I stared at the screen, gone dark and dead, then shoved the phone carelessly into my pocket.
‘What am I supposed to do now…?’
Maybe go to a convenience store and buy an umbrella first. I tried to take a step, but my whole body was heavy as waterlogged cotton. Why can’t I move at all. It felt like I’d been caught in some clinging, sticky trap. My thoughts moved sluggishly.
[Me] Hyung, let’s break up.
The last message I’d left for Lim Suha kept rising to the surface of my mind.
I never thought I’d be the one to say it first. My head knows that was the only right answer, but I can’t understand why it hurts this much.
I pressed a hand over my chest. Then I balled it into a fist and struck myself there.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
It felt suffocating, like something was completely jammed inside, and I didn’t know what to do about it. The rain fell without end. The soaked fabric of my clothes muffled the sound as my fist kept landing against my chest with dull, repeated thuds.
Thud. Thud.
What do you do when no amount of beating your chest makes any difference. What was it I was supposed to do to breathe.
…If I’d known it would come to this, I should have just gone to the PC bang to play games. Breathing was so, so hard.
Thud….
The moment I struck my chest one more time, a large hand abruptly caught my wrist. The motion that had been relentlessly hitting me finally stopped.
The hand that touched my wrist was so warm. Maybe it was the sudden warmth. The cold crashed over me all at once. It was only then that I realized my entire body was trembling.
I slowly lifted my gaze from where it had been fixed on the ground. The moment I met the eyes of the person in front of me, my lips parted slightly.
“Oh….”
It’s Cha Hyunwoo. My one and only childhood friend, Cha Hyunwoo.
At the same moment, the rain stopped. No — a large umbrella blocked it.
Beneath the pitch-black umbrella spread overhead, eyes darker than storm clouds looked down at me.
That straight nose I’d always envied, and those firmly pressed lips that seemed to mirror his nature of never speaking carelessly. I wanted to keep looking at that familiar, welcome face, but….
My vision smeared into a dizzy blur. My wet, tear-filled sight went hazy, and the strength drained from the legs that had been holding me up.
“Jeong Yiyeon!”
An urgent voice filled my ears completely.
My cold, trembling body crumpled and gave way inside a solid embrace.
* * *
Surprisingly, the world didn’t fall apart so easily.
Blink. Blink. I quietly opened and closed my eyes as I looked around.
“…Where… is this?”
“What do you mean, where. It’s our place.”
“Ugh… how long have I been out?”
“A day.”
“…What?”
I tried to shoot upright, but a large hand pressed gently against my chest and pulled the blanket up to my chin.
“Dr. Kim came by. He says you have a body ache cold.”
Dr. Kim was Cha Hyunwoo’s personal physician. As a dominant alpha, Cha Hyunwoo had a doctor assigned to him.
Truthfully, it was less about him being a dominant and more simply because the Cha family was wealthy. My family was fairly well-off too, but the Cha family was on a completely different level.
The place I was living in now was also an officetel near campus — Hyunwoo had moved out independently, and I had come in as his roommate. Though if I kept dragging him into troublesome situations like this, I might get kicked out.
I shifted my arm slightly and felt something foreign. I looked up to find a long IV line hanging down.
“Ah….”
He’d said Dr. Kim came, so he must have administered treatment before leaving.
A quiet breath slipped out of me.
Time had moved faithfully forward even while I lay there. When I said goodbye to Lim Suha, it had felt so clearly like everything was over — but reality wasn’t like that. This apartment was as tidy as always, and the world was turning just fine.
And then I glanced over at Cha Hyunwoo’s face, and I was immediately taken aback.
I thought everything was all right, but….
“You… why do you look like that?”
His usually neat appearance was nowhere to be seen — Cha Hyunwoo was thoroughly disheveled. His black hair, which always had a clean, glossy sheen, was sticking out in every direction, as though he’d raked his hands through it irritably more than a few times.
And his face. His complexion was dark and dim, like someone who had just lived through a major crisis, and his eyes looked exhausted, as though he hadn’t slept properly in days.
The one who needed to be seen by Dr. Kim seemed less like me and more like Cha Hyunwoo…?
Whether or not I was taken aback, Hyunwoo quietly adjusted the light.
“Go back to sleep.”
Then, in a low voice that sounded somewhere between a command and a plea, he said just that.
So I slept more, like he told me to. I was sure I’d slept so much there’d be no way I could fall asleep again, but I was pulled under surprisingly easily.
In the dream, I was left alone in a pitch-dark, frightening darkness. I curled my small body up tight, buried my face between my knees, and cried and cried. Without end.
I cried for so long, and still I was alone. A piercing loneliness hit me like ice pressed against my face, and I startled awake.
When I opened my eyes again, the IV was gone, and a bandage was stuck to my arm in its place. The room was as dark as the dead of night. Just like in the nightmare, I was alone in the dark.
So it really was true — my world had fallen apart.
I carefully lifted my heavy body and sat up. Everything around me was pitch black. I dropped my gaze listlessly, and there was someone there.
I could see Cha Hyunwoo, sleeping quietly, his dark hair — the kind that seemed like it could swallow all the surrounding darkness — fanned around him.
‘…Ah, I thought I was alone, but I wasn’t.’
Cha Hyunwoo was there.
* * *
When had it started, I wonder.
Cha Hyunwoo being by my side.
‘Always, constantly, without fail.’
Those were words that didn’t feel strange at all when applied to us. The two of us.
Because….
My mother and Cha Hyunwoo’s mother were high school classmates, close friends.
Lee Soeun and Han Chaewon. The two of them had much to understand and empathize with in each other, sharing the common trait of being dominant omegas. Even after they grew up, married, and became adults, they stayed close. When Han Chaewon became pregnant with Cha Hyunwoo, unlike Lee Soeun, it was her first child. Lee Soeun visited her friend often to help.
And so, in the first month of the new year, Cha Hyunwoo was born.
And in the last month of that same year, I was born.
From the very moment I came into this world, Cha Hyunwoo was already beside me. On top of that, something happened that made it so we had no choice but to keep being together. Sadly, my mother passed away giving birth to me.
Han Chaewon raised me, who had come into the world crying loudly without a clue, almost like family. My father, who was struggling with the grief of my mother’s death, tacitly accepted Han Chaewon’s help and welcomed it.
So in my early years, I had more memories intertwined with the Cha household than with my own actual family.
There was a day when something like this happened.
‘Mom!’
When I was little, I grew up calling Han Chaewon mom. Perhaps her affection had naturally opened my heart on its own.
‘Did you two play well at the playground?’
‘Yes! Yiyeon went down the slide all by himself!’
When I looked up at her hoping for praise, the words I wanted to hear always came back without fail.
‘Our Yiyeon is so brave!’
I’d be blushing at her words, and there beside us, wearing a sulky expression, was Cha Hyunwoo.
‘Okay, shall we both wash our hands then? Mom made some yummy snacks.’
‘Wow! Yiyeon can wash his hands all by himself!’
I went dashing off to the bathroom, and Cha Hyunwoo quietly followed behind me. As I rinsed off the soapy bubbles with a thorough scrub and carefully dried my hands on the towel, Cha Hyunwoo came up to me.
‘Jeong Yiyeon.’
‘Yeah!’
‘Why do you keep calling my mom mom all the time?’
‘…….’
‘You’re not my little sibling.’
It must have been a question he’d made up his mind to ask, because Cha Hyunwoo’s expression was quite serious. I stuck out my lip, unable to say anything back, and looked away. I didn’t cry. I was sure I’d held it together well — but in the end, the tears broke loose somewhere else entirely.
When evening came and we were tired from playing, a car would be sent from home. That was the time I hated most in the world. I’d make a miserable face every time, wanting to keep playing at Cha Hyunwoo’s house, and then reluctantly get into the car. Still, I didn’t cry.
But that day was different. Maybe it was because Cha Hyunwoo had scolded me. I didn’t want to leave Han Chaewon’s arms even more than usual. Feeling strangely forlorn, I cried in her arms loud enough to shake the world. I didn’t want to trouble her, but the tears wouldn’t stop.
I must have cried myself out and then gotten in the car. Sure enough, through the car window, Cha Hyunwoo stood there with a displeased look on his face.
The next day came, but for the first time, I found myself hesitating to go to Cha Hyunwoo’s house. Because Hyunwoo’s disgruntled face kept coming back to me.
Could it be that Cha Hyunwoo hates me….
I’d become considerably timid about it, but in the end I had no choice but to go. Because Cha Hyunwoo was my one and only childhood friend.
Fortunately, contrary to my worries, the day at Cha Hyunwoo’s house passed just like any other. We ate a proper dinner and waited for the car to take me home. Even if I didn’t want to go, I wouldn’t cry today. I was quietly resolving this to myself when Cha Hyunwoo, as if hitting the mark, asked:
‘Are you going to cry again?’
The moment I heard that, my resolve not to cry crumbled as if it had been a lie, and tears welled up. Cha Hyunwoo really must hate me after all.
I shrank back, bracing for whatever he was about to say. But what came next was completely unexpected.
‘Let’s live together someday.’
‘……?’
‘If we live together, you won’t have to leave even when night comes.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. So don’t cry.’
‘Okay! I won’t cry anymore.’
Cha Hyunwoo let out a small breath as if relieved, then looked at me again with a careful gaze. The eyes that met mine were quite serious.
‘But even if we live together — you’re still not my little sibling.’
I nodded my head cheerfully. The tears that had been threatening to spill were gone before I even noticed.
‘That’s right, I’m not Hyunwoo’s little sibling! We’re friends!’
‘…Friends?’
‘Yeah! We are friends, right?’
What had Cha Hyunwoo’s expression looked like when I asked that, beaming with delight?
It was deeply furrowed, as though he’d heard something disagreeable.
