By Zephyria Even though I was more than 90% sure, the moment I confirmed the truth, my vision blurred. I felt like I was in a car about to collide head-on with a dump truck. My heart pounded wildly, as if it would leap out of my body.
Swallowing dryly several times, I found my mug and gulped down the coffee.
A painful silence ensued. Yoon Joo-ho stood up, pushing his chair back, and picked up Monroe, who was playing under the table.
“I’ll take him to the room.”
It was actually only about 1-2 minutes, but it felt like over 10 minutes.
Returning to the kitchen, Yoon Joo-ho took out two cans of beer from the refrigerator. Then he took out a cigarette and tossed the pack onto the table. Holding the filter between his teeth, he lit it and asked.
“How did you know?”
With that one sentence, the truth became even clearer. I had dreaded this moment, wishing the filming would drag on so Yoon Joo-ho couldn’t return. But the truth could be revealed in a disappointingly short sentence. No, that’s right. That’s the nature of truth. Simple and clear.
Song Hyun-soo involuntarily snapped his head up and looked at him.
“You’re not even denying it?”
“If I deny it, will you believe me?”
“…”
“Who did you hear it from?”
“Is that important right now?”
“I need to know who I should beat up.”
“There’s no one to beat up. I started suspecting it myself.”
“…”
“It came to me while I was packing. The perfume and t-shirt in that box in your dress room. Where else I had seen them.”
Yoon Joo-ho, holding the cigarette between his fingers, tilted his chin up, looked at the ceiling, and gnawed on his lower lip.
“You should have told me.”
At Song Hyun-soo’s voice, he lowered his chin and glared at him.
“You heard something like that and you want me to tell you? It’s obvious how you would react.”
“What did I hear?”
“You said you hated it involving someone you know. You said you broke up for that reason before.”
“If it’s something I hate that much, shouldn’t you have told me even more? Don’t I have the right to know about that situation?”
“It’s my past, unrelated to you. Do you need to know everyone I’ve met?”
“Did I ever ask you to tell me who else you met?”
“…”
“I don’t care about anything else. But if you met someone I know, it’s only polite to tell me. Especially since that person is currently my closest friend…!”
Song Hyun-soo couldn’t finish his sentence and turned his head away. He opened the beer can in front of him and gulped down three or four mouthfuls.
“I kept thinking about it while sitting here.”
“About what.”
“That every single action you took towards me was calculated.”
“…”
“The fact that you wanted to be so close after we started dating, and how sensitive you were to every phone call I received… it was all because you were afraid of getting caught, wasn’t it?”
Crushing the beer can in his hand, Song Hyun-soo gave a bitter laugh.
“I thought you were doing it because you liked me so much, and I thought it was cute.”
“Is that all you can think?”
Yoon Joo-ho’s voice was sharp. Song Hyun-soo’s voice, as he retorted, couldn’t be soft either. He lowered his head and glared at the table, gripping the beer can tightly.
“Even if that wasn’t the whole reason, you can’t deny it was part of it, can you?”
The hat Yoon Joo-ho had tossed onto the chair came into view. It was so pathetic and absurd that I couldn’t help but let out hollow laughs.
“Do you know who picked out that hat for me?”
“…”
“I asked Ji-in Hyung. I have no eye for fashion, and not much sense.”
“…”
“I asked him to pick out a birthday gift for the man I liked… for the person that man liked the most!”
“Don’t exaggerate. We never dated. It was a dud.”
I glared at him with eyes full of resentment.
“Even a dud can have sparks.”
“We only slept together.”
“Like you did with me at first?”
“…”
That’s not what’s important, Song Hyun-soo shook his head vigorously.
“I’m not trying to argue about how deep your relationship was. The problem is that you deliberately hid it from me.”
“What good would it do you to know? Have you considered that I did it to protect you?”
“I have.”
“…”
“I think it was because you didn’t want to lose me.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I understand it must have been difficult to bring it up at first. I would have felt the same way. But after that, you should have tried. You should have told me the truth and tried to resolve it with me. But you didn’t. You kept burying it and chose to deceive me more thoroughly.”
Sigh. A deep sigh escaped Yoon Joo-ho’s lips. He ran a hand over his face as if to erase it and nervously took a drag from his cigarette. His voice, cold and calm, continued.
“Yes, I hid it.”
“…”
“I even called Jung Ji-in to tell him not to tell you anything.”
“Ah…”
“Seohae Hyung, Sang-ho Hyung. I made sure they all kept their mouths shut.”
Director Bang and Seohae.
The fact that I was surrounded by people who knew Yoon Joo-ho’s past felt new. Standing among people dressed in suits, I felt my ears burn, as if I had been naked all this time.
Shaking the ashes into the ashtray, Yoon Joo-ho gave Song Hyun-soo a crooked smile.
“Don’t you think it was quite an effort?”
Song Hyun-soo, who had put down his beer can, clenched his fist again.
“Without knowing that, I hoped you and Hyung would reconcile. I was happy when I saw the record of you calling Hyung! It’s pathetic!”
“What’s pathetic about it? No one thinks that!”
“You say it’s not pathetic?”
“I think the one who struggled to hide it is several times more pathetic.”
“What if I had met Seohae Hyung?”
“Why did the conversation jump like that?”
“What if I said I didn’t tell my senior because Seohae hyung and I were just sleeping together? And so, the senior, who knew nothing, praised Seohae hyung in front of me, asked Seohae hyung to pick out my gift, and felt pleased watching the two of them together?”
His voice was rising with emotion. Then, with a sudden drop, Song Hyun-soo added, as if whispering, his breath mingling with his words.
“Even then, wouldn’t the senior feel like a fool?”
“…”
“Whether you intended it or not, it’s about making someone miserable. That lie.”
Song Hyun-soo’s head drooped. He had clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles throbbed, but he didn’t notice. Then, suddenly, Song Hyun-soo lifted his head. As if a truly important matter he had completely forgotten had surfaced, he looked at Yoon Joo-ho with surprised eyes. Song Hyun-soo’s face, flushed just moments before, turned pale in an instant.
Yoon Joo-ho’s gaze slid towards Song Hyun-soo’s trembling lips.
“Lee Seo-kyung, that matter… Don’t tell me, does Ji-in hyung know too?”
Please say no, not this. Song Hyun-soo’s eyes looked almost desperate.
However, Yoon Joo-ho couldn’t give Song Hyun-soo the answer he wanted. He licked his lips, then bit them.
Song Hyun-soo swallowed dryly. He slowly shook his head. The speed of his head shake gradually increased. He couldn’t bear to stay in this place any longer. He snatched his phone from the table and kicked his chair back, standing up. Yoon Joo-ho grabbed his arm forcefully as he tried to run out.
“Where are you going?”
“Let go. I can’t stay here anymore.”
“If you don’t like being with me, go up to the second floor.”
“Right now, it’s just… it’s better if we’re separate for now.”
Song Hyun-soo tried to run forward, and Yoon Joo-ho yanked his arm roughly.
“Look at me. Song Hyun-soo, look at me.”
Why? So I’ll soften up looking at your face?
He refused Yoon Joo-ho’s hand, which was trying to grasp his jaw, and pushed it away.
“When you brought up Lee Seo-kyung, you should have said something then. For that moment, you really shouldn’t have lied.”
Because that moment was truly special. A moment when I believed our relationship was firmly bound by truth and trust. It felt like even that most precious thing had been defiled by lies and concealment.
“You thought I’d be happy if you just said you were the only one who knew! Is that wrong?”
“Even so, it’s a lie that sounds good. Who asked you to do that?”
I didn’t like it. I wondered how hard it must have been for you, unable to tell anyone. Instead, I felt pain and pity.
A sticky silence pooled at their feet for a moment. Yoon Joo-ho, who was gripping Song Hyun-soo’s arm so tightly as if to break it off, suddenly whispered tenderly and desperately.
“It doesn’t matter who it was. The past was all a failure to reach you. If I could, I’d want to cut it all out. Don’t you really understand? That it’s only you.”
A genuine, poignant sadness, reminiscent of Yoon Joo-ho acting in a drama. Surprised by the sudden shift in his demeanor, he met his eyes without realizing it. But his face, when he looked up, was coldly frozen, contrary to his words. His lips curled into a sneer.
“Will you feel better if I say this?”
Looking into his eyes, he understood. Just as he had retreated into himself after Cha Gyu-min’s betrayal, closing himself off in Master Zone, Yoon Joo-ho had retreated into his shell.
“Do whatever you want. Humoring you, which doesn’t suit your personality. I was just getting sick of it anyway.”
“Ugh.”
“You said you’d never betray me, yet how lightly you take it.”
Yoon Joo-ho pulled Song Hyun-soo’s arm close, grinding his teeth as if he himself had been betrayed.
“Hiding things, deceiving people, making them feel like idiots. Isn’t that betrayal?”
“…”
“Don’t package your cowardice in hiding things as love.”
Yoon Joo-ho’s long, elegant eyebrows twitched.
“What delusion are you having?”
A cold, fishy smile touched his thin lips.
“When did I ever say I loved you?”
A repulsive human.
He fiercely broke free from the arm held so tightly it cut off circulation.
He immediately headed for the front door. His steps were almost a run. Without even properly putting on his shoes, just slipping his feet in, he reached for the door lock. It seemed Yoon Joo-ho hadn’t heard his footsteps, but suddenly he was there, grabbing Song Hyun-soo by the nape of his neck.
Thump.
He shoved Song Hyun-soo against the shoe cabinet opposite the mirror, as if throwing him.
“Hk!”
Their lips were forced together. As he desperately shook his head, rejecting the kiss, Yoon Joo-ho grabbed his jaw so hard it felt like his flesh was being crushed, and stared directly into Song Hyun-soo’s eyes at point-blank range.
“If you leave now, it’s really the end. You can never come back.”
It was impossible to push away the man thrashing wildly with just the strength of his arms. Using his whole body, he shoved Yoon Joo-ho back. Thump. As Yoon Joo-ho’s back hit the mirror, he twisted and gripped the front of his knit sweater. At a distance so close their lips were about to meet, he met Yoon Joo-ho’s gaze with eyes filled with tears, turning blue.
“So, should I be scared?”
“…”
“Fuck off.”
He opened the door and ran out. It took about a minute for the elevator to arrive, but Yoon Joo-ho never came outside the front door. Only after getting into the elevator and the doors closed did tears fall. He lifted his arm and roughly wiped them with his sweatshirt sleeve. He turned his head, not wanting to see his reflection in the mirror.
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