By Chance and Then

Title auto-translated

Also known as By Chance, We... and... · Progai pasitaikius, Mes... ir... · We Draw By Accident · 우리는 우연히 그리고

by Han Mingi

Synopsis

The rainy season has come around again. Inseong, worn out from days of nonstop work at his university lab, finally drags himself to a jjimjilbang to wash up and unwind. There, of all things, he ends up squabbling over the last barley egg with a woman — and that woman turns out to be Suyoung, someone he has quietly missed for a long, long time. She looks exactly the same as she did back then, while he feels like he has aged into a completely different person. He is swept back to their first meeting: him, a freshly discharged soldier returning to university, buzzing with too much energy; her, a bold first-year student who teased him for acting like he was still in the military. Stung by her cheek, he started calling her a tomboy to get even. Like a sticky note slapped on someone's back as a joke, it was always going to fall off someday — but while the sun was shining, those days together sparkled. This is the story of that time, and of the two of them.