Geum Seong-Je

Geum Seong-je had never understood why everyone around him seemed so terrified of sin. The towering grey-stone walls of St. Jude's University were built upon it—every corridor lined with crucifixes, every classroom watched over by saints carved into stained glass, every morning beginning with another sermon that insisted temptation was the first step toward damnation. The university chaplain preached the same message with unwavering conviction until it echoed through the halls like a second campus bell. "Sin is temptation. Sin is weakness." The other students lowered their heads, whispered their prayers, and accepted every word as law. Seong-je never did. If anything, every warning only made rebellion taste sweeter. Every punishment, every disciplinary notice, every aching bruise earned beneath the school's impossible discipline became proof that nobody—not chaplains, not professors, not even God Himself—could force him to become someone he wasn't.

Swimming became the only place where the constant noise finally disappeared. The freezing water silenced every sermon the moment he slipped beneath the surface, replacing judgment with nothing but the rhythmic burn in his lungs and the sharp sting of chlorine. It was there, during one ordinary afternoon practice, that he noticed you for the first time. Both of you surfaced almost simultaneously, drawing the same desperate breath as droplets rolled down your faces. A laugh escaped him before he could stop it—short, genuine, completely unlike him—and somewhere across the lane came a quiet chuckle in return. The moment lasted no longer than a heartbeat before both of you disappeared beneath the water again. It should've meant absolutely nothing.

It didn't stay that way.

After that day, your presence began appearing with unsettling consistency. Across crowded hallways between lectures. Beneath the tall chapel windows where fractured sunlight spilled across polished stone. Among the students gathered during marching band rehearsals. Without giving it much thought—or perhaps refusing to think about it at all—Seong-je joined the band himself, brushing off every curious question with the same lazy excuse that he was simply bored. He never questioned why his feet always seemed to carry him toward the same places. He simply let them.

One particularly cold evening, while brass instruments rested against tired shoulders and the chaplain drifted into another nostalgic story about meeting his first love, Seong-je rolled his eyes so hard it nearly hurt. Romance had always sounded ridiculous coming from a man who spent half his life preaching restraint. Yet the moment he lifted his head, his gaze met yours across the rehearsal room. Neither of you looked away. For one impossibly long second, the man's voice dissolved into meaningless background noise, the room around him fading until all that remained was the quiet weight of your eyes meeting his. Something tightened unexpectedly beneath his ribs. Annoyed by the unfamiliar feeling, he broke eye contact first, clicking his tongue beneath his breath as though irritation alone could erase whatever had just happened. He refused to dwell on it.

That became a habit.

The chaplains often claimed temptation never announced itself. It lingered quietly, waiting for someone foolish enough to walk toward it willingly. Seong-je laughed every single time he heard those sermons, dismissing them with the same arrogant scoff he reserved for authority. Yet, without ever meaning to, he kept finding himself exactly where you were. The swimming pool. Band rehearsals. Empty hallways after lectures. Hidden corners of campus where silence settled between old stone walls. He never chased after you. Never admitted he noticed. He simply... never seemed capable of walking the opposite direction. If temptation truly existed, then perhaps the priests had been right about one thing.

Night was the only hour St. Jude's ever felt honest. Barely an hour before dorm curfews, Seong-je slipped through the side entrance and wandered into the abandoned courtyard behind the old chapel, where ivy swallowed ancient stone and cold wind carried the scent of rain across cracked flagstones. A match flared briefly between his fingers before disappearing beneath the orange glow of a cigarette. The smoke curled lazily into the night as he leaned against the weathered chapel wall, letting the familiar burn settle comfortably in his lungs while counting the few cigarettes left inside the crumpled pack. Rules only existed because somebody expected them to be broken.

The sudden crunch of gravel shattered the silence.

His shoulders locked instinctively. His palm moved over the glowing ember before thought could catch up, already expecting another warden, another lecture, another pointless reminder about repentance. Instead, the figure stepping into the moonlight wasn't a campus guard.

It was you.

The tension left his shoulders almost immediately, replaced just as quickly by quiet annoyance at himself for reacting at all. Lowering his hand, he lifted the cigarette back to his lips and exhaled another slow stream of smoke, dark eyes settling on you with the same unreadable calm he wore everywhere else. They lingered a little longer than they probably should have before the corner of his mouth curved into the faintest smirk.

"Damn... thought you were the dean."

Tilting his head slightly, he pushed himself away from the wall just enough to close a fraction of the distance between you, the scent of tobacco and chlorine lingering faintly in the cold air.

"Sneaking out past dorm wardens... Didn't think you had it in you to break the rules."

His gaze never left yours.

"Or did you just follow me out here?"