# Chapter 74
Tae Igyeol let out a shallow sigh. His plan to wait for the perfectly timed moment had been ruined. If he had known it would come out impulsively without any preparation or countermeasures, causing such poor timing, he wouldn’t have bothered suppressing it all this time. He had acted too hastily.
“So you reflexively rejected him to preserve your current stable relationship because you were flustered? Without even needing to think about it?”
“It’s not like I explicitly confessed, so what is there to think about? From Mo Eunje’s perspective, pretending not to know is the best option.”
“Even in this situation, you still want to shield Mo Eunje?”
“I’m just trying to view both sides rationally and objectively.”
“That’s bullshit. No, you completely blocked him from even being able to confess. Isn’t that too much? Even if he was going to reject you, he should at least give you the chance to properly confess before rejecting you.”
Ban Hajun kept interrupting before Tae Igyeol could fully explain what happened after the rooftop terrace conversation, making it impossible to move on to the subsequent events. Tae Igyeol sighed as he looked at the agitated Ban Hajun, then explained the situation when they went inside the house.
“So I told him it wasn’t him.”
“You said it wasn’t? Why on earth would you do that?”
“He said he was going to sleep early, then came back out and desperately asked with eyes that didn’t know what to do if I liked him. I just couldn’t bring myself to say yes.”
Even as he explained in detail, Tae Igyeol couldn’t understand why he was telling Ban Hajun all this. He was being so specific and detailed, even describing the look in Mo Eunje’s eyes, to the point where he questioned his own behavior.
He rationalized that he just felt so frustrated that he needed to talk to someone, and unfortunately, Ban Hajun was the only one who knew the situation. In truth, he wanted to consult with his grandmother but was cautious about causing her unnecessary worry.
“Wow, this is really stupid. Hey, how could you waste such an opportunity?”
“…If you had seen his eyes, you couldn’t have said it either. If I had said yes, it felt like he would have completely fallen apart right then and there.”
It was something he would have to face eventually, but it didn’t necessarily have to be now.
Mo Eunje had such a lost look in his eyes, so shocked that he got indigestion at the thought that the person Tae Igyeol liked might be him. The moment Tae Igyeol saw those lifeless eyes consumed by anxiety, he came to his senses about what he had done.
So strategically, this was the time to take one step back for two steps forward later. If Mo Eunje could fully accept his feelings, waiting a bit longer was nothing compared to the more than ten years he had already waited. Now he might need what Ban Hajun called a “scheme” rather than a strategy.
“Is Mo Eunje falling apart the problem here? Look at you acting all tough while buying alcohol like you’ve seen it all.”
“Then what should I do? I just can’t bear to see him struggling.”
“Igyeol, can I yell for a bit? I’m so frustrated I want to scream my head off. Hey, denying it now could backfire later. Mo Eunje might feel even more betrayed.”
It wasn’t as if Tae Igyeol hadn’t considered the worry that Ban Hajun was expressing. The decision he made had taken into account even the possibility that Mo Eunje might feel greater betrayal. In that moment, facing those terrified eyes, he had no choice.
“Then… I’ll just have to beg for forgiveness, what else can I do?”
“I thought you were super smart, but you’re actually an idiot. Where did such an irritating guy like you come from? Ugh, just listening to this is heavy, so heavy I feel like I’m suffocating.”
“If it’s like that for you, how do you think I feel as the person directly involved?”
“Someone who threw away even the opportunity he barely created has no right to speak. You have nothing to say even with a hundred mouths.”
“But not now. Not yet…”
He realized he couldn’t bear to see Mo Eunje lose his vitality, distance himself, and act awkward or uncomfortable around him. Though he had boldly decided to confess, the one who wasn’t prepared wasn’t the person receiving the confession but the one who had to confess. That’s why he ended up denying his own feelings in front of Mo Eunje.
Mo Eunje seemed to think that Cha Hyunwoo was Tae Igyeol’s first love and the object of his one-sided love. To some extent, Tae Igyeol had guided him to that conclusion to reassure Mo Eunje and buy some time. He had wanted to keep the fact that Cha Hyunwoo had contacted him a secret until the end, but couldn’t think of another method.
From the beginning, Cha Hyunwoo hadn’t contacted Tae Igyeol to meet. In their first call, Cha Hyunwoo had said that Mo Eunje’s contact information seemed to have changed and asked if Tae Igyeol could provide it, if they were still close. Mo Eunje had changed his phone number in the fall of last year, coinciding with when Cha Hyunwoo changed his number, so the group message Mo Eunje sent couldn’t reach Cha Hyunwoo by a difference of a few days. However, even if he didn’t provide it, Tae Igyeol felt that Cha Hyunwoo would find Mo Eunje’s phone number by asking around, so as a last resort, he met with him instead.
He didn’t lend him money. Honestly, he had considered giving him a few bucks and then blocking him, but humans are cunning creatures, and if money is obtained easily, they tend to repeat the same approach. It was clear that eventually he would contact Mo Eunje too, and such an unfortunate event needed to be prevented in advance. Though Mo Eunje believed in the principle of not lending money to close friends, if someone was in difficult circumstances, he would show sincerity by giving whatever he could afford. Tae Igyeol didn’t even like Mo Eunje showing concern or kindness to others.
But when he said he had no intention of lending money, Cha Hyunwoo surprisingly asked if Tae Igyeol could introduce him to a place where he could work steadily, even if it was a part-time or non-regular position. At that time, Ila Actors was hiring new road managers. As Mo Eunje had said, Cha Hyunwoo was a diligent and persistent person, so there was no reason not to introduce him.
In truth, he had intended to ignore the introduction request completely. But if he did, Cha Hyunwoo would likely find Mo Eunje’s number and contact him. In the end, the purpose of introducing him to a job was to prevent Cha Hyunwoo from contacting Mo Eunje. Mo Eunje shouldn’t hang out with Cha Hyunwoo. Tae Igyeol had no intention of seeing that sight again.
Cha Hyunwoo was the one who introduced Mo Eunje to his first girlfriend, the one who was always with Mo Eunje during the period when Tae Igyeol and Mo Eunje fought and treated each other as if they were invisible, and the one who introduced Mo Eunje to his last girlfriend as well. Because Mo Eunje always ended up with a girlfriend when he hung out with Cha Hyunwoo, Tae Igyeol detested Cha Hyunwoo. He hated him to the point of utter disgust.
“Tae Igyeol, you need to prepare yourself. Mo Eunje will need a process too.”
“What process?”
“You think I’ve dated men from the beginning? The first guy who confessed to me was a high school junior, and I beat the crap out of him right there when he confessed. Though we ended up dating in the end.”
“I’m not interested in your dating history.”
Ban Hajun wrinkled his face with an incredulous expression. Regardless, the most boring things to Tae Igyeol were other people’s dating histories and celebrity gossip. Yet here he was, contradictorily reciting his own dating history in great detail.
“I was giving an example, an example. Don’t you know what ‘for example’ means? ‘For example.’ ‘For instance.'”
“Look at that pronunciation.”
“You might have been naturally exposed to English from childhood because your grandmother is American, but my grandmother is Korean, so English is unfamiliar to me.”
“With that pronunciation, how did you get selected as an exchange student, and how did you manage to study abroad?”
“Why is the conversation naturally drifting off topic? That’s not what’s important right now, is it?”
Ban Hajun poured a certain amount of soju into a beer can, tapped it with metal chopsticks, took a sip, and then picked up a large amount of yukhoe to eat. Mo Eunje also liked yuk sashimi and yukhoe, and Tae Igyeol thought about buying some for him as a late-night snack later. The problem was that there weren’t many days left to enjoy late-night snacks together.
“…He’s been looking at places to live these days.”
“Hey, think positively. He was originally supposed to stay at your place only until he found a new home, right?”
“That’s true, but…”
“But what?”
“…The timing is fucking terrible.”
He had planned to let Mo Eunje stay for one more month because he feared he might lose self-control and cause trouble, with the intention of finding him a place and sending him off by the end of May. But to make Mo Eunje consider him as a potential romantic partner, even without Mo Eunje’s own awareness, Tae Igyeol needed to stick close to him as much as possible. For that reason, he needed an excuse to keep Mo Eunje around.
“You denied it was him, so what’s timing got to do with it?”
“Anyway, I can’t let him leave right now.”
“Tae Igyeol, think coldly and rationally. You’re an intelligent guy. In the current situation, it might be better to be apart for a while than to be together.”
“No. It’s better to be together.”
Tae Igyeol, who answered firmly, picked up his phone. But he couldn’t bring himself to call his mother by pressing the phone number saved as “Song Yeonhwa” in his contacts. First, he needed to come up with a logical plan that would convince Song Yeonhwa.
It was this difficult to keep just one person, Mo Eunje, entirely by his side.
