#38

After about 15 minutes in the taxi, the night sea came into view. Perhaps because the beach season had begun, Anmok Beach was quite bustling.

Passing by cafes and bars that stayed open late, Ji Min-chul walked decisively toward a specific spot while checking his phone. After walking for a while, he spotted a solitary figure sitting in a secluded corner of the sandy beach.

It was Yuk Du-min. Ho-jae let out a quiet, relieved sigh. Ho-jae and Min-chul approached silently from behind and sat on either side of Du-min.

Only then did Du-min seem to notice their presence, as he flinched in surprise. When he lifted his head, his face was swollen. He smelled of alcohol.

Soju bottles were visible at his feet. Min-chul and Ho-jae placed their hands on Du-min’s back almost simultaneously.

“……What the. How did you get here?”

“Ji Min-chul put a GPS on you.”

“…Huh?”

“I guess he’s your stalker.”

“You crazy bastard. When the hell did you install that?”

Ji Min-chul just shrugged innocently and spoke playfully.

“Why are you playing the tragedy card alone? There are only four hours left until your birthday.”

There was consideration in Min-chul’s words. It meant that if Du-min didn’t want to talk, he wouldn’t ask anything.

At those words, Du-min remained silent for a long time. The three of them simply listened to the sound of the waves in silence.

After some time had passed in that stillness, Du-min asked in a very small voice.

“……Did you guys see it too?”

It was immediately clear he was talking about the photo. For a moment, Ho-jae hesitated over whether he should lie and say he hadn’t seen it. Of course, Ho-jae had only seen half of the photo.

“Of course we did. With all that chaos, how could we not?”

Ji Min-chul answered first. Ho-jae looked at Min-chul, speechless.

“The lighting was terrible, though. If you’re going to take a photo, you should’ve set up some of those new lights you bought. It was so dim that your abs were all blurred out; it looked crappy.”

“…What, you piece of shit?”

“But it actually suited you. As expected, our Dumin-ssi can pull off anything. Should we try that for your next content? I think there’d be a demand. Your YouTube subscribers have increased.”

“…….”

“Right, Ho Jae-shin?”

“Huh? Uh….”

“……Cheol. Don’t you know Ho-jae can’t lie? Would it have killed you to coordinate your stories before coming here?”

“Ho Jae-shin. Why are you fumbling around like that when you’re out of the loop? Get a clue, will you?”

“…….”

“Du-min, we love you just as you are. Whether you’re a cross-dressing gay or an alien, you’re our eternal Dumin-ssi.”

“…No, seriously. Are you trying to comfort me or roast me? Ho-jae, did this bastard drink?”

“No, really.”

“…….”

“I truly think so.”

Shin Ho-jae nodded quietly beside him.

He was grateful to Min-chul for including him in ‘we’ as if it were the most natural thing in the world. In truth, he felt he had no right to sincerely comfort Du-min. Shin Ho-jae smiled bitterly, staring at the dark sea.

Du-min remained silent for a long while before finally speaking with difficulty.

“……Actually, the person I’m seeing isn’t a girlfriend, but a boyfriend.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s why I couldn’t say anything. I was afraid you guys would think I’m weird. You’re… kind of precious to me. It’s usually harder to show your true self to the people you cherish.”

“It’s not like being weird is a one-day-two-day thing for you. You worried over nothing. Right?”

“Cheol?”

“Mmph mmph.”

As Min-chul made a gesture of zipping his own mouth, Du-min let out a long sigh. Then, he quietly began to tell his story.

He said that when he was young, while other boys his age were obsessed with their fathers’ cars, Du-min was a boy obsessed with his mother’s vanity table.

Du-min’s conservative and devout family did not tolerate such behavior. The day he was caught wearing his cousin’s dress and kissing a boy he was close with, Du-min was dragged to a strange prayer meeting by his father.

A frightening-looking pastor told Du-min he was possessed by an evil spirit and forced him to pray for three days and nights without sleep. His mother cried a great deal, his father wouldn’t even look at him, and his older brother looked at him as if he were an insect.

Because of that, Du-min came to believe that this side of him was a disease that needed to be cured.

From then on, Du-min worked hard to show his family a changed version of himself. Ice hockey was part of that effort.

“My mom and brother liked that I played hockey. I guess it made me look masculine. So I worked hard at it. Because I wanted to see my mom smile.”

Ho-jae recalled the Du-min he had met in the elementary school hockey club. An introverted little boy who always kept his distance.

He remembered teasing him after they became close, asking if that persona had all been an act. Thinking back now, that image was the trace of a battle Du-min had been fighting alone.

“Then I became close with you guys, and hockey actually became fun. I really felt like my ‘disease’ was being cured. I thought I could just live like that—playing in front of the camera when I felt stifled, exercising when I was stressed.”

After saying that much, Du-min paused for a beat and spoke as if vomiting the words out.

“I happened to read a DM that bastard sent. He wrote that he wanted to know the hidden side of me. Looking back, it was probably just something he said carelessly, but of all times, I read that DM at three in the morning. Guys, never make any decisions after one AM. If I had seen it at one PM, I would’ve just thought, ‘What kind of bullshit is this?’ and ignored it!”

Du-min’s voice, which had been calmly recounting the events, gradually became playful. Even Ho-jae, who was clueless in these matters, could tell it was a voice forced to sound bright.

Min-chul, feeling the same, responded quietly.

“Dumin-ssi. You don’t have to try so hard to keep it light. You were moved because you felt comforted by those words. Because they were words you wanted to hear.”

“……You’re right. They were words I wanted to hear. Actually, all this time, I’ve wanted to hear things like that.”

Du-min’s voice, sounding like a monologue, echoed quietly amidst the sound of the waves.

It felt as if self-loathing and guilt were tightening around his windpipe.

Why did the face of someone born into a chaebol family, who must have grown up without wanting for anything, come to mind? It wasn’t as if his family was like Yuk Du-min’s, nor was it likely that he had grown up holding his breath like Yuk Du-min.

Why were Du-min’s words playing back in his head in Kwon Jung-hyun’s voice? Was it because he had seen his wounded face today?

“He said he’d do everything I’ve ever wanted to do. I fell for that. Like an idiot…. I didn’t know he was the kind of guy who would just post someone else’s photos in a fit of rage.”

“You’re breaking up with him, right?”

“I already broke up with him earlier! That piece of shit. He probably thought I’d kneel if he threatened me with that, but he seriously underestimated Yuk Du-min.”

“Good job. I didn’t like him from the moment I heard his voice.”

“What? How do you know what his voice sounds like?”

“Ah.”

“What is it? Tell me right now!?”

Ji Min-chul, whose collar was being gripped by Du-min, confessed what had happened during the intensive training camp. Upon hearing the story, Du-min’s face crumpled dramatically.

“Dammit! You should’ve told me! I didn’t even know Ji Min-chul knew, so I wasted so much brainpower trying to come up with lies! I seriously thought my head was going to split open trying to coordinate my story!”

“It looked that way. I felt so bad for you that I couldn’t say anything.”

“Ugh! This piece of shit Ji Min-chul!”

Du-min clenched his fists and began pummeling Min-chul’s side.

“Ow! Ow! Ow, that actually hurts. That’s where Na Dae-il hit me earlier!”

At those words, Du-min stopped punching and whispered a thank you to Min-chul in a voice as small as a mosquito. Min-chul teased him, saying he couldn’t hear him, and got hit one more time.

“Oh, right. You should contact Hyeong-hun. He was worrying about you a lot. Give him a call.”

“Ah, right. I’ll send him a text. He stayed by my side the whole time earlier. Good guy. Though I don’t think he could’ve imagined in his wildest dreams that the person in that photo was actually me. Haha.”

As he spoke, Du-min took out his phone. A glimpse of the screen revealed hundreds of notifications. It seemed he had kept it on silent. The vast majority of them were comment notifications from his YouTube channel and social media.

[Cross-dressing pervert lolol]

[What the hell is so hot about a muscular Alpha that they’d put him in women’s lingerie and poke him? lol The partner must be a saint lol]

[I’m so disappointed by this. Please refund my paid subscription]

[He pretended to live a ‘god-life’ as an athlete on the outside, but he was doing all sorts of dirty things behind the scenes?]

[Disgusting]

[I got an erection looking at Mr. Du-min’s photo]

[Revolting]

‘Kissing a man is even more disgusting than I thought.’

It was only natural that the words he himself had spat out came back to haunt him.

39 – Puck Drop