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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the days dragged on painfully slow, each one feeling longer than the last, made worse by the absence of a particular someone.
wooyoung had no idea where things stood—whether with san, the gossip queen, or anyone else for that matter. he just knew that eventually, he found himself back in the familiar comfort of his home.
it was sunday, 9 in the morning, and as per tradition on lazy weekends like this one, wooyoung sat at the dining room table with his older sister, yi-seul. both of them were tasked with cutting vegetables to assist their mother in the kitchen. yi-seul took on the tomatoes, while wooyoung found himself stuck with the onions, something he usually avoided like the plague. but today, he'd agreed to it.
maybe the onion-induced tears would provide him with some emotional relief, as he really wasn't sure how to react to everything that had happened in the past few days.
maybe a week-long holiday was a blessing in disguise, because all wooyoung needed was a big, long break. a break from everyone he knew, everyone he surrounded himself with, the lecture halls that dragged him out of bed at unholy hours, and the cafeteria food that, despite being bland, somehow had more life than he did on most days.
but most importantly, he needed a break from san.
san was, to put it mildly, driving wooyoung to the edge of his sanity. and to think, the worst thing that could've happened that week was supposed to be that ridiculous gossip queen post!
thankfully, wooyoung couldn't be bothered by the speculation surrounding his dating life. and it was a relief that jina had long given up on caring about her own reputation, because instead of whining to wooyoung about her criminal record being mentioned yet again, she was more irritated that gossip queen had the audacity to pair her with him of all people.
meanwhile, the end of the semester was creeping up faster than wooyoung could blink, and despite all his desperate efforts, he'd made absolutely no progress with this whole gossip queen nonsense. none. zilch. maybe yoona had forgotten a name from her list of people san had rejected. maybe wooyoung was missing something blindingly obvious, staring him right in the face. he wouldn't be surprised at this point! or maybe he was focusing way too much on the weirdest, vaguest leads like a detective from one of those crime dramas who finds a single stray hair and suddenly thinks he's cracked the case, only to hit yet another dead end.
these were all problems on their own, stacking up one by one, higher and higher, until they were almost unbearable. and like the final cherry on top of an already disastrous cake—there was choi san. the single, biggest reason for wooyoung's misery—at least, that's what it felt like right now.
wooyoung sighed, half-heartedly slicing through the onions, each slice more irregularly cut and thicker than the previous. the onion enzymes were starting to do their work on his watering eyes, and he sniffled, controlling the urge to rub his eyes and make the sting worse.
