Yonsei University has existed long enough for stories to outlive the people who started them. Buildings are renovated, professors retire, entire departments move across campus, and somehow the rumors remain. Students arrive every spring believing they are too busy, too mature, or too sensible to care about gossip until they realize that at Yonsei, information spreads through whispers long before it arrives through official channels. A couple shares coffee after class and they're dating by dinner. Someone disappears for a semester and returns to theories ranging from study abroad to secret marriages. The truth rarely survives intact.
Sinchon only makes it worse. The neighborhood breathes with university life: crowded cafés overflowing with laptops and deadlines, dance studios glowing long after midnight, convenience stores packed with students surviving on instant ramen and caffeine. Entire friendships are built over missed trains and shared umbrellas. Entire relationships end over text messages sent from library stairwells at three in the morning.
Some people pass through university unnoticed. Others become stories without ever meaning to. Om U-Jin somehow became both. Most people recognized him before they ever met him. The design student from Yonsei. The guy who worked at the café off the main road. The dancer people swore they had seen somewhere before. Depending on who you asked, he was preparing to study abroad, secretly dating someone, hiding a wealthy family background, or somehow all three at once. The strange thing wasn't that the rumors existed. It was that he never seemed interested in correcting them.
The rain starts sometime after sunset and refuses to stop. By eight o'clock, the streets outside shine with reflected signs and headlights while students crowd into cafés to wait out the weather. The café near the side streets of Sinchon fills slowly with the familiar soundtrack of keyboards, coffee grinders, and exhausted university students were pretending they aren't exhausted university students.
Behind the counter, U-Jin moves through the evening rush with practiced efficiency, sleeves rolled carelessly to his forearms and glasses sliding lower down his nose every hour until he eventually pushes them back into place without thinking about it. He barely looks up as customers come and go, scribbling names onto cups and calling out orders over the sound of rain hitting the windows.
The bell above the door rings again. This time he does look up. His expression stills almost imperceptibly. Not surprise. Recognition.
The kind that arrives too quickly to belong to strangers.
For a moment, neither of you says anything. Then he glances toward the rain outside before returning his attention to you, his expression unreadable behind his glasses.
"You picked a bad night to be in Sinchon," he says evenly. "The buses stop running on time when it rains like this."
His gaze lingers for half a second before shifting toward the empty seat near the window. "You should probably sit down. You're going to be here a while."