at shinhwa university, two students dominate their respective circles.
san, a popular and talented computer engineering major known for his chivalry and skill, and wooyoung, the arts student and outgoing gossip enthusiast who has his finger on the p...
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now that wooyoung had found a new partner in his mission to uncover the gossip queen's identity, he should have felt a range of emotions.
hopefulness, a sudden surge in his desire to finally expose the elusive online entity (an urge that would soon die down once he realised for the umpteenth time how daunting this task truly was), and productivity, a direct result of that fleeting surge.
it was wednesday morning, 9 a.m., and wooyoung found himself in the lecture theatre, parked at his usual spot on the very last bench, like a king surveying his kingdom—if his kingdom consisted of the back of a lot of heads and a painfully slow wi-fi connection. in front of him, his laptop was open on the desk.
beside it stood his black water bottle, adorned with a giant sticker of his own face—a constant reminder of how handsome he was, a small comfort during hard times. he might be suffering, but at least he usually looked good while doing it.
the world might be falling apart, but at least he had a great jawline.
this time, he wasn't admiring his reflection on the bottle. his attention was fully absorbed by his laptop screen. his wired earphones, connected to the device, were tucked into his ears. to anyone else in the lecture hall, he looked like a model student, fiercely concentrating on whatever was on his screen. his eyes were unwavering, his jaw tensing and relaxing as if he was mentally bench-pressing a thousand pounds of knowledge.
but wooyoung, who should have been combing through the latest entries from the gossip queen as he'd promised himself, was doing anything but being productive.
his new partner in this anti-gossip mission, park jina, slid into the empty seat next to him. wooyoung had completely forgotten that she was also in this contemporary arts class—was she usually this late? no wonder he'd never noticed her before. then again, he was often too lost in his own world to notice anyone else.
even now, wooyoung was too engrossed in his "work" to notice jina's presence. the girl leaned closer, whispering something to him, but wooyoung, with his volume cranked all the way up, heard nothing except...
SMACK!
jina's hand came down hard on the bench chair, jolting wooyoung out of his focused trance.
his eyes widened in shock, as if he'd just been unjustly slapped by the universe itself. he hastily paused the video on his laptop, yanking out one earphone as he turned to her.
"what did i ever do to you?!" he whisper-yelled, trying to keep it down despite the fact that jina's chair-slapping had already caught the attention of half the room.
jina dismissed his concerns with a wave of her hand, gesturing to his laptop with a tilt of her chin before meeting his gaze. "what are you doing?"
wooyoung looked at the laptop screen, then back at her. "what does it look like?"
