# Chapter 62
Obviously, Tae Igyeol can’t accompany Mo Eunje to all his schedules. He has neither the justification nor the qualifications to do so. Right now, Eunje insists on having him come along because there are only occasional appointments, but when things get truly busy, it was obvious that Eunje, given his personality, wouldn’t call on him out of consideration.
And Mo Eunje rejected his offer to be his agent—a position Igyeol had crafted with effort, even convincing his father to create this opportunity to share every moment with him. As long as the current manager, Yoon Hyesu, didn’t make any major mistakes, Eunje’s contract renewal was virtually guaranteed. No, even setting the agent job aside, Igyeol felt suffocatingly frustrated.
“Oh, this? I got it as a gift from a fan in front of the company.”
Tae Igyeol was in the mood to talk about anything with anyone just to get some relief. Though the specific situation and nuances were different, there was Shin Dael right before his eyes—a good example of someone who’d succeeded in love first.
“Let’s grab coffee if you have time.”
“Sure, why not?”
“Check if there’s an empty practice room.”
Shin Dael went back to the office to check the practice rooms, while Igyeol went to Café Ila to buy drinks. They didn’t need to be seen together outside again and become the subject of gossip. The first time, he’d managed to cover it up by using Mo Eunje and Gye Minho as shields, but people would likely not believe that excuse a second time. Most people aren’t interested in the truth—they’re more easily swept up by sensational elements.
Tae Igyeol sat across from Shin Dael at a table in the third-floor practice room. Even as he did so, he felt pathetic, wondering what he was doing.
“What’s up? Something happen?”
“You… did you say you dated your boyfriend for ten years since high school?”
“Yeah. We were childhood friends who were always together since we were very young.”
“Were your parents friends too, by any chance…?”
“They weren’t friends originally, but our moms met at a postpartum care center, and it turned out they lived in different floors of the same apartment building. So they raised us together, and we ended up at the same daycare, elementary school, academy, middle school—that’s how we were always together.”
Though the starting point was different, the process was similar. Though they weren’t raised together by their parents, they grew up under his grandmother’s care, and Tae Igyeol and Mo Eunje had always attended the same schools. Even university. During their exam prep years, how fortunate it was that their grades were similar. If not, Igyeol would have applied to a less prestigious school just to go to the same university as Eunje.
“Don’t tell me you wanted to talk because you’re curious about my love life?”
“You don’t have to talk about it if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“You already know I have a boyfriend, so why would I be uncomfortable?”
The genders were different, so hearing Shin Dael’s story might not be of great help, but he wanted to listen to a success story to give himself some hope. He guessed that what the tarot reader had mentioned—something that would make Mo Eunje feel deeply betrayed enough to shake his known world—would probably be his confession.
Though he didn’t believe in astrology, the situation matched too well to completely ignore it.
The fortune teller had said his confession would cause a major change in Mo Eunje’s life. It could be bad or good, depending on how one looked at it, but somehow Igyeol feared that Eunje, who would feel betrayed after 26 years of friendship, would likely see it as the former. He worried more about Eunje being hurt than being rejected.
“You have no idea how much I chased after him. He treated me like his little sister, but I liked him so, so much.”
“Unrequited love?”
“Unrequited love, first love, and last love.”
Shin Dael answered with a confident tone, briefly wearing a wistful expression as if recalling the past. For Tae Igyeol, Mo Eunje was also his first love and unrequited love. And he was set to be his last love too.
“Actually, we almost separated in eighth grade. His dad was being transferred to a rural area. When I heard that, I cried all night, and that’s when I realized—I like him. The thought of not seeing him anymore because we’d live far apart made the sky turn dark and everything go black before my eyes.”
Tae Igyeol thought about what he would have done in that situation. Eighth grade, fifteen years old—when he had a crush without realizing it was a crush, and his grandmother noticed before he did. If a similar situation had occurred, he would have realized his unrequited love earlier, just like Shin Dael.
“But his mom couldn’t handle rural life and insisted on being a weekend couple. Thanks to that, I was happy we didn’t have to separate.”
“You were friends for so long—can I ask how you ended up dating? You don’t have to tell me if it’s too private.”
“It’s really surprising to hear you ask questions like this…”
Shin Dael looked at him with surprised eyes, making Tae Igyeol embarrassed enough to brush his cheek. But the one who was truly surprised was Igyeol himself. Not only had he asked a question he never thought he’d bring up, but this was the kind of topic he might discuss with Ban Hajun maybe once in a blue moon. Strangely enough, talking about this subject with Shin Dael was unexpectedly comfortable.
“Igyeol, do you have someone you like unrequitedly? Is it a similar case to mine?”
“I guess so…”
He took a sip of his americano while answering self-deprecatingly. Perhaps he hadn’t been properly caring for his own feelings all this time, busy suppressing and hiding them. His grandmother and Ban Hajun knew, but that hadn’t changed anything.
However, he wasn’t sure what he was thinking yesterday when he mentioned his unrequited love in front of Author Kwon Jiyeon. Perhaps he’d reached a point where he could no longer hide it and wanted to show some hint in front of Mo Eunje. Though he’d thought he needed to make a decision soon, he hadn’t expected to act so thoughtlessly and impulsively.
Anyway, he had revealed his sexual orientation to Mo Eunje and also mentioned having an unrequited love. Things were proceeding slowly according to plan. Now he just needed to strategize and figure out how to confess without making Eunje feel betrayed.
“I confessed as soon as I realized my feelings. For four years straight, starting from eighth grade.”
“If you had been just friends until then, your boyfriend must have been surprised. He might have felt betrayed too.”
“Honestly, back then I was so desperate to express my feelings that I couldn’t afford to consider his perspective. Looking back now, I think I was really rude… but I was young. At fifteen, I could barely handle my own feelings.”
“You could have lost even your friendship.”
“I couldn’t even think about that at the time. I was just desperately clinging to him, insisting he like me somehow.”
Now he wished he had confessed back then, in those young days, like some adolescent whim, when he first realized his feelings. He regretted the years that had passed without doing anything, paralyzed by the fear of losing Mo Eunje from the start.
“But surprisingly, my boyfriend had thought about that. We were too young then, and if we dated and broke up, it would be awkward to remain friends. That’s why he kept rejecting me, afraid we’d lose each other.”
“If we had remained just friends until now… would I be able to confess?”
“Hmm… I think I’d be very cautious. I can’t force my feelings on him, and I’d be afraid things would get awkward. If we drifted apart forever, I might regret confessing in the first place.”
“Sigh… That’s exactly where I am now.”
Fuck…
That close contact with Mo Eunje earlier was a first. Eunje had pretended to piggyback on him before, and Igyeol had actually carried him when he was drunk, but he’d never embraced him face-to-face like that.
When their faces got close and their eyes met, he nearly kissed him, forgetting even that Ban Hajun was watching. Not just a stolen peck on the lips like before, but a fierce, greedy, deep kiss mixing breath, respiration, saliva, and tongues—the desire struck like lightning.
He’d thought his self-control was quite strong considering how long he’d endured, but that was an illusion. There simply hadn’t been a proper opportunity. Had Mo Eunje not abruptly turned his head in that dangerous, precarious moment, he would have truly made a mistake.
“But Igyeol, I think I would confess even if I might regret it.”
“You could lose them forever.”
“No matter how much history we share, if a relationship would end because of my confession, then that connection was only meant to go that far. I don’t want to maintain a relationship where I’m the only one suffering—for my own sake.”
If the relationship would end because of his confession, Tae Igyeol would choose not to confess. He would cowardly keep the position of a friend, as he had done until now. People need to breathe to survive, don’t they?
“Even if… it’s love?”
“Yes. Even if it’s love.”
Shin Dael, who answered firmly, seemed to have more to say as she moved her lips. Soon, as if she had found the right words, she continued.
“Igyeol, even in unrequited love, you need to take care of yourself first. You can only make the person you love happy if you’re happy. A relationship trapped in the frame of unrequited love, where only you suffer and sacrifice, doesn’t seem to last long.”
Shin Dael’s premise was wrong from the start. Loving Mo Eunje unrequitedly was hard, but he had never thought of it as a sacrifice. When Eunje was dating, he truly felt like dying, like tearing the world apart, but since his debut as an author, Eunje had been too busy to date anymore, which made things bearable.
So any difficulty was due to his own desires and greed becoming excessive recently. Before that, he’d felt happy just being by Eunje’s side. He had been able to find satisfaction, albeit insufficient. Even though he couldn’t do that anymore, consumed by desire.
“Talk sense. Sacrifice isn’t in my nature.”
“At first I thought you had a prickly, scary personality too, but after fangirling over the novelist together, I realized. You’re just hard to get close to at first, but for someone you care about, you’d give everything and accommodate them completely.”
He had no idea what she’d seen to think this way. Perhaps Shin Dael was idealizing him. Of course, when it came to Mo Eunje specifically, he would give everything and more, but there was no way Shin Dael could have noticed that.
