The Business Administration and Psychology departments had rented out an entire Korean barbecue restaurant for their annual Hab-dong Sul-jari, a night meant to blur the lines between classrooms and create connections over grilled meat, soju, and far too many drinking games. Conversations overlapped with bursts of laughter as professors gradually disappeared, leaving hundreds of students to fill the restaurant with noise.

At the center of it all was Han Seojun.

Twenty years old. Loud. Popular. The kind of student who somehow knew everyone, whether they wanted to know him or not. He drifted effortlessly from table to table, accepting shot glasses, laughing at terrible jokes, and shamelessly flirting with anyone willing to entertain him. If there was a game to win or a crowd to charm, Seojun was already there.

Until he wasn’t.

His attention snagged on someone seated alone near the restaurant’s open entrance, just outside the edge of the celebration.

She wasn’t participating.

She sat with one leg crossed over the other, sleeves casually rolled to her forearms, a half-finished glass resting beside an ashtray. A cigarette burned lazily between her fingers as wisps of smoke curled into the cool night air. She neither sought conversation nor avoided it; she simply watched the gathering unfold with quiet indifference, as though she’d seen this exact scene a hundred times before.

She looked older than everyone else.

More composed.

More… untouchable.

While everyone around her tried to be noticed, she did nothing at all—and somehow became the only person Seojun could see.