Cheese In The Trap

"The reason I decided to take leave from school..." ( The people inside the parenthesis are the cast who portrays the character in the Drama Series) ( Narration ) A drinking party is winding down at a college bar, and one partygoer, in particular, is pretty far gone, slumping at the table and thinking to herself, "I'm tired of it. So tired..." Barely intelligible, she slurs to her friends, "I'm gonna take leave from school." It comes out something more like "Imaleevskooo," and her friends are more concerned with getting her home. They manage to get her to stand, but she whirls and points at an empty chair, demanding, "Where'd [he] go? Where?!" Then she picks out a blurry face in the background—a tall student playing pool—and points at him... just before falling over in her chair and sprawling onto the ground. Thud. The pool player hovers over her in concern, and the drunk girl slurs at him, "He's here! It's your fault! So fine." The rest she just thinks to herself: "I'll disappear from your eyes. Happy?" She glares accusingly, and he looks taken aback. Fade to black. One year ago. The girl is HONG SEOL (Kim Go-eun), and today she's sober as she arrives at a beginning-of-term drinking party for her department (business administration), where she joins her friend BORA (Park Min-ji). Seol has taken the past year off from school to earn money, and Bora welcomes her back to the fold and introduces her to a male student she calls Underling (his name is EUN-TAEK, played by Nam Joo-hyuk). A bossy sunbae tries to force a student to eat food soaked in soju, and when it's refused, the guy singles out Seol instead. Cringing all the while, she attempts to eat it while Bossy Sunbae pours liquor into her mouth, but finally she has to spit the whole mess out—rice, lettuce, dribbly hot sauce—just as a tall, good-looking student arrives. Spew. Not the most auspicious meeting. He's YOO JUNG (Park Hae-jin), and he's re-entering school in a third year after fulfilling his two-year military service. Seol thinks Jung looks cold, but Bora admires his handsome perfection and predicts that the other girls will go out of their way to flirt with him. She's right, and a girl presses Jung to take a refill, and in the process ends up with a pitcher of beer in her lap. He apologizes, but Seol narrows her eyes, thinking the spill looked deliberate—and catches the tiny smirk on his face that goes unnoticed by everyone else. Then he looks up and their eyes meet. She wonders what his deal is. A bit later, Seol runs into Bossy Sunbae in the stairwell just as he's skimming cash from the students' party fund. He hides it and she doesn't say anything, as he assures another student that rich Jung will foot the bill for the next round, his voice booming through the stairwell. Seol rounds the corner and sees Jung standing there, having heard the whole thing, and her voiceover from the future notes, "I shouldn't have run into him like that. That was the beginning." Later, at school, Bossy Sunbae—fine, his name is SANG-CHUL—comes charging up to Seol, accusing her of exposing his little embezzlement on the department message board. Funny how he's the one puffed up in outrage about it. Seol has no idea what he's talking about, but he insists it had to be her because she was the only one on that staircase. Jung arrives in the hallway as she says there was someone else there too, and Jung steps in with friendly words to placate his buddy. After Sang-chul storms off, Jung tells Seol he understands why she had to report it. The clingy girl at Jung's side (the flirt from the party, JOO-YEON) gets huffy at the implication, saying that Jung was the one running around to calm the situation before it got taken to the police, and that he would hardly be fixing everything up front when he'd stabbed from the back. But Seol isn't cowed, and asks again, "Was it really not you?" Her voiceover sighs, "I shouldn't have argued like that. At the time, I didn't know that behind sunbae's smile, a frightening double side was hiding." Seol runs into Jung again at the coffee shop and tries to ignore him, though he doesn't let her. Instead he talks to her in full nice mode and gives her the juice he just bought, saying she drinks too much coffee. She's stunned speechless, wondering if the nice act was meant to prove a point to the clingy girl. I really enjoy how coming from him, an act of kindness is a cause for panic. That was when lovestruck Joo-yeon started to torment her, Seol narrates. Case in point: Joo-yeon tells her a class got moved to the afternoon, meaning she's not there just minutes before its 10 a.m. start. She's jolted awake by Bora's frantic call and races to campus immediately, while her friends try to think of ways to stall the professor. Bora even asks Eun-taek to kidnap him temporarily, and her promise of a kiss on the cheek is enough to shake Eun-taek's composure. He's adorable. They're partially in luck because the professor got ill at the last minute, but the assistant professor still intends to take roll call. So Eun-taek takes it upon himself to create a diversion, approaching the lectern and grabbing the class roster before bolting out, sending the assistant professor chasing him through the halls. Seol makes it to the building and races inside, at which point Eun-taek gives up the chase and turns on the aegyo with the professor (and amazingly isn't punished for his stunt, beyond a few hearty whacks). Safely in her seat, Seol notices Jung sitting a few rows ahead. She narrates, "After the beginning-of-term party, sunbae harassed me endlessly, using other people masterfully." She tries to avoid Jung at every opportunity, hurrying past the elevator one day while he waits, only to trip in the stairwell. He comes up to her and steps on her fallen papers, his face a cool mask as he tells her she should've been more careful. Seol shrinks back and thinks, "I could feel it for certain then—a clear malice toward me. My school life turned into hell through one person, and that's why I decided to take leave from school." Now we're all caught up to our intro scene's timeline, and resume the day following her drunken declaration. Bora tries to give Seol her savings to use for tuition, assuming she's got more money troubles. Seol tries to say it isn't about money, but just then, unexpected good news arrives: Seol has been granted a full scholarship for the term. It's a boon, but has her more puzzled than anything. She mulls it over and over, wondering how it could have happened. Furthermore, it doesn't solve her initial problem: "How can I go to school with that person?" The course selection period opens, sending the students scrambling to claim the classes they want. There's one in particular that everyone's eager to grab, because the professor is relatively easy—whereas the other professor teaching the same subject is known for being much harder. Our trio all get into the class, and as they leave they run into Jung's trio in the hall. Bossy sunbae Sang-chul calls for Seol to buy everyone meat, since she got her scholarship because of Jung—apparently, the professor lost Jung's report, so the scholarship he would have gotten went to Seol instead.