Chapter Text
The student council office at Jeonghan University always felt a little too clean for its own good.
Everything inside it was polished, lined up, or alphabetized within an inch of its life — not because anyone else cared, but because I did. If I didn’t keep control over at least one room in this sprawling campus, the rest of it would swallow me whole.
“Mr President,” came a voice from the doorway, clipped, professional.
Leehan entered carrying a stack of folders that looked like they were on the verge of collapsing. “This is only half of today’s paperwork. The other half is… incubating.”
“I don’t think paperwork can incubate,” I muttered, taking the top stack from him.
“You haven’t seen this week’s club requests.”
Point taken.
The rain outside ticked softly against the wide office windows, blurring the view of the quad below. Students hurried under umbrellas toward classes, laughter and shouts carried faintly through the glass. At times I envied them — the ones who drifted through campus without three meetings before lunch or a dozen emails waiting for answers.
At times, I wondered if they ever looked up at the office windows and knew someone was up here keeping everything running.
Probably not.
“Sungho called earlier,” Leehan said, dropping onto the chair across from my desk. “He’s running late — he’s got lunch with… someone?”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Someone?”
Leehan shrugged. “He said, and I quote, ‘I’m grabbing food with those two people you pretend not to know but definitely know.’”
That narrowed it down.
Riwoo and Myung Jaehyun — campus sweethearts, photography major and music major, respectively. Riwoo was soft-spoken, the kind of person who looked like he was always taking care of something fragile. Jaehyun was the opposite: loud laugh, impulsive, the kind of guy who would do something just because someone dared him to.
Sungho knew everyone, somehow.
Except me, maybe. But he tried.
“They’re harmless,” I said, stamping a request form.
“You say that like you don’t secretly like them,” Leehan teased.
“I respect that they stay out of trouble.”
Leehan snorted. “Jaehyun? Out of trouble? Sungho says he’s been hanging around some first-year who’s chaos incarnate. Something about stars?”
Stars?
I didn’t get the chance to ask what that meant. My vice president — Minseo — rushed in with the frazzled energy of someone who’d survived three disasters before breakfast.
“President!” she exclaimed, thrusting her tablet forward. “We have a situation. A… glowing situation.”
I stared. “Define glowing.”
Instead of answering, she tapped her screen and turned it toward me.
There on the display was a photo of the Performing Arts building — its pale stone exterior suddenly painted with large, sweeping constellations that shimmered even in daylight.
“What is this?” I breathed.
“Glow-in-the-dark paint,” Minseo replied. “Maintenance says it’s not damaging the surface, but it’s definitely not authorized.”
Leehan leaned over my shoulder, eyebrows rising. “That… looks incredible.”
“It looks like a disciplinary violation,” I corrected.
But even I couldn’t deny it was beautiful — the kind of beauty that made you pause, the kind that didn’t ask for permission before existing.
“Who did it?” I asked.
Minseo made a face. “Rumor says it’s that first-year from Literature everyone’s talking about. Something-Woon… Woon something—”
“Woonhak?” Leehan supplied.
“Yes. Him.”
The name rang faintly familiar, like I’d overheard it in passing but hadn’t bothered to remember it.
“Do we have confirmation?” I asked.
“No, but security is reviewing footage.”
Typical. Another creative student who thought rules were aesthetic suggestions.
“I’ll review the incident myself,” I said finally.
Minseo blinked. “You? Personally?”
“Yes.”
Because whenever something on campus threatened to spiral, I didn’t delegate. I handled it myself. That was the job. That was my role.
And someone painting stars on university property definitely counted as a spiral.
⸻
It wasn’t until much later — after Minseo left for her next class and Leehan went to chase down some missing receipts — that the quiet finally settled in.
My eyes drifted to the rain-smeared window.
The quad below blurred into impressionistic shapes, umbrellas like watercolor blotches. Somewhere down there, the rumor said, was a student with paint-stained fingers and no sense of rules.
Someone who made constellations on walls.
Someone who thought light belonged wherever it wanted to be.
I didn’t know anything about him.
But something in my chest tightened anyway — a strange awareness, a prickle of premonition.
Like the calm before a storm.
And I hated storms.