“It feels like it’s already hot, even though it’s only early summer.”
“It does, doesn’t it.”
Joo Tae-hyun’s only solace was that summer vacation was just around the corner.
…I wonder if there will be a concert at Changgyeonggung Palace this summer too?
Even if there is, Seo Baek-han would have difficulty attending.
He heard from his older brothers and sisters that he was the representative of the Korean student association in California, or something like that, anyway, he had secured some kind of position. Actually, even if it wasn’t from his older brothers and sisters, his news was relatively easy to come across. It poured out in droves with just a search.
He’s a graduate student, but anyway, if you only consider his age, he’s just turned twenty, barely an adult. Even considering that he’s not a Korean-American but an international student, it’s really quite an amazing level of sociability. Or should I say it’s more like a level of control than sociability? Anyway.
As he always did whenever his surroundings became noisy, Joo Tae-hyun quietly replayed the moment he first met Seo Baek-han. Then, he would inevitably end up rummaging through his phone again.
〈
Chat
☰
11:30 PM
Hyung, hello.
Hope you’re doing well? 😊
Oh? Tae-hyun, haha.
Are you studying hard?
What’s up?
3:45 AM
Ah, it’s not that, but
I’m also thinking about studying abroad early
1
3:45 AM
I was wondering how you handled the credits!:)
There’s still no reply to the message he sent, squeezing out any excuse he could find. No, it hasn’t even been read yet.
Could it be because the Wi-Fi is slow? Maybe the data isn’t working?
He pointlessly exited the chat window and went back in, but nothing had changed. He did that for a while, and then the screen blurred and suddenly went black.
The dark mirror of the screen was filled only with his own disappointed face.
Joo Tae-hyun rubbed his dry face for no reason.
…I think I sent the message for nothing. Hyung isn’t an admissions expert, I might have bothered him too much.
Even the lukewarm frictional heat of his palm brushing against his mouth pointlessly reminded him of that summer night last year.
The chirping of insects, the simultaneous lighting of lanterns, Seo Baek-han’s voice murmuring softly beyond the exclamations of the people, and the thick, cloying scent of fruit unique to the air.
Joo Tae-hyun replayed that day, which was as vivid as yesterday yet felt so far away, over and over again today.
Even when he gets older, he will probably long for the concert at the age of twelve every time he stands at the gateway to summer. That summer night when he hatched from his egg and saw the world for the first time.
Fourteen years old, autumn.
These days, Joo Tae-hyun was seriously considering his future.
Joo Tae-hyun wasn’t as great a prodigy as Seo Baek-han, but he was a commendable student who could quickly produce output with just a little input. And thankfully, he was surrounded by people who were ready to spoon-feed him anything and everything.
So, the academic part was progressing smoothly as planned.
He had already passed all the GEDs, and the admission procedures for the international school were all completed. It was a place where credits were earned in the American style, so if you accumulated credits quickly, you could graduate early.
There were many options, such as private schools with excellent college entrance rates, foreign language high schools, and autonomous private high schools, but for Joo Tae-hyun, as long as he could graduate quickly and his academic record was recognized when he went to study abroad, anywhere was fine.
The school problem, which had been the biggest stress, was solved ridiculously easily, but nothing had been decided after graduating from high school.
Maybe it’s because they saw how hard he was having in middle school. His parents seemed to assume that he would naturally go to study abroad, and he didn’t particularly dislike it either… But he hadn’t specifically thought about which country or school he wanted to go to, or what he would major in.
America? It’s where the most DH branches are located, and it’s the easiest country to study abroad in, but… I don’t want to study business administration.
First of all, Joo Tae-hyun had absolutely no interest in succeeding to the management rights. He wanted to decline taking over a company, whether it was a major affiliate or not.
During the short time he spent in middle school for a year, he realized painfully that he didn’t have the personality to run a business. First of all, Joo Tae-hyun hated being around people.
Team projects? They were terrible. People who felt a sense of pleasure when they placed talent in the right place and achieved a single goal together? They all seemed like crazy perverts.
If he took over the company with this kind of social skills, the DH Group, which the previous generations had worked so hard to build, would obviously go to ruin in an instant.
Above all, he didn’t want to take away the shares of his beloved older brothers and sisters.
If his family knew that he was even thinking like this, they would definitely make a fuss, saying he was crazy. He also knew very well that he had kind siblings, rare in a chaebol family, who would never even think that their youngest brother was taking away their share.
But in a group like DH, things don’t work out just by the will of the owner’s family.
The first and second Hyung were married, and they had nephews and nieces. In this situation, if more and more was constantly added to him, there was no guarantee that his sisters-in-law and their families wouldn’t protest.
Above all, he heard that the decision of who would be in charge of which affiliate was already decided to some extent just before he was born. It was a natural thing. His older brothers and sisters were already adults at that time.
But he didn’t want to cause confusion because of the variable that was himself, who was born late. If he had overflowing talent, it would be one thing, but if he was in a situation where it was obvious that he would ruin the company with this lukewarm enthusiasm and lacking talent, then even more so.
Moreover, it’s not like he hasn’t received anything at all. He had already received a considerable amount of appropriate stocks, appropriate movables and real estate, and other appropriate assets.
So really, what am I going to do for a living in the future?
Which university should I go to, and what should I major in?
Joo Tae-hyun, who was going through a period of turbulence, had now almost erased Seo Baek-han’s name from his mind. He had stopped searching for his name on portal sites every day a long time ago. Was it because he had a lot of things to deal with right now? He naturally thought less about Seo Baek-han.
That being out of sight is also out of mind, also applied to the person he admired. Fourteen-year-old Joo Tae-hyun thought.
“…Come to think of it, what is that Hyung doing these days?”
Since he didn’t ask first, his older brothers and sisters naturally didn’t tell him about Seo Baek-han’s news. Even though he was such a strong presence, it was also amazing that he really had no way of knowing his whereabouts once he stopped searching.
Seo, Baek, Han.
His name, which he was typing into the search bar for the first time in a while, felt strangely unfamiliar. But that was just Joo Tae-hyun’s feeling, and the world surrounding Seo Baek-han was still splendid, including news about him, as well as blog and website posts.
“Huh?”
However, what caught Joo Tae-hyun’s attention was the SNS linked to Seo Baek-han’s profile. He didn’t expect him to run SNS so publicly, because he seemed like he wouldn’t tolerate even small mistakes, but it was unexpected.
He had to log in to see the photos, so he hurriedly logged in with his family’s private account or the account he used to peek at occasionally.
But, frustratingly, his feed was nothing special. There were no selfies, just photos of the original books he was reading these days, photos of the dog that his graduate school colleague was raising, and photos he took when he went to Malibu.
Even those didn’t seem to be taken with much effort, but rather seemed to be casually captured with the camera on a whim.
He thought that was just like Seo Baek-han.
That’s why he pressed ‘like’ on each of his posts.
It was like a sign of gratitude from a sensitive teenager who was worried about his career path to a fellow Alpha who had ignited the sparks in his heart.
Oh, our youngest, haha. You liked Seo Baek-han’s photos
But you didn’t like Hyung’s photos..
Our youngest seems to like Seo Baek-han in a strange way~
…He didn’t know until his second Hyung, who had logged in at the same time as him for the first time in a while, excitedly sent him a DM, that you could see the connection status between people who followed each other unless you changed the settings separately, and that the damn algorithm prominently recommended posts that the followed person had liked…
Joo Tae-hyun hurriedly straightened his back and sat up straight, canceling the ‘like’ he had pressed on Seo Baek-han’s post and writing a long apology DM to his Hyung.