The guy who had finished saying what he needed to say dashed outside.
Jingi stood up from his seat and waved his hand at Joo Unyoung, who had been waiting at a distance, signaling for them to head up.
Unyoung walked over with an inexplicably sulky face and let his arm drop heavily onto Jingi’s shoulder.
“What did you talk about?”
“Just, he wanted to hang out at night during the school trip?”
“At night?”
“Yeah. He said he wanted to invite other kids to join us, so I said sure.”
Jingi rummaged through his pockets, but his phone wasn’t there.
“Wait a second,” he said, slipping out from under Unyoung’s arm and heading back to his seat.
Just as he pulled his phone out from a corner of his desk drawer, Baek Jaehui was calling.
“Yeah.”
— Hey, are you guys not coming yet? We’re already in line, so hurry up. It’s almost our turn.
“Actually, we were finishing up homeroom. Wait a bit.”
— Uh-huh. Hurry over.
As soon as he hung up, he rejoined Joo Unyoung, who was standing by the back door.
Jingi pushed through the long line as they headed up, grabbing Unyoung’s wrist to pull him along.
“Did Jaehui save us a spot?”
“Yeah.”
“But, what did he say we were going to do at night?”
“Eat chicken. With girls from the all-girls school.”
“All-girls school?”
“Yeah. Ah, man. Baek Jaehui called a ton of times while I was away.”
The two soon spotted Baek Jaehui.
As they squeezed in behind him, the guys standing further back grumbled.
Baek Jaehui complained for a long time, asking what took them so long, and while Joo Unyoung seemed like he wanted to ask more about what happened earlier, Jingi didn’t know anything else, so there was nothing more to say.
‘He said he was going to confess anyway. So, let him hang out with her.’
For some reason, a slightly twisted thought crossed Jingi’s mind.
From the lunch hour, when a drowsy sluggishness began to linger, until the very end of the day, sunlight gently enveloped the kids in the classroom.
The windows were all shut, and the boys’ high school classroom, kept cool by the air conditioning, was filled with guys with black hair slumped over their desks.
Jingi jotted down some notes from the teacher, waiting for the final class to end.
As the class neared its end, the students got up one by one to pack their bags.
The teacher stubbornly continued the lesson until the very last minute, but only a handful of students were actually listening.
The moment the bell rang, the teacher put down the chalk, and the classroom emptied out in an instant.
Even the guys who usually stayed for late-night study and were obsessed with grades had disappeared.
Jingi organized his textbooks and packed the notes he’d taken separately during class into his bag.
He intended to look over them once more when he got home.
Then, he glanced at Joo Unyoung, who had been in a bad mood since lunchtime.
Strangely, both Unyoung and Jingi had felt their moods sinking since the lunch break.
Jingi finished packing regardless of whether Unyoung was sulking or not.
As he fiddled with his phone, trying to send a message to Joo Hyeonje, he noticed something he hadn’t seen for a while.
As he sat up straight in surprise, something lurked by the back door.
Turning around, he saw a familiar, bulky figure.
The moment the figure, with his head slightly bowed, poked his face through the small window, Jingi put his bag down and hurriedly ran out.
“Wh-what are you doing here?”
As soon as he stepped out, he slammed the back door shut with a loud bang, and he could feel Joo Unyoung’s gaze on him.
Jingi hurriedly dragged Joo Hyeonje away.
Joo Hyeonje, with a pale, white face, smiled brightly and clung to his back.
“Did you miss your brother?”
“N-no. Senior, that…”
“You really came running like an arrow, you cute little bastard.”
‘Can you still think that after seeing this face?’
As he shoved Joo Hyeonje away with both hands, his face twisted in a mess, a deep sigh escaped him.
‘I’m getting dizzy.’
“What did you come here for?”
“I just came to see my baby, why else?”
“Then go away. Unyoung is in a bad mood today.”
He surreptitiously checked through the back door and saw that Joo Unyoung was still resting his chin on his hand, glaring at the chalkboard.
‘Ah, I should’ve grabbed my bag. So I could just leave right away.’
Jingi was anxious and began to walk, thinking he had to get rid of Joo Hyeonje first.
At the same time, Joo Unyoung looked at Jingi’s seat and turned his head with a distorted expression.
The look on his face from the right was so full of annoyance that Jingi was startled and let out a small hiccup, grabbing Joo Hyeonje’s arm and tugging on it.
He could see Joo Unyoung, who had slicked back his blonde hair, slowly rising to his feet.
“Ah, wait, let’s go somewhere else, not here!”
“I told you I came to see you, didn’t I?”
“Then you can just come with me, hurry!”
Joo Unyoung was on the list of ‘friends whose birthdays are coming up.’
The date was the second day of the school trip.
As soon as Jingi saw that, he realized why Joo Unyoung was in a bad mood.
A confession is a confession, but Joo Unyoung, who cherished and loved his friends, probably wanted to spend his birthday with him.
And he had told him he was going to hang out with other kids during that very time.
It was a problem he could have realized if he had checked a little sooner.
Even in the original story, didn’t they have a small birthday party on the school trip?
Back then, Choi Jingi had bought an expensive ring and put it on a silver necklace as a gift.
The scene of him liking it so much that he even teared up flashed vaguely through his mind.
‘Yeah, even so, it’s his birthday. His one and only birthday a year…’
“Where are we going? Hmm?”
“Anywhere, just, anywhere! Please, just come…!”
Jingi felt sorry for not knowing, and furthermore, he hoped that by bumping into Joo Hyeonje now, the situation wouldn’t get any worse.
So, he worked up a sweat pulling Joo Hyeonje and pushing him from behind to get toward the stairs.
“What will you give me if I go with you?”
“Ah, seriously! You’re not a child! Tell me later, later!”
“I am a child. So hurry up. What will you give me, baby?”
Fuck.
Jingi rubbed his skin-crawling arms and turned his head, only to see the back door opening.
There was only Joo Unyoung in the classroom, so the only one who could have opened the door was Joo Unyoung.
“I’ll do anything, so please hurry!”
“Anything?”
“Yes, hurry…!”
Jingi jumped and barely managed to turn the corner of the hallway and climb the stairs.
He hoped it was a mistake, but it felt like their eyes had met for a second; he quickly climbed up two stairs at a time.
He dashed toward the short hallway on the left and found the dark music room and science lab.
After a moment of hesitation, Jingi entered the music room, closed the door, and crouched down underneath it.
Seeing Jingi taking deep breaths and feeling nervous, Joo Hyeonje smiled as brightly as a lead in a youth drama.
‘Asshole. This guy really was the villain after all.’
“Wow, Jingi, you’re bold.”
“Shh!”
“Being in a dark music room all alone… It’s like a romance manga.”
Laughter leaked through Joo Hyeonje’s teeth.
Before long, he could hear Joo Unyoung coming up to the third floor.
Since the third floor only had several practice rooms and a few third-year classrooms, the hallway was quiet, making the footsteps distinct.
Joo Unyoung stopped in front of the music room, then headed to the right, to the other side.
Jingi, who had been holding his breath, let the tension out of his whole body.
The right hallway was long, but the turn to loop back was short. In other words, he could be caught at any moment if he just turned his head.
So, it was safest to wait for Joo Unyoung to head down the stairs before leaving.
“Ah… seriously. You should have just left when I told you to, why didn’t you go?”
“Why should I care what he thinks?”
“Th-that’s true. But, look. Look! You said you came to see me. Then you could at least do me a favor.”
When he complained because of the sudden sprinting, Joo Hyeonje smiled, lifting the corners of his mouth.
Jingi leaned almost flat against the door, thinking he would go back once Joo Unyoung went down.
“That’s true too. But I didn’t want to, so what can you do.”
“Forget it.”
‘We ran away together as a result. If it was going to end up like this anyway, how good would it have been if you had just gone earlier?’
Jingi exhaled a deep sigh with a frown.
The music room was a bit stuffy as the air conditioner had been off for a long time.
‘That thing about hanging out with the girls from the all-girls school—I told them not to miss it, so what do I do?’
No matter how he thought about it, ignoring a friend’s birthday to hang out with others didn’t seem right.
He wanted to find a substitute, but Jingi didn’t have any friends…
‘When should I buy a birthday present? Ah, right. Joo Unyoung said to go somewhere after school today… he said he was going to confess.’
At the two words ‘confession,’ his mood dropped sharply again.
As his complexion darkened in an instant, Joo Hyeonje, who had leaned in closer, noticed and tilted his head to meet his eyes.
“Why?”
When he started to run away in surprise, Joo Hyeonje followed him immediately.
It felt like their lips would bump if he got any closer, so Jingi turned his head and answered quietly.
“I was supposed to go somewhere with Unyoung after school.”
“Send a text. Tell him you’re going to the faculty office for a bit before you go.”
“……That’s smart. Thank you.”
‘So that’s why he was sitting in the classroom without going home.’
Jingi felt a sudden surge of guilt and pulled out his phone to send a text.
[I’ll be there in a bit, wait for me in the classroom for a sec g.g]
“What’s ‘g.g’?”
“It’s a crying face… it is.”
“You even use things like ‘g.g’.”
‘Is that a compliment or an insult?’
Jingi shoved his phone back.
He opened the door slightly and peered into the hallway.
Joo Unyoung must have gone to the end of the right side and turned; he wasn’t visible.
He hadn’t heard any sounds of him going toward the stairs, so it seemed like he would have to wait a little longer.
“But tell me.”
“Yes, yes, what is it?”
“Do you like men?”
The moment he was carefully closing the door, his head whipped around at Joo Hyeonje’s question.
He almost screamed at the top of his lungs, but he held it in with all his might—no, with the strength of having lived a tiring life for 22 years.
‘Has this person gone crazy? Suddenly, what?’
