What Wooyeon hated most was feeling indebted. It might not be so bad to get rid of it with this opportunity. If he could get rid of it with just one cafeteria meal, it would actually be a profitable deal.
“Okay.”
When Wooyeon answered, Sunwoo smiled even bigger.
“Did you originally enter as a physical education major?”
“Yes. I’ve been doing physical education all along.”
“You must be really good at sports. I don’t really have any athletic ability.”
Wooyeon kneaded his thin forearm for no reason. After glancing at the forearm exposed under Sunwoo’s short sleeves, the image of Jeonghan’s forearm lifting a beer pitcher at the MT came to mind again. What’s really wrong with me today.
When Sunwoo entered the student cafeteria first, Wooyeon overtook Sunwoo and went to stand in front of the meal ticket vending machine.
“I’ll buy it.”
“Ah, really?”
“At the MT, you even cross-dressed because of me.”
“Oh yeah.”
At Sunwoo’s muttering, Wooyeon burst out laughing too. As someone from another department, he had no way of knowing about Wooyeon’s poverty, and he didn’t feel bad about getting a free meal from poverty-stricken Wooyeon. Wooyeon liked that.
Wooyeon took out his worn wallet from his pocket and rummaged for money. But Wooyeon’s face was instantly colored with embarrassment. The reason was that he could only grab a single one-thousand-won bill. When on earth did he spend all that money? Just one part-time job had decreased, but even that alone had made his life tight.
“Hyung, don’t you have cash?”
Sunwoo asked casually. Rather, it was something he could say because he didn’t know about Wooyeon’s financial situation. Nevertheless, Wooyeon felt a chill down his spine as if he had heard a scary story.
“Huh? Ah, no. I do. I have a card.”
From inside the worn leather, in the card slot, he grabbed the card Jeonghan had given him.
Should I use this? No, he gave it to me to use. But would you really use that? Kwon Jeonghan won’t even care if you use it.
In a short time, countless sentences floated through Wooyeon’s mind. In the end, Wooyeon brought the card Jeonghan had given him to the vending machine’s card reader.
“Whoa, is your family rich, sunbae?”
“Uh……?”
Having finished the payment, Wooyeon, who had pulled out two meal tickets, turned to look at Sunwoo. Sunwoo’s eyes widened as he looked at the card in Wooyeon’s hand. Wooyeon quickly shoved the card back inside his wallet, feeling as if he’d been caught doing something wrong.
“That’s the first time I’ve seen someone use a black card.”
“Ah, no. It’s not like that.”
“But it is, I definitely saw it…… Sunbae, is being a gold spoon a secret?”
Sunwoo whispered to Wooyeon as if it were some great secret. The voice whispering in his ear tickled. Wooyeon, who had quickly moved away from Sunwoo, pointed to where they were serving food.
“Let’s go eat quickly.”
“Ah, right. Sausage curry.”
Fortunately, unlike Jeonghan, Sunwoo didn’t have a persistent side. Wooyeon sighed while looking at Sunwoo’s back, suppressing his pounding heart. So that was a black card. Wooyeon somehow became scared just from having that card.
“Sunbae, have you tried the sausage curry?”
“No. It’s my first time trying it.”
“Seriously, it’s the most delicious thing in the cafeteria. You have to try it, this one.”
It was when Wooyeon, who had gone through the serving line and finally grabbed a small soup bowl, raised his head to find a place to sit. A familiar scent touched Wooyeon’s skin.
“Sunbae, where should we sit?”
Right in front, he ran into Jeonghan holding a meal tray.
In the bustling student cafeteria, even among countless students, his tall height and broad shoulders that stood out at a glance, his handsome face that you’d believe if told he was a movie actor. And with cold eyes cast down, he was looking at Wooyeon.
Along with the unplanned chance encounter, Wooyeon’s heart sank at his rarely seen cynical expression. As if something had been stuck in his legs, Wooyeon couldn’t move. Even though he had done nothing wrong, every time he saw Jeonghan’s face like that, he felt as if he had committed some great wrong.
“Sunbae.”
When Wooyeon didn’t answer, Sunwoo approached his side again and tapped Wooyeon. Jeonghan was still looking at Wooyeon.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Where should we sit?”
“Anywhere.”
Suddenly his breathing became labored. Wooyeon avoided Jeonghan’s eyes and fixed his gaze on the meal tray. He wanted to quickly disappear from in front of Jeonghan’s eyes. It was even more so because Jeonghan wasn’t alone.
“Oppa, what are you doing?”
By Jeonghan’s side, as if it were natural now, was Seonyoung. Wooyeon pretended not to see them and took a seat across from where Sunwoo sat.
“Sunbae.”
“……”
“Sunbae!”
“……Uh, yeah?”
“What are you thinking about so much. Try eating.”
At Sunwoo’s urging, Wooyeon fumbled with his spoon and put curry into his mouth. Wooyeon and Jeonghan had eaten lunch together twice a week, but they had never once come to the student cafeteria. He had thought that as a young master from a great household, he always only ate expensive food, but it seemed that wasn’t necessarily the case.
So he comes to the cafeteria with Chu Seonyoung. Was it because it was a relationship he could proudly reveal? With thoughts trailing one after another, he couldn’t even taste the curry in his mouth.
“How is it, it’s delicious, right?”
“……Uh, yeah. It’s delicious.”
“I knew it.”
Even at Wooyeon’s halfhearted answer, Sunwoo was all smiles. In front of such a person, Wooyeon just forced down his throat the grains of rice that felt rough, mixed with the curry.
* * *
Just because Wooyeon said it was exam period didn’t mean he could take a break from tutoring. An ordinary tutor might ask for some consideration, but Wooyeon didn’t have that luxury. If he took a week off and the tutoring fee came in a week late, he would have to just twiddle his thumbs for that week.
Late at night, returning to Jeonghan’s villa after finishing tutoring, Wooyeon, wearing earphones, intermittently muttered tomorrow’s exam content. He had recorded the key points of the exam to listen to while coming and going. The worn earphones didn’t work on one side, and even that sometimes made crackling sounds, but even replacing things like this one by one was a burden to Wooyeon.
Reading what he had written down in his phone’s notepad about important content, he was entering toward the villa entrance when he bumped into someone.
“Ah, I’m sor……”
Wooyeon, who reflexively pulled out his earphones, raised his head, and in front of him was Jeonghan. Jeonghan took another drag from the cigarette he was holding between his index and middle fingers, then exhaled toward Wooyeon. The harsh cigarette smoke spread like steam before Wooyeon’s eyes.
In front of the villa entrance, looking at Jeonghan’s feet, there were several cigarette butts that looked like they had been smoked for a while. Since when had he been waiting?
“What were you doing to come home so late?”
“……I had something to do.”
Jeonghan’s low voice scattered into the darkness along with the cigarette smoke.
“You weren’t out meeting some other bastard, were you?”
At the strange words, Wooyeon raised his head and looked up at Jeonghan. The red light from the cigarette in Jeonghan’s mouth was staring at Wooyeon.
“I was coming back from tutoring.”
“Aha.”
Jeonghan spread his fingers as they were and dropped the cigarette butt. The cigarette butt that fell to the ground bounced up between Wooyeon and Jeonghan, then rolled on the ground again.
“Why are you here? You should be inside.”
“Just, because I missed you.”
The sweet words made Wooyeon’s chest tingle. It’s a lie. Wooyeon tried hard to turn away from that sweetness.
“You seemed to be having fun.”
“What?”
It wasn’t Wooyeon who shattered that sweetness. Jeonghan would use such sweet kindness as a weapon to conquer him, then casually stab a dagger into his heart that had frozen unable to budge. Today was no different.
“Eating together with the card I gave you, laughing—it wasn’t funny at all.”
“That was,”
“I didn’t know you’d act like such a slut with that innocent face.”
“……What?”
Wooyeon’s eyelashes trembled as he looked at Jeonghan. There was no reason to hear such words just for using a card he was given to use.
“Just as I said. Did you two kiss too?”
His breath caught. Wooyeon couldn’t understand where on earth such an imagination had come from.
“What, stop saying such nonsense.”
“Or. Did you spread your legs for him like you did for me?”
His vision swayed dizzily. In an instant, humiliation crossed Wooyeon’s face. He felt like he needed to slap him to feel better, but Jeonghan too easily subdued Wooyeon’s arm that had been swung toward his cheek. With his wrist caught by Jeonghan, Wooyeon trembled violently and screamed.
“You, what the hell do you……!”
Wooyeon couldn’t finish his words as tears burst out from his misery. The desperate cry of “just what the hell do you think of me” was not permitted either.
To Kwon Jeonghan, he was selling his body. He could say it was because of the suppressants, because of his sick mother, because of debt…… but in the end, it was an undeniable truth.
Jeonghan, who had pushed the sobbing Wooyeon against the wall, pressed his lips over Wooyeon’s just like that. The automatic door at the villa entrance closed, hiding their figures.
“Mm, hng……”
His tongue urgently stirred inside Wooyeon’s mouth, saliva mixing haphazardly. Jeonghan had a distinctive cigarette taste. He caressed Wooyeon’s wet cheeks with a gentle touch.
“Don’t cry. I’m sorry. I went too far.”
“……You.”
Jeonghan released Wooyeon’s wrist that he had been gripping tightly. The tear-soaked gaze turned toward Jeonghan resentfully. Looking at how he was trembling, like a small animal, Jeonghan briefly had that thought.
“You’re really the worst person among all the people I know.”
Tears flowed down again from Wooyeon’s big eyes. His wet eyelashes trembled helplessly.
