(Set in Episode 20, before the scene of Yong Ha trying on a cloth on a gisaeng)
Jae Shin pulled Yong Ha away so that Seon Joon could reunite with his beloved Yoon Hee once again. The two of them loitered around, and came back to Sungkyunkwan by nightfall.
Jae Shin happened to eavesdrop on Hae Won's conversation with Woo Tak and Do Hyun that Seon Joon went to his house for some family matters, leaving Yoon Hee alone in their—or rather, his room. The Gu Yong Hwa already advised him to let go, and he had relented to Seon Joon, so there was no way he was going to stay in his room. He can stay in Yong Ha's room, or he can recline along the wooden foyer, but he preferred to sleep on his favorite tree that night. Letting go was still fresh in his memory, and though he was still trying to play it cool, he was still practicing in keeping Yoon Hee away from his mind and heart. Also, he knew that Insoo knew about Yoon Hee's deepest skeleton, but the other scholars have no idea, so instead of arousing suspicion of being kicked out of his own room, he preferred the tree.
Meanwhile, a few hours after she had slept, Yoon Hee suddenly awakened to some disturbing sounds coming from outside. The feeling of fear got to her, but she wanted to know what was outside. Curiosity kills a cat, but curiosity also characterizes a woman. Lifting out the blanket, she gingerly crawled out of bed, opened the door, and looked out. No one was outside, but the sounds were coming on again.
"What... what is that?" she asked, goosebumps piling on her arms.
She suddenly realized that the sound was coming from one of the rooms in the East dorm, particularly, the Yeorim's room. She immediately got up, ran to Yeorim's room, and knock gingerly.
"Ayiiiiiii," she heard him wailing.
"Sa-hyung!" she whispered loud enough for Yong Ha to hear, knocking on his door. "Sa-hyung?"
The door gingerly opened to find a terrified Yong Ha. She seldom saw him that way, and it was usually when he would freak out about virgin ghosts and gumihos haunting the premises.
"Are you all right, Sa-hyung?" she asked.
"Daemul, do you know how to appease the virgin ghost?" Yong Ha asked in despair. "She is nagging me in my sleep, and I am scared!"
Yoon Hee smiled and giggled like the real girl that she is. She remembered scaring him to death by telling him that she did not go to the hyang-gwan-chung that night, and that the ghost was after playboys like him.
"Ahhh...do not scare me, Daemul..." Yong Ha begged.
"Ah, but there is one thing that will appease the ghost, Sa-hyung," Yoon Hee said perkily, trying to match him wit for wit. "Please come with me to the hyang-gwan-chung."
"What?" Yong Ha cringed, hiding his face with his blanket.
"Sa-hyung, I promise... It will not scare you," Yoon Hee said.
"Daemul, if something happens to you inside hyang-gwan-chung, Garang will not forgive me," Yeorim told her.
He crept out of his blanket and exited the room. He followed her gingerly to the incense hall, where the said ghost was allegedly haunting. But with Yoon Hee in front of him, Yong Ha felt a bit confident. He felt safe. After all, she is Daemul.
"Where's Sa-hyung?" Yoon Hee asked him as they were walking to the hyang-gwan-chung.
Yong Ha was a bit omniscient, so he relayed to her that perhaps, his Jae Shin bff was sleeping on the tree.
"Or he could be sleeping inside my room," he wittingly replied, trying on some mischief.
"But I did not see him there," Yoon Hee protested.
"How can Geol Oh sleep in a room with a lady?" Yong Ha asked. "He is a rough fighter, but he is respectful to girls."
More on scared of girls, what with all his hiccups when some hidden girl is detected by his subconscious radar. Yoon Hee smiled and told Yeorim that he has lots of praises for his old friend.
"Of course, because I am THE Gu Yong Ha," Yong Ha bragged with his cute wink. "And when I give out praises, I mean it!"
Even if he uses it to flatter people, most of the time. Finally, they approached the door of the incense hall, and Yong Hwa bit the nails of his fingers. There is really no way for him to enter such freaky places. He might as well pass out.
"We are here, Sa-hyung," Yoon Hee announced as she opened the door.
Yong Ha followed her into the dark room, and he trailed carefully for fear that the ghost will show up in one of the shelves filled with ritual vessels. Yoon Hee tried to remember where she and Jae Shin stayed during the night when she learned about him being the Hong Byuk Seo. Yoon Hee suggested that he sit down and close his eyes.
"It will not do me any good, Daemul," Yong Ha said, nibbling at his fingernails even more.
"Sa-hyung, the virgin ghost will forever hate you if you will not behave," Yoon Hee replied.
"Daemul, will we not do some rituals to ward her away?" Yong Ha asked.
"Sa-hyung needs to close his eyes because I will get the candle for the ritual," Yoon Hee said.
But of course, it was just a placebo ritual that she was going to devise in order to keep her upperclassman calm, and to not arouse the suspicion of the teachers and staff of the school. She knew there were rituals for that, but she preferred to customize a ritual for the most unique student in Sungkyunkwan. She managed to create a fire for the candle, and placed it on a candlestick. Yong Ha looked at her, puzzled, when she placed the candlestick in front of him.
"Are you not going to do some chants and dances?" he asked.
"Sa-hyung, this ritual will be different," she knowingly said, hoping that Yong Ha will not realize her joke.
"Ah, Daemul, you are making fun of me," Yong Ha protested.
"There is no ritual, Sa-hyung. Just for you to keep calm and be familiar with a place like this," she said.
Yong Ha was about to protest when he glanced at Yoon Hee in candle-light. He suddenly remembered his first encounter with her, and how he had developed a slight crush on her.
"All right, I will do as you say, I will close my eyes, and hopefully, the virgin ghost will not sup on me," Yong Ha said. "I am quite famous with the ladies, but I don't want to be in close terms with the virgin ghost."
Yoon Hee laughed as she watched him close his eyes, and she started to look at the fire on the candle. Her thoughts floated to the Lee household, where her beloved Seon Joon is staying for the night.
Yong Ha, meanwhile, reminisced how it all happened. He and Byung Choon were at Hwang's bookstore. Byung Choon was frantically waiting for the manuscript for the civil service exam that he was supposed to take, while Yong Ha was reading a racy red book, only to be disappointed because the end was left hanging. When the transcriber came in, Yong Ha suddenly got a glimpse of a pretty-faced man. For him, the man looked too feminine to be a man. A girl, he thought with amusement. The boredom of the day suddenly lifted away when he saw her pretty round eyes, her cute cheeks, and her pouty lips. The smoothness of her skin and her complexion told him these do not belong to a man. He looked on in amusement when Yoon Hee started to take out all of the contents in her bag. Yeorim grabbed the red book that he had ordered for transcription, and continued reading the erotic stuff in the novel. Byung Choon was still uneasy over the fact that Yoon Hee had accidentally lost the manuscript, and the two were fighting over for possible contents in her bag. Yong Ha gazed merrily at the sight of Yoon Hee's slender fingers, trying to wrestle away Byung Choon's hand. A woman's fingers indeed, he thought. She asked the frantic scholar for 30 minutes to transcribe, and it piqued Yong Ha's interest even more. Yoon Hee was unlike the gisaengs he had met, who all acted pretty, just as girls in Joseon should. To him, if this transcriber were a woman, she would be so unlike the other women in the world. Thirty minutes had passed, and Yoon Hee finished the text. Byung Choon found it unbelievable, while Yong Ha grabbed the book to examine the contents. It was too perfect, not a text was missing. He commented that she was totally a woman, and mused at how Yoon Hee hid her face with her wide-brimmed hat, and calling him rude. He teased her by saying that he was talking about her handwriting. Of course, Byung Choon and Hwang did not even try to anaylyze what Yong Ha had said, for both were kind of idiots. Since that day, he was starting to see something that will take boredom out of his mind.
During the day of the first exam, Yong Ha saw her again. Insoo and his gang, Yong Ha and the other minions following him, were walking along the busy streets and into the bridge. A short man was being chased by another one. The short man bumped into Insoo's crowd, and Yong Ha caught the man in his arms. It was the pretty man again, he thought with a smile, and he noticed the expression. Yoon Hee looked startled and afraid, even when Yong Ha examined her face and her expression closely. Yoon Hee wriggled away from his grasp and ran away, leaving him very disappointed. Despite that, he was all sighs and smiles because the other person's beauty really interested him. The man chasing Yoon Hee happened to be Lee Seon Joon, one of the students taking the entrance exam for Sungkyunkwan that day. As exchange of word war occurred between Seon Joon and Insoo and his gang, Yong Ha looked far to look for the remaining signs of the pretty man. When it was finally Seon Joon and Insoo exchanging heated words, Yeorim's attention was shifted back to the moment, and he saw when Seon Joon threw Byung Choon off the bridge. Yeorim's bored curiosity was aroused again when Seon Joon walked away, so he asked Go Bong who that man was, and the latter answered. Yong Ha smiled and looked back at his hand.
"I feel oddly attracted to him," he boredly remarked with a naughty smile.
He looked on yonder and rejoined, "Not the one in the back, the one in front."
He remembered the many times he took amusement of Yoon Hee's frightened expressions whenever he would hug her and treat her like a girl, because her expressions were giving away. He could not be fooled, she was really a girl. Yet, he had not gathered enough evidences to really prove that Yoon Hee was really a girl. He would sometimes find some amusing stuff, just like when he told Yoon Hee about bathing in the incense hall or washing her back after the little hockey game, just so she will protest into not bathing with everyone else and confirm his suspicion of her being a girl.
And how about when Yoon Hee disguised herself as a gisaeng to save Seon Joon? Yong Ha had to admit to Jae Shin that his heart went crazy after seeing Yoon Hee like that for the first time. Oh well...
And not to mention Jae Shin's hiccups. It was Jae Shin's foolproof diagnostic exam when there is a girl somewhere, and Yong Ha often smirked when his lover bff would get berserk with hiccups. Ah...another confirmation of his suspicion.
And how about when Jae Shin was all crazy in barring the door to prevent him and Seon Joon from entering the incense hall? Yong Ha thought that he was not merely trying to look at a naked woman who was bathing, he was just trying to seek the truth, as what a scholar should do. Because Jae Shin was insisting that no one should get in, Yong Ha thought that Yoon Hee was indeed inside, or perhaps, the virgin ghost. After the incident, when they got back to their rooms to sleep, Jae Shin was caught exiting the room and hiccuping like crazy, and it gave Yong Ha another reason to believe that Yoon Hee is actually a girl, no matter how much Jae Shin denied it.
That night, the frustrated Gu Yong Ha rolled over the floor, grumbling. How can Yoon Hee trick the king into entering Sungkyunkwan when she's a girl? But he was all right with that except for the fact that Yoon Hee tricked THE Gu Yong Ha. His suspicions since Day 1 about her looks and her mannerisms, all were confirmed.
When Yoon Hee finally knew that Yong Ha is not a yangban, the girl just took it wholeheartedly and continued helping him and being friends with him. He thought that since she knew his secret, it might be time for her to tell him hers, even if he already knew from the start.
He knew he was a flirt, a flirt who hangs out with gisaengs. But there are days when they bored him to death, even if he loved them very much. And he knew his heart belongs to Geol Oh. He was perpetually bored and looking for things to amuse him, sometimes even at the expense of others. He did not expect that some mysterious girl would make him take a second look and took away the clouds from his life. Yet, he knew that his was just plain crush at first, which developed into plain curiosity, and decided to help his friends be honest with themselves.
But of course, he will always be devoted to his Geol Oh, and he was willing to do anything for his friend. Yet, in the end, he had to tell his friend to stop and let go, even giving him the permission to look at Yoon Hee from afar for the last time.
"Ha, what got into you, Yeorim?" Yong Ha asked himself as he smirked with closed eyes.
If he had not been a flirt, his life will totally be boring. But...but... if he had not been a flirt, there might be a possibility of him seriously falling in love and trying to win Yoon Hee to his side. Must be the subconscious reason why he was praising her too much one night and telling her that she was interesting to him, earning him a jealous grunt from Seon Joon.
"What if?" he asked himself. "Ah...the bad thing of all the what if's..."
"Sa-hyung?" Yoon Hee called out.
Yong Ha opened an eye and looked at her.
"Sa-hyung looks peaceful," she commented.
"Ah, because I am THE Gu Yong Ha, and this Gu Yong Ha can get away with anything," he bragged again with a wink.
"Are you not afraid anymore?" she asked.
"Ah, not this time," he sheepishly replied. "I was distracted with a few thoughts."
"That's good then."
Yoon Hee told her upperclassman that they need to get back, but she was stopped when Yong Ha patted her shoulder.
"Thank you," he said with a sweet smile.
It was the first time that he smiled at her like that, and he mused again at the blush on her cheeks and the look of her pretty round eyes.
"Ah, do not look at me like that," he told her.
"Sa-hyung, let's go," Yoon Hee told him happily.
Both of them got up and went to the door while holding the candlestick, and before Yoon Hee exited, she blew off the fire and placed in on the shelf.
-end-