Gentle Giant Chapter 3
[11:11 AM│Juho-ssi! I’m sorry ㅜㅜㅠㅠㅠㅠㅜㅠㅜㅜ]
[11:11 AM│ㅜㅠㅠㅠㅠ I’m sorry!! Please don’t block me ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ]
[11:11 AM│ㅠㅠㅠ I apologize!! ㅠㅠㅠ]
He thought that if he did this, maybe Juho wouldn’t be able to block him out of pity.
Whether he had seen the messages that suddenly streamed up, read receipts appeared and shortly after, a reply popped up.
[Lee Juho: Hyung? What’s wrong?│11:15 AM]
[11:16 AM│Juho-ssi!! I was being too annoying asking you all sorts of things, wasn’t I?!! I really won’t do that anymore! Please don’t block me!!]
[Lee Juho: Huh? I’ve never blocked you, hyung???│11:17 AM]
[11:17 AM│Actually… I read this post. ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅜ]
[11:18 AM│(Photo)]
Dain captured a screenshot of the post and sent it to Juho. Only after sending it did he realize it looked like he had introduced himself as a loser, but it was already spilled water.
Even after the read receipt appeared, no reply came from Juho for a while. In that silence, Dain’s throat went completely dry.
Though they were acquaintances who met through an app, this was Dain’s one and only friend – one he never had before, didn’t have now, and wouldn’t have in the future. Dain didn’t want to lose the friend he had barely managed to make because of his mistake.
“Wh-what should I do…”
Moisture tinged the voice that escaped without him realizing it. He was so nervous that sweat from his palms was getting on his phone’s screen.
When one minute felt as long as ten minutes, he finally felt the vibration indicating a message from Juho had arrived.
[Lee Juho: Hahaha. Hyung, it’s fine! I didn’t feel that way at all!│11:26 AM]
[Lee Juho: ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ Hyung, you were worried about getting blocked?? I actually wanted to become closer friends with you. I had no idea.│11:26 AM]
“Whoa… Amazing…!”
The friend he had made was an angel. Anyone could see that the loser described in that post was obviously referring to Dain. Yet Juho sent refreshing letters spelling “hahaha” and comforted Dain instead.
[11:27 AM│Then you won’t block me?!! ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅜㅜㅜㅠㅠ]
[Lee Juho: Of course not! Don’t worry!│11:29 AM]
[11:30 AM│Thank you. ㅠㅠㅠㅜ]
[Lee Juho: Hyung, let’s keep being close friends!│11:33 AM]
Wasn’t the reason he had no friends all this time just waiting to meet Lee Juho?
Juho’s messages seemed to glow with holiness in every letter. Dain liked this kind friend more and more.
After that incident, their messages accumulated at an even faster pace, and eventually they became close enough for Dain to speak comfortably in casual speech to Juho without reading the mood.
* * *
A few days later, Dain was waiting for a lecture that hadn’t started yet, giggling as he exchanged messages with Juho.
Since it was embarrassing to openly put his phone on the desk, he had lowered his phone below the desk and was busily moving his fingers when a male student sitting in front turned to Dain and spoke to him.
“Hey, what are you doing??”
“Huh??”
Seeing Dain with his head down, smiling, seemed to spark curiosity.
Dain lifted his face from looking at his phone screen to look at the male student in front. He was a student from another department whom he had met a few times in the lecture hall.
“Watching something fun??”
“Huh? Oh, nothing…”
“No way!! You just had your phone under the desk giggling!”
“Uh, but… wh-why does that…?”
Dain’s expression showed confusion.
He had never exchanged words with this student before, but today he seemed to be speaking very familiarly. However, that tone was strangely off-putting.
Because Dain was talking with the male student, he put the phone he had been holding under the desk onto the desk. The male student glanced at the conversation streaming up on Dain’s phone and began laughing loudly.
“Yaa! Are you dating someone by any chance??!”
At that loud laughter and the word “dating,” the gazes of students around them all focused on Dain at once. Dain’s face began turning red from suddenly receiving other people’s attention.
“Whoa! It must be real!”
“N-no…!”
The male student snatched Dain’s phone and scrolled through the conversation he had been having with Juho.
At that rude behavior, Dain quickly snatched his phone back, but only vulgar curiosity remained in the male student’s eyes.
“Blood type?? Wow, that’s hilarious. Hey. What year were you born, the stone age?! You’re hitting on someone so tackily.”
“I-I never did that! And I’m not hitting on anyone!”
“Yeah right! Hey? When meeting someone, you should…”
All sorts of crude words and dating stories poured from the male student’s mouth. Having to listen to stories he wasn’t curious about and didn’t want to hear made his expression naturally scrunch up.
To make matters worse, the gazes of surrounding students became increasingly sharp.
This was because the male student had noticed that they met through chatting with Juho and was making a big fuss about it.
Even more attention was focused on them.
It was unfair. The male student had cleverly portrayed him as if he went around meeting people for such purposes.
Dain’s entire body, not just his face, turned red from the absurd and shameful situation. His head was getting dizzy, and it felt like cat ears would pop out any moment.
Beast-men did have their own characteristics, but normally they maintained the same appearance as regular humans. However, when suddenly flustered or extremely angry, each species’ traits would prominently appear to the naked eye.
Generally, mammalian species would have beast ears pop out or whiskers grow longer, while reptilian species would have changes in their skin condition.
Since Dain was also a beast-man, when he was young, his ears or whiskers would sometimes pop out when scolded by his parents or bullied by friends at school. However, after becoming an adult and learning to control his emotions to some degree, they had never appeared once, but facing this unexpected situation made it difficult to control his body.
When beast-men who couldn’t control themselves as adults and displayed those characteristics were seen, everyone would offer a concerned word. It was a clear change that indicated the situation wasn’t normal. Moreover, if such an appearance was shown at school with many students of similar age, there was no telling how rumors would spread.
Therefore, he had to cut this off before the male student said anything worse.
Dain put strength into his naturally clenching hands and spoke strongly to the male student.
“I have never met anyone for such reasons.”
“Huh? What? Why are you getting serious? Oh, come on! It was just a joke… You always look bored being alone, so I thought I’d talk to you a bit?”
“I don’t need such words. A-and everything you said about me was just your own imagination!”
“So what? Can’t even take a joke? You’re fucking sensitive!”
When Dain, who he thought would just stay quiet with a clueless face, spoke sharply, the male student’s face crumpled. Then he went over to his friends sitting across from them.
Dain thought that was the end of it. However, the tension continued as the male student and his friends glanced at Dain while snickering.
Dain felt heat rising in his already dizzy head. At this rate, his uncontrollable body might really change on its own.
Dain couldn’t understand why he had to become the target of such a nasty person’s boredom relief. He was just having a conversation with a friend.
His eyes reddened with injustice.
Except for when he was very young, this was the first time he had been directly confronted by peers like this.
Dain finally couldn’t stand the sight of them seemingly talking about him endlessly and left the lecture hall.
The lecture hall door closed and he was finally freed from that unpleasant male student’s laughter. However, that snickering and mockery kept circling in one side of his head. The curious expressions of people around him also remained like afterimages.
While the male student was picking on Dain, not a single person showed interest in Dain’s injustice. They were just enjoying being able to peek into the private life of a gloomy beast-man they usually found off-putting.
The heat that had risen with his dizzy head since earlier wouldn’t subside. Dain, who had been standing in the lecture hall corridor, hurried toward the bathroom with urgent steps.
Dain, barely holding onto his fading consciousness, entered the last stall and locked the door with trembling hands.
The moment he locked the door, pointed ears popped up on Dain’s head, and long whiskers grew around his mouth.
His body, unable to overcome the excessive stress situation, finally revealed traces of the cat.
Although doing this wouldn’t make them go away quickly, Dain pressed down on the ears that had appeared on his head with his fingertips.
Once the ears popped out, it would take 30 minutes for them to go back in. He was trapped in the bathroom until the ears went back in. If he walked around in this state, there was no telling what people would say.
Dain just stared at the bathroom door with a blank expression, thinking about what had just happened to him.
Did I do something wrong?
Am I really such a boring person who can’t even play along with jokes?
Why are they so desperate to make me into such a low-class person?
Increasingly negative thoughts were chaining together, making Dain’s head spin.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
