Chapter 5

　　A vibrator?!

　　Panic flared hot in my chest. I shoved the little device back into the pocket as fast as humanly possible, terrified someone might have seen. My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

　　What the hell? Who does that?!

　　A violent shiver ran down my spine. Was he completely insane? I never would’ve dreamed the joke hashtag I’d mentally slapped on him earlier would turn out to be dead accurate. I officially retracted every single positive thought I’d had about Hangyeol just seconds ago. There was absolutely no way I was getting close to a guy who casually carried a vibrator around in his coat like it was a tube of chapstick.

　　"Taewoon, are you really that cold? Your face is completely pale."

　　Hangyeol had suddenly appeared right behind me. In that split second, my brain went into overdrive.

　　Q. When does a humiliation-kink top start taking an interest in a bottom?

　　A. When the bottom freaks out and actively tries to avoid him.

　　Calculations complete, I made a tactical decision. It would be infinitely safer to act completely normal rather than visibly panicking and avoiding him. I had absolutely no desire to become his one and only obsession. Blending in as just another face in the crowd was my best bet for survival.

　　"Yeah, it’s pretty cold out here," I lied smoothly. "We should head back in and warm up."

　　"Oh? You don’t want to just head home?"

　　"No way. I’m fine. I think I’m tapped out on the soju, but I could definitely go for a few more beers."

　　Hangyeol stared at me for a long moment, then let out a soft chuckle. Don’t smile at me like that. It’s fucking terrifying.

　　"Alright, then."

　　Thankfully, it seemed I’d chosen the correct dialogue option. I spent several more agonizing hours sitting through the drinking session with our classmates before finally managing to escape and make it home safely.

　　I stumbled into my bedroom like a zombie and face-planted straight onto my mattress. In the quiet dark, the dust settling around me with a soft whoosh, I muttered to the empty air.

　　"Why is this entire university populated exclusively by gay guys…?"

　　I didn’t know how long this bizarre dream was going to last, but I refused to stay at this school if things kept going like this. Even if I was going to wake up eventually, I wanted to transfer universities first out of pure spite.

　　"I’m transferring to Y University. I swear to God."

　　Muttering under my breath, I finally drifted off to sleep.

* * *

　　Sitting in the passenger seat of the beat-up car, I pointed into the footwell and rattled off instructions.

　　"Seongjae, this one is the brake. That’s the gas. And remember, don’t drive with both feet. Just use your right foot and pivot between the pedals, okay? Don’t forget."

　　"Come on, man! I know that much."

　　Grumbling, Seongjae yanked his seatbelt across his chest and clicked it into place. Watching him, my eyes stung with sudden emotion. When had the little kid I’d practically raised on my back grown up so much?

　　To raise him, I’d dropped out of high school, and there wasn’t a job I hadn’t taken to make ends meet, from grueling night shifts at a logistics center to backbreaking manual labor.

　　I’d ruined my back hauling heavy loads, and there were nights I’d hidden in the bathroom to cry because the sheer weight of it all was just too much.

　　It had been a brutal few years, but seeing Seongjae sitting here, all grown up and officially old enough to drive, made it feel like I was being paid back for every single sacrifice.

　　"When did you get big enough to go and get your license? Look at you. I’m proud of you, kid."

　　"I’m a good driver, okay? Even my instructor at the academy said I was a natural."

　　"Yeah? Let’s see what you’ve got, then."

　　Seongjae pushed the key into the ignition and gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands. He was trying to play it cool, but he was clearly nervous about driving with me in the passenger seat. It was endearing, but since I still saw him as a little kid, I couldn’t help but feel a spike of anxiety myself.

　　"Do you want me to just drive? You can take the wheel next time."

　　"No. This is the first time I get to drive us to Mom and Dad’s grave. I’m doing it. I want to."

　　He was such a good kid. I reached over and ruffled the back of his hair. He clicked his tongue and swatted half-heartedly at my hand, but he didn’t seem truly annoyed, so he let me do it.

　　"It’s been a while since we visited them," I murmured.

　　The car rolled forward slowly, and before I knew it, we were gliding smoothly down the highway. Resting my head against the cool glass of the window, I let out a quiet sigh.

　　On paper, our parents’ cause of death was officially listed as an "accidental fall."

　　I would never forget the suffocating feeling of having to sit Seongjae down when he was only in the fifth grade to tell him that our parents had slipped off a bridge, fallen into the river, and drowned.

　　Only I knew that the bridge was Mapo Bridge, and that they had intentionally jumped into the Han River. It was a secret I vowed to take to my grave. Seongjae would never know.

　　The crippling loan shark debt our parents had been drowning in fell squarely on my shoulders. We had to flee our old neighborhood in the middle of the night, living out of bags and hiding in the shadows just to survive. It was a brutal, terrifying reality for a seventeen-year-old to face, but I kept going because I had Seongjae.

　　Dwelling on the past only made the little brother driving beside me feel all the more precious, which of course meant I had to nag him out of love.

　　"The sky’s looking pretty gloomy. It’s definitely going to rain. If it starts pouring, you need to drive extra safely, you hear me?"

　　"I said I got it. And you should check your seatbelt. This beater is so old it doesn’t even have airbags."

　　"It doesn’t have airbags, and you bought it anyway?"

　　"Six months of part-time wages barely covered this thing. It was my limit. If you’re that scared, hug a throw pillow or something."

　　He tossed it out like a joke, but the words pricked at me like a thorn. I’d never wanted Seongjae to have to carry the burden of worrying about money, but our reality just wasn’t that forgiving. I reached back, grabbed a small cushion from the rear seat, and hugged it to my chest, matching his teasing tone.

　　"Just you wait. I’m going to make a ton of money one day and buy you a way better ride."

　　"Oh yeah? What kind of car?"

　　"You know those cars you see on TV? The ones the handsome billionaire CEOs drive. A sleek black sedan with the three-pointed star right on the hood."

　　"Pass. I don’t like Mercedes."

　　Watching him shoot the idea down so flatly, I racked my brain for another luxury brand.

　　"Then what do you want? A Ferrari?"

　　"If you ever get that kind of money, we need to move. The upstairs apartment sprang another leak."

　　His words made my chest tight. The crumbling apartment building we lived in was significantly cheaper than market value, but that discount came with a constant barrage of maintenance nightmares. The most recent headache was the chronic plumbing leak from the unit above us.

　　"The landlord promised he’d send someone to fix it soon. Just hang in there a little longer."

　　"Landlord, my ass. Since when do we politely call the guy who runs the local hardware store a landlord?"

　　"Hey, don’t talk like that. Do you have any idea how grateful we should be that he rents it to us on the cheap?"

　　"It’s only fifty USD cheaper than the going rate."

　　"That’s still fifty USD we’re saving."

　　I widened my eyes, delivering the words with absolute authority. This kid, seriously. It wasn’t like I’d raised him like royalty, yet he still scoffed at the value of fifty USD.

　　Seongjae caught my stern expression out of the corner of his eye and let out a sudden snort of laughter.

　　"You’re always so relentlessly positive. Seriously, you act like the protagonist of some old-school shōnen manga."

　　"Yeah? What, like I’m passionate and cool and all that? Because manga protagonists are always the coolest ones."

　　The mention of manga suddenly dragged up an old memory. When we were little, our parents had been completely consumed by their business, only managing to come home two or three nights a week.

　　On the days when the empty apartment felt too big and too quiet, I used to drag Seongjae to the comic book rental shop around the corner just to kill time.

　　"Come to think of it, it’s been forever since I’ve set foot in a comic shop. We used to practically live there back in the day. Does Seonghui’s family still own that place?"

　　"It’s a comic cafe now. They completely remodeled it, so it’s actually really nice inside."

　　"Oh, right! You said you still keep in touch with Seonghui. How’s he doing? The three of us used to hang out constantly. Remember when he started hanging out with that girl next door, and you completely lost your mind?

　　"You cried your eyes out because you thought she stole your best friend. You don’t remember?"

　　"Why the hell are you bringing that up?!"

　　Seongjae snapped, his ears turning red. The sheer embarrassment on his face was too priceless to pass up, so I leaned in and pushed harder.

　　"You were so dramatic. You even put on that stupid little headband because you desperately wanted to fit in with them. You told everyone you were going to become a girl just so you could be part of their club."

　　"I was a little kid! That is a deeply repressed dark chapter of my past, okay?"

　　"But didn’t you guys suddenly make up and start playing together again? The three of you would sit around for hours drawing. Whenever I asked to see what you were working on, you’d completely freak out and hide the paper. What the hell were you guys drawing, anyway?"

　　Back then, Seongjae had been the third wheel when those two got close, but eventually, the three of them had formed a tight little trio. They mostly entertained themselves by drawing, and whatever epic saga they were creating, they found it fascinating enough to lock themselves in a bedroom and sketch all day long.

　　Even then, they had absolutely refused to show me a single page. Honestly, it had stung my pride a little at the time.

　　"Hey, do you need to use the bathroom? Want me to pull into a rest stop in a bit?"

　　"Sure. I’m actually starving."

　　Since we’d left so early in the morning, we had completely skipped breakfast, and my stomach was starting to loudly protest. I made a mental note to grab a bowl of ramen at the food court. The thought instantly brought back memories of the cheap cup noodles we used to devour at the comic shop.

　　Back then, sitting on those dusty floors with a steaming styrofoam cup of ramen felt like dining at a five-star restaurant. Now, ramen was just ramen.

　　"I wonder how everyone’s doing," I mused. "I kind of miss it. Those were good times."

　　"I deeply regret that time in my life."

　　"Huh? Why?"

　　"Because spending all that time with them completely ruined my taste in… Never mind. I just shouldn’t have been hanging around Seonghui so much."

　　Seongjae’s expression clouded over, looking like a man haunted by genuine regret. I wondered if he was hiding another embarrassing phase I didn’t know about. Then again, he was probably still just too young to understand. Once you got old enough, even your most humiliating memories just became funny stories to look back on.

　　"Come on, what’s with the doom and gloom? You just said you guys still keep in touch. You should try to get along."

　　"We do. All three of us, including Yujin."

　　"You three are still hanging out? Oh, do you guys still draw together, too?"

　　"Sort of."

　　Seongjae replied, his voice painfully reluctant. From the way he instantly avoided my gaze, that was definitely a yes.

　　"Let me see!"

　　"No. Absolutely not. Over my dead body."

　　The rejection was instantaneous, delivered with an intensity that bordered on frantic. His visceral revulsion took me completely off guard.

　　"Jeez, why are you so opposed to it?"

　　"I don’t even draw in the first place. I have zero artistic talent. I’m just in charge of the story. Seonghui is the one who draws."

　　"Then let me read what you wrote! I’ve got a pretty good eye for a story, you know. I was in a creative writing club back in middle school. I even won an award for it once."

　　Looking back, whatever I’d written to win that award was probably cringeworthy and painfully juvenile. It was undoubtedly my own dark chapter, but it was still a memory I cherished.

　　But clearly, Seongjae hadn’t reached the stage where he could view his current work as a fond memory, because he was practically vibrating with how much he despised the idea of showing me.

　　"That was a million years ago. I am never showing you my writing, so don’t even dream about it."

　　"No, seriously, why are you being so weird about…"

　　Just as I leaned over to poke his shoulder, a deafening horn blasted from the driver’s side. I jerked my head to the left. A massive delivery truck had swerved over the center line and was barreling directly toward us. By the time my brain registered the danger, it was already too late.

　　Blood poured down the side of Seongjae’s face. I should have driven. I should have taken the wheel. Why did the truck have to crush the driver’s side? Why couldn’t it have been me?

　　Trapped in the mangled wreckage, hovering on the very edge of death, Seongjae forced his pale lips to move.

　　"Taewoon… my… study… please…"

　　Through the agonizing, high-pitched ringing in my ears, Seongjae’s faint voice echoed. It was a final, desperate plea made with his dying breath.

　　Whatever he wanted, I would do it.

　　Every single thing.

* * *

　　I was already trapped inside a dream, yet I’d still managed to have a nightmare within it. A cold bead of moisture slipped down from the corner of my eye. I reached up and wiped the back of my hand against my cheek. It came away wet.

　　"It’s been a while since I had that one," I whispered to the empty room.

　　It was a recurring nightmare that had plagued me incessantly in the months immediately following Seongjae’s death. To think I was having the exact same nightmare while stuck inside this bizarre dreamscape… that was a cruel twist I hadn’t anticipated.

　　"I really did keep my promise to do whatever you asked," I muttered.

　　Honoring Seongjae’s dying wish was the sole reason I’d forced myself to read exactly 1,321 volumes of web novels about gay men falling in love and having sex. It was undoubtedly the catalyst for why I was currently trapped in this particular flavor of nightmare.

　　Seeing Seongjae again, even as a memory, was nice. But being forced to navigate a minefield of aggressively gay men at every turn in this universe was becoming a bit much to handle.

　　"Thank God his dying wish wasn’t Please become gay, or something equally traumatic."

　　If he’d actually asked for that, then to honor his final request, I’d have had to start cruising the clubs in Itaewon… Ugh. Let’s not even go down that mental rabbit hole.

　　"Maybe I really should look into transferring to Y University," I said aloud.

　　Following through on the drunken resolution I’d made the night before, I flipped open my laptop and began researching the transfer requirements from Hankuk University to Y University.

　　My jaw dropped as I scanned the admissions page.

　　"What the hell? To apply for a transfer, you have to be enrolled at your current institution for at least two full years?"

　　"I have to survive at this damn gay university for two whole years?"