His hands were even trembling.
I was completely baffled. I had no idea why he was reacting like that to something I’d said just to brush it off easily. And promiscuous, of all things. Sure, I may still be inexperienced, but by the world’s standards, a little lip-to-lip action doesn’t make someone promiscuous, does it…? Honestly, yes, I’m embarrassed about it — but that’s by my own standards as someone with no experience. Aren’t people in their twenties supposed to be cool about this kind of thing?
“No, wait — you even cursed at me back then. It seemed like you were really upset… and I get what that feels like too… so I was just saying, don’t worry about it… that’s all I meant…….”
His face had gone red all the way to the corners of his eyes, and it was honestly a little frightening, so I rambled on in a shrinking voice to make excuses. Instead of firing back with ‘and who was it that lost their head and came at me,’ I tried to smooth things over gently.
“I did my research… apparently during rut you can’t see anything clearly… so it happens… I get it.”
“…Going into rut doesn’t mean you lose your eyesight.”
W-well, yeah, that’s true.
But I can’t exactly turn around and say ‘so you were in your right mind looking straight at me and still did that, are you insane.’
Why does it backfire even when I’m trying to defend him…
My attempt to laugh it off had, for reasons I couldn’t begin to understand, completely backfired.
I don’t think I’ve ever been this flustered in front of Kwon Wookyung before.
“And besides, you film kiss scenes for work, right…? You can just… think of it as… shooting one of those……”
Ah, what else am I supposed to say? I racked my brain for something that might ease his mood, but nothing else came to me. Kwon Wookyung moved his lips behind his mask and replied in a voice barely audible.
“Kiss scenes are… acting. It’s work, so they don’t mean anything. Who would treat something like that the same as when they’re working―,”
I was nodding along, signaling unconditional agreement. If I was going to calm this guy’s sudden anger down and have a proper conversation, I needed to listen first.
But Kwon Wookyung looked at me listening attentively — and then deeply furrowed his brow and stood up.
“…I’m the idiot for even agonizing over it.”
I called out a quiet “hey,” but Kwon Wookyung irritably pulled off his cap, adjusted it back on, and grabbed his coat.
“I’ve said everything I needed to say. I’m leaving.”
“Hey!”
He got up decisively. At that moment, the women at a table across the way caught a brief glimpse of Kwon Wookyung’s uncovered face and erupted all at once. They were whispering “wait, is that Kwon Wookyung?”, “I told you I was right!” to each other, and some of them even half-rose from their seats.
But Kwon Wookyung didn’t respond to anyone, didn’t look back, and walked straight out.
I sat there frozen like someone who’d just been slapped, then snapped back to my senses belatedly. I swept the manga off the table into my bag and rushed after him.
“Wait, hey!”
I was so flustered that I dashed out of the café without even thinking about my own condition.
I was running at quite a good clip when the thought of my physical state suddenly crossed my mind — ‘huh? I can actually do this?’ — and that was exactly when it happened.
“Agh!”
And after however short a distance I’d run, my legs gave out completely and I crumpled down onto the pavement.
…Does this even make sense? Am I made of paper?
I want to die of embarrassment.
The absurdity of it washed over me and I just sat there hunched on the ground. I had absolutely no energy to get up and run again, so I figured I’d rest while I was down.
The funny thing was — he’d seen the whole thing, had been walking away on his own path, and then stopped and came back.
A shadow fell over my head and I looked up to find Kwon Wookyung, mask off, staring down at me with a face drained of color.
“You… what are you doing.”
“……,”
A wave of embarrassment hit me that words couldn’t capture.
When I didn’t answer, Kwon Wookyung looked around nervously. He seemed scared of being seen. The wide sidewalk had very few passersby, and on the road, all there was were two motorcycles going past.
He watched the distant motorcycles with a wary eye, then let out a sigh in my direction.
“You’re going to drive me insane.”
Insane, please. You look perfectly fine.
“Why did you follow me out?”
Hmm… right, why did I? Obviously part of it was that he’d reacted so intensely and I meant to calm him down, but I didn’t want to just come out and say that.
“Then why are you abandoning me and leaving?”
“…Who’s abandoning who.”
“You.”
“Get up.”
“…….”
Kwon Wookyung held out his hand, so I slapped the top of it.
“It’s dangerous. Are you not going to get up?”
“I sat down to rest.”
I absolutely did not fall. So there was no reason for anyone to help me up.
He stared down at me with an unreadable look — and then suddenly sat down beside me. Not crouching, not squatting — he dropped down onto the dirty, cold pavement the same way I had, just like that.
“What are you doing.”
“I’ll rest too.”
What kind of lunatic sits on the ground to rest, all dressed up like that.
He’d gone and dirtied his good black coat and trousers without a second thought, and then just sat there blinking at me.
The face that had been flushed red just a moment ago had reclaimed its usual cool, detached expression. For whatever reason, his mood was switching around at a remarkable pace. Where did all that resolve to walk away go — and going along with my stubbornness, of all things, I really didn’t understand. Even when I told him to go away, to sit somewhere else, he wouldn’t listen.
Strange guy.
At least put your mask back on. What are you doing with your whole face out like that.
I let my gaze drift over the street scenery, the adult friend sitting beside me, and the passing pedestrians stealing glances at us — and then made a magnanimous offer.
“You said you have my manga at your place.”
“Yeah. Lots of them.”
“I don’t remember what happened before in the story. I need to catch up.”
Kwon Wookyung, who’d caught my meaning, stood up.
“…Get up. Let’s go home.”
Only then did I come clean.
“Actually, I can’t get up.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No, my bag is heavy. Carry it for me.”
The backpack on my shoulders was so heavy my center of gravity kept tipping backward. That was why I couldn’t get up on my own. At my shameless demand, he snatched the bag away, muttered “bought a lot, didn’t you,” and slung it over one shoulder.
I felt a bit sheepish. I’d only bought one study guide and then got carried away buying every new manga volume I’d missed, and the backpack was completely stuffed.
I stood up and brushed off my palms and the back of my jeans. My leg muscles had just been startled for a moment — I could walk on my own well enough.
“Any scrapes?”
“Just my palms a little. That’s it.”
“Your knees?”
“I landed on my butt. I think it’s going to bruise.”
“Let me see.”
“My butt…?”
“No, your hands…!”
Ah, right, obviously.
With Kwon Wookyung’s expression shifting dramatically at my failure to read the room, I held out my palms timidly. They really were scraped red, enough to leave a faint mark.
“I’ll give you some ointment when we get home. Put it on.”
“Okay.”
“Want me to carry you on my back?”
“Are you out of your mind?”
I made a straight face and walked on my own two feet. First he walked off and left me, and now he was offering to carry me — that was equally absurd.
As we walked side by side, Kwon Wookyung glanced at my hair where my hood had slipped back and said,
“You got a haircut.”
“How did you notice? Even my hyungs didn’t.”
I felt strangely self-conscious and reached up to touch my hair for no reason.
I’d actually been to the salon yesterday, but I’d had so little trimmed off that it barely showed. It was the kind of cut no one would notice unless I brought it up first.
“I could just tell.”
For someone with that perpetually uninterested, indifferent gaze, he had surprisingly sharp powers of observation.
Though that alone wasn’t enough to make my mood fully recover.
“You’re such a prude, you know that.”
I’m not exactly wide-open myself, but this guy was genuinely something else. There was a reason a face like that had never dated anyone.
“Anyone who dates you is in for a rough time. You’d make a serious face over holding hands.”
Kwon Wookyung didn’t push back at all.
“No affection, no expression. They’d be burning up inside and end up asking to break up.”
It was a pretty cutting thing to say. It was too petty to swallow and let go — I needed to say at least this much.
Getting upset over nothing and just leaving someone on the side of the road like that.
“Maybe after getting dumped a few times for stuff like that, you’d fix it.”
That’s how you grow in relationships.
He’d been quietly carrying my bag and listening without a word, and then he murmured lowly,
“…I’m only ever going to be with one person.”
His lips had been moving slightly before he finally said that.
Should I call it absurdly romantic, or the kind of starry-eyed nonsense only someone with zero dating experience would say.
I was momentarily struck speechless.
I knew he was conservative, but I hadn’t realized it ran this deep. He’d buried himself in old classic novels and ended up with a hopelessly old-fashioned way of thinking about romance.
“Come on, that kind of thing doesn’t just go the way one person wants it to……”
Even as impressive as he was in every way, that alone wasn’t enough to resolve everything when it came to matters of the heart.
“What if that person says no?”
“…….”
Kwon Wookyung’s expression visibly clouded over.
He actually meant it.
“I mean, you could date and break up, you might not make it to marriage, there are so many variables.”
“…I didn’t expect you to understand.”
The reply that came back was far more desolate than I’d anticipated. I lost all the steam behind my pettiness.
“It’s not that I don’t understand — I just think you need to think about it realistically.”
