Chapter 35

How in the world did a fork get bent like that?

Mo Yeonhoo couldn’t tear his eyes away from the sight for a long moment, and Kang Miyoung answered in a grumbling tone.

“What the hell.... Why are you here making a scene first thing in the morning?”

“I’m trying to live a diligent life for once.”

“Out of nowhere? Then go do a shoot or something. Why’d you come to the café and start this?”

“What am I supposed to do if I’m too ugly to get any work?”

“What kind of bullshit is that? You probably just threw a fit because you didn’t want to do it.”

“That’s not it.”

“Hey, I heard something. Your mom said, on top of everything—!”

The face that had been smiling little by little while looking at Mo Yeonhoo was gone. The face Kwon Mieon turned on Miyoung was expressionless, and his tone was nowhere near kind.

The gap was strange, but what they were saying caught Yeonhoo’s ear even more.

‘If they’re talking about shoots, is he some kind of model?’

As he watched the two bicker, Mo Yeonhoo’s gaze slid toward Kwon Mieon.

For cousins, the two of them had completely different vibes. If Kang Miyoung gave off a soft, rounded impression, Kwon Mieon looked like someone who’d gathered up nothing but sharp, pointed things and made a face out of them.

But even that sharp impression, when the curve of his eyes bent—say, when the two moles above and below them seemed to draw a little closer—

‘This is fucking ridiculous.’

...Huh?

‘Who’s helping who here.’

Mo Yeonhoo froze.

The curve of eyes beneath jet-black hair, the two moles close enough to touch, the voice that laughed as it brushed against his ear.

‘What was that just now?’

Unlike now, when his hair was dyed blue, that unnaturally black hair kept lingering in his head like an afterimage. Startled, he blinked, and Kwon Mieon’s gaze turned toward him.

The moment their eyes met, his eyes narrowed. As if he’d noticed that Yeonhoo had just recalled a fragment of that night.

But Yeonhoo couldn’t keep looking at him.

“Um... do you have a minute?”

It was because of Miyoung, who asked the question with a slight tilt of her head. All the attention that had been pulled entirely toward Kwon Mieon swung right back to her.

Ms. Miyoung was speaking to him. And with a shy smile like that, no less.

That adorable sight almost made Mo Yeonhoo throw away every scrap of dignity he had and start nodding over and over, like of course he had time to spare.

“Yes.”

Of course, he somehow managed to grab the last thread of reason he had left and stop himself after just one nod.

“Oh, that’s a relief! There was something I wanted to ask you since last time!”

As the baby rabbit beamed brightly at him, Mo Yeonhoo nearly got disarmed all over again.

‘Cute....’

How could a person possibly be that bright and that cute? Mesmerized, he was about to smile back before a chilly voice cut in.

“What? What do you want to ask him?”

Kwon Mieon was staring at Kang Miyoung with a displeased look on his face.

Naturally, Kang Miyoung ignored him with ease and held her phone out to Mo Yeonhoo instead. To him, the whole process looked like it was happening in slow motion.

‘What, no way, this can’t seriously....’

Could it be... was she trying to ask for his number?

No wonder he’d been so worried about her, so desperate to see her since this morning. Even if it seemed like things had gone badly with whoever she’d been flirting with, still.

He always froze up in front of her and could barely get a word out, so the fact that she’d worked up the courage to ask for his number first moved him beyond belief.

‘...Hm?’

But the screen looked strange. It wasn’t a keypad where she could save a contact. StarGram was open.

“Do you use StarGram?”

These days, people exchanged StarGram instead of numbers, didn’t they? Was it that kind of thing? But Kang Miyoung smiled brightly and chirped at him.

“You seem like a regular, and our café sometimes does events for our followers.”

With that explanation, Mo Yeonhoo looked at the account ID and gave an awkward smile.

[@cafe_NoVa.]

It wasn’t her personal account. It was the café’s account.

“If you just follow the account and hit like, we throw free iced Americanos at customers all the time. So if you follow us, there are a lot of benefits....”

So it was marketing after all. Still, he wasn’t disappointed.

‘Ms. Miyoung really loves this café. That makes her even cooler.’

If anything, seeing how competent she was just made her seem admirable and cute. If Miyoung asked him for it, he’d go pluck a star out of the sky for her—but this time, there wasn’t actually anything he could do.

Because he—

“Yeonhoo doesn’t use StarGram.”

...didn’t.

“...?”

Mo Yeonhoo was dumbfounded. Before he could even answer, Kwon Mieon, who had been silently watching, stepped in first.

“Kwon Mieon, how would you know that?”

Kang Miyoung sounded just as startled as he felt when she asked him that. Kwon Mieon didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at Kang Miyoung.

But the instant he felt Yeonhoo’s gaze on him, he caught it immediately and looked straight back at him like a machine.

“.......”

Once their eyes met, Kwon Mieon moved his lips for a moment like he was about to say something, but that was all. Then he whipped his head away, as if to say, when did I ever bring anything up?

“I asked how you’d know that. You made something up again, didn’t you?”

Of course, it was exactly the kind of thing that could be misunderstood. When Kang Miyoung moved to press Kwon Mieon harder, Mo Yeonhoo stepped in.

“I really don’t use social media....”

Only then did Kang Miyoung smile awkwardly.

“Really? Wow, in this day and age.... That’s kind of a shame, though. I’m the one who manages it, so I can totally rig the regular-customer events for you.”

Kang Miyoung looked at him with obvious regret on her face.

“We do all kinds of events. Um... well, the owner gives away prizes during the holiday season, and trips to Jeju, and tons of desserts too. I do most of the drawings myself, so I could really make sure you win....”

She looked way too disappointed for someone merely offering a café promo. Mo Yeonhoo’s heart wavered. She wanted him to enter the event that badly....

“I’ll install it.”

The world’s number one Miyoung-crazed guy eventually took out his phone.

“Huh?”

“I’m downloading StarGram right now.”

He couldn’t just let the baby rabbit keep sounding disappointed.

“...What?”

Kwon Mieon let out a disbelieving laugh without bothering to hide the look on his face, but by then Mo Yeonhoo and Kang Miyoung had already sunk into a world of their own.

“You really don’t have to do that just because of me!”

“It’s fine. I’m a regular anyway... entering the event sounds good.”

“Wow! I’ll make sure you get picked without making it obvious! Just be sure to enter!”

Of course, Mo Yeonhoo hated bothersome things so much that the number of times he’d ever entered an event in his life could be counted on one hand.

“Sure.”

He could start now, then.

Every time Mo Yeonhoo answered, Kwon Mieon gave a little snort through his nose, but neither of them paid him any attention.

“Oh, right. Do you already have an account?”

“I think I made one a long time ago. Hang on.”

It was annoying having to dig up a dead account, but he liked the excuse to talk to Miyoung longer. So Mo Yeonhoo endured the annoyance and typed in the ID.

Honestly, when it came to IDs, didn’t everyone always use the same obvious stuff?

[@momo01019]

An ID made from his nickname and birthday. The moment he tapped it, a blank profile with zero activity came up.

‘Come to think of it, I deleted everything not long after I came back from Canada....’

Most of the people he followed were connections through Seunghwan Lee, so he’d dropped StarGram ages ago. To begin with, Yeonhoo had never cared about social media. Seunghwan Lee had been the one who talked him into getting it in the first place.

For now, he figured he’d follow only Ms. Miyoung’s café account, then later clean the rest of it all out.

“I found the account. I’ll follow it now.”

“Okay, great! We’re doing an iced Americano-and-dessert set event right now. I’ll draw yours right away!”

“Are you allowed to do that?”

“There barely aren’t any participants anyway, so no one will notice!”

Mo Yeonhoo found her unbelievably cute, the way she was loudly declaring she’d give him free coffee even though they had barely gotten past being acquainted.

‘She was so competent in the game too. Figures her personality would be the same.’

You could tell ten things from seeing one, and just as he was thinking Ms. Miyoung had to be the kind of person who was good at everything—

Ding!

A notification suddenly popped up at the top of the screen.

StarGram

now

rnjsaldjs47

lol

Someone he didn’t know, with some random English-looking nickname he couldn’t make sense of, had abruptly sent him a message.

How did someone know to message a ghost account that had been inactive all this time? Puzzled, Mo Yeonhoo tapped the other person’s account and tilted his head.

<img alt="insta k" src="https://webview-cache.ridibooks.com/3302046706/epub/images/Images/insta%20k.png"/>

It was strange enough that it was an account he was already following, but there was only one post on it.

To figure out who it was, he tapped the post right away. A fishbowl with a blue betta in it, a photo of the night sky, and then—

‘Kwon Mieon?’

...It was him. The man sitting across from him. Even in loose, casual clothes, he had that sort of presence that drew your eye just by standing on a street. Then another notification popped up.

K ><img alt="." src="https://webview-cache.ridibooks.com/3302046706/epub/images/Images/phone.png"/>. <img alt="." src="https://webview-cache.ridibooks.com/3302046706/epub/images/Images/video.png"/>.

rnjsaldjs47

Aren’t you curious?

Of course he was curious. Why was he—

K ><img alt="." src="https://webview-cache.ridibooks.com/3302046706/epub/images/Images/phone.png"/>. <img alt="." src="https://webview-cache.ridibooks.com/3302046706/epub/images/Images/video.png"/>.

rnjsaldjs47

Why are we following each other?