SSL 36

“You probably can. Maybe it’s natural for you. I can’t. I can’t think that way. That someone could have a normal favorable impression of me, be nice to me, and try to be considerate. That that’s normal, the basis between people… That’s just… strange. It feels bad. It’s so strange… I can’t imagine it, and I don’t want to.”

“Uh, hey…”

“Cha Jaehyun, you… if it’s you… you can understand.”

After spitting it out, his mind went blank.

His throat was so tight he couldn’t make any more sound. Doyoon gritted his teeth and lowered his head, not even realizing himself that he had thrown a declarative sentence, not a question. Jaehyun came up close and touched his shoulder. Not grabbing or twisting it, but stroking it down gently.

“I know.”

“…”

“It’s okay. I understand.”

The hand touched his hair.

The crown of his head was tousled. But the process was different. This time, Jaehyun didn’t reach his hand over his head. He gathered his fingers neatly, curled them, and held them under Doyoon’s chin, then slowly brought them up past his cheek and ear. Doyoon thought it was like what one would do to a stray cat. Make the hand look smaller so it’s not too threatening, then be considerate and let it smell you first, and then pet it.

“A person is like that… Since you’ve lived a certain way until now, you can’t just change suddenly. I know. I get it. Don’t push yourself.”

Doyoon exhaled.

As the churning in his heart subsided, the tips of his fingers grew warm. It was the first time he had heard Jaehyun swear. He didn’t think he had even sworn when he fought with Choi Jincheol. He was surprised. He was scared. But in the end, Jaehyun had listened to Doyoon’s story. He listened, understood, and came inside.

Even this far. Deeper. Even while swearing, in the end. Doyoon looked up at Jaehyun and said with sincerity.

“Thank you.”

“…It’s nothing.”

Jaehyun lowered the hand that had been tousling Doyoon’s hair. He seemed to be trying to smile but couldn’t, and instead let out a sigh and told him.

“Forget it, you should go now. Forget about the weekend. Let’s meet on Wednesday.”

“Okay.”

“Get home safe.”

“You too.”

Jaehyun turned and started down the stairs leading to the stream. Watching his retreating back, Doyoon was suddenly struck by a thought. ‘Change’?

<Since you’ve lived a certain way until now, you can’t just change suddenly.>

Did that perhaps mean he expected him to be able to change gradually?

Where was the emphasis placed in that sentence? When he first heard it, ‘can’t change’ was what flowed into his ears first, with the stress on ‘can’t’. But thinking back, it seemed that ‘suddenly’ had been pronounced more strongly. Then was Jaehyun expecting Doyoon’s attitude to change? Not right now, but in the future.

Doyoon stood there blankly for a moment. Until Jaehyun’s figure grew smaller across the stream and then disappeared completely. But he couldn’t reach a conclusion. He didn’t know which way to interpret it, and either way, it was hard to pinpoint why it bothered him so much.

Let’s just forget it. Doyoon muttered to himself. Other things were too bright to hold such a dim, meaningless question in his heart. The hand that had stroked his shoulder, the voice that had said, I know, I understand, the fingers that had gently tousled his hair. He wanted to remember only those things. Doyoon started down the embankment on the opposite set of stairs.

The bus stop was about a five-minute walk away. Where the two-lane road next to the embankment met a four-lane road. After getting on a blue bus and sitting in an empty window seat at the back, Doyoon looked out the window. Then he suddenly furrowed his brow slightly. Because a stain had appeared in his field of vision.

He thought it was one of the black dots that sometimes float on the cornea, but it wasn’t. When he narrowed his focus, he could see a bug stuck to the window. That’s what had looked like a stain in the scenery outside.

Doyoon stared at the bug. It was a bug with very long legs. But something about its balance was off. Some part of its body was a wrong answer. Doyoon tried to guess the wrong part. Antennae, one, two. Legs, one, two… four. Ah, that’s right. A number appeared in his head. Insects are supposed to have 6 legs. But it only has 4. So, wrong answer.

Then, phrases suitable for interpreting the situation in front of him came to mind. A bug that has lost 2 legs. Clinging to the windowpane with only the remaining 4. The bus speeds up. The bug’s body writhes as if it’s about to fall off. Doyoon’s eyelids twitched along with it. It hurts. It’s uncomfortable.

It’s always like this when he sees rotting corpses or insects, bugs, and the like twitching from severe injuries. He can’t empathize with anything that is perfectly alive and living normally, but he is drawn to and automatically empathizes with things that are in pain or were in enough pain to die. It’s just like me. It’s disgusting. But it hurts. It’s twitching disgustingly because it hurts.

But today was strange. A sense of incongruity separates the bug and Doyoon like a transparent film. Is it the same as me? Doyoon mulled it over in his head.

That bug, is it the same as me? Yes, it is. Of course. But there’s a part that’s not the same, too. The bug can’t buy Cha Jaehyun coffee and a pastry.

“…”

Doyoon blinked. As his focus blurred, his own silhouette, dimly reflected in the glass window, spread across his vision instead of the bug, but Doyoon did not look away. Normally, if he came across something like a mirror, he would have hastily turned his head away. Instead, Doyoon stared straight at the area around his own pupils and made a new resolution. I have to get into a good university, he thought.

I’ll go to a good university, graduate, get a good job, and make a lot of money. And… Doyoon replayed the fantasy he had already had hundreds of times in his mind. About 8 years later, his father goes to the bank one day and is surprised when he checks his passbook. Because a large sum of money has been deposited. He doesn’t know who deposited it.

The father checks his passbook again the next month. More money has come in. That large sum of money starts coming into the passbook every month from that day on. Anonymously, of course.

Imagining the numbers, which were large-unit, though he didn’t know the exact amount, Doyoon grinned foolishly. Imagining this scene always made him feel good. Money is wonderful. It’s just a number, so Kang Doyoon isn’t attached to it. So it’s fine to send it to him as much as he wants. Then he might be able to repay even a fraction. The things he had done to his father, his hyung, and his younger brother.

I can become a better person than I am now. But as he dreamed of the future, a desire for the present began to creep up in his heart. A desire he had gloomily buried a few days ago after hearing Jaehyun’s words. Should I maybe get a part-time job, too?

<For now, just focus on studying. Get into a good university for bioengineering, graduate, and get a good job. It’s more efficient to make a lot of money then and pay me back too.>

Jaehyun had certainly said that. But…

Through the noise inside the bus, the sound of cicadas came back to his ears vividly. The rustling wind carrying their sound, the fine brown hair stained with shadows dropped by the rustling leaves, the large hand holding the plastic cup with condensation on its surface, the lips that had held the end of the light blue straw.

I want to buy him things again. Doyoon muttered to himself without realizing it.

I want to buy him more delicious things, and more of them. I don’t want to wait for several years. Not too far in the future, but now, in a few days, maybe next week, one more time… But then he heard a voice, and Doyoon almost jumped out of his seat.

“Look at you, staring at something just like yourself again.”

Who was that.

Even after turning around, Doyoon couldn’t recognize the person for a few seconds. Because he was so surprised. It felt like it took time for his brain to bounce halfway out of his skull and back in. A smiling face. A smile that stretched the mouth wide.

But even though he was smiling, he was scary. Something was dark. Something dark was caked around his eyes and mouth. A beast-like hostility. What was that? I’ve seen it many times at school. The dark, sticky face gestured toward the window with its chin and spat out again.

“That bug is just like you, isn’t it. Right.”

Ah.

It’s Woo Jincheol. He finally remembered the name.

Doyoon was sitting in a two-person seat, and the seat next to him was empty. Jincheol looked down at the empty seat blankly, then plopped down.

Doyoon flinched. He tried to move away so their bodies wouldn’t touch and his shoulder pressed against the wall by the window, and he ended up sitting with his legs gathered in a crouch. Jincheol observed this, then let out a sigh. Then he started talking in a low, soft voice, so that others around them wouldn’t hear well.

“So tired of this.”

“…”

“It’s tiring enough seeing you at school, but do I have to see you on the bus during break too? Why are you wandering around?”

“…”

“Tell me. You don’t have any friends to meet. You can’t even go to an academy because your family has no money. So why did you crawl out of the house?”

His tone was as if he was genuinely curious. When Doyoon didn’t react, his eyes downcast, Jincheol tapped Doyoon’s calf with the toe of his sneaker and asked.

“Did you meet Cha Jaehyun again, by any chance?”

“…?”

“What.”

When Doyoon looked up with wide eyes, Jincheol laughed out loud.

“No way, is it true?”

Doyoon quickly averted his gaze again. A mistake. He had looked up in surprise, wondering how he knew. It was just a probe, and he had fallen for it. Jincheol snickered to himself for a while, then suddenly threw another question at him, his legs spread wide and arms crossed.

“Hey, since we’ve met, let me ask you straight up.”

“…”

“You’re a homo, aren’t you.”

“Uh…?”

“You fuck with Cha Jaehyun?”

His voice dropped even lower. A tone as if whispering a secret.

“Like, do you suck his dick and stuff?”

“What, what are you…”

“You went to a Gangnam test-prep academy with him last week, didn’t you.”

Doyoon’s heart dropped with a thud. As if he had been caught doing something bad. Because Jincheol was indeed speaking as if the two had done something very bad. Jincheol continued, smiling.

“I know some of the kids who go to the elite class at that academy. Some of them said they saw you and Cha Jaehyun at the information session.”

“…”

“That bastard hates academies. Seriously, I asked him so many times to go to an academy with me, and he shut me down every single time, you know? But why would he go with you.”

“…”

“And he was suddenly being all nice to Park Beomjun out of nowhere. Turns out, it was to go to that academy’s information session. He got close to him to take you. Because you have to be invited by a student to participate.”

So you had to be invited.

You couldn’t just go. Cha Jaehyun, you really went to a lot of trouble. To take me. As he was mulling this over, the voice reached his ear again.

“If you were a girl, I’d get it.”

“…?”

“But you’re not. So that only means you two are homos. Just by looking at you, you’d be the one who spreads your legs.”

Jincheol’s gaze quickly scanned Doyoon from head to toe.

“Tell me. Did you ask him first?”

“Ask what…”

“They say homos can recognize each other. So I’m asking if you were the one who initiated it. Like, play with me a little, and I’ll suck your dick.”

“No. That’s not it.”

Doyoon, pale as a sheet, shook his head.

“I didn’t do anything like that. I’d never.”

“Oh yeah?”

Fire flashed from his shin.

Doyoon almost let out a cry of pain. He barely managed to hold it in by biting down, but tears welled up in his eyes. Jincheol had stomped on his foot under the seat.