He had his own reasons too. Around that time, a situation had erupted a couple of times where people he was interested in and contacting happened to show interest in Eunha. But the person in question, Eunha, wasn’t interested in them. There was a period when Haebin, whose pride was hurt, berated Eunha for quite a while.
Anyway, the twins who had continued all sorts of battles throughout that year ended up scattered into different classes when the year changed. The girl naturally gave up while doing so and got into a romance with a boy who became her classmate, but the boy… continued to like Eunha for a while even after becoming a third-year.
He was also the person who first made Eunha aware of homosexuality. He had only considered him a friend and never developed feelings of liking, but there was a part that wavered a bit regarding the point of him being someone of the same sex. It was because he was immature.
One day, that kid, who brought both curiosity and confusion, and Eunha impulsively tried kissing. With eyes tightly shut, they overlapped lips and even tangled tongues. He felt a strange sensation, and his heart pounded like it would burst. Without a doubt, it was a sensation he was feeling for the first time.
Honestly, it felt good, but from around the middle onward, the uncomfortable and flustered feelings were greater. It was because that kid felt extremely like just… a friend. He felt guilty, as if he was committing an act that shouldn’t be done with someone who was so very much a friend.
He came to his senses and pushed him away, apologized, and that kid silently dropped tears. Using that incident as a turning point, he gradually cut off contact and sorted out his feelings alone. Then from the second semester, they hung out little by little again. After graduation, they naturally grew distant, and it had already been several years since contact was completely cut off.
To think that was already 10 years ago. While reviewing the suddenly surfaced past, the two people’s conversation was smoothly flowing with Eunha’s school days as the topic.
“You were popular.”
“He was the school idol. There were fucking tons of kids who came to me asking for introductions too.”
Back then it was the era of using Facebook, and his follower count went up to almost ten thousand. Whenever there was a chance, he’d get tagged on the school bamboo forest, and his photo had been stolen several times as a handsome ordinary person on troll page accounts.
Gu Haebin, who was digging up distant past events and listing them like heroic tales, was absurd beyond compare. He himself hadn’t said anything. Somehow he felt like he’d become a person showing off and bragging, and his ears grew slightly hot with embarrassment.
“Well… it does seem natural. Because hyung is a perfect person…”
“The maximum number of Pepero Day gifts I ever received was roughly about 80.”
“What 80? Don’t exaggerate… No, why are you even talking about this in the first place?”
“Even when he was a university student, there were a lot of people who liked that guy. Lee Eunha rejected all those people.”
“…Suddenly I’m thinking that someone like me might be nothing at all to hyung.”
“They’re not even in a situationship or anything, so it’s not entirely wrong, is it?”
“Ah… I’m getting kind of depressed…”
“That’s why I’m telling you. Listen well to what I say from now on, and when I tell you to come out, you come out. Okay?”
“No, what are you two even talking about right now?”
They continued their conversation among themselves while thoroughly excluding Eunha, who was right there beside them. Looking back and forth between the two who seemed to get along quite well, Eunha was dismantling his expression absurdly when he discovered customers wandering nearby and left to do the cleaning he’d been putting off.
While organizing the messy table, he faintly heard voices from behind.
“I’m rooting for you. You know that, right? Hyung will support you.”
“Why is he like that, really…”
It was ridiculous. Eunha, who scrubbed the table hard with furious hands, disappeared into the counter in a flash.
* * *
And so a few strange days passed. Days when the two people burned time exchanging some conspiracy or whatever. Days that endlessly made Eunha flabbergasted.
At the end of it, Friday arrived. It was a day when Gu Haebin didn’t visit, a day when Yeonjun had a free period, and also a day when they’d decided to go on their fourth date.
Time reaching noon. After finishing preparations to leave work and exiting the cafe, he saw Yeonjun, who had left first, standing in one corner of the parking lot. Eunha sometimes commuted on foot and sometimes by his own car, and today he’d brought his car. As he approached Yeonjun, who was standing waiting beside it, he expected him to sense his presence and turn around… but he didn’t. He was just blankly looking down at his phone.
Eunha, raising his eyebrows, peered beside his shoulder. He looked at Yeonjun’s phone together. Looking to see what it was, a store information screen in a map app was displayed. In other words, Eunha’s cafe’s review page.
The menu is friendly and the boss’s face is really delicious
★★★★★ | Recommended 336
If you go between 9 AM and 1 PM every day, you can see the boss hehe
★★★★★ | Recommended 198
This is the best cafe of my life for real…
★★★★★ | Recommended 145
“…Why are you looking at this?”
When he asked sourly, Yeonjun finally turned his shoulder slightly to look down at Eunha. After staring with dark eyes for a while, he awkwardly turned his gaze away.
“…It’s nothing.”
Let’s go now that you’re here, he said as usual on the surface, but that voice had a handful of poorly hidden distress buried in it. The back view approaching close to the passenger seat was gloomy as if covered with dark clouds. If Yeonjun had animal ears and a tail, they would surely be drooping right now with the momentum to sink to the floor.
He’d been in that state for several days ever since hearing a series of anecdotes from Gu Haebin. An atmosphere that had sunk knowingly or unknowingly. An appearance as if a lot of noise was happening inside.
When was it that he said he accepted unchangeable past as it is… Then he exhaled through his nose. He knew at which point Yeonjun was feeling distressed. The fact that there had been quite a lot of people in the past who really, truly liked Eunha and tried various approaches seemed to have come to him as a sense of crisis.
Perhaps, he’d reached the proposition that he too might not be much different from those fervent someones.
Eunha thought of Gu Haebin. He’d wondered why he needlessly mentioned past history to make him embarrassed, but it seemed to have been to push him with shock therapy. Yeonjun naturally didn’t show the dramatic ardor that Gu Haebin might have expected, but it was certain that an anxious motive had definitely been planted.
Thanks to that, even while driving to the restaurant, the atmosphere wasn’t very refreshing. He didn’t blatantly complain this way or that, but rather because of that, it became more conscious and concerning. Unable to watch any longer, Eunha opened his mouth.
“You must have been popular during your school days too.”
He didn’t think that wouldn’t have been the case. Anyone would have liked him. It meant, why are you newly concerned about such things when you both would have been in similar situations?
“You too… so that means hyung really had a lot.”
“How many years ago was that even…”
Eunha, who muttered helplessly, returned to the main point again.
“Anyway, didn’t you have a lot too?”
“I did.”
He answered surprisingly promptly. It was the moment he’d just stopped at a signal. Yeonjun reached out his arm toward Eunha, who glanced to the side, and naturally held his hand. The act of intertwining their wrists and rubbing the back of his hand with his thumb was quite everyday.
“I was really popular, hyung.”
