Chapter 55

At Yi-seon’s parting words, Mugyeol reached across to block the door handle and leaned in. Smack… A light kiss landed on Yi-seon’s lips. Yi-seon recoiled into the passenger seat clutching his bag, only for Mugyeol to follow with a rapid shower of pecks over his forehead and cheeks.

After kissing and fussing over Yi-seon’s face and ear long enough to leave his scent all over him, Mugyeol snatched the phone from Yi-seon’s hand.

“Leave this behind.”

“Why would I leave my phone?”

“Are you going to exchange numbers and Stargram handles with other bastards or not?”

“Of course I have to.”

“Fuck, don’t go.”

“Whatever.”

Yi-seon ignored the complaint and tried to wrench the phone free. Mugyeol’s grip was too strong, so Yi-seon resorted to giggling and pinching the back of his hand instead.

“If I leave this behind, how am I supposed to stay in touch with you?”

Only then did Mugyeol loosen his grip. Yi-seon gave him an innocent look that plainly said he really had to go now. Mugyeol sighed heavily and opened the passenger door for him himself.

“Have a good trip. Don’t go acting out at the retreat and end up suffering from phantom cringe pains.”

“…Ha. It hurts already.”

Slam!

The moment the door shut, Yi-seon bolted. Terrified Mugyeol might roll down the window and call after him, he sprinted toward the gathering flag. Only after he had put a safe distance between himself and the car did the engine roar behind him and fade away.

Only then did Yi-seon let out a long breath. His heart never got a moment’s peace around Yeon Mugyeol. Why did a casual kiss in public shake him even more than stripping down together in private? At this rate, actual sex might somehow be less nerve-racking.

Yi-seon gripped both backpack straps and walked toward the flag, trying to steady his racing thoughts.

At the attendance table, a tall student council executive holding a clipboard looked up and furrowed his brow. He rubbed the tip of his nose with his thumb and gave Yi-seon a long, assessing look.

As the man stared in utter silence, Yi-seon offered an awkward greeting.

“Hello!”

“…Ah. You’re participating in the freshmen retreat, right? Student ID number and name, please.”

“Business Administration, Ryu Yi-seon, Student ID XX0328.”

“Here’s the group T-shirt and your nametag. Please hang the nametag around your neck right now.”

“Yes, sir.”

Once Yi-seon slipped the nametag over his head, the student council executive smiled warmly and thanked him. The man had looked prickly while frowning, but the smile revealed unexpectedly striking features. Still nothing compared to our Mugyeol, Yi-seon thought, immediately recalling Mugyeol’s familiar smirk.

“That car earlier looked incredible. Whose is it?”

“It’s a friend’s.”

“A friend’s…”

It belongs to Yeon Mugyeol from our department, who was supposed to come today but is instead an incurable attention-seeking bastard, Yi-seon wanted to say. He barely held his tongue.

“All right, please go wait over there in the back.”

“Yes.”

Stuffing the distributed T-shirt into his bag, Yi-seon shuffled toward the bus.

Aside from being stared at like a celebrity the moment he got out of the car, nothing major happened before departure. Then a tall, neatly dressed girl glanced around the bus, sat down beside him, and struck up a conversation.

“Are you an Alpha?” The girl dropped into the seat beside him, slung an arm over his shoulders, and lowered her voice. Yi-seon looked up in surprise. She frowned slightly and asked, “Did you present recently? Are you having trouble controlling your pheromones?”

“No, I’m not an Alpha.”

“…Aha.”

The girl gave Yi-seon a newly appraising look, patted his shoulder twice, and returned to her own seat.

A few hours later, the bus reached the retreat center. Yi-seon threw himself earnestly into the scheduled events, listening carefully to the short lectures and club presentations and doing his best during introductions.

“Hello, my name is Ryu Yi-seon. I’m truly thrilled to attend the university I’ve dreamed of for so long. I look forward to learning and getting along well with all of you.”

The introduction was perfectly ordinary, yet someone shouted, “Handsome!” Yi-seon found that oddly heartwarming. His cheeks had barely begun to warm when someone else called, “So cute!” and made him intensely self-conscious. Apparently Hankuk University was full of kind, friendly people. Choosing to come here with Mugyeol really had been the right decision.

Wearing the matching group hoodie, Yi-seon threw himself wholeheartedly into the recreation program. University culture felt new and exciting—until someone grabbed him by the forearm while he was clapping along and dragged him onto the stage for reasons he could not understand.

Standing onstage and rattling a tambourine to the beat immediately became a memory Yi-seon wanted erased from existence. He cursed his habit of obediently doing whatever people asked. No one hated attention more than he did, yet circumstances kept hurling him into the center of it.

“We’re going to bring up a guest dancer too!”

When the dance club later tried to drag him onto the stage again, Yi-seon sprinted away before anyone could catch his arm. Once was enough.

Yi-seon ended up racing around the auditorium with the dance club members in pursuit, shouting apologies and insisting he was hopeless at dancing. The entire hall roared with laughter. He felt like a circus clown. Still… if everyone enjoyed themselves, I suppose that’s enough.

By nightfall, everyone knew him without him even needing to introduce himself.

“Oh? It’s Yi-seon!”

“Hey, Yi-seon-ah!”

“Which room are you in? Can we come over to hang out?”

Yi-seon did not know half these people, yet they knew his name and apparently every detail of his humiliating day. Mugyeol’s sports car, the tambourine incident, and his sprint across the auditorium had clearly done the damage.

True to Mugyeol’s warning, phantom cringe pains had already begun. Yi-seon’s stomach throbbed faintly just thinking about it.

Once the drinking games began, Yi-seon consumed a horrifying amount of alcohol because he lost nearly every round. He had never played any of these games before, and no one bothered to explain the rules properly. Whenever he looked confused, people simply told him to drink.

He couldn’t fathom how such an evil game could exist in the world.

By around one in the morning, Yi-seon’s thoughts had gone pleasantly hazy. Then the girls drinking with him surrounded him and announced that they were giving him a makeover. After being pinned down long enough for the process to begin, he finally escaped and hid in the first-floor lounge. Crouched beside a vending machine, he called the first person who came to mind—Yeon Mugyeol. He desperately needed something familiar.

— “Yeah, wifey.”

“…”

Of course, Yeon Mugyeol managed to upset his stomach the instant he answered. As though the alcohol had not already done enough damage.

“Hello, Mugyeol-ah. Repeat after me. Hello.”

Mugyeol’s laughter through the receiver sounded absurdly lovely. Yi-seon found himself smiling without meaning to. The fact that his mood lifted the instant he heard Mugyeol’s voice proved calling had been the right choice after all.

— “How’s the retreat? You were so busy you wouldn’t even answer my calls.”

“Sorry. I was in the middle of games back then… Anyway, the retreat is fun. But I’ve turned into a total attention-seeker.”

— “Did you act out?”

“Yeah. Big time.”

Yi-seon quietly recounted the day one humiliation at a time: stepping out of Mugyeol’s car under everyone’s gaze, being dragged onstage with a tambourine, fleeing the dance club, and somehow becoming recognizable to half the retreat.

Mugyeol chuckled softly over the line, then surprised Yi-seon by offering actual comfort. He remarked that someone as quiet as Yi-seon must have had a rough day. Yi-seon had fully expected malicious teasing instead.

— “You went through a lot, Ryu Yi-seon.”

“…”

The familiar baritone reached Yi-seon with an unfamiliar intimacy. He pulled the phone away and rubbed the outer rim of his ear, which had suddenly begun to tickle.

Was his voice always this good…?

Is it just because I’m drunk right now…?

Maybe it was the late hour, but Mugyeol’s voice sounded lazier and lower than usual, almost intimate through the faint crackle of the call. Yi-seon rubbed at his fluttering chest and pressed the phone back to his ear. “Aren’t you sleepy, though? It’s past one.”

— “Of course I am. I was just waiting for you to call.” Mugyeol sounded amused. Yi-seon rubbed his ear again as something warm and ticklish stirred deep in his chest.

— “Ryu Yi-seon. Send me a photo.”

“What kind of photo? Of the place here?”

— “Of you. Why would I want to look at photos of that place?”

“Why my photo?”

— “You said the girls put makeup on you earlier. Let me see.”

After a brief hesitation, Yi-seon snapped a photo and sent it. Mugyeol seemed to open it the instant it arrived, because a loud, mocking snicker came through the phone almost immediately.

— “What are you, Ashura? You’re fucking gorgeous, seriously. I just fell for you all over again.”

“Shut up…”

He had escaped right after the girls finished lining one eye and before they could start the other, so admittedly his face was a disaster.

Still, how could he laugh at me after I went through the trouble of sending it?

“Send one too. Let’s see how great you look.”

— “Oh. Sounds like you miss me quite a bit yourself?”

A photo arrived moments later. Mugyeol was lying shirtless on his stomach in bed, chin propped on one hand and one eyebrow crooked at the camera. The indifferent expression only made his face look more unfairly handsome, while broad shoulder and back muscles filled the frame behind him.

He looks better in person, but he photographs well too. Yi-seon was still privately critiquing the picture when Mugyeol’s voice returned over the line.

— “Did you make a lot of friends? Befriend a hundred people yet?”

“Not a hundred, but I made quite a few.”

— “Guys? Girls?”

“Both guys and girls.”

— “Any Alphas?”

“Yeah. One sunbae and one classmate. The sunbae’s a mixed-race male Alpha. The classmate’s a female Alpha with a great personality. She can really hold her liquor too. We’re in the same group.”

— “Same group? You hung out together?”

“Yeah.”

— “Until now? This late at night?”

“Yeah.”

— “…”

Mugyeol went silent. Drowsy from the alcohol, Yi-seon nearly nodded off before jerking awake again. The line was still quiet. Yi-seon yawned and looked around; it was probably time to head back to his room.

“What are you doing? Should I hang up if you’re busy?”

— “Not busy. Searching the address.”

“Where are you going in the middle of the night?”

— “To fetch my runaway wife.”

An automated voice suddenly leaked through the phone: Starting navigation for the recommended route. Apparently Mugyeol really had searched for directions.

Mugyeol clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction.

— “It’s so fucking far. Who booked this place?”

The retreat center was far outside Seoul, and the drive clearly did not fit whatever schedule Mugyeol had the next day. Listening to him grumble, Yi-seon let his honest feelings slip out.

“It would have been really great if you had come too.”

— “Tell me about it. I should have gone just to watch Ryu Yi-seon play the tambourine.”

The thought of Mugyeol being here made Yi-seon miss him all at once. If Mugyeol had come, he would have fended off the classmate who kept picking on Yi-seon and probably stopped the girls from pinning him down for makeup. Mugyeol could be overbearing, but he always took fierce care of his own people.

“Let’s go together next time there’s an MT or something. I kind of miss you…”

— “…”

Mugyeol was silent for a moment, then exhaled slowly. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped into a low rasp.

— “Ah… I want to draw a star on the calendar.”

“Huh?”

— “Next time, I won’t settle for jerking off together. I’m going to put it all the way in.”

“…”

Only then did Yi-seon understand what Mugyeol meant by earning another star on the calendar. He had a truly deranged way of saying he wanted sex. It might have been easier to dismiss if Mugyeol sounded playful, but hearing such shameless filth delivered in that deep, sultry voice was unfairly effective.

For better or worse, Yi-seon’s face and body apparently matched Mugyeol’s tastes perfectly. Mugyeol was forever insisting that Yi-seon’s body was obscene or that his face looked indecent enough to tempt anyone. Yi-seon had once inspected himself seriously in the shower to see what Mugyeol meant and found nothing but a pale, skinny man looking awkwardly back at him.

The only reasonable conclusion was that Mugyeol had eccentric tastes and an inborn perverted streak. Maybe their age had something to do with it too. Was being twenty really supposed to make a person this horny?

Then again, thinking about it, he was twenty years old himself.

Summoning strength into his legs, Yi-seon pushed himself up from his crouch. “Hang up, you pervert.”

Mugyeol chuckled again. Lately he seemed to laugh more easily than ever—and lose his temper just as easily.

Yi-seon wished him good night and ended the call. Alcohol seemed to cling to every breath as he walked back toward his room, but Mugyeol’s voice lingered in his ears even more stubbornly. He really did miss him.

Is this what love is?

Missing the pervert you’re arranged to marry no matter how much trouble he causes.

They got along one day, fought the next, and made up almost immediately after. Nothing about them was peaceful, yet simply thinking of Mugyeol filled Yi-seon with warmth.

That’s right. This must be what love feels like.

Confronting his feelings afresh in Mugyeol’s absence, Yi-seon opened the door to the lodgings.

Inside, the drinking party was still in full swing. Yi-seon let himself be swept back into it and drank and played until he finally passed out—a glorious casualty of orientation night.

After the retreat, Yi-seon discovered that someone had photographed him after he passed out around four in the morning. Rose-colored lipstick covered his mouth, and a lace headband he had no memory of wearing sat crookedly on his head.

It was the perfect final image for his three-day career as the retreat clown.

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