When did he start watching me? Did he see me write Lee Juhak’s name? What if Hong Seungpyo tells Lee Juhak?
His thoughts were spinning wildly, making a mess of his head, when —
“Hey, you haven’t turned yours in yet.”
The class representative, a small pouch in one hand, spoke to Dooyoung. Inside the pouch were the slips of paper collected from the students.
“Hurry up. I need to get back to studying.”
“W-wait, just a —”
In that moment, Hong Seungpyo took Dooyoung’s slip on his own and handed it to the class representative. The class representative pushed up their glasses, gave Dooyoung a strange look, and walked away. The homeroom teacher took the pouch and left the classroom. It had all happened in an instant — there had been no time to do anything.
Dooyoung bit down on his lip hard enough to bruise. The wound that had barely closed split open again. Hong Seungpyo blinked and asked, all innocence:
“What? Did you write something wrong?”
Then he dragged his thumb across Dooyoung’s lip. Dooyoung’s mind had stalled from what just happened and he let Hong Seungpyo’s touch land without pulling away. Hong Seungpyo, expression unhurried, wiped away the rest of the blood from Dooyoung’s lip. Then he held out all five fingers and flashed a wide, open grin.
“Looks like lipstick.”
With the sunlight at his back, color bloomed in his grey eyes in an instant.
On the way to Penstemon after school, there was one long alley. It was set a bit apart from the school, so it wasn’t heavily trafficked — but today that felt especially pronounced.
Dooyoung kept glancing over his shoulder as he passed through the gloomy alley. He could feel eyes on him, but every time he checked, there was no one there. He shivered at the eeriness of the alley, where nothing moved but a cold gust of dusty wind. A pair of pitch-black eyes surfaced in his mind on their own.
He had no idea what Hong Seungpyo was thinking. He was fairly certain Hong Seungpyo had seen him writing Lee Juhak’s name, yet there had been no particular reaction. He’d been his usual self through the last class and left the classroom without a second look back.
Is he done hanging around Lee Juhak’s crew? But he did show up at the hideout, so probably not. Then again, the way he acts toward Kim Jinho doesn’t quite add up either.
“Haah……”
When he breathed out a sigh, a white cloud of breath brushed across his face. He’d spent the whole day agonizing until his head nearly rotted over what would happen if Hong Seungpyo told Lee Juhak.
Could he report it to the police? Would that be blowing it out of proportion? Would the police even help him?
Dooyoung’s steps slowly came to a stop at that thought. The police wouldn’t help him. They hadn’t helped that kid either…….
Actually — what if Hong Seungpyo hadn’t seen anything at all? The theory surfaced all of a sudden and Dooyoung’s heart began to flutter. Right — maybe he was someone who often saw things that weren’t there, and had let his imagination run further than reality.
The weight pressing down on him lifted all at once. A relief settled in, like waking from an unhappy nightmare. Dooyoung walked the last stretch of the alley with a slightly lighter step.
He turned around one final time to make sure no one was following him — and in that moment, he collided with someone who had just entered the alley, and his body tipped backward. Luckily, the other person caught him, and Dooyoung didn’t fall.
“Th-thank you.”
“You okay?”
Even in the cold winter air, there was warmth in that voice — and among everyone Dooyoung knew, there was only one person it could belong to. He looked up awkwardly to find Hong Seungpyo gazing down at him with a relaxed expression.
Hong Seungpyo reached a hand toward Dooyoung’s wind-tangled hair.
“Ugh!”
Dooyoung squeezed his eyes shut on instinct. When nothing he was bracing for happened even after a long moment, he opened his eyes cautiously.
Hong Seungpyo scratched the corner of his eyebrow and said:
“Have I ever hit you before?”
Dooyoung hesitated, then shook his head. A short breath burst from Hong Seungpyo’s lips.
“Then why are you being such a pain in the ass?”
Dooyoung had been gnawing his lip when he tried to pull free from Hong Seungpyo’s arms — and his legs gave out beneath him and he sank to the ground. Hong Seungpyo, looking thoroughly exasperated, hauled him back up like pulling a radish out of the ground.
“You really are something else.”
Dooyoung was too embarrassed and too scared to lift his head. By the time he gathered himself, he was half tucked against Hong Seungpyo again, just like before. Close enough to hear him swallow.
Hong Seungpyo swept Dooyoung’s messy hair back with a large hand and kneaded the back of his neck with gentle pressure. At that warm, careful touch, Dooyoung’s guard slowly began to dissolve.
The pale strands he’d just tidied stirred again in the cold wind and fell back into disarray. The sunset caught in Dooyoung’s amber eyes, scattering light brilliantly. Hong Seungpyo’s gaze was stolen by that light — and every word he’d been turning over in his head, every reason he’d slipped out of school early and waited at the end of the alley for him, evaporated without a trace.
He exhaled slowly, scattering his breath, and said:
“I spent the whole day thinking about it.”
“…?”
“What’s the best way to blackmail you.”
Dooyoung was slow to process it, and then his eyes went wide enough to split at the corners. Hong Seungpyo smiled brightly and swept the back of Dooyoung’s head with a gentle hand.
“Guess your head’s too small for the contents to catch up quickly.”
He dragged his thumb across the corner of Dooyoung’s eye. Dooyoung knocked his hand away and stepped out of his arms. Hong Seungpyo looked down at his empty arms and felt a flicker of something like regret. It was a feeling he hadn’t even noticed in himself.
Hong Seungpyo shrugged and cut straight to it without waiting for Dooyoung to settle.
“You wrote it where it was barely legible, you know. Lee Juhak’s name.”
Dooyoung’s face went pale enough to show the veins beneath the skin. Hong Seungpyo smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners.
“Why so surprised? Didn’t you make it obvious on purpose so I’d see?”
“…No.”
“Really? Then that’s pretty careless. What are you, a cat? Think if you just hide your head, no one can see you?”
Dooyoung pressed his mouth shut. So now he’d gone from a mutt to a cat.
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep the secret. All you have to do in return is hang out with me.”
At Hong Seungpyo’s shameless, demanding attitude — boldly asking to spend time together — Dooyoung’s face twisted into an uncomfortable grimace.
“That’s… blackmail?”
“It’s not as light as what you’re imagining.”
“If — if it’s money you want……”
Hong Seungpyo’s gaze went flat for just a moment. It was the expression of someone holding back irritation.
“Do I look like I’m broke?”
Dooyoung hesitated briefly, then shook his head. Hong Seungpyo’s home was a luxury apartment, and the watch on his wrist was something Kim Jinho had been eyeing for a while. The price he’d overheard once still hadn’t left him.
Dooyoung fidgeted with his hands folded in front of him.
“I’m not that smart, so… if you don’t spell it out for me, I won’t really understand……”
His subdued voice matched the season that stripped the warmth from everything. Hong Seungpyo pulled his gaze from Dooyoung’s desolate face and fixed it on the air in front of him.
“You ate the ice cream happily enough.”
“Th-that’s only because you bought it……”
“Ahh, so that’s a no?”
“That……”
Dooyoung kept feeling like the words were getting tangled, so he decided to just stop talking. It was a silence he wanted to run from. His hands trembled so badly he clasped them together like a prayer. In that moment, his downward gaze caught Hong Seungpyo’s shoes. Hong Seungpyo’s hand followed right after, cradling Dooyoung’s cheek.
“Why are you shaking so much? Are you cold? You are pretty cold……”
“……”
“Every time I see you, I think the same thing — dress warmer.”
“…Okay.”
Dooyoung answered awkwardly. Then Hong Seungpyo took his chin and tilted his face up.
“Are you making that expression on purpose?”
Dooyoung’s mouth opened and closed helplessly, and Hong Seungpyo clicked his tongue and let go of his face.
