“Ah, just show me. I’m curious.”
“No.”
Speaking strictly, Hakyoung put his phone back in his pants pocket. Though Yumyeong showed a reaction that it was petty, he soon laughed it off.
“It’s that precious, huh? Okay, got it. I get it.”
Behind Yumyeong as he turned around generously, Hakyoung let out a soundless sigh with a troubled face.
In fact, what he had been looking at was a photo of himself from the past.
He had been carefully examining his appearance as a young boy before going through secondary sexual characteristics, seriously gauging how much he had changed from the present.
Seriously different.
Very seriously.
Hakyoung compared his hand with the tiny hand in the photo with a stiff face. The child’s thin white hands had already turned into hands with prominent blue veins on the back. With such extreme changes in appearance, he shouldn’t feel hurt that Yumyeong didn’t recognize him.
It wasn’t easy to objectively grasp his own appearance, but he had no choice but to bitterly acknowledge one thing. The boy around ten years old had such a delicate appearance that distinguishing gender was meaningless. Add beautified memories on top of that, and it made sense that Yumyeong wouldn’t dream that young child was him.
On the other hand, as soon as Yumyeong saw this photo, he would realize that ‘Yeong’ was him. Just imagining it gave him goosebumps as if his hair was standing on end. So he reflexively hid it as if his life depended on it. If Yumyeong had clung more persistently, he might have thrown his phone out onto the terrace.
He thought he wanted to tell him someday, but now wasn’t that time. He wasn’t confident he could handle Yumyeong’s reaction.
“Haah……”
Hakyoung looked at the club room inside through the window.
Yumyeong, who had gone inside alone leaving him behind, had flopped down on the mattress and was opening a comic book. Then, as if he’d already seen it, he rummaged through others and reached for the astronomy magazine Hakyoung had brought. Just watching those eyes thoroughly scanning the book to figure out the content made his heart start to stir.
The body lying loosely leaning against the wall with disheveled hair without caring how it looked, the ivory-colored smooth and slender arms revealed under the wide short-sleeved shirt after changing to summer uniform. The hands turning pages half-heartedly with an indifferent expression…….
Even the eyes searching to find interest in something uninteresting were good. He felt like he could watch that trivial sight forever without getting tired of it.
Tap tap.
Just then, a small vibration was felt from the window. Looking ahead, Sunmin, who had been sitting close to the window, was knocking on it to get his attention.
‘What are you doing?’
The sound wasn’t clear, but he could tell from the shape of his lips.
‘You’re staring too much.’
As he said this, Sunmin smiled as if there was nothing to be done. Hakyoung snapped to attention.
Suddenly, his eyes met with Yumyeong on the mattress. Yumyeong, who had only raised his eyes without changing his posture, was looking this way. At that moment, Hakyoung realized something.
He mustn’t be caught looking like this alone. Because…….
It’s strange and awkward. Friends don’t usually look at someone like this.
Most of all, because he didn’t want to be caught.
Shin Yumyeong was definitely a heterosexual who liked women. If the childhood connection continued because he mistook him for a girl, that could be understood. The problem was, he had absolutely no idea how to break through that with his own power now.
Before returning to the hallway and entering the club room again, Hakyoung pressed down firmly on his left chest, which had become much more stuffy than before. He thought it was rather better when he was agonizing over how to judge the current Shin Yumyeong. Back then, he could blame him for not remembering the past and attribute the reason for his own distress to him having changed too much.
If only he hadn’t fallen for him again like this, he could have blamed everything on Shin Yumyeong.
“No, it’s scary. The club president keeps watching from outside, so I feel like I shouldn’t slack off.”
When he opened the door, he heard Sunmin’s voice as if defending himself. When Hakyoung looked inside, Yumyeong, who was still leaning back loosely, grinned and held up the astronomy magazine.
“President, I wasn’t slacking off. I was looking at this.”
Pretending not to notice the eyes gathering on him, Hakyoung stepped inside. Then he picked up the constellation poster he had been wondering where to put.
“From outside…… the inside seems too visible. I should at least put this up.”
“Ah, that’s right. A lot of people actually come and go on that terrace. There’s even a couple that comes out there to fight all the time. Everything’s fine but the teachers coming out to smoke is annoying. They keep glancing inside, you know? We have privacy too.”
Hakyoung left Hanju chattering behind and spread the poster wide. After appropriately covering the window, privacy could be protected.
Looking at the mottled paper with light passing through, Hakyoung thought. He should cover his gaze at Yumyeong like this from now on.
When he wasn’t aware of his feelings of affection, making excuses wasn’t difficult either. Because he didn’t care if he was misunderstood. But the moment it became true, he wanted to hide it somehow. Hakyoung felt like he had walked into a quagmire with his own feet and quietly became dejected.
After neatly taping even the corners and turning around, his eyes met with Yumyeong’s again. It seemed he had been watching Hakyoung put up the poster the whole time. Unlike when looking at the astronomy magazine earlier, Yumyeong’s eyes looking at Hakyoung contained faint playfulness and were lively. Not because there was any particular meaning, but because Yumyeong’s eyes were always like that when looking at people.
At the steadily meeting eyes, Hakyoung felt choked up for no reason and said anything.
“What are you looking at?”
“Can’t I look? Did you gild your face?”
Ignoring this, Hakyoung gathered the membership applications. As if that felt more interesting than the astronomy magazine, Yumyeong threw the magazine aside and came closer.
“There were really a ton. But you’re not going to accept everyone, right? At this rate, it’ll become a mandatory club for the whole school.”
Yumyeong said it himself and laughed alone as if he found it funny. Hakyoung, who had been watching this quietly, said.
“I’ll only accept up to exactly ten people.”
“What’s the criteria?”
Hakyoung was silent for a moment. In fact, he had never really thought about it.
Yumyeong, who had been quietly looking at Hakyoung’s face, put his arm around his shoulder and said.
“Come out for a second.”
Then he led Hakyoung. The two left Hanju and Sunmin behind and went out to the hallway.
After checking that there was no one passing by nearby, Yumyeong opened his mouth.
“Among the guys who wrote membership applications, there are…… kids who used to bully Lee Sunmin before. If you pick them, there’ll be problems.”
At those words, Hakyoung’s face hardened a little.
“I didn’t know. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You don’t want the Astronomy Club to become a hotbed of conflict either.”
“That’s true. But why did they submit applications knowing Sunmin is there?”
“It’s obvious. Simple. They want to get close to you, but they don’t even care about Lee Sunmin. They’ve always bullied him, so he’s easy too.”
“Because of me? No way.”
“What do you mean no way? In all the time you’ve lived, really, there’s never been anyone? Kids who deliberately approach you hoping something will drop.”
Hakyoung frowned and crossed his arms.
“That’s…… you?”
At those words, Yumyeong was dumbfounded.
“When did I!”
Watching that face dye with various expressions, Hakyoung’s eyes curved gently.
Some worries remained, but many things were forgotten like this when facing Yumyeong. The feeling of affection had such a strange effect, Hakyoung thought inwardly.
A little later, Hakyoung entrusted Yumyeong with full authority over selecting club members. The reason was that he had only transferred recently and didn’t know well the human relationships among the students who had been here until now.
Subsequently, Yumyeong selected members with quite a strange criterion. Looking at each of the eleven total Astronomy Club members one by one, they were people with no particular commonality. As clubs usually are, they weren’t people with extensive knowledge of astronomy or showing tremendous interest either.
Yumyeong said he asked just one thing.
“By any chance, someone who eats lunch alone at school?”
Yumyeong seemed to be thinking of gathering all the dormitory fairies who might be somewhere else in the school, crying alone in the laundry room. In fact, even though he didn’t do anything, just being together made Sunmin’s school life much easier.
Yumyeong, who actually didn’t have serious intentions for the Astronomy Club, thought it would be better for friends with nowhere to go to come rather than people who had many places to be at school anyway. Because the club room would be better than the laundry room for anyone.
Hearing Yumyeong’s words like this, Hakyoung accepted without any conditions.
“That’s a relief. I was worried what I’d do if the president rejected it.”
Behind that face smiling broadly with relief, wisteria flowers swayed in the wind.
At that moment, Hakyoung was once again convinced that he was indeed destined to fall for Yumyeong again at any time and place. It was a pleasant realization.
Yumyeong’s inner self hadn’t changed at all, and he liked this about him. Probably even if more time passed and they met, it would be the same.
He too had been saved by Yumyeong’s acceptance in the past. To Hakyoung, who had been a child who needed someone to speak to him first, Yumyeong readily extended his hand and filled Hakyoung’s world with the things he liked.
“I…… couldn’t possibly do that.”
Now he just felt regretful that he couldn’t monopolize this.
