The first time I met Cha Jae-woo was the summer I was eighteen. The season when the heat had grown heavier, the school uniforms had switched to short sleeves, and the cicadas were screaming nonstop.
Back then, I was living the hamster-wheel life of a typical student — school, cram school, home, repeat. That day, too, I was at the bus stop waiting for a bus to cram school when a voice cut through the air and hit my ears without warning.
“Hey. Are you close with Kwon Tae-gyeong?”
At the time, Kwon Tae-gyeong was a trainee at K Entertainment, well-known for its idols. There was no end to the people who came up to me asking if I knew him, simply because I was his childhood friend.
Kids treating me like a bridge to connect themselves to Kwon Tae-gyeong had been a constant since elementary school, so by that point I barely thought anything of it.
Here we go again. That was the full extent of my reaction. I let out a sigh and looked up — and met the other person’s eyes.
On any normal day, I would have sent them packing regardless of whether they were a girl or a guy. Once you let someone in even once, there’s always someone else who comes whining about why you helped that person but won’t help them — and the annoyance snowballs from there.
To prevent that, I had to draw a firm line from the start. I couldn’t afford to be reduced to Kwon Tae-gyeong’s personal matchmaking bridge in high school on top of elementary and middle school.
I was already overwhelmed enough with worries about my future and college entrance — there was no time to waste taking on pointless missions.
“I’m not that clo——”
So I was about to say we weren’t that close and shut it down flat — but the moment I met the other person’s eyes, the words died in my throat.
I’d already suspected from the moment their shadow fell over me, but they were a full head taller than me. That wasn’t what made me flinch — it wasn’t fear from the difference in build.
It wasn’t as if I was someone who’d be called short or scrawny anywhere I went — not to boast, but still.
So the problem, in the end, was the face. A face so strikingly handsome that even I — who had an idol trainee for a childhood friend — was genuinely taken aback.
For a split second I thought it might be a girl with short hair, but one look at the build told me otherwise.
That kind of pretty face, paired with jet-black hair and skin so white and flawless it contrasted sharply with everything else, and above all, a mole under the left eye. It was a face that kept pulling your gaze back.
The kind of face you’d do a double take at if you passed them on the street, unable to believe what you were seeing. The person’s looks were nothing short of a shock.
A face like that, and taller than me, and longer legs too — the world really is unfair, I thought, reminded of it all over again.
The instant I clocked his face, my first thought was that Kwon Tae-gyeong had apparently gone from just reeling people in, to now reeling in guys who looked like this — and I clicked my tongue without thinking.
At the same time, something clicked.
I want to get close to this guy. No — I’m going to.
At the time I was nothing more than an ordinary high school student who had never once thought about romance between guys — so I had no idea what I was really feeling. But looking back on it later, that was the beginning of something that could only be called attraction, dressed up in the name of admiration.
“I asked if you’re close with Kwon Tae-gyeong.”
The irritation in his second question snapped me back to my senses. I’d apparently blanked out for a moment from the sheer unexpectedness of coming face to face with someone that unrealistically good-looking.
“Sort of?”
On any normal day, I would have told him I had no intention of introducing him to Kwon Tae-gyeong whether I was close with him or not, and to get lost. Not give some vague non-answer like this.
“The hell. If you’re close, just say you’re close — what’s ‘sort of’?”
Cha Jae-woo muttered with undisguised irritation. It was a pretty aggressive attitude, but having met every weird type of person imaginable thanks to Kwon Tae-gyeong, this was practically adorable to me.
Reading the other person’s intentions in an instant, I put on my most business-friendly smile and asked pleasantly.
“Do you want to get close with Kwon Tae-gyeong?”
Even with such an obviously tempting bait dangled in front of him, Cha Jae-woo didn’t bite. Instead, he glared at me with eyes full of suspicion before snapping back.
“Whether he gets close with me or not — isn’t that up to Kwon Tae-gyeong?”
It felt like he was demanding to know what right I had to be brokering closeness with Kwon Tae-gyeong. I laughed inwardly, but outwardly kept my pleasant smile and coaxed him along.
“True. But you’d have to meet him first before you can get close, right?”
As I said before, Kwon Tae-gyeong was an idol trainee and rarely showed up to school.
And even when he did, he spent the whole time glued to my side before disappearing — so finding an opportunity to get close to him wasn’t easy. Kwon Tae-gyeong wasn’t the type to hand out his contact information freely, either.
There was a reason kids came to me specifically asking me to put in a word so they could get close to him.
“That’s why you came to me too, isn’t it?”
The words hit the mark, and Cha Jae-woo’s expression twisted. He clearly didn’t like having the upper hand stripped away from him and being dragged along like this — but there was nothing he could do. As long as he had business with Kwon Tae-gyeong, he was in a position where he had no choice but to come to me.
I decided to make full use of that, and smoothly slipped in a suggestion with my own motives attached.
“For now — let’s stick together for a while.”
“……Why would I?”
Cha Jae-woo asked back in a voice soaked with genuine bewilderment and irritation. I hadn’t planned to think it at a moment like this, but even his annoyed voice was something else. I opened my mouth, slipping fully into salesman mode.
“You know how busy Kwon Tae-gyeong is, right?”
“So what.”
“These days he’s basically unreachable. His phone is managed by the agency.”
Half of that was true. It was right that Kwon Tae-gyeong barely looked at his phone when he was in practice — but we’d texted just yesterday.
Most of it had been him whining about how hard training was, so I’d replied with a half-hearted hang in there and ignored him after that — but in front of Cha Jae-woo, I complained as if it had been at least a month or two since I’d last been able to reach him.
“So it’s hard to set up plans separately, which is why I figured — if you hang around with me and happen to run into Kwon Tae-gyeong, I’ll naturally introduce you. What do you think?”
The proposal must have sounded convincing enough, because Cha Jae-woo didn’t answer right away this time either. He seemed tempted, but too proud to just bite.
Not a kid, and yet such a hassle.
“Fine, forget it if you don’t want to.”
I said it as if I had nothing to lose and put my earphones back in. At that, Cha Jae-woo’s eyes flickered. He hesitated for a moment, then grabbed my wrist.
“……Who said I don’t want to?”
Lucky I hadn’t started playing anything yet, or his voice would have been too small to catch. I pulled out the earphone and asked with a mischievous look.
“Hm? What was that?”
“For fuck’s sake. I said let’s hang out together!”
“Hmm, well — if you really want to that badly, I suppose I have no choice.”
I nodded like I was reluctantly doing him a favor and tucked the earphone back into its case. Then I threw an arm around Cha Jae-woo’s shoulder and said, as if giving instructions.
“You know we’ll have to spend every break together from now on, right?”
“I know.”
“Eat lunch together too.”
“I got it.”
Maybe because I’d managed to reel him in well enough, Cha Jae-woo nodded along willingly to everything I said. Then, as if he’d realized something was off a beat too late, he gave me a suspicious look — but it was already too late.
I wasn’t about to give him the time to calmly retrace what had just happened.
***
From that day on, Cha Jae-woo and I spent nearly every moment together outside of class. In our third year of high school, we ended up in the same class, so we were together during lessons too.
Thanks to that, my nickname shifted from that guy who’s close with Kwon Tae-gyeong to that guy who’s close with Cha Jae-woo.
Even after that, I stayed true to my original goal. I made an effort to avoid running into Kwon Tae-gyeong while building my friendship with Cha Jae-woo. That was possible because, underneath that foul temper of his, Cha Jae-woo had an unexpectedly naive side.
The moment that truly sealed our friendship — it happened on the first day I’d coaxed my way into visiting his place.
“Wow, are these your parents?”
From the photos hanging all over the walls and the trophies displayed in the cabinet, I figured out that Cha Jae-woo’s parents were classical musicians.
When I asked if he was interested in music too, the answer was yes.
That surprised me. Cha Jae-woo could sing well, but I’d never seen him play an instrument. Along with that, a question surfaced.
“But why didn’t you go to an arts high school? Ours is a regular one.”
“Because I don’t want to be a performer.”
Cha Jae-woo shook his head with an expression that seemed, at a glance, indifferent. I’d naturally assumed he’d want to become a performer like his parents — but apparently not.
“Then what do you want?”
Cha Jae-woo hesitated in a way that wasn’t like him at all. Watching the uncertainty in his eyes, I waited patiently for him to speak first. Maybe realizing I wasn’t going to lose interest easily, Cha Jae-woo let out a sigh and stood up.
A moment later he came back from his room with a laptop and handed me a headset. I put it on without really thinking — and music started playing.
My expectations of classical were shattered as a fast, yet dreamlike beat filled my ears. My jaw nearly dropped and a gasp almost escaped on its own — but I held it back and pulled off the headset to ask.
“……Did you compose this?”
Cha Jae-woo nodded. When what I’d only half-dared to hope turned out to be real, I went completely speechless.
Like most kids our age, I knew the popular girl group and boy group songs well enough. I couldn’t say whether the track I’d just heard would land with the general public or not — but I could tell it was something with real quality.
At the very least, it was clearly not something a high schooler could easily pull off. Honestly, it was the kind of thing that made you want to gasp the moment you heard it — but I didn’t let that reaction show. Instead, I pressed my lips firmly shut.
It was something I’d sensed from the moment I’d first stepped inside Cha Jae-woo’s house.
He and I lived in different worlds.
That fact had been cutting into me, little by little, like a sliver of glass lodged in the sole of my foot, the entire time I’d been looking around his home.
If it hadn’t been for Kwon Tae-gyeong, I probably wouldn’t have ever ended up hanging around with Cha Jae-woo like this. Reminding myself of that, I felt a quiet ache settle into one corner of my chest.
