“Jingi, do you like me?”
That was the beginning. Jingi was with a boy he had never seen before, who asked the question with a slightly shy expression.
He wore a white, loose school uniform shirt and charcoal gray trousers. The tall boy stood in front of the window, greeting the breeze that flowed in along with the sunset.
“Wh-what?”
Jingi asked, backing away at the sudden situation. It was only natural, considering he had been sleeping in his bed until just a moment ago.
At his reaction, the boy’s eyebrows furrowed. Jingi blankly scanned his surroundings. He was currently standing in a high school classroom he should have graduated from three years ago, and the boy in front of him—framed by white curtains—was clenching and unclenching his fists as if demanding an answer.
The boy, with platinum blonde dyed hair, had thick eyebrows and eyes that curved upward like a fox’s. His dense eyelashes were fine, and his long, slanted eyes glared at Jingi. But the thing was, he was so beautiful that for the first time in his life, Jingi thought a man looked sexy.
As Jingi stared blankly, the boy tapped on the desk.
“Choi Jingi. Are you not going to answer me?”
Jingi quickly shook his head. It felt too vivid to be a dream, but the situation was not easy to understand as reality. Nevertheless, the glare from that pretty boy made him swallow hard.
First of all, his name wasn’t originally Choi Jingi, and he wasn’t a high school student—he was a twenty-two-year-old office worker.
“Then answer. Do you like me or not?”
Leaning against the window with his head tilted at an angle, the boy looked languid. As if certain that a positive answer was coming, he ran his tongue over his lower lip, which was thicker than his upper one. Jingi quickly shook his head. He felt like he had to.
“…Really?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“…Don’t lie to me. You really don’t like me?”
Their eye levels were similar. The boy was slightly shorter than Jingi. And Jingi realized that he was larger than he remembered himself being. He looked down and fiddled with his hands. The thick, sturdy fingers felt foreign.
“I’m not just asking. I won’t spread rumors about this… I’m just curious. Answer me honestly, Jingi.”
He had never seen anyone suit platinum blonde hair so well. It was a hair color that was usually difficult for Koreans to pull off, but it fit him perfectly.
Perhaps due to his fair skin and somewhat Western features, he gave off a mysterious aura. His face was so beautiful that one might feel tempted to sign any contract he held out, but soon, that face twisted into a mess.
“You… you were glancing at me and following me around. When I was sick, you bought medicine and came to my house, and while I was sleeping, you secretly… I know you kissed my cheek. I wasn’t asleep then.”
Hearing those words, something flashed through Jingi’s mind like a bolt of lightning.
A novel his close friend had begged him to read just a while ago.
His middle school friend, Kim Hyeyeon, said it was a work she was about to publish and insisted he read it to the end and give her feedback.
Choi Jingi was the ‘Top’ who ends up with the ‘Bottom’ of that novel. To be precise, the active role in a male-male relationship.
Since it was an all-ages novel, thankfully those scenes weren’t shown, but according to Kim Hyeyeon, he was the Top.
“I, I did?”
“Yeah.”
And this scene was exactly one chapter after the novel began. In other words, the point where the Top begins to show his feelings to the Bottom. In the original, the Top confesses here and is told by the Bottom that they should get to know each other slowly.
Then, as three sub-Tops appear, the main Top, Choi Jingi, begins to feel a sense of crisis, and the Bottom gets toyed with by the sub-Tops. The plot of the novel involved the Bottom eventually feeling love after being rescued by the main Top.
Even though Jingi remembered the entire plot, he couldn’t tell if this was a dream or reality.
How could he believe a story about working overtime for five days straight, waking up from a nap, and possessing a character in a novel his friend wrote? No, did he die from overwork because he worked five days straight?
Regardless, Jingi instinctively knew that since he originally liked ‘women,’ he couldn’t tell a lie even if this was a dream.
“Well, you see…”
“Yeah.”
The ‘Bottom’ stared intently at Jingi with clear eyes. His gaze was intimidating enough that it was hard to believe he was only a high school senior.
There wasn’t a single spark of light in his light brown pupils, and perhaps because his back was to the window, his face was cast in shadow. The shadows lengthened.
“I was drunk then… I must have made a mistake.”
“…What?”
“Ah, no. I mean… I got caught up in the mood. Because, because you’re pretty.”
That’s why he said it. Jingi didn’t like men, and he had just met the boy for the first time. Since this was only the beginning, he thought the boy would understand even if he didn’t confess.
However, despite the contradictory answer, the Bottom, Joo Unyoung’s face shattered like a broken window. Jingi gulped.
But still… they were friends for now. Even in the original, he confessed but they didn’t start dating right away.
“Sorry. I bet that felt bad. It won’t happen again, so don’t worry too much.”
Jingi forced a smile and tapped Joo Unyoung on the shoulder. He didn’t have the courage to pat him firmly.
‘I don’t particularly like you… and I don’t have the confidence to deal with the jealousy of the sub-Tops or the confidence to seduce you, Unyoung. You and the sub-Tops, do your best!’
