Struggle Chapter 132

Nanyoung found Sim Suhwan, who kept tugging at his cheeks, annoying and shook his head to shake him off. Sim Suhwan, likewise a kid from a well-off family, turned on a taxi app, saying it was a bother so they should just take a cab, and Nanyoung turned to look back.

There was no way he’d be there, and no reason he would be, but it felt as though Taerok was on the veranda watching this way. Nanyoung chewed his lip, then turned back around. He kicked the ground with the tip of his foot, tap, tap, then ruffled up his hair.

“Hey, what’s with you. You’re in worse shape than when you were a CSAT student.”

Still kicking the ground with his toes, Nanyoung lifted his head. He walked up to Sim Suhwan and suddenly thrust his face close.

“Sim Suhwan.”

Without realizing it, Nanyoung had a point of resemblance to Taerok. He too was indifferent. Heartless.

“Am I pretty?”

Indifferent, and heartless.

Sim Suhwan looked at the face pushed right up to the tip of his nose under the streetlamp light and clenched his fist. At an age brimming with youthful vigor, Sim Suhwan was in turmoil. He had come to suffer anguish without even knowing the word. He gulped and kept averting his gaze from the eyes looking at him, yet Nanyoung, on the contrary, was staring straight at him. There was nothing at all weighing on his mind. That fact made him miserable.

“You….”

Turning his head completely to the side, Sim Suhwan rubbed his face.

“You… are kind of….”

Kind of cruel.

He had been about to say that when, all of a sudden, Nanyoung, who had come right up to his nose, was yanked backward.

“Sorry.”

It was Taerok.

Taerok had pulled Nanyoung back by one wrist and wrapped his other arm around his body. Startled, Nanyoung was looking at Taerok. Unlike when he looked at him, Nanyoung’s eyes were shaking wildly as he looked at his uncle. In that instant, as Taerok turned his head toward him, Nanyoung averted his gaze.

He averted his gaze.

“You, his friend, go on ahead. It seems I’d better have Nanyoung sleep at my house after all.”

Taerok pressed money into Sim Suhwan’s hand and then turned his body around. Nanyoung didn’t even glance at Sim Suhwan, then, as if belatedly coming to his senses, kept looking back repeatedly. He seemed to be saying something, but the man with a handsomeness so frightening and an aura so intimidating it was terrifying did not listen. It was not a blood relative but a man who stood there.

With an awkward expression, Nanyoung mouthed the words, I’ll contact you, at Sim Suhwan.

But Suhwan had a feeling that no message would come. What woke him from standing dazed was the honk of a taxi, and only then did Sim Suhwan realize that Nanyoung’s uncle had pressed a sum far too large to be taxi fare into his hand. A large sum, as if in recompense for a secret.

∞ ∞ ∞

“Why, why all of a sudden… I-it hurts! Let go of my wrist!”

Only after Nanyoung let out a groan close to a scream did Taerok release his hand.

But they were already at the front door. Nanyoung’s wrist hurt so much that tears welled up, and he crouched down, cradling it. It throbbed dully. Had he been injured?

“It hurts….”

At the crouched, sorrowful murmur, Taerok clicked his tongue.

It was unmistakably his own fault. Yet he felt no inclination to apologize.

“It’s strange… I don’t want to be with Uncle. I don’t want to stay here even a little bit longer now.”

Nanyoung muttered, panting. He seemed to be crying. Watching him from above, Taerok’s heart turned cold.

In fact, it had turned cold a little while ago. When Nanyoung had looked up toward Taerok’s house, Taerok too had been looking down at Nanyoung. Their eyes hadn’t met, but the moment he realized they were looking toward the same place, he went downstairs as if bewitched.

And what he had come upon was a scene out of a youth movie.

The sight had been fresh and lovely. That fact had made Taerok this wretched.

“What is it that you’re trying to do with me?”

Nanyoung looked up. The front door sensor light flickered off and then on again. He thought that was like Nanyoung blinking his large eyes.

“What is it that you want to do with me, exactly?”

Taerok had been scratching at Nanyoung all along. When he did things that would fluster Nanyoung, Nanyoung reacted as expected. Reacted as desired. Like a young person who didn’t know what to do with feelings of liking someone.

But now, unlike him, Nanyoung’s words—not spiteful but straight and piercing—scratched at Taerok. No, stabbed him.

“Indeed.”

The sensor light flickered once more.

“Let’s find that out together. What it is that you and I are going to become.”

“…We are not the kind of relationship to find out something like that.”

The reason for his flustered expression must be that Nanyoung too had been not scratched but stabbed this time.

Taerok was unruffled. He could not possibly be unaware of how dangerous and forbidden these words were right now.

“Even if you say we can’t, I’m planning to.”

“We… we are….”

“Yes. We are.”

Taerok slowly bent his knees to sit at Nanyoung’s eye level.

“We are a relationship where this shouldn’t happen.”

Flicker.

“But we’ve already crossed it, the line.”

Beneath Nanyoung’s feet, sprouts grow.

What he had thought were sprouts swelled swiftly like vines and bound his whole body tight.

He thought he was bound up alone, but Lee Taerok was bound up too.

Nanyoung stared dazedly at the eyes of the man seated in front of him, at his eye level.

“Since when did you know…?”

“From the beginning.”

Yes. He had known from the beginning. He had realized it immediately, almost uncannily. So immediately, as if he had been waiting on the spot for you to realize, for you to turn and look at him.

“…I want to go on living as if nothing ever happened.”

“Has anything even happened between us?”

His wrist throbbed. Heat seemed to radiate from that spot. Nanyoung had a constitution so weak that even during P.E., he rested six times out of ten. Now, the mercilessly besieged state of his mind or his body was too much for him. Even Lee Taerok standing before him was. As Taerok had said, he was not his parent, nor even his guardian.

Nanyoung pressed his forehead firmly between his knees and mumbled.

“I want there to be nothing.”

“You go ahead and do that.”

“…”

“I’ll do things differently.”

“You said we should find out together….”

“That was a lie.”

Taerok was brazen and fearless. Wasn’t he afraid? He himself felt his heart pounding like mad.

I’m scared, I’m so scared I could die. I don’t know what to do. I’d rather leave this house.

Only after the front door sensor light went out and a silence long enough that it didn’t come back on passed did Taerok ask.

“Was it just me? Having the feeling that somehow we were going to end up like this.”

The vines… he thought they had sprouted from the floor, but as it turned out, they had stretched out from Taerok.

Nanyoung slowly lifted his head. His eyes, having been pressed down firmly, saw the world as blurry. In that state, seeing the world through a haze, Nanyoung asked.

“Is there by any chance… no such thing as that you aren’t related by blood to my dad, or that I was adopted?”

Taerok burst into loud laughter. Then he replied merrily.

“Regrettably, no. You are one hundred percent my nephew.”

Dumbfounded, Nanyoung stared blankly at Taerok. Taerok patted Nanyoung’s cheek and then rose from his spot. Then he held out his hand.

Nanyoung tried to get up without taking it, but his legs had fallen asleep. It was clear that without holding it, he would fall over unsightly. Biting his lip, Nanyoung ended up taking Taerok’s hand. His hand was cold. They say a cold hand means a warm heart, yet his heart seemed cold too.

∞ ∞ ∞

Even after that incident happened, surprisingly, nothing occurred for quite a while. As if it had been a fleeting dream.

At first, Nanyoung paid a great deal of attention to Taerok, conspicuously avoiding him by going into his room whenever Taerok came out, but once vacation fully began, even that became impossible. Because the time spent alone at home grew, and naturally, his guard was let down.

That day was no different. In the empty living room with Taerok gone to work, he watched movies he’d been putting off, read a book, and then fell asleep just like that. Nanyoung lay utterly defenseless under the warm winter sunlight. So he didn’t realize at all that Taerok had returned during an empty afternoon schedule, and slept on sweetly without waking.

“…”

Taerok, upon discovering Nanyoung asleep on the floor rather than the sofa, stood stock-still. The carpet was extremely plush and nice, to be fair, but why here of all places?

He didn’t feel like waking him. Slowly loosening his necktie, Taerok simply gazed down silently at Nanyoung.

Lemon-colored sunlight was illuminating Nanyoung’s face. It would be dazzling for him. Taerok shifted his steps and stood at Nanyoung’s head. As his tall, lanky frame cast a shadow over Nanyoung’s face, the muscles of Nanyoung’s expression relaxed further.

“…”

Slowly bending down to sit, Taerok tilted his head toward Nanyoung.

His back completely covered Nanyoung’s face.