The driver was looking at the two with a dubious face. Yujeong didn’t explain any further. The driver also couldn’t chatter anymore and closed his mouth. He didn’t know why. He definitely thought other words would follow. For example, saying how could men dating each other make sense, or what kind of joke was that…….
As he thought that and looked at the driver, he noticed him stealing glances at the back seat. Seongjo’s face, leaning against Yujeong, was exposed so the driver could also check it through the rearview mirror. The driver was making a tense expression while looking at the exposed face, and he wondered if he felt intimidated by the sleeping face and couldn’t bring himself to add anything.
To Yujeong’s eyes, it was a face that looked several times gentler when asleep, so he couldn’t properly understand. Yujeong didn’t move at all in that position so Seongjo’s head wouldn’t shake. The unknowable love song continued to flow without stopping.
* * *
When they arrived at the apartment complex where Yujeong and Seongjo lived, the taxi driver helped Yujeong pull the dead-drunk Seongjo out of the car. Even while doing so, he kept stealing glances at Yujeong as if being cautious about something. However, Yujeong didn’t try to think about the reason for that gaze. He was someone he’d never see again anyway.
He was planning to straighten up Seongjo’s body again and make him lean on him, but since he still wasn’t coming to his senses, it seemed better to just carry him on his back instead. At Yujeong’s back as he carried Seongjo on his back and headed toward the complex, the driver said one thing.
“Fighting!”
What exactly was he cheering for?
Was he talking about having to carry an adult man over 180cm tall, dead drunk at that, on his back? Or did he really believe the word ‘boyfriend’ that had been thrown out recklessly? Either way, it was equally ridiculous. More precisely, it wasn’t the driver who clenched his fist and shouted fighting before leaving that was quite funny, but Yujeong’s own situation.
During the series of time when Yujeong walked carrying Seongjo on his back, got on the elevator, and got off, there wasn’t anyone he encountered. The neighbors he greeted coming and going weren’t active at this late hour, and the security guard would be taking a nap in the security office. It was fortunate for Yujeong. If he’d encountered someone he knew, they might have asked who the person he was carrying was.
Explaining to others who Seongjo was and what their relationship was wasn’t ordinarily difficult. They weren’t intimate enough to be friends, they’d gone on a date today so they weren’t strangers, and their relationship had distance even to be vaguely expressed as hyung and dongsaeng who knew each other.
Above all, Seongjo didn’t even know who Yujeong was. No, should it be expressed as he doesn’t remember…….
‘And yet he has good instincts.’
Lost in thought, he suddenly recalled when he encountered Seongjo again at an unimaginable occasion…… when he came to the school as a student’s guardian. He’d definitely asked if they’d met somewhere before. Since he wasn’t the type of man to pull such cliché pickup lines, it seemed Yujeong had left some kind of faint trace in his memory.
He felt neither proud nor regretful. He’d never wanted Seongjo to recognize him enough to feel proud just because he considered Yujeong familiar, or to regret that he only remembered that much.
The reason Yujeong stopped in front of Seongjo’s house, which he’d already visited once before, while carrying Seongjo on his back, wasn’t because he expected something. From inside the car until now, Seongjo only let out even breathing with his face leaning against Yujeong’s back, not twisting his body, talking in his sleep, or making a fuss. The problem was that while doing so, he hadn’t shown signs of waking up even once. He couldn’t tell whether his drinking habit should be called docile or terrible.
Since he was in that state, he didn’t even expect that Seongjo would suddenly come to his senses and enter his own house. Even so, the reason he stopped by Seongjo’s house instead of taking him straight to his own house was to observe propriety. To put forward the justification that he did his best until the end. This was also childish behavior he wouldn’t have done in front of others, but he thought, what did it matter anyway.
“Lee Seongjo-ssi, we’re home.”
As expected, Seongjo didn’t even recognize Yujeong’s words. Yujeong patiently said one more thing.
“What’s the password?”
Many people set their birthday as their password, but he didn’t know when Seongjo’s birthday was, and even if he knew, he wouldn’t have tried to open the door.
He tried calling him a few more times to wake him, but it was useless. Yujeong stood blankly in that spot for a moment without moving. Eventually, moving his steps toward his own house was a little while later.
* * *
The house entered together with another person had a somewhat unfamiliar atmosphere. Though nothing had changed from when he left. Yujeong, who barely managed to remove Seongjo’s shoes under the dim entrance sensor light, walked straight toward the bedroom.
He’d never brought another person into this house. He hadn’t even invited his parents. Who would have thought the first visit would belong to Lee Seongjo.
After opening the bedroom door, Yujeong pondered for a moment. Should he carelessly throw Lee Seongjo onto the mattress? However, the thought didn’t continue long. He sat carefully at the edge of the bed and laid Seongjo down.
“Lee Seongjo-ssi.”
“……”
Naturally, there was no answer. As if unconsciously feeling it was an unfamiliar place, he only furrowed his brow slightly and tossed about.
“Are you lying on someone else’s bed while still wearing outdoor clothes?”
“……”
After spitting out a joke that wouldn’t reach him like nagging, Yujeong laughed briefly. The fact that he’d allowed Lee Seongjo to invade the ordinary place where he fell asleep every day struck his skin more and more vividly. The gifted diffuser was giving off a fresh scent no different from usual, but because it didn’t suit Seongjo at all, it was all the more unfamiliar and interesting.
Gazing quietly down at the sleeping face, Yujeong suddenly…….
He thought he shouldn’t remain in this room any longer.
He didn’t even think about changing the uncomfortable-looking shirt and dress pants. Wasn’t it the fault of the person who passed out recklessly in the first place? Yujeong stood up abruptly as is, then stretched his feet toward the door.
The next moment was when he hesitated and turned around.
The sleeping Seongjo, perhaps feeling the rebound of the mattress, tossed toward Yujeong’s side. And grabbed Yujeong’s sleeve. Yujeong looked down at the grabbed sleeve. He was just a person passed out drunk anyway. If he tried to shake him off, he could do so as much as he wanted.
“Did you wake up?”
Again, out of courtesy, he threw out a dry question. Seongjo opened his mouth as if talking in his sleep with his eyes still closed.
“……Ah.”
“……”
“Jo Yeongbeom.”
Yujeong’s eyes narrowed. Was it starting again?
He said he was trash he’d absolutely never meet again, yet how many times had he called that name while drunk already? Did he have that much lingering attachment? The fact that his ex-lover made a man like Lee Seongjo, who seemed like he absolutely wouldn’t feel any post-breakup aftereffects, like this was both fascinating and unpleasant. Was it because the relationship was long, or because it hadn’t been long since they broke up? In any case, he didn’t feel like being held by the drunk him.
As Yujeong was trying to remove Seongjo’s hand with such thoughts, Seongjo moved his lips again.
“This son of a……”
Son of a?
“Fucking bastard…… fuck…… bastard.”
“……”
The heavily locked voice flowed out slowly, but strangely, only the pronunciation was clear. Not just son of a bitch or fucking bastard, but fucking shitty asshole bastard. ……It wasn’t lingering attachment?
Yujeong, who lost strength, changed his mind and sat down beside Seongjo again.
He looked at the sleeping Lee Seongjo’s appearance once more, this time a bit more carefully. The outward appearance that had been thoroughly set up until just when they met today was now thoroughly disheveled. A couple of shirt buttons were undone, and the hair that had been neatly combed back was in disarray. A truly defenseless state.
A man who probably rarely showed such a defenseless appearance to others, but who was solid enough that it wouldn’t be a problem even if he did.
Perhaps to his separated ex-lover, he might have shown such a relaxed appearance even without drinking.
Yujeong quietly looked down at him and reached out his hand. He neatly arranged the disheveled hair. Even though it was combed back with mousse, the texture that wrapped around his fingertips felt good. Yujeong didn’t do any action beyond that. He removed his hand as is and covered him with a blanket over his outdoor clothes.
And suddenly…… Seongjo opened his eyes.
His drowsy gaze informed that he was intoxicated by both drunkenness and sleepiness simultaneously. Seongjo’s hand touched on top of Yujeong’s hand that was resting on the edge of the blanket. It was an unconscious motion with no intention to grab.
Yujeong looked down at the hand and said.
“I’m not Jo Yeongbeom.”
Seongjo slowly opened his mouth. At the same time, very slowly, as if the unfocused vision was being focused and reason was barely returning, a different light swirled in Seongjo’s drowsy eyes.
“I know.”
With those words, Seongjo closed his eyes again. The overlapped hand also fell away limply as if it had never been there.
Yujeong stood up from his seat as if nothing had happened, but for a long while, he stood in front of the door as if rooted, not moving.
Only after a long time passed could he open the door.
