Maybe it’s not that man. Glaring at the table edge, Kang Ikwon thought uncertainly. Maybe—it could be a misunderstanding. Teo stuck his head out toward the balcony exterior. Kang Ikwon’s consciousness, head bowed, was also entirely drawn that way.
[That man.]
Moon Jaeyoung said.
[Cha Gyujin.]
His head turned as if pulled by a thread.
Clatter—at the sound of silverware clinking, Teo glanced at him. Kang Ikwon’s profile was quiet and pale as a statue. What Moon Jaeyoung’s hand pointed to precisely was the man’s face sparkling under the sunlight. The man walking toward the cabana turned to look back. As expected, it was that man. When he’d been searching so desperately, he hadn’t appeared, but at the moment he least wanted, he revealed himself under the sun. His pulse throbbed painfully.
Kang Ikwon stared at him blankly. And he realized the man’s skin wasn’t as white as he remembered, not like moonlight. That he was taller than in his memory too. The eyes shooting at the man without even blinking stung like staring directly at the sun. Perhaps he could have found more differences. If right now it had been himself standing beside him facing each other instead of Jed, as he’d imagined.
Regret stabbed his chest anew every hour as if it had never healed. While he’d been fumbling, the dream had simply remained a dream and shattered. This failure was still endlessly sour and astringent to become nourishment for memories. For the first time, Kang Ikwon became powerless at the hopeless bleakness until it rotted away and disappeared.
[You know what?]
Moon Jaeyoung said casually, propping his chin.
[Those two got together thanks to me.]
[Really?]
That’s interesting—Teo’s words about to chime in agreement didn’t come out completed.
SCREECH! A scream-like metallic sound tore at their ears.
[What the—]
The faces of Teo and Moon Jaeyoung, who turned to Kang Ikwon, paled simultaneously. A knife that had slid from the center of the plate was embedded in the table edge. Kang Ikwon, who’d frozen for a moment like someone who’d forgotten to breathe, picked up the knife and threw it at Moon Jaeyoung’s feet. Clang, clang. As the blade fell to the floor, people’s eyes were drawn. The gaze that had been pinned below the balcony slowly turned toward Moon Jaeyoung. His expression looked like he’d been stabbed by the knife he’d just thrown.
[Say that again.]
Kang Ikwon said with a face pale as a corpse, unlike the force with which he’d thrown the knife.
The slow voice carried an ominous portent like a sword dragging along the ground as it approached.
[Who connected who?]
[…Huh?]
[What did you, do.]
CLANG! This time the ice bucket fell. Moon Jaeyoung, seeing the ice pouring out of the stainless steel body like his own corpse rolling in blood, quietly lowered his butt that had been perched up. And before even knowing what went wrong, he quickly pulled his feet back.
[I didn’t do much.]
The chair toppled backward. Before Moon Jaeyoung could even attempt to flee, Kang Ikwon, who’d approached in an instant, grabbed his shoulder and pressed down hard. Moon Jaeyoung’s upper body swayed and half jutted out beyond the wide but low balcony ledge.
[Agh!]
[Eden!! This is the 3rd floor!]
Swatting away Teo, who’d rushed over in shock, with one hand, Kang Ikwon flipped Moon Jaeyoung over and fixed him facing the direction where Jed and the man were.
[Speak.]
Kang Ikwon, who’d lowered his body following Moon Jaeyoung, asked right beside the head he’d twisted. It was a chillingly suppressed voice.
[What you did.]
[…Connecting them was an exaggeration… just an introduction?]
However, the point of anger Moon Jaeyoung had vaguely guessed seemed to have missed the mark. Kang Ikwon forcibly grabbed his chin and turned it again. There was no one in the cold outdoors, and Jed and Cha Gyujin were innocently entwined like cats basking in the early spring sun. Seeing that sight, painful strength entered Kang Ikwon’s hand.
[An introduction?]
[…That earlier thing was bragging. I really didn’t do anything….]
[I’ll be the judge of that, so shut up and speak!]
With a face reddened from blood rushing to it, Moon Jaeyoung glanced sideways at Teo. What’s wrong with this bastard? But Teo was also just shaking his head with a pale face. Moon Jaeyoung, restrained like a criminal being arrested, couldn’t see, but what had consumed Kang Ikwon’s face now wasn’t simple anger. The eyes distorted and pinned on the two people in the cabana were so agonized it felt like watching a hacked wound being torn open in real time.
The situation of Kang Ikwon becoming the protagonist of a crime of passion and causing a scene was unimaginable, but Kang Ikwon being shocked by Jed’s well-worn philandering was also a reality he’d never imagined, so nothing would be surprising anymore. So don’t provoke him and quickly save yourself. Of course, even without Teo’s returning gaze, Moon Jaeyoung was planning to do that. His not-particularly-heavy mouth opened readily.
[At the pool party here last year, Cha Gyujin also came, and at that time.]
The grip suppressing him strengthened further. Last year’s pool party—that was where he and Kang Ikwon had met. Just when had he met Jed and fallen in love? Before meeting me, or after I left. His heart beat rapidly. Jealousy oxidized from despair pounded his entire body like drumsticks.
[At that time, he didn’t know anything except that the person he’d met was a gyopo, so he went around asking everywhere… Ugh.]
As Kang Ikwon’s fingers pressed into, no, dug into the back of his neck, Moon Jaeyoung groaned.
[Then somehow wasn’t he my friend… I guess it came up, and President Jo has wide connections, so that story flowed and flowed to me… Hey, can’t you let go and talk?]
I should have smashed not just the J but the O too. Kang Ikwon ground his teeth, recalling the sign he’d destroyed. The crowded bar and the shape and rattling of the door the man had opened with concentration as if solving the ultimate riddle—it was still this vivid.
And the next moment, a door opened with a rusty sound in one corner of Kang Ikwon’s mind too.
‘Are you by any chance a gyopo?’
‘Yeah.’
[It went through so many people that I don’t really know either! In the end, it seems like he wasn’t even the person he was looking for.]
Kang Ikwon’s movement stopped. His breathing stopped along with it.
[—Again.]
Kang Ikwon muttered in a voice like twisted lungs.
[It seems like he wasn’t even the person he was looking for.]
Quick-witted Moon Jaeyoung obediently repeated instead of asking back.
‘How did you come here?’
‘A friend.’
‘What friend?’
‘…Dan.’
Strength drained from Kang Ikwon’s hand as if the blood was leaving it. Moon Jaeyoung, not missing the opportunity, quickly escaped from his grip and secured a safe distance, but Kang Ikwon didn’t grab him.
[—Said he was looking for your friend.]
Kang Ikwon said quietly after a long while.
[But he… wasn’t the person he was looking for.]
[When things go through several people, stories change and become ambiguous.]
[But….]
Why? Kang Ikwon asked slowly and clumsily like someone whose tongue wasn’t working well from drinking.
[Why with Jed?]
[How would I know? I guess when they met, he liked Jed.]
Moon Jaeyoung turned and examined his stiff body here and there.
[There’s not just one man in the world, so it doesn’t have to be that person specifically.]
Moon Jaeyoung rubbed the back of his neck and cast his gaze below the balcony.
And this time he muttered in Korean:
That thing called fate.
At that moment, Kang Ikwon’s expression—Teo would probably never forget it for the rest of his life.
For a while, Kang Ikwon was silent. Though his pale complexion had returned to normal, neither Teo nor Moon Jaeyoung, who fell silent along with him awkwardly, thought Kang Ikwon had become calm again. Rather, an inexplicable madness gradually attached to his eyes that had shattered fragilely.
[He wasn’t the person he was looking for.]
Kang Ikwon said slowly. And he also muttered in Korean like Moon Jaeyoung:
“Fate.”
Though dull, Jed, who’d keenly sensed something, turned his head and made eye contact with them from afar. Oh, hi? But now’s kind of awkward to acknowledge you. The moment Jed waved his hand with a carefree, pleased face, Kang Ikwon stepped on the balcony ledge and jumped up.
“KANG IKWON!!!!”
[EDEN!!!!]
Teo and Moon Jaeyoung screamed and clung to Kang Ikwon’s waist.
[Eden! This is the 3rd floor!]
[Let go… I’m going to kill him.]
[If you fall from here, you’ll die!]
Staff members ran over and clung to him together, barely managing to pull him down. Jed, who’d turned paler than Kang Ikwon earlier, was visible sitting down with an expression like he’d seen a ghost. Cha Gyujin ran over and supported him.
Glaring at that sight with trembling shoulders, Kang Ikwon gritted his teeth. When he pushed his upper body forward over the balcony again, Teo, frightened, grabbed his waist and hung on. A moment later, what leaked out from between his teeth was, surprisingly, the sound of laughter.
“Ha.”
Like a beast regulating suppressed breathing, Kang Ikwon laughed shortly and fiercely.
“Ha.”
[Eden….]
Teo watched nervously with a frightened face. Kang Ikwon’s laughter gradually grew longer and louder, soon becoming violent enough to make his body shake. Did he go crazy from being too angry?
“Haha….”
And suddenly the laughter stopped abruptly. Having shed the hasty emotional turbulence that resembled frustration, Kang Ikwon looked straight at Jed. Jed, who’d turned deathly pale unlike himself, was almost fleeing while pulling the man’s hand and disappearing.
