HMN C11

Chapter 11

“Is that funny?”

“Ah… ah, seriously.”

While debating, in all seriousness, whether to grab the laughing idiot by the hair, Min-hye clapped lightly from afar.

“Okay, let’s wrap up here and head to round two. Hands up if you’re coming so I can do a headcount! For the record, there’s absolutely, absolutely no pressure to drink!”

Her voice, buoyed by alcohol, sounded brighter than usual. One by one, hands went up—mostly from those clustered around Go Chiwoo.

“Don’t worry. Since Chiwoo’s the vice president, he’ll definitely go.”

At Min-hye’s words, the corner that had whooped grew warm and cheery.

“Disgusting…”

For a moment, Daeyoung flinched, wondering if he’d said it out loud, but he was clamping his teeth and forcing his brain to stay on guard. The mutter had come from Seong-rae. When he stared with bright eyes, she slid him a glance and played innocent.

“I’m heading home—sunbae, are you going to round two?”

“No, I’m going home too. Wonjung?”

“Yeah, let’s go together.”

So this was how insiders and outsiders got sorted. While he indulged the childish thought, people were already tidying up and standing one after another.

“Wonjung. I’m hitting the bathroom first; wait outside.”

“I’ll smoke.”

He nodded, and Seong-rae rose with a flash in her eyes to follow Wonjung.

“Sunbae, you smoke? Let’s go together.”

“Sure you want to share a smoke with a fox?”

“What the—turns out you’re a petty fox.”

The two bickered amiably down the stairs. Maybe because she had a good nature, Seong-rae played along well with a prickly, unfunny returnee.

He’d eaten while keeping his nerves taut, more alert than usual, but the buzz was stacking up. Pressing his warm cheeks with the backs of his hands, he walked toward the bathroom sign and pulled aside the curtain draped halfway down. It was a single-occupancy washroom—if someone was inside, you had to wait behind the curtain—but no one stood at the door, likely because everyone had gone outside. He pushed open the wooden door and stepped in.

Beware the threshold! Ouchie!

The paper taped to the mirror carried a cutely written, deadly-serious warning. With a snort, he leaned toward the glass. The skin beneath his eyes was red.

“I’m drunk…”

Sniff. He snorted back a nose that hadn’t even run and washed his hands. Working up a thick lather, he scrubbed between his fingers, his dazed gaze fixed in the mirror.

“How do I look like a bear.”

Sure, Koo Wonjung was the better-looking one, but still, at this level, anywhere he— He’d never heard it. In high school, he hadn’t had friends. One classmate loathed him with a passion, and because that guy ran little politics in the class, the dull, simple teenage boys were easily swayed. The so-called semi-outcast and loner.

“Enough. Enough. Enough.”

Alcohol bred thoughts and jolted emotions. If he’d done the army, he should be mature by now. No clinging to the past! After scrubbing for ages, his fingers felt frozen from the cold water.

“Ugh, tch.”

He pressed the cold back of his hand to his cheek and elbowed the door open. Someone was standing outside. To spare the waiter embarrassment, he avoided eye contact and stepped out quickly. That was the problem.

Thunk.

His toe caught on the threshold. His body pitched forward; in that instant, the “Ouchie!” warning flashed past. Ah… that was for someone like me…

“Hey!”

Even mid-tumble, survival instinct shot his arm out to avoid the fall. The hand reached toward the person in front of the bathroom. He was a hair’s breadth from grabbing on.

The face he glimpsed then was the problem.

Go Chiwoo. Wee-oo, wee-oo—sirens went off in his head. He would not, under any circumstance, brush him—not even the slightest—if it meant shattering his knee a second time. The hand he’d thrust out to catch a lifeline veered up and away from him.

Thump.

“Gasp…”

Which was, in its own way, a problem. In trying not to grab his arm, he ruined everything. Off-balance, he spilled straight into the man’s chest. His hands skated off the wall; his face landed squarely against a broad chest. The result was an almost dainty embrace.

“……”

“……”

He was too stunned to say anything. He couldn’t lift his head, couldn’t move. He only widened his eyes and braced his ankles. And then—

Rustle.

“Chiwoo, why aren’t you—oh my!”

A shocked voice from behind. Min-hye. He turned his head, still buried against him; behind the lifted curtain stood Min-hye, a hand over her mouth, and beside her, one more spectator. Two witnesses to his squalid tableau.

“……”

Caught. He had penned a taller man between his arms and buried his face in that man’s chest.

“Uh, uh…”

Stammering, he planted his feet and, hands skidding awkwardly along the wall, pushed himself upright. So flustered that his vision swam, he couldn’t form words. As he darted his eyes between Chiwoo and Min-hye, mumbling “uh, uh,” Go Chiwoo flicked a speck from his collar and pushed off the wall.

“Sorry.”

The single word hooked every gaze.

“I don’t swing that way.”

“……”

He heard Min-hye gulp air between her lips. Still failing to fully process what had happened, Daeyoung just stood there vacant as Chiwoo swept aside the curtain and walked out. The other guy, who’d kept flicking looks at him, trailed after Chiwoo with Min-hye.

“What… just…”

The decorative curtain, long enough to brush his shoulders, still swayed as he slowly retraced the moment.

Blink. Blink.

“No way…”

Heat flared up his nape. It was instant. In a blink, he’d become the drunk gay who made a pass at Go Chiwoo. In front of Min-hye, whom he’d wanted to befriend, at that. Throb. Throb. His heart seemed to have relocated to his crown; strength left his hands.

Is my campus life going off the rails…

As a rule, bleak thoughts seldom lied.

Smack.

“Hey, why are you snorting steam.”

The moment he stepped out of the bar, face blazing, he scanned for Chiwoo and Min-hye—but neither was in sight. Only Wonjung, smoking in a nearby alley, flicked a butt and hurried over.

“Where did the guy who just left go.”

“Guy? Who—Go Chiwoo? He left with Min-hye.”

“Son of a—!”

“What happened.”

His clenched fist trembled. The bastard had done it on purpose. He’d seen him stumble; he’d known he tripped on the threshold and still said that and vanished. That despicable jerk. He put his hands on his hips.

“Koo Wonjung, I’m changing my goal this semester.”

“To what?”

“Killing Go Chiwoo.”

“Why now. What did he do.”

Wonjung asked again, but Daeyoung didn’t answer. He only swallowed the churning injustice and fury sloshing at his throat.

At this point, Ahn Daeyoung decided to change his thinking. It wasn’t that Chiwoo appeared with perfect timing whenever he humiliated himself, but that humiliation happened whenever Chiwoo was nearby.

“Hm.”

Wonjung eyed his friend, red-faced and puffing white breath. He was quick to boil and quick to flare as a rule, but he shook hardest when one particular person was involved. He called him a nemesis, but it felt less like a proper feud than a one-sided hatred.

Like the freshman member had said earlier, Daeyoung lacked social sense. People like that were often dull at situational judgment but sensitive in other ways. They watched for cues but never actually caught the right ones.

When he first tried to get close, it had taken a long time because Daeyoung wouldn’t put him in the “friend” category at all. He’d assumed it was aloof vanity, but in hindsight, that wasn’t intentional. He simply didn’t understand that someone might want to befriend him. He considered it impossible. That was why the year’s goal of “becoming a well-liked insider” made no sense. Not because he didn’t need it and didn’t know—but because the “bear pretending to be sensitive,” Ahn Daeyoung, was never going to pull it off.

“They’re all dead. I’m going to chew that guy up.”

Flames hissed invisibly. Turning on his heel, Daeyoung strode home, eyes blazing.