Yoonhee wakes up slowly from her dream, although she can’t really call it a dream since she hardly slept all night long. She feels inmobilized between two bodies, and all night long she was in full alert of all their movements. Sunjoon moved very little, but Jaeshin moved all night long…probably because of his injury.
Suddenly, she could hear drums from outside their building. Someone is beating the drums. “Wake up! Wake up!” the sooboks yelled.
“Did you sleep well?” Sunjoon asks. “I thought maybe you might not be comfortable in a new environment” he says. She slides away from him. She may be dressed as a man, but she doesn’t want him to see her “just woke up” face. “Yes, I slept well.”
“You weren’t cold?”
“No, I was fine.”
Jaeshin moves from one side to the other, angry over the sounds of the drums and covers his head with the blanket. In a rough voice, he yells: “How dare they beat the drums before I wake up?”
The sound of the drums are heard again. The soobok beats it three times and yells: “It’s time to wash up.”
Yoonhee carefully asks Jaeshin: “U…um, aren’t you going to wash up?”
“Geesh, just take the sesutdae* (a wash basin) and get out!
Even though he’s still half-sleep, he’s still scary. Sunjoon laughs and takes his sesutdae. He steps outside and the soobok is there to pour hot water in his sesutdae. Yoonhee is folding the mat and blankets when Sunjoon returns with the kettle of water. He begins to wash his face and she stares at him from the back. He removes his Mangun. After washing his face, he lifts up his legs to wash his feet. She can see that his feet are big and the hairs on his legs are so light that from a distance it looks like he doesn’t have any. She squats down and hides her feet with her hands. There’s a big difference. Her feet are much smaller while his are very masculine.
When he is finished, he places the bowl with the dirty water outside and the soobok come rapidly to take it away. Yoonhee is ashamed that she is still wearing her pajamas. She takes her clothes and goes to a corner near the door, her back to the rest of the room and very carefully begins to wash her face and other parts of her body. She is so concentrated in what she’s doing that she doesn’t see Sunjoon behind her.
When she is finished and turns around, her legs fail her and she falls to the floor. Sunjoon is completely nude! With her eyes wide open, she absorbs everything that she sees: his wide shoulders, his arms, his back, his waist and his “thing” which makes her face turn red. Inside her head she repeats the image over and over. Sunjoon sees that she is completely stunned, with her eyes fixed on him.
“At least you should have averted your eyes. How can you keep staring at me like that?”
She tries to tell him that her body isn’t responding to her commands, but she can’t speak. All she can do is get redder. Worried by her expression, he turns toward her. She can’t move, she can’t scream, and worse of all, she can’t avert her eyes. Seeing his nude chest and only makes her blush more. She sees his “thing” which last night casually brushed against her. Her head is a complete chaos and she can’t breathe. He puts on his undershorts and then comes toward her. Although she can no longer see “it”, she sees the line of hair on his lower stomach which leads to…
Sunjoon touches her head and feels her face burn. He’s worried that she may have gotten sick. But the worse thing for her, is that now she is seeing everything up close.
“It looks like you are running a fever. Your face is very red and … you are sweating!”
Yoonhee contains herself from telling him it is all his fault. She turns away and buries her head in her arms.
“I’ll be okay if I stay like this for a while. In the meantime, just get dressed.”
“Are you sure you’re okay? Should I call someone from the infirmary?”
“N…no! Just get dressed.
Sunjoon dresses quickly. Yoonhee tries to calm down. How many times will she have to see a naked man in this place? And how to put up with it? How long before she goes crazy? She thinks to herself that it won’t be possible, unless she starts seeing herself as a man. After Sunjoon is complete dressed, he returns to Yoonhee’s side, but she yells that everything is fine. Sunjoon observes her closely to be sure she is all right, and he notices how smooth her skin is. Her face is to beautiful to be a man. He doesn’t want to insult her by telling her she looks like a woman, so he keeps his thoughts to himself. His hands accidentally caress her sangtoo when he gets up to put up his hair.
An uncomfortable silence engulfs them. Now they are completely dressed but, fortunately, the silence is broken by the sound of the sooboks calling all the students to breakfast.
