#020
“Really, I really hate him.”
Leaning against a stone wall and sitting down, he kept glaring stubbornly at Lee Yeonwoo while muttering continuously.
“I hate him. He’s annoying. Weird guy.”
Lee Yeonwoo wasn’t one to just sit still. His grandmother had taught him that if someone disliked him, he should pay them back double.
“Ugh.”
He stepped firmly on Shin Gihyeon’s sneakers with his full weight, driving the point home.
“Yeah, fuck it. I hate you fucking much too. Happy now?”
“…These are new sneakers.”
He had dressed up in his own way for his first variety show filming with Kang Dojun, but even that got trampled by Lee Yeonwoo.
“This is totally a fussy younger brother. Are you a slow 26-year-old? Is that it? Were you born at the very end of December?”
Having frequently interacted with elders, Lee Yeonwoo had somehow become a young old-timer. If there was anything unfair about it, it was the fact that Shin Gihyeon really was born on December 28th, barely making it onto the 26-year-old train.
“Year of the Ox? Tsk, how dare an ox act up in front of a tiger?”
It was absurd. He was almost at the level of a school bully specifically assigned to Shin Gihyeon.
‘Sunbae-nim, what do you think about Lee Yeonwoo?’
‘He’s a cute younger brother.’
‘Even if his personality is nasty?’
‘What can I do? We’re already a team… Even if others say things, I should at least believe in him.’
It was so ridiculous he had to laugh. What team… This wasn’t even a game.
Meanwhile, Lee Yeonwoo seemed to have developed a taste for being an old-timer, curling up the corners of his mouth and focusing on teasing Shin Gihyeon.
“26 years old, Shin Gihyeon. State your rank and name.”
“Do you know your personality is fucking nasty?”
“Smack, this one to his hyung. Stand up and attention right now. Execute!”
Instead of getting up and standing at attention at those words, Shin Gihyeon firmly stepped on Lee Yeonwoo’s shoes. It was revenge from earlier.
“Hey, 25 years old. Tiger. If you keep crawling up… ah, why do you keep stepping on me!”
“When you get hit, you have to pay back double.”
“Anyone can see that I’m the one getting beaten up?”
“What are you talking about.”
Lee Yeonwoo stepped on Shin Gihyeon’s sneaker, which was on top of his left sneaker, with his right foot. It was an absurd thought that he didn’t care if his left foot was crushed at the bottom as long as he could step on Shin Gihyeon.
Lee Yeonwoo, who had been awkwardly maintaining his center of gravity on one foot, eventually staggered and fell.
“Ah, shit.”
“…Are you okay? That’s why you shouldn’t choose to do weird things.”
When Lee Yeonwoo suddenly felt a stinging sensation near his right eye and put his hand there, a small amount of blood came off.
‘Ah, embarrassing.’
When he roughly wiped his face with his sleeve, Shin Gihyeon was horrified and stopped him.
“Hey, hey. Don’t do that. It might get infected.”
“How badly am I hurt?”
Lee Yeonwoo, who couldn’t check his own face without a mirror, asked him. Shin Gihyeon immediately took out his phone from his pocket and held it up to Lee Yeonwoo’s face. A click sound was heard.
“This bastard, you’re making fun of me, right? Why the photo? Are you going to spread rumors that I fell? Delete it right now.”
“Why is your mouth so foul? It’s so you can check.”
“Ah… thanks.”
He handed his phone to Lee Yeonwoo. Lee Yeonwoo checked his face in the photo.
“It’s not scraped much.”
“Still, disinfect it and apply medicine. You might get a scar on your face.”
He said this while fumbling to put his phone back in his pocket, then stopped.
‘Wait, why am I taking care of him?’
He glared at Lee Yeonwoo, who kept trying to touch the wounded area.
‘Stupid guy. What if it gets infected? He definitely won’t disinfect it or anything. I should tell Dojun sunbae-nim.’
Lee Yeonwoo patted Shin Gihyeon’s shoulder and said.
“Sorry for the misunderstanding. I thought you were going to spread rumors. Fine, I’ll even be friends with you. 26-year-old Shin Gihyeon dongsaeng-ssi.”
“No, I’m one year older.”
“As friends, I’ll even give you honey as a commemorative gift.”
Shin Gihyeon, who was almost at the point of giving up on Lee Yeonwoo’s antics, sighed and said.
“Do whatever you want.”
He added “annoying guy” at the end, but Lee Yeonwoo didn’t seem to care. He probably thought it was just empty words.
“Why are you so late?”
“Were you waiting for me? Hyung, this is a gift.”
Lee Yeonwoo held out a different black plastic bag to him, not the one he gave to Shin Gihyeon.
“Why is sunbae-nim’s a gift?”
“Hyung is a precious customer. Service spirit.”
Lee Yeonwoo said while sticking out his tongue.
‘That little shit.’
Whether the two were fighting or not, Kang Dojun’s gaze was fixed on one place.
“Are you hurt?”
He asked while gently stroking Lee Yeonwoo’s scraped eye area.
“Ah, a little.”
“How did it happen?”
“I scratched it because it was itchy.”
It didn’t look like something caused by scratching, but Lee Yeonwoo was too embarrassed to say he fell. Kang Dojun, who had already figured out that Lee Yeonwoo had quite strong pride, guessed he must have fallen somewhere.
“Let’s disinfect it and apply medicine.”
“We probably don’t have disinfectant at our house, do we?”
Kang Dojun now naturally looked toward the house across and said.
“Grandma Kyeong-i’s house should have some.”
Since Grandma Kyeong-i was absent, they tried to just quickly disinfect and come out, but somehow they ended up rummaging through the entire house looking for disinfectant.
“Why am I…”
Shin Gihyeon, who had been searching for disinfectant together, made a tearful expression.
Eventually, when Grandma Kyeong-i came home late, all three of them got scolded, disinfected, applied medicine, and were kicked out. Grandma Kyeong-i looked at Kang Dojun and shouted.
“There’s one more brat now!”
Then the door slammed shut.
“She called hyung a brat.”
“…I heard it without you saying it.”
The tightly closed door opened once more, and Grandma Kyeong-i roughly shoved medicine and band-aids into Kang Dojun’s arms before slamming the door shut again.
“Take good care of him so he doesn’t get scars!”
It was the right choice by Grandma Kyeong-i, who never thought Lee Yeonwoo would take care of applying medicine himself.
* * *
The time came for Shin Gihyeon to go up to Seoul, and the three came out to the yard to say goodbye.
Shin Gihyeon stepped firmly on Lee Yeonwoo’s foot and said.
“I’m leaving.”
“Yeah, take care.”
Lee Yeonwoo trampled his foot with the opposite foot just like before. Humans repeat the same mistakes, and when he was about to stagger again, Kang Dojun caught Lee Yeonwoo from behind.
It was obvious without looking.
‘I guess he fell like this earlier too.’
Shin Gihyeon looked at the two with strange eyes.
Absolutely, absolutely he wouldn’t tell Kang Dojun. About his feelings for Lee Yeonwoo that he hadn’t realized yet.
Falling in love in just 5 days was laughable too. Yes, it was probably just a minimal level of favorable feelings for now.
Until Kang Dojun realized his own feelings on his own, Shin Gihyeon firmly resolved not to say a word. He hoped that his idol, his goal, his destination would deviate from the path more slowly.
“Hey.”
Shin Gihyeon kicked the front of Lee Yeonwoo’s shoe and said sulkily.
“Contact me when you come to Seoul.”
After leaving those words, he got into the car. The door closed and the car left, and it felt like all filming was finally over. Perhaps because he had experienced many things in one day, he felt somehow bittersweet.
While fidgeting with his phone, he remembered the photo he had taken of Lee Yeonwoo’s face.
Lee Yeonwoo. He was an ugly and annoying guy, but a funny guy he couldn’t hate.
‘Come to think of it, this morning PD Han Taegu…’
He glanced at the bag containing honey bottles next to his seat.
‘…I should at least pay for the honey, right?’
As if remembering something, he tapped his phone screen.
* * *
“PD-nim! Please, please stop filming for a moment… This is urgent.”
Kang Dojun’s manager Park Daeho approached Han Taegu. Sensing something unusual, Han Taegu nodded and made a gesture to stop filming.
Park Daeho bowed his head in thanks and quickly approached Kang Dojun.
“What’s wrong?”
“You… you! What did you do?”
“What are you talking about?”
He frowned at Park Daeho’s incomprehensible words after making them stop filming.
“You left comments on a YouTuber named Wonseon’s videos! The agency keeps getting inquiries asking if it’s really you!”
Park Daeho showed him the captured content on his phone.
○ [Hello, I’m actor Kang Dojun. Since everyone is asking, Yeonwoo is currently living in the countryside. As shown in the video, he’s still a very lively kid. He’ll be staying with me for a while, so please don’t worry too much.]
[??? Is this really Dojun oppa?]
[That’s a lieㅋ]
[Really? But why is Kang Dojun here?]
[They said Kang Dojun went to film a countryside variety show, if this is real, didn’t he go to film in the neighborhood where Lee Yeonwoo lives??;;]
“What is this!”
It seemed like the ID claiming to be Kang Dojun had left more than one or two comments on Wonseon’s YouTube videos. When Park Daeho scrolled the screen, endless screenshots appeared.
○ [Yeonwoo looked really young back then.]
○ [His stubborn personality was the same back thenㅎ. I’m enjoying watching Wonseon-nim’s videos.]
○ [Isn’t Yeonwoo cute?]
○ [Yeonwoo doesn’t clean his room, that’s true.]
Since he claimed to be Kang Dojun, the ‘likes’ quickly increased and the comments rose to the top.
“Is this really you?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Why?”
Seeing him speak so casually, Park Daeho felt like he was going to explode.
Kang Dojun was usually the model of a well-behaved celebrity who didn’t even use SNS much, let alone live a promiscuous life, without even the common gossip. But such a person was going around leaving numerous comments on individual YouTuber videos saying our kid is great, cute, pretty, he’s doing well so don’t worry, which made his stomach burst.
“Isn’t that okay? Everyone was curious about Yeonwoo’s recent situation, so I let them know.”
“So why are you the one telling them!”
At first, he just left comments saying Yeonwoo was doing well, but people didn’t believe it, so he revealed his name to increase credibility.
When Kang Dojun acted like what was the problem, frustrated Park Daeho pounded his chest.
He didn’t know if he had seen it, but currently the comment section was plastered with posts like ‘Does Kang Dojun stan Lee Yeonwoo?’, ‘Is this real?’, ‘How busy is Dojun hyung-nim, would this be realㅋㅋㅋ’, ‘Well, our Yeonwoo is charming’.
“What’s wrong? Just release an official statement through the agency saying it’s really me.”
With things having escalated like this, they had no choice but to release an official statement as he said.
“That’s what agencies are for, right?”
His expression said how much he had earned for them so far, couldn’t they do this one thing? Of course he was right, but Park Daeho’s nagging wasn’t going to stop.
To show the reactions that were still running in real-time, he was entering the YouTuber video when he discovered a strange comment and stopped.
○ [Check Shin Gihyeon’s StarStar feed. It seems like it’s real?]
“What happened?”
Han Taegu quietly approached writer Minju and asked.
“It seems like there’s chaos because of this right now.”
She went into the YouTuber video and showed the comments Kang Dojun had left.
“PD-nim, I think you should see this too.”
This time another writer brought Shin Gihyeon’s StarStar feed.
‘Yeonwoo-ssi?’
On his feed was a single photo of Lee Yeonwoo’s face that he had taken earlier, covered with a large tiger emoticon. The content was brief.
[Fast friend 🐯🐯🐯🐯 #RuralConquest]
[Oppa, who is that person? Please show his face clearly too.]
[Looking at the Rural Conquest tag, isn’t he a cast member?]
[Shin Gihyeon always only posted Kang Dojun photos, is he starting to stan someone new?ㅋㅋㅋI’m curious who the target is.]
[Does it mean Year of the Tiger? Fast birth year? I’ve never seen Gihyeon oppa make friends his age because he stans actor Kang Dojun. Is he finally starting to make friends?]
[A cast member from Kang Dojun’s variety show filming? Search all the celebrities. Full-scale guest guessingㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ]
[There was someone impersonating Kang Dojun on Wonseon’s YouTube, if that’s real, isn’t that photo Lee Yeonwoo?]
└Who is Lee Yeonwoo?
[Who is he. Who is heeeee. Will they tell us if we watch Rural Conquest? Will they really?ㅠㅠㅠ]
Han Taegu, who had been checking the comment situation, said with a voice full of conviction.
“Let’s increase Yeonwoo-ssi’s screen time.”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
