#35
Although it wasn’t clear what she was sorry for, Min Iseo blushed and hurried away as if she had seen something she shouldn’t have. A few classmates who witnessed this scene giggled.
The grip of Choi Hyun-oh’s hand, which had been firmly holding my top, loosened. Taking advantage of this, I moved away slightly and straightened my lifted clothes.
The outside air that had entered between my clothes and skin made my spine shiver. I deliberately pressed down on the ill-fitting parts of Saheon hyung’s clothes with my hand.
The body I had seen while showering was covered in red marks as if bitten by insects. The reason I couldn’t check if my lower parts were swollen was because I couldn’t shake off the embarrassing feeling, so there might have been red marks on other parts I hadn’t properly checked.
Although there was no way the passionate traces of last night could be seen, my heart was somehow fluttering, so I pretended to adjust my clothes. I fiddled with my neckline and meaninglessly wrapped the sleeves that came down to my knuckles around my palms, pulling them.
Choi Hyun-oh, who had glanced at Min Iseo with a slightly anxious look, wet his lower lip with his tongue. I assessed the situation by just moving my eyes while holding both sleeves in my palms. Hyun-oh’s Adam’s apple moved up and down greatly when our eyes met.
“…Ah, honey!”
It was a playful voice as if meant for everyone to hear. Our classmates around us burst into laughter. Hyun-oh exaggeratedly pretended to wipe sweat and chattered in a mischievous tone.
“What are you going to do, really. I told you CC doesn’t like to show off. Now everyone knows about us.”
“Ah… Sorry.”
I apologized without knowing why. The laughter of the classmates around us grew louder. A teasing whistle was heard.
Choi Hyun-oh mouthed ‘Die!’ and threateningly raised his fist at the classmate who whistled. I watched Hyun-oh charge at the whistling classmate while still cradling my aching waist. The laughter grew even louder.
After pretending to choke the whistling classmate with a gesture full of playfulness that anyone could see, Hyun-oh headed towards where Min Iseo was. I sat in the chair that Hyun-oh had seemingly marked with his suitcase.
As I sat on the chair that hadn’t been warmed by the heater, my body trembled. With the stinging sensation spreading from below, I blushed and lowered my gaze.
Feeling the need to hold onto something, my awkward hand searched for my phone, but I remembered once again that it was smashed. I lifted my hand that had been wandering in my pocket onto the desk and irregularly tapped the cold edge.
No matter what I thought about or what happened, the events of yesterday naturally came to mind, now filling my head hazily.
I had sex with Saheon hyung. Words that didn’t fit together at all came together to create an unbelievable fact. I bit my tongue and forced strength into the corners of my mouth. My expression twisted strangely, uncontrolled.
No matter how much I tried to control my expression, my face burned hot due to the lewd memories. If asked if it only hurt, that wasn’t entirely true either. As I ended up smirking due to a strangely rising sense of satisfaction, I covered my mouth with my hand and even lowered my head.
The fact that I had done something typically reserved for lovers with the person I had been in unrequited love with for my entire life kept coming to mind, even unintentionally.
The fragmented memories of each moment were enough to evoke various indescribable emotions that sent chills down my spine. Of course, they leaned towards positive emotions.
From the moment I kissed hyung, the sensation that hurt but I didn’t want to give up, the hot temperature of our touching bodies, the compliment of being pretty, the connected feeling as if we were the only two left in that moment, and the lingering ache and the sight of hyung’s back as he left to shower.
My expression, which had been following the flow of time, gradually hardened. The smirk-like smile also changed its angle. I slowly lowered the hand covering my mouth.
After solving the biggest problem of having to go to school, the thoughts I had temporarily pushed aside started to surface one by one.
The dressing table full of traces of someone getting ready for work, and the quiet stillness that clearly indicated no one was there. These were clear signs that hyung had gone to work. Usually, Saheon hyung would tell me a day or so before leaving for work where he was going and how long he’d be gone, but this time I hadn’t heard anything.
The main reason for not knowing the cause was undoubtedly my running away and last night’s unexpected happening, but I couldn’t help feeling the disappointment that I had forgotten creeping up.
Couldn’t he at least text me that he was leaving? No, since he knew my phone was broken, couldn’t he have left a note? Even if I was sleeping deeply, if he had said he was leaving, I would have remembered it even in my sleep….
I didn’t want to be emotional, but I couldn’t erase the disappointment of “but it was my first time.” The reason why I couldn’t give up even when it felt like I was being torn apart when hyung’s thing entered me also began to raise its head. I habitually pressed hard on the sunken, dark area under my eyes.
It felt like if I stopped here, I would lose Saheon hyung. The hope that we could break the lifelong relationship of being next-door neighbors and close cousins made me endure even the pain, but….
I bit the inside of my closed lips hard, and had to try not to fall into too negative thoughts.
As if nothing had happened. As if me and hyung sleeping together was just a one-night imagination. Pushing down the anxious thoughts, I instead tried to engrave the moments with Saheon hyung firmly in my mind, recalling them once more so that the memories, like fine sand, wouldn’t slip through the cracks of my fingers.
“Ugh, noisy brats.”
But thanks to Choi Hyun-oh taking the seat next to me, my resolve was shattered in an instant. Hyun-oh threw himself into the chair so forcefully that I could feel the vibration. Scratching his brightly bleached hair, Hyun-oh made an exaggerated fierce expression at Shin Jiyu and Kim Seo-hee, who were giving him suggestive looks.
“What are you looking at? Come to gawk?”
“Are you two dating?”
At Shin Jiyu’s mischievous words, Kim Seo-hee sitting next to her clapped her hands and cackled along with the jeers. At first because of the pain, and now because I was reminiscing about yesterday, I couldn’t immediately grasp the point of what they were saying and just quietly looked at Choi Hyun-oh.
His pierced ears were red. The silver piercing crossing over his reddened earlobe stood out even more because of it. It was the first time I had seen the usually playful Choi Hyun-oh so flustered. When our eyes met, Hyun-oh instead spoke loudly in a boastful manner.
“Go ahead and spread rumors, really!”
At his grumbling tone, Shin Jiyu and Kim Seo-hee burst into laughter. Mumbling with his lips pursed, Hyun-oh glanced at me and then messed up his hair again as he pulled out the handle of the suitcase.
“Honey. I’ll give you what you left at my place.”
Another round of jeers erupted. Hyun-oh skillfully pulled the suitcase out from the space between the desk and chair and passed it to me. Chuckling, Hyun-oh whispered in an intentionally more annoying voice towards the classmates who were making “ooh” sounds.
“Last night was so good.”
When Hyun-oh tapped my shoulder as if flirting, another tingling sensation rose from my waist. I almost furrowed my brow at the sudden attack, but I held back, fearing that if I showed pain on my face, Hyun-oh would think Saheon hyung had hit me again.
I stroked my aching waist once. Finally unable to bear the cringe, Shin Jiyu playfully threw a punch. I watched as Shin Jiyu and Choi Hyun-oh exchanged mock punches and blocked each other with their palms.
“What, why, what!”
“He likes you~ He likes you~”
“F*ck, will you shut up?”
Suddenly, a hypothesis occurred to me. Min Iseo had misunderstood something when she saw me and Choi Hyun-oh tussling. Hyun-oh was embarrassed by this and punished the teasing classmate, and now he was making a commotion as if to explain to Min Iseo.
I covered the slight gap between my parting lips with my hand. This surprising deduction I had made in the blank space where pain had dulled my senses was enough to momentarily make me forget my feelings of disappointment and hurt towards Saheon hyung.
Choi Hyun-oh likes Min Iseo.
While everyone else was focused on Choi Hyun-oh’s antics, I had come to this conclusion after a thorough analysis from a different perspective.
It seemed that Choi Hyun-oh liked Min Iseo, and fearing that this might be discovered, he was desperately trying to divert attention by joking around with me. Usually, even if someone says two guys are dating, everyone laughs it off as a joke, and for someone like Hyun-oh who knows how to change the mood, it was a natural choice.
I looked at Choi Hyun-oh with curious eyes. I didn’t know how long he had liked her, but the realization made the corners of my mouth rise involuntarily. I felt like I understood why parents would exclaim “Oh my, oh my, look at them!” when watching romantic scenes in dramas.
It seemed that the other classmates didn’t know that Choi Hyun-oh liked Min Iseo. As Hyun-oh and I were the only male students among our French Literature classmates, it was clear that I had perceptively noticed something others didn’t.
I pressed my lips inward and looked at Choi Hyun-oh with eyes full of curiosity. Hyun-oh, who was holding Shin Jiyu’s thrown punches one by one with his large hands and shaking them around while yelling, suddenly seemed different to me.
Although my waist was creaking with pain from yesterday’s overexertion, having momentarily erased thoughts of Saheon hyung, there was only one resolution in my mind:
I must help Choi Hyun-oh and Min Iseo get together. Not only because Hyun-oh was the only other male classmate and we maintained a good relationship, but also because I wanted him to achieve what he desired. Both subjectively and objectively, Choi Hyun-oh was a good man.
Despite his strong impression that made him look like a delinquent, Choi Hyun-oh was quite handsome. Even putting aside his looks, Hyun-oh fundamentally had a kind and friendly personality.
He had told me to come in without any conditions when I ran away, he took care of me until the end at drinking parties, he hung out with me when I was decided to be an outsider, and he gave me various pieces of advice.
If he was this good as a friend, I couldn’t even imagine how much better he would be as a boyfriend. Would I soon hear rumors of them dating? It was clear that Hyun-oh’s future partner – and most likely Min Iseo – would be extremely happy.
I looked at Choi Hyun-oh with eyes like a viewer watching a drama, only to hear his sharp scolding, his face completely red as if the heat had rushed to the top of his head.
“What! Yes, I like her, so what!”
