Chapter 12: The Heartbeat Outside the Ribs

The boy’s calm voice felt scratchy against my nerves.

While I had been twisting my insides into a knot, he had been walking out the school gates just to buy ointment. The image of him traversing the same path I had walked up this morning was vivid. So that’s why he used up the whole lunch break, I thought.

The energy drained out of me.

This was ridiculous. I wasn’t a child, yet I had snapped at him out of petty pride, only to end up looking like a fool.

“Aren’t you going to apply it for me?”

Song Yun Jae looked up at me as I stared blankly at the tube in my hand. He had already unbuttoned his cardigan.

Even without moving, the extra tube of ointment in my own pocket felt like it was poking my thigh. I tossed the one he gave me back to him. He caught it deftly in mid-air, his eyes widening into circles.

“If you’re breaking out in cold sweats, shouldn’t you be taking medicine instead of ointment?”

That was the reason I had woken him up, after all. Though it was Yun Jae himself who had insisted on going to the roof, claiming he wasn’t sick, seeing him slumped over in such an uncharacteristic deep sleep made it clear his condition was poor.

But he just wore an indifferent expression and plopped himself down on the dusty rooftop stairs.

“Hey, the dust.”

“I’m not sweating because I’m sick.”

“What?”

“I’m hot.”

I scowled, thinking I’d misheard him, but the corners of his mouth curled up into a grin. It was the first time I’d seen that smile in a day.

“I’m hot. I’m just drained because of the heat, so I was lounging.”

“…F*ck.”

I’d been played. It wasn’t even funny.

The fact that I’d been internally tense—thinking he was sick again or that he’d been beaten so badly his fever was returning—felt like a pathetic waste of energy. Perhaps because of the lack of sleep, it felt like I’d been barking up the wrong tree all day. My head, which I thought was clearing, felt dizzy again.

Hot? I’d touched him a few times and his body temperature always felt quite low, so I assumed he didn’t feel the heat much.

The way he said it so casually made my stomach turn.

“Why are you swearing just because I’m hot? You’re funny.”

“……Whatever. You want the ointment or not?”

I roughly brushed back my bangs and leaned against the railing, waiting for his answer. The boy, looking up at me blankly, began to pull his arms out of the cardigan. As I watched his back, imagining the bruises still hidden by his shirt, my eyes drifted to his hair—which, unlike other boys’, never looked disheveled.

It was the first time I’d looked down at him while he was sitting on the stairs; his rounded head felt strangely unfamiliar.

“Let’s just go to the snack bar today.”

“…What, so suddenly?”

“It’s your treat.”

“What are you even talking about?”

He was stripping off his cardigan only to ask to go to the snack bar. He really had a million ways to catch a person off guard. As soon as I finished applying the medicine, he stood up without hesitation and suddenly poked his face close to mine. I backed away as much as he approached.

His face grew strangely bright.

“You feel bad for me, don’t you?”

“…….”

“So, let’s empty your wallet today. Stop thinking about emptying mine all the time.”

“…Hey, you sh*t.”

Song Yun Jae pulled his cardigan back on and quickly ran down the stairs. I stared at his retreating head for a moment before following him as if possessed.

“Are you sick?”

“The sick one would be you.”

“I told you, I’m not. If I were sick, I couldn’t eat this.”

The menu he first bought for me was, as expected, a perfect reflection of his tastes: tuna-mayo triangular kimbap, a sausage, and chocolate milk. Since he seemed to be waiting for me to pick something, I just paid for what was in his arms. He looked at me with questioning eyes and spent the entire time we sat on the stone steps outside pelting me with questions while he ate his sausage.

Why aren’t you eating? Are you out of money? Did you eat lunch? Did you skip lunch too? Have some bread at least. This new cream bread is delicious…

I didn’t think he was the type to talk this much. His rambling, longer than any of the angry words he’d ever spat at me, felt so foreign that I just sat there in a daze.

His calm voice, devoid of much inflection, continued without pause. The more he spoke, the more I withheld my words. I needed time to digest his chatter.

“Since we already ditched, you want to go outside?”

“You are sick.”

“It’s my first time skipping, but I don’t feel as guilty as I thought I would.”

“For a model student, you’ve got some nerve.”

He rolled his eyes at me. He had finished the sausage and was spinning the empty wooden skewer around his finger. Most kids would have tossed it into the flower bed or a drain, but he held onto it tightly.

“If you’re done eating, go back up.”

“For an unfaithful student, why are you being so strict?”

“How am I unfaithful?”

“More unfaithful than me, at least.”

He slowly stood up. I thought he was going back to class, but he headed toward the main gate instead of the central entrance.

“What’s wrong with you all of a sudden?”

“What?”

“I’m asking what’s gotten into a kid who’s never skipped a day in his life.”

“…Hmm, just because?”

He started walking toward the gate again. I debated whether I should actually follow him, but after a few steps, I caught up.

The sky was blue without a single cloud. It was so clear it was hard to believe the monsoon season was predicted for the start of summer. It was a day that would have been perfectly refreshing if not for the unusually piercing sunlight. The beads of sweat on the back of his neck came to mind. Thinking of him wearing that cardigan despite the heat, I thought it would be better to return to the classroom.

Just as I was about to call him, he spun around, grabbed my arm, and pulled me into a flower bed. It happened in an instant.

“Hey, what the—”

“Shh.”

The boy, who was a full head shorter than me, pinned me against the wall. Our bodies pressed together without a gap. The breath I sharply inhaled was thick with his scent.

He was too close.

“…….”

“…….”

We were in the corner of a building wall, behind a tree thick with leaves. He turned his head to peek toward the gate. His neck was right in front of my face. Veins were visible beneath his fair skin. Because he had turned his head, his neckline was revealed so vividly. It was a neckline I saw every day while applying ointment, but… strangely, it felt new.

I tensed my muscles to push him away consciously, but he pressed his body even closer. Then, in a hushed, bated voice, he whispered, his eyes still fixed on the gate.

“The dean of students is out. If we get caught, it’s demerits. Ah, sh*t.”

A guy who’s scared of demerits shouldn’t be skipping school. I inhaled to scold him, but I felt a strange vibration in my solar plexus. It was a vibration coming from the body pressed against mine. His rapid heartbeat was being transmitted directly through my chest.

An inexplicable itchiness arose. It was only then that I pushed his shoulders away.

“Hey, what’s going on there?!”

Song Yun Jae looked up at me from a distance with wide, surprised eyes. Even though I was away from him, the vibration remained in my chest.

I was flustered.

The dean ended up just tapping our heads once with a rolled-up workbook.

‘Have you smart kids caught heatstroke already? Why are you crawling out here?’

‘…We’re sorry.’

‘If I catch you again, today’s punishment doubles. Got it?’

‘Yes. Thank you, sir.’

Song Yun Jae expressed his regret first with his characteristic clean-cut expression. The dean glanced at my face and waved his workbook, telling us to get going.

Song Yun Jae turned around first, glancing back at me. Staring at his rounded back, I had no choice but to meet his eyes.

‘You jerk.’

His lips moved without a sound. A sulky expression was the finishing touch.

I followed him back to the classroom, walking quite fast. Fortunately, it was break time. After that, he didn’t speak to me until the end of night self-study. The most he did was give me a sharp glare whenever I entered his line of sight. Even after self-study ended, for some reason, he left the classroom before me. And just like I used to do to him, he glanced back at me and flicked the lights off.

I stood alone in the pitch-black classroom. I stayed there until the sound of his footsteps fading down the stairs completely disappeared.

All afternoon, I hadn’t had the chance to get angry back at him or find his irritability annoying. While he spent the rest of the day nursing a grudge, I had to spend it trying to erase the sensation from that moment our bodies touched.

The white cardigan that smelled sweet, his rounded head, and the thin neckline following it. Even just thinking that far created a massive disconnect from the musty classroom where I’d been trapped until sunset. He said he was hot, but the sensation of that moment—which wasn’t hot or sticky at all—came back to me again.

“…F*ck.”

Lying on my back staring at the ceiling, I whipped over to my side. My chest still felt itchy. His thumping, rapid heartbeat was vivid.

“…Does he have his heart attached to the outside of his ribs? What’s his problem?”

It was a mess.

I wondered vaguely if what I was feeling was unpleasantness, but self-mockery followed. I knew it wasn’t unpleasantness. I was tossing and turning irritably when I rolled over to the other side.

“Ah, sh*t.”

The ointment case I’d kept in my pocket poked my thigh. It was because I’d thrown my bag aside and collapsed onto the bed the moment I got home.

Even this was a fragment that made me think of him.