# Chapter 29
Due to Lee Jaei returning home drunk and oversleeping, breakfast was skipped. The lunch menu that began at 1 PM was bone hangover soup.
Doha, who was currently quite annoyed with Jaei, was looking with pitying eyes at Jaei as he meticulously picked off the meat from the backbone with his chopsticks. Among the various hangover soups, he had deliberately chosen bone soup. It was to make things troublesome for Jaei.
However, since Jaei was sensitive to smells and tended to be picky about restaurants, he ordered from a place that had passed his strict evaluation. He just wanted to make things a little inconvenient for him, not prevent him from eating altogether.
Unlike Doha, who roughly tore off the meat and was satisfied with that, Jaei always attempted delicate work like an artist sculpting when faced with a backbone. If Lee Jaei was a fox, then at this moment, Lee Doha was a crane disturbing the fox’s meal.
Jaei, who hadn’t been able to properly eat until Doha had almost emptied his bowl, pouted with a sullen expression. The baby crane watched the fox and sneered, raising one corner of his mouth.
Jaei took a sip of the soup and asked, blinking his large eyes.
“Doha. Are you done eating?”
“Yeah. Hyung doesn’t have an appetite? You’re barely eating. Try eating with this.”
He kindly pushed the raw onions and chili peppers that Jaei couldn’t eat in front of him. Effortlessly ignoring Doha’s malicious consideration, Jaei soon shouted with a bright smile. His voice was so shameless and innocent.
“Help me pick off this meat!”
Jaei’s plate with the backbone on it was already placed in front of Doha. At the sight of Jaei asking him to separate the meat from the bone, Doha blinked rapidly. Jaei was making a refreshing expression like one from a vitamin C commercial. His eyes gently folded, and his fan-like long eyelashes drooped heavily.
Doha, whose eyes stung from Jaei’s refreshing demeanor, soon covered his mouth with the hand not holding the spoon. And then he said in a voice filled with emotion.
“Yes, Hyung. I’m really good at that.”
He put down his spoon and picked up new chopsticks. Quickly abandoning his brief past as a crane, he began the work of picking off the meat for Jaei’s perfect meal. While he wasn’t good at studying, he was quite skilled with his hands. He was confident in perfectly separating the meat, with the mindset of a wood carving master, when feeding Jaei, even though he would eat his own food any which way.
A short while later, Doha was sitting next to Jaei rather than across from him. After Jaei put a spoonful of soup and rice in his mouth and waited for him to chew it thoroughly, he placed the meat in Jaei’s mouth with perfect timing, like a mother bird.
“You should’ve asked me to do this earlier.”
“You were eating too.”
Jaei, who received the meat like a baby bird and chewed, smiled happily like a child. Doha unconsciously stroked Jaei’s hair. Jaei’s expression, as he quietly allowed himself to be stroked while maintaining eye contact with Doha, began to distort little by little.
Soon, with his expression hardened, Jaei tightly closed his mouth and rolled his eyes, looking back and forth between Doha and the hangover soup. Doha hesitated at Jaei’s sudden change of expression and withdrew his hand. At that moment, Jaei put down his spoon and hid his face with both hands.
Doha, not too flustered by the sudden situation, calmly checked Jaei’s condition. The spaces between his long, pretty fingers were getting moist and wet. The person who had been eating with a smile until a minute ago had suddenly started to cry.
But that could happen. That’s just how artists are. Jaei tended to have extreme emotional fluctuations. However, because he was a person with such a kind and gentle inner nature, his emotional ups and downs might confuse others, but never made them uncomfortable.
Doha stroked the back of Jaei’s hand and then gently gripped his fingers, making him lower his hands. As expected, Jaei’s pretty face was moist with tears. Doha, with a slight smile on his lips, asked in a bright voice.
“Why is Hyung crying at this timing? I’m trying to guess but I can’t figure it out. Was the onion too close?”
Doha moved the onions and chili peppers that the unkind crane had placed in front of Jaei far away. Then he dabbed Jaei’s tears with a napkin. Jaei, who had been whimpering like a child with his mouth tightly closed, soon painfully offered an answer. This response, too, was something Doha hadn’t expected at all.
“…Because I’m so happy eating like this with you.”
A 26-year-old man crying suddenly because he feels happy eating bone hangover soup with his younger brother on a weekend with no schedule. Does that make any sense? Doha truly loved Jaei who behaved in such nonsensical ways. No matter how he thought about it, this was an inexplicable loveliness. He gently pulled on Jaei’s large ear and laughed heartily.
“Hyung, how many times have we eaten together so far? Probably more than 3,000 times.”
The problem was that Lee Doha was a person with too much empathy who would cry along if others cried. Especially if that person was Lee Jaei, it was virtually 100%. Doha, who had been teasing Jaei, soon covered his face with his large hands. As if copying Jaei’s emotions, a sudden overwhelming happiness surged in his chest.
After finishing their tearful meal, Jaei solved a puzzle in the living room for brain development. It was a large puzzle with 1,000 pieces, a gift made by a fan using Jaei’s pictorial photos. Doha also started a brain development game beside Jaei, who was sitting on the floor with his legs spread in a circle, solving the puzzle.
Doha, who had completely embodied Jaei’s emotions as his own through direct transfer, was so happy about spending this leisurely weekend with him right now that he could cry. However, he was also seized by anxiety that he might lose Jaei to apartment 1002 by evening. So, with an urgent mind, he was working at full brain capacity to solve the password of apartment 1002.
Jaei stared down at Doha, who was lying prone beside him. Right now, Doha was decoding a password with his phone open to a portal search site, clutching a notebook and pen. Doha spoke in a voice full of confidence.
“I think I can solve the password soon.”
The notebook was covered with messy Braille-like dots and lines. The problem setter tilted his head and asked.
“What are you doing? Explain it to me.”
“The first hint you gave me was ‘meong’ [sticking out tongue], right? I’m converting that to Morse code and listing it all out. Then I’m comparing it with numerical Morse code. How about that, Hyung, are you shocked now? Am I smart? Don’t you think I’ll open that door soon?”
Doha was infinitely transparent and clear. Jaei awkwardly blinked and scratched his cheek with his finger. Doha was indeed using his brain impressively after a long time, but it was obviously wrong. The cause of the wrong answer was that his solution method didn’t consider the level of the problem setter at all. Regardless of Doha’s level, Lee Jaei wasn’t at a level to create such a problem.
“That’s not a hint. I was just sticking out my tongue. I was in a tongue-sticking-out mood then.”
“What?”
Doha, who had only developed his brain without results, dropped his pen with a thud.
But somehow, he couldn’t stop feeling smarter, so he sat across from Jaei and solved the puzzle together. Right now, Doha felt as if he could get into Seoul National University after completing this puzzle. Jaei, finding Doha’s enthusiastic brain-developing appearance endearing, revealed a decisive hint for him.
“It’s a birth date.”
“Eight digits? Like our house?”
“Yeah.”
He had already tried entering Hong Duyoung’s birth date. But that wasn’t the answer either. Doha, putting down the puzzle piece in his hand, lay down on the floor again and grabbed his notebook and pen.
He searched for the birth dates of people related to Jaei. He carefully wrote down names and birth dates in his notebook. He could easily obtain information about 50% of the celebrities who were close to Jaei, but the remaining 50% of ordinary people were not easy to find information about. So he started making a list of people who were followed on Jaei’s private, non-public SNS and collecting information.
Jaei, pitying Doha who was looking for a crab in the desert, released a flood of hints like a store owner with a “The Boss Has Gone Crazy” banner.
“Born in July.”
“July?”
“I’ve told you everything now. This is almost like giving the answer and then asking the exam question.”
Jaei replied coyly. July 10th. Ryu Doha, who had returned to the world exactly recognizing his name and birthday, just seven years younger. Of course, his birth date was the password for apartment 1002. So it differed only in the first four digits from Lee Doha’s birth date, which was the password for apartment 902.
From Jaei’s perspective, it was as if he had openly shouted, “You are the main character of that house.” Jaei hoped that Doha would discover his own past, figure out the password himself, and enter that house on his own to face their beautiful memories again.
However, he was also concerned about Doha having to accept an unbelievable truth and a dark past that would do no good to know. So he wanted Doha to discover the truth slowly, not too hastily. He planned to reveal the past little by little, not urgently, so that he could return to him without a big shock. And by then, Doha would probably be an adult.
At that moment, Doha’s fingers, which had been searching through wiki documents related to Jaei’s celebrity connections, hesitated. Doha got up and moved to the sofa so that Jaei couldn’t peek at his phone screen.
Hong Duyoung
Film Director
41 years old
Born June 8 (lunar calendar)
