boy, or a son of a btch who steals his mom’s clothes?’

‘My mom gave it to me because she said it suits me.’

‘Then buy her one, you punk.’

So, the kids were the kind ones.

Seeing them treat him normally without thinking of pulling out or driving in the nail that stuck out, I thought.

Sodong is more of a rural town than I thought.

If that’s the atmosphere of this town, I should just live like that too.

I hated standing out as well.

I had no intention of rebelling against my father’s words, who wanted me to stay quiet and graduate quietly.

I had no resentment about moving all the way to Sodong for that.

From the start, we were in a relationship where such things were unlikely to happen.