Before bewilderment could fully rise on his face, a familiar silhouette appeared beyond the window on the driver’s side.
Even without confirming the face, he could tell the owner of the back figure wearing a suit jacket was Cha Seonwoo. Having seen him for years, there was no way he wouldn’t recognize him.
‘He must be cold.’
The heater was still running inside the car. It was warm enough that he didn’t need to wear an outer coat, yet he had covered him with his coat before going outside—what an idiot. Idiot Cha Seonwoo.
Haeyoung quietly gazed at that back figure, then picked up Seonwoo’s coat that had fallen onto his lap. Grasping the car door handle, he carefully opened the door. The moment he placed one foot outside the car, he heard a familiar voice.
“Please keep your subordinates in line. Does Haeyoung need to know all of that…?”
At the name he heard, Haeyoung reflexively froze. So that’s why he was outside—he seemed to be on the phone with someone else. What reason would there be for his name to come up in a call with another person? Momentarily frozen by the confusion drilling into his head, he finally stepped out of the car.
Sensing the presence behind him, the person who had been on the phone with his back to the window turned around. His black hair, swaying in the blowing winter wind, lightly lifted and settled back down. His coolly hardened face melted like snow the moment he spotted Haeyoung emerging from the car.
“…I’ll receive your report tomorrow.”
His dark lips moved quietly. Immediately ending the call, he approached the car and smiled, narrowing the corners of his eyes against the backdrop of the dark Han River. Yoon Haeyoung unconsciously furrowed his brow slightly as he looked at the face smiling gently toward him.
The smile hanging on hyung’s lips was more dazzling than the sparkling lights from the bridge visible behind Seonwoo hyung. That’s why his throat felt dry, and his fingertips kept curling inward. He felt like he didn’t want to look away from him, while at the same time wanting to squeeze his stinging eyes tightly shut.
“Did you sleep well?”
The question that flowed out so freely was excessively warm, to the point where the cold voice he’d just heard on the phone didn’t seem to belong to him at all. Haeyoung, who had been staring at him smiling like an angel as if he’d never had an expressionless face, nodded briefly. Then he quickly approached him, leaving the car door closed behind him.
The drowsiness had long since fled from the biting wind that swept sharply across his cheeks, cold enough to freeze his skin. Standing before Seonwoo, Haeyoung looked up at him and asked.
“Aren’t you cold?”
Seonwoo, who had been tilting his head while looking at Haeyoung approaching him, immediately drooped his eyebrows. At the pitiful expression that rose over his sculpted features, Haeyoung’s expression became subtly affected as well.
“I’m cold, Haeyoung-ah…”
“Then why did you go out without your coat?”
“What if you got cold?”
“That…”
He had opened his mouth as emotion surged up in that instant, but he bit his lip without finishing his words.
Was now really the time to worry about that? He had been sleeping inside the warm car with the heater on, yet here he was, the one who had gone outside to make a phone call in the middle of winter? Haeyoung, who had been watching him with displeasure while raising one eyebrow crookedly, clicked his tongue softly.
“This is seriously driving me crazy.”
It hadn’t even been a few hours since he’d freshly realized they had broken up. Yet he still found himself worrying about him and acting as if nothing was wrong, just like before—this wasn’t simply because he still liked him. It was because he, too, couldn’t erase the greedy desire to keep him by his side.
That’s why when he was with Cha Seonwoo, he kept forgetting that he shouldn’t act this way anymore, and furthermore, he came to want to forget it. Yoon Haeyoung cleared his increasingly blocked throat and muttered.
“Hyung… you really have a talent for making people worry.”
As he spoke, he reached out and draped the coat he’d been holding over Seonwoo’s shoulders. Cha Seonwoo couldn’t take his eyes off Haeyoung’s face as he meticulously helped him into the coat. Then he called out to him in a voice tinged with laughter.
“Haeyoung-ah.”
“What?”
“Were you worried about me?”
At the sweet voice that couldn’t hide his pleased feelings, Haeyoung’s fingertips trembled.
“Look at me. Hm?”
Looking down at Haeyoung, who was keeping his mouth firmly shut and staring only at his chest as if glaring at it, Seonwoo raised his hand and grasped his hand that was fiddling with his coat collar.
Haeyoung’s hand had already become cold from being outside for just a moment. Firmly holding the coldness he felt within his palm, Cha Seonwoo swallowed a sigh.
“Don’t you think I’m pretty anymore?”
“…What?”
Haeyoung, who had been straightening the turned-up coat collar when his hand was caught, raised his head with an incredulous expression. The moment he lifted his gaze, the face of the man quietly smiling while looking at him filled his vision.
Was he asking if he wasn’t pretty anymore? If anyone else had asked, Yoon Haeyoung would have laughed mercilessly and shaken his head, or perhaps teasingly replied and teased them. Wasn’t there something excessively ridiculous about an adult man asking if he was pretty? However, the moment the person asking that question was Cha Seonwoo, Haeyoung had no choice but to lose his words and part his lips slightly.
He’d kept saying he was pretty, so it seemed he was well aware that he himself was pretty. That’s why he could ask such a shameless question. Haeyoung pulled his hand free from his grasp and leaned diagonally against the car, as if stepping backward.
“Why is there no context to what you’re saying?”
“…I don’t know how to win you back.”
Yoon Haeyoung forced himself to swallow the rebuttal he’d reflexively almost let out. Soon after, a sound like air escaping came from inside his mouth. Letting out an empty laugh, he narrowed his eyes as he looked at Cha Seonwoo, who was still pointlessly working hard to win him over.
‘Ah. You’re so annoying, Cha Seonwoo.’
Did it make any sense for someone who said he didn’t know how to win him back to be smiling while gently narrowing his eyes? He must keep smiling because he knew this kind of face made his heart weaken. Looking at Seonwoo, who didn’t even give him a moment to steel his resolve, Haeyoung pouted his lips unnecessarily.
“What do I have to do for you to see me again? Before, you used to like me just by looking at my face.”
“That would be you, hyung.”
Haeyoung tilted his head crookedly. Honestly, he couldn’t refute it, but he just wanted to refute it anyway. Even at the words spat out sharply along with a scoff, Cha Seonwoo smiled and shook his head.
“I still like you just by looking at you.”
“…Ha.”
Words to counter with didn’t immediately come to mind. Haeyoung, who had been looking up at him with complicated eyes, raised his hand to run it through his hair along with a sigh.
“Let’s go home.”
He gave up on responding to Seonwoo’s words.
Having stood outside for a while, his body was gradually beginning to tremble from the cold wind. Haeyoung, who had raised his coat collar and curled his body as much as possible to hide his face inside it, took a step toward the car. However, before he could get far, he turned back toward Seonwoo as if he’d almost forgotten.
“But hyung. Weren’t you saying my name on the phone just now?”
At Haeyoung’s question, Cha Seonwoo’s expression, which had been maintaining a smile, wavered for a moment. Though he didn’t noticeably freeze, his face, which seemed somewhat hesitant, clearly showed he was flustered.
What? At the answer that didn’t come right away, the suspicion that had been hanging in Haeyoung’s eyes deepened.
“It’s nothing.”
The answer that came after a long while was far too simple to be something he’d said after hesitating.
“It’s really nothing, Haeyoung-ah.”
Whether once wasn’t enough, or because he was making an expression that showed he couldn’t accept it, he emphasized once more that it was nothing. Even at that repeated answer, Haeyoung couldn’t easily accept it without any suspicion. That’s because it wasn’t an answer to the question he’d asked.
To his question about whether he’d mentioned his name during the phone call, Seonwoo said it was nothing instead of affirming or denying. Deflecting the conversation in such an obvious way was, in a sense, very like Cha Seonwoo and at the same time unlike him. Though he wouldn’t know everything, at least during their dating period, as far as Haeyoung knew, he hadn’t hidden anything from him. …Until before that incident.
A shadow slowly fell over Haeyoung’s face as he looked at Seonwoo, as if the cold wind had seeped in.
Was the reason for not telling him related to their changed relationship? Was it because they were no longer the kind of couple who exchanged trivial things and listened carefully to each other’s mundane stories?
Whenever he realized their breakup anew, Haeyoung had to feel as if a sharp line had been drawn between him and Seonwoo. Things that had been natural were no longer natural, and he couldn’t naturally accept that fact.
“Hyung.”
It was when Haeyoung, who had been clenching his fists tightly, finally couldn’t bear it and called out to Seonwoo. At that moment, at the sound of vibration he heard, he reflexively lowered his gaze and took out his phone from his coat pocket.
[Jeong Yeoeun]
Haeyoung’s brow reflexively furrowed slightly at the name that appeared on his phone screen. After leaving work, there was nothing to contact each other about, so he felt uneasy about her calling at this unexpected hour. Haeyoung, who had been looking at the screen, raised his head with a troubled expression.
Then he saw Seonwoo looking at him with a pale face, smiling ambiguously and nodding. It meant he was fine, so he should hurry and answer.
“…”
A heavy sigh that he couldn’t let out gathered at the corner of his mouth.
He was bothered by the conversation that had been cut off in the middle, and even more bothered by the purpose of Yeoeun’s call. After a brief hesitation, Haeyoung finally answered the phone and brought it to his ear.
“Yes, Yeoeun-ssi. What’s the matter?”
– Haeyoung-ssi, I’m sorry for the late hour. I didn’t wake you up, did I?
“It’s fine. I wasn’t sleeping.”
Haeyoung replied while shaking his head. Listening to her voice mixed with both apology and nervousness, his shoulders tensed up unnecessarily.
He had naturally thought so, but as expected, the business was related to the final presentation assignment. It seemed she wanted to change the legal precedent used in the introduction while finishing up the PowerPoint. She said she posted her opinion in the group chat, but no one read it, so she ended up contacting him separately—Haeyoung nodded briefly to Yeoeun.
His heart was as rushed as her urgent voice. And naturally, the subject making him anxious was Cha Seonwoo, who was right before his eyes. Haeyoung glanced at Seonwoo sideways and opened his mouth calmly.
“I’ll check it as soon as I get home and give you feedback right away. Could I ask you to send me the revised PowerPoint?”
– Yes! Then thank you!
She answered cheerfully. What’s there to thank me for when Yeoeun-ssi is working the hardest? At the words spoken in a gentle tone, Yeoeun’s mood seemed to have lightened as well. Relieved by her considerably lighter voice, Haeyoung raised the corners of his mouth and lowered the phone he’d held to his ear.
“Then I’ll hang up.”
Having greeted her affably, he looked up again while viewing the disconnected screen.
There stood Cha Seonwoo, still looking at him. Not the clumsy smile he’d been putting on to hide his embarrassment, but Seonwoo wearing his usual affectionate smile, as if he’d been waiting.
“Let’s go home, Haeyoung-ah.”
Seeming to have noticed something had come up while watching him on the phone, he nodded toward the car.
He knew that if he got in the car and headed home like this, their conversation would fizzle out inconclusively. And he also knew that Seonwoo, who said they should go home without a word, likely had such an intention.
But timing is always what’s important. Relationships where you can restart decisions or conversations postponed even after missing the timing are based on mutual trust. A trust far too deep to share between people who have broken up.
That’s why Haeyoung, who had missed the timing to bring it up again, raised the hand not holding his phone to roughly run through his hair.
“For hyung…”
Becoming nothing—that feels worse than I thought.
At the anxious feeling that suddenly flared up, Haeyoung rubbed his face as it was.
Barely swallowing the words he’d almost blurted out in that moment, he turned away from the gaze directed at him and headed toward the car. He knew eyes filled with puzzlement were following his back, but Haeyoung had no words to give him in return. He couldn’t be honest either—they were the same in that regard.
Despite having work to do as soon as he returned home, his attention kept being drawn to only one person. The darkly rippling waters of the Han River—the bottom couldn’t be seen, and Haeyoung’s mood also sank down toward that invisible bottom.
