“That’s Minjun’s shirt. It’s clean, just wear it. God, I’m actually starving. I was about to suggest eating too.”
“We’re on the same wavelength.”
Eunho chuckled and pulled Minjun’s t-shirt over his head. His body was lean and well-proportioned all over, so Doyun had expected it to fit loosely — but it was tighter than expected. Watching the t-shirt transform into a completely different fit on him, Doyun made himself a firm resolution.
This semester, I’m building muscle too.
***
The area around Doyun’s studio apartment was all residential, making it hard to find a restaurant or grocery store nearby. After wandering through the small alleyways for a while, the two of them gave up and headed toward the busy street in front of the university. Walking only made the hunger worse, so they walked into the first restaurant they laid eyes on and had a late dinner.
The menu was sundae guk. The cool, hearty broth settled their whiskey-soaked stomachs perfectly. Leaving the restaurant, the two of them stopped by a nearby convenience store and came out with a large water bottle tucked under each arm and an ice cream bar in each hand.
Doyun picked a chocolate-flavored tube popsicle, and Eunho chose a hard bar. After a few bites, Eunho’s ice cream had already disappeared from view — while Doyun was making very little progress on his.
Instead of heading straight back to Doyun’s place, the two of them took a slightly longer route along a walking path. The path ran alongside a small stream, with the occasional lone walker passing through. Eunho took Doyun’s water bottle and carried it for him. With his hands now free, Doyun worked away at his ice cream, softening the surface with his hand before eating.
“Should we save the rest of the whiskey to share with the guys later? There’s still about half left.”
“Just keep it. I bought two more bottles to drink with them. Did you know Minjun’s been sending voice messages every day? Telling me to bring whiskey.”
“Ugh, Na Minjun is the most exhausting type of person.”
Doyun shook his head as he said it. To put it kindly, Minjun was persistent — to put it less kindly, he was relentless. Eunho glanced sideways at Doyun. Doyun was still hard at work melting his ice cream in the dark with his mouth.
“You don’t like that type? Someone who calls and texts every day.”
“Obviously not. Anyway, good thing you brought more whiskey. When I told them you’d drunk the whole bottle, Minjun was devastated. Let’s not tell the guys we cracked open a bottle together — just between us. Without even seeing it I know Minjun and Songsseok would lose their minds.”
Following the stream had brought them to the end of the walking path without them even noticing. The night was dark, but the streetlamps were lit up brightly, making the surface of the water sparkle and glimmer. Eunho stepped up first onto the stepping stones that crossed the stream. He tucked the water bottle under his left arm and held his hand out to Doyun.
“Right. Finish the rest with me another time. Now that I know where your place is, I’ll come again. As long as I bring whiskey, you’ll always let me in, yeah?”
“Hey, your place is way bigger — why do you keep crawling over to my cramped little apartment?”
Doyun looked up at Eunho and took the offered hand. The two of them crossed the stone bridge hand in hand. The gaps between the stepping stones were wider than expected.
“Just — your place is closer to campus, and you never come to mine.”
“Getting to your place by bus means taking the long way around, so it’s actually pretty far.”
The officetel Eunho was living in was located in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Seoul. In terms of square footage it was far larger than Suhyeok’s apartment, and the interior was luxuriously decorated — but the public transit access was inconvenient. Eunho always invited him over, but Doyun had only actually been there a handful of times.
“Should I move somewhere closer to campus? If I find a slightly bigger place, would you come every day?”
“Excluding my own place? Are you trying to charge your friend rent?”
“No rent. Just come.”
Eunho, who had finished crossing the bridge first, turned to look at Doyun as he said it. The smile at the corner of his lips made it sound like a joke — but his eyes were serious.
“Oh, Sa Eunho. Why are you saying heart-fluttering things like that to a beta?”
Doyun leaped off the last stepping stone, landed on solid ground, and gave Eunho’s shoulder a light punch as he laughed.
“I’m saying it so your heart flutters.”
Eunho’s sudden bursts of warmth like this were never easy to deflect with a quick comeback. At Doyun’s reply, the smile that had been lingering at the corner of Eunho’s mouth quietly disappeared.
***
The two of them crossed the walking path and began making their way through the maze-like alleyways together. Midway through the walk, Doyun spotted a bug clinging to his clothes and swore out loud in alarm — the slightly stiff atmosphere that had settled between them broke when Eunho flicked it off.
“God, this is heavy, get your arm off me. You’re pressing me into the ground.”
Doyun said with his mouth hanging open in an exaggerated biting motion toward the arm Eunho had draped over his shoulder. As if finding Doyun’s little act of defiance amusing, Eunho tightened his arm around Doyun’s shoulder and pulled him in closer.
“You’re fully grown already.”
Doyun let out a short sigh and looked at Eunho. Because of the height difference between them, he had to tilt his head up to meet his eyes. It was humiliating to have to look up like this in the middle of a conversation about height — but Doyun pretended not to care and shot back:
“There’s a saying that beta guys can still grow after they go to the military.”
“You’re not even that short, so why are you so fixated on height.”
The Eunho saying this was nearly 190 centimeters tall. Starting with Na Minjun today, Doyun couldn’t understand why everyone kept poking at him about his height unprovoked — and he scrunched his face slightly in irritation.
“I’m just one knuckle away from hitting 180 — if you were me, you’d be frustrated too.”
“Not really….”
“Right, right. What would someone your height know.”
Doyun shook his head with a sigh and Eunho laughed.
“Still, you grew a lot. When we first met, you were really small. You only came up to here.”
Saying that, Eunho pointed to just above his own solar plexus. Doyun’s gaze dropped sharply downward, following Eunho’s hand. Even back in first year of high school, he hadn’t been that small.
“That’s a serious exaggeration. I wasn’t that short.”
“When you hurt your leg and I carried you on my back for over a month, I remember it exactly. Right here. I was already this tall back then.”
“Wow, that was years ago already. When I blew out my knee playing soccer?”
Doyun’s eyes went wide as he responded. Like most guys at an all-boys high school, Doyun would grab a soccer ball and run out to the field whenever there was a free moment. Minjun and Suhyeok were more into basketball and couldn’t care less about soccer. Eunho, on the other hand, always got on Doyun’s team without a word of complaint.
The day Doyun’s leg broke was nothing out of the ordinary. He’d wolfed down lunch in ten minutes and sprinted to the field before he’d even digested it. The moment he broke through the opposing team’s defense with a flashy bit of footwork, he got hit with a rough tackle — and Doyun went down hard, feeling his knee scrape against the ground as he tumbled across the field. What happened next was hazy.
“Yeah. And after that happened, I almost got suspended for getting into a fight with the kid on the other team.”
Oh right, that’s true, Doyun agreed. He’d been too busy clutching his injured leg to see it himself — he only heard afterward that Eunho had thrown the first punch.
“Looking back on it now, one annoying thing is — if I’d actually torn my ACL, I could’ve gotten out of military service, but instead I just had to wear a cast for ages for nothing.”
At Doyun’s immature complaint, Eunho’s expression turned genuinely worried.
“Do you really have to go to the military? I’d rather you didn’t.”
An even more immature thing came out of Eunho’s mouth — who was exempt from mandatory military service because of his secondary gender.
“I feel the same way. But I’m this healthy — how am I supposed to get out of it…. The military is the kind of place they drag you into even if you pull a perfectly good tooth and jam a needle in your urethra.”
“…What would it take to get an exemption?”
At Eunho’s question, Doyun fell silent for a moment and thought about it. A military exemption. What a dream.
“…I can’t exactly break the law just to dodge the military. Oh! Just put out a bowl of water and pray for me to present. Who knows — maybe with your prayers, I’ll miraculously present as an alpha and shoot up to 185.”
At Doyun’s words, Eunho’s footsteps came to a stop. The arm around Doyun’s shoulder fell away at the same time.
“Doyun, you want to present…? But why would you be an alpha?”
Eunho looked at Doyun with a surprised expression and asked, and Doyun answered with a laugh.
“Obviously — if I were going to present at all, alpha suits me better, don’t you think? Omega doesn’t make any sense.”
Doyun gave Eunho’s shoulder a light punch and started walking again. Doyun’s studio apartment was visible just up ahead. Eunho fell into step beside him and matched his pace as he asked, his expression and voice carrying a genuine, baffled disbelief.
“Why doesn’t it make sense? It’s possible.”
At Eunho’s question, Doyun shook his head as if he’d heard something completely absurd. Like most beta guys who quietly harbored the wish, Doyun had imagined what it would be like to present as an alpha. The most notable trait of alphas was their superior physical condition — and thinking about the tall stature, broad shoulders, and solid muscle that came with it, of course there was some envy there. But an omega. That was an option he had never once imagined for himself.
