So Why Was He Still Thinking About Him?

“Does Seo Haeyoon have someone he’s seeing lately?”
“What?”
At the sudden mention of the uncomfortable name, Minseok, who was tilting his glass across from Jaeyeol, raised his eyes sharply.
An undisguised glint of contempt was visible in his gaze.
Even though Minseok was among Jaeyeol’s longtime friends and one who understood him relatively well, it was still the same.
He couldn’t understand why all his friends were siding with that bastard Seo Haeyoon.

Overcome by a wave of bitterness, Jaeyeol poured the full shot of soju into his mouth.
Watching him silently, Minseok asked back.

“Why are you curious about that?”
“Well… just because.”
“Hey, you’re really something… Jaeyeol-ah, if you have any conscience, you should live without even looking in Seo Haeyoon’s direction.”
The negative emotion towards Jaeyeol was plain in Minseok’s tone.
It sounded like the way one treats a piece of shit, no matter how you heard it.
Somehow, not a single one of these so-called friends was on his side.
How on earth did Seo Haeyoon manage to win over all these bastards’ hearts?

Swallowing the pathetic question that would only make him look desperate if he voiced it, Jaeyeol refilled his empty glass.
Minseok continued without stopping.

“You’re getting married soon, right?
You should be busy with wedding preparations.
Do you have time to be curious about Seo Haeyoon?
Frankly, you shouldn’t even be drinking with me right now.”
“……”
“At least because it’s me, I’m telling you this, Jaeyeol-ah.
Since things have come to this… don’t do useless things and just live well with Ahn Seonwoo.”

There wasn’t a single word in his lecture that was wrong.
It was truly only because it was Minseok that he was meeting him and hearing such things.
Jaeyeol had noticed that the friends he used to meet with Seo Haeyoon had been subtly avoiding his contact lately.

Marriage, Ahn Seonwoo, and Seo Haeyoon.
The complicatedly entangled words, fueled by the alcohol, rapidly began to occupy his mind.
Come to think of it, he hadn’t been able to contact Seonwoo to say he’d be late.
Ahn Seonwoo hated it terribly when he couldn’t be reached.
If he didn’t want things to get troublesome, he should call now.
He just didn’t want to.

The moment he thought of Seonwoo, fatigue washed over him.
Lately, the two of them had been fighting much more often.
Most were petty arguments, but with the increasing frequency, the fatigue was inevitable.

“…Right.
I should focus more on the marriage.”
Jaeyeol muttered, trying hard not to think of Haeyoon, who always tried to understand and consider him first in everything.

As Minseok said, the wedding was just around the corner.
Whether Seo Haeyoon was walking around covered in Alpha pheromones or not was none of his business.
For Jaeyeol, there was Ahn Seonwoo, who was much more fun, lovable than Haeyoon, and with whom he could have a child who resembled them both.
Ahn Seonwoo, whom he had chosen over Seo Haeyoon, was now the best lover for Jaeyeol and would be the partner to spend the rest of his life with.

Jaeyeol lifted his glass, forcefully ignoring Haeyoon’s face that kept surfacing.

* * * *

Seonwoo, lying in bed, heard the sound of Jaeyeol coming in.
It was past 2 a.m.
He felt irritation surge at the fact that he had no contact until now and was only coming in this late.
However, instead of getting up and scolding him, Seonwoo pulled the blanket up to his nose.
He wasn’t in the mood for an argument with him right now.
Seonwoo had been staring at a message Jeongha had sent a while ago.

Seonwoo had looked at that message, which carried an ambiguous vibe, over and over.
If it were a letter on paper, it would have worn out and torn by now.
Baek Jeongha, who had acted as if he had some lingering feelings, had again completely cut off contact after that day.
No matter how many times Seonwoo swallowed his pride and contacted him, there was no news.

As always, the anxiety was Ahn Seonwoo’s burden to bear.
If this was the so-called technique of ‘push and pull,’ then Seonwoo was properly caught in it.
Frankly, just the thought that Baek Jeongha was interested enough to play push and pull with him made Seonwoo’s heart race as if it would burst.

Even on the verge of marrying another man, Ahn Seonwoo was still the ‘inferior’ one to Baek Jeongha.

Then, the sound of the bedroom door opening was heard.
Seonwoo closed his eyes and pretended to sleep.
The sound of Oh Jaeyeol’s sigh resonated in the quiet room.
Jaeyeol didn’t come inside and instead turned and left.
The moment the door closed, Seonwoo irritably sat up.

Who was the one who should be angry right now?
He couldn’t understand why he was the one sighing.
Seonwoo glared fiercely at the closed door.
Come to think of it, Jaeyeol had been acting strange lately.
His attitude had changed in some vague way, and it definitely wasn’t for the better; there had been more than one or two times it rubbed him the wrong way.
He just hadn’t reacted sensitively because his attention was focused on Jeongha.

The wedding was approaching, and there were mountains of things to sort out, but the problem started with him coming home late, using work as an excuse.
Seonwoo hated that it seemed like he was the one more sincere about this marriage.
Oh Jaeyeol was the one who abandoned his long-time lover and chose him.
So, of course, Jaeyeol should be the one clinging more desperately and wanting it more.

“Annoying…”
Seonwoo sat up, feeling an inexplicable displeasure, then picked up his phone, searched for the number that had once been as familiar as his own, and typed a message.

[Haeyoon-ah, awake?]
The recipient was Seo Haeyoon.

[It’s just… when it gets to dawn, I think of you.]
[You’ll come to my wedding, right? You have to come. I’ll be waiting.]

Only after the messages he sent appeared in the conversation window, which had been blank for a while, did Seonwoo savor the feeling of relief and smile.
It was a familiar situation.
For a long time, on days when he was in a bad mood, Seonwoo would vent his ambiguous frustrations on Haeyoon to relieve his feelings.
Even if not directly, situations that would be more than enough for others to notice were always repeated.

Yet, the foolish Seo Haeyoon, unaware he was being treated as an emotional trash can, would always offer serious comfort to Seonwoo.
The problem was that such tolerant affection wasn’t exclusively granted to Seonwoo.
Friends who initially found Haeyoon difficult due to his cold impression eventually came to trust and rely on him at some point.

Seonwoo found that exact aspect of Seo Haeyoon disgustingly hateful.
He resented that guy, who wouldn’t have been able to get close to anyone if it weren’t for Ahn Seonwoo, monopolizing the reputation of being a good person the more you got to know him.

‘Without me, you’d be nothing.
You couldn’t have become anything.’
Under the name of friendship, Seo Haeyoon had parasitized him and taken away all the good things.
Seonwoo genuinely believed that.

After staring at the chat window with Haeyoon for a long time, Seonwoo soon placed his phone on the bedside table, lay back down, and closed his eyes.
He didn’t receive a reply, but imagining Seo Haeyoon feeling devastated upon receiving his message made him feel a little better.

‘Why are you trying to hurt me this much?’
The question Haeyoon had asked at the reunion came to mind.
With his eyes closed, Seonwoo snorted.
It was truly a shameless question.
Seo Haeyoon and his stupid friends acted as if Seonwoo had done something terribly wrong, but that was a million miles from the truth.
If it weren’t for Ahn Seonwoo, Seo Haeyoon would have had nothing from the start.

Seonwoo was merely returning Haeyoon to the place where he rightfully belonged.

* * * *

Ruminating over something that happened long ago and getting hurt is useless.
Haeyoon was always a person who focused more on the present than the past or future.

‘You’re so lucky to have a friend like me. Without me, you wouldn’t have had any friends, right?’

But at this moment, he couldn’t stop reflecting on the past he had passed through unknowingly.

[You’ll come to my wedding, right? You have to come. I’ll be waiting.]

Haeyoon’s gaze swept over the message that had arrived out of the blue from Seonwoo in this early dawn.

Looking back, Seonwoo was always like that.
He kept saying things he didn’t need to say.
That Haeyoon was able to make friends was all thanks to him, that only because it was him could they become close so easily.
Seonwoo would tell Haeyoon such things whenever he got the chance.

Haeyoon never really refuted it.
Because he thought it was true.
He had heard since childhood that he looked too cold, making it hard to approach.
There weren’t many people like Seonwoo who approached him without hesitation and proactively introduced him to other friends.

As time passed, some friends even subtly expressed dissatisfaction, asking why Ahn Seonwoo always spoke like that, but Haeyoon was fine with it.
Compared to what Seonwoo had done for him, that level of self-praise was bearable.
He thought Seonwoo was just overly honest by nature, not intending to hurt him.
That’s what he thought back then.

It was a massive misconception.
Only now did Haeyoon realize that every single word Seonwoo said back then was not much different from the message he received now.

Haeyoon put down his phone, got up, and opened the closed window a bit.
Taking a deep breath of the cool dawn air, it filled his lungs.

The first emotion he felt upon seeing Ahn Seonwoo’s message was devastation.
It overlapped with the image of Oh Jaeyeol, who had shamelessly held Seonwoo’s hand and appeared at the reunion.

Did Oh Jaeyeol also know that Seonwoo was still desperately trying to hurt him?
Did they write this message together, snickering?

Were the two of them enjoying themselves as if this were some great amusement, waiting for Haeyoon’s reaction?

Not having lingering feelings didn’t mean the sadness had disappeared.
Haeyoon still felt pain at the sight of the two being this cruel.
But the emotion Haeyoon felt now wasn’t just that.
While the negative emotions were intense and explosive, something else clearly lurked beneath.

The wind blew.
The shadow of the approaching winter flickered over Haeyoon’s black pupils as he looked outside.
In the place where the devastation, bitterness, betrayal, and the pain of ordeal had swept through like a gust of wind, a strange emotion began to slowly rise.

Surprisingly, it was anticipation.
Excitement.
It could even be called interest.

The more cruel Ahn Seonwoo and Oh Jaeyeol were, the more they acted like trash, the more desperately they tried to hurt him, the greater the shock they would receive on their wedding day.

The fool who could do nothing, who did nothing, just as he had been until now.
The pathetic idiot who didn’t even know his lover and best friend were having an affair, only having a decent appearance.

Before those two, who looked down on and humiliated him like that, Haeyoon would appear proudly.
With Baek Jeongha by his side.