Chapter 16

I re-read Ji Geon-hyung’s short message several times. After all that, it seemed that he noticed that I was eavesdropping.

What could be comforting to hear? No, It’s a subject that I have to accept first to be comforted.

I knew for sure that the friend I liked, liked someone other than me, and I already guessed [who it was]. This wasn’t something to be comforted about, but something I had to understand and accept.

Feeling my heart ache, I left a message for hyung.

[I’m fine. I’ll have it sorted out soon.]

I didn’t really have anything to sort out, but if I really had to, I needed to sort out my mind. I didn’t want to make Ji Geon-hyung uncomfortable because of my feelings for Kang Ji Seok.

However, my heart was still beating fast, confused by Minah-noona’s face and Kang Ji Seok’s words which filled my head.

‘I should wash my face with cold water to clear my mind.’

After drenching my face with icy cold water, I raised my upper body thinking I would feel better. My cell phone happened to ring at that time.

[Open the door.]

It was a short message from Ji Geon-hyung. There was a feeling of inexplicable pressure from it. It’s not like the door was locked, so he could open the door himself and come in, but hyung always seemed to be careful to ask me to open the door directly.

Hesitantly, I approached the door and instead of replying to the message, I opened the door as he said to. In front of the door stood Ji Geon-hyung with his distinctive musky scent, along with the scent of the cigarettes he smoked a while ago.

I didn’t know what to say after opening the door and facing each other. First of all, should I apologize for eavesdropping unintentionally? I didn’t mean to in the first place. To deliberately listen carefully.

Facing Ji Geon-hyung, Ji Seok’s words which I had momentarily forgotten came to mind again. Sure enough, I shouldn’t have listened. If I hadn’t listened, I wouldn’t have had such a headache.

As soon as I lowered my eyes while thinking of Ji Seok, he grabbed my arm. Ji Geon-hyung pulled me out by the arm with an expressionless face, and silently closed my door. Then, he dragged me to his room without saying a word.

Ji Geon-hyung lived in the most spacious and neatest room in the house, even the bed was large. The bed was so wide that I thought it should be shared with someone else, so we always used this room when I slept with hyung at dawn.

The door closed and locked, and then suddenly Ji Geon-hyung hugged me and lifted me up. Startled by the sudden shift in my vision, I wrapped my arms around his neck, and my face showed a flustered expression.

“Hyung, wait, why…!”

He just laid me down on the bed without saying a word. Not only that, he also laid down next to me and pulled the blanket up to my neck.

Seeing my face stained with embarrassment, Ji Geon-hyung smiled brightly in that moment.

“People tend to forget everything while sleeping. So let’s go to sleep.”

He picked up the remote at the bedside and turned off all the lights in the room, the surroundings quickly filled with darkness. As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, the moonlight came through the window, making it easier than usual to distinguish faces that were closer.

I was lying on my side, looking at hyung and leaned back a bit. I usually slept on the edge of the bed, holding hands, so I never laid this close before.

I was about to go back to my usual position, but Ji Geon-hyung wrapped his stretched out arm around my waist, and pulled me back so I couldn’t move away any more.

“Stop that. If you go any further, I’ll cry from loneliness.”

“Who says you’re lonely and crying?”

After hearing his childish words, I angrily spat out and in the dark, Ji Geon-hyung laughed softly and said, “I am.”

I looked at him with bleary eyes and sighed deeply.

“You just want to sleep, right? This does not seem like comforting.”

It was already almost one o’clock in the morning, so it was time to sleep.

In fact, there was no need to be confronted. Truthfully, if hyung, who knew all my feelings, comforted me as if he was sorry for the conversation he had earlier, the little pride I had would have fallen to the bottom. Perhaps, I had sorrowful tears streaming down my face unknowingly. Of all things, why did I have to pick a guy like Kang Ji Seok?

I’d rather he had dragged me in here because he needed sleep.

Hyung didn’t bother answering whether I was right or wrong. Instead, he wrapped his arms around my waist so that I couldn’t back away any further, and patted my back as if I was a child he was putting to sleep.

This was new. Starting from the place where his arms and hands touched, a pleasant warmth that aroused a comfortable feeling spread throughout my body. My heart, which was beating so fast that I was short of breath earlier, soon regained stability and my muddled mind gradually sorted out and settled down. The peace I felt before falling asleep in contact [with each other] seemed to be like a kind of “comfort” as hyung said.

‘Come to think of it…’

This feeling, I’ve felt it somewhere before. It was only after I went a little farther and traced my memories that I could remember that I had been patted by hyung like this four years ago.

It was during the time when my parents, who divorced when I was young, often met afterwards and would make a fuss. Since they had no interest in their only son, without regard for whether I was an examinee1 or not, they fought loudly even when I was concentrating on my studies in my room.

Now, the issue of money that caused the two of them to fight often had been resolved. But until then, my mother, who was responsible for my upbringing, was sensitive about all the places where a lot of money would be spent. I didn’t know if I had to bear the expensive tuition fees alone to go to college.

So, I went to Ji Seok’s house under the pretext of tutoring because it was hard to cope with the dark and harsh atmosphere of the house. However at the time, it was during the holiday, he and his family had gone to their relatives’ house to play without a word and only Ji Geon-hyung was left alone.

That day must have been the day I had the most conversations with Ji Geon-hyung. Speaking out every word in my heart, I openly envied his family that showed strong familial love even though they lived far away because of work. Hyung listened to all my angry words and stroked my hair, wiped my tears from my eyes and put me to sleep. At that time, I couldn’t get used to the act as if he was coaxing a baby to sleep, but at some point I was able to sleep comfortably. When I opened my eyes again, all the stifling feelings that had piled up inside disappeared, and even the negative emotions that were bubbling in my throat were washed away. When I opened my eyes, while looking down at me with care, Ji Geon-hyung’s eyes seemed to be happy.

As I thought about how similar this was to back then, my eyes naturally closed. These days, I was not as sleepy or tired because I’ve been sleeping soundly with hyung, but I was already falling asleep at that moment thanks to the pleasant sensation.

I didn’t refuse the approaching sleep, closed my eyes, and habitually said good night to hyung. I felt a large hand gently stroking my hair. No matter how much younger I am than him, I was worried that I was being patted too often as a man, but I had already fallen asleep and [he] didn’t let go.

“Good night, Woo Seo-ya.”

Listening to hyung’s voice tickling my ear, I fell asleep in an instant.

++++++++++

The next day.

Kang Ji Seok and I were just as usual.

Kang Ji Seok walked out of his room with a frivolous face as usual and apologized for oversleeping, and I expected that would be the case, so I handed him two pieces of buttered toast and strawberry jam, saying that it was breakfast. Pretending to be disappointed, he rambled about how ‘breakfast is soybean paste stew’, so I insisted to quickly eat before I made his face into soybean paste2 and returned to my room.

Right, it was the same as usual. This was how it was.

What happened the day before still lingered in my mind. Be that as it may, there was no need to be conscious of it and be anxious. It certainly seemed to be that at the root of this thought was an old resignation. All I wanted was to be by his side as ‘Kang Ji Seok’s best friend’ for a long time.

However, somehow I felt a little lighter today. My mind seemed clearer and my heart was beating a little less painfully even when I thought about what happened the previous day.

“It turns out that the more areas of contact there are, the more comfortable I can sleep.”

As soon as I opened my eyes, Ji Geon-hyung brought me cool water and said with a smile. Maybe because I was still half-asleep I reacted thoughtlessly, but now I realized that there was definitely something different when I slept with holding hands from when I slept with his arms around my waist.

‘When I slept in the back-hugging position3, I felt it was very refreshing and pleasant, at the time…’

As I was thinking that, suddenly someone embraced me from behind. Thanks to the musky scent that grazed the tip of my nose, I could tell who it was without looking back.