Munyeong let out a quiet sigh and looked away.
It had been ten years, and yet he looked no different from back then.
He was exactly like Yeon Haejeong from ten years ago, still in his school uniform.
Immature, prideful, and utterly reckless.
**
The standoff dragged on longer than expected.
Both men had staked their pride on drinking, and they turned out to be genuinely resilient against alcohol — neither one went down easily.
Even well past lunchtime, neither showed any sign of leaving, and the auntie who appeared to be the owner was starting to shoot them pointed looks.
“Come on, let’s stop. Yeah?”
Munyeong pleaded earnestly, grabbing Juho’s arm out of genuine concern.
Of course, having held out this long, neither of them was entirely sober anymore.
“Hey, hey. Right now, two men are — settling this like men, fair and square! Just wait a little longer!”
Juho’s tongue had gone completely slack, and his eyes were glazed over with drink.
“The fuck, listen to you talk about being a man. Do you even know what a real man is?”
Naturally, the other party — Yeon Haejeong — was no different.
With a face that had no idea what he was saying, he was grinning arrogantly and slurring drunken nonsense.
“Hey, can’t you see? This body right here?”
Juho let out a hollow laugh, rolled his shoulders back, and thumped his own chest — full of muscle.
“Bullshit. Hey, a real man — fuck. It’s all about what’s down below. You win or lose with what’s down there.”
Haejeong had completely dropped the prickly act, sprawled out like some vagrant, saying whatever came to mind without a shred of decorum.
“My, my. Young men like you, making a scene in broad daylight.”
The auntie, who had been shooting the two of them dirty looks, clicked her tongue quietly as she cleared away the empty dishes.
Munyeong bowed his head and kept apologizing on their behalf.
“Ha! Sounds like someone’s pretty confident?”
“Confident? Really… hey.”
Haejeong, who had been tossing those embarrassing words back and forth, shifted his lazy gaze over to Munyeong sitting across from him.
The moment their eyes met directly, Haejeong smiled in a subtle way and ran his tongue along his lower lip.
“…Honestly, every single person who’s slept with me has lost their mind. Yeah?”
“Ah, this guy’s delusional, I swear. Looking like that. Hey, how could someone like you ever be with our Mun—!”
“Juho! Juho, here, have — have some meat.”
Munyeong startled and shoved a piece of thoroughly dried-out meat into Juho’s mouth by force.
For a moment, he had completely forgotten.
He was hiding his name from Haejeong.
The realization that his sluggish brain wasn’t working sharply enough hit him, and a cold sweat broke out instantly.
“As always, you’re the only one who looks out for me.”
Juho chewed on the meat contentedly and leaned his body against him with easy familiarity.
Munyeong smiled awkwardly and quietly glanced at the man sitting across from him.
Haejeong was wearing that characteristically displeased expression of his, rolling his tongue around inside his mouth.
“…Are you two that close?”
Then, after looking back and forth between Munyeong and Juho sitting close together, he tossed out the question.
“Come on. What kind of question is that? We’re basically — like family. Fam-i-ly.”
“Family?”
“Yeah, man. He’s closer to me than family. Well, not that I have any family to speak of. Pfft.”
Juho snickered to himself and covered his mouth.
When Haejeong’s face twisted into a look of total bewilderment, Juho leaned in even closer and rested his head against Munyeong.
“You don’t know? We’re both from the same facility. We didn’t come from the same parents or anything, but either way, we grew up in the same place together… so how is that any different from family? Right?”
He grinned mischievously and sought Munyeong’s agreement, and Munyeong smiled faintly and nodded along.
“That’s strange.”
Then, all of a sudden, Juho squinted across at Haejeong’s lack of reaction with a puzzled expression.
“Usually… when I say something like this, people either get this super shocked look on their face and feel sorry, or they just ignore it — one or the other.”
Juho was right.
When people found out someone was an orphan, they typically reacted with flustered discomfort, or they became awkward.
But Haejeong was, literally, completely nonreactive.
“What’s the big deal about growing up together, calling it family?”
And at that out-of-nowhere reply, Juho let out a short, hollow laugh.
“We have our own kind of solidarity, you know? Right? That’s why, the moment we ran into each other again, he just immediately lent me money, just like that. Isn’t that right?”
The way Juho brought it up as if it were some great exploit of his, Munyeong simply and gently reached out to stop him from bringing the glass to his lips again.
“…What?”
At that, Munyeong instinctively glanced at Haejeong, catching a reaction that seemed mildly startled.
The face that had been thoroughly loosened by drink, or entirely blank, had gone visibly rigid.
“He lent you money?”
“Didn’t even lend it. He just gave it. He just — wiped out my debt, just like that? How cool is that.”
“…How much?”
Juho was answering every question as if under a spell, grinning all the while.
With each answer he gave, no one noticed that Haejeong’s eyes were growing harder and colder.
“Three thousand…? Was that right?”
As Juho turned to Munyeong with a bleary, uncertain look, the hand wrapped around Haejeong’s beer glass was gripping it with tremendous force.
“…Why do you keep talking about it like it’s something good. Juho, let’s stop drinking and get up.”
Munyeong’s mind was completely occupied with one thought alone — he had to end this before Juho’s mouth let his name slip.
Why hadn’t he thought of that. He really was an idiot. It took him until now to realize that even deceiving people required a certain kind of sharpness.
“…Hey — Haejeong, let’s get up too.”
It felt awkward to call him by name, and he stumbled over the words without meaning to.
He was anxious that calling him so casually might offend him.
But contrary to his worry, Haejeong was clearly lost in some other thought, muttering quietly to himself.
“…Absolute pushover…”
Ha — a low exhale accompanying the words didn’t quite reach Munyeong’s ears clearly.
His attention was already scattered because Juho had started throwing a tantrum about wanting more to drink.
“…Managing Director. I think it’s time for us to go.”
With thoroughly drunk Juho making a fuss behind him, Munyeong spoke again, softly and politely.
Only then did Haejeong’s gaze, which had been lost elsewhere, snap back and land squarely in the air between them.
“Yes. Let’s do that. Im. Sun. Yeong.”
There was something crooked in that reply, and Munyeong blinked in confusion, wondering if he had done something wrong again.
But without any explanation, Haejeong simply stood up abruptly and headed toward the register.
And without a pause, he slapped a thick wad of cash down in front of the owner, who had been watching TV at the counter.
“Keep the rest as a tip.”
Munyeong’s eyes went wide with surprise and he moved to stop him, but at that exact moment he missed the timing — too busy catching Juho, who was staggering and couldn’t walk straight.
“I — I was going to pay…!”
Munyeong called out plaintively, but Haejeong walked out of the restaurant without looking back.
The auntie, startled by the wad of cash that had landed like a windfall, looked back and forth between the spot where he’d just exited and Munyeong, who was standing there dumbly with Juho propped up against him.
Munyeong shut his eyes tightly and let out a long, deep sigh.
It truly had been a day where nothing went right.
**
After finally managing to shove the still-arguing Juho into a taxi and send him off — insisting the contest hadn’t been decided yet — only then could Munyeong breathe easy.
Why did he always get like this the moment he had a drink. And seeing him still trying to handle people through drinking, unable to shake that old habit — it made Munyeong feel a little heavy.
He watched the taxi disappear into the distance for a moment, then finally exhaled with relief, his expression visibly lighter as he rubbed at his stiff shoulder.
But it wasn’t all over yet.
When he turned around, there was a tall man in the alley beside the restaurant, smoking a cigarette like some local thug.
Haejeong had been right about himself.
Even in this run-down neighborhood, even wearing clothes that looked too childish and out of place for him, an air of refinement still leaked through.
So out of place that it almost made Munyeong laugh without meaning to.
“Um… thank you for the meal. I appreciate it.”
Munyeong slipped back into his employee mode and offered a proper, courteous thank-you.
He too had drunk enough for his eyes to go hazy, but not so much that he was stumbling like Juho.
“…I was going to pay.”
Since he had never had any intention of letting someone else treat him, he murmured the words quietly — and Haejeong scoffed.
