#109

Jung-hyun slowly turned around. It was late at night, and since he was standing with his back to a streetlight, his face wasn’t clearly visible.

Despite that, for some reason, Ho-jae found it difficult to meet his eyes, so he lowered his gaze slightly. Instead of his face, he saw his hands.

They were rough at the tips and completely devoid of color. Between his long fingers, he held a single unlit cigarette.

His voice drifted down from above.

“I guess you’re on your way back from training.”

His voice sounded a bit subdued, but it was as casual as ever. As if they were the kind of people who had shared such conversations effortlessly just yesterday. He was entirely different from Ho-jae, who was lowering his gaze because he couldn’t even make eye contact.

“…It wasn’t training. I’m on my way back from the fourth match.”

Jung-hyun responded with a passing, “Ah,” as if it were nothing. At that answer, Ho-jae smiled bitterly to himself.

It seemed he hadn’t even known there was a match today. Ho-jae had been inwardly happy when reporter Park Ha-na mentioned that Jung-hyun likely hoped for his victory, but this was the reality.

Ho-jae bit his increasingly dry lips several times before finally managing to speak.

“It’s very late… You couldn’t have come to Suwon by chance….”

And before uttering the next words, he felt the emotion rising in his chest and let out a hollow laugh.

“Did you… perhaps come to see me…?”

Ho-jae gripped the strap of the duffel bag slung over his shoulder. It was almost embarrassing how transparently clear it was what he wanted to hear.

Even so, he wanted to hear it. He didn’t care what excuse was attached; he desperately craved that one sentence—that Jung-hyun had simply missed him.

He felt that a single word would make up for everything. The nights he hadn’t spent a single day without thinking of him, the silence of these streets he had wandered endlessly every day, and the pain that felt like his heart was being split in two.

However, the sound that flowed from Jung-hyun’s lips was entirely different from his expectations.

“I just came because I wanted to apologize one last time.”

Jung-hyun murmured in a calm tone.

“I’m sorry. For everything until now.”

“What is this, all of a sudden….”

Ho-jae looked up. His face was still shrouded in darkness and hard to see.

“What are you sorry for?”

“Everything.”

“What do you mean, everything….”

Ho-jae’s face crumpled.

“Are you saying you regret meeting me…?”

Jung-hyun did not answer. In that terrible silence, Ho-jae felt as if his throat were closing up.

He knew that Jung-hyun’s wedding was less than two weeks away. Even if he didn’t want to remember, the date was vividly etched in his mind.

Did he want to apologize to him and feel unburdened before the wedding?

While Ho-jae suffered every day because he couldn’t let go of him, had Jung-hyun come here just to cast him aside with a single sentence?

His chest tightened agonizingly. It was painful. No, it was closer to rage.

He hated him. He hated him so much for throwing only him into this hell and then so easily offering an apology.

“Isn’t this too cruel…?”

Ho-jae laughed with a distorted face.

“For you, is all of this something that can end with a single ‘I’m sorry’?”

“…….”

“How can a person be so cruel?”

Ho-jae murmured, feeling as if he were vomiting his own heart.

Jung-hyun looked at Ho-jae in silence for a moment, then slowly admitted it.

“I suppose so. I’m sorry for that, too.”

His voice was still devoid of any heat.

Shin Ho-jae braced himself, furrowing his brow. If he didn’t, he felt he would pathetically burst into tears. Perhaps as a reaction, his cheeks trembled.

He wanted to scream and ask if that was truly all he had to say, if he had come all this way just for that one sentence, but none of it could become sound.

How much time passed? Jung-hyun turned away first. Ho-jae immediately looked up and followed him with a feverish gaze.

He didn’t want to part like this. But he didn’t know what words to use to hold onto someone who had come to shed everything and become light. Just as his lips were trembling with a heavy heart and anxious mind, Jung-hyun flicked the cigarette in his hand into a trash can. Because there was a streetlight there, Ho-jae could clearly see his hand, which had been submerged in darkness, touch the white light. Ho-jae’s eyes widened slightly.

“…Your hand, what happened?”

Jung-hyun’s back of the hand was covered in wounds.

There had been marks of scabs falling off and new wounds forming before, but now his hand looked as if it had been bitten for a long time, with pieces of flesh raggedly chewed.

“I asked what happened to your hand.”

Without a word, Jung-hyun hid his hand in the pocket of his trench coat. Ho-jae’s brow narrowed.

“Why did you bite yourself so severely?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“How can I not worry…!”

Ho-jae strode toward him and grabbed his arm. He didn’t use much force. He simply wanted to pull the hand out of the pocket to see it closely.

His face, standing under the streetlight, entered his field of vision. This time, Shin Ho-jae’s eyes grew wide.

Jung-hyun’s face was a mess. One cheek was swollen as if he had been hit by someone, and there were clear traces of crying around his eyes.

Ho-jae’s face distorted instantly. Unconsciously, he gripped his arm and pulled him toward himself.

“Why is your face like this?”

Jung-hyun immediately slapped his hand away with a sharp sound. But Ho-jae did not back down. He grabbed him again and carefully cupped Jung-hyun’s face.

“Who was it? Who laid a hand on you?”

“…Keep your voice down. Others will hear.”

“What happened?”

“I told you not to worry about it.”

Jung-hyun replied irritably and pulled his body back. Since Ho-jae hadn’t used much strength, Jung-hyun slipped out of his grasp immediately.

Shin Ho-jae looked up at Jung-hyun.

“Did Kyung Seung-hee do this?”

“…….”

“…Was it Kwon Ki-hyuk?”

Jung-hyun didn’t answer; he simply looked at Ho-jae with an expressionless face, his hands still in his coat pockets.

Ho-jae stared at him intently and spoke.

“Or, did your mother do it……?”

It would be nearly impossible for his small, frail mother to beat her grown son until his face swelled, but for some reason, her face came to mind at that moment.

Perhaps it was because he had just seen the mess of his hand. Jung-hyun had once said that his habit of biting the back of his hand started because of his mother.

Jung-hyun’s pupils gazed blankly at his face. Then, as soon as their eyes met, he looked away.

“Go inside. This is near your house, Ho-jae. Aren’t you afraid someone might see?”

Ho-jae looked at him silently, his lips drooping. He knew Jung-hyun’s bad habit of trying to avoid the situation. It was a habit that appeared whenever he wanted to hide something.

“Why do you think I’d be afraid?”

Jung-hyun slowly curled the corners of his mouth. He didn’t know it, but there was blood on the tip of his lip, making the smile look only pitiful.

“You hated it, Athlete Shin. Having others see you with me.”

“……Do you really think I still feel that way?”

Ho-jae took a step closer to him.

“I actually wish they would see.”

Jung-hyun furrowed his brow and looked up at him.

“I’d prefer it if someone took a photo and sent it to Kyung Seung-hee.”

Ho-jae took another step closer. As Jung-hyun reflexively tried to step back, Ho-jae reached out and grabbed his arm.

“So that the wedding you want so badly gets completely ruined.”

His eyes grew hot.

“I think about that all day long.”

Jung-hyun, with both hands thrust into his trench coat pockets, had his shoulders seized by Ho-jae.

Looking closely at his face, he could see those deep blue-grey eyes. Those were the eyes that had always been difficult to escape whenever he saw them up close.

“How can I get you to come back to me, how can I ruin that wedding, but then what if you resent me, what if you hate me.”

Ho-jae slowly moved his hand from his shoulder to his neck, and then cupped his cheek. The cold, dry skin touched his palm.

“You said it was a wedding you wanted so much, so why isn’t it me, why is it that I have nothing and can’t give you what you want.”

Tears began to shimmer in Ho-jae’s eyes. Even though he was right in front of him and he was touching him with both hands, he didn’t feel like he belonged to him.

“Why did I only receive so much and couldn’t give anything back, why was I so cold, if only I could turn back time, I want to go to Canada to meet you.”

Jung-hyun blinked slowly, looking into Ho-jae’s eyes.

“I wish you still loved me, I wish you’d throw everything away and come to me, I want to steal you away from Kyung Seung-hee, no, even now I want to run away to a place where it can just be the two of us….”

“…….”

“……That’s all I think about all day.”

Ho-jae fumbled and hugged his shoulders. He felt as if Jung-hyun would disappear at any moment, and he couldn’t bear it unless he held him this tightly.

He felt the fabric of the coat, which held the cold air, in his arms. Ho-jae hugged him as if to crush him.

“……Shin Ho-jae. We’re outside.”

A small voice, sounding like a reprimand, came from over his shoulder. Ho-jae spoke as if to cover his words.

“I hate you so much.”

As he said this, he hugged him even tighter. Jung-hyun let out a voice that sounded like a sigh.

“Your words and actions are different.”

“…Isn’t it the same for you?”

“…….”

“You could push me away, but you aren’t using any strength at all. You said I’d be a hindrance to the wedding, yet you came all the way here yourself.”

“…I told you I came because I wanted to apologize.”

“Don’t lie.”

“…….”

“……Don’t lie anymore.”

Ho-jae’s voice grew increasingly wet.

He was a man who could lie without blinking while seeing both his fiancée and Ho-jae at the same time.

He was a man who coldly told him that he was insufficient because he had nothing.

Even now, he was a man who brought up an apology too easily just to make himself feel better.

“If only I could have just hated someone like you with a clear conscience.”

Ho-jae murmured something, unsure if he was speaking to himself or to Jung-hyun.

Jung-hyun let out something between a sigh and a laugh and spoke.

“Then do so. I must be a very bad person to you, Shin Ho-jae.”

Ho-jae immediately followed.

“None of that matters anymore.”

The heavy teardrops hanging from his eyelids finally succumbed to their weight and fell.

“Whether you’re a good person or a bad person, whether you deceived me or not, none of that matters anymore.”

“…….”

“As long as it’s you, that’s enough.”

The tears flowing down his chin soaked Jung-hyun’s shoulder. Ho-jae buried his face in his shoulder and poured out the words he had been holding back.

“I love you.”

“…….”

“Please don’t get married….”

Jung-hyun didn’t say anything in return. However, Ho-jae actually welcomed the silence. Because the words he was saying were no different from a child’s tantrum.

In the empty alley where no one else was, only the sound of his occasional sobbing echoed. Jung-hyun remained still, simply letting himself be held in his arms.

The chest and shoulder touching him began to hold a bit of warmth, and the chilly early spring wind lightly ruffled his hair.

“…Shin Ho-jae.”

After standing in silence for a long time, Jung-hyun softly called his name just as the fluttering hair tickled Ho-jae’s chin.

“Shall we run away?”

It was a voice so small it sounded as if it might extinguish.

110 – PUCK DROP