Chapter 50

Kwon Mieon had caught the word in that tiny gap and teased him with it. His tone was clearly joking no matter who heard it, but Mo Yeonhoo could not laugh.

Why am I doing that?!

He sat there dazed, then reached out. Kwon Mieon handed the phone over obediently, and when Mo Yeonhoo saw the timeline displayed at the bottom of the screen, his mouth fell open.

Eight hours...?

Mo Yeonhoo flicked through the video with his fingertip. But even when he skipped ahead several minutes at a time, the two of them were still sitting on the stairs, pressed close together.

The image quality was not good enough to tell exactly what they were doing, but from night until morning, Kwon Mieon and Mo Yeonhoo had stayed on those stairs the entire time.

This makes no sense. Why are we sitting like that?

The Mo Yeonhoo on-screen kept shaking his shoulders while hugging Kwon Mieon. Kwon Mieon was doing the same. They could not have been crying, so they must have been laughing.

For a long while, the two of them kept leaning against each other, throwing arms over each other’s shoulders, hugging, over and over again....

“Hey, say something.”

Mo Yeonhoo, who had been glaring at the CCTV footage like it was his mortal enemy, suddenly remembered something.

His own voice, touching Kwon Mieon’s face as if he found it fascinating when it was right in front of him, then abruptly ordering him to speak.

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

“What should I say?”

“Ahaha, this thing can really talk.... Amazing.”

And his own voice, laughing at Kwon Mieon’s answer and spouting bizarre nonsense!

At the memory that suddenly rose so vividly, Mo Yeonhoo {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} went white.

That video was not fake...!

“Mo Yeonhoo, don’t go around drinking as much as you want just because you can hold your liquor.”

“Why?”

“You don’t get drunk easily, but once you do, you crash hard. Ugh, when you’re drunk, the skinship is no joke.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not that bad.”

“Hey. The one who got subjected to it is the most wronged here. You know your memory blanks out when you’re drunk, right?”

But Mo Yeonhoo rarely drank enough to get drunk unless he was with close friends, so he had only laughed it off and moved on.

“Yeonhoo. You remembered something, didn’t you?”

Seeing this video, he was terrified that it really might be true that he, completely wasted, had said weird nonsense to Kwon Mieon about staying beside him and taking responsibility for him!

“N-no? I didn’t remember anything.”

What had they been talking about, and in what context had those remarks come out? He was curious, but Pandora’s box should not be opened.

“I’m sorry, but I seriously don’t remember much.”

He would bury it.

“So don’t put too much meaning into whatever I said, and it’d probably be better to delete this....”

More than anything, that video was terrifying to watch again because just seeing a little of it had made memories rise back up as if they had been waiting. Thinking he had to bury it so he could not recall it at all, Mo Yeonhoo tried to delete the video, but Kwon Mieon quickly snatched the phone away.

“Why would the things you said have no meaning?”

Kwon Mieon’s sharp rebuttal made him look offended.

“D-don’t you know you’re supposed to let mistakes people make while drunk slide?”

“Mistakes?”

“Yeah, I’m usually....”

“You’re saying you’re usually like this when you drink?”

It was true that he got more physically affectionate, but not to this degree. At that fierce gaze, Mo Yeonhoo shut his mouth.

“And don’t say it like that.”

Kwon Mieon answered coldly.

“Why would that day have no meaning?”

It was the angriest face Mo Yeonhoo had seen from him today, and it made him rather curious.

What had happened between them that day, for him to keep saying it had meaning?

“Your salad and ades are out first~ Which side should I place them on?”

But before he could ask, the food arrived. While the appetizer and drinks were being served on the table, neither of them opened their mouths, and only after the staff member left did Kwon Mieon speak.

“Eat first.”

He smiled. His face was gentle, as if he had never been in a bad mood at all, but Mo Yeonhoo felt oddly conscious of him. ℴ

“You’re hungry, Yeonhoo.”

Earlier, it had seemed sincere, but now it somehow felt fake. Mo Yeonhoo felt stuffy, as if something had settled on his chest.

The seat suddenly felt uncomfortable. Mo Yeonhoo felt what little appetite he had vanish completely. Kwon Mieon seemed the same; food kept coming out endlessly, but the two of them were clearly eating slowly. As Mo Yeonhoo pushed around the innocent salad, Kwon Mieon spoke again.

“You want me to delete that video, don’t you?”

Mo Yeonhoo, who had been pressing down on a piece of lettuce with his fork, slowly lifted his head and flinched. Kwon Mieon was already propping his chin on his hand and staring fixedly at him.

Those strange, low-saturation eyes stared at him as if they were piercing through him.

“Then meet me.”

“What? M-meet you?”

At Mo Yeonhoo’s reluctant reaction, Kwon Mieon narrowed his eyes slightly, then drew his brows together.

“......That reaction is interesting.”

But even at Kwon Mieon’s words, Mo Yeonhoo still could not hide his flustered expression.

“No, even so....”

“Even so, what? Are you saying even meeting me like this is a waste of ti—”

“D-dating is a little much, isn’t it?”

Kwon Mieon froze.

“...What?”

His voice sounded drained, but Mo Yeonhoo failed to catch it and was serious all by himself.

“I’m open-minded. In this day and age, prejudice is... of course, I can’t say I have none at all.”

“.......”

“And I’ve obviously... never thought about dating a man before.”

“......?”

At that string of nothing but contradictions, Kwon Mieon lost his words. Mo Yeonhoo kept talking with a troubled expression.

“No matter how you feel, I don’t even know what happened between us, and even if the other person weren’t a man, forcing someone to date like this is....”

Kwon Mieon had been watching him with an annoyed look, but the more he listened, the stranger his expression became. Regardless, Mo Yeonhoo answered seriously. Of course he had no choice but to be serious.

“Obviously love isn’t a crime.”

Mo Yeonhoo, the love-crazed bastard in the middle of his forty-sixth crush, faced it sincerely even if the other person was Kwon Mieon.

“I’m not trying to hurt you, but this is kind of a s-special case, right? I don’t mean that it’s wrong for you to like me, okay? But....”

“.......”

“It’s... a little wrong.”

With all his heart and soul, in his own way, he explained as hard as he could while trying not to hurt the other person. But what was the point?

“So, what I’m saying is, dating you is a little....”

Every sentence was full of contradictions. His desperate words were all incoherent nonsense, but Mo Yeonhoo kept trying to persuade him seriously with his eyes squeezed shut. Kwon Mieon watched him, and in the end the corner of his mouth twitched.

“...Pfft.”

He laughed.

At that sound, Mo Yeonhoo froze. His eyes met Kwon Mieon’s across from him, the other man’s head slightly lowered as he looked at him. His eyes curved as he smiled.

“I heard you out.”

Mo Yeonhoo was flustered.

What? Is he in a better mood now?

He had thought Kwon Mieon would obviously be offended because Mo Yeonhoo had indirectly rejected his request to meet him.

“Thank you for thinking so seriously about my proposal, but....”

And yet, for some reason, Kwon Mieon looked pleased. Mo Yeonhoo stared at him with blank eyes, unable to understand why Kwon Mieon’s mood had suddenly improved, then froze solid at the words that followed.

“Even if you don’t remember, I was saying that since we met again like this, it must be fate, so we should be friends.”

......What?

“I don’t have many friends, so if you met me and hung out with me, I was going to delete the video on my own.”

Kwon Mieon smiled.

“But you imagined going as far as dating me?”

Yes. If Mo Yeonhoo had gotten the wrong idea, he had gotten it spectacularly wrong!

No, Kwon Mieon said I hit on him and talked about responsibility and all that, so obviously I thought that was the nuance.

And look at that face. He was asking with those damn romance-drama eyes, so of course I misunderstood...!

“What are you talking about? Pretend you didn’t hear that!”

“How can I pretend I didn’t hear it when I heard every word?”

Ignoring him, Kwon Mieon cheerfully kept talking, not even giving Mo Yeonhoo a chance to escape.

“Yeonhoo. Now that I think about it, I’ve never dated a man either.”

Then he said something horrifying.

“But I think I could do it with you.”

He said that crazy thing so easily.