MY 15

In the first place, this entire situation started because of him. From start to finish, everything was Won Wooje’s fault. If one were to be pedantic, the person doing something wrong right now, the person being excessive and out of line, was not him but Won Wooje. It was his fault for crossing the line under the pretext of being friends, and it was much more his fault for making a person misunderstand and for suffocating them with such pressure.

“…Why should I.”

Han Seolwoo, looking down, muttered.

“Why should I have to listen to you curse at me right now? Why do I have to live hiding things like a coward in the first place, fearing that I’ll be cursed at by you over something like this? Who do you think you are?”

Then, he spat out each word as if chewing them. If the guy knew what thoughts had filled his mind all day long, he couldn’t act this way. It was Seolwoo himself who had been troubled and uneasy with a heavy heart the whole time.

Just who do you think you are to grab a person and shake them like this? Who do you think you are to tell me to do this or that, and who do you think you are to be stuck in my head all day, refusing to leave and making me…

“…What did you just say?”

Won Wooje burst into an incredulous laugh. As expected, he wore a face of total disbelief. His chest surged at that predictable expression, which didn’t differ by even a single margin of error. He felt as if his stomach were blocked, as if he had indigestion. He was annoyed. Unidentified emotions swirled and poked at his heart.

“It’s all because of you. You grill me so tiredly every single day, so what am I supposed to say? Whether it’s a girl or whatever, if I do anything, you try to hold it in your hand and throw such a fit—you think I wouldn’t be stressed?”

He, too, began to fire off the words he had piled up like a bomber.

“What exactly is wrong with you? You go around doing everything you want like some hoodlum, so why the hell are you like this to me? Is being friends everything? If we’re friends, if we’re friends, does that mean you can just fuck around and swing me however you want?”

Han Seolwoo panted with ragged breaths. At the sudden flood of verbal abuse, Won Wooje’s eyes went stiff. A silence that was terrifyingly quiet flowed between them.

“…Ah.”

“… .”

“So, what you’re saying is, this is my fucking fault too because of my shitty personality?”

Won Wooje muttered lowly. His heavy voice, sounding as if it were echoing in a cave, filled the surroundings. Turning his head slowly to look to the side, he let out another gasp of disbelief.

Han Seolwoo stared at him without even blinking. He was also so angry that his heart was thumping.

“Yeah, it’s your fault.”

“… .”

“The way you act, it’s really excessive.”

That it was excessive.

That it was truly excessive.

Fucking excessive.

Han Seolwoo repeated the same words to himself. The scolding he directed at the other returned to him. The corners of his eyes, which he had strained so as not to lose, felt stinging and sore.

“…Ah.”

Won Wooje let out a hollow laugh as if he had lost his strength.

“I see.”

Turning his head, he spat on the ground with his hands shoved in his pants pockets. Soon, he wiped his mouth once with his palm. A gaze that had grown sharp enough to cut through skin brushed past Han Seolwoo.

“You must have been damn annoyed all this time. Having to deal with a nobody’s bullshit.”

In the silence, his eyes became expressionless again. Unlike how he usually couldn’t easily calm his emotions when he got angry, this was a cold, emotionless face that had turned icy.

“Why didn’t you just say it was shitty from the start? Then neither of us would have had to deal with this annoying business, right?”

With his hands in both pockets and his head bowed, he tapped the ground with his sneaker. The line of his mouth visible beneath his nose was slightly turned up.

“I wouldn’t have thought of you as a friend either.”

A heartless gaze slowly rose and brushed past Han Seolwoo. At that one pointed remark, his heart felt like it was breaking. Han Seolwoo froze stiff. Anxiety that spread in an instant covered him like a wave.

Lifting his head, Won Wooje took a deep breath while looking at Han Seolwoo, then exhaled as if suppressing something. He looked as if he were trying his best to endure.

Quickly averting his gaze, he tapped Han Seolwoo on the shoulder and stepped forward. It was toward the opposite alley, not toward his home.

“…Where are you going at this hour?”

Han Seolwoo caught him reflexively. However, as soon as he touched him, his arm was violently shaken off and bounced away painfully.

A gaze that was even chillier than before returned.

“What does it matter where I go.”

“… .”

“Mind your own business and go your own way.”

Won Wooje turned around abruptly. Stomp, stomp. The sound of his forceful footsteps was rough. Until he reached the end of the alley, Won Wooje did not look back even once.

Han Seolwoo touched his forehead and exhaled a sigh. His head throbbed. Because he had been standing stiffly with tension without even knowing it, only then did he feel the pain near his leg. He bit his lip hard. It wasn’t just his leg that hurt.

Won Wooje had sensed Han Seolwoo’s strange behavior long ago.

It was things like acting unusually busy when he woke up after sleeping face-down on his desk, glancing at him for no reason, or moving his body awkwardly for some reason.

Won Wooje was quick-witted, and Han Seolwoo couldn’t lie. Thus, Won Wooje noticed that he was hiding something from him. Immediately, he headed toward the most prominent problem among his recent strange behaviors.

“Ack!”

“I asked what the hell you did.”

He roughly let go of Choi Sangyoon’s collar.

“Ah, Wooje, that’s too much. Why are you like this?”

“I know everything, so just talk.”

“Ah… .”

“Is it a girl?”

Then he gestured with his chin irritably. He had already expected it, but he needed confirmation, not just an inference.

“No… You’re going to tell Seolwoo.”

Choi Sangyoon, whose school uniform collar was completely crumpled, hesitated and avoided his eyes.

“I won’t tell him, seriously. Everything’s out in the open. Have you ever seen me lie?”

Won Wooje was serious. Choi Sangyoon, watching his mood, let out a sigh. He smoothed out his disheveled clothes and looked around. Indeed, Won Wooje was the type to be shameless rather than someone who would lie.

“…Yeah. He asked me to set him up.”

“But he told you to keep it a secret from me?”

“…Yeah.”

“Aha.”

Won Wooje burst into a dry laugh.

I thought so. The feeling that Han Seolwoo’s vibe was strange hadn’t been an illusion. His mood twisted at the hunch that had hit the mark instantly.

“…Wooje, keep your promise, okay? If he finds out I spilled it, it’ll just be embarrassing for both of us.”

At the words spoken while scratching his cheek, Won Wooje’s eyes flashed. An impulse to beat him up for doing something so useless surged within him, but he held back once. It was a reward for confessing to him immediately without dragging it out.

“Heh, of course.”

Thus, he smiled kindly.

“Thanks, Sangyoon-y?”

“Argh!”

Choi Sangyoon, clutching his solar plexus, made a pained face. Won Wooje, having patted him on the back, headed back to the classroom. His black eyes, which looked uncomfortable to anyone who saw them, were lost in deep thought.

The guys who were crazy for girls started causing trouble in earnest since middle school. No, if one were to pick out the loose-screwed ones, there were some even in elementary school. Won Wooje had seen those kinds of guys very consistently and many times over. It didn’t matter if they were hyungs, younger ones, or friends.

Of course, Han Seolwoo was different from those guys who looked for girls with their eyes lit up like hungry hyenas, but a situation like this could happen. There is no woman who would refuse Han Seolwoo, who is so handsome that he would sell out instantly even if he became an idol right now. It was he who had cut them off like a knife every time people clung to him like bees to a flower.

Therefore, if Han Seolwoo, having escaped his control, made up his mind, dating a girl would be as easy as pie.

Fuck. Where did it go wrong? From where?

Won Wooje agonized. And he remembered.

‘…Have you, that, tried it too… .’

He was the one who suddenly asked about his virginity. The face that asked while blinking eyelashes so long they cast shadows—thinking about it now, he looked somewhat anxious for some reason.

…This is it.

A light flickered on in his head. Only then could Won Wooje properly grasp the cause of this ‘blind date crisis.’ The very shitty fact that Han Seolwoo wants to lose his virginity!

Won Wooje wanted to turn back the way he came right now and beat Choi Sangyoon like a dog. Even though his dick is the size of a bean, he kept planting fantasies by talking about sex, sex in front of the kid, so it was certain that Han Seolwoo had become curious too.

Han Seolwoo has no experience. In a word, he was a naive soul. If a guy who hasn’t even held a girl’s hand got a taste of it through a late-blooming spark, his eyes might just flip over.

Fuck. No way, absolutely not.

How dare he try to lose his virginity while he’s still a minor. To be set up with a girl with such impure thoughts. And to top it off, how dare he even hide it from me!

It was truly a contemptible and beyond contemptible thing. Eighteen. The sexual desire of a vigorous youth in his prime is nothing but a nuisance, but there’s no way Han Seolwoo would know such a fact. He couldn’t let the guy he had raised so preciously and purely fall into the abyss in an instant like this.

He ground his teeth.

“Lee Narin… .”

Won Wooje repeated the name he had seen on Han Seolwoo’s phone. The more he thought about him doing something he never used to do, the angrier he got.

Right, it must be temporary. He would confess the truth to him before long anyway. He was a bit annoyed, but it wasn’t like he didn’t understand why Han Seolwoo was hiding it from him. Won Wooje was a person who was quite good at self-objectification in his own way.

From the day he found out the truth, Won Wooje’s daily routine focused on ‘the timing of Han Seolwoo’s confession.’