Memories of the past clouded my mind. To snap myself back to reality, I hurriedly lifted the coffee sitting on the table and gulped it down.
The ice cubes clinked against my teeth, and the cold liquid sliding down my throat made my vision swim for a moment.
When I set the cup down and shifted my gaze, I saw the scribbled words written on the back of a scrap sheet.
Amid the messy pen strokes, certain phrases had been traced over again and again until they stood out clearly.
First meeting → Original story begins? Entering love triangle
The moment he became certain he liked him…
Looking at that, I could tell exactly where I had stopped writing before my mind drifted off. I must have been trying to organize my thoughts, only to get lost in old memories instead.
Min Siheon’s gaze left me and moved to the scrap paper I had been staring at. Thinking I couldn’t let him see it, I hurriedly flipped the page over.
“Jungwoo-ya, what’s that?”
“It’s nothing. You guys are going to keep working for a while, right? I’ve got class soon. I’m going to step out for a cigarette. Keep going without me.”
I shoved the scrap paper into my bag along with the half-messed-up assignment. Even as I pulled out a pack of cigarettes and stood up, Min Siheon only kept watching me.
His gaze lingered—its meaning unreadable—and I couldn’t bear to face it any longer. I was the one who broke away first.
The moment I stepped out of the air-conditioned room, which had been cool to the point of being chilly, the blazing heat of early summer poured over me.
Feeling my skin grow sticky with sweat in an instant, I made my way to a secluded corner of the alley beside the café.
Why couldn’t I endure Min Siheon’s gaze? Standing beside the dirty outdoor air-conditioning unit layered with dust and grime, I carefully replayed my behavior from earlier.
It was just… somehow, in that moment, I felt like I shouldn’t stay next to him.
With a suffocating feeling in my chest, I pulled out a cigarette and placed it between my lips. I flicked the lighter, exhaled something close to a sigh, and released the smoke into the air.
Maybe it was because I hadn’t eaten and was smoking on an empty stomach, but my insides burned. The unfinished phrase from earlier floated through my mind, and I didn’t feel particularly well.
When had I first thought Min Siheon liked Go Heemin…?
I had witnessed a strangely charged moment during their first meeting. But I hadn’t thought it would develop into deep feelings right away.
If anything, Min Siheon had spent more time with me than with Go Heemin, so that first encounter had quickly faded from my thoughts.
“Was I crazy? Jumping to conclusions like that.”
Hoo. As acrid smoke spread before my eyes, memories of everything I’d experienced with Min Siheon surfaced. Back then, I had been gravely mistaken—like I was under some kind of spell.
There had been rumors trailing behind Min Siheon, but I ignored them and kept hanging out with him anyway.
Watching him act overly clingy for someone who was supposedly just a friend, I’d started to delude myself into thinking—maybe he had feelings for me.
Honestly, I’m not even gay, and I wasn’t certain of anything, so I observed him for a long time.
For some strange reason, I was especially weak when it came to Min Siheon. I let that ambiguous time drag on without making a decision.
I remembered how my mind had been completely consumed by him, without even a thought spared for the original storyline.
Maybe because I was constantly conscious of him, I couldn’t think rationally whenever he was around.
“If I hadn’t seen that, I’d probably still be acting like an idiot. How embarrassing.”
At that time, there had been one incident that abruptly brought me back to reality.
It was about two weeks after Min Siheon had become acquainted with Go Heemin’s group.
***
After midterms ended, the cherry blossoms fell and greenery grew lush.
Contrary to my assumption that we had entered the original storyline, Min Siheon showed no particular point of contact with Go Heemin.
Even while sitting in class, listening to the lecture, my worries about him wouldn’t disappear.
Unless their schedules happened to overlap, they didn’t seem to have much contact at all.
Even Kang Taeyoon didn’t appear to be wary of Min Siheon, which felt strange. In the end, it was just me being pulled around by endlessly kind and gentle Min Siheon.
Watching this strange form of friendship I’d never experienced before, I started wondering again if maybe he liked me.
If that were true, what should I do? I’d never liked a man before. The odd sense of elation made my head spin, but at the same time, I worried Min Siheon might get hurt.
I’d only been lost in my own thoughts for a moment when the professor’s closing remarks rang out and the lecture hall filled with chatter.
“That will be all for today’s class.”
As the undergraduates stood up, I hurriedly closed my book as well.
At least I was alone in this class. If someone had been sitting beside me, they probably would have looked at me strangely.
I quickly gathered my things to leave.
As I organized my notes and stationery, I realized I hadn’t even written down half the lecture content, and my head throbbed.
…I was basically throwing my tuition away. My mind had been wandering in a completely different field.
Unlike my original resolve at the start of the semester, I was living a foolish college life.
Just as I slung my bag over my shoulder and walked down the hallway, my phone in my pocket vibrated for a long time.
[Go Heemin]
“Of all people, him.”
The one calling was one of the main sources of my mental chaos—Go Heemin.
I didn’t really want to answer right now, but avoiding it would seem more strange, so I pushed aside my complicated thoughts and picked up. Sighing had already become second nature to me.
“Yeah, what?”
—Cha Jungwoo, look in front of you.
“What?”
For some reason, his voice over the phone sounded unusually vivid. At his words, I quickly lifted my head and looked ahead.
At the end of the hallway, Go Heemin stood waving, smiling brightly.
He was alone, without Kang Taeyoon glued to him as usual. That alone made it feel like an unusual day.
“Where’s Kang Taeyoon?”
“Hey, are we conjoined twins or something? Even In-ho’s like this—you see me and immediately ask about Kang Taeyoon.”
That’s because you two are the original couple. Flustered by my comment, Go Heemin ran a hand over his face and draped his arm over my shoulder.
The back of his neck was flushed red—looks like something happened again.
“That bastard Taeyoon got called in by the professor. Said it’ll take about an hour for the meeting. We’re grabbing food after. Wanna come?”
“Sure.”
As I let him guide me along, I caught a glimpse of his side profile as he awkwardly turned his head away.
Go Heemin was talking nonstop—so suspicious it was almost funny.
I stared at him steadily, and he lifted a hand as if to shield himself, brushing it across his mouth.
…These bastards. Now that I looked closer, his lips were oddly reddish. Slightly swollen too—guess he’d been rubbing mouths with someone again.
The warmth pressing against my side and his flustered attempt to act normal made it obvious.
I didn’t want to know this kind of thing, so I forced my eyes upward toward the ceiling and tried to erase the images forming in my head.
Together, we wandered around looking for a place to wait for Kang Taeyoon. Since Go Heemin said it wouldn’t take long, we ruled out a café as an option.
After asking around, we found an empty lecture room, settled in, and tossed our bags onto the chairs.
Go Heemin sat next to where I placed my bag.
Yawning repeatedly as if exhausted, he glanced out the window and spoke lazily.
“What should we do while we wait?”
His eyelids fluttered heavily, his voice lower than usual, his speech slower.
“You sleepy?”
“Yeah. Pulled an all-nighter doing assignments. You look tired too. You’ve been spacing out a lot lately.”
“…Something like that.”
It wasn’t assignments or college life that were exhausting me. It was being stuck in this complicated web of relationships.
But I couldn’t exactly tell him that, so I brushed it off vaguely. After yawning wide, Go Heemin tugged at the light jacket I was holding.
“If you’re not bored, I’m gonna nap.”
“Go ahead.”
“If you’re not wearing that, can I borrow it?”
“You called me here because you needed something to cover up with, didn’t you?”
“Ha ha, you caught me.”
“Here.”
In the peaceful afternoon sunlight pouring in, Go Heemin’s eyelids drooped closed. After fiddling with his phone a few times, he slumped forward onto the desk.
Pulling the jacket he’d stolen from me over his head, he quickly drifted off.
It had only been a few minutes since he closed his eyes, but judging by his steady breathing, he’d fallen into such a deep sleep that he wouldn’t wake unless someone shook him.
“If you were just going to sleep, why call me?”
“……”
As I watched Go Heemin softly breathing, my phone vibrated again in my pocket.
Not wanting to wake him, I quietly stepped out into the hallway.
Closing the door behind me, I glanced at the screen and saw a text message from a familiar name.
[Min Siheon]
[Where are you? I’m in the lecture room, but I don’t see you.]
Even though it was such a simple message, my mind felt as tangled as a ball of knotted thread.
At a time when my thoughts were already restless, the person in question had contacted me.
We’d briefly run into each other that morning, but since our classes were different, we hadn’t seen each other again. I’d thought we might run into each other in the evening—but I hadn’t expected him to reach out this soon. His message left me inexplicably flustered.
It seemed Min Siheon had gone all the way to the lecture room where I’d had class to look for me. Shaking my head at the unnecessary trouble he’d gone through, I texted him my current location.
[Not there—Room ○○○. I’m meeting Heemin for lunch later. Want to join? We’ll probably have to wait about an hour because of Kang Taeyoon.]
[Yeah. I’ll head over now.]
It hadn’t even been long since I sent the message when my phone vibrated again. I felt oddly self-conscious.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d been dragged into a love triangle I’d never signed up for, and an unexplainable thirst crept up on me.
It felt like my throat was tightening shut, so I touched my Adam’s apple and remembered the vending machine at the end of the hallway.
It wouldn’t take Min Siheon long to get here from wherever he was, so the timing would be tight. Thinking that, I found myself wondering what drink to buy for him.
For now, I decided to get something cold and started walking toward the machine.
