Rabbit Hole Chapter 12

“Hyung, it’s been a while….”

Geumseo greeted him sheepishly. Go Unha was definitely warm by nature, but at the same time, he drew clear lines, so he was someone you wanted to get close to yet found difficult. Was that why he seemed even cooler? The brighter the light, the darker the shadow, and the farther the distance, the longer it stretches. Like a shadow.

“You came at just the right time.”

Go Unha pulled Geumseo by the hand and ushered him inside. Go Unha’s apartment had the exact same layout as Go San’s but flipped in orientation. As soon as you walked down the hallway, you entered a wide-open living room, where, unlike Go San’s place, warm-toned furniture clustered together cozily. He felt at ease in an instant.

“There was something I wanted to talk about.”

“Something to talk about…?”

“Yeah. Honestly, I wondered if I needed to say it this soon, but I thought it’d be better to tell you in advance.”

Suddenly he felt tense. Geumseo took the coffee cup that Go Unha brought and handed to him. He had sat on the sofa as he was told to make himself comfortable, but maybe because he didn’t know what he was about to hear, he didn’t feel at ease.

“Hyung, are you maybe… getting married…?”

Geumseo’s voice sounded more dazed than usual. At those words, Go Unha made a peculiar expression and then burst into laughter.

“What would you think if I got married?”

What would he think…? It was honestly something he had never thought about. Geumseo was surprisingly pragmatic and didn’t really imagine the future like that. He wasn’t the complicated type who deeply agonized over things that hadn’t happened yet.

Still, since he was asked, he tried to imagine it, and it came surprisingly easily. He could picture Go Unha in a tailcoat as vividly as if he’d seen it many times before.

“I’d congratulate you…. You’d probably live well, hyung. Your kids would be pretty too, I bet….”

This time, his voice was definitely more vacant than usual. Hearing this, Go Unha burst into laughter again. That hearty laugh resembled Go San’s. It was a kind of laugh he’d rarely heard from Go Unha.

“Ah, Geumseo, you’re unexpectedly funny sometimes.”

“Unexpectedly?”

That stung a bit more than the current situation of him possibly getting married. So all the cute antics I’ve put on for hyung up until now weren’t really that funny…. Go San always said that when Geumseo tried his hardest in front of Go Unha, he looked like a dog wagging its stump of a tail frantically. No, he called him a son of a bitch.

“But it’s not marriage. Anyway, it’s not. That’s not going to happen.”

It was an oddly definitive statement. Go Unha tapped the bottom of the mug Geumseo was holding. At the silent urging to drink, Geumseo sipped the coffee. Honestly, if he drank this now, he wouldn’t be able to sleep…. But since Unha hyung had given it to him, he didn’t want to refuse.

“I’m going to America.”

“Huh…?”

“Yeah, it looks like I’ll have to go and come back. San will go too. Extending contracts, making adjustments, that sort of thing.”

Geumseo felt both happiness and regret at the same time. The news that Go San was going too was good, but the news that Go Unha was leaving was regretful. The regret was bigger, enough that it confused even Geumseo’s exceedingly simple mind—he almost mistook it for being regretful that Go San was going too.

“If you go, you won’t come back…?”

“Probably not for a while? I think I’ll have to see how the schedule works out.”

“Are you giving up your apartment too?”

“I’ll leave the apartment for now. Still, since you’re my closest dongsaeng in Korea, I figured I had to tell you. Good thing you came.”

“It’s not a good thing….”

“Hm? What did you say?”

“Nothing….”

Go Unha shook his head dejectedly. Even he knew that saying something like how can you leave your close dongsaeng behind and go was just being unreasonable.

“So, Geumseo, about you and San….”

Just then, Go Unha’s door opened. The sound of the passcode being pressed and the door opening felt almost simultaneous, it was so fast. And the sound of footsteps striding closer. It felt like the ominous precursor sound in a horror movie. By the time Geumseo and Go Unha turned their heads, the owner of the footsteps was already entering the living room.

“What the. I hoped I was wrong, but.”

It was Go San. San looked back and forth between Geumseo sitting on the sofa and Go Unha sitting in front of him, leaning his upper body toward Geumseo. It was as if he had just walked in on a scene of infidelity.

His hair was wet, and his skin was as pale as ever. Go San’s expression practically said:

Why are you here.

“Yang Geumseo, why are you here.”

“Uh… you called me here.”

“Right. I called you. Then you should’ve come to my place. Why the hell are you at Go Unha’s.”

“You said we were meeting with Unha hyung anyway.”

“Fuck, of course it was a lie.”

“You wanted to see me, San?”

Go Unha asked in a deeply affectionate voice. Go San scowled as if the sound were nails on a chalkboard.

“I said no.”

“Should hyung come over to your place?”

“What bullshit are you talking about. You live here. Yang Geumseo, you follow me out.”

“Since we’ve already met here, can’t we just stay…?”

If I follow him out right now, I feel like I’ll actually die…. Geumseo asked, discreetly reading the room. What a funny guy. Go San could see right through Yang Geumseo’s transparently turning thoughts and let out a short laugh. That idiot hasn’t grasped the situation. No, he seems to have grasped the situation, but does he not understand it?

In the meantime, Geumseo’s body was gradually inching backward. He looked ready to hide completely behind Go Unha. Did he believe Go Unha would protect him? Go San felt like diving back into the pool he’d been at just an hour ago, just to deal with Yang Geumseo’s hopeless head.

“Will you walk out on your own two feet, or should I take you.”

“…”

Go Unha neither stopped Go San nor spoke up for Geumseo, simply watching the two of them with interest. His eyes were sparkling.

“Fine. I’ll take you.”

The gentler Go San’s tone got, the scarier it was. Geumseo yelped in fright and tried to dodge. But even so, there was no avoiding the long-limbed Go San. Outdoors might have been a different story, but indoors, it was utterly impossible from the start. Go San reached out his arm toward Yang Geumseo, who was hastily trying to flee backward.

“If you hadn’t run, I was going to at least let you walk on your own.”

“Aagh! It hurts! It hurts!”

“You’re impossible.”

Geumseo screamed as he grabbed the wrist of Go San, who had snatched him by the hair. The grip was so strong that no matter how much he grabbed the wrist and scratched at the back of the hand, it didn’t budge. And he was so skilled at it that tricks like sacrificing some hair to pull his head free didn’t work either. It felt like his scalp would tear right off.

“Hyung, hyung. Hyung…!”

In the end, Geumseo, on the verge of tears, called out to Go Unha with glistening eyes. But Go Unha simply sat with his legs crossed and chin propped, watching the two of them as if they were adorable, doing nothing.

“Hyung, save me…!”

“You’re making it sound like I’m going to kill you.”

Go San sneered.

“Geumseo, goodbye. Let’s see each other next time.”

Go Unha bid him a warm farewell.

“Huh-huhng. Ack, it hurts…!”

Yang Geumseo cried.

Unfortunately, the entire 11th floor was occupied by the Go brothers. No matter how much he cried on the short walk to Go San’s apartment, there was no one to hear it and come out. The vicious Go San had even left his own front door wide open when he came out, so he didn’t even need to waste time punching in the passcode. Geumseo was dragged straight through the front door.

“Ah, it hurts. It hurts, let go, Go San…!”

“Someone who knows it hurts should know where he’s supposed to go.”

“I forgot, I forgot…!”

Go San clenched his teeth. Being a birdbrain is one thing, but this was just a goldfish. Calling him a mouse was generous. Even a mouse would be smarter than Yang Geumseo.

“Then you could’ve contacted me.”

“The power was off.”

“The charger. Did you forget to charge it too?”

“…”

Anyway, his body woke up reliably at the exact right time, and he could check the time one way or another. Calls were so relentlessly horrible and traumatic that he’d wished dozens of times the device itself would just disappear, so of course he had no attachment to it—certainly not enough to want to faithfully feed it electricity.

“You’re still like this even after getting older?”

“…Well you got older with me, and you lied.”

“What lie did I tell.”

“You said we’d meet with Unha hyung together. That wasn’t true.”

“We met in the end, didn’t we.”

If nonsense like that counted as an argument, Geumseo wanted to insist that his going to Go Unha’s place just now also counted as keeping the promise.

“Ha, fuck. He’s all grown on the outside but still a damn brat.”

“I’m more of an adult!”

Geumseo, now wound up as if he’d been pricked by needles, yelled harshly.

“You haven’t even done your military service yet! So I’m more of an adult!”