.
I asked hesitantly, “Oppa, do you know that story? You know the recent rumors about…”
“Huh?”
“… The nationwide Number 1.”
Yeo Dan oppa, who frowned for a moment, tossed a question with a strange look on his face.
“Are you talking about the Number 1 chef in a nationwide competition?”
“Um, sorry for asking, bro,” I replied with a calm look as possible.
I realized that if the nationwide ranking thing was a story about land animals, Yeo Dan oppa belonged to a group of whales. No, actually, most of the problems in this world were irrelevant to him since he always had been leading a free and quiet life as if he was floating in the ocean.
I turned my head to glance at Yeo Dan oppa’s profile face. He was walking down the hill beside me. The fall of the second year in high school… Yeo Dan oppa only had about a year and a few months until the College Scholastic Ability Test, but earlier, he told me apathetically that he skipped the after school self-studying session and was going back home.
‘I should live this way since we only live once…’ Harboring an impossible wish, I bent my steps. Anyway, I felt great to encounter Yeo Dan oppa after a long time.
The after school self-studying session in his school was until eleven-thirty at night, so it was already midnight when he came back home; thus, I could hardly encounter him during the weekdays. The only chance for me to see his face was during family dinner at the weekend, but once he turned second grade in high school, our parents felt sorry to call him for dinner.
However, whether it had been a long time to see him again or not, our conversation wasn’t working well.
“Yeo Dan oppa, how’s studying these days?”
“Good.”
“Only a year left until the college exam, right? Aren’t your feeling too pressured?”
“Not me.”
“Uh… yeah… anything going on?”
“…”
Instead of a conversation between a girl and a boy in the same age bracket, our dialog sounded like a talkative old lady, who was interested in others, talking unilaterally to a brusque young man. However, his face suddenly changed when I flung that meaningless question without any expectations.
He soon switched his gaze to somewhere else. Eh? I opened my eyes wide, thinking, ‘What’s the matter?’
While we were having that kind of conversation, we approached the elevator before I even knew. As I stretched out my hand to press the elevator button, he took his backpack forward and began to find something inside. He then asked me, “You still like chocolate milk, right?”
“Excuse me?”
Instead of a suggestion, it sounded like a request of ‘take this and please be quiet.’
That was when I squinted my eyes while wondering what was going on. There was something falling under the chocolate milk, which he took out from his bag unusually in a hurry. I directed my eyes on the milk in his hand then diverted them onto the ground.
There was a pink envelope dropped in front of the elevator door. It didn’t look like a report card at all.
“…”
A heavy silence hung between us.
I hesitated for a moment but soon bent myself forward to pick up the letter and handed it back to him. This time, of course, I didn’t say any bullshit like ‘I picked this up on the way over.’ He then gave me the chocolate milk, which felt like a barter scene in the New Stone Age.
During the whole time in the elevator to go up to our floor, there was a suffocating silence as if the world had ended. When I, at last, heard the bell ring sound of the arrival on our floor, Yeo Dan oppa’s mouth also opened together.
“It’s not what you think.”
I smiled soullessly and asked him politely, “What was I thinking, oppa?”
“Oh…”
“I didn’t see anything at all.”
“I see…”
Once we arrived in front of my house, we just left each other without bidding farewell. It seemed like he was trying to say something to me, but I missed it and just closed the door.
As soon as I stepped inside, I heard a thunder-like noise and trembled in bewilderment. That was when I turned around to look back while touching my shoulders.
‘I think the door just slammed shut because of the wind. Yeo Dan oppa, you won’t get me wrong, right?’ I soon shook my head to remove that thought.
‘There isn’t any time to be concerned about Yeo Dan oppa! I have my own problems now!’
No one was after me, but I took off my shoes in haste and dashed into my room. Once I shut the door and threw myself onto the bed, I was able to shriek, “URGH! What the hell!?”
Ban Hwee Hyul’s messy, long black hair and his red eyes, which I saw in the parking lot, flashed through my mind so vividly.
‘He said he’ll memorize me… why… for what reason?!’ At last, I imagined Ban Hwee Hyul giving off that nerdy look while taking off his thick glasses and getting some haircut. Flaunting his handsome appearance, Ban Hwee Hyul would suddenly barge into our classroom. Although he was wearing our school uniform, everyone in our class would whisper, ‘Who is he? Did he transfer to our school?’ with their eyes wide open. Meanwhile, Ban Hwee Hyul would show his wallet and yell at me, ‘Hey, how dare you say that you’ve picked this on the way over?’
“…”
No, my imagination was going too far; however, when recalling the things that happened between Ban Hwee Hyul and me today, no conversation would take place other than that.
Holding my pillow, I rolled on the bed and murmured, ‘Okay, let’s just put this thing aside.’ That was when I came up with the happening that occurred in front of the elevator earlier.
The pink envelope that fell under the chocolate milk to the ground… It even had a heart-shaped sticker on it. Unless his mischievous friends were playing around, what the letter meant was obvious.
A love letter.
He didn’t carry many things in his backpack––yes, that was true since he didn’t even carry textbooks to school––so it wasn’t so surprising that he had a love letter in his bag.
If someone asked who was the most popular high school student in this neighborhood, people outside this place or strangers would point out Eun Jiho or Yoo Chun Young.
Yoo Chun Young was a public figure, who appeared even in TV programs; Eun Jiho, in another sense, took a position that was somehow more famous and overwhelming than a public figure.
However, those who grew up in this neighborhood from long ago like me, who had been living here since the time that I couldn’t even remember, would only choose Ban Yeo Dan as the hottest high school guy.
What else should I need to say when he was Miss Perfect, Ban Yeo Ryung’s only brother?!
He received so many love letters that one could even imagine. There were even rumors about his school locker that his school had changed all the lockers into metal ones since his locker door got destroyed several times due to too many letters filling it inside. (That would probably be true.)
However, Yeo Dan oppa never ever brought those letters home. He read and threw them away at the spot. The most practical reason people had guessed was that the letters were too many to even store them at his house.
That was also true too. It wasn’t only Yeo Dan oppa who received that many letters in his house.
If he and his sister, Yeo Ryung, stored all their love letters at home, this apartment would have exploded in the end, and the whole building should have been changed into a metal construction.
Putting aside the spatial issue, another reason why he didn’t bring the letters home was that he hated to put other people’s things in the space, where he shared with Yeo Ryung.
“…”
I wasn’t joking. That unbelievable sister complex, which we could only encounter in something like novels, had enabled such a thing.
Having some mixed feelings, I rolled on my bed again then quickly lifted myself. I severely murmured, “I should better tell Yeo Ryung, right…?”
So far, Yeo Ryung and I, the two of us were the only girls in Yeo Dan oppa’s world.
