F64

Siwoo stood with his back to Yeonho. He grabbed the doorknob to leave the room but couldn’t bring himself to step outside. Did seeing Yeonho’s wounded face bring him any satisfaction? No, not at all.

What he felt the moment he saw Yeonho’s expression…..it wasn’t exhilaration, it was that same old flicker of hope.

Held back by that foolish hope, Siwoo couldn’t open the door. In the end, he turned around. Yeonho was standing there, having gotten out of bed, facing him. Siwoo examined every detail, his teary eyes, contorted expression, twitching brows, trembling lips.

When someone shows their emotions without trying to hide them, you can’t help but be swept up in them. And what Siwoo saw in Yeonho’s face now wasn’t just wounded pride.

It must have been the same expression Siwoo himself had worn when Yeonho once told him he’d been with someone else, or that he loved someone else. That raw, crushed look, that was something that could only be called love.

Just a week ago, when they had sex, Yeonho hadn’t looked at him like this. The feelings Siwoo had seen then were nervousness and excitement. It had reminded him of Yeonho from five years ago, when they had first met.

So was this because his memories had come back? Had only the ones from the happy days returned, right before everything fell apart?

They stood there staring into each other’s eyes for a long time. Yeonho exhaled roughly, unable to contain his anger. His sharp gaze was full of hatred. It was the first time Yeonho had broken down like this in front of him, and Siwoo felt blood rush back into his once-dead heart. His veins surged at the thought that maybe, just maybe, he would be given another chance.

Yeonho suddenly grabbed Siwoo’s collar with both hands and shouted. His voice and expression were even more furious than when he’d asked earlier if Siwoo had killed Seong Junhee, or if he had come to kill his family.

“Tell me it was a lie!”

From Yeonho’s perspective, whose memories had returned up to the early autumn of his twentieth year, the idea that Siwoo had spent the past four years in bed and in daily life with someone else, just one person, was something he could never accept.

He knew it was selfish. But no matter how horribly he had treated Siwoo that winter, he had kept one promise. That he wouldn’t share what they had done together with anyone else.

Even if those memories had vanished, he couldn’t believe he would have done something like that willingly. That was the one thing he could swear on with his life.

He hated it more than dying. Siwoo, throwing off his clothes in front of someone else, exposing his scarred and battered body, showing the traces of self-harm. Siwoo, using another person’s hands and body to soothe wounds buried deep in his heart. Siwoo, kissing someone else’s skin and making their bodies one. Even the idea of them sharing meals every day made him feel sick.

He blocked the door with his whole body, lips trembling as he spoke.

“You’re not leaving until you say it wasn’t true.”

Siwoo took a deep breath and stepped closer. He wiped the tears from Yeonho’s soaked cheeks with his fingers and whispered softly.

“Yeonho.”

“Yeah.”

Right now, it really feels like you love me. Just like I love you. It feels like that one small lie I told is enough to make your whole world fall apart.

Siwoo felt embarrassed by the thought and let out a quiet laugh, lowering his head.

Right now, to Joo Yeonho, Kim Siwoo must seem like “the man who killed my beloved older brother.” So how could he possibly love him with the same heart? It had to be that terrifying, consuming possessiveness Yeonho used to feel for him.

At twenty, Yeonho had loved Siwoo with a love made of desire and possession. Even the pity and sympathy he had felt for Siwoo’s misfortunes had been just tools to satisfy that possessiveness. It was a shallow love, easily taken back the moment his heart changed.

“You really want to stand here playing out this tragic drama with me while still thinking I killed Seong Junhee? I told you, it might not have been an accident. It could have been murder.”

Siwoo pushed Yeonho aside and walked toward the door. Yeonho, hearing those words, was forced to think about what kind of person he was. Truthfully, the fact that he wanted Siwoo so much in this moment made him uncomfortable. He chased after Siwoo and once again stood in front of him, looking up at him with pleading eyes.

“Yeah. If I were a decent person, I probably shouldn’t be doing this right now.”

“If this is how you’re acting toward me, then I guess your brother must not have meant much to you. Easy enough to replace, just like that. Is that what you do? Just keep the person who excites you most next to you in the moment? If this was where it was going, then why did you ever… forget it.”

Siwoo let out a bitter laugh, pulled Yeonho into a hard embrace for a moment, then let go.

“You’re so into forbidden love, maybe I actually turn you on more now. Good. If this is what gets you excited, that’s better than being someone boring and dull.”

Yeonho let out a broken sigh, his face full of pain. He understood why Siwoo was being so cruel. Maybe the right thing to do now was to protect his own humanity and stop pressing him. But his instincts kicked him in the shin and refused to listen to reason.

“Hey. Kim Yeonho. Stop dodging. Did you sleep with someone else or not?”

Later that night, after wrapping Yeonho up like a newborn in blankets before he could reach for the frying pan, Siwoo returned home and sank deep into thought. His reawakened heart was still pounding. He couldn’t help but hope. He kept holding onto the possibility.

“Why do you look like the world is falling apart when you look at me?”

Yeonho had become someone whose words often changed and whose actions didn’t align with what he said. It made it hard to trust anything he showed at face value. So Siwoo had no choice but to sort through everything himself and decide what was true. He wanted to erase each of the countless contradictions Yeonho had shown him.

It might be difficult to uncover any twist in the already broken relationship between Seong Junhee and Yeonho, but maybe his assumptions about Seong Junyoung and Yeonho could still be overturned.

Did Seong Junyoung and Yeonho really kiss because they wanted to that spring at the resort? Was it not enough that he had questioned it back then and checked whether Yeonho had been able to drive? Had too much time already passed by the time he met them in the parking lot?

Siwoo tossed all the sleeping pills he had taken from Yeonho’s home into the trash and muttered to himself.

“I’m going to get that bastard locked up. No one should ever do something like this to someone they love, whether it’s family or a partner.”

In truth, Seong Junhee had played a major role in how Siwoo viewed the relationship between Seong Junyoung and Yeonho. The moment he saw the bouquet and card Yeonho received from Seong Junyoung, Siwoo had already spiraled into a triggered state from his trauma surrounding Seong Junhee. After witnessing them kiss, there was no way he could believe they were just ordinary siblings.

Yeonho had left Siwoo behind and chosen Seong Junhee. Then, after the accident at the ski resort, he lost all memories of the time he had spent dating that man. It looked as though he had replaced Seong Junhee with Seong Junyoung in his mind.

But there were things that didn’t quite line up if Seong Junyoung and Yeonho were really in a relationship. First, Yeonho’s attitude toward him didn’t seem romantic. And then there was Yeonho’s body, something Siwoo had confirmed for himself. It had been tightly shut, stiff and narrow, like someone who hadn’t had sex in years.

Siwoo had been gathering information about Seong Junyoung for a long time. He had acquaintances from his reckless years in America who overlapped with Junyoung’s social circle. Their ages and family backgrounds were similar, and the language program Junyoung attended abroad had been near the region Siwoo later studied in. On top of that, Junyoung had an unusually wide network.

Siwoo already knew those mutual acquaintances were feeding Junyoung information about him. Which meant he needed to be just as thorough in collecting things from their side. According to what Siwoo had heard not long ago, this was how people spoke about the two brothers.

“Seong Junyoung is totally different from his older brother. He’s flashy, loves attention.”

“What about Seong Junhee?”

“Oh, not even close. He was known for being upright and classy. Everyone said he had a great personality, very scholarly. I never met him myself, only went to the funeral, but the people who did know him were all mourning like crazy. The whole place was a sea of tears.”

“I see. I guess I’ll have to live the rest of my life repenting for what I did.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. It was an accident. I wouldn’t be your friend if I thought it wasn’t.”

When Siwoo heard that, it saddened him to think Seong Junhee really might have been someone worthy of Yeonho’s love. But Seong Junyoung, maybe not.

He reached out to an old acquaintance and asked,

“Do you know if Seong Junyoung is seeing anyone? We’re working together now, so I’ve been getting curious.”

“I think he might be.”

“Who is it?”

“It’s kind of hard to say… I only saw it on his private Instagram account. He never said they were dating, but the mood in his posts is weird. Everyone’s just speculating. It doesn’t seem like a normal sibling relationship.”

Siwoo’s gut dropped. He already had someone in mind, and hearing that made everything sink.

He took a breath, nodded slowly, and calmed himself before asking,

“His stepbrother?”

He let out a deep sigh and closed his eyes. So he’d gotten his hopes up for nothing.

According to the conversation that followed, Seong Junyoung had a private Instagram account only visible to a small circle of close friends. On that account, there were videos of his stepbrother telling him he loved him, or clips where the two shared odd physical contact. Apparently, his followers showed a lot of interest in those videos.

At that, Siwoo’s eyes shot open.

“Would you be willing to sell me the account linked to that profile? If not, could you find someone else who might be? I’ll pay whatever it takes. As long as you keep quiet, I’ll give you as much as you want.”

Seong Junyoung was the type to flaunt everything he had. His parents’ resort, golf course, residence hotel, their house. His foreign car, luxury watches, travel destinations. Siwoo had seen all of it on his public account.

And if what he was showing off in his private space was his unusually close relationship with his good-looking stepbrother – famous for their looks since school – and if those clips had been recorded without Yeonho’s consent, in fleeting moments Yeonho hadn’t even been aware of…