“So what.”
“My dad hated that about me.”
Hwichan’s expression didn’t change.
“He said looking at me was unbearable because I looked exactly like my mom. Said I didn’t seem like a proper human being. Then he ran off not long after, drank himself to death somewhere far from home.”
At that, Hwichan let out a faint, hollow laugh.
“So? You want us to bond over both being hated by our own blood?”
Haeshin had his knees drawn up with his face half-buried against them, but he turned his head toward Hwichan.
They’d known each other for less than a full day, yet this felt like a moment where he could glimpse something of what lay beneath the surface of someone called Shin Hwichan. The cruel words he must have used to grind and wear himself down, over and over — Haeshin could almost hear them right beside his ear.
Haeshin murmured in a calm voice. Blunt, but without any real edge.
“I dug into your family history, so I figured I’d dig up a bit of my own too. By the way — you really do say things that hurt.”
Hwichan let out a short, incredulous laugh at that. “Ha.” Still, the atmosphere seemed to ease, just slightly, compared to a moment ago. Just ever so slightly.
Haeshin looked at Hwichan beside him with a clear, quiet gaze. It wasn’t a smile born of good feelings — but even if it was a scoff, seeing a change in Hwichan’s expression, which had been set rigid this whole time, made him look a little more like a living person. If he smiled properly, he’d probably be as pretty as the wind.
And so Haeshin gathered his courage and added one more thing.
“I’ve been wanting to ask how old you are.”
“What?”
The other fixed him with sharp, upturned eyes. Ask about his age twice and he’d probably get another slap.
Haeshin curled his lips into a slow, tentative smile. He added, because I’m curious about your age — and with that, Hwichan’s gaze, which had been pointing like a blade in his direction, drifted back down toward the surface of the sea.
“Why does my age matter to you?”
Why does it matter. One of the most common things Koreans ask each other is “how old are you?” Wondering if maybe Hwichan was put off because he hadn’t said his own age first, Haeshin awkwardly tacked on, “I’m twenty-seven,” like a small tail at the end.
Hwichan’s gaze flickered briefly, and he answered in a low voice.
“Twenty-three.”
“Oh wow, four whole years younger.”
Haeshin was genuinely surprised, and lifted his face slightly from where it had been half-buried between his knees.
Then Hwichan added,
“So you’re hyung.”
And that one word. Just the single word hyung — and the tension Haeshin had been holding quietly dissolved. Hearing the word hyung come from the mouth of that rude, sharp-tongued person felt strange, and yet strangely satisfying.
Maybe it’s because I’ve never really had occasion to play the older one before. Haeshin went quiet with a docility that surprised even himself.
“Yeah. I’m hyung. I’m hyung, aren’t I.”
He murmured back while gently suppressing the smile that was trying to bloom shamelessly across his face. It wasn’t said for Hwichan to hear — it was something he needed to repeat to himself.
He called me hyung. I’m older than him. He looked at me and called me hyung. His foolish heart thudded away like a child encountering the concept of a younger sibling for the very first time.
Then, as if on cue, both of their gazes met. Haeshin kept breaking into a silly grin even while looking at Hwichan’s face, which wore something closer to a smirk than a real smile. Perhaps because of that, the cold, distant air Hwichan had been carrying until just a moment ago loosened considerably. He might have an awful personality — but it seemed he wasn’t the type to spit in the face of someone smiling at him.
The sun, which had risen like a pretty egg yolk, warmed both their foreheads with a golden tint, as if brushing gentle fingers across them. No words passed between them, but in the half-shade of the shadows, a warm and gentle heat began to settle in, layer by layer.
Soon, the sharpness in Hwichan’s bearing from a moment ago having softened, he opened his mouth slowly.
“But — you.”
“Not you — hyung. And if you’re four years younger, shouldn’t you be speaking formally to me?”
It was half-joking, but Hwichan took this lighthearted request with surprising sincerity.
“Ha…… Fine. So, hyung. Is there something you want to say to me?”
“Something to say? Like what.”
Haeshin narrowed his eyes slightly and looked at Hwichan as he asked. Hwichan rolled his impassive gaze over to meet his. Buried beneath that indifference was a cold unease, lodged there like a thorn.
“Going to the beach yesterday.”
“Yeah. What about the beach?”
“I’m asking why you went.”
Why he went to the beach. Haeshin felt an inexplicable pang of guilt and stiffened slightly.
Coming clean — that the beautiful face of a city boy who’d turned up on the island had thrown him into such a state that he’d had to get into the water to calm himself down — would probably come across as…… quite strange. Strange would be getting off easy; he’d be lucky if it stopped at strange and didn’t cross into completely unhinged.
They’d only just learned each other’s names. He had no desire to be branded as both a shallow person and a strange one this soon. The kid had just been left alone on an island with nothing to lean on — and if the only person his own age on the entire island turned out to be a shallow aesthete with an extreme fixation on looks, that wouldn’t exactly make for a pleasant situation.
On top of that, if he confessed that said doomed fixation had begun in under a minute, concluded in about ten, and that in the course of that conclusion Hwichan had swallowed seawater and passed out — even a saint would be in a bad mood upon hearing that.
Haeshin kept his expression easy and sun-warmed as he answered.
“I just like water.”
It wasn’t a lie.
“You like water? That’s your reason?”
“Why not? It’s quiet, it’s gentle. When you float still and just let the current carry you, it feels like everything unnecessary gets washed away.”
At that, Hwichan fixed him with a sharp look. What had been oscillating between warmth and prickliness until just moments ago swung back firmly toward the prickly end.
Back to the rude, sharp-tongued Shin Hwichan. What good was using polite speech? Tacking -yo onto the end of your words doesn’t resurrect dead manners. Haeshin frowned, puzzled by his sudden bristling reaction.
“Is there a problem?”
“Is there a problem? You really have to ask that?”
He genuinely couldn’t figure it out. As Haeshin kept tilting his head in clear confusion, Hwichan began to pour out words as if he’d been waiting for exactly this moment.
“The sea was really quiet and gentle in the rain, was it. Sediment churned up everywhere, waves going wild, unbearably salty, garbage washing in — it was an absolute mess out there.”
That’s not wrong either.
“I know your type. You went in on purpose, didn’t you? On a rainy day.”
Why the deliberate stress on on purpose. Haeshin turned the answer over in his mind before settling on something.
“No, it wasn’t on purpose……. I was already planning to get in the water, and then it just happened to rain. I prefer going in on a clear day too.”
Haeshin loved being submerged in water whenever he had the chance. Being a merman by nature had something to do with it — but even setting that entirely aside, Haeshin loved the sea.
He loved the sparkling ripples of morning light. He loved the orange-tinted waves of a late afternoon. He loved the heavy, sinking feeling of reaching the seafloor at night. He rambled on like a boy recounting an exciting dream.
“You have no idea how good it feels to sink under the water on a clear day. It’s like every bad thing just disappears, and when you open your eyes it feels like you might be in a completely different world. Want to come with me next time? Yesterday you kind of interrupted things, so I was a little disappointed.”
A mischievous grin mixed in with the brightness in his voice. But somehow, with every word he spoke, Hwichan’s face was going a shade more ashen.
“……You’re saying I — interrupted you? And now you’re asking me to go in with you?”
Is this really something to go stone-faced and murderous over? Haeshin was flustered by Hwichan’s increasingly alarming reaction.
“Can’t we go together? It’d be better than going alone.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
And then — are you out of your mind.
