-23-
While continuing their precarious secret meetings, cracks began to form in their relationship starting from a certain day.
It was during the time when BLACK was appearing on a variety show during their hiatus after promotions.
‘Jeong Ido seems to be dating again.’
‘……?!’
Kim Bunhong’s face turned white as he looked at the manager, wondering if they had been found out.
‘This time he’s meeting some actress. That one from the Wednesday-Thursday drama. The one who’s doing well these days.’
‘What. Hyung is dating again? I want to do it this time too. I’ve found someone I like recently.’
Lucy grabbed the manager hyung’s arm and whined. No way, you’ll get in trouble. The manager said firmly while looking at Lucy.
‘Then what about hyung?’
‘You and Ido are different.’
‘How are we different? This is discrimination against foreigners!’
The manager was horrified and slapped his back several times with his palm. Ah, ow! Lucy’s screams filled the waiting room.
‘What kind of trouble are you trying to cause! Others will misunderstand!’
‘What misunderstanding……’
Ignoring Lucy who was grumbling and muttering, the manager continued.
‘It’s just that Jeong Ido has to make songs, so he needs to accumulate various experiences and all that. Your situation is different from his.’
Inspiration doesn’t come that easily, you know. The manager acted pompous as if he were Jeong Ido himself.
‘Inspiration? My goodness, was Ido hyung a grandfather?’
Leaving behind the manager who began a long speech explaining the meaning of the word “inspiration” to Lucy, Bunhong slipped out alone and walked down the long corridor.
‘It has no end. The length.’
Again, he feels suffocated. After falling in love with him, the area around his chest that he thought had been filled actually seems completely empty.
Stopping for a moment and leaning his back against the wall, Bunhong breathed roughly and thought vaguely.
‘It’s okay. As long as I get a song from Ido hyung, everything will be fine.’
From the moment he prioritized making a bet over saying let’s date, he knew he had started with a kind of handicap, but it was still terrible.
No matter how many steps he took, he remained in the same place. It was like being in a pitch-black abyss.
From that day on, whenever Bunhong met Ido, he always wanted to ask him. Whether there was someone else he was seeing besides himself. Isn’t dating something two people do, not three?
Of course, these were words he never brought up or questioned.
Because he didn’t want to break up. Because it would hurt much more than now if they parted. Because he came to depend on small acts of kindness. Because he came to expect love. That’s why he was losing.
Love made people into fools. He wanted to be deceived even while knowing. Enough to start even while knowing that the other person’s feelings for him weren’t as big as his own feelings. Even when there was only unhappiness, the reason he couldn’t end it was truly because of this.
Maybe he knew all along. What colored their canvas was all darkness, black. No matter how hard he tried to paint other colors, it was already an irreversible relationship.
What if they had met different types of people? Kim Bunhong sometimes imagined that would have been better.
Someone who was truly mature, not just pretending to be mature. Or perhaps a lover who would directly say it’s hard when things weren’t okay would have suited him much better – he came to this conclusion weakly.
‘It hurts……’
He had unnecessary thoughts. Imagining that someone else might be by his side, that that person might fill the empty space he couldn’t fill, felt like his heart was being torn apart, so Bunhong bit his lips hard enough to draw blood.
Though he called it a relationship, no matter how much he thought about it, it was a relationship that had no answer.
The compatibility was the worst between Bunhong, who couldn’t express himself well even when lacking affection and could only speak indirectly, who smiled brightly even when rotting inside, and Ido, who wouldn’t understand even if he died and came back to life.
However, Kim Bunhong thought that he just had to endure alone, but
abnormal relationships, as always, bring cracks.
The moment when all the anxiety became reality and appeared before his eyes,
‘Have I ever asked you for anything until now, hyung?’
‘……’
‘Please answer me!’
Can’t you hear me? Please listen to my voice……
Bunhong began to sob.
Soon, watching Kim Bunhong who was grabbing his own arm and crying out desperately, Ido gave no answer and silently watched that series of words and actions, then realized.
For Kim Bunhong, it would have been since Lee Hanbit came in, but Jeong Ido, being an adult who could view the situation much more objectively, could understand. It had been wrong from the beginning.
From the start…… it was because he failed to recognize it. The hole that lay deep inside Bunhong’s heart.
Unlike his lovely appearance that always had a bright smile, the person he now properly understood was endlessly empty. At best, he was like a five-year-old child. About the level of whining that comes out when you can’t have something you want.
After brief deliberation, he made a judgment, but Ido didn’t know. Though he knew it was deficiency, he didn’t know that it was ‘a signal asking to be loved.’ Even in this extreme situation,
the two could never understand each other.
Ido spoke as if trying to calm Bunhong down.
‘Kim Bunhong.’
‘……’
‘Calm down and listen to me first.’
But Bunhong was already blinded by anger.
‘It was the first and last time I asked for something!!’
‘……’
‘I asked for a song, a song written for me. I wanted to become the protagonist of that song created only for someone…… That was really all it was, but why!! Why!!’
‘……’
‘I never asked you to understand me from the beginning, to love me. Just one song, if I had just that one thing, it would have been enough, but why, why on earth……’
‘……’
Covering both eyes…… he wanted to live only in the world Ido created. Just counting endless stars…… without anyone else’s interference, only the two of them, just Ido and himself. That was Bunhong’s only dream.
However, instead of honestly talking about his feelings, Kim Bunhong swallowed the truth and lied once again.
Instead of saying ‘Please don’t drive me out into reality,’ he screamed and cursed Hanbit relentlessly.
‘Ah……!’
Then he suddenly realized.
The moment when the languages of love born from Jeong Ido’s existence became all mixed up with languages of hatred, all the memories and recollections between them had been ruined.
Their world, everything he had treasured until now, collapsed. And Jeong Ido looked coldly at such Kim Bunhong.
After somehow finding out that he had decided to give a song to Lee Hanbit, Kim Bunhong was really like a different person. He was spitting out curses like a truly crazy person and had disheveled hair. His eyes were full of vicious poison.
Ido laughed helplessly and turned his head to look inside the studio.
All the things he had ruined came into view even more. At the same time, their relationship that he had ruined as well.
‘This won’t do.’
Ido decided to judge the situation coldly. Objectively speaking, this was largely his fault. This wasn’t supposed to happen from the beginning. It was a mistake, a wrong judgment. It was a stain that would remain forever in Ido’s own life.
Seeing Kim Bunhong lose his reason from jealousy toward a fellow member because of himself, it really was so. Therefore, it was the end.
‘Let’s stop now.’
No more romantic games – at Ido’s words that came like a bolt from the blue, Kim Bunhong seemed shocked and just blinked his eyes.
‘How can hyung do this to me……’
At that moment, should he have said ‘don’t go’ instead of those words? Kim Bunhong, who couldn’t be honest with his feelings, couldn’t do it this time either. Instead of saying anything, he began to sob again, then shouted filled with anger.
‘Even a male prostitute receiving payment would have been treated better than this!’
Smack. Before he knew it, Ido’s hand moved first. He noticed belatedly and quickly pulled it back, fortunately not even using half his usual strength, but Kim Bunhong’s head had already turned. Thus ended their short but long, abnormal love.
.
.
.
‘See.’
‘……’
‘You lost.’
After that, Ido came to Bunhong who was holed up in his room in the dorm, holding his breath with his face buried in the pillow, and declared while gently placing an ice pack against his cheek.
At that coldness, Kim Bunhong thought he might suffocate. As Ido tried to turn and leave after those words, he grabbed his pants leg and began crying with his head buried on the floor.
Drip. Drip.
Teardrops fell endlessly onto the floor.
‘I was wrong…… Hyung. I was wrong.’
At Ido’s unilateral declaration that their relationship was over, Kim Bunhong whispered incoherently as if he didn’t even know what he was saying.
‘Please……’
‘……’
‘I love you. I really love you. So don’t go. Don’t leave me alone here. I’ll collapse. If hyung leaves, I’ll become nothing again.’
But no matter how much he pleaded, he couldn’t change Ido’s resolve.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
