Today, he had a university lecture at noon, and in the afternoon he had to go tutor a repeat student aiming for medical school, and in between he had to spend time preparing for tutoring and supplementing the lecture materials.

After changing clothes, he turned on his phone. He transferred living expenses, hospital bills, principal on the loan, and interest all at once to his parents’ account. Oreum’s parents had not prepared for old age and also had chronic illnesses, which always made Oreum anxious. Seeing the balance in his account made even his already meager appetite disappear completely.

The moment he stepped out of the front door, he grew tense. Day after day, living did not feel like living, and it was suffocating. He only plugged the cabled earphones into his ears and did not listen to music. Oreum stopped by the convenience store in front of his house and bought a triangle kimbap, then shoved it into his mouth. Since he could not get dizzy during the lecture, he usually ate even when he had no appetite. It was a depressing, shabby morning. The moment he tried to peel the wrapper off the cold triangle kimbap, his phone vibrated in his pocket. The sender was his mother.

「[Mother 08 : 16] This month’s Dad hospital bills and medicine costs were more than expected, you have the tutoring money coming in, right, transfer a bit more by tomorrow morning, we only have you」

The moment he saw the text rose above the screen, Oreum’s breathing stopped dead. Only ‘numbers’ began to violently dominate Oreum’s brain.

Bank balance, 210,000 won. 480,000 won from the center part-time job coming in next week. The moment the 650,000 won rent came out, his parents’ hospital bills aside, even next month’s food and transportation would be in the red. Where was he supposed to get more money? Should he force in three more translation part-time jobs? Or should he cut his sleep time to two hours and go out for dawn logistics loading and unloading?

His stomach clenched hard, and nausea rose. He made a strangled sound, hit his chest with his fist, and barely managed to drink some water.

The ice-cold water went down, but the heavy foreign feeling lodged at the pit of his stomach did not go away. It was not simple indigestion. It was the warning sound of survival, stirred up by fear that he might collapse at any moment and by the brainstem being stimulated, and it was also the indigestion poverty had created.

‘We only have you.’

Oreum could not resent his parents. It was not because they were malicious, but because he knew all too well that they were only clinging to him because they were old and sick and helpless. At an age when others dated, studied, and planned their futures, Oreum had become a machine that performed only arithmetic for the sake of survival.

Beyond the glass window, people in thick padded jackets passed by the street laughing and chatting. Oreum felt as if they and he were completely different species. Normality. Ordinariness. He had struggled so hard to enter that peaceful orbit, yet it seemed he was destined to be thrown away forever at the edge of the Gaussian distribution curve. Oreum pressed the screen with his chilled fingers and typed a reply.

「I’ll send it by tomorrow morning. Don’t worry.」

The moment he pressed send, Oreum threw the remaining triangle kimbap into the trash. His stomach felt sick as hell. A human who was nobody. A being who was nothing. He wanted to vanish from the world like this.

Oreum went to school almost every day of the week. Because the school had a free break room and, above all, cheap cafeteria food and coffee. Since he was in the position of having to camp out and work anywhere, it was better if it was cheap.

Final check before lecture. After going through the slides carefully, he turned the experimental equipment borrowed from the lab, almost as if begging for it, on and off by hand.

When he had time, he wrote his household ledger in his diary and reviewed his tutoring materials. The coffee he had bought at the campus cafeteria was already cold and lukewarm. His body felt heavy as lead. Why was he so tired? His mind scattered like water, but he forced himself to pull it together.

Students began to appear and slowly fill the lecture hall. Oreum was mildly bothered by the information about Itae that he had learned by chance, but he never showed it. As always, he stood there in neat clothes and loafers with straps, estimating the number of students.

Then, again, their eyes met.

Eom Itae, seated in the center, was staring straight at Oreum. In a hooded sweatshirt with all the tension drained out of it compared with last week. He really was a kid whose concept of social distance had been deleted. No matter how easy I may seem, I’m still the teacher, and I couldn’t understand how he could openly stare at people like that. Far from recognizing his own rudeness, he was acting as if he meant to examine every single layer of Oreum.

The lecture hall had a charged atmosphere, waiting for the experiment. Oreum carefully took out the demonstration materials. Electrode cap. Ag/AgCl electrodes. Conductive gel. Cotton swabs. Headband straps. Cable bundle. Signal amplifier. Laptop with the monitoring software installed. The faint, slightly sticky smell of the familiar conductive gel floated through the air.

“Since we have a volunteer, I’ll demonstrate right away. Come out.”

A brief silence fell. Eom Itae walked out slowly. The students seated in the back, who seemed to be his friends, jeered teasingly, but Itae ignored them and reached the lectern at an even pace. As Oreum spread open the cap, he said,

“Put it on over your head and adjust the electrode positions. Face forward. If you move your head, noise will get in.”

“Yes. teacher.”

The tone made it obvious he was deliberately emphasizing “teacher.” Itae sat in the chair prepared in advance, with his body slightly leaned forward. His gaze was fixed exactly straight ahead as Oreum had instructed, but the lowered pupils were dark and sharp.

He had a natural, handsome look. Although the lines making up his face were strong, the overall impression seemed a little languid. Oreum applied conductive gel to a cotton swab, then approached Itae. And then he pressed the gel little by little between Itae’s scalp. His hair was cut short like a soldier’s, so it was easy to apply. The distance became unavoidable. The moment Oreum’s palm touched Itae’s temple, Itae’s Adam’s apple moved up and down largely, and a shallow breath could be heard. It was like a beast’s reflex, reacting with extreme sensitivity to another person’s body heat.

“…If you laugh or frown, EMG2) gets mixed in. Keep your facial muscles as still as possible.”

As Oreum gave the warning in a voice that trembled minutely while hiding it, Itae lifted only his eyes to glance up at Oreum without moving his head.

“Do I have to manage my expression too?”

The tone sounded playful, but his pupils were black and dark like a swamp. Itae stared only at the empty switch in front of him, at that single point and nothing else. Oreum hooked the cap strap under his chin. The moment skin touched skin again, Oreum felt heat rise for no reason. A tingling sensation spread from the fingertips he pulled back in a hurry. His pulse raced abnormally fast. In the middle of an open lecture hall with more than a hundred students holding their breath and watching them, Oreum felt a strange suffocation, as if he were trapped in a narrow place alone with him.

“Baseline measurement starts. Face forward.”

Itae’s usual brain waves began appearing on the monitor. They were clean.

Most ordinary people had Alpha and Beta waves that wavered because of tension. But Itae’s baseline was eerily smooth, as if drawn with a ruler. There was almost no distortion in the Alpha or Beta waves. There was no noise at all from jaw tension, facial muscle contraction, or the tiny blinks of the eyes.

If the brain waves were this static, there were two possibilities. Either he was the type who did not feel anxiety itself, that is, someone with almost no fluctuations in physiological arousal, a narrow emotional range, and abnormally strong restraint, or the type whose anxious signs did not show well, someone who intentionally “erased” external reactions.

Either way, it was dangerous. Emotional insensitivity and impulsiveness were only a sheet of paper apart. Oreum swallowed a dry gulp while looking at the screen. Too stable. No one but himself could know what was writhing beneath. Oreum cut off his thoughts and resumed the class.

“Let’s start with the reaction task. I’ll give you a button.”

Oreum took a small response button out of his pants pocket. Itae’s gaze drifted down smoothly and swept over Oreum’s thigh.