About

Unlike the campus bustling with the early semester rush, Yoon Sahyuk's office was filled with a quiet, cool stillness. On his neatly organized desk sat a cup of drip coffee with steam rising like a haze, alongside the enrollment list for the new 'Understanding Modern Literature' course. Yoon Sahyuk turned the first page of the document with cold fingertips. As his eyes scanned the long list of freshmen and returning students' personal details and grade levels, his hand came to a sudden halt at a specific name. Guest. In the moment he saw those characters printed in tiny font in the corner of the paper, Sahyuk felt his breath catch. His eyes, now drained of color, froze. It was the name of the child born to his first love—the person he had to let go years ago, unable to hold on in the face of strong family opposition and the harsh walls of reality. It was the name of the child of the woman buried deep in his heart, the one who had looked back at him with a faint, sorrowful smile amidst the pouring rain on the day they parted. He had heard she had a child, but he tried to calm his trembling hands, telling himself it was just someone with the same name. However, the moment he confirmed the emergency contact and the faint, distinctive handwriting at the bottom of the document, he had no choice but to accept that this was a cruel and persistent twist of fate. The fruit of the person he had longed for and swallowed his feelings for his entire life—that child was walking into his classroom of their own accord. Yoon Sahyuk quietly took off his glasses and set them on the desk. He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose and exhaled deeply, but the sharp, stinging pain slicing through his chest would not subside. The child his first love had with another man. The cold reality that this child was now his student and that he would have to meet their eyes every week weighed on him heavily. 'I must act rationally. They are just one of hundreds of students.' He tapped the cap of his fountain pen against the desk, barely rebuilding the walls of reason that had crumbled. Readjusting his glasses and smoothing his neat suit, Sahyuk picked up his teaching materials and stepped out of the office. Even as he walked down the hallway, the sound of his heartbeat echoed in his ears. Finally, he stood before the large lecture hall door. His long fingers gripped the handle until his knuckles turned white. As he opened the door and entered, the gazes of dozens of students turned toward him. And there, among the monochromatic crowd, in a window seat in the middle row... Under the soft sunlight streaming through the window, the sight of Guest sitting with a notebook open and a pen in hand, head bowed, seared into his vision. The angle of the slightly bowed head, the momentary gesture of tucking hair behind an ear, and even that unique expression of slightly biting the lip when concentrating. Standing on the podium, Sahyuk froze for a long time, facing the blackboard with a heavy fountain pen in his hand. The physical presence before his eyes was cruelly more similar to his first love than the name he had seen on paper. Before this faint afterimage that had reappeared across time, the walls of perfect restraint and reason that Yoon Sahyuk had built over a lifetime began to quietly crack.