“Honey water. It’s good for hangovers. It’s sweet, too, so it tastes good.”
As soon as he finished the simple explanation, Seok-ho, who had been staring at the cup held out to him for a while, reached out and accepted it.
“Thanks.”
He murmured quietly, then gulped down the honey water in large swallows. His prominent Adam’s apple moved up and down noticeably. The glass was emptied in no time.
After setting the empty cup down on the table, Seok-ho frowned as if a headache was setting in. Then he closed his eyes and pressed firmly at his temples. Kang-woo cautiously studied his expression.
“Does your head hurt?”
“A little.”
“You must’ve drunk a lot yesterday.”
When Kang-woo sent him a worried look, Seok-ho gathered his brows slightly and scratched at his eyebrow.
“Probably.”
“…You should’ve taken it easy. Why’d you suddenly drink that much? It’s not even good for your health.”
Kang-woo scolded him lightly, his concern clear. In response, Seok-ho simply lifted the corner of his lips faintly without saying much. Seeing his listless reaction, Kang-woo’s eyes immediately drooped.
Has work been really hard on him lately? Well, he hardly has any days off, and he does seem busy all the time. In a way, he works in a service job too, so there must be difficulties he can’t easily talk about with others. As Kang-woo tried to guess his own reasons for the sudden heavy drinking, he worried his lips.
“Hyung.”
After hesitating for a long time, he finally gathered the courage to call him. Hearing his voice, Seok-ho opened his eyes and quietly looked at Kang-woo.
“…Do you remember everything that happened after you drank?”
“After I drank?”
At the question in return, Kang-woo nodded immediately.
“I remember coming home.”
Seok-ho frowned slightly, searching his memory, then trailed off. Kang-woo scratched his cheek and cautiously added something that might serve as a hint.
“When I came out at dawn, you were sleeping on the sofa…”
Seok-ho rubbed the back of his neck with his large hand. It seemed his body was stiff from having slept on the sofa all night.
“I guess I got drunk since it’s been a while since I drank that much. You covered me with a blanket, right? Thanks.”
And that was the end of it. There were no further words. Kang-woo carefully studied Seok-ho’s face. Was he intentionally avoiding mentioning what had happened yesterday? The thought briefly crossed his mind, but nothing in his sharp expression suggested anything unusual.
As expected. He doesn’t remember.
All the answers he’d read last night scrambled his thoughts. He’d somewhat expected this situation, but somehow it still drained him.
He himself hadn’t been able to sleep all night because of that kiss with Seok-ho. Meanwhile, Seok-ho not only slept soundly but seemed to have completely erased the memory of dawn.
Part of him wanted to ask bluntly why he had kissed him. But since Seok-ho clearly didn’t remember anything, he wondered if it was really right to bring it up. They lived in the same house, after all. It might just make things uncomfortable between them.
Maybe it was something he didn’t want to remember, so he’d consciously forgotten it. In that case, perhaps Kang-woo should just treat it as a simple incident and pretend not to know.
As Kang-woo fiddled with his fingertips while lost in thought, Seok-ho asked with a more serious expression.
“Did I make some kind of mistake?”
The moment he heard the word mistake, Kang-woo reached a clean conclusion.
“No. It’s not like that.”
As if nothing had happened, he decided he would simply pretend not to know.
“Nothing happened.”
Kang-woo shook his head with a faint smile.
Right. Between him and Seok-ho that dawn, nothing had happened. If he kept it to himself and stayed silent, there wouldn’t be any problem.
In truth, there was still one important suspicion he couldn’t shake off. What if Seok-ho had mistaken him for someone else? What if he’d thought Kang-woo was someone entirely different?
If that were the case, it might actually be better not to clarify the truth. If he had to hear those words directly from Seok-ho’s mouth, it would only be more miserable.
Right. Nothing could be more miserable than that.
***
Seok-ho thought to himself: these days, Kim Kang-woo is strange. The guy was—truly strange.
After work, whenever he arrived home, Kim Kang-woo used to greet him unfailingly at the front door. But for the past few days, the only thing greeting him had been the dim living room.
That didn’t mean Kang-woo had gone to bed early, either.
After eating the dinner set on the table and washing the dishes, when Seok-ho sat in his room working on designs, he could clearly hear footsteps going in and out of the bathroom outside. Sometimes he even saw the light on in Kang-woo’s room.
In conclusion, Kim Kang-woo only moved around outside his room when Seok-ho wasn’t in the living room. It felt as if the guy was deliberately avoiding him. The problem was that Seok-ho had no idea what the problem even was.
The turning point had been that day. The day after he came home drunk.
The day before that, Seok-ho had met up with friends for drinks after a long time. He’d felt the need to deliberately put his mind somewhere else. It was one of those days when he wanted to empty everything out—leave nothing in his head.
So after lightly drinking at a bar for the first round, he even followed them to a club for the second round—something he normally would’ve refused.
He wondered if, after suppressing himself for too long, he might be starting to feel lust toward the wrong person. He needed to get away from the image of Kim Kang-woo that kept appearing before his eyes. So he tried meeting someone else.
But in the end, the attempt failed. His body refused to move the way he’d decided it should.
Plenty of people approached him to start conversations, but he couldn’t muster the slightest interest. Instead, he stayed in the room, repeatedly downing strong whiskey until he finally returned home.
He had definitely drunk more than usual. He clearly remembered opening the front door and stumbling inside with heavy legs.
But the problem was what came after.
He remembered nothing after that. Absolutely nothing.
It even felt like he might have dreamed something. But he couldn’t recall the contents at all. From the faint residue that lingered, he could only vaguely guess that it had been a pleasant dream.
To begin with, he had a high alcohol tolerance, so he rarely got drunk. And even when he did, he wasn’t the type to make a nuisance of himself. According to what acquaintances had told him, once he passed his limit, Seok-ho simply fell asleep quietly.
So even if he’d blacked out after coming home, he’d just assumed he’d crawled onto the sofa and fallen asleep. He hadn’t worried much about it.
But what if something had happened while he was blacked out?
The next morning, when Kim Kang-woo asked if he remembered everything from the night before, Seok-ho seriously tried to retrace his memories, wondering if he’d missed something.
But nothing surfaced.
No matter how much he searched through the blank white space in his head, nothing came out. Thinking it would be better to ask directly rather than make inefficient guesses, he asked if he’d made some kind of mistake.
But Kim Kang-woo said nothing had happened.
The uneasy feeling wouldn’t go away. Especially the sight of the guy’s split lip—it kept bothering him.
Kang-woo had said he’d hurt it by bumping into something in his sleep, but Seok-ho couldn’t easily accept that explanation.
He didn’t seem like someone that careless. The question lingered.
Still, seeing Kang-woo acting the same as usual, Seok-ho couldn’t press him any further.
And the very next day, Kim Kang-woo’s strange behavior began.
Despite the fact that the only things he did at home were a bit of housework and reading books, he was extremely hard to see. He stayed holed up in his room all day long—who knew what he was doing in there.
Yet he still made sure to prepare Seok-ho’s meals.
If Seok-ho woke up late, lunch would already be set on the table. On the rare occasion they ate together, Kang-woo would pile a huge mound of rice into Seok-ho’s bowl and push all the side dishes toward him, while he himself barely touched his own food.
Whenever Seok-ho tried to talk to him, Kang-woo would subtly leave the room or answer half-heartedly.
Seok-ho didn’t like that attitude.
The guy who used to follow him around and look only at him had suddenly changed overnight. And Seok-ho didn’t know the reason why.
Today was the same.
Since there were no appointments, Seok-ho stayed home instead of going to his studio. The entire time he was home, Kang-woo didn’t come out of his room even once, except for a few trips to the bathroom.
Kim Kang-woo’s behavior was definitely strange. Which gave Seok-ho a headache.
In the current situation, one strange person was already more than enough—himself.
These days, Seok-ho felt like he was barely managing to hold on to his sanity. Forcing himself to restrain the body and heart that kept trying to turn toward Kim Kang-woo was making his nerves increasingly sharp.
Honestly, in a situation like this, Kang-woo’s distant attitude should have been something Seok-ho welcomed. After all, he’d been thinking he needed to keep his distance from the guy anyway.
But as if he’d sensed something, Kang-woo had started putting distance between them first. From a rational standpoint, the right thing to do would be to leave him alone.
But his heart kept betraying his reason.
For some reason, Seok-ho found it hard to endure Kim Kang-woo avoiding him. He couldn’t just sit back and watch the guy act like he’d suddenly entered a late adolescence. There was clearly some kind of problem. Not knowing the cause made his insides feel like they were burning.
Unable to bear it any longer, Seok-ho knocked on Kang-woo’s closed bedroom door. Today, he’d decided he would definitely put an end to this meaningless cold war.
“Kim Kang-woo.”
Even when he called his name, no answer came from the other side.
“Kim Kang-woo.”
He called again. But once again, there was no reply.
Seok-ho’s patience wasn’t very long. Without waiting any further, he flung the door open. Inside the dark room, he saw Kang-woo curled up tightly on the bed, his back facing him.
“Kim Kang-woo.”
At the sound of his name, the hunched back flinched slightly. That meant he wasn’t asleep.
“Let’s talk.”
It was obvious Kang-woo had heard him, yet there was still no response.
“Kim Kang-woo.”
When he called again, his voice slightly harsher this time, a small mumble finally came back.
“What?”
“Let’s talk.”
“…I don’t have anything to say.”
“Maybe you don’t, but I do. Come out to the living room.”
Seok-ho informed him in a strict tone and walked out to the living room.
Left alone, Kang-woo let out a deep sigh. He didn’t want to face Seok-ho right now. But judging by Seok-ho’s firm attitude, it didn’t seem like he had any intention of overlooking things today.
In the end, Kang-woo slowly dragged himself upright.
“Sit.”
Already seated at the dining table, Seok-ho jerked his chin toward the chair across from him.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
As soon as Kang-woo sat down, Seok-ho questioned him in an accusing tone.
“…What do you mean?”
“You’ve been sulky lately. You barely answer when I ask you something, you stay locked in your room all day whenever I’m home. Even when you eat, you just pick at your food.”
Hearing about the things he’d done to avoid Seok-ho coming out of his mouth made Kang-woo feel childish and immature.
To anyone watching, it would clearly look like the behavior of someone who had a grievance. And it was obvious that the behavior was meant to make the other person notice that grievance.
The truth was, Kang-woo didn’t even know himself what he wanted from all this.
Back then, he’d firmly told himself he would act as if nothing had happened. But his body hadn’t followed his heart. He’d acted before he could even think.
“Kim Kang-woo.”
The voice calling his name was gentle. Like someone coaxing and soothing a child.
Kang-woo’s shoulders shrank. The gaze that had stubbornly remained fixed on the table finally lifted toward Seok-ho.
“Did I do something that hurt your feelings?”
Kang-woo bit down hard on his lip.
