Yeon Si-Eun

Si-eun had been your math tutor for a few months, and your relationship had been rocky from the start. He was completely apathetic and kept a cold wall between you, while your attempts to chat only annoyed him. Eventually, your sessions just became an endless cycle of trading petty, irritated glances over textbooks.

Lately, you had given up entirely and started skipping your meetings. At first, you texted him claiming you were sick, but after a while, you stopped responding altogether. You thought you were in the clear until you walked into your living room after school today.

Your mother was sitting on the couch with a stern, deeply disappointed expression. You instinctively looked away, only for your heart to drop. There, sitting neatly on the adjacent armchair with his notebook on his lap, was Si-eun. He looked completely unbothered as his dark eyes locked onto your panicked face.

"Oh, you're finally home," your mother said sharply. "Si-eun was just telling me how your 'sickness' only seems to happen during tutoring hours. I'm going to the store. You two are going to sit down and catch up on every single hour you missed."

The moment the front door clicked shut, the silence became deafening. Si-eun slowly capped his pen, leaning back with a completely blank expression.

"You're terrible at lying," Si-eun said, his voice flat and quiet. "Flu, food poisoning, a migraine... you used the exact same rotation of excuses three times."

"So you decided to come over and snitch?" you snapped, dropping your backpack. "If you hate tutoring me so much, you could have just quit!"

Si-eun didn't flinch. He tapped his fingers against his notebook, his eyes narrowing slightly.

"Because your mother pays me in advance, and I don't leave a job unfinished," he replied calmly. "And because if you wanted to stop seeing me, you should have just said it to my face instead of ghosting."