“…I’m, not crying.”
“Yes you are. Tears are dripping down. Why are you crying? Did something happen with Yeongyeom earlier?”
Don’t even say that bastard’s name. Yoonjo felt even more miserable and squeezed his eyes shut. He needed to say something, but his mouth wouldn’t easily open. Remaining still with his head lowered, Yoonjo held out the plastic wrapper in his hand to Seonwoo and spoke haltingly.
“The ice cream… tastes really bad.”
“……”
“It should be sweet… but I can’t taste anything. It tastes bad. Ice cream shouldn’t be like this. Why did I even come all the way here…. It’s more than a 10-minute distance even by cultivator. I came all the way here to eat ice cream… but why does it taste bad? I came to eat something sweet…. It’s free so it should taste even better….”
Yoonjo barely opened his eyes and kept fidgeting with the empty Jjujjuba wrapper. From his dark eyes, fat tears like chicken droppings kept dripping down. The tears falling in rapid succession wetly glistened on his healthily tanned skin.
Yoonjo’s lips trembled as he spoke again with difficulty.
“The ice cream tastes bad. This… tastes really bad….”
In truth, it was Yoonjo’s favorite ice cream. The supermarket grandmother couldn’t have given it to him without knowing that. Soda-flavored Jjujjuba. Yoonjo liked it so much that eating it almost daily when he came down to the countryside was practically routine. But today it tasted bad. That made him so angry.
Yoonjo, who had only been shedding tears, now looked like he was about to start sobbing. Once the floodgates opened, his words burst out louder over time, almost like shouting.
“Hueoong…. Ice cream…. This, the taste…. It tastes bad…. Why does it taste bad? This is supposed to be delicious, *sniff*, urk…. It’s supposed to be, delicious…. But it tastes bad. Hyeong, this is weird….”
Yoonjo tilted his head back with his eyes closed and pressed his lips together once as if trying to hold back tears, but it was nowhere near enough to stop the flowing tears. He finally began to cry out loud. Even Yoonjo himself didn’t know why he was acting this way.
At Yoonjo’s crying face, Seonwoo hurriedly ran into the supermarket and grabbed a handful of ice cream in sight. The supermarket grandmother gestured with her eyes asking why Yoonjo was crying, but there was no time to answer. He frantically emptied all the cash from his pocket onto the counter and laid out the ice cream in a line in front of Yoonjo.
“Yoonjo-ya, don’t cry. Let’s eat one, okay?”
“Hueoong…. Ice cream…. is weird….”
The crying showed no signs of stopping easily. Seonwoo raised his hand and cupped Yoonjo’s chin with his palm, then pressed his cheeks firmly. Yoonjo’s lips automatically jutted out like an angry goldfish. Even so, tears continued to flow, dampening Seonwoo’s fingers.
It wasn’t tear ducts but a faucet. A faucet with a broken handle that kept gushing water.
When Yoonjo didn’t stop crying easily, Seonwoo wiped Yoonjo’s eyes with his palm, but it seemed futile, so he raised his arms and pulled him into an embrace as if soothing a child. His shoulder instantly became damp. Seonwoo felt Yoonjo bury his face in his shoulder and slowly patted his back.
“Don’t cry.”
“*Hic*…. Why, is this happening….”
“Yoonjo, little one.”
“I’m not, *hic*, a little one.”
“Right, Yoonjo baby.”
At the word “baby,” Yoonjo’s eyebrows angled sharply. Even so, he didn’t push away Seonwoo’s hand. Seonwoo gauged Yoonjo’s mood and fumbled to bring an ice cream to Yoonjo’s eyes. It must have been cold because Yoonjo flinched momentarily.
“Did the ice cream taste bad?”
“Yes….”
“Then if we eat them one by one, one bite at a time, maybe one will taste good.”
“……”
“I really like this milk ice cream, want to try it?”
“Yes.”
Only then did Seonwoo slowly pull Yoonjo out of his embrace and peeled off the white ice cream wrapper. He pulled Yoonjo’s wrist over and placed the stick firmly in his hand, then lightly tapped his cheek.
“Take a bite.”
Yoonjo opened his mouth and took a big bite of the ice cream, then chewed. A sweet milk flavor swirled on the tip of his tongue. With his eyes half-lowered, Yoonjo took another bite, then hesitated before offering Seonwoo the side he hadn’t bitten.
“Hyung, you have some too.”
At Yoonjo’s suggestion, Seonwoo tilted his head slightly and opened his mouth. It was precisely the side Yoonjo had bitten. The white ice cream slid between his red lips.
“Ah….”
“It’s delicious. Does this one taste bad too, Yoonjo-ya?”
At the question asked with smoothly curved eyes, Yoonjo blinked and then shoved the ice cream into his mouth eagerly. Seeing that handsome face smile, peace quickly came to his heart. He thought this must be what beauty therapy was.
They say if you cry then laugh, horns will grow… Well, let them grow. It felt really unpleasant to keep crying while looking at that face.
“…It’s delicious. I’ll start liking this one from today.”
Though he ate quickly, in the hot weather the stick ice cream melted and stuck to his fingers. Yoonjo stuck out his tongue and licked his fingers, then raised his head at Seonwoo’s gaze he suddenly felt. He was quietly watching Yoonjo’s fingers.
“…Should I give you one?”
Yoonjo rummaged through the ice cream bag and asked as he found and offered a milk-flavored ice cream. Seonwoo’s eyes curved beautifully as he stroked Yoonjo’s head.
“…Not that, something else.”
“Something else what? Do you have a different favorite, hyung?”
“Yeah.”
He asked what it was while chewing on the ice cream, but an answer never came.
***
Sitting in front of the old computer for the first time in a while, Yoonjo chewed on the end of his pen and carefully looked at the screen. A list of courses opening next semester was displayed on the monitor.
Right next to him, a fan was spinning on natural breeze mode, adjusting its strength as it pleased.
“The easy-A lecture isn’t opening this year….”
It seemed “Physics Journalism,” which was supposed to guarantee an A if you just kept up with attendance and assignments, wasn’t available this year. Just in case, Yoonjo checked the first semester too, and went back to last year’s second semester, realizing this course only opened once every two years.
“I knew it. I shouldn’t have believed what Gamsungdom said.”
He wanted to scold himself for being tempted by his classmate’s words that the assignments were just a bit difficult but you just needed to submit them. Yoonjo clicked his tongue and chewed on the pen tip, then wrote down several courses in his spacious diary. In a corner of the diary, “National Farmers’ Association” was impressively printed.
As Yoonjo was piecing together his schedule, he checked his phone screen at the timely vibration. As soon as he saw the three characters “Gamsungdom,” he pressed the answer button.
“Good timing. I’m making my schedule right now.”
– I’m finally hearing your precious voice. Do you know I’ve called you more than a hundred times? It kept disconnecting and only now got through.
“Can you verify the number 100?”
– Ah, sorry. Anyway, it’s true it didn’t connect. It really seriously didn’t work.
Yoonjo could see the number changed to 3G and the antenna barely flickering from one to two bars. Just when he thought it was working well for a while, it was acting up again.
“The internet’s not working well. Why’d you call?”
Yoonjo, who had scribbled down one major course on the paper, paused his hand briefly at his classmate’s following words.
– Hey, today’s my day 1.
“…What are you talking about? Where would you have a girlfriend?”
– Listen up. Do you remember? Right before the end of semester, I went on a blind date once. I met a business major sophomore noona there.
Because he had made a big fuss as soon as the blind date was set, it remained vivid in Yoonjo’s memory. He had put on a disgusting fashion show in the dorm. Yoonjo keenly realized that day just how repulsive another man’s body could be.
Ki Seonwoo’s body had muscles nicely defined, so why did other guys have weird flabby flesh that defiled the eyes? Even though he didn’t want to recall it, memories from the past naturally surfaced and Yoonjo’s face scrunched up on its own. It was an expression Seonwoo would have thought was a wicked sunken eye if he’d seen it.
“But that fell through. You got rejected at light speed without even an after-party.”
– That noona is working part-time at a cafe in my neighborhood.
“Oh…. Amazing coincidence.”
Yoonjo replied half-heartedly, busy selecting the required major courses he needed to take. He had to finish quickly and go to town with Seonwoo. Today was the day they planned to buy a raincoat and food for Dongtae.
Since he had to make his schedule, he inevitably had to skip the morning farm work, so his daytime was free but not his evening. So he had to quickly finish making his schedule and spend the daytime with Seonwoo. Repeating that thought, Yoonjo diligently pieced together courses, credits, and times.
– Right. But that’s only a coincidence for me, isn’t it a totally fucking unlucky situation for that noona? We met as customer and part-timer at a cafe after she rejected me without even an after-party at the blind date.
“Oh… Gamsung Hyeon. How did you even think of that?”
– Actually, Huiwon taught me…. If it weren’t for Huiwon, I would have really screwed up.
He was talking about Kang Huiwon, his friend and also a member of the sexual minority club he had mentioned to Seonwoo before. Yoonjo nodded readily with an “I knew it” expression. The Seonghyeon he knew was what you’d call popular, but he was the light type who was a bit distant from such devoted romance.
– He gave me advice. To start with really minor, insignificant kindness and smoothly permeate in. In that process, you also have to do gift attacks but choose appropriately so it’s not burdensome, and if the other person shows even the slightest sign of dislike or rejection, you have to cleanly cut ties, right?
“…And?”
Before he knew it, Yoonjo had started writing down Seonghyeon’s words in his diary. Kindness, start, gift attack, no burden, if dislike or reject then cut ties. As Yoonjo was writing such things, he had to briefly ponder whether this would even work on Seonwoo. Above all, Seonwoo was a man, and a man liking a man was clearly a type of story difficult for anyone to easily accept.
After deliberation, Yoonjo circled the part that said “no burden” and listened carefully to Seonghyeon’s continued words. He pressed the fan button with his toes. Choosing weak breeze instead of natural breeze, he turned up the speaker volume a bit more.
