“……You never told me you were this handsome. Now you really have to take responsibility for me, hyung.”
Haein knew that was an utterly ridiculous way of shifting the blame, but there was no denying it.
He did not only admire Ignis-nim.
It was an undeniable fact that he could no longer reject.
When Yeonjun opened his eyes the next morning, he groaned and pressed a hand to his forehead as a hangover weighed heavily on his head.
He did not think he had drunk very much.
The last memory remaining in his mind was of sipping a strong, sweet cocktail with a faint grape-juice flavor while disparaging it and wondering why anyone liked things like this.
Had he finished all of it? Had he then ordered something else and guzzled that down like water too?
No matter how thoroughly he searched his memory, nothing after that moment came to him.
“…….”
Simply enduring the headache that had assaulted his still-foggy mind was difficult enough.
Urgh. Forget thinking about it. Let’s sleep for ten more minutes and get up afterward.
Just as Yeonjun blearily opened his eyes to check the time on his phone, he realized that no matter how deeply he dug through his memories, he could not remember returning home safely.
His heart seemed to drop with a thud.
Am I insane? Then where exactly am I?
The bedding wrapped comfortably around his body, and the sensation was undoubtedly familiar.
There was no way he had fallen unconscious and somehow returned home in perfect safety.
Alarmed by the dizzying situation, Yeonjun abruptly sat upright.
Gasp…
The interior of the studio apartment he had seen so often that he was sick of it came into view, just as it always did. It was the same cramped one-room apartment, with nothing special or different about it.
How did I manage to get home safely…?
Yeonjun sat up with a faint sense of anticipation.
What he discovered was a figure asleep in one corner of the sofa with his head resting on a cushion.
“……???!!!”
Why is there a person over there?
Yeonjun had not seen his face yet, but he did not have a single acquaintance with that kind of build who dressed like a young college student.
Of course, Ignis had acquaintances like that.
However, Yeonjun could not even imagine how anyone might have contacted Haein, so there was no chance he would associate the college student sprawled across his sofa with Haesal.
What kind of accident did I cause yesterday? What could I possibly have done to bring a complete stranger into my house?
His horror mounting by the second, Yeonjun grabbed the blanket and pulled it over his head.
He wanted to escape anywhere at all.
He had not gotten drunk, picked a fight with someone, or clung to them while pretending they were close like some lunatic, had he?
Yeonjun knew perfectly well that he was not that kind of person. Still, if he had to choose the most plausible scenario, perhaps he had struck up an instant friendship with a customer he met at the bar, shared a drink with him, then brought him home because it had gotten late……
Something along those lines.
Me…?
It seemed impossible no matter how much he thought about it.
Yeonjun was far more attractive than average, and his appearance had caused more than enough strange people to approach and harass him over the years.
Even while drunk, there was no way he would have accepted an invitation to share a table from someone who obviously had ulterior motives.
Then what had happened?
Yeonjun instinctively checked the condition of his lower body.
He was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, and only the top button of his shirt near the collar had been undone. It did not appear that he had done anything that could become a problem.
Then had he truly grabbed some random college student off the street, drunk with him, and invited him to sleep over?
Me?
Still unable to recover from the shock, Yeonjun tried not to look at the person lying on the sofa and squeezed his eyes firmly shut.
Avoiding the problem would not make it disappear.
He checked the phone he had dragged beneath the blanket with him. He did not have to leave for work immediately, but he did not exactly have plenty of time either if he needed to deal with the person sleeping on his sofa.
He needed to resolve that within thirty minutes so his hangover could ease a little and he could gather his senses before leaving the apartment.
What in the world did yesterday’s me do?
Yeonjun repeatedly pulled at his hair and struggled to remember. The only thing that came to mind was the strange sensation of something unusually sweet and soft touching his lips.
After squeezing his memory dry for a long while, all he could vaguely recall was a fluffy, pure-white rabbit nestled in his arms.
Had it been when Yeonjun was in elementary school?
At his maternal grandparents’ home, there had been a white rabbit his uncle had supposedly found abandoned somewhere.
It was not the small, cute size people usually imagined. The rabbit was larger than a decent-sized small dog and looked as though it could fight off a burglar, but it loved being petted by people.
Perhaps because it rarely had an opportunity to leave its enclosure unless young relatives like Yeonjun visited, the rabbit followed him around faithfully.
Its huge front teeth occasionally flashed as though they could chew through bone, but it was adorable when it rammed its forehead against Yeonjun’s neck as if demanding to be petted.
His parents always warned him that animals could transmit germs, so he had to wash his hands after touching it and must not even think about kissing it.
However, there was no way a child would obey his parents with one hundred percent devotion.
Yeonjun’s greatest expression of affection for the rabbit had been secretly pressing a kiss to its small, fluffy forehead when it burrowed into his arms, then hugging it tightly and stroking it.
How many years ago had that been……?
Forget twenty years. It had happened almost twenty-two years ago.
He had no idea why the memory was surfacing now, but he could not completely shake the feeling that something had touched his lips.
Still, it doesn’t seem like I caused any major disaster…….
Yeonjun finally gathered his courage and lowered the blanket.
The presumed college student was still asleep, breathing softly.
I can’t keep ignoring this. Unless I plan to abandon this apartment and run away, I need to send that out properly and clean up the situation.
After finally hardening his resolve, Yeonjun stretched one foot out of bed.
The person on the sofa apparently slept extremely lightly. He shifted, then blearily opened his eyes.
“…….”
The face looking up at him after rising diagonally from the sofa really did belong to someone Yeonjun had never seen before.
The moment their eyes met, Yeonjun wanted to vanish somewhere.
“Uh…”
His cheeks still held a plump trace of baby fat, and he had a rounded forehead and large eyes.
His features were delicate and finely arranged, giving the impression of beauty before handsomeness. As soon as the handsome young man’s gaze met Yeonjun’s, he smiled softly.
He’s smiling?
Had Yeonjun been in a relatively sound state of mind, he might have wondered how a boy could be so pretty. At the moment, however, that was hardly the important issue.
The young man spoke first.
“Are you feeling a little better? I was worried you’d still have a hangover from yesterday.”
Yeonjun’s eyes immediately narrowed at the strangely familiar voice.
What is it?
It did not sound like a manner of speech he had heard from very close by, but it was definitely a tone he had heard sometime within the past month.
“Who… are you?”
A sense of foreboding swept over Yeonjun. Why did this complete stranger give him such a strange feeling of familiarity?
As Yeonjun slowly pushed himself backward toward the opposite side of the bed, the young man, who was the prettiest male Yeonjun had ever seen, smiled brightly and answered.
“You really don’t know who I am, hyung?”
At that moment, Yeonjun felt as though the ground beneath his feet had collapsed into a thousand-foot abyss.
A light yet grounded voice.
The excited way he called him hyung.
Only one person could be identified from such unimpressive clues.
“Wow, I’m telling you, I was seriously shocked. I never imagined you’d be that handsome, hyung.”
“…….”
Yeonjun sat at the table across from Haein and stared at the bean-sprout soup bubbling in the pot.
Even though Yeonjun had not uttered a single word, Haein chattered away as if that were nothing unusual while opening the package of instant rice he had heated.
“Eat something first. Fortunately, you don’t seem like you’re about to throw up or anything. You’ll probably feel better once you eat some hangover soup and warm your stomach.”
Was Haein simply meddlesome, or was he extraordinarily shameless?
Unbothered by Yeonjun’s cold response, Haein ladled steaming bean-sprout soup into a large bowl and held it out to him.
Then he poured a couple of ladles into the strangely designed soup bowl he had taken for himself, scooped up a large helping of white rice, and mixed it into the broth.
As for how this situation had supposedly come about:
The previous night, Yeonjun had become completely intoxicated after just one drink at the bar, leaving him insensible and unable to return home by himself.
At that exact moment, he had supposedly seen Haesal’s message asking when he planned to log in and called to ask whether Haesal could come pick him up.
Me???
Yeonjun could not imagine doing such a thing, but his phone records proved that Haein was not lying.
[Outgoing Call]
[DoHyun]
It was genuinely listed as an outgoing call, not an incoming one.
Why in the world?
Granted, it was not as though Yeonjun had any other friends or coworkers who would come pick him up. But how had he ended up calling some guy whose address he did not even know?
The guy who had truly come running when summoned and Yeonjun, who had summoned him in the first place, were equally out of their minds.
In any case, Haein claimed that after receiving Yeonjun’s call, he had rushed over immediately, carried Yeonjun all the way home, and then borrowed the sofa for the night because it had gotten so late.
Unlike Yeonjun, whose brows remained drawn together from the lingering headache, Haein wore a bright and cheerful expression the entire time.
Leave a Reply