“That’s not like you.”
Doubt flickered across Han Jaeheon’s face, backlit by the streetlamp. Eunseo, anger surging up in him, calmed himself back down, gripping and releasing his backpack straps over and over. Whose fault does he think it is that I look like this — what does he think all this is about? Does he really have no idea, acting like that? Eunseo genuinely wanted to crack open Han Jaeheon’s skull and look inside. No matter how he thought about it, the man seemed to be missing the entire front of his brain.
“Why are you following me?”
“Why didn’t you answer my messages?”
He’d asked because Jaeheon seemed to want him to ask, but instead of answering, Jaeheon fielded it right back with a question of his own. Eunseo pressed his throbbing forehead and answered without much enthusiasm.
“I had it on silent, so I didn’t see them.”
“Why’d you put it on silent?”
“I was busy.”
“I told you I’d help you.”
“The lab is, as a rule…”
“Off-limits to outsiders, right?”
“…Yes.”
At last Han Jaeheon’s barrage of questions ran out. Eunseo stood still a moment, then turned and started walking again. But after only a few steps, he turned back toward Han Jaeheon.
“Han Jaeheon.”
“Yes.”
“…How did you know to come here?”
“By ‘here’ you mean — ah, the chicken place?”
“Yes.”
“I just grabbed people in the natural sciences building and asked. They all told me.”
“………”
“I heard you ignored my dinner invitation and left, so I figured if you looked like you were having fun, I’d just turn back. But you didn’t look like you were having fun at all.”
Does Han Jaeheon really feel nothing for me? Eunseo keenly felt the poverty of his own language, faced with explaining this ironic situation. If one stepped back and looked at the two of them objectively, it would read as the exact opposite of their real feelings: Shin Eunseo had feelings for Han Jaeheon but was doing everything he could to push him away, while Han Jaeheon felt hardly anything for Shin Eunseo yet acted like a stalker.
“Is teasing me fun for you?”
“Hmm…”
Han Jaeheon pretended to think it over for another moment. No… this time, he really did seem to be thinking. What he said after a slight shift in his true feelings left Eunseo dumbfounded.
“I do find teasing you fun, but I don’t think that’s why I’m doing this.”
“…I see?”
“I can’t even be sure of my own feelings.”
Eunseo’s head was full of nothing but question marks. It wasn’t like Han Jaeheon, who always spoke with such confidence.
“Well, anyway, I was wondering if you’d skipped dinner and gone back to work, so I’m glad that’s not it.”
Could Han Jaeheon maybe like me, just a little? What he said and did left Eunseo utterly confused. No matter how hopeless he was with relationships and feelings between people, what Jaeheon was doing now didn’t seem like something you’d do to a person you felt nothing for.
…Of course, the blind spot in that reasoning was that Han Jaeheon was impossible to figure out — there was no knowing what he was thinking, and his actions defied Eunseo’s common sense entirely.
“Han Jaeheon.”
“Hmm, if you’re going to say you don’t want to see me again, save it.”
“…Why?”
“Because I like seeing you. And I want to keep doing it.”
“………”
“And you don’t exactly hate it either, do you?”
Son of a bitch. Eunseo ground out the curse with more feeling than ever before. If Jin Seunghu had seen it, he’d have praised it as a curse well spent.
“I bought this on purpose, so please eat it — even if it’s for tomorrow’s lunch.”
Han Jaeheon insistently pressed the paper bag he’d been holding into Eunseo’s hand. Eunseo stared down at it for a long while, then said with a sigh,
“Han Jaeheon… are you someone who makes a point of feeding abandoned dogs?”
“Me? No way.”
“………”
“I only feed my own dog.”
After fumbling with his lips for a moment, Eunseo quietly thanked him and hugged the paper bag to his chest. He wasn’t sure whether Han Jaeheon had understood his question, but he was grateful Jaeheon hadn’t said yes to it.
“Then see you tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
His purpose achieved, or so it seemed, Han Jaeheon turned away without a backward glance. Eunseo stood watching until that broad back disappeared at the end of the alley, then walked toward the studio-apartment building right in the next block. And then a figure lunging out of the alley grabbed him by the hair.
“Still can’t let go, huh — seducing that alpha bastard?”
The skinny middle-aged man’s grip wasn’t all that strong, but Eunseo couldn’t push him away. If he bit down on the inside of his cheek and endured the feeling of his hair being ripped out, the man would soon fling him aside as if throwing him away.
“…You’re here.”
It had gone so far that he couldn’t even open his eyes properly, at the hands of a man much smaller and scrawnier than he was.
Glaring with one eye, he demanded an answer.
“My words don’t sound like words to you, huh?”
“No, Father. That’s not it…”
“‘That’s not it’? You’re not even a proper omega, can’t even give off a scent, and you’re out here putting on airs — what?”
Even driving a stake through a living heart wouldn’t hurt like this. The person who knew him best struck only where it hurt most. Eunseo blinked vacantly a few times, then barely managed to tear his eyes away from him and got to the point first.
“How much do you need?”
“You little shit…!”
The man raised his hand as if in a towering rage. The hand came crashing down on the side of his head, and his glasses went flying. It didn’t end with one blow. Only after striking his head, forehead, cheeks — several blows concentrated on the left side of his face — did the so-called father’s beating stop. And that was only because he’d run out of strength; had he any left, he’d have made the right side match before he was done.
Eunseo watched the panting man for a moment, then wiped the wetness trickling down his chin. He forced himself to ignore the red smeared across the back of his hand and opened his mouth. The numb pain made even moving his tongue hurt. The inside of his mouth was probably torn up too.
“…I figured you’d come anyway, so I’ve been carrying it around.”
Eunseo opened his backpack and took out an envelope. For a week now, thinking it was about time for him to show up, he’d been carrying it with him.
“Something like you… I should never have had you!”
“…Yes.”
“Where the hell did a fucked-up thing like you crawl out of.”
“………”
“Get those damn eyes out of my sight!”
With that, the man snatched the envelope from Eunseo’s hand. Drunk as he was, the gesture was like a peregrine falcon snatching its prey.
“Father, where are you staying these days? I—”
Before Eunseo could even finish, the man tucked only the envelope preciously inside his clothes and fled as if running away. Eunseo tried to grab him, but one eye wouldn’t see properly, so he grasped at air a few times, then sank down where he stood.
The man hated Eunseo. He hated more than anything in the world the child who’d caused the death of the person precious to him. But even so, Eunseo couldn’t hate his father. Those few bright flashes in the past — the loving way he’d treated Eunseo, but only in the brief instants when he, always drunk, came back to his senses — still kept Eunseo from letting go.
Even today the man would be drinking somewhere, calling out for his wife. And he’d fall asleep cursing them both — himself, who couldn’t die, and Eunseo.
Eunseo swallowed saliva that reeked of his nosebleed. “Die — please, just die. I wish you would die and my wife would come back to life.” Eunseo had always agreed with the man who said that. But his dying wouldn’t bring his mother back to life, so he couldn’t die.
He picked up the paper bag rolling around on the floor and dusted it off. It was what Han Jaeheon had left for him, and without even getting to look inside, it was already ruined. Eunseo opened the half-soaked bag and peered in.
Amid the thoroughly jumbled food, something orange caught his eye. Salmon again — will I ever manage to tell Han Jaeheon I hate salmon? Eunseo gave a hollow little laugh, then stopped when his wound throbbed. And he sighed again at another drop falling from his chin. He worried how he was supposed to go to school looking like this.
***
The next morning, Eunseo woke up already sighing over a dilemma. Can I go to school looking like this? Half his face was dark with bruising, his lips were split and swollen, and his forehead was even torn a little. He turned his face this way and that in the mirror, but there seemed no way to cover all of it.
It would take weeks to heal fully, and people would stare just as much whether he went today or next week. Having so decided, Eunseo steeled himself to go with his face as covered as possible and began getting ready.
This was nothing new to him, so Eunseo checked his wounds once more in the mirror, decided on his own that they probably didn’t need stitches, and carefully stuck on just a bandage.
After washing up and applying ointment, he hid his face behind his hair as much as he could, and he did look a little better,
but the problem was that his glasses were completely broken. They’d broken last time too, and he’d been getting by with a spare, so now he had no usable glasses left at all.
The money he’d given his father yesterday had been quite a sum, so getting new glasses made right away was difficult too. Even if he picked the cheapest frames, his eyesight was so bad that the lenses alone cost quite a lot. A master’s student’s research stipend was barely anything to begin with, and the thought of having to buy glasses again made his stomach churn. The thought of getting by on lenses until the stipend came in was even more dreadful.
“Nothing to be done about it, I guess.”
Eunseo thought there was something abnormal about him, still unable to cut his father off, and he’d tried terribly hard to break free of it. He’d gone to counseling more than once, and moved so his father couldn’t find him. But family bound by blood would find him somehow, no matter what.
He’d tried to hate his father just as his father hated him, tried not to give in to his demands — but the harder he tried, the more Eunseo suffered. Twenty years of abuse had put down deep roots and already wound itself tightly around him, and the more he tried to escape, the more brutal his father’s hand became. After the time his head was cracked open and he was carried to the ER, he’d chosen to simply endure it instead.
With a mask on, everything from his nose to under his chin was covered, but his temples and the corners of his eyes were the problem. Eunseo sighed for a moment, then put in a pair of daily disposable lenses he’d bought years ago. Daily lenses could only do so much, but without them he was as good as blind, so he had no choice but to wear them.
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