Giyun slept poorly. Not only sleep. All weekend while working at the convenience store, his head was crammed with thoughts of Seungjo.
It was worse than the times he habitually thought of him. It could not be helped.
There was no contact from Seungjo afterward. Giyun did not know his personal contact information.
Even if he had known it, he would not have had the courage to reach out first. Until he could meet him again, Giyun had to figure out and define the situation of that day by himself.
Up to the moment he threw informal speech at Seungjo and grabbed him by the collar, Giyun had thought that day would be his memorial day.
A one-time deviation and a big incident. But it was not.
The kiss he gave wiped every other event from memory. Everything else became trivial at once. His own impudent words and actions, and the harsh things he had said before that. Should he call that a relief?
Blankly, Giyun rubbed his lips. There were no wounds, yet the inside of his mouth ached and itched. Just recalling that day made his heart jump noisily.
He had never in his life received even a peck from his parents. It might have been just a kiss to him, but for someone ignorant of physical affection like himself it was shocking in intensity.
The sensation was on a different level from when Chang-gon had groped his body. Back then it had felt only repulsive. This time, however…
“Why on earth did he do that…?”
It was also true that the thought came over him with a jolt that perhaps he too had feelings for him. But he erased that hypothesis as soon as it arose.
To make such a lazy and irresponsible assumption about someone who left without a word and had not contacted him since was too much.
It was wiser to set aside the laughable expectation that both felt the same way. There was no need to seek out hurt.
Even though Monday was not a lecture day, Giyun went in to the office. He told himself it was to get the week’s document work done early, but in truth, it was in hopes he might see Seungjo.
He wanted to hear an excuse or anything from him. He wondered what on earth the man was thinking.
But there was no Seungjo in the company. He had dared to hope, and of course…
Giyun swallowed a sigh. With no choice, he figured he might as well work before going home, and was idly tapping at the keyboard when Sangbin came out of the meeting room with a sulky face.
He had said Assistant Manager Kim chewed him out, but he had not expected him to show it this openly as he came out.
Back at his desk, Sangbin tapped Giyun’s monitor and, as soon as their eyes met, whispered.
“Giyun, get me some coffee.”
The reason he was whispering in that creepy way was not that his vocal cords were damaged. Every time he had tried to send Giyun on a coffee errand, the people around had scolded him heavily, so now he made these secret requests instead.
You could see his formidable determination to make use of others even if it killed him. With the team leader and Assistant Manager Kim away from their seats, there was no one to watch closely.
Do I look like an actual café part-timer?
Giyun darted a short glare at him. Things he usually let slide felt grating today.
But heading to the break room without a word was the greatest resistance he ever offered. Making a cup of coffee was easy and simple. It did not feel like a big deal, so it was awkward to make it an issue, and above all he did not want to stir up trouble with the boss’s staff in Seungjo’s office.
If he thought of it as his job to begin with, it was easier on his mind. Perhaps this level of busywork was something he ought to accept.
“Here.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
After delivering the coffee to Sangbin, it was even harder to focus on work. Sighing at the empty monitor screen, Giyun headed up to the rooftop for a change of mood.
As always, the rooftop garden showed off its lush view under the midday sun. Beyond the thick plant stems you could see Yeouido’s skyline.
Walking the garden, Giyun made eye contact with someone near the pergola. Having disappeared from sight after leaving the meeting room, Assistant Manager Kim gave a small wave from the smoking area. Giyun bowed his head and naturally found his steps going that way.
He was alone there. Smoky cigarette haze was carried off by the wind. Holding out his pack, Assistant Manager Kim asked:
“You smoke?”
“No.”
Giyun shook his head.
“Yeah?”
With that brief follow-up, he stubbed out the cigarette. Flustered, Giyun fluttered his hands.
“You can smoke, it’s fine…”
“I had plenty. Time to head back in.”
He truly looked like he was about to go. Rising from the bench, he put away his cigarettes and picked up his phone, then as if remembering something, exclaimed, Ah.
“Know what? That food photo you took, after I dropped a filter on it and put it on SNS it got more hearts than my selfie. Is that something to be happy about or not?”
“Um…”
Giyun gave an awkward smile. Wrinkling his nose as if joking, Assistant Manager Kim went on:
“The restaurant DM’d me too. Said thanks for the good photo and that they would compensate with something next time we came.”
“Wow, really? That is great.”
“Yeah. Not sure we can go again though, it was expensive. Should I try to push for our next team dinner to be here again?”
Though last month’s dinner was only just gone, he naturally started thinking ahead to the next one. Discussing how to get the most out of company money while staying legal, he ended up plopping back onto the bench.
“Want to stay up here a bit longer? I am going to be working late anyway. No point going down early.”
“Are you working late today?”
“Yeah. Dumb Park Sangbin made a mess of the prelim questions, so I have to review it again from the beginning.”
“Ah…”
So that was why he had called him into the meeting room. He poured out a string of laments. Mostly about Sangbin’s brazen shamelessness and incompetence.
Giyun only listened attentively. He almost agreed that sometimes he too got angry at the constant coffee errands, but it did not feel like a story that suited him, so he held back.
Having vented somewhere, he looked visibly lighter. With the leisure to look around, he changed the subject.
“This garden is pretty, right?”
“Yes. It is pretty.”
“At night the lights come on and it is even prettier.”
He knew. Photos from then remained in his phone. Half of them were blurry because he had been drunk.
“When I am feeling stifled, coming here calms me down a bit.”
He muttered that maybe the reason his mind calmed down was because he smoked every time he came up here.
“Anyway, tulips and peonies bloom here in spring. The boss may seem to prioritize efficiency and practicality when it comes to work, but sometimes there is no one more aesthetic than him.”
Not understanding at once, Giyun tilted his head. Surely not.
“…This garden, the boss made it?”
“Of course. This building belongs to him.”
For a moment, Giyun had no words. With no proper way to relate to it, even being surprised took time.
Owning not a home but a building. His parents had never in their lives owned even a single home. Of course someone in the world must own this building. There would be no building if there were no owner. He had always thought it would be someone he would never meet in his lifetime.
He felt anew that Seungjo was a person from a different world than himself. He had no reason or right to, but Giyun felt a little desolate.
“You did not know? Well, the boss has never mentioned it.”
“No… I did not.”
“He only had the garden made and almost never comes up himself because he is busy. Good for employees like me though.”
Then, saying the dream of a worker was not a company with a rooftop garden but early retirement, he got fired up again.
For a free and abundant future he told him to get employed and start doing finance early, and gave Giyun a long speech. Then he noticed the way Giyun’s face grew darker and scratched his cheek, embarrassed.
“Did I talk too much by myself?”
“No, sir.”
“You looked off. You are not sick, are you?”
“No, I am not. I am healthy.”
He must have looked that way because he was thinking of Seungjo. He tried consciously to smooth the gloom from his expression.
“Do you have worries these days? The other day you sighed in the office.”
“…”
“Is studying not going well?”
He swallowed. Was it all right to say it. Though a different sex, Assistant Manager Kim looked far more experienced than he in human relations and love.
“It is not my story, but…”
“Okay.”
After hesitating, he cautiously began. Rather than continue to stew alone with no answer, maybe it would be all right to ask a third party’s advice. Of course, he would adapt it so that it did not sound like his own story.
“My friend likes someone.”
“Oh, so you like someone?”
His face drained white in an instant.
“No, I said it is my friend’s story.”
“Right, right. I know.”
His impish voice drove Giyun to despair. He could see him biting his lips to hold back laughter. In an instant, Giyun lost the courage to speak.
“Kidding. You are fun to tease, you know that, Giyun.”
“…”
“So what about this friend?”
He coaxed and soothed him to get his clamped shell of a mouth open. Shaking his head pale, after insisting several more times that it really was his friend’s story, Giyun finally continued.
“He does not know the other person’s feelings. What they are thinking…”
“So they are kind of flirting now?”
He shook his head hard. Such a term was out of the question.
“Not at all. My friend likes them one-sidedly.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. That person has no interest in my friend at all. And is very busy…”
“People that age are not that busy. Are they doing external activities? Or a part-time job?”
“…The other person is older.”
“Oh, they are older? How much older?”
“About ten years… maybe.”
He had intended to be honest and say a little more than ten years, but only the words “ten years” had left his mouth before Assistant Manager Kim’s face filled with shock, so he rounded it off there.
With his expression finally in order, he gave sincere advice.
“Giyun, it is not a married woman, right? That is a no. Do not even have a crush.”
“No. And it is not a woman, it is a man…”
“What? Hold on, then is your friend a girl?”
“Pardon? Ah…”
Now that it had reached the point of revealing genders, he faltered. If he said his friend was also a man, he felt like Kim’s mouth would never close. Besides, it would be harder to avoid being identified if he said it was a man.
“…Yes.”
“What, so it really is your friend’s story?”
It sounded deflating. Surely it was not just his imagination. He was still suspicious after all. He tried not to show the chill that ran down his spine.
“Anyway, if the other person has that little interest, there is nothing to be confused about, is there?”
“…But, the other day…”
“So something happened?”
“…The other person gave my friend a ride. And in the car the two of them… somehow…”
“They slept together?”
“What? No!”
His face flared red. He could not even imagine such a thing. Whether that was fortunate or not, because Kim had skipped ahead as if racing through levels, a kiss suddenly felt like nothing.
“…They k-kissed.”
“Playing the field.”
With certainty and contempt, he muttered.
Giyun’s face darkened again.
“…But he stopped in the middle.”
“What does it mean to stop kissing in the middle?”
“I do not know. He started cursing in the middle…”
“Huh?”
“And told him to get out of the car.”
“…That is just a crazy bastard, no?”
The moment he defined Seungjo as a “crazy bastard,” Giyun realized he had made a wildly compressed summary.
It was excessively fragmentary. Nothing he said was false, but it was not the whole. Yet he had no idea how to euphemize and relay the subtle mood and complicated circumstances of that day.
“Do you have his number? Call him. I will fight for you.”
It felt too late to undo it. Watching him get fired up on behalf of a fictional young girl, Giyun floundered like a culprit.
“Please calm down, sir. My friend does not know his number either. There is no way to contact him…”
“What? He bit and sucked a young kid’s lips and teased them, then blocked contact?”
Shameless animal, a wretch who should face history’s judgment.
Worked up, he bombarded a volley of denunciations. That the target of his fury was the company president he worked for was something he might never know to the day he died.
“He looked down on them because they were young. What a character. Ugh, honestly when you said the age thing I did not like it from the start. Throwing himself at someone ten years younger is wrong from the get-go.”
“He never threw himself at them… Really. From beginning to end my friend liked him alone…”
“Giyun, say something that makes sense. If he had no interest, why give them a ride? Why kiss?”
“That is because my friend was drunk…”
“He got them drunk and put them in the car? My God… shameless and calculating.”
“…”
His anger had already risen beyond what Giyun could rein in.
“Oh dear, how will you all manage, you and your friend both so naive. There is a reason older women tell you not to date much older men.”
Be careful with men who have a big age gap. Ironically, his advice resembled the warning Seungjo had once given him. He even wondered if those words had been a kind of signal not to like him.
“Listen up. If a man old enough to know better hits on a girl in her early twenties, it is because that is all he can manage. He could not get chosen by women his own age and got weeded out.”
“…”
“Think about it. If he is a decent man, why would he still be single at that age? Unless he is gay.”
At that last sentence, Giyun’s shoulders twitched. Thankfully he did not notice. He was too busy continuing a self Q and A in a heated voice.
“He looks cool to your friend? That is because your friend is still young and does not know. Spend a little money and it looks like a lot, hold a decent job and it looks like success.”
“…”
“People in their early twenties rarely have cars, and that man drives, so it looks like something. It is not. Plus there are so many car-poor people these days. Look at Park Sangbin. He lives in a one-room and bought a foreign car on a 60-month installment. Where does that man work? A big company?”
“…He is not a company worker.”
“What? He does not work at a company?”
His face grew more serious. This was beyond help. It was written there.
To correct the misunderstanding, Giyun explained:
“Not like that. He is a freelancer… no, a self-employed person…”
“Wow… I have no words. Where does one even start with this.”
“…He runs businesses in his own name and has employees…”
“I am going crazy, business disease too? Be really careful. He might ask you to co-sign someday. If he does not ask your friend to lend him their pocket money, you should call it a blessing. I feel sorry for his employees. I hope their salaries are not late.”
“…”
“No need to see more. Freelancer this, business that, all that glitters is fool’s gold. What he has achieved at his age is actually nothing much. You or your friend, in ten years when you are his age, you will be earning more and doing better.”
“…”
“I promise.”
Because of that impossible boast, he shrank even more. Even if by luck he became a public servant next year, if he added together every salary until retirement and every pension payment until death, it would probably still be less than the profit Seungjo made in a single quarter.
Feeling that overwhelming gap, the self-contempt he felt was indescribably large.
“Do you see reality now?”
“…Yes.”
His face rapidly darkened as he faced a brutal and merciless reality. The assistant manager interpreted that reaction in the way that suited him. That he had enlightened an ignorant soul. That the truth is painful by nature.
“If you understand, you can pass it on to your friend as-is, right?”
“Yes…”
Checking his phone with a satisfied expression, he clicked his tongue about how late it was already. As he made to go back, Giyun carefully spoke.
“Um, sir.”
“Yeah?”
“What you are saying, then…”
After a long hesitation, he asked something he did not expect.
“Anyway, it means that person had some interest in my friend, right? Even a little…”
“…”
“…Which is why they kissed…”
“Giyun, have you not been listening to anything I said?”
He scrunched his face hard. It was understandable to be frustrated. From beginning to end his argument had been consistent. That man was no good, wrong, to throw him away now.
Maybe he was right. The problem was that this was not the answer Giyun was seeking. He had not wanted confirmation of whether Seungjo was a good person or not. He only wondered about Seungjo’s feelings. Just what meaning that action toward him had carried.
Other facts, whether known or not, did not matter. It was all the same to him.
“You said earlier. If there was no interest, he would not have given him a ride…”
“Whether there was interest or not, why do you care? Saying interest makes it sound wholesome, but it is absolutely not the pretty and pure feeling you are imagining. That old fox toyed with your friend who knows nothing.”
“…”
“Your friend went through that and you are not even angry? If you are close enough to share this kind of worry, are you not very close friends? Tell him not to be swayed. Got it? If he dates that kind of man, it will be a hundred or a thousand times to your friend’s loss.”
“…”
“Even if that man contacts him in the future, do not pick up. It is the shortcut to ruining his life.”
“…He says there will be no contact anyway.”
He snorted.
“No, that kind of guy always ends up contacting you. And soon.”
“…”
“I guarantee it.”
Regrettably, everything he guaranteed turned out wrong.
Year-long curricula usually start in an odd month, July, and cycle every two months. Seungjo’s lectures were the same. The basic lecture that began in July ended in late August, and the advanced lecture starting in September was about to begin.
He had been cut from the basic lecture TA job at the end, but fortunately he received notice that this time he would go in as normal. From the manager, of course. Which meant that even after several more days, there was still no contact from him.
Only on lecture day could Giyun barely see Seungjo’s face. Again it was an extra-large lecture hall with a suffocating number of students, and since it was the first day of the term, saving seats was more intense than ever.
One minute before the hour, still as brilliant as ever, he opened the lecture hall door and entered. The instant he saw that ever cool and neat face, Giyun’s heart began to pound and at the same time his spirit sagged a little.
He had been deliberately lingering at the front of the lecture hall under the pretext of tidying the board so he could be there when he came in, but surprisingly, Seungjo did not make eye contact with him even once.
Receiving treatment worse than a pen that had fallen under the lectern, the little confidence he had left drained away.
“What are you doing there? Stop tidying and get out.”
Unable to bear it, Younghyun grabbed him. Caught by Younghyun, he withdrew to the back of the lecture hall.
As always, the opening class was an orientation. After a brief self-introduction, he laid out clearly the content and direction of the lectures to come. Inwardly, Giyun had hoped that with that crisp logic he would also redefine what had happened that day, but it seemed he was the only one curious about the course of this relationship.
If this was how top lecturers’ live classes always were, then while other students reacted to his words like gospel, Giyun alone, a heretic, analyzed him.
He had not expected him to look gaunt, but looking annoyingly fine in itself made him feel aggrieved. Since that day, he had thought of nothing else all day. He had been able to do nothing.
Perhaps he had come down with amnesia, that disease more common than a cold in morning dramas. If so, his lecture should not have been flawless as always. He did not seem like someone who had lost his memory.
Looking at the calm culprit at the lectern, Giyun’s insides alternated between boiling and cooling. He made an effort to ignore the conjecture that what had happened that day meant nothing to him, so he felt no need to redefine or explain anything.
When class ended, he chased after him as he left. When they reached a corridor with fewer people, he hurriedly called out.
“Sir.”
His steps slowed for a moment but did not stop. His gaze brushed him briefly. There was no change in expression. He hesitated over how to break that impassive face.
“Did you get home safely that day?”
“…”
“The night of the team dinner.”
It was a question to see whether it was partial amnesia. He tilted down at him obliquely. Just when a slight line seemed to furrow between his brows.
“Yes.”
With a frustratingly short answer, Seungjo went on his way without regret. There was not even the courtesy of asking in turn whether he had gotten home safely. He remembered that night, but this was a clear expression of intent not to speak of it.
“…”
It took him some time to collect himself. Giyun stood staring blankly down the hall where he had disappeared, like a dog chasing a chicken now looking up at the roof. Such a clean and thorough ignoring.
Had he been greedy to hope for even a shabby excuse?
He let out a hollow laugh.
T/N: This is the end of Volume 1! I don’t know how to fix NU links, so I’ll rename it properly moving forward. Pray for my soul because this story gets SPICY aaahhhh I promise to update this ahaha *melting emoji*
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