“What about you?”
Won Dogyeong asked while gently brushing my bangs aside. A shivery sensation flowed gently down from the back of my head along my spine, making my body tremble.
This position really does make me self-conscious. Feeling the back of my neck stiffen, I sat up pretending to be calm.
“I said I still don’t really know.”
“That sounds hopeful enough.”
Won Dogyeong lifted the corners of his mouth refreshingly. His hair had grown a bit and was starting to cover his forehead, making him look somehow younger today. As I blankly watched him, the conception dream story suddenly came to mind.
“Mom had a conception dream.”
“Oh, really?”
When I relayed what I’d heard, he nodded going “oh” as he listened, then grinned widely.
“The conception dream is so… totally cool. Then should we call it Yongyong? For the nickname.”
“You mentioned something about tense consonants.”
“Yongyong is a dragon, so it’ll understand everything. Right, Yongyong?”
Won Dogyeong gestured toward my belly.
Hmm. The tense consonant nicknames weren’t really my taste either, but Yongyong doesn’t seem bad. It’s cute.
How about it, is it okay?
I placed my hand on my belly and asked inwardly, then laughed thinking what am I doing when it doesn’t even have a brain yet.
Sorry if you don’t like it, but the truth is you don’t have a choice, Yongyong. I’ll listen to complaints after you come out into the world.
“Ah, right. And come to the house together sometime.”
“The house?”
“They want to have a celebration party? Noona and hyung will probably come too. Should we call your dad and Doa too?”
Doa is Won Dogyeong’s younger sister, four years apart. She was also close with me and my family. Having always been dissatisfied with not having younger siblings, I thought of Doa as no different from my own younger sister.
This time I’ll have to tell her unexpected news though.
“They’ll come even if we don’t invite them, right?”
“True.”
“I’m in trouble. If Daun hyung finds out, won’t he try to kill me…?”
Won Dogyeong wasn’t very close with my hyung. It was almost amazing how awkward they were even after knowing each other for so many years.
“I’ll stop him. We finally decided to raise it together, can’t have it grow up without a dad.”
I nodded pretending to be resolute.
“I feel like I’ll lose though…”
“Hey.”
I grabbed Won Dogyeong’s nose and shook it, then let go when he whined that it hurt.
Yeo Daun was the most my-pace person I’d ever met in my life. He couldn’t stand things he didn’t think were right, so in high school he’d come home with his face all beaten up from fighting with delinquents. Fortunately, maybe because of the age gap, he was soft on me.
It’ll work out somehow. What can we do, it’s already happened.
*
“Want popcorn?”
“Yeah.”
“Combo?”
“Let’s go half and half. Caramel and onion.”
“Half and half… you want cola too?”
He asked while pressing options to select and moving to the drinks page.
“Uh… no, get me orange juice.”
“Juice? You’re not drinking cola?”
“I don’t know. It has caffeine in it so just…”
“Ah.”
Won Dogyeong paused while pressing the kiosk screen and scratched his nose bridge looking sheepish.
“This is hard.”
He looked a bit deflated for some reason even though he wasn’t the one who stopped me from drinking it. He also canceled the cola he’d chosen for himself and firmly pressed the orange juice quantity to change it to two cups.
“You can drink it though.”
Won Dogyeong stubbornly pressed payment without answering and inserted his card. Fine, do as you please.
“It’s been a while since you’ve seen this, right?”
“In a theater? 7 years? 8 years? Maybe.”
He answered with his brows furrowed as if counting back in his head to the year this movie first premiered.
We’d bought tickets for a late night showing after a long time and come to the theater in front of our house. It was because a movie Won Dogyeong had appeared in as a supporting role when he was a rookie was having a brief re-release. It was the movie where he first started to make a name for himself.
“I saw it recently too.”
“This one?”
“It pops up in the NeTube algorithm sometimes.”
“Ah, NeTube.”
Even aside from watching it on NeTube, I’d seen it over five times in the theater during its first release alone. I already know the content so well I could even memorize the lines.
I watched it with Won Dogyeong too, but during the movie’s run, every time I met a friend I’d drag them along for multiple viewings. It was amazing to see Won Dogyeong on screen, but I also wanted to secretly cheer for him from behind. It felt a bit ticklish to say anything to his face.
What was that even, everything seemed embarrassing when we were young.
Won Dogyeong probably doesn’t know. I never told him.
“Actually I saw it in the theater several times.”
“…Really? Why?”
Won Dogyeong, who’d been sitting with his chin propped up alternately watching the popcorn number and the electronic board, opened his eyes wide.
“So you’d make lots of money.”
I chuckled, recalling how several months after the movie left theaters, multiple tickets for the same movie tumbled out of the coat pocket I’d worn back then.
“…Spending money on useless things.”
He answered gruffly and turned his head. Then he crossed his arms for no reason and stared at empty space, and as soon as the number appeared on the board he jumped up and disappeared to get the popcorn.
That’s embarrassment.
At times like this, he was the same Won Dogyeong I knew. Lately his words and actions had become strangely softer, and there were times I couldn’t adjust.
“Let’s go.”
He called me with his arms full of popcorn and drinks, gesturing toward the theater entrance with his eyes.
“Let me hold the drinks.”
“It’s fine.”
So this kind of thing is somehow… or not? I feel like he was always like this too…
Ugh. I definitely thought something had changed, but it was difficult to explain exactly what was different.
The moment I stepped into the theater entrance while mulling over these thoughts, I heard some whispering that caught my attention.
“No, I’m telling you it looks like him… He lives around here.”
“I don’t think so…”
When I reflexively turned around at the gaze I felt from behind, two young women who looked like college students averted their eyes pretending not to look.
Since it was late there weren’t many people, so I thought it would be okay, but we seemed to have been spotted. This happened often when going around with Won Dogyeong. People recognized celebrities better than you’d think.
It was amazing at first, but now I too had gotten used to this situation and pretended not to hear most things. It would be funny if someone heard that I, not even a celebrity, had gotten used to this situation.
“Where are the seats?”
“F10, 11.”
When we sat down, deliberately ignoring the small whispers, the two behind us had seats further up and passed by tilting their heads.
As soon as Won Dogyeong sat down, he chomped on popcorn then stopped with his mouth awkwardly open.
“It’s salty.”
“Isn’t it not mixed well?”
When I snatched the popcorn container to look inside, I could see the sauce clumped in places. I shook it roughly a couple times, but since it was still full of popcorn, one or two kernels kept escaping the container, so I gave up and set it down in the middle.
“Can’t mix it. Just eat it.”
“Hey, orange juice is good.”
Won Dogyeong, who’d taken a sip of juice in the meantime, muttered with a surprised expression.
“Of course, it’s all sugar.”
“True.”
After a few ads, the movie soon started. Even knowing the content already, it felt different watching it on screen after so long.
Won Dogyeong, whether bored or hungry, ate popcorn the whole time and emptied the entire container before even 10 minutes of the movie had passed. He rustled around wiping his hands with the wet wipes he’d brought, then handed me a new wet wipe, so I took it and wiped.
The on-screen Won Dogyeong appearing in short bursts had a baby face. Back then I thought Won Dogyeong looked mature, but looking at it now after time had passed, the impression is different.
In the movie, Won Dogyeong played a supporting high school student role. Even back then he was already in his early twenties, so he wasn’t the age to wear a school uniform, but it suited him well enough. In actual high school his face was even more baby-faced than that and his personality was sharp.
Now his way of speaking is just somewhat blunt, but in high school he was really rude.
Especially when I first manifested as an omega, he acted so damn obnoxious I almost cut ties with him. He’d tell me not to come near, tell me not to come to his house. Then if I didn’t walk with him to school, he’d throw a fit about being left behind.
When I asked the guys he always hung out with if they knew why that bastard was acting like that, the only answer I got was “if you don’t know, who does?” They were unhelpful then and now.
On top of that, he already looked a bit like a punk, and he put up such walls with classmates that the class president came whining to me saying it was scary to talk to him. So when the homeroom teacher wanted to call Won Dogyeong, I’d relay the message instead.
He did study hard though, so even if classmates didn’t know, the teachers seemed to like him.
The Won Dogyeong in the movie was the complete opposite of his high school self. If the real Won Dogyeong was a rude model student, that character felt like a lively delinquent youth.
It’s still a bit amazing to see Won Dogyeong do that kind of acting. He seems like such a different person. His face was sharp though, so it suited him.
As I focused on the movie while reminiscing about old memories that kept popping up, there were scenes that felt like I was seeing them for the first time even though I’d watched this movie multiple times. Strange. Maybe because I always mainly watched focusing on Won Dogyeong.
After checking his name in the ending credits, I slowly got up.
“Shall we go?”
Without even needing to ask, he’d already gathered the trash into the popcorn container, organized it, and was holding it in his arms ready to get up. As we left the theater, threw away the trash, and stretched, I heard hurried footsteps from behind and someone called out to us.
