By Zephyria 
For several years, while living a peaceful life alone, content and without any regrets, such thoughts had rarely crossed his mind. Yet, lately, they had been particularly frequent. And Seo Chi-young knew why.
‘Ah, right. Back then…’
A low, muttered monologue suddenly echoed in his ears. It was a voice he had heard some time ago. That voice had approached him along with a gaze that scrutinized every inch of him with a sense of novelty.
After being told they were in the same class in high school, the man had seemed to struggle to recall the memory. He appeared to have succeeded in dredging up a classmate from his memory—someone he had had no connection with and no interest in. And at the same time, it seemed he also recalled the one and only time that classmate had spoken to him.
I heard you like men. Me too.
The man had likely barely managed to pull those words out from the dust of old memories, having perhaps never thought of them since. However, in the very next instant—for a brief flash—he wore a troubled expression.
The expression vanished as quickly as it had appeared, but Seo Chi-young had seen it clearly. And he understood what it meant.
As Seo Chi-young remained silent, the man finally spoke, his voice laced with a casual smile.
“Ah… I remember now. Right, right. Mr. Seo Chi-young. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you sooner. My memory is actually quite poor.”
He apologized with a regretful face, mentioning that he often forgets things and gets scolded a lot by Jun-young. Seo Chi-young shook his head awkwardly.
“But I remember everything now… You spoke to me once back then, right? Yes, you did.”
He looked at Seo Chi-young with a smile in his eyes. His voice dropped slightly as he continued, as if apologizing.
“I’m sorry. I tend to be a bit indifferent and don’t pay much attention to others, so I didn’t think about it at all back then. But Chi-young-ssi must have agonized a lot and spoken to me because you were desperate for a friend of the same kind. I didn’t realize it.”
When he said “I’m sorry” once more, Seo Chi-young remained silent for a moment before shaking his head. “No, it’s not like that,” he replied briefly.
At the time, because they were both minorities—because he was glad for that—Seo Chi-young had spoken to him; that was how the man was framing it.
He didn’t think the man wouldn’t have known. I like men too—that roundabout confession had laid Seo Chi-young’s heart bare. Even back then, although he had absolutely no interest in Seo Chi-young, he must have noticed. Because he had not the slightest bit of interest, he had simply let it pass.
Even now, having recalled those memories, there was no way he hadn’t also recalled Seo Chi-young’s feelings. He was an exceptionally quick-witted and intelligent man. Based on the way Seo Chi-young had treated him and the words he had used since their reunion, he likely saw that Seo Chi-young still harbored those emotions at the bottom of his heart, but chose to act as if they didn’t exist in reality.
Seo Chi-young had no complaints about this. He had no intention of speaking or revealing his feelings anyway. If it hadn’t come out this way, he would never have brought up the past to him.
Seo Chi-young was satisfied with things as they were. Acquaintances who could exchange conversation quite comfortably.
Let it stay like this. He liked that.
And yet.
Along with a sense of relief, his willful heart recalled a faint regret.
“Hmm… since we’re alumni… Chi-young… Seo Chi-young… suddenly dropping honorifics feels a bit awkward, and calling you CEO is the most comfortable since I’m used to it, but that’s also a bit ambiguous… would it be okay if I called you Chi-young-ssi?”
Muttering as if conflicted, he asked Seo Chi-young with a smile, and Seo Chi-young nodded. “Yes, you can call me that,” he replied. With those words, the man left, leaving behind the same smile as before, as if nothing were novel or awkward anymore.
It remained the same after that.
As before, he would visit with Yoon Jun-yeo or stop by alone on his way, but his attitude toward Seo Chi-young did not change. Nor was he drawing a line under a casual demeanor as he had previously. The only thing that changed was the form of address. From CEO to Chi-young-ssi.
Everything remained exactly as the time Seo Chi-young had spent in satisfaction.
And yet, it was desolate. A loneliness lingered in his heart, as if a crisp, cool, dry air were drifting through.
“…….”
Once again, his chest tightened with a dull ache, then released.
Seo Chi-young sighed quietly, rubbing the aching area of his heart. Inside the bus, which had stopped at a traffic light immediately after crossing the Han River, he looked down at his watch. In the middle of a road that became more congested after crossing the river, the clock pointed to an anxious hour.
However, feeling anxious was actually better.
Whenever he felt this desolate, the busier he was, the better. So that other complicated thoughts would have no room to occupy his head. Today, too, by the time he finished helping with the opening preparations, the evening would pass without him having the mental capacity for other thoughts.
Just as it had been last night.
But the traffic was truly starting to jam. At this rate, he would be late. Would it be better to call his Seonbae and tell him he might be a little late? Scanning the wide road blocked up ahead, Seo Chi-young opened his phone folder. It was just as he began searching for his Seonbae’s number.
Beep beep, a new message arrived with a short signal. Checking the message with curiosity, Seo Chi-young read the content slowly twice, then closed the folder. He put the phone in his pocket. There was no need to call his Seonbae, and no need to be anxious anymore.
It was a short message saying that, although it was sudden, tonight’s work was canceled.
“……”
His Seonbae had always been somewhat willful, but he hadn’t expected such a sudden cancellation. Judging by his impulsive personality, it was highly likely that something trivial had gone wrong, and in a fit of temper, he had told everyone to just quit, as he had done several times before.
The Seonbae would probably regret it in an hour or two, but regardless, tonight’s plans had fallen through.
The heart that had been anxiously watching the clock suddenly lost its tension. A bitter sense of disappointment and emptiness caused his mood to sink slightly.
Suddenly, he had free time. His body was still exhausted and his heart was gloomy—and perhaps because of that—he didn’t feel like going back home just yet.
What should I do? As Seo Chi-young thought vacantly, a large shopping mall approaching from across the street suddenly caught his eye. And beside it, a long set of stairs leading up a hill.
Rather than thinking, Seo Chi-young impulsively got off the bus.
Until the time he collapsed because his body couldn’t withstand the years of accumulated overwork after graduating high school, he had been too busy making a living to have the luxury of paying attention to other things. From the moment he opened his eyes until he fell asleep, he was busy tackling mountains of tasks—what to do next, what to do after that. When he finally finished his day and returned home in the middle of the night, he would often collapse onto his blankets like a water-soaked cotton ball and fall into a dead sleep.
He thought that perhaps the human body degenerates if not used. As if the body decided that function was unnecessary and let it slowly fade away, he had lived an utterly bland life for the past few years. He felt that if he didn’t wake up with an erection in the morning, his libido might have fallen asleep forever.
Then again, it was a tool that had never been of any real ‘use’ to begin with.
“………”
Seo Chi-young sighed quietly. He didn’t remember that ‘use’ being particularly helpful anyway. He looked up and scanned his surroundings.
The park he visited after several years had been half-cut away and turned into a parking lot. It hadn’t been a very large park to begin with, and now that half of it was a parking lot, it felt more like a temporary resting spot than a park. Following the stairs at the far corner of the parking lot led to a large shopping mall with a cinema. He had heard vaguely that the building, completed two or three years ago, had few customers, whether due to the recession or the location. Even now, on a holiday evening, the area around the building didn’t seem crowded, even from a distance.
Perhaps the developers, thinking the building’s own parking wouldn’t be enough, had bought the land to create this parking lot, but the cars were only sparsely parked.
He saw people coming up the stairs. A young man and a young woman, a couple. Having parked their car near the park, they approached, saw Seo Chi-young sitting on a bench in the corner of the awkwardly sized remaining park, exchanged a few small words, giggled, and drove away. Seo Chi-young felt unnecessarily awkward and curled his interlaced fingers.
As expected, it was wrong.
He had been sitting here for nearly an hour, but nothing had happened. Perhaps the location had changed. No, with a large shopping mall parking lot attached to it, it was only natural that it had changed.
It had been several years. Just once, when his body was exhausted and his heart had nowhere to lean, feeling as if he might die from the crushing weight of loneliness, he had painstakingly looked into it. Where do people like him meet? He couldn’t be the only man in the world who liked men.
Relying on a few rumors he had overheard, he had managed to find a bar of that sort, but it felt uncomfortable, like wearing clothes that didn’t fit.
Clean, plush chairs he had never sat in; expensive-looking liquor bottles lined up on shelves behind the bartender; glassware hanging upside down, reflecting the dim lighting; low, languid music filling the space; and men in sophisticated attire chatting here and there.
It didn’t feel like a place where he belonged. So, after barely drinking a glass of whatever cheap cocktail he had ordered, Seo Chi-young sat there fidgeting and hurried out.
Rather than such a place, the terminals or the shopping districts in Jongno and cinemas—places the bartender had alluringly mentioned, saying, “People used to meet in places like that until recently. It’s mostly a dying trend now”—felt more comfortable.
One of those ‘places’ he had learned about back then was here, the park where Seo Chi-young was currently sitting. Although several years ago, when he last came, it had been more spacious and secluded.
But even then, eventually, he found it hard to endure the subtle, groping hands that reached out as a matter of course before he could even relax his tension from a few words of conversation, so he never once successfully achieved his purpose. Fortunately, it seemed not all gay men went as far as penetrative sex, so they stepped back lightly enough to deflate the tension that had frozen Seo Chi-young to the core.
When he first went out, he thinks there was expectation along with the tension. It was a vague expectation, not even clear as to what it was. However, when he actually went out and mingled with strangers, it wasn’t as good as he had vaguely imagined, nor was it that bad.
In the end, even if he managed to satisfy his desires to some extent upon returning home, nothing more was filled. After going out once or twice like that, feeling a sense of futility about what he was doing or feeling as if he were escaping, he dove back into his grueling life, and such deviations ended with those few times.
“……..”
Seo Chi-young suddenly let out a bitter smile like a sigh. He felt the tension leave his stiff shoulders.
He had come here telling himself that, unlike his naive self back then, he could now respond more flexibly to relieving sexual desire with a stranger, but there was no progress. Look at this. He had been tense without even realizing it.
Getting off the bus and coming here on a whim was nothing more than an impulse. A sunken mood, a lonely heart, and the unconscious thoughts of should I try going back that had flickered in his mind recently all blended together in that moment, and before he knew it, his feet were climbing the stairs to the park.
And in this spot, for about an hour, he sat there, not even knowing if he was waiting for someone or not.
The subtly wavering heart slowly settled while sitting alone. The anxiety—the thought that if someone approached, or if someone appealing caught his eye, he might spend the night as he had long ago—also faded.
Whether the location had changed over the years or not, the dark park as night fell was deserted, and Seo Chi-young let out a long sigh.
As expected, one shouldn’t do things they aren’t used to. …Let’s go back. He thought it would be better to go back, go to bed a little early today, and prepare for the new week starting tomorrow. After all, he wouldn’t be able to rest even on weekends for a while.
Just as Seo Chi-young was about to stand up, a car coming up the curved road from below the hill stopped in a corner of the parking lot adjacent to the park. The engine of the car, parked directly facing the bench where Seo Chi-young sat, turned off.
As he stared blankly, thinking that the sophisticated car body—which looked plain at a glance but had subtle, custom details—would suit someone very well, the driver’s door opened and a man stepped out. As he pressed the key button to lock the car and turned around, he happened to glance this way.
At first, he thought he had seen wrong. Or that it was someone who looked very similar.
However, the man also paused upon seeing Seo Chi-young and looked at him with a surprised expression, and soon, a familiar smile appeared on his face.
It was Jang Ui-geon.
Seo Chi-young stared at him blankly, forgetting even to speak. The man, mixing a smile with his surprised gaze, strode toward Seo Chi-young.
“I thought I saw wrong. I didn’t expect to run into you in a place like this.”
Seo Chi-young couldn’t answer for a while to Jang Ui-geon, who was smiling broadly. Seo Chi-young, more than anyone, had not expected to run into him in a place like this.
“What are you doing here? Did you come to see a movie too, Chi-young-ssi? The facilities over there are decent, but it’s nice and quiet because there aren’t many people.”
To Jang Ui-geon, who was pointing toward the shopping mall, Seo Chi-young muttered clumsily, “Yes, well…” Jang Ui-geon, looking down at Seo Chi-young with a clear look of bewilderment, suddenly looked around.
“But Chi-young-ssi, sitting in a place like this… ah, it’s not that late yet. At this hour it’s fine, but if you sit here until late, it’s a bit dangerous.”
“…Pardon?”
Seo Chi-young tilted his head and asked back. Then, Jang Ui-geon seemed to ponder with a subtle expression for a moment before smiling at Seo Chi-young as if realizing a fresh fact.
“Right, come to think of it, Chi-young-ssi is also on this side. No, no. Sometimes ‘normals’ wander into places where people from our side hang out without knowing and encounter embarrassing situations. I forgot for a moment that you’re also on this side… Ah, were you looking for a partner?”
Seo Chi-young, who had been staring at Jang Ui-geon as if entranced, gave a slight flinch of his shoulders. Jang Ui-geon smiled bitterly. He seemed to ponder for a moment before speaking.
“This area isn’t great lately. First of all, hardly anyone comes, and since most people come only for that purpose, it’s inevitably dangerous. There are diseases, and occasionally some low-life humans.”
“……….”
Seo Chi-young slowly lowered his head. Jang Ui-geon already knew why Seo Chi-young was sitting here. Indeed, there was no way he wouldn’t. Jang Ui-geon would know what kind of spot this was, and knowing Seo Chi-young’s preferences, there was no way that intelligent man wouldn’t know.
Why did he have to meet this person here? In the place he least wanted to meet him, showing the side of himself he least wanted to show.
Jang Ui-geon looked at the head-bowed Seo Chi-young as if he knew exactly what he was thinking, scratching his head with a slightly troubled face. Hmm, he cleared his throat briefly, paused, and then asked.
“Or rather… there’s a bar I go to occasionally; would you like to go there? I’m actually on my way back from there now because I couldn’t find anyone I liked, but it’s fine. It’s a place people go to by word-of-mouth, so there aren’t any truly strange people. It’s perfect for playing safely.”
Seo Chi-young shook his head hurriedly, as if trembling.