He sent the business first without even a greeting. Since Jae-min’s profile had a photo, he thought he’d recognize who it was without introduction. After waiting a bit, Hyun-woong’s reply came.
[ㅗ: When]
Like his usually blunt way of speaking, the reply was also just two characters total. Earlier he’d been chattering about how his chest hurt and his nipples were inverted so politely. Hmph, Jae-min sneered and tapped the screen again.
[We need to look at our schedules and decide]
[ㅗ: (photo)]
Hyun-woong just sent a photo of his schedule without a word. Jae-min displayed his own schedule and compared it with that. Their free periods happened to overlap during lunch time tomorrow.
[We can meet tomorrow at lunch then]
[ㅗ: Got it]
After confirming the dry response, Jae-min put down his phone without replying. Though he’d made an appointment for a team project meeting, only other thoughts floated around in his head.
‘So will he come with gauze attached there tomorrow?’
They’d said secretions might leak from the massage effect. He couldn’t forget the back of Hyun-woong creaking like a broken robot as he rushed out of the clinic after hearing those words. Also his nape flushed bright red.
Jae-min raised his arm and stared at his palm. Though it was a fairly large hand, he recalled Hyun-woong’s chest that had filled and overflowed here. Jae-min curved his fingers as if gripping the air.
Once again, a tingling sensation was felt.
⁕⁕⁕
“Kang Hyun-woong!”
At the lounge area set up next to the campus store, Jae-min, who had secured a spot and was waiting, raised his arm at the appearance of a familiar build. Hyun-woong, who had just opened the door and entered, moved his gaze toward Jae-min at that gesture.
“Over here.”
Hyun-woong approached quickly with big strides. Jae-min swept over his outfit today. He was wearing a large black hoodie zip-up over a gray t-shirt.
Today the temperature was much higher than yesterday. Though it was still spring, it was weather warm enough without wearing outerwear. But Jae-min, who knew Hyun-woong’s situation, clicked his tongue inwardly. He must have worn it thinking to zip up and hide his chest if anything happened. Jae-min, who roughly guessed his inner thoughts, casually asked.
“Aren’t you hot?”
“Not really.”
Hyun-woong, who raised one eyebrow slightly, put his backpack down on the floor.
“You look hot though.”
He added indifferently while sitting in the chair. Jae-min shrugged his shoulders and spun around the laptop he’d taken out earlier to show Hyun-woong.
“Looking at the team project announcement board again, the paper we need to summarize was already decided. You saw it too, right.”
He opened the paper pdf file they had to solve for the assignment. Hyun-woong narrowed his brow after confirming the three-digit number displayed for the page count. As it was a paper assigned as a group project, the content was very long.
While Hyun-woong was checking the paper on the monitor, Jae-min smoothly lowered his gaze. Since he was sitting with his upper body bent forward, the chest stretching the clothes taut could be seen even better.
‘Did he really attach gauze?’
Though it wasn’t visible properly hidden by the hoodie zip-up, something like a square outline seemed faintly visible under the gray t-shirt. It was when he was wondering whether that was clothing wrinkles or traces of gauze. Hyun-woong tilted his head to the side.
“So? How do you want to proceed?”
Jae-min, who quickly removed his eyes from the chest, continued nonchalantly.
“Since there are quite a few pages, let’s divide it and summarize first. After that, we need to divide who’s in charge of writing the report and who’s in charge of the presentation.”
“It’s better if you do the presentation.”
At the firmly falling response, Jae-min slightly raised his eyes.
“I’m uncomfortable standing in front of people.”
Hyun-woong said with a frown. Jae-min blinked. It was words that felt confident that unlike himself, Jae-min wouldn’t find it burdensome.
Of course, it was true he’d often stood on stage for performances with the band club or part-time work, so presentations wouldn’t be difficult either. But Hyun-woong wouldn’t know such background about Jae-min.
He thought he guessed so because he liked dressing up so much and had such a flashy appearance. Jae-min nodded casually.
“Well, I don’t mind anyway. Role division is fast.”
“Is today’s meeting over now?”
At that moment, at a strange sense of déjà vu, Jae-min raised his eyes to look at Hyun-woong. His blunt face filled his view.
“Is today’s treatment over now?”
Just yesterday, the question Hyun-woong with his eyes covered while receiving a chest massage had carefully asked came to mind. In a feeling completely contrasting with patient Kang Hyun-woong’s polite speech that sounded particularly weak with anxiety and tension, Jae-min let out an empty laugh at the ticking arrogant tone.
But there was a fact he realized belatedly. Not only the familiar informal speech that came out, but Hyun-woong’s attitude toward Jae-min was very natural. Of course, they were taking a general education course together, but since it was the beginning of the semester, there was no occasion to exchange words, and they should have been people who’d never had a conversation before Yun-ji introduced him as her boyfriend.
“But you, did you know me originally?”
Hyun-woong frowned as if asking what he meant. Jae-min placed his arms where he’d cleared the laptop and leaned his upper body slightly forward.
“You said we’d met before back then. You were natural with informal speech from the start too.”
Jae-min raised one corner of his mouth crookedly while recalling the encounter with Yun-ji at the café. Hyun-woong, who had been staring at Jae-min with narrowed brows, crossed his arms.
Jae-min quietly stared at Hyun-woong, who had naturally assumed a posture supporting his pectorals with the back of his hands and arms.
‘He’s lifting his chest like that. It must be heavy.’
He was inadvertently admiring the chest when Hyun-woong opened his mouth.
“I knew.”
At the firm response, before Jae-min, who was surprised, could answer, Hyun-woong continued as if throwing it out.
“You were standing nearby at the freshman orientation.”
At the unexpected story, Jae-min’s eyes widened. It was the first time hearing this.
“Me? Near you?”
“The Physical Education line was near Business Administration.”
“I had no idea.”
“…Well, unlike you, I don’t have a standout appearance.”
Though it was a statement he couldn’t agree with, he roughly understood. If he was a man this large in build, he definitely would have looked once, but Jae-min had always been more interested in the opposite sex than the same sex. There was no way he’d have paid attention to and remembered a man like a wild bear.
“I was standing behind you too.”
Hyun-woong added in a quiet tone. Jae-min unconsciously stroked his chin.
“Freshman orientation…”
The ‘freshman orientation’ was also a special event for Jae-min. Because he’d met and started dating Yun-ji there. As he recalled the time when they were flirting before officially dating, he also newly realized his current state of having broken up with her. Jae-min, whose mood had become completely bad, looked over Hyun-woong.
Come to think of it, after Yun-ji had given him a huge screwing over and he’d seen her watching Hyun-woong’s basketball, he hadn’t seen the two of them together at all. Jae-min glared at Hyun-woong while swallowing the anger that welled up.
“Is the relationship going well?”
“Relationship?”
“Why’s your expression like that? How are things with your girlfriend these days?”
Jae-min tapped the table with his fingernail tips.
“Must be nice dating the girl with the biggest breasts in our department.”
At the bluntly delivered words, Hyun-woong scrunched up his brow sharply.
“Why do you call a person like that? She has a name.”
“This bastard keeps dodging without answering. Yeah, I mean Lee Yun-ji.”
“Oh, Lee Yun-ji.”
“You two met after screwing me over.”
Hyun-woong silently only moved his gaze. Hyun-woong’s eyes stopped on Jae-min’s fingers touching the table. At the appearance of not even responding to the words said and completely ignoring it, Jae-min, who got worked up again, burst out laughing.
“But you’re really a weird bastard too. No matter how much you liked her, still. Don’t you have any pride? Dating a girl who wants to screw over her boyfriend so asks to date right away.”
“That’s my business.”
Jae-min let out a helpless breath, then intently stared at Hyun-woong answering indifferently. Suddenly the day he saw the two at the café, the image of Yun-ji pressing her voluptuous chest firmly against his thick arm came to mind. Jae-min’s temper, which had been dead for a moment, was reignited.
“Well! When she pushed with her body like that, you couldn’t refuse.”
“What?”
“Honestly you like her because of her figure too, right? If you’re a man, your eyes can’t help but go to her. She’s a whopping G-cup. I remembered her right away when I first saw those breasts too.”
