Huiwon answered on behalf of the rigid, frozen-stiff Hyeonho. The bartender curved his eyes into a grin.
“Lots of people start that way. What’s so special about being straight? Not having been with a man yet is what straight is.”
“…….”
No, that’s not—— For a moment Hyeonho almost cut the bartender off flat, but he caught Huiwon in the corner of his eye and sealed his mouth shut.
They’d come together, but the two of them sat in silence, doing nothing but emptying their glasses. Hyeonho drank his beer and kept quiet tabs on Huiwon. He wanted to bring up what had happened that day, but catching the right moment was proving difficult.
“So how does it feel, being in a gay bar?”
Just when Hyeonho was mulling over his opening line, Huiwon broke the silence first. Hyeonho hesitated briefly at the question turned back on him, then answered.
“Uh……. Well……. The drinks are good.”
“You had something with actual character in it and passed. What you’re drinking now you can pick up at the corner store.”
True enough — but if he said what he honestly felt, the night was obviously going to fall apart. Hyeonho sorted through what he could and couldn’t say, and the things he couldn’t say won out by a considerable margin, so he kept his mouth shut. Should’ve just ordered a foreign beer and said the beer was good.
“…….”
“…….”
Silence fell between them again. Hyeonho downed the rest of his beer in one go and let it wet his throat. The alcohol and carbonation running down felt very present. He breathed out a warm, alcohol-laced breath, and this time it was Hyeonho who opened things up.
“That day must have been quite a shock.”
Huiwon tilted his cocktail glass and swallowed several mouthfuls, then shook his head.
“Less of a shock and more…….”
With his gaze angled slightly downward, Hyeonho caught sight of Huiwon’s fair cheek. In the red light, the area near his cheekbones — still carrying some baby fat — twitched. He’d had a drink too, so Hyeonho wondered if maybe the memory of that day was bringing emotion welling up. Naturally, the image of Huiwon’s wet eyes from that night came back to him.
“It was absolute shit.”
In an instant, the casual profanity cut straight into Hyeonho’s eardrum. Hyeonho blinked, questioning his own hearing.
“Genuinely. Absolute shit.”
Huiwon clenched his jaw, grinding his molars together. It wasn’t tears he’d been holding back a moment ago — it was rage twisting his face, making the muscles near his cheekbones jump.
Huiwon’s clear face and dark, luminous eyes looked entirely innocent — but everything else about him was miles from it.
Hyeonho had been planning to lead into it and then tack on some explanation about the forced catheterization, maybe even a few words in defense of Detective Seo — but it all evaporated in an instant, and his mind went completely blank.
“You had every right to be angry. You were wrongfully accused on top of being made to hear something degrading.”
Hyeonho pulled himself together and carried on with a composed front. Scenes of shouting and cursing were nothing new to him. He’d lost count of the people who’d screamed pig, bastard, insults and every obscenity imaginable straight to his face. But the profanity coming from the clear-faced boy sitting next to him hit differently — the incongruity of it landed with a weight he hadn’t expected.
“Why are you so fixated on apologizing anyway? You could have just let it go.”
“……Hmm…….”
“Is it pity?”
Pity? He hadn’t thought of him as pitiful. It was less pity and more — something like concern. While the drug offenders rattled on comfortably about retaining lawyers and waiting for their guardians to arrive, the image of Huiwon sitting there with those small shoulders sagging. Or gritting his teeth with wet eyes.
“It’s not pity. But it stayed with me.”
“…….”
“Whether it was in how the investigation was conducted, or in what someone said — I could see that the other person had been hurt. And I didn’t want to just walk past it like I hadn’t noticed. I’m involved in what happened, so I wanted to be the one to apologize, at least.”
Huiwon narrowed his eyes as he listened to Hyeonho’s answer.
“I hope it helps, even just a little.”
Hyeonho continued gently, watching Huiwon’s face. When Huiwon tilted his head and looked at him, Hyeonho curved his soft eyes into a smile. Huiwon quickly turned his gaze back to the table and reached for his cocktail glass as he replied.
“Ten times.”
“Ten times?”
“You said you wanted to apologize. Come here ten times. With me. I think that might make me feel a little better.”
Ah. Hyeonho let out a short, quiet exhale as he watched Huiwon drink his cocktail. He’d been open to meeting him partway as long as it wasn’t a massive sum of money or something completely unreasonable — but he hadn’t anticipated being asked to come to a gay bar together, ten times over.
Hyeonho was honestly uncomfortable in this space. In all thirty years of his life, gay people had never existed within the perimeter of his day-to-day. They may have, without him knowing — but somewhere this openly explicit was a first.
He had no intention of hating gay people — but as a heterosexual man who had only ever been with women, he wasn’t exactly at the point of being so unbothered that he could drop in and out of a gay bar together like it was nothing. Given what Huiwon had been made to hear about his identity, he could see himself coming along once as a gesture of apology — but ten times was a different matter.
Hyeonho slowly shook his head. He was about to propose an alternative when —
“Do you have any idea how much I lost that morning? I couldn’t even bake the cakes in time.”
Huiwon’s eyes were sharp as he tapped the rim of his cocktail glass with his fingertips and stared him down. Just the incident itself was bad enough, but thinking about the business side of it made his blood boil all over again, he seemed to be thinking as he raked a hand through his hair. Whatever the case, it was clear he worked hard at that café — it looked like he’d nearly lost his job on top of everything. Hyeonho worried about whether he’d been treated unfairly after that day, or had his pay docked.
“Oh — about the part-time job, did they——”
“What the hell. So Jiwon’s crew got caught with drugs.”
A stranger appeared between Huiwon and Hyeonho out of nowhere and dropped a hand squarely onto Huiwon’s shoulder. The heavy smell of alcohol the man was putting off hit his nose unpleasantly. Huiwon didn’t bother hiding his displeasure as he twisted his shoulder away. Even so, the man stubbornly kept his grip on Huiwon’s shoulder and started kneading it slowly.
“I’m not part of his crew.”
“No? I thought you were always around each other. Well, if not — I’m right here.”
The man’s hand slid from Huiwon’s shoulder down toward his back. Hyeonho watched that casually roaming hand and weighed whether he should step in or pretend not to notice. This was a gay bar, and Huiwon and the man seemed to know each other — he couldn’t just barge in.
“Get your hand off me.”
Huiwon twisted away harder this time. But the man persisted, moving his hand to follow whichever way Huiwon turned. The sound of his breathing growing rougher was deeply grating.
“I said no.”
At the rise in Huiwon’s voice, Hyeonho shot up from his seat and grabbed the man’s hand. The unwelcome guest’s face crumpled fast.
“What the——”
“He said no.”
The man smirked at Hyeonho, one hand caught in his grip.
“Oh, someone already got there first? Now that you can’t leech off Yoon Jiwon anymore…… damn, you switch fast. Hey. I’m next in li——ow! Would you just — let go!”
Hyeonho wrenched the man’s wrist fully back, and the man groaned and thrashed. Hyeonho kept the pressure steady in the hand holding him.
He watched until the man’s face had gone scarlet and he was gasping for breath, then released him. The man spat out a curse under his breath but cleared out fast.
Hyeonho watched his retreating back as he slunk away, then turned his head — and met Huiwon’s eyes, wide and round. Huiwon hiccupped quietly, then quickly schooled his face into something indifferent and pressed his lips shut.
“What did you do that for. I was going to play hard to get and then leave with him.”
Huiwon pushed back with pointless stubbornness. He’d been helped by Hyeonho, but he didn’t want to say thank you.
“……Ah…….”
“We’ve had drinks too. What is there to do here now? Guess I’ll have to go eat some men.”
Huiwon grumbled one more time, looking at Hyeonho’s complicated expression. He hadn’t meant to go that far — but whether it was because the shock had worn off and left him loose, or because he just wanted to say something, anything, to Hyeonho, his tongue moved on its own.
Hyeonho let out a long breath and picked up the bottled beer on the table, draining it in one go.
“I don’t think ten times is going to work for me after all.”
