The Boy Who Walked Past Me Every Spring

Chapter 2: The Unspoken Proximity

By

FeminaAshik



The morning after their encounter at the fountain, the atmosphere on campus felt different to Min-ji. It was subtle – a shift in the air, like the way the wind changes just before a storm. She walked toward the literature building, her heart doing that familiar, nervous flutter whenever she caught a glimpse of the architecture wing.

She kept her head down, but she could feel the whispers.

“Did you hear?” a girl from her class murmured to a friend as they passed. “He had actually talked to someone yesterday. Someone from the literature.”

Min-ji didn’t look up, but her steps faltered. They couldn’t be talking about us, could they? She felt a strange mix of exhilaration and terror. If he was the campus legend, then being noticed by him was equivalent to being painted with a target. She didn’t want to be a rumor; she wanted to be the girl who could sit in the library in peace, watching him from the shadows.

In the dorm room, So-young was relentless. She sat on Min-ji’s bed, eyeing her with a playful, narrowed gaze. “It was just a help, So-young. He’s a senior. He was being polite. That’s all.”

“Polite?” So-young laughed, grabbing a pillow. “Ji-hoon doesn’t ‘do’ polite to anyone except his professors. The girls in my elective have been trying to get ‘hello’ out of him for months.”

Min-ji kept her secret tucked away, safe behind her studious mask. If only they knew, she thought. If only they had knew that he's been the one I’ve been looking for a year.

Meanwhile, Ji-hoon was experiencing his own version of the ripple effect. He sat in the architecture lounge, his sketches open, but his mind was far from structural integrity.

“You’re acting weird,” Seo-jun noted, leaning against the table. “You’ve been checking your phone every five minutes. And you were actually…. Friendly yesterday?”

Ji-hoon didn’t look up, his pencil moving with sharp, practical strokes, “I was just helping a student. Don’t make a story out of nothing.”

“Right. ‘Nothing,’” Seo-jin chuckled. “But keep it up, man. Maybe you’ll finally stop being the ‘ice prince’ of the department.”

Ji-hoon didn’t respond, but his jaw tightened. He didn’t want to be “friendly.” He wanted to be the only one. He had spent the last twenty-four hours mentally cataloging every person who had looked at Min-ji today. He’d noticed a freshmen in her class lingering too long near her desk in the library, and it had taken everything in him not to walk over and reclaim the seat behind her.

He was being possessive, he knew it – but he wasn’t ready to let her know he was in love. To her, he had to remain the “kind senior” for a little longer. He had to earn her trust first. He had to be the one she turned to when the world got too loud, so that by the time he finally told her the truth, she wouldn’t see it as a sudden confession, but as the only logical conclusion.

That afternoon, Min-ji found her usual spot in the library. To her surprise, the seat behind her – the one usually occupied by a boisterous group of biology students – was empty.

A moment later, the familiar, grounding scent of cedar and old paper drifted through the air.na shadow fell over the desk, a heavy bag was placed on the floor behind her. Ji- hoon was there. He didn’t say a word, and he didn’t try to start a conversation. He simply pulled out his materials and began to work.

Min-ji felt a heat climb up her neck. Every time he turned a page, every time he let out a soft, rhythmic breath, she felt as if he was occupying her entire world. She couldn’t focus on her own notes. She kept imagining him sitting there, his eyes fixed on the back of her head, his presence a silent wall protecting her from the rest of the library’s distractions.

She didn’t know that he was watching her. She didn’t know that he had deliberately maneuvered his schedule to ensure he was the only one allowed to occupy that seat. As she gathered things to leave, she caught a glimpse of his notebook left open on the desk – and realized with a jolt that the sketch on the page wasn’t of the architecture of the library but of her.