By Zephyria 
“I don’t want to.”
The answer that followed was completely unexpected.
“…What?”
“I don’t want to pretend this never happened.”
Yi-ho turned his head reflexively, his shoulders flinching. Min-gyu had leaned down, bringing himself right in front of Yi-ho’s eyes.
“I might be fine, but I don’t think you’ll be fine with it, Song Yi-ho.”
“…….”
A hand suddenly invaded his field of vision and covered Yi-ho’s head. It was warm, just as it had been when it covered his feverish forehead. That same gesture felt as if it were telling him that nothing had changed, making his vision swim.
“Song-i.”
“…….”
Min-gyu looked at Yi-ho with his usual warmth, the corners of his mouth curving upward.
“I don’t mind if we date. That’s why I came here.”
Not immediately grasping the meaning, Yi-ho’s eyes narrowed. He couldn’t even bring himself to ask for clarification. As Yi-ho stood there with his lips parted in a daze, Min-gyu’s gentle voice continued.
“I don’t think I feel the same way as you, but it’s true that you are the most special person in my life.”
“…What?”
“I can’t lose you, Yi-ho. I want to keep getting along with you, and I don’t want you to be hurt. Then there’s only one answer.”
Song Yi-ho’s slow processing speed gradually pieced together the words spilling from Cha Min-gyu’s mouth.
Cha Min-gyu had answered that he would accept a relationship with a man instead of losing his friend.
A sense of emptiness greater than that of his messy confession, followed by a wave of shame, flushed his face hot.
His face burned instantly. His stomach tightened to the point where he felt like gagging. Even if he were exposed as a homosexual in front of everyone he knew, he didn’t think he would feel this humiliated.
“Ha, ….”
Words that Yi-ho had folded away in his heart countless times, never once daring to utter, came so easily from Min-gyu.
Ironically, what came to mind was an incident that had occurred in Min-gyu’s marketing team a few months ago.
An event had been launched with the wrong quantity settings, and the disaster had already struck. In a situation where everyone else was frozen, Min-gyu had pinpointed exactly what needed to be done and resolved the crisis.
Just like that incident, Min-gyu had come to solve the problem with Yi-ho.
To resolve the abnormal situation where a friend had confessed his love. To correct the error that threatened to shake the relationship between them.
A sharp pain throbbed in his chest. His whole body felt hot with fever, yet his limbs trembled finely as if he were freezing.
For the first time, Yi-ho learned that when a person is pushed to the depths of misery, they start to laugh.
“…Hey, Cha Min-gyu.”
“Yeah.”
“It would have been much better if you just called me a gay bastard.”
“…I clearly told you I don’t have any prejudices—”
“Did you really think I’d be thrilled and jump at the chance to date just because I like you?”
He was sorry, but Cha Min-gyu was a person far too precious to Song Yi-ho to simply accept this blindly. If his own feelings had been the priority, things would never have reached this point.
It wasn’t that he had desperately hidden his feelings because he was ashamed of liking men. He had been worried about how Min-gyu would react upon finding out, and he didn’t want to steal away his precious friend.
“Is it that easy? I… ha.”
He had suffered for over ten years. The accumulated knots blocked his already poor eloquence. There was so much he wanted to burst out, but because it had been pressed down and crushed for so long, the shapes had vanished, leaving him unable to voice them.
Seeing Yi-ho’s expression, Min-gyu’s smile faded.
“Did I get something wrong again?”
“…Yeah. Everything from one to ten is wrong.”
“Then what… how was I supposed to do it?”
Min-gyu’s voice also betrayed a sense of exhaustion and sadness toward a partner he couldn’t understand. Yi-ho finally looked Min-gyu straight in the eye. Because the words he needed to say in this situation were clear.
“Cha Min-gyu, let’s just pretend it never happened after all. Even if we don’t, I’m not going to show any sign that I like you from now until the day I die.”
“I honestly don’t know why the conversation keeps going back in that direction.”
Min-gyu closed his eyes tight in frustration before opening them and dropping one knee to the floor below the sofa. Yi-ho and Min-gyu’s gazes met at a similar height.
“This wasn’t a situation where we had to erase it. Song Yi-ho, you said you like me, and I….”
Min-gyu brushed his lips once before continuing.
“…I know I brought up the idea of dating in a pretty shitty situation. But with your personality, if I had prepared properly and asked you to date like everyone else does, you would have run away even further. I—no, never mind.”
“…….”
“Song Yi-ho, I’m sincere about wanting to be in a relationship with you. That way, you won’t have to avoid me anymore.”
“Cha Min-gyu, I told you clearly. I originally had no intention of ever letting you know my feelings for the rest of my life.”
Yi-ho spoke, sculpting each syllable with great agony.
“The reason for that was also because I liked you. The person called Cha Min-gyu… is too precious in my life. I didn’t want to do anything that carried the possibility of losing you.”
“So….”
“If I date you like this, I’ll just be trembling again, terrified that we might break up.”
“Break up?”
Confusion seeped into Min-gyu’s intense gaze. Yi-ho answered as if he were being asked something obvious.
“Do you think we could date forever? If we dated and then broke up, do you think we could go back to getting along like we did after we fought and made up? There’s no way.”
“Song Yi-ho.”
“…What.”
“Something about what you’re saying is weird. You and I have been together for fifteen years. And you said you liked me for a long time. Why are you thinking about the end first, instead of what we’d do if we dated or how happy it would be?”
“…….”
Wasn’t it obvious? He had done enough optimistic thinking back when he first started liking Cha Min-gyu as a child. Since then, he had only added more reasons why it could never happen.
When Yi-ho didn’t answer, Min-gyu crossed his arms. His biceps bulged tight.
“So, you want to pretend it never happened, hide your feelings until you die, and if I keep talking about us being friends for life in the future, what are you going to do?”
“…We’ll just be friends for life. Like you said.”
“You asked about my dating life for a while. You’re okay with seeing me meet someone else while you like me? What if I get married and have kids?”
Min-gyu’s gaze fixed tenaciously on Yi-ho.
“Can you stand to watch me from the sidelines?”
Yi-ho’s fists curled inward. Still, this was a question he had hypothesized dozens of times, so he could answer it a bit more easily.
“…I’d probably drift away. Slowly.”
“Ha.”
With a forced laugh, he ran his hand through his hair, messing it up.
“…Ah. I didn’t know why I’ve been so angry for a while, but now I get it.”
His gaze grew intense. With a fierce expression that didn’t hide his emotions, it was a side of Cha Min-gyu that was rare to see.
“That’s where it went completely wrong. Drifting away from me, breaking up… is it that easy to remove me from your life? Is that a valid assumption?”
At those words, a surge of unfairness welled up in Yi-ho.
“I’m doing this because I can’t remove you, you bastard!”
“Is avoiding a person and running away until you slowly drift apart what you call ‘liking’ someone?”
“Then I’d be able to move on!”
“And after you move on, you’d slowly drift away from me while I’m standing next to you like an idiot, smiling because I think we’re friends?”
“…….”
“Song Yi-ho.”
With a low call laced with anger, Min-gyu moved even closer. He grabbed Yi-ho’s startled arm.
“Ugh….”
“That’s what would actually make me a total idiot.”
“…….”
“How is that any different from telling me to keep you by my side while pretending not to know you’re dying of misery? It means I don’t need to know your true feelings, your mood, or your pain ever again. Yi-ho.”
Yi-ho grabbed Min-gyu’s wrist with his other hand. But Min-gyu didn’t care.
“You say you can’t remove me, so why are all your conclusions focused on struggling to remove me from your life?”
The voice gritting through teeth, the grip tightening on his arm. Everything was unfamiliar.
“Tell me. I’m looking for a way for us to be together, so why are you the only one looking for a way to break up?”
“I am suggesting a way for us to be together! Something that actually works, like staying friends!”
“What kind of friendship is it where you just wither away and die alone!”
“Anything is better than this shitty situation. Let go of me!”
The situation was spiraling toward the worst possible outcome, making his head spin. His head throbbed more than it did when he had a severe flu with a high fever. His heart, beating as if it would leap out, hammered against his brain without a moment’s peace.
Min-gyu’s face was flushed in patches. It seemed to represent the unrefined, tangled emotions between the two of them.
Both were overly agitated. And they didn’t understand each other in the slightest. Perhaps, just as Min-gyu seemed strange to him, he himself must look strange in Min-gyu’s eyes.
A chill crept up his spine. Even in this state, his empty stomach churned with the desire not to look pathetic in front of Cha Min-gyu.
“…Get out, Cha Min-gyu.”
“…….”
“I said get out…! Ugh.”
The moment he tried to twist his body away, roughly pulling his wrist back, the grip on his arm tightened. As Yi-ho groaned and frowned, only then did the hand clutching his arm loosen. With a startled look, Min-gyu withdrew his hand and bit his lip.
“…I should. I feel like I might do something reckless.”
“…….”
Min-gyu stood up from the floor. Yi-ho’s gaze followed his knees. He walked slowly toward the entrance.
“Tomorrow, you’d better be sitting properly across from me at the table, Yi-ho.”