Chapter 2: The Soft Interrogation

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁣⁣⁠⁣⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁠⁣⁣⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁣⁣⁠⁠⁣⁣⁣⁠⁣⁠⁣⁠⁣⁣⁣⁠⁣⁠⁣⁣⁠⁣⁠⁠⁠⁣⁠⁠⁣⁣⁣⁠The grip on his wrist was loose enough that he could have pulled away with just a little effort.

As soon as they left the noisy tavern and stepped into the alley between the buildings, Baek Haejun twisted his wrist to free his trapped hand.

Although he thought he had let go naturally enough, he saw Moon Sijin briefly look down at his empty hand.

Moon Sijin then lightly clenched and unclenched his fist a few times.

“I’m going to smoke.”

“Ah, okay.”

Moon Sijin rummaged through his coat before putting a cigarette between his lips.

He said nothing until a straight trail of smoke rose from the tip of the cigarette.

Baek Haejun knew that Moon Sijin was quietly observing him.

The subtle Alpha pheromones emanating from Moon Sijin made it impossible to guess his emotions easily.

Moon Sijin merely watched as Baek Haejun’s gaze failed to meet his and lingered downward instead.

As Moon Sijin inhaled, the red glow hanging at the tip of the cigarette turned even crimson.

Only when those frightened eyes slowly lifted to meet his face did Moon Sijin turn his head away and exhale a long breath of smoke.

“I’m so glad to see you that I don’t even know what to say first.”

With the cigarette resting between his fingers, the facial features of his high school days were still visible on his grinning face.

Baek Haejun mindlessly looked up at him despite himself.

When he saw him in the tavern earlier, Moon Sijin’s eye level was already much higher, but Baek Haejun had thought that was only because he himself had been sitting.

Standing face-to-face now, Moon Sijin’s eyes were still higher than his.

There was also a significant difference in their builds.

Part of it was due to his Alpha trait, but Moon Sijin had a naturally large frame to begin with.

Looking him in the eye, Baek Haejun lowered his gaze as he felt an overwhelming aura radiating from the other man.

“A freshman? Did you enter as my junior?”

“I only found out after I enrolled. That you were attending here, Brother.”

Baek Haejun had left without saying a word to Moon Sijin, who used to cherish him like a real younger brother.

Enough time had passed to make him wonder if he should just bury those memories in the past.

Ever since he grew up, he had been living a life battered by harsh reality, and it was only when he turned twenty and entered university that he heard the name of the person he had never forgotten.

The same school, and even the same department.

He heard Moon Sijin was five years ahead of him, though he had not graduated yet.

From that day on, vague imaginations kept creeping into Baek Haejun’s mind.

Perhaps he might run into him by chance someday. Just like today.

Although he had expected it in a distant way, there was naturally a massive gap between imagination and reality.

“You used to say since you were little that you wanted to go to school with me, and I guess you finally got your wish.”

Moon Sijin smiled, raising the corners of his mouth.

When Baek Haejun blushed as Moon Sijin brought up what he had said in the past, Moon Sijin watched the scene leisurely.

A five-year gap existed between them.

When Baek Haejun met Moon Sijin back in elementary school, Moon Sijin was already attending high school.

Judging from what Baek Haejun had overheard about Moon Sijin in the tavern earlier, it seemed Moon Sijin had taken a leave of absence during his junior year of university to participate in a two-year internship before returning this semester.

On top of that, Baek Haejun had also caught wind that Moon Sijin was eligible for early graduation, meaning he would graduate after the first semester of next year.

“Then that means you’re twenty this year.”

Moon Sijin took a deep drag of his cigarette—deep enough that his cheeks hollowed out slightly—before exhaling a long plume of smoke.

When Baek Haejun nodded in affirmation, Moon Sijin repeated Baek Haejun’s age inside his mouth.

“My Haejun… You still look like an elementary schooler in my eyes, but you’re already an adult.”

“…I’m sorry.”

The moment the word ‘elementary schooler’ came out of his mouth, Baek Haejun reflexively uttered an apology.

There was a reason why Moon Sijin still viewed him as nothing more than a child.

In truth, Moon Sijin had not seen Baek Haejun since right after Baek Haejun graduated from elementary school.

The meaning behind Moon Sijin saying he had so much to say that he didn’t know where to start was also a question as to why Baek Haejun had vanished without a word.

Why had he disappeared without leaving a single trace after living like his younger brother for a time?

Baek Haejun parted his lips to offer the excuse he had thought up while imagining a meeting like today’s.

However, his voice hardly came out, so he ultimately could not say anything.

Catching a glimpse of the lips opening and closing repeatedly without a sound, Moon Sijin shifted the topic.

“What about a cell phone? Do you have one?”

Moon Sijin’s face seemed to ask, ‘Don’t tell me you still don’t have one?’

Even when his peers carried their own personal phones, Baek Haejun used to use the few public payphones on the street.

He did not even get his first cell phone until he became a high school student.

It was not a recent model even when he bought it, so it was completely outdated now.

The screen he had cracked a few months ago still had not been repaired, making it look all the more pitiful.

Fumbling through his back pant pocket to pull out his cell phone, Baek Haejun suddenly felt embarrassed, as if he were displaying his own impoverished reality.

“I’ll save my number. If you ever need to get in touch, don’t hesitate to call.”

“Thank you, Brother.”

Moon Sijin merely knitted his brows slightly at the condition of Baek Haejun’s phone screen before typing in his number without saying much else.

After all, except for Baek Haejun’s family, Moon Sijin was the person who knew Baek Haejun’s destitute circumstances best.

Receiving his cell phone back, Baek Haejun could not take his eyes off it for a moment.

It was because he could hardly believe the fact that Moon Sijin’s number was in his hands.

Should he try slapping his own cheek?

He mindlessly pinched his cheek, and a dull pain flared up.

Reminded by the pain felt in his cheek, Baek Haejun finally looked straight into Moon Sijin’s eyes.

He was still standing in front of him.

Only after feeling the sense of reality firsthand did a delayed feeling of bewilderment wash over him.

Looking at Baek Haejun, who was holding the cell phone with both hands as if it were a precious object, Moon Sijin offered a light smile.

He naturally led the conversation.

“How is Grandmother doing?”

“Yeah. She’s healthy, except for complaining about her back hurting every now and then.”

Grandmother was the only person with whom Baek Haejun could let his guard down.

When the topic of his grandmother’s well-being came up, Baek Haejun unconsciously loosened his facial muscles and smiled.

“What about you, Haejun?”

“Huh?”

“Have you been doing well without getting sick anywhere?”

It seemed the question Moon Sijin was truly curious about was Baek Haejun’s well-being rather than his grandmother’s.

Moon Sijin even robbed Baek Haejun of the chance to gloss over his words by mentioning that Baek Haejun had failed to answer when he asked earlier.

Because of that, Baek Haejun had no choice but to scratch his cheek awkwardly.

Although he suffered from minor illnesses here and there, he was generally healthy.

However, if asked whether he had been doing well, he didn’t know how to answer.

When he thought about it, his life had never been peaceful from the moment he was born.

It was just that the presence of his grandmother or Moon Sijin comforted him from time to time, enabling him to stay alive to this age.

“As for me… I’ve been doing well.”

Hiding his bitterness, Baek Haejun smiled.

Just as he was about to ask back if Moon Sijin had been doing well too…

“Didn’t you miss me all this time?”

“…”

“I thought of Haejun whenever I saw young kids.”

Moon Sijin pouted, as if feeling quite sulky.

The way his eyes narrowed slightly had a strangely charming feel to it.

Baek Haejun hurriedly hung his head low, his ears flushing red.

He had missed him. Tremendously.

If Moon Sijin thought of him whenever he saw young kids, Baek Haejun was always thinking of Moon Sijin, only occasionally living in reality.

“I… missed you. Me too.”

“I felt so empty because you suddenly moved away without a word. Even if I wanted to contact you, I didn’t know your number or anything. I even spent time blindly reflecting on myself, wondering if I had done something wrong.”

Having said that much, Moon Sijin closed his mouth for a moment.

Soon, as if realizing something, his thick eyebrows twitched, and he asked back in a suspicious voice.

“Don’t tell me you really moved away because you grew to hate me?”

“No!”

Baek Haejun hurriedly denied it.

To think he grew to hate him. It was completely absurd.

If anything, it was the exact opposite.

“…That’s really not why.”

“If so, then that’s a relief.”

Moon Sijin replied nonchalantly and turned his head.

As if his gaze had held heat, the moment Moon Sijin looked away, Baek Haejun felt a chill.

Since they had cleared up the small misunderstanding, the flow naturally led into an atmosphere where Baek Haejun felt obligated to explain his situation.

‘Haejun-ah. This place is a living hell. I can’t bear to watch your father devour you too. …Let’s go with Grandma. Okay? Let’s just live with just the two of us.’

At dawn when even the moon had not risen, his grandmother had cried at the bedside of the lightly sleeping Baek Haejun.

‘Secondary-gendered people are uncomfortable in many ways. Haejun, you’re young so you don’t know well, but don’t try to find out just yet.’

The older brother figure who had made him aware of his innocent first love used to feel uncomfortable around secondary-gendered people.

The man called his father had shouted that as soon as Baek Haejun presented as an Omega, he would sell him off to a shop, and Baek Haejun ended up manifesting as an Omega as soon as he turned fourteen.

The reality at that time was so wretched and harsh that young Baek Haejun had no choice but to run away from home, holding his grandmother’s hand.

A mother who died as soon as Baek Haejun was born, a father who might as well not exist, and a dilapidated shanty that wouldn’t be surprising if it collapsed at any moment.

The only things of value in Baek Haejun’s life, which was filled with pure poverty, were his own body and his grandmother.

Even back when he was clueless, he had not poured out all his tedious circumstances to Moon Sijin.

It was because even back then, he knew what shame was.

There was no way Moon Sijin had failed to guess that his family circumstances were poor, but Moon Sijin had never shown it to Baek Haejun either.

He had simply doted on him as if caring for his own younger brother.

Because Moon Sijin was the person who made him feel a love of a different emotion than what he felt for his grandmother, Baek Haejun was even more self-conscious of his own appearance in front of Moon Sijin, gradually realizing the ways of the world while comparing himself to Moon Sijin.

Seeing how he still felt embarrassed, fond, and shy in front of him even now after time had passed, it seemed he still liked Moon Sijin.

Even though his father was no longer around, it might be because his impoverished state remained unchanged as well.

Even though it shouldn’t be possible, Moon Sijin offered a smile as if he understood all of Baek Haejun’s heart.

Unlike his momentum when they first met, Moon Sijin seemed to have no intention of pushing Baek Haejun, who kept hesitating.

Crushing the barely burned cigarette against the wall, Moon Sijin extinguished the spark.

With hands unsoiled by the smell of cigarettes, he gently stroked Baek Haejun’s head.

The touch running through his hair and brushing against his outer ear evoked the nostalgia of back then.

It felt as if Moon Sijin was expressing that he still cherished Baek Haejun.

“Right. Let’s talk about that slowly. We’re going to see each other often from now on anyway. Right?”

A hand large enough to wrap around both his crown and ear at the same time moved to the back of his head.

Under the pressure that supported the back of his neck, Baek Haejun’s chin lifted, and their eyes met.

“Yeah. That’s right.”

Baek Haejun looked up blankly at Moon Sijin as if accustomed to it, answering obediently.

Moon Sijin was as gentle as ever.

Perhaps he seemed even more relaxed and gentle now than when he was a high school student.

While Baek Haejun was struggling just to barely become an adult, the fact that Moon Sijin had become an even more splendid adult made him feel complicated inside.

Just as he thought, it felt like a realization that his presence beside Moon Sijin was of no help at all.

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