Hana POV

Word of their breakup got around campus quickly. It spread like wildfire through Woohyun's sport college, and like quicksand through my engineering school.

I, for one, was not expecting such a dramatic reaction. It dumbfounded me how the personal life of the captain of the football team involved every single person on campus. Why was everyone so interested and so shocked by their breakup?

I tried to feel something. When Hanbyul rang me on Sunday night, I tried to feel. Honestly, I did. But the only thing I felt was more hollowness and numbness. I thought that I would feel happy, sad, betrayed, hopeful or smug even. But nothing. I guess I had cried out every single tear in my body, and now I was left bone dry and empty. It did not once occur to me that the timing of the breakup was weird. We went out to dinner on Saturday night, and he broke up with her either shortly after or the morning after.

She called me on a Sunday night. Come Monday morning, I could safely say that the least thing I was expecting to hear were some people on the bus chattering loudly about it behind me. I turned to look at them, to see if maybe they were part of the football team, or I had known them from high school, but their faces were unfamiliar.

It made me extremely curious. Woohyun’s breakup was such a big deal that it reached even mouths of those who I did not know.

I should have known. I should have prepared myself for hearing his name being thrown around campus like a football. Woohyun this, Woohyun that. I should have known that.

Even hearing his name hurt. A name I had thought of many times was different to hearing it physically, a million times.

Hyeri and Chansik approached me on Monday as I was lining up in the café for a coffee.

“Hana,” Chansik said, tapping me on the shoulder as I was paying. “How are you? I haven’t see you for ages.”

I eyed him. Hyeri was hanging off his arm like a monkey. She was gripping him tightly, looking at me with a kind of…malicious smile. There was no other way of describing it. Her eyes gleamed with a warning that said back off.

I looked up at Chan to see if he had seen it, but he was still waiting for my answer. I was seriously contemplating just turning around and leaving, considering that time he snubbed me in the mall, but I didn’t want to be the immature rude one.

“I’m fine, thanks,” I answered politely. I still wasn’t sure where our friendship was.

“That’s good.” He stepped up to the counter to order once I was done. I started walking off, but he called out. “Hana, wait. Can we sit?”

I glanced at Hyeri again, but she was avoiding my eye. I hesitated. I had no more classes for the rest of the day, but I was so scared of awkwardness that I was willing to lie.

“You don’t have any other classes for today,” Chansik informed me.

I gaped at him.

“You sent each other our timetables, remember, for our physics project. I still remember it, because you would always blow me off to hang with your boyfr – “ He answered, biting his lip before he could say it.

“Yeah, okay,” I replied, secretly glad I didn’t come up with some bogus lecture I had to attend. “I’ll find a table.”

I spotted one across the café and walked toward it, but not fast enough. I heard Hyeri whispering to Chansik, saying things like “what are you doing?” “can we go?”

Again, I was too numb to care.

“Hey,” Chansik said, setting down his coffee and muffin, pulling the chair out for Hyeri before he sat. “So, how are things going? How’s maths?” He smirked. He knew that maths was worse than capital punishment.

I decided to ignore this. “It’s hard, but I think I’m coping.” I sipped my coffee.

I knew Chansik. We hung out everyday for two months. He would always try some nonsense small talk before getting to the real topic he wanted to discuss. I learnt to just wait and let it come out naturally.

“So…” Chan began again; in what he thought was a nonchalant way. Nope. “I heard about Woohyun and Minji.”

Both his and Hyeri’s eyes were on me.

“Yeah, I’ve heard too,” I said, looking down at his coffee instead of their eyes. I felt like a deer in headlights – both were gauging for my reaction. I didn’t want to show anything, not even happiness, in case they twisted it into some bogus story later.

“Do you – “ He paused. I felt Hyeri nudge him under the table. “Do you know what happened?”

“Nope,” I shook my head. “I don’t really want to know, to be honest.”

I looked up from his coffee cup to his eyes. Chansik was awfully handsome in a way that was different to Woohyun’s. A boyish kind of handsome, instead of Woohyun’s manly handsome.

“Oh, okay.” Awkward pause. “I was wondering if you could tell me why it was such a big deal…that people are talking about it even if Woohyun doesn’t attend this university, it’s the campus next to ours…but I guess you don’t know either.”

“Oh, I know,” Hyeri spoke up. I looked at her, wondering what could have happened to that bubbly, friendly girl we met in the meat restaurant with Woohyun. Now all I could see was a jealous, spiteful cheerleader-like girl who was studying engineering. Was she like this all along? Which of her personalities was the façade, and which was the real one?

“You do?!” Chansik ruffled her hair. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“Well, you never asked,” she huffed, looking pissed that he messed her hair. But a loving kind of pissed, all the same.

“It’s a big deal.” She shrugged. “Woohyun was placed as captain because of his skills, but was cemented in that position because he started going out with Minji.

Minji is head cheerleader that’s a year older than us – she has a lot of influence over things that happen in their campus, because, well, it’s a sports college, after all. A hierarchy of footballers and cheerleaders rules them.

It’s a tradition that head cheerleaders date the captain of the football team. I don’t know why, but I guess you can imagine that footballers aren’t really that…bright. They just like pretty girls and such.

But when Woohyun got elected as captain, he was the first to ever do a double degree with engineering. He was smart. And they knew that he had a relationship with you, Hana…and they just pressured him to break it off with you and go out with Minji.”

Hyeri looked extremely uncomfortable but continued anyway.

“The alumni of the football team all have their time at college, as the captain, to thank for their lives. They all graduated and were scouted for the national league. They all have beautiful wives, children and live comfortably, if not well off, in suburbia.  

It’s a tradition that is not spoken but observed. It’s a social rule that has existed in the college for a long time, since it opened in like 1960s, or whatever, when football become popular.

Woohyun is the first to break this rule, whether it being intentionally or not.”

She finished with a huff. “I guess that’s why it’s such a big deal.”

I sat there, absorbing it all. My blood, which I swore had frozen in my veins these few months, started flowing again, hot and thick like honey. Woohyun was pressured into breaking up with me? It didn’t make sense.

It didn’t change anything. I wanted desperately to talk to him, but of course, I couldn’t. 

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