Chanting *it’s not true* like a spell, Eunwon backed away. He fled at a quick walk without even saying goodbye. Behind him, left alone, Joo Siyoon burst into loud laughter. For some reason, at that moment, words the young Muyoung had once said to him surfaced like a hallucination.
"*Someday he’ll try to ruin things between you and hyung?*"
From behind him, Joo Siyoon shouted in a big, cheerful voice.
"Tell your teacher I said hi! I’ll be by to visit soon!" By "teacher" he meant Eunwon’s mother. He’d taken essay lessons from her academy following Cha Muyoung, so the title had stuck.
With everything already feeling like the edge of a cliff, having his sick mother brought up made his throat tighten further. Eunwon never looked back once as he fled.
It was a thousand mercies that Joo Siyoon didn’t chase him.
He realized he’d left his phone at Muyoung’s place only when the doors of the long-awaited bus swung open.
"Ah… I’m sorry."
Stepping onto the stairs then backing off, Eunwon apologized blankly, bowing his head. Only after he’d pointlessly sent off a bus with a long interval did he realize his wallet was safely in his pocket.
*I really must be losing my mind.*
He scolded himself briefly, but thanks to that, he was able to catch the next bus safely. He wasn’t too worried about the phone in Muyoung’s hands.
It wasn’t like he’d dropped it on the street—he could just get it back at work on Monday. Today was Friday, which made it exactly the third day they’d promised…
The bus rattled.
While everyone else bowed their heads, sunk deep into the world of their smartphones, Eunwon alone stared out at the dark window. Through his wrecked mind, the afterimages of one long, long day swept past like a panorama.
The arranged meeting he’d prepared so hard for and so spectacularly failed, Cha Muyoung who’d kept him off balance until he could barely think straight, and Joo Siyoon who’d giggled out those skin-crawling words.
It was as if months’ worth of trials had stormed through in just a few hours.
He was truly so tired and drained. Getting off the bus, Eunwon trudged up the hill that felt unusually steep today and barely made it home.
The house with the grim rumor of a ghost, which made the rent cheap. It might look shabby to others, but to Eunwon right now it was the coziest, most desperately needed nest in the world.
And so, climbing the stairs, all he’d thought was *I just want to get inside and rest*.
But the front door was slightly open.
He’d definitely locked up well that morning. No one knew about the spare key hidden under the flowerpot… Was it a burglar?
*Today really is just that kind of day,* he thought, swallowing dryly with tension as he slipped silently inside. The place was so small he could see the whole kitchen standing in the entryway. There, someone’s back was bent over, rummaging through his fridge.
"Ohh… Eunwon’s here?"
"…"
"Long time no see. You been well?"
At Eunwon’s presence, the man turned around. His getup was no different from a homeless man in front of the station. Greasy, matted hair and shabby clothes. But Eunwon’s gaze, faced with the vagrant in his home, froze on the familiar face before it registered the shabby state.
"…Uncle?"
The very uncle he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of for two years, since his father’s funeral.
—
His uncle inhaled the ramyeon Eunwon had cooked for him, barely chewing. Watching him devour it, he looked like he hadn’t eaten in days. After ravenously finishing even the last drop of broth, his uncle finally sat back, laughing awkwardly in embarrassment.
He folded a sheet of tissue small and wiped his mouth several times; the back of his hand was noticeably gaunt. Across from him, Eunwon’s gaze was complicated—he couldn’t not know—but he spoke in a brazenly cheerful tone.
"Wow, this kimchi’s amazing. This is your mom’s cooking, right?"
"…It’s store-bought. Mom can’t make kimchi anymore."
"Ahh… right. She’s not in a state for that." Clearing his throat awkwardly, his uncle asked after Yiwon this time.
"You living here with your brother? Seems small for two grown boys… and, uh, is he still doing ballet?"
"…Yiwon’s abroad."
He could have told him more, but Eunwon held his tongue. Just in case—he probably wouldn’t contact Yiwon or go to America, but just in case.
Looking at his uncle, suppressing the complex emotions boiling in his chest, Eunwon bit his lip hard and finally asked the question he was most curious about, the one he absolutely had to ask.
"…What brings you here?"
"What! Can’t I come here?"
At the sudden contorted face and the shout thrown back, Eunwon just looked at his uncle silently. His uncle, who’d been working himself up into a deliberately angrier scowl, couldn’t withstand that level stare and turned away, feigning nonchalance.
"…"
Dealing with his uncle was a very difficult, painful thing for Eunwon too.
He’d once truly trusted and liked him. The cheerful uncle who always brought snacks and gifts for his young nephews. Even when his business failed once, Eunwon’s family had trusted him and embraced him. He was young and capable—they’d told him he could start over, never stinting on encouragement or support.
But instead of honest effort, he’d hoped for luck, and once he set foot in the gambling den, he’d rolled down into an irrecoverable abyss.
When he’d run up illegal loans and finally, while Eunwon’s family was out, snuck in and ransacked his sister-in-law’s drawers, stealing her wedding jewelry and disappearing—even Eunwon’s father had given up on him then.
After being missing for a long while, he’d reappeared when their father was diagnosed as needing a liver transplant.
Banging the ground and wailing, he’d readily offered his own liver to his hyung, boldly declaring he’d become a new man from this day on. Eunwon’s whole family had wept with gratitude.
But that resolution’s expiration date was far, far too short.
The moment he woke from the anesthesia after the transplant surgery, barely out of it, he’d threatened his sister-in-law and demanded money.
*I saved hyung’s life, so that’s my compensation. Just hand over the insurance payout and the surgery costs. I’m not asking for much more.*
If it had ended there, he might have remained someone to be grateful to, as his life’s savior. But sadly, their father hadn’t beaten the illness after all, and while his mother collapsed at the funeral, he’d reappeared, cleaned out everything in his hyung’s name, left the house to be auctioned off under a mountain of debt, and vanished.
The ringleader who’d shoved the three family members—already drowned in deep grief over the beloved husband and kind father they’d lost—into the pit of abject poverty.
Just thinking about it, he should have grabbed him by the collar and shaken him, but there was one single reason Eunwon couldn’t.
Whatever the outcome, it was an undeniable fact that he was the man who’d given up part of his own organ for their father.
The long, sunken silence grew uncomfortable for him too, and after fiddling with the empty pot a few more times for no reason, his uncle muttered, "Ah, forget it," and casually climbed onto Eunwon’s bed to claim it. He seemed to fall right asleep, his snores already rough, reeking of alcohol.
Eunwon, sitting blankly at the table, sighed shallowly and stood, walking to the bed. Since it had come to this, at least he’d cover him with a blanket.
He went to take off the filthy black socks dirtying the white bedding first, and when the rolled-up pant legs revealed his uncle’s bare shins, he couldn’t help sucking in a breath.
His entire shins were covered in bruises, wounds, and oozing sores—a wreck. It didn’t look like he’d simply fallen or bumped into something… it looked far more like he’d been beaten.
"…What on earth have you been doing?"
A sigh-like mutter escaped him. There was no answer from the snoring man, but seeing him knit his brow and groan in his sleep as if he felt the pain even unconscious made his heart heavy despite everything.
No matter how much he hated him, he was still his uncle.
The little brother their father—who’d lost his parents early—had raised like his own son. Just as he thought of Yiwon, their father must have loved his uncle that way. The thought stung, and Eunwon bit his lip hard.
He’d resolved that come morning he’d draw a line somehow and kick him out, but seeing him so gaunt and hurt, his foolish heart went soft again.
But.
Right now he had a nosebleed’s worth of his own troubles—three feet deep.
The debt he’d left behind hadn’t disappeared; Cha Muyoung had only paid it off in his stead. The mere thought of that still-crushing sum made his breath catch.
On top of that, his mother’s illness and hospital bills, the new-drug treatment costs, worries about Yiwon living precariously abroad, his own precarious standing at work, Cha Muyoung—who’d kissed him knowing he was an omega. And… Joo Siyoon, saying those strange things.
With a mountain of immediate worries, Eunwon’s shoulders were far too heavy to carry his uncle too.
In the end, Eunwon pretended not to see and pulled his uncle’s pant legs back down. Cooking him ramyeon, taking off his dirty socks, covering him with a blanket. That was the full extent of what he could do.
After soaking his uncle’s dirty socks in soapy water and setting fresh socks on the nightstand, Eunwon crouched in the dark corner of the room, hugging his knees.
As he tried to bury his head between them, the sensor light by the shoe cabinet suddenly flickered on. There was no movement anywhere near it.
It happened often, so it wasn’t scary. He’d long since theorized that if there really was a ghost in this house, it must frequently wander around over there.
Watching the room go briefly bright then dark again as if nothing had happened, Eunwon suddenly thought: *I’m lonely.*
His uncle snoring noisily, *drrrong-drrrong*, and a ghost that might be watching him from somewhere.
Sharing this tiny one-room with them, he felt as if he’d been dropped alone into the middle of the vast universe.
He pressed his stinging eyes hard into his knees, and Eunwon tried to just end this day. Fitting for such a long, exhausting day, sleep came easily despite his tangled heart. Strangely enough.
Drifting through a sea of sleep, Eunwon dreamed of the day he’d presented as an omega.
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