Chapter 10.4

Sangwoo silently nodded. When he was a corporal, a bee that had gotten into the unit had caused trouble, and he remembered his experience of wearing CBR protective gear and going to the beehive himself. Jaeyoung tapped his finger near his heart.

“That’s the only way of putting your lust to rest. Don’t avoid it and don’t even ignore it. Just see it through to the end with me.  Try to feel what it is that you are feeling to your heart’s content. And then the feelings that are torturing you might disappear.”

‘He’s convincing. And we’d also be able to continue the project.’

If it was according to Sangwoo’s principles, refusing such a thing would be correct. Even on the Internet, the dominating opinion was that “sex partners,” who meet to relieve sexual desire, is an unethical form of relationship. No matter how overcome by sexual urges one is, they should be defeated as a civilized human, but hearing Jaeyoung’s argument, it unexpectedly made sense.

Above all, sweat was rising from his hand. He felt greedy, wanting to continue seeing, touching, lips touching, and doing more. Ignoring it didn’t seem like it would make it disappear easily.

Was it true? If he wanted to deal with his sexual desire, wouldn’t he have to compromise? Unfortunately, there were insufficient clues to make a judgment because it was something that had never concerned him before.

“For now, let go of this.”

Sangwoo managed to push Jaeyoung away. He moved away when pulled out his hand and scooted his butt back. Even if it was a suggestion, Sangwoo wasn’t the type to make important decisions on the spur of the moment. He picked up his cap and then said, “Give me time to review the proposal.”

“Okay. How much time?”

“Two weeks.”

“Two weeks? You know I don’t have that much time, right?”

“I know. My midterms are next week, so if you look at the schedule, no meeting is scheduled for two weeks. In the meantime, I’ll consider your suggestion, sunbae. You can proceed with the graphic work as scheduled, and please compress the work and upload it to the FTP by Friday, April 26th.”

“Stingy bastard.”

After finishing what he had to say, Sangwoo got up from his seat. The hand that Jaeyoung had clutched was still numb. He walked past Jaeyoung, but he called his name.

“Chu Sangwoo.”

“What?”

“Why are you being so difficult?”

“I have no idea what you’re trying to say. See you at the next meeting.”

“The meeting is absurd.”

Sangwoo walked toward the door feeling the adrenaline running through his blood vessels.

return 0;

The exam period wasn’t any different than usual for Sangwoo. Since he had reviewed the contents of his classes every day, he just increased the amount he studied a little bit during the exam period. He had to work harder this semester, because he had barely listened during class in the beginning. Fortunately there was nothing too difficult, so he was able to catch up little by little after the second week when Jaeyoung had dropped out from all his classes. Perhaps it was because they didn’t have any meetings, but he had so much spare time now, that he only had to work on transferring the resources he had completed to the engine.

On Wednesday, Ryu Jihye suggested studying together on the weekend. Sangwoo, who considered ‘Theory of Popular Culture and Culture’ a weak point, agreed and looked forward to her help. As it was exam period, on the Saturday he didn’t have his part-time job, he met up with her at a designated café. Time flew as they checked how much they understood by explaining the theories and supplementing the weaker parts.

The exam week passed chaotically. Although most of the exams were in written form, there were oral exams such as in Chinese, and there were subjects in which he got homework in lieu of an exam. There wasn’t any subject where a problem was very difficult. Even when he had taken seven or eight subjects, he had always been the top student of his department, so what was difficult about five subjects?

“Wasn’t it a bit difficult?” Jihye said as she came out after finishing the ‘Theory of Popular Culture and Culture’ exam.

“Especially question 15. Isn’t it too useless that we have to know everything, even the origin of the theory on a city-wide basis in order to solve the problem? I think he made it so that we would be wrong.”

“I found question 22 difficult.”

“Oh, really? Was it the descriptive type where postmodernism was criticized when Adorno’s view came to be? When we checked last time, you accurately knew about the two ideas, so why was it difficult?”

They meticulously reviewed the exam questions while eating at the restaurant. Like any student who studied hard, Jihye was very greedy about the results.

“From what I hear, I think you did way better than me, oppa. Except for the possibility of losing points on question 22, you didn’t seem to get anything wrong?”

“Perhaps.”

“What’s that? After listening to my explanations, you’re the only one who did well? That’s too much, really.”

“I can’t intentionally fail the problems of the test just because I got your help.”