***
Today, Doyun’s lunch partner was Suhyeok.
In truth, for the past week, Doyun had been eating lunch alone — not reaching out to Eunho, Suhyeok, or Minjun.
When Minjun started bombarding him with messages every day, Doyun had replied with an uncharacteristically sharp response: “Leave me alone.”
Whether he’d sensed something off in Doyun’s reply, Suhyeok stepped in this time. Doyun couldn’t bring himself to tell Suhyeok to back off the way he had with Minjun — not when the text just said “Let’s meet up.”
Suhyeok was an engineering student who became run-off-his-feet busy the moment the semester started, and yet he had graciously made the trek all the way to the Business Administration building.
“I heard you told Minjun you’d only hang out with Eunho from now on. Did you already get into a fight with Sa Eunho?”
After finishing lunch at the student cafeteria in the Business Administration building, the two had grabbed coffees and stepped outside. Chuseok was just around the corner, yet the heat hadn’t fully let up. Doyun took a long sip of his cold drink and answered Suhyeok’s pointed question in a blunt tone.
“We didn’t fight.”
“Then why aren’t you contacting Sa Eunho?”
“Did Sa Eunho put you up to this? Is that why you reached out — not because of Na Minjun, but because Eunho nudged you?”
“Eunho nudged Minjun too.”
“What.”
“Why are you two avoiding each other again? The last time I saw you, you were practically whispering sweet nothings to each other. Did you fight?”
Doyun’s expression went blank at Suhyeok’s words.
The “last time” Suhyeok was referring to was when the four of them had gathered at Suhyeok’s place for the first time in a while. While Suhyeok and Minjun were absorbed in their game, Doyun had simply sat squished up against Eunho on the sofa and chatted about this and that — it was hardly “whispering sweet nothings.”
“What are you on about, when did that ever happen.”
“Eunho called me since the crack of dawn today saying he doesn’t want to become the type people get tired of, and keeps telling me to reach out to you. I could immediately understand what ‘the type people get tired of’ means, by the way.”
Suhyeok was now convinced something had happened between Doyun and Eunho.
For a while now, Eunho had been calling Suhyeok morning and night. And every single day, he’d ask about Doyun. Did Doyun say anything about me? Is Doyun sick? Did Doyun go to school?
At first, Suhyeok had answered vaguely, but the calls kept coming at shorter and shorter intervals until he knew he had to do something.
“Ugh… I don’t know. Sa Eunho is so annoying.”
“Why now. Tell me.”
Quickly, Suhyeok added.
One look at him, and Doyun felt there was no escaping this.
He couldn’t exactly say that Eunho had told him “I can imagine myself inside you,” so Doyun glossed over it vaguely.
“He just made a dirty joke, and the more I think about it, it’s just… ugh, it’s annoying.”
Summarizing it as a “dirty joke” felt woefully inadequate given how hard it had hit him — but getting even that much out made him feel a little better.
Doyun let out a sigh and raked a hand roughly through his hair.
“What did he say?”
“I don’t know, I don’t remember.”
Doyun scowled and pressed his lips shut again. Suhyeok fell into thought for a moment, looking at him.
Even with Doyun’s half-baked explanation, he had a rough idea of what must have happened.
Hmm, Suhyeok mused, and decided to take Doyun’s side for now.
“Sounds like Sa Eunho got on our Doyun’s high and mighty nerves. He usually doesn’t act all ‘I grew up abroad’ about things, but then he goes and makes jokes like that so easily. Remember that one time, ages ago, when we all went out to eat?”
“How many times have we eaten together? Which time?”
Doyun replied, kicking a small pebble on the ground.
“When we went for pasta. The day the bill came out to 69,000 won.”
“Ah… yeah, I remember.”
As Doyun said, the four of them eating together was hardly a rare occasion. But the reason Suhyeok remembered that particular day — down to the menu and the exact bill amount — had everything to do with Eunho’s absolutely unhinged joke.
Like any other time, the four of them had gathered at Suhyeok’s place.
Flipping through channels, they landed on a cooking show making pasta, and being hungry, all four of them headed straight to a fusion restaurant near Suhyeok’s place.
The pasta they’d enthusiastically ordered was dreadfully bad. Doyun had leaned over and whispered, “Hey, let’s grab ramen on the way back to Suhyeok’s,” and everyone had nodded in agreement.
When the four of them ate together, Eunho often volunteered to pay — but out of conscience, they did take turns treating each other. That day, Eunho had stepped up to handle the bill again.
Taking the receipt, Eunho glanced at the total, raised one eyebrow, and said:
“Oh, everyone’s favorite number, sixty-nine. I definitely have to be the one to pay for this.”
The amount printed on the receipt was exactly 69,000 won.
Even though it was said in a playful, sing-song tone, silence fell over the table. Not because they hadn’t caught Eunho’s smooth English pronunciation — but because they had heard it loud and clear, and that was the problem.
Sixty-nine. 69. A joke alluding to a certain sexual position.
The brief, awkward silence that followed was shattered by the three of them in collective shock.
“Oh my god.”
“This crazy bastard.”
“Hey, this is a Confucian country.”
As he recalled the memory, Doyun’s face twisted slightly.
Whenever Eunho cracked jokes like that, Doyun never really knew how to react — but it wasn’t that he disliked Eunho for them, or thought less of him for being crude.
“Ugh, I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s annoying.”
It was probably Suhyeok’s way of saying Eunho’s always been like that, just let it go — but it wasn’t particularly helpful.
Watching Doyun’s face go pale and then flush red again, Suhyeok offered a compromise this time.
“I’ll have a word with him, so start picking up his calls again. Why are these guys using me as their carrier pigeon.”
“Mm… okay.”
Doyun answered and nodded weakly.
Poor Suhyeok, caught in the middle of all this, he thought.
“Let’s get moving. I’m heading to the engineering building. Didn’t you say you don’t have class?”
“I normally have a free period, but today there’s an exchange student info session, so I’m going to sit in on that.”
“Right. You cleared the TOEFL score requirement, didn’t you? Fill me in after the session. I’m thinking of doing one semester abroad after I get back from the military.”
“Sure. Go for it.”
“And hey — make sure you make up with Sa Eunho. Got it? We need to crack open that whiskey he brought over soon.”
Suhyeok clicked his tongue and gave Doyun a desperate look.
Eunho had clearly used the whiskey as either a threat or an enticement to get Suhyeok to do something.
“We’ll see.”
“I’m off.”
In a rush to make it to class, Suhyeok readjusted his backpack and waved goodbye.
Even as he walked away, Suhyeok shouted back, “Make sure you make up with Sa Eunho!”
Great, now he’s advertising to the whole world that Eunho and I had a fight, Doyun thought.
He could feel the stares of passersby on the street. Doyun gave a half-hearted nod and turned away.
***
The reason he’d been ignoring Eunho’s messages wasn’t because of some stupid joke.
On the night they’d had a small argument and ended up sleeping in the same bed, Doyun had a wet dream — in the strangest way possible.
If he hadn’t wet himself in his sleep, then it was definitely a wet dream.
But calling it a wet dream felt off too, and for a very specific reason — not only was the front of his underwear soaked, but so was the back, around his rear end. There was far too much for it to have just been ejaculate that had dripped from the front to the back.
He hadn’t even been having a particularly erotic dream, and Eunho had been lying right there asleep beside him — the fact that he’d had a wet dream was mortifying.
If the dirty joke Eunho had made right before they fell asleep had triggered it, that was somehow even more pitiful.
Had he been pent up enough to come just from a single line? He’d gotten one out not that long ago…
Doyun bit his lip and carefully, as gently as he could, extracted himself from the bed.
After making Eunho wake up and leave, Doyun hand-washed his soaked underwear.
He’d scrubbed them with just soap and no fabric softener, so they came out smelling off and stiff as cardboard.
Staring at the underwear hanging in the corner of his small room, Doyun had been tormented by self-loathing every single day.
That was the real reason he’d been ignoring Eunho.
***
I talked some sense into Sa Eunho, so stop fighting and get along, you little shits!
Late in the evening — probably after chatting with Eunho following lunch — a text came in from Suhyeok. It had started out civil enough, but it was clear from the message itself that the more he’d thought about it, the more irritated he’d gotten.
Doyun tossed his phone into the corner of the bed and flopped face-down onto the mattress.
Eunho’s scent — despite him insisting he didn’t wear cologne — was still faintly soaked into the bedsheets.
It was a sweet, thick fragrance that made the body feel languid and heavy.
Doyun closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. The sweetness filled him completely.
The wet dream was the last time, so it’s been a little while since he last got one out…
With that thought drifting through his mind, the moment Doyun slipped his hand inside the waistband of his pants — his phone buzzed.
Drrrrr.
“Shit.”
The caller was Minjun.
As if flooding him with messages all day wasn’t enough, Minjun had apparently started calling the moment class let out.
The phone buzzed and then went quiet again.
Doyun buried his face into the soft pillow.
Drrrrr.
