He’s changing the subject right in front of me.
The tone of the question was so calm — it felt as though we had been having ordinary conversations up until just yesterday. Knowing full well that wasn’t the case made it feel all the more off.
Still, it was a conversation that had to happen at some point, so I answered without resistance.
“About two months ago. I finished rehabilitation at the hospital and only recently came back home. I can walk on my own now. The hospital called it a miraculous recovery.”
“…….”
Kwon Wookyung just looked at me quietly without saying anything. So I was able to look back at him directly in return.
In the time I had been in the hospital, Kwon Wookyung had grown taller just as I had. There had always been about a five-centimeter difference between us, and that gap hadn’t narrowed one bit.
He had apparently been keeping up with his exercise — his body was much more built than before — and his already handsome face had shed its baby fat, making his jawline sharper. The difference between seeing him on screen and in person was significant too. The Kwon Wookyung on TV had seemed calm yet bright, like a young man with a light about him. The friend standing before me now had no such brightness. His eyes especially were… even back then he hadn’t been a particularly lively high schooler, but now there was something almost desolate about his gaze.
One thing was certain — the Kwon Wookyung in front of me did not look happy at all.
“Hey, are you… not glad to see me?”
I asked with a slight sigh. I couldn’t believe I had to ask that with my own mouth. How humiliating. He didn’t have to bawl like Shin Haechan, but… this was an absurdly deflating reaction.
“I am glad.”
“Then why is your reaction like this?”
“It just… doesn’t feel real.”
“That’s so anticlimactic.”
When I grumbled, the corner of Kwon Wookyung’s mouth lifted ever so slightly. The smile I remembered made a brief, fleeting appearance.
“How have you been?”
I threw out the ordinary question I had been wanting to ask this whole time.
“…Not bad.”
The answer was just as ordinary as the question.
“Looks like you made it. I saw you on TV. Are you still acting?”
“Yeah. I got pretty lucky.”
“It’s incredible. You succeeded exactly the way I imagined you would. Congratulations, you.”
“Thanks.”
Kwon Wookyung seemed to have become even more quiet than he had been as a teenager. On TV he had spoken well and smiled easily. Was that just a persona for the cameras?
Did you not look for me all this time? Why? Are you really not sick? Why did you collapse last time?
There was so much I wanted to ask, so much I wanted to say.
But faced with that excessively composed expression, there were no words I could actually bring myself to say out loud.
Even from just this brief exchange, I could tell. The twenty-four-year-old Kwon Wookyung was very different from the eighteen-year-old one. Time had passed, and people had changed. Unlike me, still standing in place, he had moved forward.
If that was the case, the lukewarm reaction made sense too. Having a long-forgotten childhood friend come back from the dead might be surprising, but it wasn’t something he would particularly care about. They say it’s common for people to naturally let go of childhood friendships as they grow up.
Gladness, resentment, hurt, irritation, and tension had all gathered into a single knot inside me — and then scattered in an instant, the dust of it settling. A disappointment far greater than anything I had felt the day I ruined my performance on stage completely buried everything else.
“Haechan hyung said you moved away. But when I was out walking a little while ago, I noticed the lights were on in this house, so I thought I’d come check.”
I saw his face, so that’s enough. I was curious about him, after all. I rationalized it away quickly.
“I should get going now. I told my mom I’d be back soon.”
I should just go home.
I turned my gaze away from Kwon Wookyung’s face, which was doing nothing but staring at me.
What was I even expecting? Pathetic.
“Haeyong, come here. Let’s go home.”
“Woof.”
Haeyong, who had barely moved and had just been lying there the whole time I talked with Kwon Wookyung, perked up his ears and came trotting over. I made sure to grip the leash firmly, then opened the front door without hesitation. I stepped halfway out through the door and gave Kwon Wookyung a half-hearted nod.
“Take care then.”
It was a colder tone than was like me.
But Kwon Wookyung, whom I had expected to just nod back and close the door, said something unexpected.
“I’ll walk you.”
“…Huh? To my house?”
“Yeah.”
I had still been holding the door handle at that point — Kwon Wookyung stepped through the open gap and turned to look at me quietly. The moment to decline had already passed, so I let the door shut behind me, feeling oddly put out.
Kwon Wookyung walked beside me with an expressionless face.
He didn’t bring up anything in particular — he just walked slowly, matching my sluggish pace.
Why, though?
Once again thrown off by something I hadn’t expected, I found myself asking the same question I must have asked a dozen times today. On top of that, an awkwardness had crept in, making my whole back feel stiff.
By then, darkness had fallen over the street, and the lampposts were lit here and there at intervals. The two of us had walked this road together thousands of times. The one thing different from back then was that I could now detect the faint pheromone scent coming off Kwon Wookyung. The scent was so subtle and elusive that I found myself breathing more deliberately. What was it that Choi Seonho had said it was? Chi… chi… what was it.
Before I could recall Choi Seonho’s description, a quiet voice cut softly through the evening air.
“By the way, you… manifested.”
With a pheromone scent where there had been none before, it would have been impossible not to notice.
I just hadn’t expected Kwon Wookyung to be the one to bring it up first, so I fumbled noticeably.
“Oh, yeah. About four years ago? Apparently I manifested. They say the hormones don’t stop even in a coma. I thought it was strange too.”
I could have just answered with a simple “yeah” — but I ended up blurting out details I had no particular reason to share.
“My hyungs are all alphas but apparently I’m an omega. Honestly, I still can’t get used to it.”
“That makes sense.”
A short reply came back after a long explanation.
I had been looking straight ahead as I walked, but in that moment I turned my head toward Kwon Wookyung — and before my gaze could even land on his face, the strength drained out of my body. The muscles that had been locked tight with tension gave out all at once, and my knees buckled completely.
“Ah——!”
Kwon Wookyung caught me swiftly as my body lost its balance and pitched forward. If he hadn’t, my knees and arms would have scraped the ground.
Half-cradled in his arms, I held my breath at how close his body scent suddenly was. And reflexively, I tried to put a little distance between us.
“Oh, uh, th-thanks?”
“Can’t you walk?”
Collapsing like a paper doll on flat ground with nothing in the way. Heat rushed to my face.
“No, it’s not that bad.”
I quickly willed strength back into both legs and stood upright — but my left knee was trembling. Kwon Wookyung’s gaze landed directly on it.
Ugh, so embarrassing.
I tried to hide the trembling but my legs wouldn’t listen. It seemed like I had genuinely overdone it.
“Get on my back.”
Kwon Wookyung bent forward in front of me without a moment’s hesitation.
“Hey, you don’t have to do that.”
Haeyong circled around me as I stood there flustered.
“You can’t strain your legs.”
“…….”
The words I wasn’t ready to say out loud yet — ‘It doesn’t really matter if I strain my legs anymore’ — I swallowed them back down.
I pushed the sad thought away with a smile. And then I silently climbed onto his back. Kwon Wookyung took Haeyong’s leash from me and started walking. His body temperature ran so warm that it felt like hugging a radiator.
“Do you remember? When I hurt my ankle during practice, you carried me on your back and ran all the way to the infirmary.”
“…….”
When I turned my head toward that silent face, Kwon Wookyung turned his head in the opposite direction and said a quiet “yeah.” And then he went quiet again, so only the sound of his unhurried footsteps filled the air.
What broke the silence was an out-of-nowhere apology.
“Sorry.”
“For what?”
“…Everything.”
Kwon Wookyung had always had a way of saying things whose meaning you couldn’t quite see through. So in that sense — this was the friend I remembered. My feelings, which had already begun to soften a little while ago, gave way easily.
“I don’t know what you mean by that, but fine — apology accepted.”
Our friendship over those ten years hadn’t always been smooth sailing — we’d had our fights. During our teenage years there had even been a period when we grew distant. Honestly, even now there were moments I still couldn’t quite understand why we had argued over certain things — but I wasn’t the type to pick everything apart, so once my mood lifted, I’d vaguely make sense of it and let it go. We also weren’t the kind of friends who needed to explain everything to each other one by one. This was probably one of those things too.
I looked at the front gate of my house, now close, and said out of nowhere,
“Oh right. You never changed your gate passcode.”
“Yeah. Everything’s still the same.”
Those words made my mood lift — and all at once, I realized something.
I missed Kwon Wookyung.
