“Anyway, I’m glad you started socializing. Now show some interest in soccer too. Participate in department life. Your department kids are curious about you. The girls too. They said the club with the most girls in the engineering school went looking for you.”
“…Why are you picking up such things?”
“If your best friend is popular, isn’t this much fate….”
Best friend. Fate. It didn’t sound bad to hear, so he chuckled.
“When it gets warmer, I want to go somewhere.”
“Where?”
At the welcome words amidst listening, Lee Euishin quickly asked. Because his driver’s license would come out soon.
“Just anywhere… the sea?”
Kwon Yunsu, who had raised his gaze high to look up at the buildings, smiled brightly. That seemed to be the right answer he’d just blurted out.
“I want to go to the sea.”
“Let’s go when it gets warmer.”
Just the two of us.
“Good. Keep that promise.”
You too.
“Want one more?”
Despite the offer, Kwon Yunsu was already putting bungeoppang in his hand.
The excited drunkard kept laughing and laughing.
Watching him, he felt like he was getting drunk too.
- Come on now, ease the pain
Until the summer of his fifteenth year, there was no color in Lee Euishin’s world. It was just cold and monotonously refined.
He was born sensitive and on the prickly side. Growing up pampered in a wealthy family where he could easily get anything he wanted, there was no need to restrain such a temperament. No, sometimes he had to restrain it excessively. In front of his paternal grandfather and relatives, and his parents’ social guests.
Imitating goodness in front of hypocritical adults dealt a huge blow to Lee Euishin’s character. He came to extremely dislike people and didn’t develop trust in others. He thought gaining pleasure from interactions with others was laborious and inefficient. Only very occasionally, when he beat up guys who picked fights or saw his mother’s face making a fuss as if something terrible had happened, did he feel faint pleasure. If dividing the categories of normal and abnormal medically, he was probably barely hanging on to the edge of normal. Because he’d never once felt attachment to people.
A cold and monotonously refined world.
A horned monster who was neither adult nor child, fifteen years old.
‘I recommend the transfer student.’
When he first saw Kwon Yunsu, he thought he was a guy living in a shōnen manga. A country puppy who was terrifyingly cheerful, found everything interesting, had too many delicious things, loved soccer more than anything in the world, and couldn’t tell front from back. A completely different world. He didn’t even know such a colorful and childish world existed, it was bothersome, it was irritating, and… he never imagined he’d be dyed by it.
‘You came all the way here, so why are you leaving instead of staying?’
But those tears. It wasn’t even a lifetime separation, just a brief season spent together by chance had passed by, yet that person who grieved their parting with all his heart……
—I was thoroughly bewitched then.
‘Euishin-ah, take care.’
He must have been thoroughly bewitched then. That day, that impudent country bumpkin who stopped his tears with a donut and walked him home must have stamped him hard with a poisonous seal. Otherwise,
‘Why didn’t you contact me?’
There’s no way this one sentence would still be lodged in his heart like this.
Even though it was something he’d already said once, it clotted like poison in his throat—. He’d never nurtured such tenacious and harsh resentment before.
‘Why didn’t you contact me?’
That was painful waiting. It was vaguely deferred expectation and a collapse where his pride was completely worn away. And finally,
‘I could have contacted you first too, couldn’t I?’
It took three years to admit that he’d been more absorbed in that memory than the other person.
“…Would you know that time….”
Right in front of him was Kwon Yunsu sleeping with only his eyes showing. A drunkard reeking of alcohol. When drunk, Kwon Yunsu wanted to have many, very many conversations with anyone, and last night he followed into his own bedroom despite being a bother, chattering for a while before falling asleep like that.
Sleeping together with someone was uncomfortable. He didn’t even like long trips because he hated changing sleeping places. Especially if that partner was Kwon Yunsu. However, even knowing he wouldn’t easily fall asleep, he didn’t wake the guy and send him away. He even covered him well with the blanket and put him to sleep carefully. He even drew back the blackout curtains he always kept tightly closed. If it’s too dark, he gets scared.
And as expected, his night passed slowly. Even when he dozed off briefly, when he became aware of Kwon Yunsu lying beside him, he’d be startled awake. In such repetition, morning approached. The breathing of the twenty-year-old country bumpkin sleeping sweetly while reeking of alcohol deepened and shallowed. Too, close.
‘Euishin-ah, let’s get along well.’
Before falling asleep, Kwon Yunsu had said such words.
Apparently there was a quarrel among the group of classmates with romantic relationships tangled around the few girls in the department. The drinking session lengthened while clearing up misunderstandings and reconnecting. Mid-April, when awkward and unclear relationships were slowly settling into place—it was a common occurrence. Kwon Yunsu, who excitedly told him the stories of guys he didn’t even know, might soon become the protagonist of such a happening too.
Can I endure it?
‘Let’s not fight. Got it? If there’s something I did that pissed you off, something built up… I’m going to sleep now, so when I’m completely asleep, just beat me up. Beat me. Then in the morning say I rolled out of bed. Got it?’
Would Kwon Yunsu remember? Was he carving that day as a piercing memory like me? At the center of the fragmentary thoughts that seeped in during the sleepless night was that memory.
Just once, the day he couldn’t hold back in front of Kwon Yunsu.
Winter of second year of high school, the last day of finals. That day when the liberation of a brief end and the tension of a genuine beginning intersected, unable to resist Kwon Yunsu’s nagging, he went to eat hamburgers with some guys from class.
‘Thinking about today’s exam, I.’
‘You only eat the ice from your cola.’
‘I definitely shouldn’t apply for early admission.’
‘You mean you can’t.’
‘Considering various aspects….’
‘You failed the exam.’
Then and now, Kwon Yunsu was consistently the type to seriously engage in such conversations, and Lee Euishin always found it boring and kept his mouth shut.
‘Talk more when you’re with the kids. The kids say you’re like an alien making contact with Earth through me. How did you end up being called an alien, Euishin?’
After Kwon Yunsu nagged like that, having heard something from somewhere, he consciously kept his mouth shut. They must have talked behind his back because approaching him was difficult, but the nuance of those words wasn’t so unpleasant.
For example,
‘So what about you, Kwon? Did you do well on the exam? What about Euishin?’
When it was awkward to ask directly so the question was slipped in alongside Kwon Yunsu,
‘Yeah, I feel like I did well somehow.’
‘He definitely did better than Kwon Yunsu.’
Looking only at Kwon Yunsu while returning the answer. This pattern reinforced that nuance. Very satisfactory.
‘I never once thought Kwon Yunsu had good social skills.’
That day, there was one unfamiliar face mixed in instead of the usual fixed members who always hung out together.
‘Seeing him like that with Euishin, I realize anew this guy’s a good person.’
‘I seduced him with my outstanding beauty.’
He definitely fell for the seduction. When Lee Euishin chuckled, the unfamiliar guy made a surprised face.
‘Euishin is laughing…. Did you really seduce him with beauty?’
‘What… is Euishin the type to admire someone’s face? He keeps scolding me saying I’m ugly.’
‘I heard you’ve been friends since middle school.’
‘Yeah, well.’
After the reunion, they consciously didn’t talk about middle school. To be precise, about the transfer. For Lee Euishin it was teeth-grinding, and Kwon Yunsu… why you? Did you feel guilty about not contacting me?
He suddenly wanted to know Kwon Yunsu’s inner thoughts. Lee Euishin put on a calm expression as if nothing was awkward, glanced at Kwon Yunsu, and took a sip of cola.
‘It’s unusual for someone to transfer out and come back.’
‘But it’s not completely unheard of.’
Several guys added appropriate comments, and
‘Right, I didn’t think this guy would come back either.’
…He struggled to relax his face that was about to stiffen at those words. Then Kwon Yunsu became uninhibited.
‘He came at the start of second semester and left before midterms. Despite that, he was class president, got confessed to several times. People from the neighboring school came to see him too. You know Song Eunkyung? She was the prettiest and scariest girl in our grade, and she tormented me so much to find out what academy Euishin attended.’
From useless memories he didn’t even know.
