“Shit… That CEO bastard must really have nothing to do.”
After finishing the meeting and returning to the car, Seo Hanryul started expressing his dissatisfaction.
“Hey, what’s with the bitter feelings? CEO-nim said he wants to push you.”
“…Hey, didn’t I tell you not to take the CEO’s side in front of me?”
“…I should just keep my mouth shut.”
Seo Hanryul grumbled about Lee Dojun’s sudden declaration to accompany us, but I was finally able to grasp what was in his heart.
The denial phase of falling for someone.
Lee Dojun was going through the denial phase of falling for someone.
What is the denial phase of falling for someone? It’s a term my hopeless younger sister taught me.
Seo Jiyeon was an ardent fan of an idol group throughout middle school. Around the time Seo Jiyeon first encountered this idol, I happened to overhear her talking on the phone with her friend at home.
“Hey! I think I’m in the denial phase of falling for NEon. What should I do?”
“What do you mean what, you’re screwed.”
The two only made incomprehensible sounds for a while. As soon as Seo Jiyeon came out of her room, I asked what the denial phase of falling for someone was, and the bastard explained the term as if I was pathetic for not knowing.
Denial phase of falling for someone. A period when someone strongly denies that they’re starting to have interest in a certain field or person. I asked why deny it if you like them, and my younger sister dodged saying there’s just something like that that I don’t know about.
Indeed, seeing is believing. Looking at Seo Hanryul and Lee Dojun, I could immediately understand the term denial phase of falling for someone.
Lee Dojun. The existence called Seo Hanryul suddenly barged into the life of that high-pride bastard without notice. For the fastidious Lee Dojun who dislikes people and only knows himself, this would be a very irritating situation.
But no matter how hard Lee Dojun tries, Seo Hanryul won’t leave his heart. Even if he doesn’t want to think about Seo Hanryul, he will think of him, and he will want to see his face. That’s probably why he’s accompanying even the advertisement shoot schedule.
The problem is that Lee Dojun is so harshly denying his own feelings that he’s only accumulating a negative image on Seo Hanryul’s side.
‘Right, that’s it.’
This Thailand shoot is a golden opportunity. Love has no choice but to burn in a foreign country. Since I’ll be accompanying to Thailand anyway to play my slave role for Seo Hanryul, I thought I should help Lee Dojun end his denial phase there.
It’s not like I need to meddle this much, but the situation of having to be included in the two’s blundering at that dinner last time was quite exhausting. I decided I needed to make Lee Dojun acknowledge his feelings as soon as possible and go straight for Seo Hanryul.
And Seo Hanryul is getting stranger by the day, so I hope he gets together with Lee Dojun soon. When people fall in love, they become a bit softer, so wouldn’t that benefit me too?
When Lee Dojun faced his feelings and started going straight for Seo Hanryul, what was it like? It was truly an eyesore of a scene. The great Lee Dojun sending greetings texts every day, making and feeding him food when Seo Hanryul was sick, holding a bouquet of flowers in front of Seo Hanryul’s house…
With his tremendous affection offensive, Seo Hanryul, who was a sulky person only toward Lee Dojun and thought Lee Dojun was a bad guy, eventually accepts him. And later the two became a pair of cockroaches, true love.
Know the enemy and know yourself, and in a hundred battles you will never be defeated.
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you won’t be in danger even if you fight a hundred battles. I only now realized that I’d been desperate about just my own living without thinking about BL at all.
‘Right. From now on, I should at least study.’
I thought I needed to study how the BL world works before the advertisement shoot. Since my understanding of the genre was 0, I thought I couldn’t take any action even after seeing the two’s blundering.
From now on, I thought I should study the laws of this world and definitely connect the bastards. Although not much time remained, even that time would provide some breathing room. And if he gets together with Lee Dojun, Seo Hanryul would also be able to forget me more cleanly.
* * *
“Cha Jaehyun, what are you doing today?”
“Today after the schedule ends, I have to go home. I need to study.”
“What, you’re going to study?”
“Are you looking down on me? I studied really hard even in America. If you don’t believe me, watch my GPS all day long.”
Seo Hanryul tried to steal my rest time again, but I firmly refused to do the studying I planned after the advertisement meeting.
“Did some wind blow into you suddenly? What studying…”
“There’s something like that. Anyway, get home safely. I’m going to study.”
It was true I was going to study. The problem was that the content of studying was somewhat difficult to mention. The study topic was BL genre study to connect Seo Hanryul and Lee Dojun.
I felt self-loathing wondering if I really needed to study something like this, but I had to study because it was clear I would also be comfortable if the two became a couple.
‘Right, let’s start by searching first.’
As soon as I got home, I searched for the keyword ‘BL’ in the blue window. When I searched, a vast amount of explanatory materials began pouring out. It was nothing short of a gold mine.
[BL: Boys’ Love, or BL as an abbreviation, is a creative genre that deals with romance or relationships between male characters and male characters.]
‘This is content I already know.’
[…Currently, because there are so many genres and works in BL, it can’t be defined as just one thing, but standardization has been achieved, such as dividing roles into top (攻) and bottom (受).]
The more I read, the more a strange sense of guilt arose, but I carefully read all the content with the mindset that I had to survive, and I was able to learn the basic content about BL.
First, in the BL world, there are tops and bottoms. According to the top-bottom concept, it seemed Lee Dojun was the top and Seo Hanryul was the bottom. Really TMI, but anyway, I acquired new information about the two.
And before top and bottom, adjectives that could explain each person’s personality or characteristics seemed to be attached. Like XX top, XX bottom. And depending on the combination of these keywords, it was said that the romance the two create would be different.
Then let’s think about Seo Hanryul and Lee Dojun. I took out A4 paper and started writing various things like brainstorming.
- Seo Hanryul (25): Pretty boy, celebrity, rude, has subtle obsession (doesn’t let go once he bites)
- Lee Dojun (29): Also handsome, chaebol, CEO, rich, a bit crazy (only knows himself)
‘Then is Seo Hanryul a rude bottom or obsessive bottom, and Lee Dojun a crazy(?) top?’
Rude bottom stuck to my mouth nicely, but crazy top sounded a bit strange. So when I searched in the search window, there was a good expression called ‘mad top (狂攻).’
‘Crazy, mad top…’
Reading the explanation about mad top, it was exactly like what Lee Dojun showed, so I started giggling.
I wrote rude bottom under Seo Hanryul’s name, mad top under Lee Dojun’s name, and started thinking about the two’s emotions.
- Lee Dojun -> Seo Hanryul: Denial phase of falling. Seems to like him but doesn’t express it. Rather gets on Seo Hanryul’s nerves
- Seo Hanryul -> Lee Dojun: ? (Unknown, but judging by the interrogation after the dinner, it’s clear he’s started taking interest in Lee Dojun)
As I organized things in my own way while writing by hand, I could understand the two’s psychology to some extent. Anyway, the two bastards hadn’t known each other long, but they were intensely aware of each other’s existence in their minds.
∴ Both are concerned about each other -> This overseas shoot is very important
I reached a conclusion. No matter how I thought about it, I thought this shoot was a very important opportunity, and I had a strong aspiration to connect the two bastards no matter what.
* * *
‘Time sure flies fast.’
It felt like just yesterday that Seo Hanryul caused an accident in front of the restaurant. Already the day of BM’s overseas shoot had come, and I was preparing to board a flight to Thailand. With Seo Hanryul and Lee Dojun together, that is.
As Seo Hanryul strongly wished, when there wasn’t much left until the end of Laws of the Universe, the schedule was flexibly adjusted so no schedule conflict occurred.
Seo Hanryul and Lee Dojun were clashing even while going through the boarding procedures, but having thoroughly studied this genre, I didn’t consider this a big problem.
Before studying, it would have been quite concerning, but now I knew that readers who read BL like this kind of bickering before dating. It’s said that seeing them become a couple and fight after growling at each other mercilessly like this doubles the fun or something.
The only regrettable thing was that this time the seats weren’t first class but business class. Having ridden first class despite being a commoner, my standards had gotten too high.
But when I actually entered, I could see that business class was also quite good. The seats also had a very simple answer.
Two window seats and one aisle seat next to them. Naturally, the two would sit by the window, and I would sit on the aisle side.
“Hey, let’s sit by the window. You sit on the inside.”
I was about to sit on the aisle side when Seo Hanryul suddenly grabbed my arm and pushed me inside by the window.
‘Ah, that bastard.’
“Hanryul-ssi, you should ask Jiwon-ssi’s opinion too, right?”
Lee Dojun said while slightly glaring at Seo Hanryul. Lee Dojun said something appropriate for once.
“Then I’d like to sit on the aisle side. You two sit by the window.”
I immediately answered Lee Dojun as if I’d been waiting.
“I don’t like that.”
“Then CEO-nim, if you sit in the seat you want first, I’ll sit in the remaining seat.”
“No. Jiwon-ssi, you choose first.”
‘No, why is this bastard acting like this again?’
It’s not like solving a math conditional problem. He said he didn’t like me sitting on the aisle, but then told me to do as I please? There are only 3 seats, so what does he want me to do?
Then it’s back to square one. If I sit at the end as Seo Hanryul says, there’s a passage in between, but Lee Dojun and Seo Hanryul would be sitting next to each other.
“Then I’ll sit on the inside by the window.”
“Yes, then I’ll sit next to Jiwon-ssi.”
“CEO-nim, I don’t like the aisle seat.”
I was about to settle into my seat again when Seo Hanryul threw a tantrum saying he didn’t like the aisle seat. The words telling him to just stand up and leave rose to the tip of my throat.
“Then I’ll sit in the middle seat. Hanryul-ssi sits inside me and CEO-nim can sit on the aisle side. I’m not accepting objections.”
At this rate, it seemed all 3 of us would end up standing, so I unilaterally sat in the middle seat. The two excluding me also seemed dissatisfied with the seat selection. It was a disaster caused by the two’s hopeless push-and-pull.
‘Ugh, I’m sick of this.’
This tiresome push-and-pull. I’ll end it when I go to Thailand.
