As soon as he got off the elevator, he saw a black figure flickering in the darkness. For a moment, he thought he’d seen wrong, but he hadn’t. As he stepped forward, the sensor light turned on, revealing the scene in front of his home in full.
Yeongbeom was sitting with his knees up as if he’d collapsed in front of Seongjo’s place, leaning his back against the closed front door.
He looked back at Seongjo and naturally opened his mouth.
“You’ve been away from home for a long time.”
For a moment, he was so dumbfounded that words wouldn’t come out. Seongjo let out a hollow laugh and swept his bangs back.
His hair, which he always kept neatly slicked back with pomade, was comfortably disheveled today. The hair that had gone back softly scattered back to its original place in an instant.
Seongjo had returned home from Yujeong’s family home in Gangwon-do without styling it. It was thanks to having relaxed both body and mind there yesterday and today. He hadn’t felt the need to set himself up in that sharp appearance, as if not a single drop of blood would come out even if he were stabbed.
The home he’d returned to became an utterly uncomfortable place just from Yeongbeom’s presence alone. Yeongbeom looked up at Seongjo’s appearance with an unfamiliar expression. It might have been because of his natural hairstyle, or it might have been because of the beige t-shirt he’d borrowed from Yujeong yet again.
“You weren’t here yesterday either. Where have you been?”
Perhaps because of that, Yeongbeom asked in a somewhat stiff voice. It was a question that seemed like he was still acting as a boyfriend even though they’d broken up. Seongjo answered with a face that didn’t even show mockery.
“What’s it to you?”
“…I’m curious.”
How ridiculous and pathetic an answer. Seongjo shrugged his shoulders and spoke again.
“Haven’t you got the wrong house? Seems like you should’ve gone to your mother’s house instead of here?”
At those words, Yeongbeom noticeably flinched. He was so shameless that he hadn’t known, but it seemed he wasn’t completely without guilt. About abandoning his family without any sense of responsibility.
“…Right. I was surprised to hear you were living here.”
But the very fact that he’d clearly known his mother and younger sister were living in this apartment yet never showed his face, only now taking steps to camp out where Seongjo lived, was terribly shameless in itself.
From the looks of it, he still hadn’t contacted his family. Ruling out the one-in-a-million possibility that he might have learned of Seongjo’s whereabouts from Yeongeun or her mother, there was only one conclusion after all.
He’d found out about the new place and come looking. Obviously through background checking.
He’d told Yujeong he didn’t really care about being investigated. But it seemed if the subject was Yeongbeom, he’d have to retract that statement. Seongjo let out a derisive snicker.
“Move.”
Yeongbeom answered, pretending not to hear.
“You changed the password.”
“Then should I have kept using it?”
“Looks like you still remember what number it was. It’s been several years.”
The password Seongjo had originally used was one he shared with Yeongbeom. Since they’d spent a long time together, knowing each other’s home passwords wasn’t strange. He’d definitely registered some trivial anniversary as the password long ago.
Was it the 333rd or 444th day of dating—he’d changed it when Yeongbeom came with flowers on that day. It wasn’t an anniversary that repeated every year on the same day, and they broke up around the time when enough time had passed for the original meaning to fade.
Apparently, Yeongbeom seemed to think that Seongjo setting a different password for his new place was rather done ‘consciously.’ Or he wanted to believe that. If by any chance he’d been using the same number, he would have sent a wistful look while saying something like ‘You still haven’t changed the password.’
“Hey, don’t assign meaning to it.”
Seongjo spoke decisively, wanting to cut off even the slightest possibility.
“Whatever number that was, I changed it because the problem was that someone who’s nothing to me anymore knew it.”
In the first place, when moving, changing a password that someone else knew was natural logic. Did he have to explain even this point? It was all because he was blocking the door sitting there. Otherwise, he could have ignored his very existence and gone inside.
With that thought, irritation surged through Seongjo as he ignored Yeongbeom’s existence and pressed the password.
He yanked open the unlocked door. Though it took quite a bit of force due to Yeongbeom’s weight, it wasn’t to the point where he couldn’t open it. Yeongbeom, who nearly tumbled ridiculously from his spot because of the door opening wide, barely caught his balance and stood up.
Once Yeongbeom’s weight was gone, the door opened wide. Seongjo stepped in without hesitation. Then Yeongbeom urgently reached out and grabbed the side of the door.
“Let’s talk for a bit, Seongjo-ya.”
“No, I’m telling you… I have nothing to say to you.”
“Really, just a moment is fine. Just a moment, okay?”
The standoff continued between Seongjo trying to close the door and Yeongbeom holding on and enduring. Because their strength didn’t differ much, the door remained in a stalemate, neither closing nor opening.
Yeongbeom had always been pointlessly stubborn. From his face desperately begging that just a moment would do, something like madness could be felt.
In the end, Seongjo released the force from his hand that had been pulling the door in an instant. Thanks to that, Yeongbeom staggered for a moment while holding the door. Glancing at that sight, Seongjo tilted his head.
“Speak.”
“Let’s go inside and talk.”
“Fuck that. Say it here.”
“If we make a scene here, people will hear.”
So, what. Was he trying to say it would be a nuisance to the neighbors?
However, in Seongjo’s opinion, the biggest nuisance was an ex-boyfriend crouching in front of someone else’s home waiting to talk. A guy who’d already committed the worst possible nuisance act saying that wasn’t even funny. Seongjo raised one eyebrow and looked down at Yeongbeom coldly.
Whether the implication in that gaze was faithfully conveyed, Yeongbeom’s expression slightly contorted. He opened his mouth with a rather reluctant face and added:
“…That guy seems to live here too?”
Who ‘that guy’ referred to didn’t require long deliberation to know. Was this a threat that if they made noise here, Yujeong would hear too? Seongjo reflexively glanced back toward the stairwell.
There were several floors between Yujeong’s place and this one, and this apartment’s soundproofing wasn’t that bad. But he couldn’t rule out the possibility that Yujeong might come out to check because of the commotion. And perhaps the unhinged Yeongbeom might go directly to Yujeong and knock on his door.
Taking on these worries was unfamiliar work for Seongjo. However, when he thought of Yujeong and Yeongbeom being entangled together, he couldn’t erase the complicated thoughts.
With his hand against the side of the door, Seongjo swept his hair back again and flicked his hand with a sigh. It meant to come in.
Yeongbeom came in following Seongjo with a complex, subtle expression. Either way, he’d been granted entry, but his face wasn’t very bright, perhaps because Seongjo had only backed down after he’d made excuses about Yujeong.
He neatly took off his shoes next to Seongjo’s and came in, then looked around the house.
“Even after moving, you’re living in a way that’s like you.”
It was obvious, but it didn’t feel welcome in the slightest. He was about to tell him not to look around, but didn’t want to make pointless conversation, so he kept his mouth shut. Yeongbeom, who had been watching that with a deliberately bitter face, brought up the main point without dragging it out further.
“I came because I wanted to apologize to you.”
Should he say he’d expected it, or should he say he hadn’t? Seongjo let out a long sigh and retorted.
“Apologize, and what. You want forgiveness too?”
Right after they broke up, Seongjo kept recalling things from the past. He thought he was unable to break free from the past to that extent. But looking at Yeongbeom now, it seemed the person most stuck in the past was Yeongbeom himself. That appearance of his, seeming to think that if he apologized and begged forgiveness like before, some positive response would come back.
Yeongbeom looked at Seongjo with a desperate-looking face.
“…It’s shameless, but yes, I want to be forgiven….”
Something like a short laugh escaped from Seongjo’s mouth. At that light breath, Yeongbeom’s face wavered greatly. He took a step toward Seongjo. And then.
“Seongjo-ya.”
As he knelt down, Yeongbeom called out.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it that way. I shouldn’t have done that, but I was too impatient.”
Seongjo raised his head and looked at the ceiling.
It was regrettable that there was no pattern on the ceiling. To have the patience to let Yeongbeom’s words go in one ear and out the other, it seemed he’d need to at least count ceiling patterns.
“I keep staying in the same place, but you, who was already ahead of me, seemed to keep going higher and higher without me. Plus, everyone around you, whether men or women, were all wonderful people….”
And Seongjo suddenly thought this situation wasn’t all that unfamiliar.
Ah… he remembered.
That very situation when Yeongbeom had knelt and begged just like this.
‘Isn’t that Jo Yeongbeom? He’s with a woman?’
The voice of a colleague he’d completely forgotten came back to him intact.
