Chapter 11

Cha Gyuhan ended up sleeping over at his brother’s place.

With a dazed mind, he had mindlessly eaten everything his younger brother fed him, and within moments, he was in pajamas. While his brother snuffled and wept over an anime he must have rewatched a hundred times, Cha Gyuhan sprawled out on the sofa with one leg hooked over the backrest, sorting through his thoughts.

Sure. A friend could sleep with guys. What, Cha Gyuhan, were you shocked because you thought Gong Jio might put you in his ‘fuckable’ category? Are you really that narrow-minded? No way. Why would Gong Jio ever want to drag a guy like you—built like a tank, manly and handsome, well-mannered, and dripping with responsibility—into bed?

Gyuhan shook his head. Deciding (for now) that he had just been trapped in prejudice and overreacted, and giving himself a stern scolding for it, he felt considerably lighter.

Then, out of nowhere, it flashed in his mind; Gong Jio’s erection.

“Nah. He said that was just out of embarrassment.”

“Huh? What’d you say?”

Cha Gyuwon turned his head and asked. His eyes were bleary.

Leaving the sofa to him, his brother was crouching on the floor. Gyuhan looked down at him and asked, “Gyuwon-ah. Is it common to suddenly get turned on by a friend?”

“That’s a classic cliché,” Gyuwon, who had zero friends, answered immediately, dredging up the fiction that had served as his lifelong companions.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Sometimes they accidentally sleep together by mistake and start becoming hyper-aware of each other until they fall in love, or one of them has secretly harbored an unrequited crush for years, or both of them have been pining forever until someone finally confesses and they get together… It’s the absolute textbook trope.”

“Is tha-at so…? But that’s only because it’s between a man and a woman,” Cha Gyuhan—who had never dated a single person in his life and only possessed hordes of friends, male and female alike—spoke as if he were an authority on the subject.

“No! It’s a cliché, a classic! Classics transcend borders and gender!” Cha Gyuwon snapped in sudden outrage.

Before Cha Gyuhan could even ask, Why are you yelling at me?, he was subjected to Gyuwon’s impassioned lecture. Gyuwon rattled off titles of renowned masterpieces, of which Cha Gyuhan couldn’t comprehend even half.

Unable to understand, it felt like listening to a foreign language. On top of that, Gyuwon was speaking at breakneck speed. Gyuhan’s mind went completely blank. It was just like sitting through class back in school. Conditioned by years of academic trauma, his body reflexively began to succumb to drowsiness.

“S-sorry, Gyuwon-ah. My bad.”

Cha Gyuhan mumbled without having the slightest clue what he was apologizing for. His eyes were half-shut. His posture—legs slung over the sofa backrest—was strangely comfortable. His clothes were cozy, and his belly was full thanks to Gyuwon diligently feeding him snacks. It was the ultimate sleep-inducing environment, identical to fifth period right after lunch.

Cha Gyuhan blinked his fluttering eyelids. Behind heavy lids that wouldn’t open halfway no matter how hard he tried, he seemed to see the gleaming bald head of his social studies teacher, droning softly into his textbook. A man whose fifth-period classes reliably turned the entire classroom into a wasteland of sleeping students…

—Cha Gyuhan.

It felt as if he had drifted straight back into that classroom…

—Cha Gyuhan.

And then Gyuhan heard someone calling his name. No, he recalled it. This was a memory.

At the sound calling him alongside a sharp poke in his back, he turned his head around, grumbling inwardly, I was just getting into the perfect sleeping posture, what do you want?

“Don’t you smell something?”

He couldn’t recall the classmate’s facial features, only the malicious smirk. Snickering, the boy pointed his pen into the empty air over Gyuhan’s shoulder. Cha Gyuhan followed the direction and lifted his gaze.

“Smells from over there, right? Doesn’t it?”

A cold face leaning back against a chair. With boyish softness still lingering and facial contours far gentler than now, it was a face that struck one as pretty before handsome. No, not just pretty—he was fucking gorgeous.

Cha Gyuhan looked down from the face to the name tag pinned to his uniform.

Gong Jio.

His name’s pretty too?

“Do you smell it, or not?”

Right. He remembered why he had turned around in the first place. Because this kid called him.

Cha Gyuhan was about to ask what the hell kind of smell he was talking about. But a sharp whew whistle sounded. Following the sound, he saw Gong Jio tucking his lower lip under his teeth, letting out a breezy hiss of air right through the gap. Defiantly. As if daring anyone to say something.

Back then, Gong Jio and Cha Gyuhan already shared a secret. Even before becoming classmates, the two of them had already…

“The smell is—”

The moment Cha Gyuhan opened his mouth to speak, a sudden loud crash rang out.

“Hyung. Long time no see. How have you been?”

“Yeah. Been good.”

Thud!

Shaking violently at the impact, Gyuhan woke up. But his body hadn’t fully booted up yet, so Cha Gyuhan lay there with his eyes barely a third of the way open, thinking blankly.

What kind of dream was that again? It felt like something nostalgic. But why does my body ache all over? Feels like I got kicked in the ribs.

Then he realized he was sprawled flat on his stomach.

No wonder my sleep was so restless.

Cha Gyuhan sucked in a breath, wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, and closed his eyes. Unlike the loud sound from a moment ago, no further commotion followed. Sounds tended to sound exaggeratedly loud right on the cusp of waking up, so he had probably just overreacted.

But then, he snapped to full alert at the voice of the person Gyuwon had greeted.

Without realizing it, he had ended up in a bedroom. His formidable homing instinct seemed to have kicked in here as well. While he hadn’t managed to sleepwalk all the way to his own apartment or Gong Jio’s, he had navigated himself into the guest room with the comfortable bed. Having mapped out his sleeping posture, the familiar voice, and his surroundings, Cha Gyuhan’s mind cleared considerably. And with that, the voices from the living room carried in even sharper.

“Where’s your boyfriend? Did he come with you?”

“No. He’s in the States right now. I miss him like crazy, honestly,” Gyuwon answered in a dejected voice.

“Right. Didn’t actually care to know. Anyway, do your best over there. Keep that lover of yours from ever setting foot on Korean soil if you can,” Gong Jio remarked dryly.

At that, Gyuwon bristled instantly. “Why? Don’t tell me… hyung, did you sleep with my dear hyung too?!”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet?!” Cha Gyuwon shrieked.

Cha Gyuhan was equally floored by Gong Jio’s response.

But Gong Jio immediately corrected himself.

“Ah, that hyung. No. Sleep with him? As if. I haven’t slept with him, won’t happen, and I have zero intention to. It’s just that looking at Americans gives me a headache.”

Normal people would ask, Then who on earth is the ‘hyung you haven’t slept with yet’?!, but Gyuwon was so relieved that he hadn’t just run into another of his boyfriend’s former sex partners that it completely slipped his mind.

“Phew, scared me to death. I didn’t see your name when I ran my background check on him, so… you really gave me a fright. But seeing Americans gives you a hard time? Oh dear… Hyung, you must have been the Regent Heungseon Daewongun in your past life.”

So relieved was Gyuwon that he blithely chimed in on Gong Jio’s random excuse without any reflection or thought. He could have just stayed quiet, but Cha Gyuwon was incapable of leaving a conversational ball unreturned.

With the subject shifted, Cha Gyuhan in the bedroom also forgot all about the “hyung he hadn’t slept with yet.” Even when fully awake, Gyuhan was incapable of catching conversational slip-ups; half-asleep, there was zero chance he possessed the razor-sharp attentiveness required for such deductive reasoning.

“Anyway, stay together for a long time. If you ever run short on plane tickets, tell me. I’ll buy them for you. Why not go ahead and get married? If you get married, I’ll buy an air purifier for every single room in your house. I’ll give a fat wedding gift envelope too,” Gong Jio said with genuine sincerity after opening the conversation with nonsense of his own and brushing aside Gyuwon’s absurd Daewongun remark.

“Thank you so much. Out of everyone around me, I’ve never seen anyone cheer me on as much as you, hyung. Honestly, I thought you were kind of scary, prejudiced, and all that…”

And Gyuwon was touched without a shred of doubt. Both brothers were far too trusting of people. They should have been scammed hundreds of times over, but two things had spared them. First, they barely met people. Second, Gong Jio was always standing right beside them.

Gong Jio, who had guarded Cha Gyuhan’s life in places Gyuhan never knew, replied nonchalantly to the younger brother he had known just as long. “Unlike how you look, you’ve always managed to sneak in everything you want to say since way back. And I love prejudices. Having prejudices makes it all the more entertaining when you smash right through them. Where’s Gyuhan?”

“In the bedroom.”

“Alright. I’m taking him with me.”

By this time, Cha Gyuhan was nearly fully awake. Hearing footsteps approaching, he wiped his clean mouth again and drew in a breath. As he braced against the mattress to push himself up, a knock came at the door.

“Cha Gyuhan. I’m coming in.”

And almost simultaneously, the door swung open.

“You’re up.”

Even in a moment like this, Gong Jio never showed a speck of surprise. Cha Gyuhan offered an awkward grin.

“Uh, yeah, just now.”

“Good. Come out.”

“Why? Where’re we going?”

The fact that Jio treated him so normally made Gyuhan feel even more awkward, prompting him to chuckle sheepishly. Watching him, Gong Jio furrowed his brow and leaned crookedly against the doorframe.

“Why do you keep smirking like a dumbass?”

Definitely not the kind of thing someone would say to a romantic interest. At least, that was how Cha Gyuhan saw it. Which was why he accepted the following proposal without giving it a second thought.

“Let’s go to the sauna.”

“You? With me?”

“Why. Don’t want to?”

“Hell no, count me in! How many years has it been? Hold on, I’ll be right out.”

Just then, Gyuwon called out that the coffee was brewed. After Jio said he’d wait in the living room and stepped away, Cha Gyuhan scrambled to his feet so fast that he nearly tripped over the duvet tangled around his ankles.

“Hell yeah, sauna!”

He was thrilled.

No matter how many times Gyuhan had begged him to go, Jio had never agreed once—so just how many years had it been? His brother-like friend, Gong Jio. It felt like nearly ten years. No, it was literally ten years. Ten years was the perfect milestone for a friendship renewal.

Yeah… This is what friends do. This is real brotherhood.

Cha Gyuhan pumped his fist in self-satisfied triumph. Once there, they could see who lasted longer in the hot sauna room, take a cold bath, scrub each other’s backs…

Wait…?

And then, with tragic delay, he recalled something glaringly obvious.

If we go… we’re gonna see each other’s dicks, aren’t we…?

Cha Gyuhan slowly tugged at the elastic waistband of his pajama pants. Naturally, the humiliating fiasco at Gong Jio’s apartment flashed across his mind. Thump-thump, his heart pounded.

“Ah, shit. I can’t get nervous.”

This was a monumental, once-in-a-decade event where that clean freak had actually suggested going to a sauna first. Cha Gyuhan fretted late into the morning that he might screw things up and cause another misunderstanding with Gong Jio—the man set to be his brotherly best friend for the next ten years.

Despite his worries, Cha Gyuhan dutifully headed toward the sauna.

“Technically, we shouldn’t be going at this hour.”

Normally, Gyuhan would have insisted on driving, but with a lingering hangover, he sat in the passenger seat and nagged.

“Normally, you gotta go at six in the morning. After that, they won’t let me in.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean why? Because of my tattoos.”

“Then why’d you get them in the first place? I told you not to. You keep saying you want to raise a fucking brood of foxy little kids—what kind of spectacle are you planning to make at parent-teacher conferences?”

“Hey, soften your tone when you say brood. The way you spit out fucking brood, I can’t tell if you’re talking about my sweet babies or a bunch of goddamn bastards.”

“Right. Your babies. Brood.”

Cha Gyuhan felt a crawling sensation of unease, but shrugged it off with a noisy slurp of his iced coffee.

“Though if your kids take after you, looking like clever foxes is pretty much out of the question.”

“That’s why I’m looking for a fox-like wife. Besides, having kids is only possible if Her Ladyship exists and gives her consent. How could I make them on my own? It’s not like I can give birth. Still, I’ve got a handsome face, so even if they aren’t foxy, my kids’ll be gorgeous. When they’re born, are you gonna spoil them with fat allowances, Uncle Jio?”

Gong Jio let out a dry smirk and muttered with cold, lightless eyes, “If you’re the one giving birth, sure.”

Cha Gyuhan completely missed the sinister mockery—the insidious thorn lurking beneath the words, sharp enough to puncture a windpipe and send someone to the ER—and simply beamed in satisfaction. Just imagining it seemed to make his day. Never mind the fact that he had neither a wife nor even a prospective partner in sight.