The voice tossed out casually came from an unexpected place. The owner of the voice was Hakyoung, leaning against the open window. Standing with his arms crossed, leaning diagonally against the veranda door, he looked just like a model—as if he were filming a beverage commercial. It was absurd how even the night breeze gently caressing Hakyoung’s hair seemed like a manufactured scene.
Yumyeong stared at him and couldn’t help but snicker. It was because the guy who had been pretending to reluctantly give in was somehow sneaking his way into every gap.
“Don’t make me laugh. You think I’d date just anyone who confesses to me? I want my first relationship to be serious too.”
“Is there ever a time when you’re serious?”
“Here you go again… Do you even know me?”
“I know very well how you toy with people’s feelings.”
At those words, Yumyeong glared at Hakyoung. Hakyoung steadily met his gaze and then slurped his coffee. Hanju and Sunmin, who had unknowingly gotten caught in the battle of wills between the two, could only watch nervously.
“Hmph, if I had actually toyed with anyone, at least I wouldn’t feel so wronged.”
“I heard rumors that you reply to every confession letter you receive.”
“Ah, yeah. Are you jealous? What, you’ve never received a confession so you find that an eyesore too?”
“That’s what toying with people’s feelings means.”
“Ha, you wouldn’t know because you’ve never received a confession, right?”
Yumyeong scoffed derisively. He deliberately mocked him to get under Hakyoung’s skin.
“When you actually receive a confession, you absolutely can’t reject them. Words filled with sincerity are so heartfelt. If you ever received one, you’d think differently.”
“Nonsense. Let me give you some advice—reject confessions properly.”
Hakyoung looked down at Yumyeong with his arms still crossed.
“You shouldn’t be kind when rejecting a confession. Not leaving any room for hope is a much more considerate act. If you’re not going to reciprocate those feelings anyway, making them hopeful—isn’t that because you don’t want to lose their affection? Wanting to remain a good person until the end because you don’t want to be hated—that mindset itself is selfish.”
The usually taciturn Hakyoung turned out to be surprisingly eloquent once he opened his mouth. Hanju was inwardly impressed by the sentences pouring calmly from those lips. Sunmin thought that while Hakyoung’s words had merit, they were crueler precisely because they were correct.
Yumyeong just glared at Hakyoung without a word. That’s when Hakyoung hit the nail right on the head.
“Because you act like that, you get rejected by the person you actually like. In other words, it’s karma.”
At that moment, Yumyeong shot to his feet.
“What did you just say?”
The atmosphere was ominous. Hanju hurriedly wrapped his arms around Yumyeong’s waist to stop him from lunging at Hakyoung.
“Yumyeong, you need to hold back. Hakyoung! This time you went too far.”
“Let go, Park Hanju! I only let that bastard off because he looked so pathetic, and now what is he saying?”
“At least I don’t act pathetically desperate.”
“Augh, let go of this! I knew I should have beat him up. Why did I even let him off back then?”
Yumyeong thought he really should have secretly beaten him up when they were alone rolling around in the wild hills, and began throwing a fit. He should have left a dark bruise on that sleek face.
The commotion on the veranda spread up and down, and students in other rooms who heard Yumyeong’s voice ringing out in the middle of the night occasionally poked their heads out their windows to peek. Eventually, Yumyeong was dragged back to his room by Hanju, who couldn’t stand the embarrassment any longer.
A moment later, only Hakyoung and Sunmin remained on the veranda where the chilly wind blew.
Sunmin gauged the situation for a bit before speaking up.
“Um, is this because of what I said before?”
Sunmin, who was the one who had passed on the story that “Yumyeong replies to all the confession letters he receives,” felt a bit guilty about the fight that had just happened. At the same time, he thought Hakyoung was being excessively harsh toward Yumyeong.
“Yumyeong probably didn’t mean it that way, there was no need to say all that…”
At Sunmin’s words, Hakyoung let out a short sigh. But in those resolute, melancholic eyes gleaming in the darkness, there wasn’t the slightest hint of regret. In a way, Sunmin had seen correctly. Those were the eyes of a boy who had grown harsher after experiencing a heartbreak that wasn’t quite a heartbreak.
“Are you confident you won’t become a victim?”
“…”
“Are you confident you won’t suffer while harboring futile hopes, thinking ‘maybe’?”
“…”
“I don’t think so.”
Hakyoung’s voice was very calm.
“I know that type. They act like that just because they don’t want to lose others’ affection. They hate being disliked more than death. That’s why I think Song Heeun did it right. Because she rejected him so decisively, Shin Yumyeong has at least given up on her now.”
***
“Yumyeong, hold back, I said hold back!”
At that same time, Hanju dragged Yumyeong to their room and quickly closed the door. Then, thinking Yumyeong might push him aside at any moment and run to the room across the hall, he unconsciously blocked the door.
“How can you make such loud noise this late at night? I get that you’re pissed off… okay?”
But unexpectedly, Yumyeong became quiet as if by magic the moment the door closed. With a face that seemed somehow drained of energy, he drooped his shoulders and turned around without a word.
Hanju watched Yumyeong’s back, wondering what was going on. Given his personality, there was no way he would stay still, so it was suspicious that he just quietly turned away.
“Haah…”
Yumyeong plopped down in his chair, propped both legs up on the desk slovenly, and let out a big sigh as if to make a show of it. At least he didn’t look like he was about to run back out to pick another fight, so Hanju was relieved for the moment.
“Yeah, just understand with a broad mind. Just think of it as there being some people who just don’t get along. How can you like everyone in the world? It’s tiring to fight with everyone. Sigh, I need to wash up and sleep too.”
Thinking this was good enough, Hanju rubbed his tired eyes and headed to the bathroom. Then Yumyeong tilted his head back and asked.
“Aren’t you going back to study?”
“I lost my momentum and don’t feel like it. I’ll stop for today.”
A moment later, the sound of water—whoosh—came from behind the closed bathroom door. He seemed to be washing up before bed.
With that noise as background, Yumyeong sat motionless in the middle of the room.
He was barely maintaining his composure, but it wasn’t easy to calm his indignation. The most confusing part was that it didn’t seem to be simple anger.
Between feeling heated, his heart surged and churned. His insides stung from words that seemed to poke at a sore spot.
He had shot back “Do you know me that well?” but he couldn’t deny Hakyoung’s words.
Because he didn’t want to be hated,
Because he wanted to remain a good person until the end…
It was all true.
“Because you act like that, you get rejected by the person you actually like. In other words, it’s karma.”
It was too much to jab at his heartbreak like this. Besides, doesn’t everyone dislike being hated?
Thinking this, Yumyeong stared at the ceiling.
“Is it wrong to want people to like me?”
Hoo—as he blew his bangs off his forehead, his eyes somehow stung. He didn’t want to admit that this was a feeling of being wronged, or that Hakyoung had triggered it.
Yumyeong blinked while staring at the ceiling, then soon adjusted his posture.
A moment later, when Hanju came out after washing, he saw Yumyeong sitting at his desk, concentrating on something.
“What are you doing? Not sleeping?”
“Go ahead and sleep first.”
Saying that, he turned off all the room lights and left only the desk lamp on. When Hanju tried to peek at the desk, Yumyeong quickly covered it with his palm. Sensing something suspicious, Hanju kept trying to peek.
“What is it? Are you studying?”
“None of your business. I told you to sleep first, didn’t I?”
“…Fine, you go to sleep soon too.”
And even after Hanju fell asleep, Yumyeong was absorbed in writing something. He carefully revised what he had written several times, writing it out neatly by hand.
After completing the heartfelt writing, he pulled out a cute envelope that had been buried somewhere in his drawer and folded the letter into it.
***
The next day, due to the aftermath of insufficient sleep, Yumyeong had to wake up even more painfully than usual.
“What time did you go to bed last night? Your face looks like a corpse with all that blue under your eyes.”
Just as Hanju said, Yumyeong’s face was full of fatigue.
“I don’t know… 5 o’clock?”
“Wow, you studied alone until that hour? Traitor!”
Yumyeong let Hanju misunderstand as he pleased. He lacked so much sleep that he didn’t even have the energy to refute. Even after going to school, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that his soul was floating outside his body, so Yumyeong dozed through all the morning classes.
“Has Shin Yumyeong given up on exams completely? Someone wake that kid up.”
Of course, the teachers didn’t leave Yumyeong alone when he was blatantly sleeping with midterms just around the corner. His seatmate had to shake his shoulder several times to force him awake. But even after propping his chin and staring at the blackboard with unfocused eyes, it wasn’t long before Yumyeong would lose consciousness and keel over again.
Yumyeong finally came to his senses when lunchtime arrived. When mealtime came, his eyes naturally lit up with curiosity about today’s menu. Then, as if he had never been dozing, he ran toward the cafeteria faster than anyone else.
Arriving at the cafeteria alone, he naturally got in line. Though he had run there like a hungry wild boar, his purpose wasn’t just to be the first to reach the cafeteria.
Yumyeong kept his eye on a group of female students in line ahead of him. Fortunately, they were classmates whose faces he recognized. After clearing his throat once, he tapped one on the back, and she whipped around.
“Hey, can you do me a favor?”
Yumyeong whispered in a low voice and pulled a small envelope from his pants pocket. The letter he had painstakingly written last night was slightly crumpled from being in his pocket. With a short click of his tongue in regret, he smoothed out the letter.
“What’s this?”
The female student asked primly. Yumyeong bent down to whisper to the girl who was much shorter than him.
“Someone asked me to deliver this… to Ryu Hakyoung.”
