The man who had been so eager just a short while ago was now fuming, face twisted in anger. Munyeong, who had come rushing out thinking something serious had happened, found his dazed eyes meeting a pair of fierce, narrowed ones. As Munyeong blinked in flustered confusion, the young man locked eyes with him for a brief moment, shot him an irritated glare, then spun on his heel and stormed out in a hurry. He was so worked up he hadn’t even properly finished getting dressed.
Munyeong stood there blankly as it all happened in an instant, and then Haejeong appeared from the bedroom, moving at an unhurried pace. Bare from the waist up, he sauntered out without a care, cast one brief glance toward the direction the young man had left, and muttered under his breath.
“Tch. What a temper.”
Munyeong pretended he hadn’t heard a thing and got on with tidying up his belongings, while Haejeong made his way to the dining area, grabbed a can of beer, knocked it back in one long pull, and drifted toward the living room, where the open dressing room was in full view. Then he addressed Munyeong, who was still hovering awkwardly without knowing what was going on.
“What.”
He looked entirely unbothered, as if nothing had happened at all.
“You’re not working?”
Noticing there was still one more suitcase left to deal with, Haejeong said something about it, and Munyeong snapped back to his senses and turned back to the task. He’d almost instinctively asked what had happened just then.
The beer can was emptied in no time, and that seemed nowhere near enough, because he threw open the display cabinet that took up an entire wall of the living room. He reached for whichever bottle of whisky or brandy came to hand from the collection arranged by year, poured a glass, and downed it in one go. Then another. Watching him knock back one glass after another of something that looked harsh even just to look at, with nothing to eat alongside it, Munyeong found his brow furrowing without realizing it.
Had he been rejected just now, in that short span of time…? Is that why he’s drowning himself in drink again like this? Come to think of it, he’d had a drink in hand every single time Munyeong had seen him. And it wasn’t just alcohol either. At that high-end Korean restaurant, it had been something other than drink as well. It seemed like anything bad for you mentally, he indulged in.
“Why do you keep stealing glances at me?”
While his thoughts had briefly wandered elsewhere, Haejeong’s voice cut in abruptly. It seemed he’d been glancing over at Haejeong without even realizing it. Munyeong played dumb with all the grace of someone who absolutely had been doing exactly that.
“…M-me…?”
“Who else is here.”
Haejeong set down his glass and tossed the words out carelessly.
“…I wasn’t looking……”
“What, you feel sorry for me because I got turned down?”
“…N-no?”
“Should feel sorry for me. Lost the one who was going to take care of it for me.”
He sat with his legs spread wide and jerked his chin down toward himself, where there was no mistaking what was making its presence known beneath his thin training pants. The fabric was so thin that his cock was jutting up conspicuously, its sheer size impossible to miss.
Munyeong couldn’t help his eyes going wide in undisguised shock as they darted around, not knowing where to look, trying to act as though he hadn’t seen or heard anything as he focused on what he was doing.
“Have you done it with a man?”
“……Pardon?”
“I said have you. Sex.”
“……I’m not sure why you’re asking me that……”
The question felt like it was seeing right through him, and Munyeong averted his eyes and dodged the answer. Questions of a sexual nature made him quite uncomfortable to begin with.
“You didn’t seem particularly surprised when I brought a man back.”
“I… was surprised.”
“You’re a surprisingly good liar.”
“…Pardon?”
“With a woman, then.”
“…Pardon?”
“I said have you done it with a woman.”
“……I find this kind of question uncomfortable.”
“After already seeing everything there is to see, this kind of talk is nothing.”
He laughed at his own expense and knocked back another glass. He was drinking so much so fast that Munyeong found himself stealing a worried glance at him without thinking.
“You’re looking at me like that again.”
“…Pardon?”
“Like you’re worried about me.”
His tone was as offhand as ever, but his mood seemed more subdued than usual. Munyeong scrambled to compose himself, eyes darting around, wondering if it had been that obvious. He’d half expected Haejeong to snap at him — who do you think you are, worrying about me — but instead, a low, quiet voice reached him.
“…I need to drink myself stupid before I can sleep.”
“…….”
“More precisely — either drink myself into the ground, or have sex until I lose my mind. Those are the only ways I can sleep.”
He stared at the amber liquid in his glass without expression as he said it, his voice flat and dry. Without any of his usual teasing or prickliness, the words landed differently, and Munyeong stared at him in a daze, unable to look away. He had no idea what he was supposed to say to that.
It didn’t sound like a lie. Every time Munyeong had run into him, every time he’d moved alongside him, Haejeong always had a drink in hand. And given that he’d seen him reaching for something harder than alcohol as well, it struck him suddenly that the more than ten years that had passed since hadn’t been easy ones.
The last time he’d seen him — that night he had suddenly appeared at an ungodly hour in the early morning and stayed the night — Haejeong had looked like he was barely holding together. He’d been soaked through from the rain, come to him dead drunk, kissed him without warning, and come at him like he meant to force himself on him — and yet, strangely, it had felt less like assault and more like someone desperately asking to be held. Munyeong had had some sense of why he’d shown up on his doorstep in that wrecked state that night, and so he’d simply wanted to give Haejeong whatever he needed. He’d wanted to help him. Because back then, Haejeong had been the person Munyeong loved most in the world.
Just as he had then, Munyeong could sense in fragments that Haejeong was struggling with something again now. Not being able to sleep without depending on something was, at its core, insomnia — and insomnia was an illness that came from damage to the mind. It hadn’t been long since Munyeong had seen Haejeong again, and they hadn’t built enough of a bond for him to feel genuine sympathy, so he let show only the bare minimum of the pity any person might feel for another.
“…Still, I think you’re drinking far too much.”
“Like I said. Alcohol or sex.”
“…….”
“If you’re that worried about me, then help me out.”
“…Pardon?”
“If not alcohol, what do you think I mean.”
He got to his feet and started walking toward Munyeong, slowly. Still half-naked. Feeling the pressure of him closing in, Munyeong instinctively stepped back with a flustered look — but there was a wall behind him, and nowhere to go. No — he hadn’t even thought to run. He could only stand there, breath coming in short bursts, watching him approach. Why was that. Was it the image of Haejeong kissing that young man, still seared too vividly into him? Was it the moans that had drifted through the wall, surfacing now to stir a strange, charged tension in him? Or was it simply that Haejeong seemed subtly different from usual, and it was catching at something in him? Munyeong didn’t run from the man drawing closer. He only pressed his fist tight.
“Well? Will you let me?”
