Semantic Error

Chapter 3.2

“Or wait until I change my mind. I’m very fickle, you know.”

“I just thought you were a piece of trash, but you’re a huge psycho.”

“I hear that a lot.”

There seemed to be an invisible spark between the two. Even if he didn’t have to try, there was mockery in Sangwoo’s words.

“You think I’m a bastard pushover, but you’re completely mistaken. I’m not scared of anything, and I’ve been able to fight off all the nut jobs, trash, and attention whores. What sunbae is doing is nothing to me.”

Bluffing on purpose, Jaeyoung joyfully laughed.

“Hearing that makes me rage even more.”

“Go ahead and try, psycho sunbaenim.”

“Yeah, I don’t have anything to do anyway, thanks to you, nut job hoobaenim.”

Sangwoo aggressively turned his back and approached the bicycle he had locked in front of the library. Just in case, he angled his back so that Jaeyoung could not peek, unlocked it, and jumped on his bike.

“I’m sure the air wouldn’t be taken out”.

If he had touched the bicycle, there would be an excuse to report him to the police immediately. However, contrary to his  expectations, the bicycle was unscathed. Sangwoo simply returned home earlier than usual.

He locked his bike in front of his studio apartment and went up to the fourth floor. His mind and body relaxed as he unlocked the door. Sangwoo rested for a while, lying on the bed without changing his clothes.

‘What a bolt out of the blue.

He had suffered all day. He couldn’t concentrate in class. The food he had for lunch gave him indigestion, his walk was ruined, and he couldn’t study in the library. Unlike what he’d told Jaeyoung, Sangwoo had no confidence. He was different from the bad guys he had come across up until now, this Jang Jaeyoung person. Jaeyoung was so cunningly meticulous that he was unlikely to resort to illegal activities. Reporting illegal activities was the only way Sangwoo knew how to fight back.

“There’s only one solution.”

The only way would be to endure it stoically and let Jaeyoung exhaust himself. No matter how far he goes in his craziness and no matter how hard he crams, Jang Jaeyoung will be unable to absorb and endure difficult classes like “Engineering Mathematics 2.” Anyhow, at most, he will last only until the two-week drop period for classes.

Two weeks. It may be agonizing, but it’s not a long period of time over a semester. If he keeps his head down and endures, a good day will come.

‘Still, it’s annoying.’

He barely had any friends, but one would probably not be able to relate to being stressed out from the mere reason that someone took your seat and sat next to you. Sangwoo slept very poorly that night.

return 0;

The next day was the long-awaited second day of the new semester.

Usually, he got eight hours of high-quality sleep, but he woke up once in the middle of the night, because he had a nightmare and only slept for four hours. He was thus in a terrible condition. A red padded jacket appeared in his dream. As it was unzipped, a sharp tooth appeared and tried to pierce his skin. He felt ridiculous after waking up, but he ran away in his dream, because he was scared.

‘Let’s just hang in there for two weeks.’

Sangwoo clenched his teeth and recited a magic spell. The groundless anxiety that his stable life would collapse kept surging, so he constantly had to pull himself together. There was no alternative, because he couldn’t change the classes he had to take (because Jang Jaeyoung would follow him anyway), and he couldn’t take a leave of absence based on such an insignificant matter.

When he passed through the main gate, the electronic clock displayed 8:24. Unlike the previous day, he went to school early to secure a seat. There were barely any students on campus, because it was early. Sangwoo locked his bike in front of the library and headed to class in the engineering building.

He immediately felt despair when he opened the classroom door. This was because a leather bag was placed on the rightmost desk in the fourth row. When on earth did he come to take his seat? He ran over to inspect the bag closely, but he couldn’t tell if it was the same as the one from yesterday.

‘He can’t possibly have left it there yesterday?’

Sangwoo recollected a shocking possibility. No matter how closely he examined that person, he didn’t look diligent no matter how hard he looked . It was more likely he had left his bag behind yesterday instead of arriving early just to leave it on the seat.

Anyway, today was also a defeat. Sangwoo was forced to sit the farthest away from that seat. The heater hadn’t turned on, so the classroom was as cold as it was outside. As he sat down without removing his layers and scarf, he felt sleepy. That was also because he didn’t get enough sleep. He opened the book to preview the content of the upcoming class, but the letters kept blurring.

‘If I  doze off in class, I’ll be in trouble.’

Instead, it would be better to sleep a little before the class started. For the first time, he covered the book and used it as a pillow. As he closed his eyes while resting on his major textbooks, his consciousness quickly faded.

“…30 points consist of a homework, and the remaining 20 points consist of a final evaluation. My office and email address are on the syllabus, right? If you want to have a meeting, you can find the TA (teaching assistant) or send me an email directly. Now, let’s look at the problem.”

When Sangwoo opened his eyes again, he heard a monotonous voice. The color red filled his field of vision. He had definitely sat far enough away from that seat, but Jang Jaeyoung was right next to him with an expression full of ridicule.

Sangwoo quickly checked his wristwatch. It was 14 minutes since the class began.

Looking around, students had handouts, but only his own desk was empty. Next to him, Jaeyoung shook the A4 paper between his fingers.

‘That crazy bastard.’

Sangwoo hurriedly looked at other students, but no one had extra handouts.  He would’ve felt embarrassed to ask for the handout, since he should’ve grabbed it in the beginning of class while the professor was still talking. Sangwoo clenched his teeth and held his hand out to Jaeyoung. He spoke in a low voice.

“Give it to me, my handout.”

“Was it left here? This one’s mine.”

“You’re not going to study anyway.”

Jaeyoung’s eyes narrowed. A thin piece of paper fluttered at his fingertips. Sangwoo tried to reach out and pick it up, but he couldn’t even touch it, because Jaeyoung grabbed it back and pulled it out of his hand.

Jaeyoung folded the paper in half. Then he folded it in half again. Sangwoo impatiently watched what he was doing.

“Shouldn’t you ask politely if you want something?”

Jaeyoung looked like a devil, wearing red clothes and whispering low in a fierce manner. The handout Sangwoo needed was now in the shape of an airplane, sandwiched between Jaeyoung’s index  and middle fingers.

“Give it to me, please.”

“More desperately.”

“I beg you.”

“Fail.”

The moment the professor turned his back on the students to write on the blackboard, the paper plane drew a smooth arc in the air while escaping through the slightly opened back door.

Sangwoo rose from his seat, suppressing his anger. It was also a foolish thought that he would get anything from Jang Jaeyoung. He squeezed between the tightly packed desks and went forward to grab a printout from the stack on the professor’s desk. Just then, the professor turned around and made a cold expression.

“What is the student doing?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t get the materials, but I couldn’t tell you, because I was afraid it would interfere with the lecture.”

“It’s not because you’ve been dozing off since the first hour?”

The professor clicked his tongue in disapproval while wearing an expression that screamed “pathetic.”

“Go to the bathroom or something.”

“What?”

“Bath. Room.”

Sangwoo went out the front door with the handout without even knowing why he had to do so. He was not a student who was loved by professors for raising his hand or visiting the lab on his own initiative, but he naturally gained their trust at the end of the semester, due to his high assignment completion rate and high test scores. It was the first time he had made an impression on a professor on the very first day of class. In addition, Professor Choi was an important professor who mainly taught fourth-grade (advanced) subjects.

After entering the bathroom, Sangwoo almost screamed. His reflection in the mirror was strange. A dark mustache had been vividly inked under his nose. He hurriedly turned on the faucet and washed his face with water, but nothing changed.

‘I need to hurry and return though…’

Sangwoo lathered his hands with soap and quickly rubbed his philtrum (the vertical cleft in the middle of the upper lip). The black graffiti was erased little by little, but it was a very slow process. Sangwoo couldn’t believe that he was wasting his lecture time on such a useless thing.

‘You’ve been meticulously painted as an arts student, you son of a bitch.’

He wasted 19 minutes like that. With only five minutes remaining in the class, he thought he’d only be glared at by the professor upon returning to the classroom.

‘What was it that I did that was so wrong?’

Sangwoo suddenly felt wronged. He only told the professor the cold, hard facts about what happened in the class Jaeyong failed:  Sangwoo had done the assignment alone. Jang Jaeyoung’s failure to graduate may seem unfair to others, but it was self-inflicted. For that reason, it was too harsh for him to sit back and wait outside the classroom during class.

‘Error-like motherfucker!’

Sangwoo uttered the worst curse word he could think of. Even ‘error’ depended on the nature of the error. It could easily be fixed if it were caused by typos or formatting errors, but logical errors often appear and are not easily caught no matter how thoroughly the code is searched. Jang Jaeyoung, who unexpectedly appeared and tore down Sangwoo’s daily life, was nothing short of a semantic error.

After the class ended, the students, who had been tightly-packed like canned sardines, struggled as they pushed their way out of the classroom. Sangwoo walked back to his seat and packed his backpack. He saw red padding out the corner of his eye, but ignored it and left the classroom. Jang Jaeyoung’s goal was to make Sangwoo angry. He didn’t want to make him triumphant by showing him the expression on his face.

He thought that it would be better to not attend this class rather than sit in such a position. However, because it was a required class for  his major, he had no other choice but to stay far away from Jaeyoung, who had occupied the best seat.

After that, things went the same way as the previous day. After getting his tray of Korean food, Sangwoo settled in the most remote place in the restaurant, and among the many empty seats, Jaeyoung sat next to him and ate without saying a word.

Feeling indigestion, he cleaned his plate, and went to the snack shop, but of course, they didn’t have the coffee Sangwoo wanted. Because of the theater crew, even his walk was ruined.

After sitting down at his reserved seat in the library, he was exhausted. It had been only two days since the tormenting began. At this rate, how could he stand that psycho’s attacks for two weeks?

“Hitting the books again today, hoobaenim.”

He was sitting with poor posture and quietly opened a book, but Sangwoo glared at him with angry eyes. Now, just from looking at Jaeyoung’s face, Sangwoo’s seethed with anger.

“Can’t I report it somewhere?”

Charge:

– The crime of walking around in red. (Not against the law)

– The crime of occupying a seat. (Not against the law)

– The crime of sitting next to him. (Not against the law)

– The crime of shaking his leg. (Ambiguous)

– The crime of spinning his pen. (Ambiguous)

– The crime of buying up all the coffee. (Not against the law)

– The crime of filling up the trash can. (Not against the law)

– The crime of not giving the handout. (Not against the law)

– The crime of scribbling on the face. (Guilty)

– The crime of his very existence. (Not against the law)

– …….

The more he analyzed Jaeyoung’s faults, the more he himself seemed to feel shabby. The cunning villain couldn’t be accused of using abusive language or violence. It was as if  Jaeyong had gotten inside Sangwoo’s head and then had only chosen things he absolutely hated, things that wouldn’t seem like a big deal to others, to torment him.

“Bug-like bastard.”

Sangwoo glared at Jaeyoung who was reading a book and giggling. With his back fully leaning against the chair, he crossed one leg over the other and nodded vigorously. A red hat filled his field of vision, so Sangwoo felt a strong desire to hit the back of Jaeyoung’s head.

He couldn’t do anything, because he had been paying attention to Jang Jaeyoung for quite some time. But things got better after a while. His enemy, who was reading a book, yawned and began to fall asleep. Fortunately, he fell asleep quietly without snoring, grinding his teeth, or talking in his sleep.

After Jaeyoung had fallen asleep, people he presumed were his friends were giggling as they went to take pictures. At the same time, a few female students hung around and whispered, but it wasn’t that much of a distraction.

Two hours later, Sangwoo put the book and the pencil case in his bag, careful not to wake up Jaeyoung. But the moment he pulled out his chair, Jaeyoung suddenly sprang to his feet. Drinks and several packed snacks that had been left behind by people he didn’t know, dropped on the floor as he hit them with his elbow.

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Footnotes