The restaurant they wandered into had spicy braised chicken as its main dish. The dinner that started with a fiery pot of braised chicken wrapped up with makgeolli and soju.
“My legs are giving out.”
“Get on my back.”
Eunho, who rarely got drunk thanks to either his secondary gender or a natural tolerance for alcohol, fed ice cream to Minjun, Doyun, and Suhyeok one by one — then crouched down in front of Doyun with his back turned. Minjun shoved Doyun aside with his hip just as Doyun was about to climb onto Eunho’s broad back with the ice cream stick still in his mouth, and then Minjun playfully tried to climb on instead.
“Hey, Na Minjun.”
“Babe, carry me instead of Doyun.”
“……”
That was the moment Doyun truly understood what it meant to curse someone with your face alone. Exerting every last ounce of self-control, Eunho refrained from hurling Minjun to the ground and waited patiently until Doyun had climbed on.
“Eunho’s got good taste. Think about your size. If he’d carried you, you’d both be in critical condition.”
“Pfft, he doesn’t have good taste — he just knows a bad deal when he sees one.”
Deliberating over a menu that was no different from the day before, Doyun ordered his usual kimchi stone pot bibimbap, while Minjun ordered something new — rosé pasta. The kimchi stone pot bibimbap turned out to be the far better choice. “I keep telling you, pointless experiments always end in disaster,” Doyun said, and Minjun nodded in reluctant agreement.
After finishing their meal, the two of them took their drinks to go from the café next door, then sat down on the bench in front of the building. Summer break was over and it had already been a full week since the semester started, yet the sun was still beating down hot.
“I’m dating Daye.”
“What — are you serious?”
Doyun, who had been happily sipping at his iced drink, choked at the completely unexpected news and broke into a coughing fit. Minjun grimaced at his reaction and asked:
“God, you scared me. Is it really that shocking?”
“Since when?”
“We’ve been in the flirting stage for two months already. You dropped out of the club, but Daye and I kept going.”
After starting university, neither Doyun nor Minjun had really warmed up to their department. They already had close friends on campus, so there was no pressing need to make new ones — and on top of that, they just couldn’t handle the awkwardness of getting to know people in a new environment.
But thinking they couldn’t spend all of university life just the two of them, Doyun and Minjun had signed up for various clubs and academic societies. For Doyun, most of those club activities fizzled out after a month or two.
That was true of the club he’d newly joined last semester too. But unlike Doyun, Minjun had consistently shown up for MT trips, performance prep, and all kinds of activities. Doyun had wondered what on earth had gotten into him — and now it turned out there was a hidden reason all along.
“Daye got LASIK over break, didn’t she. Are you sure it’s not a side effect? Or maybe something rough happened to her recently. She’d have to be mentally compromised to choose you, otherwise.”
Daye, who had become Minjun’s girlfriend, was a fellow club member from the same year. Easygoing by nature, she had kept in occasional contact with Doyun even after he’d mostly stopped attending. They’d even exchanged messages not long ago — something like are you doing well — and she’d been dating Minjun this whole time. Doyun silently offered his condolences.
“Oh, so Doyun wants to be buried under the management building?”
Minjun crumpled up the straw wrapper he’d been holding and flicked it at Doyun, asking in a sweet voice. Just then, Doyun’s phone in his pocket buzzed briefly. The message was from Eunho.
Eunho: Doyun, should I come over to your place today?
Doyun: yeah yeah come if you wanna lol
Doyun fired back a reply quickly. Today was one of the days he didn’t have to work at the convenience store. He sent the message, turned the screen off, and fixed Minjun with a glare.
“Traitor.”
“Traitor, really, Doyun. Well, if you don’t like it, get a girlfriend yourself.”
“Wow, look at you showing off just because you’re in a couple now.”
He’d deliberately called Minjun a traitor and exaggerated his reaction just to tease him, but there was a faint bitterness behind it. There were several reasons Doyun had never really felt at home in his department, and one of them was the subtle undercurrent of pressure around dating.
As time passed, even the freshmen naturally gravitated into their groups — betas with betas, secondary-gender-presenting types with their own kind. The conversations among beta guys at drinking gatherings were always the same. How disgusting alphas were with their obsession with sex. How they’d like to sleep with an omega at least once in their life. And yet, how dating and marriage should ultimately be with a beta woman.
Eunho: Found the golden elephant t-shirt.
[Photo]
Eunho sent two messages in a row. The photo was the elephant t-shirt Suhyeok had gifted them years ago.
Doyun: lmaooo you’re actually gonna wear it?? you really wanna do couple pajamas with me?? lol
Doyun’s had been worn so often that most of the flashy gold foil print had worn off, but Eunho’s was exactly as it had been the day he’d received it. He’d probably taken a commemorative photo the day he got it and then put it straight into the back of his wardrobe.
“It’s lonely being the only one without a girlfriend. Watching Doyun eat in the cafeteria alone and buy coffee alone — don’t you think Minjun’s heart would ache? Or not.”
“Forget it. I’m hanging out with the other three without you.”
“Oh, but did you know? Songsseok has someone he’s interested in too. Sa Eunho set Suhyeok up on a blind date.”
“What? Why didn’t any of you tell me that?”
It was already surprising that Suhyeok — who, aside from his two or three tutoring sessions a week, seemed to spend every day buried in assignments — was seeing someone. But the more shocking part was that Eunho had been the one to set it up.
Doyun, Minjun, and Suhyeok all ran in roughly similar social circles, given how similarly they’d grown up. Eunho’s “people he knew,” on the other hand, were complete strangers to Doyun — no shared history, no connection whatsoever.
The idea that Eunho had introduced one of those strangers to Suhyeok, and that Suhyeok might end up dating this person Doyun had never met — it felt strange and oddly foreign.
“I kind of mentioned it? You just let it go in one ear and out the other.”
“Song Suhyeok never said anything to me. Neither did Eunho.”
“Probably because you don’t like talking about that stuff. It’s not like you give useful advice or even really listen. That’s why Suhyeok’s been grinding through tutoring even while that little alpha brat gives him hell — he’s trying to save up for dates.”
“You’re all traitors.”
Doyun scowled and stuck out his lower lip, glaring at Minjun. The genuine hurt came through clearly in his voice. He downed the last of his drink, then dropped the remaining ice into his mouth and let it roll around.
He’d always figured that Minjun, Suhyeok — and maybe even Eunho — would start dating at some point, but he hadn’t expected it to happen this fast. He’d assumed that dating still felt awkward for all of them and that the four of them hanging out together was still more comfortable and fun. Apparently that had only been true for him.
Eunho: Doyun, pick a number from 1 to 3.
Doyun: why?? 3
Doyun, reading Eunho’s message, poured all of his bruised feelings straight into the reply and hit send. He stuck out his lower lip and chewed absently on the innocent straw.
Out of Song Suhyeok and Na Minjun, it was Sa Eunho he felt the most betrayed by. Why was that? Because Eunho — the one he’d thought looked out for him most — had set Suhyeok up with someone instead of him?
No, that wasn’t it. Being hurt over something like that didn’t quite fit — Doyun didn’t actually want to date anyone right now, and he had even less interest in beta women.
“It’s always the quiet ones. Skip the whole middle stage and cause the biggest disasters. Next thing you know you’re showing up with two kids. Want me to ask Daye to set you up? Blind date?”
“Blind dates are awkward, I don’t like them…”
“Hey, it’s a hundred times better than a group mixer. Otherwise you can be alone forever.”
Alone forever.
The words Minjun said, smiling down at his phone, struck a chord in Doyun’s mind like a bell going off. He felt like he was only now beginning to understand it — this vague dread and bitterness that was different from just being hurt that Minjun hadn’t told him about the relationship.
It was the fear that as his friends began falling into relationships one by one, things between the four of them would never quite be the same. He wasn’t the type to live and die for friendship, but the changes that would come as his friends’ priorities shifted — he wasn’t exactly welcoming those.
Doyun quietly reflected on his own complacency. Seeing Eunho’s unrealistically handsome face every day had led him to assume that Minjun and Suhyeok, by comparison, would have a hard time finding anyone. He’d genuinely thought the compliments from classmates and club members — “wow, all your friends are so good-looking” — were just idle flattery. Apparently, looks weren’t the obstacle he’d assumed it was for either Minjun or Suhyeok when it came to getting a girlfriend.
