I played the video as if in a trance.
The cheers were already roaring by the time the director and cast walked out onto the stage.
“Kwon Wookyung, I love you!”
“I love you too!”
At the outpouring of affection directed at him, Kwon Wookyung smiled, nodded, and waved back. As the director and cast each took turns saying a few words, the person filming — clearly a Kwon Wookyung fan — kept the camera locked on him from beginning to end. He seemed to be in good spirits, making eye contact with the audience and smiling back at them.
He looked perfectly happy — nothing like me, who had been a mess of churning feelings the whole time. He looked completely fine too, as if the rut had ended without a trace. The bright, open face made it almost impossible to imagine him curled up in bed suffering. Then again, he had no reason not to be happy. The ticket numbers were climbing by the day.
Kwon Wookyung accepted the microphone, gazed quietly toward one section of the audience for a moment, then began to speak.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to come out and express my gratitude to the audience during Black City’s run……”
A roar from the crowd cut him off mid-sentence — “Please stay healthy!” — and Kwon Wookyung turned toward the voice and gave a small, respectful bow.
“Yes. I will stay healthy.”
Laughter and cheers erupted. Fans screaming at the slightest smile — the kind of reaction that fit a top-tier actor perfectly. Once the noise died down, Kwon Wookyung continued.
“Something I am deeply, personally grateful for happened during Black City’s run.”
He stopped there, dropped his head, and looked down at the tips of his shoes.
The person filming, apparently impatient, zoomed in — but even then his expression wasn’t entirely clear. The filmer whispered, “Is he crying?” and the person beside them murmured, “From being so moved?” Fortunately, Kwon Wookyung didn’t let himself cry in front of the crowd.
“I think this film brought me great luck. I hope that for each of you in the audience as well, something you’ve been wishing for finds its way to you like a miracle. Thank you.”
He lifted his head, smiled, and finished his bow — and applause poured down.
After that, there was fan service to fill the time before the screening began. He put on a silly pink headband a fan handed him and took selfies, walked through the audience with goods the production team had prepared, handing out gifts and signing things — a thorough, earnest fan service.
“Good grief…”
His acting skills had clearly improved beyond recognition, that much was certain. If someone had handed that headband to friend-mode Kwon Wookyung, he’d have been met with nothing but a look of contempt and flat-out ignored. Watching my friend’s public-facing social moments from afar, I was genuinely speechless.
The video ended with the last glimpse of Kwon Wookyung waving as he made his exit.
No contact. But he was back.
I had no confidence to reach out first, yet I blamed him inwardly for not reaching out either.
I think I was a little angry until I fell asleep.
*
How many days had I kept up the pretense of studying diligently?
It had definitely been more than three days — quite a record for someone with as little perseverance as me.
I’d stopped by a bookstore to pick up more study materials, then slipped over to the manga section just to browse the new releases for a moment… and promptly fell headfirst into the swamp. Understandably so — six years had passed, and far too many series had put out new volumes since then.
I filled my backpack to the brim with manga, and even that wasn’t enough — I didn’t even have the patience to wait until I got home to read them. I stopped at the first café I passed, dropped into a seat, and started tearing off the plastic wrap.
Ahh, the smell of ink.
Sitting in a sun-drenched spot and reading manga I loved — there was no better paradise.
I was deep into roughly the first half of volume one when my silent phone buzzed. A call.
Caller ID: ㄱㅇㄱ
…Calls fast, doesn’t he. Wouldn’t contact me all those times I was staring at my phone — and now that I’d almost managed to put him out of my mind, he calls as if he’d been waiting for exactly this moment.
Even though I’d secretly been waiting for this, I hesitated to pick up.
I knew I couldn’t keep avoiding him forever — not unless I was planning to cut ties with Kwon Wookyung for good — and yet I couldn’t just answer immediately. I ended up hitting the call button right before it would have gone to voicemail.
“Hello.”
I answered with deliberate indifference.
— Where are you?
“Uh… just a café near my place. Why?”
Both his voice and mine were so perfectly calm they didn’t stray an inch outside the ordinary.
— Are you alone?
“Yeah.”
— I have something to say.
Under the table, away from where Kwon Wookyung on the other end of the line could hear, I tapped the tabletop with my fingertips and stirred my straw round and round, fidgeting like crazy.
“Oh… yeah? Right now? Are you free?”
— All done. I’ll head over now.
“Then come… Here’s where I am——”
After hanging up, even though the latest volume of a manga I’d been absolutely riveted by — one I had to finish before I died — was sitting right there in front of me, not a single word or image registered anymore. It was because even now, after all this time, I still hadn’t decided what to say when I actually saw him.
Deeply unsettled, I kept darting glances at the faces of every person coming in and out of the café.
The same tone as when I picked up the phone — that should be enough for now.
He said he had something to say, so I could hear him out first and decide from there. And if he brought up that day… I’d have to smooth it over somehow, act like it never happened. With that settled in my mind, I glanced toward the door twice in the span of a single page.
How much time had passed.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling café windows, a black car that screamed celebrity pulled up — and out stepped Kwon Wookyung, cap pulled low over his face.
He’d tried to hide himself behind a black cap and a black mask, but his tall frame and the aura he carried made it pointless. The moment he pushed open the café door, every customer’s gaze swept over him more than once. A silent disturbance passed through the air — the kind that breaks the drowsy calm of a quiet weekday afternoon café.
Swept up in the charged atmosphere, I let my manga slip halfway from my hands and stared at Kwon Wookyung walking straight toward me. When he reached my table, his eyes skimmed over the manga scattered across it and the half-finished strawberry latte.
“I’ll go order.”
Wookyung set his thin between-seasons coat down on the seat and headed for the counter. My eyes followed the line of his back and waist in that shirt. Even at a glance it was clear he’d dressed with care. Through the gap below his cap brim, a hint of natural-looking makeup was visible.
Here I am in a hoodie I threw on without a second thought, reading manga.
Kwon Wookyung looked unusually grown-up today — and in contrast, I felt smaller and more childish by comparison.
Which meant I ended up pulling my hoodie even further down for no good reason.
Kwon Wookyung came back with an iced Americano and sat down across from me, pressing his cap brim lower. He flipped through one of the manga volumes.
“You were reading this?”
“Yeah. Hey — six years later and the series has actually made some progress, hasn’t it? Five volumes of releases I haven’t caught up on yet.”
“That author went on another long hiatus. Nothing after volume 103 for over a year now.”
“What……? You’re lying.”
I dropped the volume 99 I’d been reading midway. Isn’t that author being too much? Banking on their own popularity like that. An absolute menace.
“But how do you know the release schedule? You don’t read manga.”
“…I kept reading because of you. You left a few volumes at my place.”
“Oh, that’s why a few of my volumes were missing. I wondered where they went. I don’t remember the earlier stuff — I’ll come pick them up.”
“Sure.”
“What were you up to before this?”
“Stopped by the company, went to a few events. That’s it.”
“I thought you were resting.”
“I’m feeling better, and the situation got to a point where I couldn’t keep staying out.”
Clearly someone at his agency had dragged him out, begging him to come back. Understandably — with the film doing this well, it wasn’t realistic for the lead actor to keep being absent.
Kwon Wookyung moved his hand toward his ear as if to take off his mask. I stopped him immediately.
“Hey, don’t pull your mask down.”
He stood out enough to be a problem — the moment his lower face was exposed, every customer in here would recognize him.
“Then how am I supposed to drink my coffee?”
“Don’t drink it here. Ask them to pack it to go later.”
He looked exasperated, but followed along without argument. I pushed the coffee cup he’d ordered but couldn’t touch off to the side and reached out.
“Give me your hands. Both of them.”
“……”
I pulled both hands toward me as he placed them on the table, palms down — turned his right hand over to check it, and for his left, undid the sleeve button and checked the inside of his arm. Kwon Wookyung held his hands and arm out obediently, then followed my gaze to where I was looking and said quietly,
“It’s fine. I had it treated. It healed well.”
“It won’t leave a scar?”
“No problem.”
“……I shouldn’t have—”
“You got bruise marks because of me last time. Call it even.”
He knew perfectly well they weren’t the same level of injury, and yet Kwon Wookyung said it in a flat, offhand tone. Then he pulled his hand back, refastened his sleeve button, and said,
“And I had to apologize in person.”
“What? What apology?”
My heart was pounding hard.
I knew exactly what Kwon Wookyung was referring to, but I played dumb for the time being.
Receiving an apology for something like that, in the middle of broad daylight — it was too much for me to handle. Even now I wished Kwon Wookyung would say “It was nothing” or “No, never mind” and change the subject. If we let it pass and never brought it up again, it would fade from memory eventually.
“I think I startled you. I’m sor—”
“I thought it was something serious. You’ve been holding onto something like that?”
Without knowing my own feelings, I cut off Kwon Wookyung mid-apology — his eyes dark and unreadable — and let out a laugh. Ha ha ha. If he was going to bring it up regardless, the only option was to play it off as a funny little accident that neither of us had intended. That was the best outcome for both our pride and dignity.
“You told me to leave and I didn’t listen. It’s not like I’m some kid having their first kiss — it doesn’t matter. Things like that can happen between friends during a sensitive time.”
I put on the air of someone with plenty of experience, laying it on thick.
Please, just accept that and let it go, I begged inwardly.
But Kwon Wookyung’s reaction was the exact opposite of what I’d expected.
“A… mistake…?”
Kwon Wookyung’s face went bright red.
Even with his lower face covered, it was obvious. Everything that was visible had gone completely red.
“How can you say something so… so scandalous so casually? Aren’t you embarrassed?”
