INV 37

And she had a conscience too!

“I came to pay my dues voluntarily because student Kwon Yihyeon was captured while I was watching and filming the match. If you do not wish for this, I will delete all the data. However! If you would permit it, would it be alright to utilize this material for a Korea University promotional video?”

He had already had quite a few experiences where his face spread across social media without his knowledge because of people snapping photos at school without asking for permission.

Compared to those people, the home master was considerably polite.

Kwon Yihyeon was merely thinking that, but the home master kept bowing her head repeatedly, feeling unnecessarily intimidated by his good looks.

“If you wish, I will stake my life on pushing for this to be linked even to school promotional ambassador activities!”

So please debut! The home master barely swallowed the words that almost spilled out of her mouth.

In the eyes of the home master, who served as both the lighting director for the theater club and a member of the newspaper department, Kwon Yihyeon possessed an exceptionally special talent. No, well, looking only at appearances, he was a normally handsome human. Even to the home master who had dedicated her life to being an idol fan, he was top-tier, but that didn’t mean this person was the greatest beauty of her life. Of course, Kwon Yihyeon was at this level even with a bare face while idols would have worn makeup…

At any rate, Kwon Yihyeon didn’t fit the home master’s specific taste. The home master, who pursued ‘beautiful’ men, was generally head-over-heels for long-haired, pretty-boy-style male idols. Kwon Yihyeon was a human of the handsome lineage far removed from that. His shoulders were broad, his back was wide, his hands were large, and he was tall… If asked if he was handsome, she’d say yes, but if asked if he was her type, it was an absolute no.

Yet the moment she encountered Kwon Yihyeon at the sports festival, her gaze was strangely drawn to him. To the home master, who had entered the Business Administration department to match her grades but dreamed of being an entertainment reporter or photographer, it was an experience like destiny. Having lived a lifetime fiddling with cameras, she naturally zoomed in the lens the moment she saw Kwon Yihyeon. Love? It wasn’t anything like that. She had instinctively recognized the subject’s qualifications and talent. The specialness he possessed.

As a lighting director for the theater club who had brushed past countless aspiring actors, the home master was able to put that talent into words.

She felt pathos from Kwon Yihyeon.

Pathos originally refers to appealing to the emotions of the audience in Greek. To put it in difficult terms, it is a communicative technique used in narrative art genres such as rhetoric, literature, and theater, but in the entertainment industry where one must beguile the public, a face that touches the emotions of others just by existing is a literal cheat-code-like presence.

He was a twenty-year-old youth who laughed sociably, but was it because an unknown sorrow was felt just by him casting his eyes down slightly?

The emotional appeal was so thick it was dizzying.

‘I want to lure him into the theater club. If his appearance while playing tennis wasn’t so legendary, I would have kidnapped him.’

From the almond-like shape with eyes sharp only at the ends, to the two layers of lightly creased double eyelids above them, long and thick eyelashes, and even light-brown pupils that looked as if he were wearing lenses.

They were features that could easily look flighty if handled poorly… yet emotions strangely surged with every expression he made. She hadn’t heard that he had any history of learning acting, but somehow he seemed to know an instinctive way to stimulate the emotions of others. In a word,

‘He has an idol face, but an actor face!’

Is it possible for the two to coexist? I don’t know! I don’t know. But he’s handsome. Isn’t that enough?

“I will grant anything you wish! Please, I beg of you!”

However, Kwon Yihyeon didn’t particularly have anything he wanted from the person in front of him. Of course, he did recognize who the owner of the professional camera that had been fervently filming him was. Just in case an incident regarding portrait rights occurred, he had intended to seek out the party involved and finish it amiably. The identity of the home master he discovered that way was simple. A 3rd-year Business Administration student. However, an eccentric who was more sincere about her own hobbies than actual business studies, staying close only to the newspaper department and the theater club. If he had to add one thing, the information he naturally gathered through his surroundings was that she was sincere about long-haired male idols.

If he had used unnatural routes, he might have explored even more intimate information, but seeing as she came to find him personally, it seems he was right not to choose an unnatural route after all. Politicians who owed a great debt of gratitude to his grandmother were exceptionally kind to Kwon Yihyeon, the only ‘ordinary person’ the Great Mountain fussed over, but in Kwon Yihyeon’s opinion, there was absolutely no benefit to getting entangled with those kinds of ‘high-ranking people’.

‘What’s the point of increasing the number of times I have to sprinkle salt.’

At any rate, Kwon Yihyeon thought it was somewhat awkward. Kwon Yihyeon is not a person without desire, but he isn’t a greedy person either. It meant that he wasn’t the type of person to have a wish come to mind immediately upon hearing that they would grant whatever he wanted. Not only did he have nothing he wanted, but even if he did, it didn’t seem like the kind of thing she could fulfill.

No, maybe one thing is possible?

“You don’t necessarily have to grant it, but there is one thing I’d like to ask of you.”

“No! Please give me your orders at any time!”

“Please calm down, sunbae-nim…”

Kwon Yihyeon laughed softly.

“It’s nothing else, I was hoping you could promote our club a bit.”

The sunbae was startled by the unexpected words. The sunbae had remained in the club room all this time fearing that Kwon Yihyeon would be completely fooled by the bizarre eloquence of the newspaper department eccentric and stamp his thumbprint on a fraudulent contract, but she never dreamed she would hear such words. However, the home master didn’t even notice that the president was surprised. The home master’s eyes were already completely rolled back at the thought that she could plaster Kwon Yihyeon’s face on the front page of the school newspaper, and Kwon Yihyeon spoke calmly even in front of the lunatic who was on the verge of rushing at him while drooling.

“Our club isn’t a central organization. Since there’s already a separate school tennis club. But our president’s skills are truly great. She’s really good at it, and she teaches well. I picked up a tennis racket for the first time this year.”

Even the home master, who had investigated all the power struggles between the central club union, the existing tennis club, and the club Kwon Yihyeon attended, didn’t know this.

Skills learned for the first time this year? That?

“Crazy. Shit. I am sorry. I momentarily went mad and used foul language…”

“Hahaha. Sunbae-nim, please speak comfortably. Anyway, school promotion is fine, but I’d like it if many people knew that our club is good…”

Kwon Yihyeon spoke with a wistful smile, and the home master instinctively pressed the shutter to leave even that image in a photograph. While adjusting the contract terms verbally, the home master, who showed a professional side saying she would soon deliver terms more unconventional than the standard school promotional ambassador contract through the newspaper department, looked quite cool compared to before—but soon, she left while saying strange things like he must debut after seeing Kwon Yihyeon’s face, so the renovation of her first impression remained a failure.

Before long, there were only two people in the club room where the sun was beginning to set, and they looked at each other for a moment before starting to pack their bags. Kwon Yihyeon didn’t have many belongings, so he finished packing his bag first. The sunbae, who had been deliberately lingering while taking out the sports drink she had packed in her backpack and repeating the act of opening and closing the cap several times, finally gripped the drink container with her sweat-soaked palm as if crushing it. The sound of plastic crumpling was embedded in his ears with strange clarity.

Following that, a heated voice rang out, buzzing as if wrapped in a heat haze.

“Yesterday’s match, from where did you intend it?”

The desire dwelling in the voice was too severe to pass off as the air being hot because it was summer. The opponent was not someone he could just ignore and move past. If it were a classmate he didn’t know well, he would have tilted his head as if he knew nothing and acted mischievously, but because he was in a state where a strange bond had formed with the sunbae while playing yesterday’s match, it was ambiguous.

Kwon Yihyeon turned back for a moment instead of heading out the door.

An index finger stood straight in front of his playfully stretched lips.

“Psychological warfare is everything in tennis. Isn’t that right?”

By speaking in circles to say that where he intended it from was a secret, he laughed lightly as if playing a joke. He turned around and walked out just like that. Toward the far side filled with the twilight.