Semantic Error - Chapter 23

Sangwoo hadn’t received a single text, yet there were over ten comments saying that they had contacted him. Sangwoo held back his irritation and copied the text and posted it again. He deleted the previous post that Jaeyoung had ruined. If he had already spread bad rumors about him around the Visual Design department, then he wouldn’t be able to find anyone, so at this point, he was thinking of trying to find a professional freelancer.

10:36

Knock, knock, knock.

Someone knocked on the door. It wasn’t a place where packages arrived, so what was going on? Sangwoo got out of bed.

Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock!

The force of the pounding on the door increased. Sangwoo didn’t know who it was, but it was clear that it was an impatient and rude person. When he was approaching the door to look through the peephole, he heard a resounding shout.

“Hey, Chu Sangwoo!”

Sangwoo stopped, hesitantly standing with one foot on the doorstep.

“I know you’re in there. Open the door.”

“…”

“Are you not gonna answer me, you motherfucker?”

Sangwoo an unexpected swear word. He quickly grasped the situation.

He hadn’t gone to class. Jang Jaeyoung had followed him to the front of his house, so he knew where he lived. His bike was locked by the bicycle rack, so he was able to guess that Sangwoo was home. The bike owner’s apartment number is written down on the bicycle rack.

With hostile eyes, Sangwoo yelled out to his opponent on the other side of the door.

“Get out of here before I report you for brawling.”

Bang!

There was a sound so loud that Sangwoo worried that the door had been broken.

“Open up.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Open the door!”

“I said I don’t want to. Why are you trying to make someone else open their door!”

There was an oppressive silence for a while. The opponent who had been acting out on the door calmed down for a bit. Sangwoo glared at the door.

“Hey, you asshole. Was asking you to go to the movies with me awful enough for you to skip class?”

Sangwoo could hear him gasp. Sangwoo’s chest rose and fell.

“You skipped a class? A bastard who would scramble to hold his seat even five minutes before the world ended?”

“Think whatever you want.”

Knock.

It was a weak sound this time. Sangwoo could tell that Jaeyoung was leaning against the door.

“I just asked you to go to the movies with me once, and things turned into nuclear waste. Are you also going to take a leave of absence from school or something?”

His mumbling seemed exactly like he was talking to himself.

“Go ahead. How about you write your reason for it like this? My fucking sunbae, who’s a dude, erratically asked me to go watch a movie with him, so I want to take the semester off.”

“Shut up!”

“Did anyone say they were going to kidnap you to confine and torture you? That they were gonna drug you and take your organs?”

“Well, it can’t be good! It’s disgusting between men…”

“What kind of ancient mindset is that? I can watch movies just fine even with men. I even went yesterday.”

“I don’t. I only watch movies with the opposite sex and on the premise of marriage. So don’t yell in front of someone else’s apartment and just get out of here!”

He heard a medley of curses through the door, followed by a sigh.

“How much time and effort have I spent on you? What does this motherfucker think about people?”

“What are you even talking about after harassing me at first?”

“Two days. I just did it for two days. And I haven’t been doing anything for the rest of the week. Shit, this is the first time I’ve done anything so pointless since I was discharged from the army. Thank you so fucking much for giving me the opportunity to do something so fruitless.”

“Do you have a personality disorder? What the hell did you do that’s so great that you even get mad at me?”

“Just forget it.”

Perhaps it was because he had enough of a fit already, but the malice in his voice had disappeared. After a brief lull, a thin sheet of paper came in through the gap between the door and the floor. It was a movie ticket with a picture of a film on it.

“Just take it and get lost. I won’t even do as much as look your way anymore.”

“Since you’re saying that, then leave right away.”

“You can get out of here yourself, you crazy bastard. And never appear before me again.”

Where is he telling someone who’s already home to go? It was like a candle telling the wind to blow it out. Sangwoo soon heard tempest-like footsteps. The rough and mechanical-sounding footsteps increasingly grew farther away, until they couldn’t be heard at some point.

‘That worked out well.’

Sangwoo was so furious at that moment that his intention of taking a leave of absence completely vanished. He changed his clothes without even washing up, so that he wouldn’t be late for his next class. Everything he had been worrying about before Jaeyoung came to find him became dim. As he had completely turned things around, Sangwoo was filled with a strong desire to finish the semester.