# Chapter 2. One Out of 34
The best thing about spring is the flowers. Cherry blossoms, specifically. Most of the students in class probably thought this while watching the cherry blossom petals fall onto Woo Yeonho’s head as he sat by the window seat.
In this narrow space where everything was colorless, only Yeonho and the cherry blossoms maintained their vivid colors.
Though I don’t have a hobby of appreciating paintings, with a frame, this scene could be called an art gallery.
My seat was at the opposite end of the same row as Yeonho, so there was no reason for him to look at me. That’s why I could freely steal glances at his picture-perfect appearance.
I apologize to the teacher, but the voice explaining the textbook content gradually became muffled. The sound faded as if I had deliberately blocked my ears, until all surrounding noise disappeared.
Suddenly, Yeonho’s voice from one morning echoed in my head.
‘Seungwoo. You have a mole on the back of your neck.’
‘It’s pretty.’
‘Are you ticklish?’
‘I wanted to touch it.’
‘I can’t?’
‘That’s too bad.’
What does it mean to be disappointed about not being able to touch someone else’s mole?
‘I suddenly thought about you yesterday, Seungwoo.’
‘Aren’t you going to ask what I thought about?’
‘It’s a secret. I won’t tell you.’
Why did he suddenly think about me, and what was he thinking?
‘Seungwoo, I can’t help but smile whenever I see you.’
‘Even though you never smile back.’
‘You’d look really pretty if you smiled.’
‘Won’t you smile for me just once?’
Why does he smile when he sees me? Why should I smile for him?
My insides were churning. The delusions I had barely stopped a few days ago exploded in my mind.
It was at that moment our eyes met. Yeonho’s face was expressionless, but I, who recognized his peculiarity, immediately understood the emotion it contained. The expressionless face clearly held annoyance. It was as if he had peered into my exploding delusions. Yeonho looked at me with that face for just a moment, then smiled lightly and turned away. Though it was a momentary smile, it was different from the ones he had shown me before.
All along, it really was just Yeonho’s small whim. My chest stung and my face felt hot.
Ah, what kind of expression am I making right now?
***
Despite how clear it was during the day, it started raining when classes ended. Many students were running with all their might to the bus stop without umbrellas, either because the weather forecast was wrong or they simply didn’t have one. I figured I’d get wet whether I left early or late, so I was dawdling in the classroom as much as possible, but the cleaning duty students scolded me to leave quickly, so I reluctantly left the classroom.
Yeonho had already gone home. He was calmly playing with his phone among students stomping their feet because they had no umbrellas, and the moment he answered “I don’t have one” to someone’s question, he was grabbed by the hands of the “winners” who had umbrellas and dragged away.
As I watched from the window, Yeonho emerged from the central entrance on the first floor, squeezing his large body under a small yellow umbrella. Probably the umbrella of a student who luckily won in rock-paper-scissors among the winners.
The spring rain poured down frantically like a downpour. The cherry blossoms that had made Yeonho the protagonist of a painting had all fallen, creating another plausible picture.
Standing precariously under the roof of the central entrance, I stretched my hand out, and the rain immediately dampened it. With absolutely no courage to run out, I blankly recalled what had happened a few hours ago.
After making eye contact with Yeonho and reading the implication on his face, I couldn’t look at his face again. Knowing that the other person found me annoying, I wasn’t shameless enough to keep staring, so I immediately turned my head and didn’t direct my gaze toward where Yeonho was until all classes ended.
More than Yeonho being annoyed with me, I felt wronged by the fact that he probably thought of me no differently than the other guys.
I was different from the others. I wasn’t thick-skinned like those guys who kept clinging to Yeonho despite getting rejected every time, I wouldn’t die if I couldn’t see his face, and I didn’t hover around him all day trying to strike up a conversation.
Yeonho’s previous actions toward me were just the whims of someone who lived with a sense of superiority when he was bored. I wouldn’t be hurt if those whims ended. In other words, it didn’t matter if that kindness had no real meaning. I just didn’t like being treated as one out of the 34 students in Class 2-3 in Yeonho’s relationships.
I was the only one who knew Yeonho’s extraordinary presence and the emotions he suppressed.
‘I’m so special, yet just one out of 34…’
And it angered me that the biggest contributor to making it this way was none other than myself.
I’m not gay, and I wasn’t in love with Yeonho.
I didn’t want to form a special bond with him like the other guys, but to make such absurd fantasies just because he acted on a whim once?
I swear, up until now, I never once had the slightest thought of wanting to date Yeonho.
Right, that’s it. I never had such thoughts. The reason I started having these absurd fantasies was all because of Yeonho.
If he was going to make a face like that, he shouldn’t have acted in ways that could be misunderstood in the first place. If he didn’t want to eat something, he should have refused before receiving it, or he should have rejected those he liked, so why did he have to feed it to me personally? But if I were to tell him this, he would calmly answer:
‘Then why did you eat it?’
Right. Why did I accept everything he offered without hesitation? It’s not like I particularly liked sweet things.
Anyway, it’s all over. I’ve ultimately remained just one out of 34 to Yeonho, and in a year I’ll be just one out of 714 students in the entire school, and we’ll grow even further apart after graduation.
I shouldn’t be, but I felt extremely depressed. I wanted to go home quickly, wash in warm water, and lie down in bed. I wanted to sleep soundly without thinking, wake up, and forget everything cleanly.
…I wanted to somehow hide this shock.
***
Whether I was shocked or not, time passed incredibly quickly. Thanks to that, the emotion that had been heavily pressing near my chest quickly evaporated, so even when I saw Yeonho’s face, I didn’t have any particular thoughts.
I returned to how I was before, reading Yeonho’s expressions and actively mocking the kids he interacted with. My arrival time at school also returned to what it was before, always arriving at the classroom first. Of course, Yeonho wasn’t there at that time. As I thought less about Yeonho, truly peaceful times remained for me.
“Seungwoo.”
But as if mocking such thoughts, I was soon driven to the edge of an unstable cliff.
“What does it feel like to like a man?”
My throat tightened at the question that drove me into his territory. So I answered, stuttering more severely than usual, asking what he was talking about. Yeonho looked down at me quietly with an expression that seemed to reflect my words back at me.
The shadow Yeonho cast was cold and dark, just like him now. I couldn’t read his thoughts from Yeonho’s face up close like before. Whether it was contempt or genuine curiosity. So I said the truth, that I don’t like men. In quite a clear and loud voice. However, completely ignoring my effort, Yeonho gently stroked my stiff hair and said kindly:
“I’m just curious. Seungwoo, you like me, don’t you?”
My small sister, worn down by society, once told me there are many things in the world you should pretend not to know even when you do, and that life becomes easier if you can easily deceive yourself. I understood those words at this moment. The sweetness I had already tasted once was an emotion impossible to forget.
“I want to be special to Yeonho.”
I thought I had forgotten that, but I was just pretending, and nothing had changed. My peace, achieved through pretending not to know, collapsed so easily with just a few words from Yeonho.
“Ugh…”
A sudden wave of nausea made me cover my mouth, but only acid reflux came up. If only I could have thrown up, I might have escaped this overwhelming moment.
Yeonho didn’t even pretend to worry as I suppressed my churning stomach and dry heaved. His voice was as sweet as if pouring honey, but his actions were utterly cold. Yeonho urged an answer with his silence.
‘What does he want to hear?’
Do you want to mock me like I mocked the people who cling to you? If that’s the case, you could do that without probing like this. You already think of me the same as the other guys anyway. Or do I have any value to you?
‘Do I even have the slightest, just the slightest bit of…’
No, from the beginning, I knew that to Yeonho, I never existed in his field of vision, even though we breathed in the same space, attended the same classes, and walked the same paths. Even when I truly discovered Yeonho, felt excited, and laughed at the clueless guys, to Yeonho, I was just an extra like them.
The April sky at 5 PM was cloudless, and the old building corridor, where only Yeonho and I were, was quiet with not a single person passing by. Occasionally, shouts from students playing soccer on the field could be heard, and the vibrating sound of Yeonho’s phone in his pocket was annoyingly audible. Despite the long silence, Yeonho remained unchanged. He was still blocking my escape route, waiting for the answer he wanted to hear.
Whatever I answered, it wouldn’t be the right answer. I actually don’t know Yeonho at all. Everything was my delusion, and maybe even Yeonho’s strange actions in the mornings of the past few days were all my imagination.
A fantasy I made up, falling into the delusion that only I knew you, wanting to be a little more special.
“I don’t like you…”
“That’s not true.”
The immediate response made me look up at Yeonho’s face. Yeonho’s bright brown eyes twinkled beautifully even in the dark corridor as the incoming light diminished. This time, Yeonho didn’t wait for my answer.
“Seungwoo, I hate lies.”
So please, don’t call my name so affectionately. Your true intentions must be harsh, but what comes out is kind, so even though I know it, I couldn’t help feeling upset.
“It’s not… a lie… Really, it’s not…”
Ah… maybe I’m the first person who said they don’t like him, and he can’t accept it? Though he didn’t seem like the type to care about such things, I didn’t want to argue anymore, so I immediately corrected what I had said.
“No, no, that’s not right. I do like you. That’s true…”
Yeonho’s eyebrows twitched. A new expression appeared on his otherwise unchanging face.
“Really?”
Yeonho always had composure, but today he seemed to have even more. His hand moved from my hair to my cheek. Now it wasn’t just my head, but every inch of skin attached to my body felt ticklish. Even each knuckle of my hand was so ticklish that I kept clenching and unclenching my fists.
“Then when are you going to answer what I asked earlier?”
What does it feel like to like a man… The intention behind such a question was too obvious. He wanted to mock me. To tease me. Maybe even start rumors.
I’d heard that Yeonho had received confessions from guys several times, knowingly or unknowingly. I remembered a guy who talked about Yeonho receiving confessions, throwing around vulgar curses as if exchanging frivolous jokes. Even though someone was spreading such private matters right in front of him, Yeonho didn’t make any particular effort to stop it.
It probably didn’t matter to him. They must be kids whose names and faces he couldn’t remember by now.
“…Just, it’s the same… There’s no difference.”
“What’s the same?”
“…It’s the same as… liking a girl…”
“So you liked girls before me?”
I nodded vaguely at the persistent question.
I probably did in elementary school, I guess. Before meeting Yeonho in high school, I hadn’t even felt the emotion of liking someone, let alone dating. I wish I had never known. I should have moved far away in the 9th grade. Then I wouldn’t have come to this school and could have lived without knowing a person called Woo Yeonho.
“Then, Seungwoo.”
Even though I had answered as he wanted, Yeonho didn’t seem inclined to leave me. When Yeonho’s low voice called my name again, I reflexively met his eyes. The noise of Yeonho’s phone vibrating in his pocket was heard again. Someone seemed to be desperately looking for Yeonho. Whoever it was, I hoped they would come quickly and take him away.
If Yeonho left, I wanted to cry for just a moment, then go home, eat lots of delicious food, and fall asleep with a full stomach. While I was imagining this hopeful scenario, Yeonho’s following words made my entire body heat up as if I had encountered an untimely summer.
“Have you ever imagined kissing me?”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
