By Zephyria 
At a point where everything felt too distant, his brain momentarily stopped working. He opened and closed his mouth, unable to find the words, before finally pressing his lips together. He wondered how on earth this had all happened.
While he was glitching under the overload, Kim Seon-woo continued eating nonchalantly. With Eun-ha staring blankly like an idiot in front of him, he leisurely used his chopsticks and suddenly asked.
“Do you remember that? When I fought with Lee Sang-woo in our senior year.”
He asked it casually, as if it were a mundane topic. There was no particular context to the remark. Because of that, Eun-ha forgot he was in shock and answered instinctively.
“……You and Lee Sang-woo?”
“Yeah. We even got dragged into the faculty office and everything.”
“I don’t remember that……”
“It happened.”
Lee Sang-woo was a male student who had liked Eun-ha in high school. He was the person who first made Eun-ha aware of homosexuality, and the friend with whom he had shared his first kiss out of curiosity. The boy he had happened to reunite with at the Han River quite recently.
“Then do you remember that Lee Sang-woo and I used to hang out before that?”
“……Did we?”
“You really don’t remember a thing, do you? Look, Lee Sang-woo and I were in the same class in our third year. He had been close with you in the second year, so we became friends through that common denominator at first.”
As he listened, the memories seemed to play back faintly. Using Kim Seon-woo’s explanation as an answer key, he searched through his mind, and dim fragments gradually surfaced. Ah. Right. There was a time when he found it curious that two people who didn’t seem like they’d get along were hanging out together.
He also remembered the shock of hearing that the two had gotten into a fistfight in the classroom, prompting him to run down the hallway. He had been surprised first because the parties involved were people he knew well, and second because Kim Seon-woo had fought with someone. The Kim Seon-woo he knew was someone who never had more friction with others than absolutely necessary.
That remained an unchanging premise even now. Since then, Eun-ha had never once witnessed Kim Seon-woo experience conflict in his human relationships. That was why that particular time felt even more puzzling. Why had they fought so fiercely back then?
He recalled it being quite a scene. Both sets of parents were called in, they received disciplinary action……
“The reason we fought back then was you.”
“…….”
It was a clear explanation. Eun-ha quietly lowered his gaze. Instead of answering, he just fidgeted with his water glass. The moment he heard the explanation, the context clicked.
The internal details of why the two had fought over him flashed through his mind in an instant.
They had been talking about sexual orientation. He had mentioned that he knew he was gay since high school, and then suddenly brought up Lee Sang-woo.
‘And he liked me from the second year to the third year of high school…… to him, Kim Seon-woo must have been like a point of contact with me……’
The connection was easy to draw. A sliver of embarrassment surged at the fact he had been completely unaware. That such a thing had happened…… While he was maintaining an ambiguous stance, not knowing exactly what the situation had been.
“It wasn’t malicious. It was more like he was asking for advice. He was almost out of his mind, like someone with lovesickness.”
“…….”
“But from my position, it was bound to be annoying. He was reckless, too. Why should I have to hear that kind of thing from someone who isn’t even the person involved first?”
“…….”
The calm explanation continued for a while longer. It seemed Lee Sang-woo had mentioned it as if sharing a worry, judging that Kim Seon-woo already knew the truth. Having heard it for the first time, Kim Seon-woo had processed the situation and gradually become angry.
While listening in silence, Eun-ha’s head, conversely, began to cool down. He had felt a brief flash of unpleasantness at the thought that he had been effectively “outed” without his knowledge, but it slowly faded.
At some point, he asked abruptly.
“So you actually threw punches?”
He asked it like a joke. It was a question that implied, ‘You did?’ Kim Seon-woo glanced up and replied with an equal amount of playfulness.
“Yeah. I properly remodeled his mindset. I made him keep his mouth shut, too.”
Eun-ha pulled the corners of his mouth up to play along, but the smile slowly faded as he dropped his gaze. After hesitating for a moment, he spoke.
“How was it? I mean, how did you feel?”
He thought that Kim Seon-woo must have felt frustrated at times, keeping it a secret for ten years. Next, he wondered what he had thought then, and what he thought now……
And he felt a bit lacking in confidence.
Kim Seon-woo wrinkled the bridge of his nose, as if he found it absurd.
“What do I think about it? I don’t think anything. It’s been nearly ten years since I found out.”
He added that it would be weirder to have a significant opinion on it now. He claimed that even at the time, he didn’t think much of the fact itself.
“Ah. There is one thing, though.”
“…What. What is it….”
“Gu Hae-bin knows all this. Alone.”
“……How do you know that?”
“I guessed.”
“Ah.”
“Don’t tell me Gu Hae-bin doesn’t know either?”
“…No. He knows.”
“See.”
He narrowed his eyes as if that one thing was slightly unfair. Even if he spoke like that, he probably wasn’t truly regretful. Rather, he likely wanted to say that something like sexual orientation wasn’t a problem at all. That what he should actually worry about wasn’t something like that, but the fact that he had only revealed it to a few people in their friend group……
He sniffled. An emotion that was difficult to define rose to the tip of his throat, surging as if it might overflow. He didn’t know why he had harbored such a vague fear.
Perhaps Yeon-jun’s insight was accurate. That he would be like this. That he would react this way. That he would accept and embrace everything…… That he would nonchalantly understand the part of him that even his family had cast aside.
Because he wasn’t sure if he was a person who deserved such acceptance. Because he felt he wasn’t that great of a person. Because he felt it was somewhat shameless of him.
His eyes grew hot. It was inevitable. Of course, knowing that even a single tear would make him a target of teasing for a long time, he fought desperately to hold it back.
Nevertheless, facing the inevitably shimmering eyes, Kim Seon-woo furrowed his brow pointedly.
“What are you looking at me like that for?”
“…Just because.”
“Stop it.”
“What did I even do?”
“Just stop whatever you’re doing.”
They were two adult men who had known each other for a long time. No matter how serious the topic of conversation was, he refused to let the atmosphere become genuinely cringeworthy.
Watching Kim Seon-woo guard against the softening mood, Eun-ha let out a powerless chuckle and finally whispered a small phrase. Sorry for telling you late.
Kim Seon-woo gave a rough snort and dismissed it, asking what there was to be sorry for.
At the end of that, the hesitating Eun-ha asked.
“Kim Seon-woo.”
“Yeah.”
“Would the other guys be like that too?”
He hesitated again under the returning gaze and murmured like a crawling ant.
“Like you……”
Kim Seon-woo, who managed to understand, rolled his eyes in thought and then replied nonchalantly.
“I’m guessing on this too, but.”
“Yeah.”
“I bet fifty thousand won that the other guys have already noticed.”
That they all knew long ago and were simply not making a show of it.
Eun-ha gave a bitter smile. Then, to clear the heavy atmosphere, he pettily scolded him, asking why it was only fifty thousand won. Whether it was a satisfying answer or not, Kim Seon-woo chuckled comfortably. Not long after, the other friends arrived one by one, appearing with a noisy commotion.