Watching him, Hwan hesitated several times before carefully whispering a question.
“…Kang-hyung, do you not want to get married?”
“That can’t be.”
Huiseo answered readily to Hwan’s question.
But that quick answer sounded less like it really wasn’t the case, and more like resignation—as if to say, how could he possibly have any say in such a momentous matter? Even the sigh that followed was like that. So watching Huiseo, Hwan became lost in deep thought.
‘Did Huiseo like hyung more than I thought?’
He’d heard that in the case of close siblings, when one of them gets married, the one left behind sometimes feels a sense of emptiness, thinking they’ll grow distant.
It was a story somewhat removed from Hwan, whose premise of being ‘close’ was fundamentally wrong, but thinking back on Kang, who thought of Huiseo even more like a younger brother than a real younger brother, it seemed understandable that Huiseo might feel such emotions.
But it was irreversible.
‘…I’m here. You can depend on me.’
Not hyung.
Even in that moment, Hwan was jealous of Kang, who dominated Huiseo’s mood.
‘Love only me.’
With such pathetic thoughts, Hwan reached out and firmly grasped the hand of Huiseo, who sat in the seat beside him.
***
However, before long, Hwan realized in a rather shocking way that the person he should be wary of now was not his older brother. And it happened not long after they arrived at school that very morning.
As the new second semester began, a transfer student appeared in Hwan and Huiseo’s class.
You can probably guess from here, but that transfer student was the problem.
His name was Choi Yuwon.
From what he’d heard, he was the grandson of that famous Myeongwoon Group, which made cell phones, TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, cars—there was nothing they couldn’t make. Seeing how the company name was attached before his name, to put it simply, he was a rich kid.
As soon as he opened the classroom door and entered, the other kids who already recognized him busily whispered amongst themselves. While everyone else was doing that, Hwan merely propped his chin on his hand and watched indifferently, thinking, ‘Are they planning to gather all the troublesome kids in one class?’
Well, he was tall as a beanpole, and his short hair and upturned eyes were striking.
In crude terms, he looked like he had quite a temper.
Sure enough, when he smiled slightly while introducing himself, one corner of his mouth lifted first, revealing a characteristic arrogance. Hwan clicked his tongue inwardly at him.
‘A classic chaebol family’s youngest son.’
But at that very moment, wouldn’t you know it, Hwan’s and his eyes met directly.
That gaze was quite sharp, and momentarily overwhelmed, Hwan flinched and trembled.
‘…Did I just click my tongue out loud?’
No, that couldn’t be. If he had, Huiseo sitting next to him would have reacted first.
While Hwan was flustered like this, the homeroom teacher informed Yuwon that his seat was the one at the end by the hallway. That spot was, so to speak, directly opposite Hwan’s seat at the window-side end.
So it was clearly wrong for him to suddenly stride toward Hwan’s direction.
The homeroom teacher and classmates were of course surprised by his highhanded behavior, but the one most flustered and surprised was, naturally, Hwan.
‘Wh-what, does he want to fight?’
The earlier eye contact was like that too, and it didn’t seem to have a good meaning. So Hwan even straightened his somewhat slouched posture and stealthily went into defensive mode. He wouldn’t just suddenly hit him, would he? No matter if he was a chaebol grandson, he was also a prince.
But when his steps suddenly stopped at an unexpected place, Hwan’s face changed to one of bewilderment. No, to be honest, Hwan was even more flustered now.
Because the place he stopped was none other than in front of Huiseo.
‘…What is he doing right now?’
Yuwon paid no attention to Hwan’s unfriendly gaze.
Meanwhile, Huiseo had no idea what was happening and kept his eyes fixed on his book as usual. Whether a transfer student was introducing himself at the front of the classroom or not, he’d had no interest from the start anyway. So he seemed unaware that someone was standing in front of him, and that all the classmates were staring only at him.
To catch Huiseo’s attention like this, the person standing in front tapped Huiseo’s desk with his fist.
Only then did Huiseo sense someone’s presence and raise his gaze.
“Hi.”
A low voice spoke to him.
To Huiseo.
While wearing a bright smile completely different from the arrogant smile Hwan had earlier described as arrogant—that sneering smile with only one corner of the mouth raised.
‘…Hey, this bastard? He’s making a move?’
It was from that very moment that Hwan’s internal description of him became somewhat crude.
***
Everyone’s gaze converged on those two people—no, extending to include Hwan, three people.
It seemed to be quite an interesting sight for them. And for good reason, since until now it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Hwan had always monopolized Huiseo. It had been so conspicuous and extreme that even getting slightly close to Huiseo would make Hwan’s eyes turn fierce.
But what kind of situation was this?
It was a scene they had never, not even once, witnessed before.
Meanwhile, Huiseo was looking up at him with an expression that showed he didn’t understand why this person was suddenly being friendly with him. At that innocent face, only Hwan’s insides burned endlessly.
‘No, Huiseo! You can’t make that face! That bastard is a bad guy!’
Yuwon, who had already become a ‘bad guy’ in Hwan’s mind, put on quite an affable face in front of Huiseo. However, the posture of leaning against his desk as if he might pour everything onto Huiseo at any moment was, conversely, quite intimidating.
“Don’t you remember me?”
“Mm.”
Had Hwan’s desperate feelings been conveyed?
Surprisingly, Huiseo gave a rather short answer, uncharacteristically so for him, one that even felt cold.
What was more surprising was the fact that while one would expect him to be flustered by that cold response, Yuwon didn’t care at all. For someone who’d surely been raised being pampered in everything, this situation must have felt like a great humiliation. But instead, he smiled even more deeply in front of Huiseo and said,
“That’s a shame. Actually, if you think about it, we knew each other before you knew His Highness the Prince over there.”
At those words, Huiseo’s eyes narrowed slightly. Hwan, listening from the side, couldn’t hide his dumbfounded expression at the remark that blatantly checked him.
‘What do you mean “we” linking you and Huiseo together?’
It was absurd. He should at least say something that made sense.
Hwan felt like grabbing him by the collar, wondering what kind of scheme this was.
On the other hand, Huiseo said nothing and after briefly furrowing his brow, looked up at him for a while with no particular change in expression. Yuwon facing him would be the same, but Hwan was even more anxious not knowing what Huiseo was thinking.
That brief moment of the two making eye contact was too hard to bear.
Hwan felt an impulse to grab Huiseo’s hand right now and storm out of there. Perhaps he really would have if Huiseo hadn’t dismissed him once more with a cool expression right after.
“Well, even if you say that, I still don’t recall.”
“Well, that’s possible. It was when we were very young.”
The problem was that it didn’t work at all.
Yuwon, who had spoken so nonchalantly, soon shifted his attention to the kid sitting in front of Huiseo. Then he tapped his shoulder. That was, hard to believe, apparently meant to tell him to move.
But when the kid in front didn’t understand immediately, Yuwon frowned and said,
“Move.”
“…Huh? Me?”
As mentioned earlier, his assigned seat was the empty seat by the window. Even though he’d heard that clearly, he was still being this highhanded. Moreover, it wasn’t even a pretense of asking, ‘Sorry, but could you move?’—it was literally a demand.
That everyone couldn’t say anything about such outrageous behavior was probably because his background was effective. Who would have dared to say no to what he wanted to do until now? One could believe he’d grown up more like a prince than an actual prince.
‘So this little classroom must seem trivial to him.’
Everyone was intimidated.
So in the end, the kid in front who’d been reading the mood had no choice but to quietly stand up.
But watching that, Hwan snorted derisively.
‘That kid doesn’t know anything, not by a long shot.’
He couldn’t help but click his tongue and sneer.
Just moments ago he’d been acting so familiar with Huiseo in front of him, but now it was so obvious that it was all a bluff. It seemed he was planning to somehow cling persistently by sitting in front of Huiseo, but even before that, he was already making a huge mistake.
Hwan knew better than anyone. Just how much Huiseo hated that kind of behavior.
‘Ever heard of extreme disgust?’
Yuwon had just, in crude terms, ‘stepped in shit.’
So Hwan’s anxious and rushed feelings could gradually settle down. As he gained composure like this, he could see all of Yuwon’s foolish acts that followed.
Not knowing this, Yuwon, who had doggedly secured the seat in front of Huiseo, bothered Huiseo at every opportunity during break time or whenever there was a chance, even if not exactly then.
“What book are you reading?”
“……”
“How have you been all this time?”
“……”
“What do you do after school?”
“……”
Even without Huiseo’s answers, he chattered away so well.
Without giving Hwan sitting beside him even a glance, treating him like an invisible person, he acted familiar only with Huiseo in every way. So he probably didn’t even realize that Hwan was looking at him with pitying eyes.
Because of Yuwon constantly talking to him, Huiseo couldn’t concentrate on reading his book at all.
So naturally his mood became noticeably uncomfortable.
‘Foolish bastard.’
Hwan turned his head pretending to look out the window and smirked. Even without deliberately interfering, things were falling apart on their own. That was a seat he’d barely secured by fawning obsequiously, saying he’d be quiet beside him, that he wouldn’t even make a sound of breathing.
‘You think you can snatch it away that easily?’
