The hand Doyun grabbed was ice cold. When he tilted his head down, the nape of Eunho’s neck that brushed against his forehead was cold too.
“I was a little hot so I showered with cold water. Doyun, did you know your shoelaces are completely undone?”
“I didn’t.”
Doyun lifted his head from where it had been resting against Eunho’s nape and moved it to his shoulder. Over Eunho’s shoulder, he could see him tying Doyun’s shoelaces. The sneakers Doyun had worn today had been kicked off in a rush, leaving the laces loosely undone. Eunho was pulling the laces tight from the very first eyelet, working his way up. His neat, long fingers moved without pause.
“If I’m ever struggling with assignments, can I come to your place?”
Eunho, who had been focused on tying the laces, said this to Doyun. Whether the offer to visit his tiny one-room apartment wasn’t just empty words, Eunho looked completely serious, not a trace of a smile on his face as seen from the side.
“You’re coming to sleep over? But you don’t usually pull all-nighters.”
“I figure I’ll try doing it your way from now on — not studying for exams in advance, leaving assignments to the night before and staying up.”
Doyun tightened his arms around Eunho’s neck slightly. At his declaration of surrender, Doyun quickly loosened his grip, cleared his throat, and rested one cheek on Eunho’s shoulder.
“That was only for one subject. I got good grades in all my other classes.”
“Sure.”
“But fair warning — my place is really small, so brace yourself. Don’t bring any stuff, just come as you are.”
“Just come as I am?”
Eunho tilted his head sideways and asked Doyun with a wink. Eunho occasionally winked like this — one eye blinking shut — when saying yes to something or when he was teasing. When Doyun had first gotten to know him, he used to find it a little overwhelming — why on earth is he winking at me? — but over time, he’d gotten used to it too. He’d tried winking back at Eunho a few times in reply, but it apparently didn’t look very natural, because Eunho would just burst out laughing.
“Eunho, haven’t you seen it? His place is genuinely tiny.”
“Yeah, you can’t even sit and have a conversation in there. You’ll both have to stand.”
Suhyeok and Minjun, who had been sprawled out in the living room amidst soju bottles and snack bags, seemed to have sobered up at some point and were now standing with them at the front entrance. Eunho muttered “done” to himself and stood up, which caused Doyun — still on his back — to be pulled up along with him. Eunho’s hands slid under Doyun’s inner thighs to support him as he dangled unsteadily. Ticklish, Doyun squirmed and dropped off Eunho’s back with a soft thud.
Having climbed down from the back he’d been clinging to and now standing on his own, Eunho tilted his chin toward Doyun’s shoes. At the toe of Doyun’s sneaker — which had had its laces all undone and the tongue twisted out of place — sat a neat little bow. As Doyun was about to jam his foot back into the carefully tidied shoe, Eunho held out a shoehorn.
“Have you guys been to Doyun’s place?”
The way he asked Minjun and Suhyeok came out noticeably cool. Doyun glanced at Eunho with a puzzled look, while Minjun and Suhyeok answered with a yawn, completely unbothered.
“We helped him move. Well, calling it a move is generous — it was basically just three boxes. Anyway, the room is genuinely tiny, not sure you’d even be able to fit inside.”
“We’d have to fold Sa Eunho in half to get him in. But it’s jeonse, right? That’s actually not bad at all in its own way. And it’s literally right next to campus.”
“Oh? That close to campus, huh.”
Eunho’s voice noticeably softened as he took in Minjun and Suhyeok’s answers. Doyun quickly bent down and used the shoehorn to slip into his sneakers.
At first it felt a little snug, but once his foot was fully in, it fit perfectly. Doyun tapped the toe of the shoe against the floor a couple of times and looked up. His eyes met Eunho’s.
“Yeah, if you run it’s a five-minute sprint. Pretty sweet.”
Eunho dipped his head and laughed at Doyun’s answer.
“Pretty sweet?”
“Yeah, it’s super close.”
While the two of them exchanged idle banter, Minjun — who had come out to see them off — had his phone out and was looking at it. Suhyeok, saying his throat felt like it was tearing apart from thirst, disappeared into the kitchen with a clatter. Eunho, doing a final check to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, took out his car keys and jangled them as he asked Doyun:
“You really don’t want a ride? I can drop you off.”
“No, I’ll just walk straight to the convenience store. I’m working at the restaurant alley tonight, so it’d be hard for you to drive there anyway. And you said you have plans.”
Before Doyun even finished speaking, Minjun looked Eunho up and down and said:
“Oh, Sa Eunho suddenly all dressed up like that to go meet someone?”
“Oh, Sa Eunho.”
Suhyeok, who had apparently come back without anyone noticing, echoed Minjun’s exclamation and narrowed his eyes at Eunho. When Eunho gave a small smirk without answering, Suhyeok and Minjun raised their eyebrows dramatically and shot him suspicious looks. It was Suhyeok and Minjun doing the teasing, yet Eunho looked at Doyun and added his explanation.
“It’s not an important thing. Doyun… see you at school tomorrow.”
Eunho’s hand lightly gripped Doyun’s shoulder, then slid down his arm. After saying his goodbyes to Suhyeok and Minjun one by one, Eunho gripped Doyun’s shoulder once more with a lingering touch.
“Look at these two doing their tearful farewell again. Ugh, if you’re leaving just go already! The entryway is cramped enough.”
“Yeah, go on.”
Even with Minjun’s halfhearted send-off — still scrolling through his phone — and Suhyeok rushing him out saying it was getting chaotic, Eunho’s feet didn’t budge.
“See you tomorrow.”
Only when Doyun smiled and said that did Eunho finally start moving.
***
After class, Doyun and Minjun shuffled out of the lecture hall yawning their heads off. Minjun joked “hey, you’re drooling” and Doyun actually wiped the corner of his mouth — that’s how badly he’d spent the entire class jerking his head around trying to fight sleep.
Minjun, a seasoned napper, slept peacefully with his arms crossed and his chin held high. Both their notebooks were a disaster — smeared ink and half-finished notes.
“It’s a required major course so we can’t even drop it. How are we supposed to sit through this for a whole semester.”
“Seriously… and I heard the exams are brutal. We’re done for.”
Minjun and Doyun sighed in unison. As students in the same department, Minjun and Doyun always took their major courses together except for general electives. Out of every major course they’d taken so far, today’s was by far the worst.
Is the professor some kind of superhuman? I heard his voice and literally fell asleep on the spot, Minjun said, and Doyun nodded in total agreement. Even though he’d done nothing but doze for two hours straight, it was lunchtime and he was hungry. They’d thought about going somewhere off campus, but choosing a place seemed like too much effort for either of them, so they headed to the cafeteria inside the Business Building.
Faced with the same rotating lineup of meals as always, Doyun stared at the menu board with a look of grave deliberation. Minjun casually slung his arm over Doyun’s shoulder as he read.
“Get your arm off, it’s stunting my growth.”
At the sudden weight on his shoulder, Doyun’s eyes narrowed as he drove his elbow into Minjun’s side. Minjun dodged it effortlessly and snickered.
“How old are you, still clinging to that hope? You’re done growing.”
“It’s because you guys are always pressing down on me like this that I didn’t grow. And they say beta males can still grow after the military. Don’t be shocked when I get discharged — I’ll come back taller than you.”
Doyun shot back with a straight face. Doyun’s height was right at the average for a beta male — by no means short. Setting aside the fact that Eunho was nearly 190 cm because he was an alpha, Doyun was quietly annoyed that even Minjun, another beta, was tall.
At least Suhyeok was around the same height, which was a relief. If Song Suhyeok had been significantly taller than him too, he thought he might have been bitter enough to low-key resent his parents.
“That’s a pathetic excuse. You used to hang off Eunho all the time and he still shot up just fine.”
“When did I ever hang off him?”
“You were doing it in the hallway just yesterday.”
He didn’t love the image the word hang conjured, but it was true that he occasionally messed around and hung off Eunho as a joke. Unlike Minjun or Suhyeok, Eunho never made pained noises about it — he’d just laugh and take Doyun’s rowdy antics in stride.
On nights when all four of them drank until they were wasted, Doyun always ended up getting carried home on Eunho’s back. Drunk Doyun talked a lot and got handsy, which should have been annoying, but Eunho had never once complained.
“True. What’s the big deal — it’s not like I have anywhere to put that energy anyway.”
“What do you mean Eunho has nowhere to put his energy. Actually, now that I think about it, that pisses me off. When I ask Sa Eunho to carry me, he acts completely disgusted.”
Last semester, to celebrate the end of term, the four of them had gathered at Suhyeok’s place and then went to a PC bang to game. Doyun, whose gaming skills were catastrophic, gave up early and sat next to Eunho watching a movie. Only after Suhyeok and Minjun had gamed intensely for several hours straight were the four of them finally able to go for dinner.
