#69
Nam Seonwoo, pale as a sheet, fled to the room with a strange scream. Without even thinking to put on the clothes on the floor, he hid his body under the blanket and first felt his waist. It was a bit sore, but that was all. Somewhat relieved, he examined various parts of his body, finding unfamiliar marks here and there.
They were hickeys. And quite explicit ones at that.
Just as his mind went blank with bewilderment, the door clicked open. Nam Seonwoo, who had pulled the blanket up to his neck, shouted,
“Hey, you, why are you coming in? Aren’t you leaving?”
“What about you? It’s third period.”
He wondered how Kang Jihan knew his schedule, but then remembered his phone’s lock screen showed his timetable. However, the bigger problem was Kang Jihan approaching closer. Nam Seonwoo, clutching the blanket like a lifeline, said warningly,
“What’s it to you? Hurry up and leave. Get out of my house.”
“Why? Let’s go together.”
“…I, I have someone coming over.”
His frozen brain managed to find a plausible excuse even in that split second.
If Kang Jihan kept trying to cross the line dangerously… he could say that there was already someone else within this line, so don’t come in and back off. From the start, Nam Seonwoo was an idiot who couldn’t flatly refuse Kang Jihan, so this was a decent method in its own way.
“I don’t want any misunderstandings, so please leave quickly.”
He spoke with a more definite meaning, but Kang Jihan showed no particular reaction this time either. He had expected him to be surprised, angry, or at least sarcastic, but he just nodded as if he understood.
As if that was the reason he had come into the room in the first place, Kang Jihan picked up the blue jacket from the floor and prepared to leave. The jacket was a bit dirty on the back. It looked like it had some dirt on it, unlike the usually neat Kang Jihan.
“Hey.”
There was only one reason Nam Seonwoo called out to Kang Jihan, who was about to leave the room obediently.
“What… did we do?”
The marks left all over his body were clearly kiss marks. But he couldn’t remember at all what they had done or how far they had gone.
Kang Jihan turned around. Annoyingly, he said nothing.
“We didn’t do it, right? …Right?”
If they had, there’s no way his body would feel this fine. The very fact that he could walk around normally was proof that they hadn’t done it. After all, Kang Jihan was the type who wouldn’t be satisfied until he did it several times in a row once he started.
“Who knows.”
But that damn bastard gave an ambiguous answer. His gaze swept over the blanket as if to say, ‘Shouldn’t you know better?’ This made Nam Seonwoo feel as if the soreness in his waist was spreading to his buttocks.
“It’s a bit much to say we did.”
But the following answer made him genuinely sigh with relief. The pain was indeed just his imagination. If they had done it once and stopped, that would be one thing, but Kang Jihan wasn’t the type to stop at just once. So this soreness was probably just from lying somewhere for a long time after drinking…
“We did it once because someone passed out from the wind.”
…They did it?
“I’m going. Call if it hurts.”
If it hurts…?
At these words hitting him like confirmation shots, Nam Seonwoo froze with his mouth wide open. Kang Jihan left the room with a smirk. Only after hearing the front door open did Nam Seonwoo make a belated protest.
“Why, why would I call you?!”
But the only response was the sound of the door lock engaging. Nam Seonwoo, dumbfounded, stared into space and then carefully examined his naked body under the blanket again.
‘Crazy.’
No matter how he looked at it, it seemed like they really did do it…?
There were kiss marks he hadn’t noticed before all over the inside of his thighs and below. Unable to believe it, he felt his lower back and buttocks, but couldn’t clearly determine where this soreness came from. Moreover, since he had been living in forced celibacy after waking up in his nineteen-year-old body, he couldn’t even remember what the dull pain after sex felt like.
However, the muscle pain in his thighs was too suspicious. With muscle pain as if he had been spreading his legs for a long time, Nam Seonwoo muttered while hitting his own head,
“…You, crazy… crazy bastard. You crazy Nam Seonwoo.”
It was just yesterday that he had vowed never to get entangled with Kang Jihan again. It was only a few hours ago that he had banged his forehead against the wall, promising not to do the stupid thing of dating Kang Jihan again.
He slept with Kang Jihan?
With Kang Jihan?
And even invited him to this house?
Nam Seonwoo chanted “fuck” like a mantra while burying his head in the pillow several times. He was displeased with his stupid and loose-minded self. It was incomprehensible why everything always became lax when it came to Kang Jihan.
With his face buried in the pillow and letting out strange groans, Nam Seonwoo suddenly raised his head. As if he needed to find a way to save himself apart from his self-loathing, his mind started working quickly.
“He just did it himself, it doesn’t mean we’re dating, right?”
It felt even more trashy after saying it out loud, but he needed some shamelessness right now.
‘…Young people often have one-night stands, don’t they?’
Of course, he didn’t prefer such casual relationships, but it was entirely possible to ‘pretend’ to be like that.
Right. It was just a mistake made while drunk, nothing more, nothing less. Let’s go with that.
Nam Seonwoo recalled the lie he had blurted out earlier without thinking. Despite being a hasty excuse, it fit perfectly. Kang Jihan would have understood well the implication that there was someone he was seeing. So he would also understand that last night’s incident wasn’t the beginning of any relationship, but just the end of it. Judging by how he left immediately when told to go.
‘…He seems unbothered.’
How to put it, Kang Jihan seemed used to such one-night flings. Like a decent one-night stand partner who cleans up the traces, takes care of his partner’s morning, exchanges a few words, and then leaves cleanly.
It’s not that there’s anything wrong with that. He had no grounds to judge either. But honestly, it was a bit shocking. He knew that Kang Jihan was no longer the person he used to know, but he didn’t expect him to have changed so completely.
Was this how Kang Jihan was in the timeline where he was excluded? Or did ending his first relationship in such a trashy way unknowingly affect him? He couldn’t know for sure, but what was certain was that Kang Jihan’s vibe had subtly changed from his high school days.
Twenty-one. Still a very young age. But the twenty-one-year-old Kang Jihan had become somehow more mature.
‘Come to think of it, his mother…’
In his previous life, Kang Jihan had held his mother’s funeral when he was twenty. So she must have passed away by now. That would have contributed to Kang Jihan’s unfamiliar change.
A part of his heart sank heavily. Not being able to pay respects to his mother, not being able to be by Kang Jihan’s side – these might be burdens he’d have to carry for a lifetime.
Stepping out of the room, he saw the French toast still on the dining table. The toast that had been steaming earlier had cooled in that short time.
The reason he couldn’t easily take his eyes off it earlier wasn’t just because it contrasted with Kang Jihan’s rice balls. This dish, made by soaking bread in egg wash, was a breakfast menu Nam Seonwoo often made in his previous life.
Nam Seonwoo carefully took a bite. Unlike the salty rice balls, it tasted surprisingly good.
* * *
A week passed.
There was not a single contact from Kang Jihan. He had been on edge for the past few days, worried that Kang Jihan might act as if something had changed just because they slept together once, but daily life flowed normally, just like the past year without Kang Jihan. By that point, feeling like he was the only one being conscious of it, Nam Seonwoo also lived the life of an ordinary college student.
The first thing that changed was his attire. Since there was no longer any need to hide his face, he dressed like a typical college student in sweatshirts and jeans. However, after the day Kim Minhwan stuttered all day upon seeing the kiss marks on his neck, he started wearing a turtleneck underneath.
The next thing that changed was the attitude of Kim Minhwan and his classmates. After the drinking party, his classmates started addressing him casually, calling him “oppa” or “hyung”. Kim Minhwan, who belatedly learned his age, even put on a show, bowing 90 degrees and apologizing for “not recognizing his senior”. But after a few days of awkwardness, Kim Minhwan was back to being casual again. If anything, he seemed to stick even closer now that he knew Nam Seonwoo was older.
As such ordinary days passed, time flew by and it was Wednesday, the day of Professor Park’s lecture.
Kim Minhwan, who seemed to have become Park Jiyoung’s secret santa, brought an extra coffee from the morning. After gently placing the coffee on Park Jiyoung’s seat, Kim Minhwan asked with a flushed face,
“Hyung, hyung, who’s your secret santa?”
It seemed like a good decision to tell him to speak comfortably. Compared to when he first learned Nam Seonwoo’s age and used extremely formal language, calling him “sir” repeatedly, this was much better. Nam Seonwoo answered indifferently,
“It’s a secret.”
“What? I told you mine!”
“Who asked you to tell me?”
Kim Minhwan, who became sulky in an instant, then asked something else,
“Then what have you done? I sent one greeting text last time and brought coffee this time. Is that enough?”
Of course, he hadn’t done anything as a secret santa. Sending a greeting text to Kang Jihan or taking care of him in any way was absolutely out of the question. Just as he was about to casually reply that that should be enough, something was placed on his desk with a thud.
…It was coffee.
“Hello.”
The hand that put down the coffee, and the voice that casually greeted him. Even without looking up, he knew who it was.
