“You must have been so startled….”
Yeon Haejeong glanced sideways at Munyeong, whose face had grown subdued — seemingly rather fond of the pitying tone that had slipped out of him without thinking. He hated being on the receiving end of anyone’s sympathy, but Munyeong’s worried gaze wasn’t entirely unwelcome, so he let out a small, dry cough and tacked on another word for no particular reason.
“Well… something similar happened a few times when I was little, so I wasn’t all that startled, actually.”
He brought up the past again for no real reason, watching for the other’s reaction.
“When you were little…?”
One prod and he responded immediately. Munyeong’s face had grown even more serious, and Haejeong had to press his lips together to keep the corner of his mouth from curling up.
“…Something like that happened to you when you were a kid, too?”
At the genuinely startled reaction, Haejeong felt an itch crawl all over him — he scratched wildly at his opposite arm and gave a slight nod.
“Yeah, well…. But it’s nothing, really.”
He answered with an air of bravado. He shrugged as if it were nothing worth mentioning, and Munyeong muttered quietly, his expression having turned sullen.
“……How is that nothing….”
The words came out drenched in distress. It was clear he hadn’t meant to say them aloud, and that only made the itch inside Haejeong worse. It felt like something was crawling under his skin, and at the same time like something was slowly burning through him. Completely opposite sensations — yet both, somehow, were driving him out of his mind.
Flustered by his own reaction to Munyeong’s unguarded honesty, Haejeong deflected, a little embarrassed, and shifted his gaze elsewhere before speaking again.
“W-well, I came out of it without a scratch, so.”
“…….”
“Thanks to someone.”
“……Hm?”
“Back then. The kidnapping.”
Haejeong added it offhandedly, as though Munyeong hadn’t caught on. But what had startled Munyeong was the fact that he still remembered it.
“They helped you…?”
“Helped me and saved my life. Still don’t really know who it was, even now.”
Haejeong narrowed his eyes, reaching back through hazy memories. What had stayed with him from that incident — before he lost consciousness — was that someone had called out to him with such desperate sorrow. The voice had been so anguished it had burned itself into his mind. Munyeong had never once thought Haejeong would remember that, and his pupils widened.
“The first person I ever felt grateful to, in my entire life.”
“…….”
“If it weren’t for them, I might’ve actually died.”
Haejeong spoke of his own potential death with his usual nonchalance. Munyeong’s expression stiffened, and he asked carefully.
“…You never found that person?”
“…No.”
“Ah…….”
“I kept looking, so my mother went and dragged someone in front of me — but from where I stood, that wasn’t the guy.”
“…….”
“She just grabbed whoever and said, this is him.”
Only now did Munyeong learn what had come after. It seemed someone had been passed off as the person who’d helped him. He found himself thinking, not for the first time, that Haejeong’s mother was truly something else.
“And then before I could look any further, I got shipped off to America.”
“…….”
“……Before I got sent away… I went to see you. Drunk.”
“……Ah…….”
The memory surfaced for both of them at once, and they each looked away, faces awkward. The image came back vivid as yesterday — Haejeong showing up out of nowhere, completely out of his mind with drink, and Munyeong, knowing nothing, falling into bed with him as if under a spell.
“That time… I wasn’t in my right mind….”
Haejeong reached for an excuse.
“I can barely even remember how I made it there…… Anyway… that’s how it was.”
“……How did you know I lived there?”
He had already moved out and left the facility by then — the part that puzzled him most was how Haejeong could have known where he was staying. It was an unexpected question, and Haejeong flinched, caught off guard, his cheekbones lifting as he struggled to school his expression.
“…Well, by chance…….”
He couldn’t bring himself to admit he’d looked into it, so his voice trailed off. But Munyeong didn’t seem particularly curious about the details — his face clouded with concern as he asked quietly.
“…You looked so worn out back then.”
“…….”
“Are you… okay now?”
That was what he wanted to know most. Haejeong had only just turned twenty at the time, and he had clearly been in pain. Confused, struggling, unable to bear it alone — he had gone looking for someone to be near. He had needed someone, and he had come to Munyeong — someone he had only known briefly in school. How few people must there have been around him to lean on, to truly need, if he had come all the way to someone as unremarkable as Munyeong.
“……You want to know that?”
Haejeong found Munyeong’s question strangely perceptive — as if he could see straight through to the heart of that day, to the person Haejeong had been — and yet it felt like it missed the real point, so he asked again.
“You’re not curious why I came to find you?”
Ah…. Munyeong breathed out a small sigh at the question he hadn’t seen coming. But seeing that he wasn’t answering, Haejeong felt it — Munyeong was deliberately sidestepping the core of it. Unconsciously avoiding it. Haejeong’s feelings. The fact of who was shaking him, who was making him lose his head. He was avoiding all of it.
Having been in good spirits only a moment ago, Haejeong slipped back into sullenness. He bit down on his lip, turned sharply away, and yanked the blanket up to his shoulders, cutting off the conversation in an instant.
“…I’m going to sleep now, so you can go.”
And as if by habit, he added in a voice edged with irritation.
“You’d better go get some sleep yourself.”
“…….”
“Since you asked me to, I’ll work you to the bone starting tomorrow.”
Haejeong pulled the blanket up to his shoulders and grumbled. Seeing him go from perfectly fine to suddenly cross, Munyeong nodded without a word and rose from his seat. The fact that he still had energy left to be petty was a reassurance — it meant his body was doing better.
“Alright. …Sleep well.”
Munyeong said goodnight quietly and turned off the bedside lamp. Then, just as before, he padded softly past the side of the bed, carefully dampening his footsteps. And in that moment — thwap — his hand was caught. The lamp had been the only light in the room, and now that it was off, Haejeong’s face was invisible. But the warmth of his hand was unmistakable.
“…The thing about working you to the bone…… I take it back.”
The halting voice was full of hesitation. Without even seeing his face, Munyeong could tell — these words had been held back, held back, and finally let out. Munyeong blinked in mild surprise, his eyelids shifting. All of a sudden — what is he saying?
“It just… came out that way without thinking…”
“…….”
“…I’m just saying — since you asked to work, I’ll give you work to do.”
The moment Munyeong heard the rambling that followed, he understood. Haejeong was making excuses for what he’d said. Worried, perhaps, that it had hurt Munyeong’s feelings. But that was what made it all the more baffling — out of everything Haejeong had ever said or done, that hadn’t even been particularly cruel. To Munyeong’s ears it had just been his ordinary way of speaking — every word wrapped in that usual layer of prickliness and petulance — and it hadn’t bothered him in the slightest.
“…Oh……. Yeah.”
But hearing him stumble through something so unlike himself, Munyeong felt a pang, and rather than saying anything more, he simply answered without fuss. It seemed like the end of the conversation — but the hand still hadn’t let go. He could feel Haejeong’s fingers shifting, fidgeting.
“Sleep well, too…….”
“…….”
“……Sleep… well…….”
“…….”
