It was only after they finished the presentation rehearsal that Haeyoung finally leaned back comfortably against the backrest. Seeing him drooped like a deflated balloon, the expression “utterly exhausted” might have been more accurate. Yeoeun, who was sitting next to Haeyoung as he collapsed in exhaustion, asked if he wanted to grab a cup of coffee on the way.
Haeyoung, who had been sighing with his eyes closed while looking at the ceiling, merely tilted his head at her question. Before declining gently, an apologetic look appeared on his face as he smiled with his lips stretched.
“I’d like to, but right now I just want to go home and sleep…”
“Then I’ll buy you coffee tomorrow on my way to the office.”
“Huh, really?”
At Yeoeun’s words that flowed out readily, his narrowed eyes immediately widened. Watching his lips curve up at once, Yeoeun blinked in affirmation.
“Haeyoung-ssi worked the hardest. You have the most content to present too. And you’re the one who set the research direction.”
“But you did the research, Yeoeun-ssi, and I just added my spoon to it.”
She couldn’t help but smile back at Haeyoung’s weak grin. At her words that they should get going, Haeyoung straightened his body.
The other team members had left right after the early part of the presentation ended. After organizing the remaining materials and sweeping what needed to be taken into his bag, he put on his outerwear and waited for Yeoeun.
“Shall we go?”
At Haeyoung’s question, Yeoeun, who had finished preparing, nodded. Perhaps because it was late, it was already dark outside the window. Haeyoung, who had taken the elevator down and exited the building with Yeoeun, had no choice but to stop as if frozen at the figure that appeared before his eyes.
“Haeyoung-ah.”
Seonwoo, who seemed somewhat nervous, was waiting for him with a smiling face nonetheless.
He was in such an overexerted state that the cold winter wind felt refreshing. Haeyoung, who had wondered if he was seeing hallucinations due to being completely exhausted, raised his hand and rubbed his eyes. However, when he took his hand away and opened his tightly shut eyes, the person he saw was unmistakably Seonwoo no matter how he looked. Cha Seonwoo standing in front of a car, looking at him.
It wasn’t a mistake, nor was it a dream.
“Hyung?”
Haeyoung, who had encountered him unexpectedly, belatedly opened his mouth. Yeoeun, who glanced up at Haeyoung blinking without taking his eyes off Seonwoo, raised her hand and briefly grabbed and released his arm.
At the light pressure felt on his arm, Haeyoung lowered his head, and Seonwoo’s gaze also reached Yeoeun following him. She looked at Haeyoung and spoke in her usual calm tone.
“It seems he came to pick up Haeyoung-ssi, so I’ll get going now.”
“Yes, then see you tomorrow, Yeoeun-ssi.”
He smiled and waved at Yeoeun, who raised her finger to gesture in the opposite direction. Then, only after she started walking toward the subway station entrance did he turn his gaze back to look ahead. Seonwoo was waiting for him with a smile that seemed nervous but still composed.
Haeyoung began to walk toward him. During the walk across the short distance, Haeyoung’s steps gradually quickened.
“What’s this?”
The words that came out to hide his gladness were close to grumbling.
Haeyoung, who had arrived in front of Seonwoo, stopped and looked up at him. The question spat out through briefly parted lips was like waves where complex emotions were entangled and rushing in, and the pure white breath that escaped due to winter was the foam of those waves. In that hazy world, the only vivid man had his already fair skin turned pale, perhaps from standing outside for quite a while.
Since the urge to immediately reach out both hands to caress and warm his coldly frozen cheeks arose, Haeyoung had to clench both hands tightly. Whether knowing his heart or not, Seonwoo tilted his head and smiled affectionately.
“I came to pick you up.”
The car visible behind him wasn’t the one he had been driving around while filming the program. The silhouette familiar to his eyes even though he was seeing it after a long time was a car Haeyoung knew well. Because it was the car Seonwoo originally drove around.
Haeyoung, who had been looking down at it for a moment, unconsciously opened his mouth.
“So.”
Why did you come to pick me up… He couldn’t ask until the end and swallowed the question he was about to ask. When he asked that, the pattern of conversation that would follow was clearly drawn. If it was the Cha Seonwoo he knew, it was highly likely that rather than coming to pick him up with some purpose, he just came because he wanted to pick him up.
Wanting to take him to work, wanting to pick him up from work. It wasn’t that there was another secondary purpose, but rather that itself was the purpose. Knowing Cha Seonwoo, who never ran out of things he wanted to do with him, and also knowing what kind of heart that was, Haeyoung got into the car he opened without a word instead of interrogating him.
Perhaps because the car was familiar, his heart somehow felt at ease in this narrow space. Only after seeing him get in the car did Seonwoo, who had walked around to the back of the vehicle, also get into the driver’s seat. That process was so naturally fluid that Haeyoung, who was belatedly wondering if this was the right thing to do, turned his head at the question heard from beside him.
“Was it okay to just send her off? …Or did I interrupt?”
Even with the subject missing, he could tell who he was referring to. Since he saw him coming out with Yeoeun, he probably said it with her in mind. It was a gentle question as usual, but there was strength in the hand gripping the steering wheel.
At his appearance of starting the car but not thinking of moving, Haeyoung deliberately frowned.
“Ah, what interruption. She’s just an intern colleague.”
At those words, Seonwoo made a face as if he had heard something he shouldn’t have heard. He only widened his eyes, but perhaps due to his naturally glamorous impression, even that alone made the change in expression look dramatic. Seeing the expression close to shock, Haeyoung had to retrace whether he had just said something shameless.
Seonwoo, who had been at a loss for words, soon closed his mouth that had been slightly open. And after seeming to ponder for a moment, he called Haeyoung again.
“Haeyoung-ah, do you know how often relationships between colleagues at work develop into romantic relationships?”
Where is this going now? Hearing words that didn’t even make sense, Yoon Haeyoung chuckled as if dumbfounded. Cha Seonwoo had always had the strange habit of worrying about things that didn’t need to be worried about right now.
“Wow, when hyung said he was going to the new employee orientation, that’s exactly how I felt. Now I understand your heart, Cha Seonwoo.”
“…You were the one who kept telling me to go even though I said I wouldn’t go, Yoon Haeyoung. I wanted to be with you.”
“Huh.”
At his appearance of protesting as if wronged instead of picking up his own slip of the tongue, Haeyoung narrowed his eyes.
“No, but what new employee doesn’t go when the company tells them to come out? If they say go, you have to go… Hyung, actually, everyone already found out you’re the chairman’s son. You have no intention of hiding it at all, do you?”
Yoon Haeyoung looked up at him with a crooked gaze as he spoke.
The reason they never had a big fight throughout their relationship was because their arguments always ended somehow before they could really turn into fights. Someone you like so much can make you feel upset, but that doesn’t mean making the person you like upset is acceptable, right? That’s why Yoon Haeyoung couldn’t win against Cha Seonwoo, and Cha Seonwoo couldn’t win against Yoon Haeyoung.
The seed that had been covered and passed over back then was dug up again after a long time. Over the newly sprouted conversation, Seonwoo shook his head side to side like a child.
“No…”
“Don’t lie. Hyung, you’re really fucking terrible at lying.”
Haeyoung, who had been chattering in an informal tone as if bickering with him over nothing like back then, hesitated upon seeing Seonwoo looking at him and smiling. Before he could ask what he was smiling about, a realization that came again struck him.
‘Ah, right. We broke up.’
Some realizations go beyond the realm of understanding and evoke sensations. At the shock spreading through his chest belatedly, Haeyoung bit his lower lip instead of breathing quietly. As he closed his mouth, silence quickly settled in the car.
“…Haeyoung-ah.”
The call heard softly had a desperate corner somewhere. As if knowing the reason why he, who had been smiling and grumbling just moments ago, suddenly closed his mouth, there was even a glimpse of an anxious tint in the breath on the trailing end of his words.
And Haeyoung, who had turned his head at the voice calling him, stopped breathing for a moment upon facing Seonwoo’s face. It was because his heart sank with a thud as if the ground beneath his feet had caved in the moment he discovered the chaotic emotions floating over his face. Though his gaze was swaying anxiously, the object contained in his black eyes was clear.
At his gaze as if standing at the edge of a cliff, Haeyoung unconsciously opened his mouth.
“Hyung, aren’t you cold?”
It was a voice where worry inevitably seeped through. Seonwoo didn’t miss Haeyoung, who took his eyes off him and reached his arm toward the heater’s control button along with the gentle question.
“Should I raise the temperature on this?”
To him who glanced at him and brought his fingers over the button, Seonwoo nodded. As Haeyoung moved his hand a few times, warmer heat circulated inside the car.
Feeling the warm air making his cheeks toasty, Haeyoung spoke in a nonchalant tone.
“It’s okay now, right? When I first saw you, hyung, your face was so frozen that I was concerned.”
“…You were concerned?”
“Of course I was, wouldn’t I be?”
As if trying to fill the gap created by his silence, Haeyoung grumbled playfully. Seonwoo, who was looking at such a Haeyoung, wore a faint smile on his lips as if he couldn’t help it. Because he could see his effort to change the subject after immediately catching on to his mood.
The car that soon departed separated from the sidewalk and entered the roadway as if gliding. The car quickly filled with warm heat, while the conversation between the two was dying out like a fire forcibly covered just as it was about to blaze.
As the car started moving, Haeyoung, who had rested his head against the window and was watching the water droplets gradually forming on the window, raised his finger. The touch that reached the hazy window made squeaking sounds as it passed, and the path it left became clear for a moment before being covered hazily again repeatedly.
There are things that cannot be erased even if you try to erase them. Could he really live without Cha Seonwoo? Haeyoung, who had been watching the warmth that had already reached him touch the cold window and form into droplets, closed his eyes at some point without knowing it himself. The fatigue he had been enduring to the end rushed in all at once.
***
When he opened his eyes, the same darkness was greeting him. The inside of the car was warm, and though he didn’t know when it was undone, the seatbelt was also unfastened. He wouldn’t have undone it himself, so probably Seonwoo hyung did it.
Haeyoung got up from the seat that had been reclined back for his comfort. Because of that, something that had been covering his body like a blanket slipped down onto his lap. It was Seonwoo’s clothes.
‘Where did hyung go?’
Haeyoung, who was left alone in the car, looked at the empty driver’s seat and turned his head.
