By Zephyria 
“He… he left.”
“So, who exactly is that?”
Jang Ui-geon’s fierce eyes made it clear that he knew the person wasn’t among those currently inside. Seo Chi-young couldn’t recall doing anything wrong, yet he felt as if he had, answering hesitantly while shrinking back.
“He’s, uh, a customer who visits occasionally…”
“That nuisance?”
Jang Ui-geon hit the mark immediately. He had likely run through various possibilities while throwing everything aside and driving here the moment he hung up the phone. Seeing Jang Ui-geon’s cold, sunken expression, Seo Chi-young shrunk his neck like a child about to be scolded.
“He’s not usually like that…”
“You said he’s usually a nuisance.”
“No, I mean, he’s not always that much of a nuisance…”
“Why do you think I rushed all the way here?”
“……….”
He was a nuisance.
From the moment the man had snatched Seo Chi-young’s phone, his behavior had been that of a nuisance, regardless of what anyone said. If forcibly taking someone’s phone to pour out absurd words to a stranger and then promptly fleeing wasn’t being a nuisance, then there would be no such thing as a nuisance in this world. Jang Ui-geon looked down at the head-bowing Seo Chi-young and let out an irritated sigh.
“He said he’s breaking up with you?”
“No, he didn’t!”
“Right, I figured as much.”
As Seo Chi-young immediately lifted his head to answer, Jang Ui-geon nodded as if he had already known it. Even so, his fiercely hardened expression softened slightly.
“He told you he hasn’t been much of a nuisance to you lately, right?”
“Yes. He’s, uh, a decent person… was a decent person.”
Seeing Jang Ui-geon’s eyes narrow, Seo Chi-young quickly corrected his tense to the past.
“Then why did he do that to me?”
He didn’t know. Having no way of knowing, Seo Chi-young shook his head.
“Does he happen to know that I’m Chi-young’s boyfriend?”
“No, he wouldn’t… ……….uh… maybe he does…”
Seo Chi-young paused mid-answer. There was no reason for the man to know that the person on the phone was Seo Chi-young’s boyfriend. However, judging by the words he had poured into the phone, it felt as if he did know.
“He did that knowing I’m Chi-young’s boyfriend…?”
Jang Ui-geon looked down at Seo Chi-young, who was trailing off ambiguously, with narrowed eyes. After speaking through gritted teeth, his gaze suddenly shifted to the wallet tossed on the table. A single wallet sitting lonely on a table where only empty plates remained.
“Is that his wallet?”
Jang Ui-geon approached and picked up the wallet. His hand, which had been about to open it without hesitation to take out a card, suddenly paused. Jang Ui-geon’s sharp gaze stared blankly into the wallet.
“…Someone who lives a poor and difficult life?”
Jang Ui-geon scoffed. Lifting his gaze to Seo Chi-young, he opened the bill compartment of the wallet and tilted it toward him.
Inside, it was stuffed with white slips of paper. …Checks. Checks. Checks. In fact, the ones Jang Ui-geon pulled out and scattered on the table in disbelief were all million-won checks.
I guess it wasn’t a lie when he said he couldn’t pay because he only had million-won checks… Seo Chi-young thought blankly as he looked at the checks. Seeing million-won checks scattered around this shop felt like a completely surreal sight.
“Who on earth is this ‘unfortunate person’ that you felt sorry for, said was in a difficult situation, and worked so hard to protect?”
“……….”
“What kind of bastard is he, playing tricks by appealing to sympathy… this piece of shit…”
Jang Ui-geon shook the wallet back and forth, grinding his teeth fiercely. Seo Chi-young just blinked, staring at the pieces of paper fluttering down to the floor. He didn’t think the man had been playing tricks, but it didn’t seem like the right atmosphere to say so now.
While Seo Chi-young stood there looking troubled and lost, Jang Ui-geon began rummaging through the wallet with rough hands.
“Be a bit more suspicious! Don’t be so accommodating to nuisances! People like that, once you start indulging them, there’s no end to it! Moreover, if he’s a guy with this much uselessly overflowing money, things could get incredibly annoying if you’re not careful!”
Jang Ui-geon rattled off his words with a deep frown etched between his brows. Still unable to grasp the current situation, Seo Chi-young just listened quietly, growing more discouraged. Jang Ui-geon rarely nagged or spoke harshly, but now, as if truly boiling over, he continued speaking while fiercely searching the wallet.
“I’m not someone who hates competition. In fact, I tend to enjoy it. But this is absolutely not it. There are things worth competing for, but these kinds of cheap tricks should be nipped in the bud…!”
Just then, Jang Ui-geon, who had pulled out all the cards from the wallet and spread them like a fan, suddenly stopped talking.
The expression vanished from Jang Ui-geon’s face as he stared intently at the four or five cards. Seeing this, Seo Chi-young also looked at the cards. At a glance, there seemed to be no ID cards. Just a few credit cards. Jang Ui-geon stared at the credit cards, which likely only had names on them, without even blinking. One by one, he flipped through the cards slowly, staring as if he were trying to burn holes through them.
In that sudden silence, Seo Chi-young also fell silent.
“…Is this the nuisance who comes here every day to badmouth his younger brother?”
At some point, Jang Ui-geon asked abruptly. His voice was subtly sunken. To some, it might have sounded a bit softer, and at that ambiguous tone, Seo Chi-young nodded.
“He said his brother causes a lot of trouble. That’s probably why he suddenly snapped. Um… it seemed like his brother is a very bad person. He contacted him after a long time just to demand money, and he’s cut off all interest in family matters…”
Seo Chi-young diligently offered these excuses, hoping Jang Ui-geon would feel a bit of pity, but Jang Ui-geon said nothing. He simply stared silently at the cards.
Suddenly stuffing the cards back in and tossing the wallet onto the table, Jang Ui-geon took out his phone. He pressed the call button as if intending to call someone, but he had to listen to the sound of the call being abruptly disconnected by a rejection after only a few rings.
“Ugh… this man, seriously…!”
A growl leaked through Jang Ui-geon’s clenched teeth. Watching Jang Ui-geon look up at the sky and uselessly press the call button again, Seo Chi-young finally raised an eyebrow in curiosity and asked cautiously.
“Do you… happen to know him…?”
“Know him?! Well—”
Jang Ui-geon, who seemed about to explode with frustration, paused just as he was about to get angry. He stared intently at the blinking Seo Chi-young, then quietly put the phone back in his pocket, sat down in a chair, and spoke seriously.
“Tell me again. What did this man say about his brother?”
The man appeared with the same face as always.
“CEO. I’m here.”
As the man entered, speaking in a voice still raspy from a cold, Seo Chi-young instinctively froze and gave a stiff nod. “Yes…” He was so flustered for a moment that he couldn’t even tell him to come in.
However, the man sat in a chair as if nothing had happened and casually shouted, “One order of gopchang and a bottle of soju.” While the soju was being brought and the gopchang was being stir-fried, Seo Chi-young’s tension eased just a little. Glancing at the man, who let out a light sigh with a much better expression, he spoke cautiously.
“Did something good happen? You look like you’re in a good mood…”
“Yeah. You noticed right away? A complication with a project finally got sorted out. Phew, you have no idea how much I’ve suffered mentally. Anyway, it’s a real struggle when you’re born into the wrong family.”
While the man spoke with a bright face about the resolved issue, Seo Chi-young couldn’t bring himself to smile. He tried to force a slight curve to the corners of his mouth but eventually gave up, saying, “That’s great. Congratulations.”
“Ah, right. Come to think of it, was everything okay that day?”
“Pardon?”
“I mean your boyfriend, CEO. He stormed in right after I left, didn’t he? Just from the phone call, I could tell—he seems like he’d have a terrible personality. Petty, mean, cold… right, yeah?”
Seo Chi-young didn’t know how to respond and just blinked at the man. He was smiling ambiguously, but it wasn’t a real smile. Just as Seo Chi-young was breaking into a cold sweat, trying to say, “No, well…”
“This shop is in trouble too. A nuisance has made himself a regular.”
A very cold voice flew toward the back of the man’s head. The man seemed to flinch for a moment.
“It’s only because the CEO here has such a good personality that he puts up with you. If it were me, I would’ve kicked your ass out.”
The cold voice approached slowly, step by step. The man, who had been shrinking and swallowing hard while shifting his eyes, turned around stiffly. The moment his eyes met Jang Ui-geon, who appeared with his head tilted, he instead widened his eyes and lifted his chin.
“What are you doing here? A businessman shouldn’t be wandering around during business hours instead of tending to his shop!”
“Coming here at this specific time on purpose… what the hell is this?”
Jang Ui-geon’s voice, which had been coldly sunken, also turned aggressive. In response, the man raised his voice even louder, as if he had never been intimidated.
“Then who told you not to take my side and to pretend you didn’t know when I was fighting with Father?!”
“And because of that, you come here and sit around badmouthing me? Of all places, here?!”
Both the man and Jang Ui-geon were equally strained, veins popping in their necks. Facing each other just one step apart and raising their voices, Seo Chi-young looked back and forth between the two men in bewilderment. It was noisy enough that passersby glanced over at least once.
However, the commotion didn’t last long. The lady from the vegetable shop right across the street suddenly shouted.
“Hey! Why are you fighting in front of someone else’s shop, you misters! Go fight somewhere else!”
As soon as the lady’s irritated voice rang out—complaining about nuisances fighting at another’s shop—the men shut their mouths, regardless of who was first.
“Misters… and nuisances…”
Perhaps those two words hit hard, as Jang Ui-geon frowned and pressed his hand to his forehead, and the man quickly turned back toward Seo Chi-young.
“This kid is a regular here, right? What a shame a nuisance is a regular. Tsk tsk…”
Jang Ui-geon, staring fiercely at the back of the man’s head as if he wanted to smack it for continuing to chatter, clicked his tongue and pulled over the chair next to him to sit. As he poured the half-frozen barley tea that Seo Chi-young tactfully provided into a glass, he glared at the man with a deeply scowled face.
“I called home. I heard you reached a 6-to-4 compromise with Father. Why are you taking your anger out on me here? Is it because you only got 4?”
“Hey! I’m the 6! Who says I’m the 4? Did Father say that? Seriously, that old man is just too greedy for work.”
The man shouted indignantly and poured the soju. However, since the compromise had been reached, his mood seemed to have cleared, and he drank the soju with a refreshed face as if it were a soft drink.
“Oh, right. Some money will be released next month, so I’ll give it to you around the middle of the month. You pay for the promissory note and the notarization costs. I’ll specially give you the bank interest rate.”
Speaking as if he were being generous, the man caught the eye of Seo Chi-young, who was stir-frying the gopchang in silence while looking back and forth between them with some concern. Looking at the blinking Seo Chi-young, the man suddenly let out a deep sigh and called, “CEO.”
“He’s a guy you gain nothing from knowing, but since you’ve seen his face, I’ll introduce you. This is that bastard of a younger brother I mentioned. He lives around here too, so you might run into him by chance. If possible, stay far away from him. Far away.”
“Will you stop it?”
“I’m telling you, if this guy can’t control his temper, you never know what he’ll do. You saw him try to kill me earlier, right?”
Seo Chi-young looked at the man, who was muttering with a distorted face, with an ambiguous expression, unsure whether to laugh or not.
Jang Ui-geon’s brother.
He didn’t know what kind of face he should make. He deeply felt the reason why Yoon Jun-young found that older brother uncomfortable. No matter how much they badmouthed or complained, blood is thicker than water. The curious, probing gaze of someone wondering who his brother likes could not be comfortable. If even Yoon Jun-young, who didn’t like Jang Ui-geon, felt that way, how much more so for Seo Chi-young?
Unable to watch Seo Chi-young blink and break into a cold sweat, Jang Ui-geon frowned.
“Why are you even coming here? Don’t ever come back. Can’t you see he’s uncomfortable? I’m really going to get angry.”
“I know, I know. I heard you hit Jun-young too. Before, Kang-hee was so quiet and lost in thought that I gave him some alcohol to loosen him up, and that’s when he told me.”
“Why is that kid coming up now? I’m not normally a violent person!”
Jang Ui-geon beat his chest and gulped down the barley tea. He cast a bashful glance at Seo Chi-young. Recalling the situation, Seo Chi-young broke into an even heavier cold sweat.
The man, watching the two of them subtly avoid each other with awkward and embarrassed expressions, suddenly turned his head and muttered softly to himself.
“Sigh… first he was obsessed with someone who wouldn’t even look at him, and now he’s got a kind person who can’t escape his grasp in that state…”
Though it was a monologue, the man let out a loud sigh that could be heard by the person next to him. Without even looking at the fuming Jang Ui-geon, he fixed his gaze on Seo Chi-young.
“CEO, don’t forget what I said and treat him well. Before your hair turns grey… huh? I’m really saying this for your own sake.”
“What nonsense are you talking now!”
“But then again… somehow… it doesn’t look like they’ll break up.”
They’re like two cockroaches stuck together, the man thought. Without giving a single glance to Jang Ui-geon, who was staring with a suspicious gaze, he happily accepted the gopchang Seo Chi-young offered with an ambiguous face and popped it into his mouth.
When Jang Ui-geon returned after seeing the man off to the roadside, the last customers were just leaving the shop.
“Please get home safely and come again.”
Jang Ui-geon, greeting them brightly as if it were his own shop, turned toward Seo Chi-young, who was clearing the empty plates, and rolled up his sleeves. He picked up a dishcloth and began wiping the tables.
“You worked hard today. It was tough, wasn’t it?”
“Ah. No. Rather, Ui-geon, is the shop okay?”
“Hmm—I usually do the closing, but it’s fine. It’s okay to leave it to someone else for a day or two. …I’m sorry. My brother has been a nuisance.”
“Oh… it’s okay.”
“I think he just happened to stop by while looking for a new business site nearby. Kang-hee said this place was delicious before, and since my brother’s line of work is what it is—everyone in our family is in the food industry, so we can’t resist visiting a place that’s said to be tasty. Still, after hanging around this neighborhood for a while, it seems the atmosphere isn’t quite right for the kind of restaurant he’s planning to open. He said he probably won’t have much reason to come often now.”
“Ah, I see…”
Jang Ui-geon looked at Seo Chi-young, who looked slightly disappointed, with a strange expression. His face seemed to ask, Why be disappointed?
“Still, he said he’d visit your shop occasionally because it suits his taste. I told him not to come too often.”
Adding that he wouldn’t be able to come much anyway once he started his new business, Jang Ui-geon fell silent for a moment. Seo Chi-young just nodded, saying, “I see.”
“…My family isn’t exactly the affectionate type, but we are people who are very interested in family matters. Because of the age difference, he’s been like a father to me since I was young.”
As he wiped the tables briskly, Jang Ui-geon suddenly chuckled, perhaps remembering something from the past. They must have been brothers with a good relationship. Seo Chi-young smiled quietly to himself as he carried the dishes to the sink.
“Still, he seems like a very good person. Though he is a bit eccentric. I think he’s a kind and reliable person.”
“Do you like people like that?”
“Pardon?”
Seo Chi-young blinked and looked at Jang Ui-geon, surprised by the unexpected counter-question. Jang Ui-geon, looking at Seo Chi-young with eyes full of laughter as if he hadn’t said it seriously, tossed the cloth he had used to wipe the table into the sink and picked up a broom.
“Forget it. I’ve got a father who doesn’t care about his children when it comes to work, an older brother who has no blood or tears when it comes to taking care of his own business, and a strong-willed younger sister… Well, at least I have one decent younger brother, so you can just try to hold onto him well.”
Jang Ui-geon mentioned that it was about time to be generous and glanced sideways at Seo Chi-young. Seo Chi-young ended up laughing as he dipped his hands into the sink.
“Yes, they said he’s a good person. I heard he treats his partner very well. Apparently, even when he’s at a family gathering, he’ll leave immediately to go pick up his partner.”
As Seo Chi-young spoke quietly, Jang Ui-geon flinched.
“He told you that too? …Ah… seriously.”
Jang Ui-geon muttered something under his breath. He seemed to be complaining about his Hyung. His face flushed slightly, looking as if he were angry. However, Seo Chi-young knew that he wasn’t actually angry, but simply embarrassed.
“I… I also… when I see someone wearing a tie similar to yours, Ui-geon-ssi, I think of you.”
Seo Chi-young’s face also grew subtly flushed as he dropped his gaze to the sink. He could feel Jang Ui-geon’s eyes on the side of his face.
“I mean, just what on earth did Hyung blabber about…?”
To Jang Ui-geon, who was muttering in disbelief with a face redder than embarrassed, Seo Chi-young continued in a voice that grew gradually lower, his gaze still fixed on the dishes in the sink.
“I’ve thought since high school that your handwriting is very pleasant to look at, Ui-geon-ssi… and also,”
Seo Chi-young hesitated for a moment.
There were words he was reluctant to let out. He had thought them for a long time, and he knew he felt this way, but he had never revealed them outwardly.
“…And also, when I go down to see my father and mother on the weekends, I sometimes feel a bit sad. Since it’s the weekend I’ve finally returned to, I feel bad that I can’t be with you, Ui-geon-ssi.”
He couldn’t say it because he felt sorry toward the parents who lived far away. He scolded himself, thinking his own greed was outweighing his duty, and tried not to think about it, but he couldn’t help the feeling.
He wanted to be together even one day more. He didn’t want to lose a precious day where they could spend a leisurely afternoon together.
“……”
It was a greed for Jang Ui-geon.
Jang Ui-geon stared intently at Seo Chi-young. He stopped sweeping the floor and looked at Seo Chi-young—who was diligently clattering dishes in front of the sink—with a strange expression. He watched the process of Seo Chi-young’s face turning redder and redder without missing a single moment, watching and watching, until finally, he smiled. With a look of absolute joy.
“And?”
“Pardon?”
“What else did you hear?”
“Uh… and…”
As Seo Chi-young faltered, lost in thought, Jang Ui-geon set down the broom and approached. Standing right behind Seo Chi-young, he whispered.
“Tell me the things I don’t know. I don’t think a nuisance like that will ever come visit me.”
Whether it was badmouthing, tattling, or talking about people around them, it didn’t matter; someone who could talk endlessly about Seo Chi-young was unlikely to seek out Jang Ui-geon.
Jang Ui-geon felt a slight sense of regret.
There were no shortcuts for him; he could only get to know Seo Chi-young by honestly accumulating time. He wanted to know and hear even one more thing. Only then did Jang Ui-geon understand why Seo Chi-young had looked regretful when he said his Hyung wouldn’t be coming back.
“This is the first time I’ve ever missed a nuisance,” Jang Ui-geon said with a sigh.
Hearing those regretful words, Seo Chi-young laughed. Watching Seo Chi-young laugh silently, his eyes curving beautifully, Jang Ui-geon thought, But this is fine too.
Even if it wasn’t a shortcut, they were eventually heading toward the same place. He felt it would be okay to walk slowly, bit by bit. If so, by the time their black hair turned white as spring onions, they would likely have reached a reasonably satisfying place.