Jung Taek Woon is avoidant. Through his notebook page filled with incomprehensible scribbles and equations he’s desperately trying to memorize for his upcoming calculus II final, he hears that word.

It’s his first and only class of the day: social psychology. He prefers this class to any other he has in his roster simply because it fulfills his major requirements and all he has to do is sit and attempt to take notes while letting his mind become preoccupied with other, more important things. Sometimes he ends up paying attention, such as when models for the self are discussed in excruciating detail (Taek Woon prefers Higgins’ model for some reason) or when the class discusses and constructs a model for the salience of interdependency in groups (forming-storming-norming-performing-disintegrating; although Taek Woon and his small group haven’t reached the disintegrating step yet, the model is extremely applicable). Other times, Taek Woon sits at his desk, rests his left cheek on his fist, and attempts to either study for another class or not fall asleep. It isn’t that social psychology is boring; it’s just that attempting to understand concepts that can’t be personally applied isn’t something Taek Woon wants to waste his time on and so he doesn’t.

It is rare moments like the present when a word among the rehearsed monotonous spiel that usually pours out of his instructor’s mouth pronounces itself that Taek Woon listens. He hones in on the lesson; immerses himself in it. After he hears something that may be to his benefit (or detriment, but he ignores those kinds of feelings because self-diagnosis is nearly always inaccurate), he leans forward in his seat and grips his favorite black pen just a bit tighter and listens. Every word slips through the mental block he has fortified times over and sinks in. Any other anxieties, worries, impending tests, and herculean tasks are shoved into the background to make room for the new, applicable information. Taek Woon is, of course, still a young college student. He’s attempting to identify even the most trivial fragments of his identity so that he isn’t floundering for some semblance of self during his adult years.

The instructor begins to drawl on about Ainsworth’s “Strange Situation,” an experiment that Taek Woon is all too familiar with. He has read about it on his own time, of course (since he hates being behind in any of his classes, he always reads ahead, and his teachers wonder how he’s bringing information to exams that has never been divulged, but they give him extra points anyway). Babies play with their mothers in a strange room. Then the babies play with a stranger with the mother still in the room. Then the mother leaves the child in the strange room with the stranger. Then the stranger leaves. It’s only the child and the room.

There are three different outcomes. The first—and most preferred—is that the baby cries and desperately seeks comfort from its mother. The mother returns and is able to console the young one-year-old child. The second outcome is that the child cries and desires comfort, but it is colicky. It pushes its mother away, continues to cry a bit more, and pushes its mother away yet again. When it finally begins to play again, it constantly checks for its mother’s presence. The child has a lapse in trusting its caretaker. Eventually, things will even out.

The last outcome features a baby that doesn’t externally respond to anything. When the mother leaves, it does not cry. It does not play. It does not react to the stranger. It will sit alone until the mother comes back in. It will not react. The baby has no significant reactions to the caretaker’s presence. Taek Woon imagines himself eighteen years earlier, sitting in nothing but a soft powder blue one piece, cheek fat threatening to eclipse his tiny strawberry red lips. His mind carries him out of the university lecture hall, dropping a plump two-year-old Taek Woon in the strange room on his own, no mother or father in sight. ‘We love you very much, Taek Woon,’ they say before leaving. They lock the door. Toys abound; there’s a rocking horse in the corner and a colorful abacus nailed onto the wall right above the crown molding. There are board games with the pieces missing and cards tacky with saliva. There are dirty bibs in a tiny clothes bin and clean diapers placed beside a low crib. Taek Woon waits patiently for his babysitter. He grabs a rubber ring the color of snot and absentmindedly chews on it. He chews on it for ten minutes until his babysitter arrives. He merely stares at his babysitter for a good portion of the two hours he spends with the beautiful teenager who pops her bubble gum and changes him into different outfits. He laughs at her. Once. She spilled his mashed tomatoes on her white shirt. His parents come back two hours later. He sits up in his crib and stares vacantly at a picture book. He doesn’t react.

Taek Woon manages to return to the present just in time to hear his instructor apply attachment theories to romantic relationships. Babies who are predominantly secure grow up to have secure, healthy relationships. Anxious-ambivalent babies grow up to have explosive, intense relationships founded on the basis of future rejection and abandonment (Taek Woon’s instructor builds on this by using the example of a person who calls their significant other every five minutes when that significant other doesn’t communicate with them as often as they would like. Name dropping ensues and almost earns the class a free showing of a catfight). Avoidant babies are less likely to enter into relationships. They’ll be more likely to claim that they are commitment-phobic, Taek Woon’s instructor says, and in a way, they’re telling the truth. Closeness is problematic.

Closeness is problematic. Taek Woon turns those three words around in his mind; observes them from every angle. He repeats them internally in both Korean and English. They sound right. In elementary school, he received his first box of White Day Pepero. Taek Woon remembers—perhaps a bit too fondly—never actively seeking out the boy who stuck a sticky note with his name on it on the box. He’s once again not in a university lecture hall, but in the hidden stairway at the back of his elementary school building, eating the Pepero by himself. He reads over the name on the pastel pink sticky note—Cha Hak Yeon—but doesn’t go to find him. Taek Woon knows who he is; an annoying boy who smiles too much and is naturally a bit dark. Kids a lot. Taek Woon doesn’t; why should he? There’s nothing beneficial about teasing people. Taek Woon eats all of the Pepero at once and keeps the box.

A palm hits Taek Woon’s desk, roughly jarring him from his thoughts. He doesn’t feel the scratchy material of his elementary school trousers anymore. He can’t taste the delicious white chocolate coating of the Pepero he ate at the back of the small building, away from his classmates. He’s facing an empty lecture hall now; even the teacher has left the room. Taek Woon has nowhere to go, nothing pressing to do, so he sits for a minute more before standing up. He’s taller than his friend, the Cha Hak Yeon from years ago who also studies psychology but really wants to be a choreographer for the stars. He smiles and talks as if he has “secure” as a preset from birth. Hak Yeon probably had parents that were always there to take care of him. He probably didn’t need a babysitter. He probably, despite how much the kids would , always received Valentine’s Day and White Day candies. Taek Woon listens to Hak Yeon talk about how exciting the lesson had been. Hak Yeon sits on the other side of the room, so he couldn’t actively keep track of the male’s interest. Hak Yeon slings a toned arm over Taek Woon’s shoulders. Taek Woon raises an eyebrow but doesn’t shrug the male’s advance off. He prefers a bit of contact, especially this close to final examinations.

“Hey, I called you, like, ten times yesterday! What gives?”

Taek Woon has the ten corresponding voicemails on his phone to verify that, yes, Hak Yeon called him exactly ten times in the course of ten minutes. Taek Woon shrugs Hak Yeon’s arm off of his shoulders and states, “I was studying. Something you don’t do.”

Oh. Taek Woon watches Hak Yeon’s arm fall listlessly to his side. Hak Yeon’s expression is indecipherable. His plump lips settle into a straight line and his eyes lose the gleam that Taek Woon is so accustomed to seeing. Hak Yeon runs his hand through the fringe that cloaks his small forehead and, just like that, his smile returns. The gleam in his eye comes back full force and then some. Hak Yeon pats Taek Woon on his back and then walks out of the lecture hall a bit quicker than what’s normal for the jovial, laid-back man.

Anxious-ambivalent people tend to expect rejection and, ultimately, abandonment.

Taek Woon sits back down and stares at the blackboard at the front of the lecture hall. Today’s class was worth paying attention to.