ASIAH 36

“…Jooyoon. Have you ever had a girlfriend?”

“What are you going to do with that information?”

It didn’t seem like he would suddenly open up and confess that he might like men, too. If he liked women, then what was that at the orientation party? And if he liked men, I was still curious what that was all about.

But Jooyoon kept clamming up, so I had no choice but to provoke him.

“But if you dated a small woman, I think she’d be kind of pitiful. …Then again, does it matter once you’ve got her on her back?”

Finally, Jooyoon showed with his entire body that he was displeased. It felt good to have elicited some kind of reaction, but it was so frustrating that he wouldn’t talk about that day until the very end. He even called me trash, and at that point, I couldn’t help but laugh bitterly.

‘Look who’s talking.’

Was he being defensive to tell me not to dig any deeper? But then Jooyoon suddenly asked a question that caught me off guard.

“You don’t smoke.”

It’s because of you that I can’t! But if I showed any weakness here, I would have to admit that I’d been swayed by Jooyoon.

“How did you know? You’re surprisingly interested in me, huh.”

“You’re so annoying…”

“Ah, is that why you won’t talk about women? Jooyoon, are you gay? He’s gay, this guy. He’s totally gay, isn’t he? Hey, Joo-gay!”

Even as he babbled on like that, Hyun Jaekyung’s mind was filled with nothing but curses.

‘Fucking bastard! He’s the one who said I was his type. He touched me so… so stickily!’

Even though I was prodding him so openly, Jooyoon showed little reaction. At this point, it was do or die.

“I quit smoking. Someone said they didn’t like it. How about that, this decisiveness and ability to execute? Isn’t it charming?”

After going this far, anyone who wasn’t a complete idiot would realize what I was trying to bring up. If he pretended not to know again, then he was really trying to avoid it. But this time, too, Jooyoon spouted nonsense like, “So you smoked in high school and then quit,” and even asked if I was a delinquent.

‘What the fuck is he talking about?’

He should at least be consistent in trying to push people down. He kept acting like he was lost in his own world, which was confusing. With this, Jooyoon was crowned the number one delinquent among all the guys Hyun Jaekyung had ever met.

“So… are you scared?”

That I’m harping on a single mistake? But Jooyoon asked back as if he genuinely had no idea what I was talking about.

“What’s your concept? Why would I be scared of you?”

“Because I don’t know what you’re thinking when you go about your day.”

The honest thought popped out unexpectedly, but Jooyoon’s demeanor didn’t waver at all. Jooyoon took off his gloves, and goosebumps instantly rose on the back of Hyun Jaekyung’s neck. With the gloves he had just removed, of all things, he had touched the soft flesh of his neck where he had fondled him before.

Jooyoon touched Hyun Jaekyung as if it were no big deal and even spouted these words.

“Why do you keep trying to sound me out like that? Do you like me?”

‘What?’

Jooyoon was the last person who should be saying something like that. In the moment I was so dumbfounded I couldn’t react at all, Jooyoon took it a step further.

“Sorry, but I’m not interested in men.”

Hyun Jaekyung tried to sort out the feelings he was experiencing, but it wasn’t going well. For now, it became clear that this bastard was trying to turn what happened that day into a joke or something that never happened. Despite committing such a shitty act, he had shaken it all off by himself.

Never in his life had he thought he would ever be upset or troubled by something like this. If anything, he had considered such worries to be the pitiful and worthless problems of people who had one-sided crushes on him.

‘That son of a bitch! Fucking bastard!’

Since that Jooyoon bastard showed no intention of cleaning up his mess, I had to reclaim my own masculinity. That’s why I skipped classes and desperately went out to have fun. I went to everything with “ting” in the name, like blind dates and group dates, and even left my regular club where my face was well-known to party in other neighborhoods, but it wasn’t as easy as I thought.

After repeated failures, one day I booked a room only to run out alone and start drinking. Then, pathetically, like a line from some cheesy old song, I called Jooyoon.

I wanted to demand, “Why did you do that to me that day?” but when Jooyoon actually answered the phone, no words came out. The memory of my own past, of freely mocking and feeling disgusted by anyone who was clingy, was even more torturous.

The truth he was only now admitting was that Hyun Jaekyung was not a cool guy.

I was living like I wasn’t even alive, on my way to the department office for my work-study job. I ran right into Jooyoon in the lobby of the Fine Arts building, and it had been a really long time since we’d run into each other in a space that wasn’t a classroom. Normally, we would have just pretended not to know each other and avoided one another, but that bastard Jooyoon held out a 10,000 won bill.

“She told me to go eat with you, but we’re not exactly on terms to sit face-to-face and eat together.”

Son of a bitch! He said sunbae Ryu Seonhee gave him the money, but who knew when he had managed to sweet-talk her to get it. After that, I was so furious I don’t even remember what nonsense I spouted. Jooyoon, in a calmer tone compared to Hyun Jaekyung, asked.

“Are you angry?”

“Huh?”

“Are you angry with me about something?”

Could it be that Jooyoon didn’t remember what happened that day? But didn’t he say he doesn’t get drunk? Absolutely not. He said it so many times!

Hyun Jaekyung denied it reflexively.

“Why would I be?”

“I guess you just enjoy making people feel like an idiot on your own like that?”

“Who made who feel like an idiot? That was me, not…”

But Jooyoon shot back without taking a breath. It was a rare occurrence for the guy, and it was the most he had spoken since the orientation party. After that, he even said something about being a delinquent and to leave him out of it. And to top it all off…

“I can’t stand guys like you.”

Hyun Jaekyung had rarely lost, not just in fistfights, but in verbal arguments either. But this time, his mind went completely blank, and he had no idea what to say back. And that son of a bitch’s venomous words didn’t even end there.

“Even if you were the exact same person but your gender was switched, I probably would have still hated you.”

Ah… so he’s telling me to stop bothering him? Now I finally get it. It was a declaration of his intentions, so clear that the time I’d spent worrying alone now seemed absurd. In the end, Jooyoon was the same type of person as Hyun Jaekyung. No, it became certain that he was an even worse bastard than Hyun Jaekyung.

“I, I also… wouldn’t do it with you even if you paid me, you know?”

He was so confused that the words wouldn’t come out smoothly. He wanted to storm out of the school and go to a club, but he knew it wouldn’t be effective. Completely drained of energy, Hyun Jaekyung turned his steps toward the dormitory. It had been a while since his roommate had moved out, so he could be alone.

As he drank the alcohol he’d stashed away, the most painful thing was the fact that he, ‘the Hyun Jaekyung,’ had been so swayed by a prank played by a classmate. He, who was always the one throwing stones, never the frog struck dead by one, had been had by a nerdy otaku guy.

“Son of a bitch…”

His chest felt so tight that he tried cursing, but his voice came out sounding seriously choked up. He craved a cigarette, but this time too, even lighting it was impossible.

Even if someone had beaten him up, his mind and body wouldn’t have hurt in so many different ways. Tormented by self-loathing throughout the night, Hyun Jaekyung finally fell asleep.

After a long while, his consciousness began to surface, seemingly due to some noise. He was still tired, and even without looking at the clock, he knew it hadn’t been long since he’d lain down. He had planned to take the whole day off, and he was annoyed that he had woken up already.

BANG!

Just then, a sound like a bomb going off suddenly came from his dorm room door. Hyun Jaekyung shot up without even opening his eyes.

“You fucking, what the hell is this bastard…”

“…You were in your room.”

The guy standing in front of the door was the last person he expected, Jooyoon. Jooyoon’s question was stupid, but Hyun Jaekyung’s reaction was even stupider. Wondering if he looked like a total mess, he went to the sink to try and look at least human, but it was worse than he’d expected.

When he put on his horn-rimmed glasses and opened the door again, Jooyoon’s attitude had softened slightly.

“They said you’ve been running around like that lately. You must be really sick.”

“Who told you that, Ha Wonjong?”

‘Pretending to be worried, when I’m in this state because of you. So you don’t like me, the one you made a move on first, but you like everyone else? You treat Wonjong so well, but me…’

…He even started to feel that kind of defiant anger.

As he snapped, asking if he liked Ha Wonjong, the corners of Jooyoon’s mouth drooped lower and lower. No matter, there was no way he could be more hurt than Hyun Jaekyung had been all this time.

But… hadn’t Jooyoon come here after hearing that Hyun Jaekyung was sick?

‘I guess he was concerned?’

As his thoughts reached that point, his heart, strangely enough, began to soften again. However, as if he had read Hyun Jaekyung’s mind and was saying, ‘Nope, you idiot, go fuck yourself,’ Jooyoon held out a jar of citron tea marmalade.

“Eunha noona told me to give you this.”

For a moment, Hyun Jaekyung wanted to beat the handsome face hidden behind those glasses to a pulp. Judging by the brief impulse, it really felt like he could beat the bastard in front of him to death.

While Hyun Jaekyung failed to show much of a reaction on the outside and just stared at the glass jar, Jooyoon pushed it toward him as if to entrust it to him. As he took the citron tea marmalade and replied reluctantly, his voice came out cracked.

“…So you came on an errand for Eunha noona.”

‘That’s it.’

Hyun Jaekyung himself had often hit on people and then forgotten about them even when he wasn’t interested, so he could understand this situation better than anyone. Though he had truly hoped this wasn’t the reason.

He tried to think calmly, but he couldn’t handle his own emotions. The fact that a person like Jooyoon was nice to other people was, more than anything else, unfair and hurtful to his pride, and he was so furious he felt like he might even cry.

As Hyun Jaekyung threw a thoughtless tantrum, Jooyoon softened his tone as if he were soothing a spiteful child.

“If you’re really sick, don’t take your anger out on me for no reason and get some rest. I’ve run the errand, so I’ll be going now.”

That response, too, was like he was being the mature one and letting it slide, so I couldn’t just let it go. Hyun Jaekyung reflexively grabbed Jooyoon by the collar. But he didn’t have the confidence to lift his head.

Knowing full well that his own expression must be pathetic, and then some, he kept his gaze lowered and muttered.

“You really seem to like women. I’ve never seen anyone who likes women as much as you do.”