# Chapter 70
“You and me?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re crazy.”
He really was disgustingly handsome. Especially those eyes that exuded a mysterious charm with their chilling feel. Tae Igyeol’s grayish-white eyes seemed like they would feel new every second even if you stared at them 24 hours a day, never getting tired of them.
“What’s the point of doing this with you and me?”
“I’m curious whether you’d get tired of me or not.”
“Igyeol, I’m sorry, but I think I’m already tired of you, so this seems pointless. You might think I’ve only seen the soles of your feet for 26 years, but sadly, your face is what I’ve seen the most.”
Mo Eunje held out a piece of crab meat toward the familiar face that he had seen perhaps even more than his own. Even though he picked it up with his gloved hand, Tae Igyeol, who would normally nag about what the fork was for, quietly opened his mouth and ate it.
“But did you really like him because he was handsome?”
“As if.”
“Damn, what? I thought it was true.”
“Who likes someone just for their face?”
“Ten years ago you were young, so you could have liked someone for their face. Even now, Gye Minho likes Shin Dael for her face, so what’s wrong with liking someone for their looks?”
It wasn’t just because Shin Dael’s profession was being an entertainer. Looking at couples around them, quite a few mentioned pretty or handsome appearance as the initial reason for liking someone. Of course, that’s just the beginning, and it wouldn’t be easy to maintain an unrequited love for 10 years solely because someone was handsome.
“What about you?”
“What?”
“Would you like it if the person I’ve been crushing on was you?”
Tae Igyeol brought back the joke that Mo Eunje thought had been passed over. Judging by his expression and tone of voice, there wasn’t even a speck of seriousness, but even if the question was asked lightly, it wasn’t something that could be answered lightly.
“Hey, I… I can’t answer that.”
“Why?”
“Why? It’s something I’ve never thought about before. Saying I’d like it would be 100% a lie, but if I say no and it turns out you really do like me, you’d be hurt. So how am I supposed to answer?”
He’d already figured out who Tae Igyeol’s crush was, so there was zero possibility of the latter, but no, that shouldn’t be the case either, but anyway, he was considering the 0.000000001% possibility in this binary choice.
“Even in this situation, do you want to maintain your image?”
“What’s the point of doing something so exhausting when I don’t have an image to maintain in front of you? Let’s call it consideration, consideration.”
“Consideration is just as tiring.”
“That’s true. So… is it me? It’s not, right?”
Knowing it obviously wasn’t him, he asked playfully with a broad smile, without any tension. Tae Igyeol, who had been making eye contact for a moment, took a sip of beer with an expressionless face.
“…As if it would be you.”
“So that means it’s not me, right?”
“You really seem to like the idea.”
Tae Igyeol probably had no idea that Mo Eunje had already noticed the identity of his crush. Mo Eunje laughed awkwardly and gulped down his can of beer mixed with soju.
“Eunje.”
“Yeah?”
“Are you… afraid I might say it’s you?”
Mo Eunje couldn’t understand why Tae Igyeol was asking such a question when the possibility was absolutely zero, just considering the relationship between their families. He grabbed a crab leg with composure and met Tae Igyeol’s eyes with an expression that seemed to say, “What a strange question I’m hearing.”
“…”
“…”
Suddenly, a chill ran down his spine and the mood turned sour. He felt strongly that he needed to answer well out of nowhere. The warm and cozy air now clung to his body with an uncomfortable and awkward density.
“Honestly… yeah. I, you… I mean, I’d like you to remain my friend like you are now.”
“…”
“…”
“…It’s not you.”
His ears heard a denial, but his eyes read a different answer. Tae Igyeol’s distant expression and hurt gaze couldn’t hide the truth. The raw emotion emanating from him was so clear that Mo Eunje couldn’t pretend not to notice.
If he hadn’t intended to reveal it, if he had wanted to keep it hidden until the end, then Tae Igyeol had completely failed.
First love, 10 years, someone I know…
Cha Hyunwoo wasn’t the only one who matched the conditions Tae Igyeol had mentioned. The error had occurred from the moment Mo Eunje had excluded himself from the candidates. He shouldn’t have let his guard down due to familiarity; he should have heeded the advice he’d received when consulting astrology.
Perhaps…
His unconscious might have already vaguely known, though he had desperately turned away from it.
“…Right? Of course it couldn’t be me. I was completely terrified you might have fallen for my charm. But that doesn’t make sense, does it? How could you like me that way after seeing all my good and bad sides over the years? That’s impossible.”
Mo Eunje rambled on according to his stream of consciousness, unaware of what he was saying. His hopelessly tangled mind refused to sort itself out.
“Why would it be impossible?”
“Huh? Well, there’s no fantasy. When you know someone to the bone, what’s the fun in dating? Getting to know each other has a certain taste—you feel appropriately tense, excited, and your heart goes thump-thump.”
He gave a plausible answer and put some crab meat in his mouth. The crab meat that normally melted in his mouth had no discernible flavor. He chewed roughly and swallowed, but had an ominous feeling that it might get stuck. Everything went dark as he wondered how this situation had come about.
“How did you… know you liked someone? Was there a moment when you realized it?”
“Why are you asking as if you’ve never liked anyone?”
“Come to think of it, I’ve never been the one to like someone first.”
Though he had liked his first love first, the period was too short to say he really liked them, and since he had decided to keep it as his eternal private first love and now lived having completely forgotten it, he had decided not to count it.
“But you’ve dated, several times.”
“I have. When someone confessed, I felt good and felt sorry to reject them, so I’d start dating, but I still don’t really understand what it means to like someone in that way. It’s not for nothing that I wanted to scrap my new work. Sigh… that’s why none of my relationships lasted 100 days before I got dumped.”
Mo Eunje couldn’t even begin to gauge Tae Igyeol’s feelings, which had made him bring up life and death. One shouldn’t carelessly guess about unknown territories they haven’t experienced. All of Tae Igyeol’s words and actions toward him had inevitably had reasons that only Mo Eunje didn’t know.
“So… why did you like them? What did you like so much?”
“…I couldn’t help but like them.”
“What kind of answer is that?”
“It was an irresistible force majeure… I couldn’t help but love them.”
“There wasn’t a specific moment?”
“How can I list everything? Each and every thing was precious, so everything put together became the reason.”
“…”
Mo Eunje had no idea what he had done to Tae Igyeol all this time.
After realizing the truth and sincerity, the first emotion Mo Eunje felt was neither betrayal nor disappointment, but guilt. The countless experiences that were too numerous to list one by one poured in haphazardly.
‘Igyeol, have I ever told you I love you?’
‘…Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.’
The hint had been in the closest place.
“Because you laugh well, because you’re pretty, because you eat well, because you’re honest with your emotions, because you’re attentive, because you speak well, because your consideration is deep, because you’re affectionate, because your heart is warm,”
“Hey, th-that’s enough. You can stop talking. It’s giving me goosebumps, I can’t hear any more.”
“Why… don’t you ask who it is?”
“Huh? Hey, that’s too deep. It’s your privacy. I don’t want to know who it is. Just… yeah.”
Life is truly unpredictable. Unable to anticipate it, he couldn’t avoid it, and being unavoidable, he faced it. But cowardly, if he could avoid it, he wanted to avoid Tae Igyeol’s overwhelming sincerity. He had to. He had not the slightest intention of losing Tae Igyeol.
“Actually, I gave up once in the middle.”
“Why?”
“Seeing you with women, I realized it wouldn’t work. I felt it in my bones that I was different, so I couldn’t possibly ask you to look at me.”
“Then, did you stop liking me and start again?”
“No. For a while, I treated you like you didn’t exist, not talking or contacting you. But I couldn’t stop… my feelings of liking you.”
What on earth is this unstoppable feeling of liking someone?
Mo Eunje felt dizzy with the fear that surged like a child lost in an unknown space. For no reason, he felt like crying.
“Haah… What am I doing? This isn’t what I intended.”
Tae Igyeol downed half of his remaining beer at once and crushed the empty can with one hand. The crumpled can screamed in surprise.
“Eunje.”
“Yeah.”
“I… I want to confess, but I don’t know if I should.”
“…Igyeol, I read somewhere that if you’re debating whether to speak or not, don’t speak. There are many sayings like that.”
“But if you think you’ll regret it, you must speak.”
The latter part of the sentence that Mo Eunje had deliberately omitted flowed from Tae Igyeol’s lips. Come to think of it, there were twenty-something sentences that enriched life, and Mo Eunje had read them to Tae Igyeol before. He hadn’t expected him to remember.
“Until now, I was too afraid of losing even our friendship to think about confessing, but now I’m trying to overcome that fear.”
“Even with that fear, you’re going to… confess?”
“I think I’ll regret it if I don’t. And I can no longer be satisfied with being just friends. So no matter how scary and overwhelming it is, I have to somehow overcome it and confess.”
The world Mo Eunje knew began to crack and shake entirely. The necklace around his neck suddenly felt heavy, as if it were choking him, and he brushed his hand over the nape of his neck as if cradling it. The faces of his family and Tae Igyeol’s family, who had always embraced him with affection, flashed by like hallucinations.
This shouldn’t happen. This can’t happen.
“The other day, the teacher said this to me. I want to say the same to you.”
“What did they say?”
“Igyeol, it’s okay to lose sometimes. No one will say anything if you lose.”
“…”
“If you’re scared and overwhelmed about losing even your place as a friend, I think I would just lose once and at least keep my place as a friend.”
There was no one who had confessed yet, but there was already someone who had awkwardly rejected.
‘Would you die in place of that person you have a crush on?’
‘Yes. Because it would be better for me to die instead of them dying. Even if I had multiple lives, I would give them all to die in their place.’
Everything felt like an illusion.
An unbearably heavy feeling painfully pressed down on Mo Eunje’s heart. For some reason, he felt like he might burst into tears at any moment.
