Gyeonwoo’s hand, about to open a beer can, flinched to a stop.
“Woosung? You don’t mean Lee Woosung, do you?”
“Yeah.”
“How did you get in contact with that guy?”
Gyeonwoo seemed surprised by the unexpected news too.
“I ran into Jaeik by chance yesterday. So when I gave him my contact info, Woosung sent me a message in the evening.”
Woosung was Hyowoo’s closest childhood friend from when he was little. Thanks to their mothers being best friends, they were always together from infancy until they became high school students. However, going from ‘close friend’ to ‘used to be close friend’ was because of that day’s incident.
“…Is he doing well?”
“Yeah. He said he’s in Seoul now.”
At those words, Gyeonwoo slowly took a sip of beer.
“That’s good.”
“He said he goes to your school?”
“Our school?”
Wondering how they’d never run into each other despite attending the same school, Gyeonwoo made a surprised expression again.
“What department?”
“Life Sciences.”
“Ah, that’s why we haven’t run into each other until now. The Natural Sciences building is much further up than our department building.”
Rubbing his chin with one hand, Gyeonwoo, who had been lost in thought for a moment, continued speaking.
“What did you talk about?”
“We just briefly exchanged greetings. We decided to meet once after my exam is over.”
“Yeah?”
A curt way of speaking. That unconvincing response made Hyowoo’s heart complicated.
It was when he was fidgeting with his fingers while reading the room. Gyeonwoo, who had been sipping his beer for a while, quietly added.
“Will you be okay?”
His voice was subdued.
After that day, Hyowoo had cut off all contact with his high school classmates. He was extremely anxious that he might run into seniors, juniors, and peers who attended school during the same period, even by chance.
Woosung was also a classmate from the same high school and knew well what Hyowoo had gone through. It wasn’t unreasonable for Gyeonwoo to worry.
This time, Hyowoo smiled a little at his younger brother who was reading his mood.
“I don’t know… But I thought I should meet Woosung at least once someday.”
If he had been simply a childhood friend, he would have avoided him for life like other classmates, praying never to run into him. However, he couldn’t do that with Woosung alone.
‘Woosung going down to Busan was entirely my fault…’
He too was another victim caught up in the incident, and Hyowoo had to apologize to him.
Worry filled Gyeonwoo’s eyes as he looked at his hyung’s face speaking calmly. However, he soon nodded as if respecting Hyowoo’s opinion.
“If you’re okay with it, Hyowoo, that’s fine. Have a good meeting.”
“Let’s meet him together.”
“Why? Just meet him alone.”
Woosung was Gyeonwoo’s childhood friend too.
He’d been constantly troubled, feeling like he’d forced his mother and younger brother to cut off a precious connection. Whether the relationship between their mothers would be restored like before was uncertain, but he wanted to at least give his younger brother back his friend.
Moreover, Woosung was more than just a friend to Gyeonwoo.
“Let’s just go together. You want to see Woosung too.”
Even while guessing what his hyung was trying to say, Gyeonwoo pretended not to know.
“Yeah, let’s go together then. Since Woosung is also an Alpha, I should be careful.”
“That’s not what I meant… In the first place, you and Woosung losing contact was also because of me…”
“Why is that because of you?”
Gyeonwoo’s expression changed at his hyung’s words blaming himself.
It was a fierce expression that only appeared when he was truly angry, one that Hyowoo couldn’t even imitate despite having the same face.
“It’s the truth. If it weren’t for me…”
Whenever he saw his hyung acting like a sinner in front of the family, Gyeonwoo felt anger before pity.
When he hadn’t done anything wrong. When he was still suffering, struggling, unable to escape from that hell and tormented by trauma.
How angry, how twisted inside, how heart-wrenching it was every time the victim of a cruel crime himself bowed his head—did his hyung, who was only this kind and fragile, even know?
“So why is that your fault?! They should all be beaten to death with stones hundreds of times and it still wouldn’t be enough, that bastard Ansu…”
Gyeonwoo, who had been raising his voice, hastily shut his mouth.
Swept up in intense emotion, the forbidden name that should never be uttered in front of Hyowoo almost burst out.
Fortunately, because he became aware of it himself just before crossing the line, he was barely able to stop before spitting out all three syllables of the name.
A faint shadow of fear also briefly passed through Hyowoo’s eyes, but he soon regained his composure.
Gyeonwoo, who had kept his mouth tightly shut for a moment while cooling his anger inside, downed the rest of his beer in one gulp.
“Don’t ever say that kind of thing again. If you say that one more time, I’ll beat you up, hyung or not.”
“……”
“It’s absolutely not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. Got it?”
At his younger brother’s repeated emphasis, Hyowoo reluctantly nodded.
Only then did Gyeonwoo let out a short sigh before getting up from his seat and heading to the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator door and took out another beer.
“Tell me when you set up the appointment. I’ll go together too.”
“Okay…”
“But I’m not sure if that bastard Woosung will like it. He made plans to see you alone, but I’m coming along too.”
“Huh?”
Hidden by the refrigerator door, his younger brother’s words weren’t clearly audible.
“What did you say?”
He asked again, but Gyeonwoo said it was nothing and closed the refrigerator door.
* * *
“Hey, Ji Hyowoo. Look, your boyfriend is on.”
Before the match started, the TV showed the players warming up on the field. Seeing Seohee who happened to be caught on screen, Gyeonwoo casually tossed out a comment.
“Boy… boyfriend, what are you…”
If it had been usual, it would have ended with one curt retort to the wordplay, but Hyowoo visibly wavered.
“Seohee is really insanely handsome. Does he look like that in real life too?”
“Huh? Uh… well…”
“It can’t be helped since it’s his natural face. Still, he has no manners as a person.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If he’s the only one who looks like that, how are other men on Earth supposed to live? On top of that, he’s also rich—isn’t that honestly too much as a human being?”
“…What’s too much as a human being?”
“No, wait. At that level, he’s an alien. How can a life form on Earth look like that?”
At the continued absurd words, Hyowoo pretended to look at his cell phone and played dumb. Observing his different-from-usual reaction, Gyeonwoo tested Hyowoo again.
“But hyung-nim. Shouldn’t you be cheering from that stadium’s sky box, the VIP seats, instead of watching this match in the corner of your younger brother’s one-room eating snacks?”
Sensing that his younger brother’s teasing wouldn’t end soon, Hyowoo put down his cell phone.
“…Why do you keep talking nonsense since earlier?”
“You’re dating, so you should do at least that much.”
“Dating what. With just meeting twice…”
“You’ve met face-to-face twice, but texting, calling, video calling—that’s meeting, what else would it be?”
“…What are you trying to say?”
“It’s just that you can’t meet in person right now because of the distance. If Seohee were in Korea, you would have been meeting face-to-face all the time, right?”
Hyowoo finally realized this wasn’t wordplay started to tease him.
“…I don’t know what misunderstanding you’re having, but Player Seohee and I aren’t in that kind of relationship.”
It was the truth. However, with such a half-hearted answer, there was no way Gyeonwoo would stop questioning.
“If you’re not in that kind of relationship, then what kind of relationship is it?”
“…I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, but you’ve been meeting for over half a year?”
He was momentarily at a loss for words. Even Hyowoo himself had difficulty understanding his own actions, so he didn’t know what answer to give. As he kept his mouth shut and just fidgeted with his fingers, Gyeonwoo, tired of waiting for an answer, spoke first.
“You don’t trust people easily. Especially Alphas even more.”
Gyeonwoo paused for a moment. He hesitated about whether to mention ‘that incident,’ which was regarded like a taboo among the family.
He worried about whether he might reopen his hyung’s wound that had barely been healing, but in the end, he continued speaking.
“I think it can’t be helped that you have distrust of people. When something… unimaginable happened, how could you trust people? That’s why I’m even more surprised. That you’re meeting with Seohee.”
Hyowoo was wary of those who approached showing interest, but his family was equally wary.
To others, they might look like a strange family overprotecting a fully grown adult, but to those who knew Hyowoo’s terrible past, it was a completely natural reaction.
“Let’s unpack this one by one. First, what does Seohee think of you?”
“…He said… he likes me…”
Unlike Hyowoo, who unnecessarily fiddled with the back of his neck due to the embarrassment that washed over him after finishing his answer, Gyeonwoo threw out the next question with a cool expression.
“Can you trust those words?”
