His legs lost strength and he collapsed. It was an everyday occurrence and something he should have gotten used to by now, but it seemed there were still corners left for his mind to deteriorate. However, as if dried up, tears didn’t come out.
Wooyeon sighed and opened the refrigerator door that still wasn’t properly closed. He had to eat to have the strength to work. Wooyeon took out the convenience store food that didn’t have much left after Choi Seokwoo had eaten it. He’d brought things from the convenience store where he worked part-time that were going to be discarded.
Without even checking what flavor it was, Wooyeon tore open the triangular gimbap packaging and brought it straight to his mouth. His heart grew anxious because there wasn’t much time left until his part-time job.
Wooyeon, who had eaten about half the triangular gimbap, tore open one of the Kafiyak packs rolling on the floor and swallowed one pill. Since it was medicine that wasn’t good for the stomach, eating it during a meal at least made his stomach less upset. Wooyeon, who had swallowed the pill habitually without water, chewed the remaining triangular gimbap again.
“Ah, ugh…”
At the suddenly surging nausea, Wooyeon ran into the bathroom. Holding onto the toilet, Wooyeon threw up all the triangular gimbap he’d forcibly eaten. Gastric fluid that had flowed from inside his mouth dripped down over his red lips.
The medicine Choi Seokwoo gave had severe side effects like this, but this was the only option Wooyeon had. It wasn’t like dominant omegas who were supplied with suppressants from the Center, and real suppressants were too expensive, so taking real suppressants was realistically impossible. Above all, because Wooyeon was a beta on paper, he couldn’t even get a prescription for suppressants.
The “real thing” he’d handed over to Choi Seokwoo for money flickered before his eyes. Wooyeon, who had collapsed right there on the bathroom floor, wiped his lips with the back of his hand and pressed down on his eyes and cheeks with his palm as if tears would flow. And he kept repeating to himself.
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry…
* * *
When Wooyeon entered the convenience store, the face of the man wearing a convenience store vest brightened completely. He, who worked part-time the shift before Wooyeon’s, was two years older than Wooyeon. With a mild face and bear-like impression, he looked upright, but he certainly wasn’t quick when working.
“Hey, Wooyeon-ah. Good you came. Go get some tuna and ramen stock.”
He must not have organized the display shelves—products displayed so the expiration dates weren’t visible, products displayed differently from their price tags, products whose stock hadn’t been filled caught his eye. The man bent down again to organize the ramen on the lower display.
“Hyung, I’ll just do it. Hyung, go home.”
Wooyeon said as he entered the backroom. When Wooyeon busily put on the convenience store vest and came dragging a box of canned tuna stock, the man excitedly went back into the backroom. It seemed like he was shouting something from inside the backroom about knowing you’d do it and thanking him, but it wasn’t clear.
“Right. I left the discarded stuff there. You take it.”
“Ah… Thanks, hyung.”
When Wooyeon, who had been putting canned tuna on the display shelf, raised his head, he could see convenience store food items marked for discard behind the checkout counter. At the thought that he could get by for a few more days with that, Wooyeon let out a sigh of relief. He’d been worried about what to eat starting tomorrow anyway since Choi Seokwoo had cleaned out his refrigerator.
“If you only eat convenience store food all the time, your body will suffer.”
“It’s okay, for now.”
“If your face gets damaged, that’s a big problem, so eat good things too. Hyung will buy you a meal sometime. Well, good luck.”
“Yes, get home safely, hyung.”
The man shouldered his large cylindrical sports bag and left the convenience store, and while greeting him, their eyes met with someone standing on the other side of the door. Wooyeon, holding a canned tuna in his hand, quietly looked at him. It was Kwon Jeonghan.
The man passed by Kwon Jeonghan, who was rarely expressionless, and someone else standing next to Jeonghan grabbed and opened the door that was about to close and came in.
“No way, what a coincidence! How coincidentally I coincidentally met Wooyeon sunbae by such coincidence.”
The face was familiar. Come to think of it, he was an underclassman from the same department who Jeonghan had said they should do a group project with. They weren’t particularly close, but perhaps he had quite an outgoing personality, as he greeted Wooyeon playfully, inserting his name.
“Hello.”
Wooyeon greeted stiffly without even waving his hand. The face of Kwon Jeonghan, who had followed the underclassman, was still expressionless. At the coldly cooled face, Wooyeon realized he was somehow reading the mood. Consciously, Wooyeon turned his head and finally placed the canned tuna he’d been holding on the display shelf.
Wooyeon, who roughly pushed the stock box to the corner, returned to the checkout counter.
“Sunbae, checkout.”
The underclassman who had gone to the beverage refrigerator said toward Wooyeon. Four cans of imported beer were placed on the checkout counter. Wooyeon didn’t raise his gaze upward and concentrated on the checkout. And soon when the checkout amount came up, not him but Jeonghan took out a wallet from his black coat pocket and held out a card.
“Card received. Do you happen to have a points card…”
“I don’t have one, so just do it.”
“Yes.”
Wooyeon swiped the card and held the card out to Jeonghan again. The card had a gold line around the edges on black shiny material. Jeonghan received it dryly again, and the underclassman standing next to him picked up the four cans of beer placed on the checkout counter.
“We’re going to have a beer in front of here.”
It would still be cold, and as soon as that thought reached him, Wooyeon unconsciously looked at Jeonghan. Jeonghan still had cold eyes and was looking down at Wooyeon with his hands in his coat pockets. It felt like his heart fell with a thud.
“Aren’t you coming out?”
“I’m buying cigarettes too, go out first.”
“Oh, okay.”
Holding beer cans in both hands full, he opened the convenience store door with his shoulder and went outside. Only Wooyeon and Jeonghan remained in the narrow convenience store.
“Sunbae, you seem to call other people hyung well.”
“…What?”
At the absurd words, Wooyeon’s eyelashes lifted upward. Jeonghan’s eyes looking at such Wooyeon were cast down and still without a smile. Wooyeon, who had looked up at Jeonghan in the silence, soon let out a small sigh.
“Not buying cigarettes? Is one pack enough?”
He didn’t know why he had to read the mood of Kwon Jeonghan, who was at best an underclassman. Wooyeon turned around and took out a pack of cigarettes that Jeonghan had bought before and placed it on the checkout counter. Because it wasn’t something people commonly smoked, it rather remained in his memory.
When his gaze moved from the cigarettes back to Jeonghan, this time Jeonghan’s face was subtly relaxed.
“Should I check out?”
“Yes.”
Jeonghan held out the card he’d given earlier again. And just like when he first met him at the convenience store, Jeonghan deliberately brushed Wooyeon’s fingers with his fingers. Wooyeon knew Jeonghan did it on purpose, but he didn’t show it.
“Sunbae, you must have a good memory.”
Wooyeon didn’t answer and held out the card after finishing the checkout. This time, Jeonghan took the card after completely grasping the tips of Wooyeon’s fingers as if wrapping them.
At his skin that brushed from inside the palm to the fingertips, Wooyeon’s heartbeat immediately quickened. Surprised at the sensation of sudden heat rising, Wooyeon looked at Jeonghan again, and Jeonghan was smiling faintly as if he was in a good mood.
“Do you remember everything about who I came with and what I bought?”
“No.”
Contrary to his answer, sadly he remembered everything. The woman who was next to Kwon Jeonghan when he visited the convenience store one night before the new semester general meeting, and even the condoms Kwon Jeonghan had placed on the checkout counter—Wooyeon, who had crazily remembered them, couldn’t understand himself suddenly feeling bad. Wooyeon was anxious about himself inadvertently showing mixed irritation.
“The checkout is done, right? I’m a bit busy.”
Jeonghan was still standing in front of the checkout counter, but Wooyeon passed by him and went back to where he’d been organizing stock earlier. The canned tuna that felt quite heavy went into the display shelf with a thud. Not long after, the sound of the convenience store door opening and closing was heard.
Wooyeon let out a sigh of unknown meaning, whether relief or something else, and finished putting the few remaining canned tuna into the display shelf.
When the stock box became an empty box, Wooyeon came out toward the backroom again holding the empty box, but Jeonghan was already gone. Looking outside the convenience store, only the underclassman who had bought beer earlier was sitting alone at the convenience store table drinking beer.
Wooyeon went back into the backroom and this time came out holding a box of cup ramen stock. Because cup ramen was one of the best-selling items at the convenience store, he was always busy filling cup ramen stock. When he brought the large box to the front of the cup ramen display, the sound of the convenience store door opening was heard again.
“Welcome.”
Wooyeon put down the cup ramen he was holding and greeted the newly entered customer. As he went back inside the checkout counter, the middle-aged customer was already drunk.
Wooyeon’s calm gaze quietly followed the middle-aged customer. He lingered in front of the liquor refrigerator and occasionally muttered curses, and his staggering movements from being drunk only felt uneasy. With an uneasy premonition, Wooyeon couldn’t take his eyes off him.
“Kugh, fuck…”
It seemed it wasn’t an unfounded anxiety. Not long after, the sound of glass shattering rang out in the narrow convenience store. At the sudden sound, Wooyeon’s fingers flinched for a moment. The man who had been taking out several bottles of soju from the liquor refrigerator had finally dropped a bottle from his hand. The man was still holding soju bottles in both hands and cursing at the broken glass pieces at his feet.
“Customer, I’ll clean it up.”
Wooyeon immediately left the checkout counter and went to the man. He thought the priority was to keep the drunk man away from the broken glass bottle.
When Wooyeon approached the man and lightly pulled his arm, the middle-aged man forced open his wrinkled eyes that weren’t opening well due to drunkenness and looked at Wooyeon.
“Who are you?”
Feeling instinctive fear at his gaze, Wooyeon removed his hand that had been touching the man’s clothes and stepped backward. The man looked over Wooyeon’s body with drunken eyes, then shoved away the soju bottles held in both hands by stuffing them anywhere in the beverage section.
“You’re an omega, right?”
