“Hyung-nim, if that’s the case, you can come to our house every morning.”
“…Hm?”
Hyung-nim, who had barely stopped coughing, asked with curiosity.
For a moment, a story I’d heard somewhere in the past came to mind. The sad story of unemployed adults who lied about going to work and wandered around in parks.
“It’s okay, just trust me. I won’t say anything to imo, samchon, or Jeongyeon.”
Hyung-nim, who realized what I was thinking, coughed up a storm again. Like someone who had heard something completely unexpected.
“What the… you sometimes act like an old soul.”
Having finally calmed down and drunk some water, hyung-nim checked his watch and got up from his seat. For some reason, his fine lips and the corners of his eyes were full of laughter. Today, hyung-nim was dressed in a neat shirt and slacks, not loosely disheveled like last time.
He was the very image of an adult man that I could never imitate.
“You’re leaving?”
I didn’t add “already.” That would reveal too much regret.
“If I don’t want to mooch breakfast every morning, I have to go out and work.”
I hadn’t even finished eating yet, but the mealtime I spent with hyung-nim ended much shorter than I expected. I unnecessarily scooped up a big spoonful of rice and shoved it in my mouth, when he suddenly turned around as if he’d remembered something.
“Right, baby, come home early at night. If you get cocky just because you’re an adult, you’ll get scolded by hyung.”
“How can I be a baby when I’m an adult?”
I really hate the nickname ‘baby.’
In fact, I was the type to say what needed to be said even in a timid voice. Besides, right now it was an unwelcome comment that came at a time when I was already feeling hurt, so I couldn’t help it.
“A kid is a kid.”
“Last time you said I was hyung-nim. You said there’d be big trouble if you called me baby.”
“That’s about other people. To me, you’re a baby, aren’t you?”
“What?”
Where on earth does such absurd logic exist? As I stared at him in disbelief for a moment, hyung-nim grinned.
“When you get to be my age, you’ll see just how much like babies twenty-year-olds look.”
“…You sound like an ahjussi.”
“That’s right. Even I think I sound a bit like an ahjussi.”
And yet hyung-nim just chuckled as if the word ahjussi wasn’t even insulting. Then does that mean I’ll be a baby for life?
“Still, Hajin, I even changed your diapers… you’ll be a baby forever, then.”
Ha.
“……”
My pride thoroughly scratched, I picked up my chopsticks and moved them to the fish. After that, I kept my mouth firmly shut and didn’t answer. I couldn’t win anyway, and it was something I absolutely didn’t want to respond to.
As expected, mackerel isn’t to my taste.
It took quite a while, even after hyung-nim left, to bring the deboned fish meat to my mouth.
***
In fact, there was a separate reason why I came to respectfully call Jeongwoo hyung-nim, who was no different from a real older brother, ‘hyung-nim.’
After becoming aware of my feelings of affection one day, I simply couldn’t let go of my feelings for hyung-nim. From that day on, I deliberately started calling him respectfully to try to hide my feelings even a little.
I define the beginning of my unrequited love as from the time I was born. Because Jeongwoo hyung-nim even occupied my very first memory.
Just like a duckling imprints on the first thing it sees when it hatches from its egg, something like that imprinting probably happened to me too.
From the time my first memories formed, my gaze was always directed toward Jeongwoo hyung-nim.
Of course, Jeongwoo hyung-nim back then wasn’t ‘hyung-nim’ but ‘eong-a,’ and a little while after that, he was ‘hyung-a.’
Even when I was stammering with my short tongue, I played with hyung-a’s pens and sat on his lap in his school uniform doing coloring. The worst thing in the world was when Mom came to pick me up while I was playing with hyung-a.
In my young heart, I was jealous of Jeongyeon, and so I once whispered in hyung-a’s ear secretly from my childhood friend.
“Hyung-a, can Hajin be your hyung-a instead of Jeongyeon?”
It was truly a question only snotty-nosed kids would ask. It would have been fine to just play along appropriately. But hyung-a regrettably didn’t make promises to the kid that were impossible.
“Well, but hyung-a’s mom and dad are separate, aren’t they?”
That voice was so gentle that even young me didn’t think he had rejected my request.
He was simply telling me that it was literally impossible for us to become real siblings.
Unable to ever become real family with hyung-a, I hung my head dejectedly. As I was doing my best to make a dimple in my chin to keep from crying like a baby, I heard laughter from the side.
“Your lips are all sticking out.”
Not knowing what was in my heart, hyung-nim, who burst into laughter, kissed my cheeks and the tip of my nose with little pecks.
He even kissed the corners of my eyes where tears had formed. I completely forgot that I had almost cried just moments before. Soon after, unable to hold back the ticklishness, I burst into giggles.
“Hyung-a, it tickles!”
And a few days later, I stole one of Mom and Dad’s wedding photos that was stuck on the refrigerator and ran to hyung-a.
Even after tripping over a stone in the yard and falling, I didn’t cry and boldly proposed a new way to become family with hyung-a.
“Hyung-a, when Hajin grows up to be an adult, can I marry hyung-a? Then we can become family. It’s my wish!”
Having said it all without breathing, I waited for an answer with a pounding heart. Then hyung-a, who laughed as if dumbfounded, readily nodded without long deliberation.
“Okay, let’s do that.”
My memory from when I was only 6 years old is still as vivid as if it were yesterday. More than anything else, because his answer didn’t end there. He suddenly lowered his voice with a serious face.
“But… this has to be a secret that only Hajin and hyung know.”
“A secret?”
Back then, I looked at hyung-a with round eyes. Because I was planning to run straight to Mom and Dad and brag about it.
“Wishes have to be treasured to come true, you know.”
“……”
“Of course, Jeongyeon might get jealous too.”
The voice of hyung-nim whispering as he hooked pinkies and his playful smile—everything about that day sparkled in my eyes.
If you lived in a world painted with only one color, it would probably feel like this. Back then, and now, it was always the same.
My world was completely filled with Jeongwoo hyung-nim’s color.
‘I might die now. So as my last wish, please keep the promise from when I was little. I still remember it, you know.’
Marriage, I mean, hyung-nim.
If I said that, what would hyung-nim say?
Probably hyung-nim would laugh it off saying such verbal promises have no legal effect. He probably wouldn’t take my words seriously for even one second.
Or maybe he’d leave without looking back, saying all the affection built up over 20 years had run out.
After going to the hospital, my first semester as a college student had already started. I couldn’t bring myself to tell my parents for fear they’d cry, so my illness was still mine alone.
At first, I had definitely planned to go to the hospital alone like an adult, get an accurate diagnosis, and then tell my parents. But it was scary to have to handle such a big thing by myself.
I wished I could ask hyung-nim to go to the hospital with me like in the old days… but now I hesitated because hyung-nim and I weren’t that close anymore.
Instead, these days I kept thinking that if I really was terminal, I wanted to do something with hyung-nim before I died.
Honestly, marriage is absurd. If not marriage, then at least dating; if not that, then at least sex; if not that, then at least a kiss…
“Um, excuse me, is the seat next to you available?”
Having arrived early at the lecture hall and lost in thought, I quickly raised my head at an unfamiliar voice.
I was so lost in thought I didn’t even know I’d put my bag on the seat next to me. As soon as I hurriedly moved my bag, a guy who was probably a fellow student pulled out the chair and sat down. Wow, his hair is yellow.
“Wait a minute.”
The guy who had been examining my face carefully suddenly grinned as if he was pleased.
“You sat in the very front row at orientation, right? I don’t think you came to the after-party though.”
“Huh?”
How does he remember me? When I nodded with surprised eyes, the guy’s face brightened even more.
I’d heard the after-party was a gathering to build friendship while drinking, and since I didn’t know when I might die, I was too distressed and really didn’t feel like going to such a gathering, so I went home early.
“I was sitting behind you then.”
“Ah…”
Having made a dumbfounded sound for a moment, I suddenly missed Yoo Jeongyeon. Unlike me, Jeongyeon had a cheerful personality, and just by having them stick by my side, I could naturally make friends too. With Jeongyeon and I going to different colleges, I felt like I’d been dropped alone into the world for the first time.
“I’m Choi Jihwan. And you?”
“Huh? Oh, I’m Lee Hajin.”
Fortunately, Choi Jihwan gave me another chance. I stared at the hand he casually extended, then grasped it. Choi Jihwan shook my hand a couple times, then started focusing on the lecture.
Next time I should answer a little less stupidly.
As I listened to class, I kept reflecting on my behavior from earlier. Honestly, just now I think I unconsciously became guarded because I had an intuition that Choi Jihwan was an alpha based on his outward appearance.
Being quite the goody-two-shoes even in high school, I mainly hung out only with omega or beta friends.
My parents were betas, and my closest friend Yoo Jeongyeon was also an omega, so the only alphas around me were Jeongwoo hyung-nim and Cheolwoo samchon. Hyung-nim manifested as an alpha early on, perhaps because he resembled his alpha father.
In this world, many unsavory things happen because of pheromones. Naturally, most of the victims were omegas.
From the outside, I had thinner features than a beta male, and Jeongwoo hyung-nim was an alpha with a physique so large and solid that anyone would feel intimidated just by him standing in front of them.
However, even after my secondary gender presentation, I had never properly experienced a heat. Although there were small disturbances at school, I didn’t suffer any major harm.
“You’re not an omega, you’re Lee Hajin. You understand what I’m saying, right?”
In the past, when I had just manifested as an omega and was being bullied at school, Jeongwoo hyung-nim told me that.
But not long after that, I masturbated for the first time thinking about hyung-nim.
Even after I became an omega, I masturbated thinking about the man who raised me while seeing me not as an omega but only as the human Lee Hajin.
