Prologue
Blood trickled from the dozens of cuts across my body, the embedded shards of glass making me look like a human pincushion. Even as I slipped in and out of consciousness, I forced my heavy head to turn toward the driver’s seat.
Blood poured down Seongjae’s face. I blinked my blurred eyes, fighting to focus. I wanted to shake him awake as he gasped for breath, but my voice failed me.
Before I could even ask if he was okay, Seongjae spoke first.
“Hyung… my… library… p-please…”
He wanted me to take care of his library? What did that even mean? Before I could ask, my vision flooded with black.
When I opened my eyes again, Seongjae was already gone.
I clutched the urn holding Seongjae’s ashes to my chest, sobbing until my throat burned. I couldn’t believe my little brother—my only remaining family—had left me behind.
For days, I existed as a hollow shell. I sat blankly in my room, refusing to eat or sleep. Then, like a lightning strike, Seongjae’s last words echoed in my mind.
“He said to take care of his library…”
A library? In our cramped two-room apartment? There was no way something like that existed. What on earth had he meant?
After thinking it over, I went into my brother’s room. I looked around carefully, but there were no books on his desk besides his heavy textbooks. Then it occurred to me that there might be a clue on his phone. I powered up the device, which I still hadn’t brought myself to disconnect.
The passcode was my birthday. Sweet kid. Tears seized my throat. I scrubbed my eyes with my sleeve and started poking through his internet history and apps. That’s when I clicked on an e-bookstore app with a bright blue logo.
A digital bookshelf filled the screen. At the very top, in neat little letters, it read: [My Library]. This was it!
I examined the app closely. Total books: 1,321. As I wondered what he’d meant by “take care of it,” I pulled up Seongjae’s social media. There, on a private account, he’d written down a specific goal.
[Anonymous @secret_123] —From now on, whenever I read a book, I’m gonna write my review here. Beneath it were five threads trailing down. They looked like short impressions he’d written after finishing each novel. —Rating: 4 stars. As expected, this author is an absolute master of the groveling-ex trope. —Rating: 5 stars. Clueless, sweet bottoms really do save the world. I swear, no one gets the appeal. If you don’t understand how cute a naive bottom is, I feel incredibly sorry for you. —Rating: 1 star. Such a cliché billionaire-alpha top. I’m really not into novels that treat the bottom like a dame in distress.
“So he wanted me to read every book in his digital library and post the reviews for him!”
Ever since I dropped out of high school, I’d been too busy working exhausting part-time jobs to read for pleasure, but I couldn’t refuse my brother’s dying request. I started reading from the very top of his library list.
“What the hell is this?”
Around the middle of the novel, the protagonist passionately kissed a friend he’d been constantly bickering with. I thought it was just a wholesome story about high school boys building a solid friendship, but they weren’t just building a friendship—they were rounding all the bases and heading straight for the bedroom. And, as I found out later, that particular book was actually on the tame side.
I closed the book and, after searching online, learned it was something called “BL.” Boys’ Love.
In other words, romantic novels about men dating other men. Right. My little brother had been gay.
At first, I was completely stunned. But as time passed, my shock faded into deep sympathy. How hard must it have been for him, hiding his true self all that time? I felt a heavy guilt that I hadn’t noticed until now.
I reopened the book I’d slammed shut and started reading again, one by one, in order.
“But aren’t these guys just having s*x nonstop instead of dating?”
They did it the moment their eyes met, they did it on the first day they made things official, and half the time, the entire relationship started with a drunken one-night stand.
If it were a man and a woman, sure, whatever. But reading about two men felt jarring at first. Still, it was my brother’s last wish. Burdened by the guilt of not knowing he was gay all this time, I powered through all 1,321 novels in his library. And I diligently wrote and posted detailed reviews on his social media.
Then one day, a friend of Seongjae’s that I hadn’t seen in ages asked me carefully, “Taewoon, something’s been popping up on Seongjae’s social media… what is it?”
“Oh, it was a hobby of his. He asked me to take over for him, so I’m just keeping it going.”
“Ah…”
“But how did you know?”
“It’s a public account.”
Somehow, I must’ve messed with a setting, because the private account had been switched to public. After that, I heard similar comments and reactions from several of Seongjae’s other friends.
“Seongjae was into that? I see…”
“There’s nothing wrong with it. I just hope you won’t look down on Seongjae’s tastes.”
If anything, my stubborn streak flared up, and I posted even more diligently. What was so wrong with men dating men? I dug my heels in, aggressively defending Seongjae’s tastes while writing reviews for all 1,321 books. The posts started picking up the occasional retweet. Then, before I knew it, Seongjae’s follower count breached ten thousand.
For some reason, it made my chest swell with pride. Seongjae, you became a star.
“I finally finished them all!”
Pushing myself to the limit and sacrificing sleep, I managed to devour all 1,321 books over the course of exactly three years.
After I finished the final book, I fell asleep with a profound sense of relief, and then…
* * *
“Taewoon! Wake up! You’ve gotta get to campus!” When I opened my eyes, Seongjae was standing right there. Alive and perfectly fine. The instant I saw him, I realized this had to be a dream. Even so, I was overjoyed that I could see my brother again, even if it was just a hallucination. I sprang out of bed, lunging forward to hug him. “Seongjae!” “What’s wrong with you?” Seongjae dodged my attempt at a hug, taking two quick steps back. Grasping at empty air, my foot tangled in the blanket, and I crashed hard onto the floor. “Ugh…” Why did it hurt if this was a dream? My kneecap throbbed where it had slammed against the floorboards. The pain felt incredibly vivid. Beside me, I heard Seongjae click his tongue in disapproval. “Hurry up and get off the floor. You said you’ve got your freshman mixer today, right? You need to get ready.” “Freshman mixer? What’s that?” When I lifted my head to ask, Seongjae frowned and scolded me. “A welcome mixer for freshmen! You don’t even know that? I heard that Hankuk University’s Korean Language Education Department is having its welcome mixer today.” “…Hankuk University?” “Yeah! What, are you not awake yet? You took an extra year studying for the CSAT and barely got in—you should be enjoying this. Get ready. Go make some friends.” Pushed along by Seongjae’s relentless nagging, I washed up and got dressed in a daze before heading out. Hankuk University? The name sounded so familiar. Didn’t it show up in novels all the time? The most prestigious university in the country. In fiction, it was the ultimate stand-in, boasting a reputation similar to real-life Ivy League schools. I guess authors couldn’t use the actual school names, so they usually defaulted to Hankuk University. Me? A student at Hankuk Uni? I figured I’d read so many novels that my brain was just generating a niche fantasy. While I was walking, my phone started buzzing like crazy. [Hankuk University Korean Ed. Dept. Batch of ’16 Group Chat] Messages were flooding in at a ridiculous pace in a chatroom titled “Batch of ’16 Group Chat.” Unable to keep up with the chaos, I just headed for the welcome mixer location listed in the pinned notice. I was still completely dazed, but for now, I decided to go along with the flow of the dream. A huge part of me didn’t want to wake up anyway. Seongjae was here. When I arrived at the mixer, the venue was so loud my head spun. I let myself get pulled to some random table and sat down; though “got shoved into a seat” felt a lot more accurate. A glass was filled, and people immediately started urging me to drink. Without showing any reluctance, I downed whatever they handed me. This was a world where Seongjae was alive. And besides, wasn’t this supposed to be the most prestigious university in the country? As someone who hadn’t even properly graduated high school, I’d always harbored a quiet longing for the college experience. I wanted to fit into this dream. But… something was weird. “Heh, you’re kind of cute.” A pretty damn handsome guy sitting across from me said something entirely inappropriate to say to a guy over six feet tall. On top of that, the jerk had been casually brushing his fingers against my hand for a while now. “Aren’t you bored here? Wanna sneak out with me?” Wait. I’ve seen this exact scene somewhere. Hankuk University. A freshman. A noisy drinking party. A handsome guy asking me to sneak out with him. …Isn’t this a classic BL cliché?