Chapter 3: Ice Cream and Afterthoughts

Moon Sijin paused as he was about to pull out another cigarette.

Then he put it back into his pocket.

Baek Haejun quickly realized that Moon Sijin had done so out of consideration for him, a non-smoker.

This was not the first time he had seen Moon Sijin smoke.

Even when he was an eighteen-year-old minor, he used to smoke.

It seemed Moon Sijin had tried to smoke secretly out of Baek Haejun’s sight and return only after thoroughly erasing the smell, but Baek Haejun’s sense of smell was sharper than Moon Sijin had expected.

Whenever Baek Haejun stole glances at Moon Sijin smoking beyond the wall, Moon Sijin would let out a tired sigh or gaze into the distance at the ground.

Because of that, whenever Baek Haejun caught the scent of cigarettes on him, he would simply assume that something bad had happened to Moon Sijin that day.

Just as Moon Sijin refrained from commenting unnecessarily on Baek Haejun’s family situation, Baek Haejun also knew that this was not a boundary where he had any right to be overstepping.

Even if he had asked whether something was wrong, Moon Sijin would likely have been firm, telling him that a child had no business knowing.

While it meant not to be curious about the taste of cigarettes, Moon Sijin was also worried about having his gloomy state of mind discovered.

After all, whenever Baek Haejun acted unusually mature for his age, Moon Sijin would wear a rather complex and subtle expression.

“If you’re going home, I’ll drop you off.”

“No. I’m okay.”

“Are you going back inside?”

Asking back like that, Moon Sijin’s eyebrow twitched.

It somehow looked delinquent.

Baek Haejun had no intention of going back inside the tavern in the first place, but seeing Moon Sijin’s face made him feel he needed to deny it even more properly.

Baek Haejun shook his head rapidly.

“I meant I can go by myself. You don’t have to drop me off.”

“It’s late.”

Watching Moon Sijin’s side profile as he checked the time on his wristwatch as if entranced, Baek Haejun shook his head again.

“You haven’t been there long, Brother. People will be looking for you.”

“Let them.”

“…”

“There are a lot of drunk people walking around at this hour. I’m just doing this because I’m worried about you.”

“Brother… I’m twenty.”

Baek Haejun’s voice quivered slightly in a tone of utter disbelief.

However, his intention did not seem to come across properly.

Moon Sijin looked down at Baek Haejun with a gaze that seemed to say, ‘So what about it?’

“My house is far from here.”

“I have a car.”

“Didn’t you drink?”

“I didn’t touch a drop.”

Baek Haejun bit his lip anxiously.

He could no longer think of an excuse to refuse.

Parting with Moon Sijin like this was regrettable for him as well, but having Moon Sijin take him all the way home was another matter entirely.

Even when they were young, whenever Moon Sijin offered to take him home, Baek Haejun had flatly refused every single time.

He did not want to show his run-down home to the older brother figure who lived in a large, spacious house.

The house he lived in now was not particularly presentable either.

Although it was a precious home to his grandmother and himself, there was no guarantee it would look that way to others.

“Haejun.”

Seeing Baek Haejun’s plump lower lip being chewed repeatedly between his teeth, Moon Sijin cupped Baek Haejun’s chin and pulled it away.

His habit of picking on his lips whenever he was in a bind remained unchanged.

“Do you dislike it when I do this?”

Baek Haejun pondered whether he should nod or shake his head, ultimately letting out only a deep sigh.

Moon Sijin had tamed Baek Haejun long ago, teaching him that it was completely fine to accept whatever Moon Sijin gave him.

Although there was hesitation, his tamed nature made it impossible for him to reject Moon Sijin.

“…Alright.”

When Baek Haejun relented, an Alpha pheromone drifted faintly from Moon Sijin at that moment.

The sensation of the Alpha pheromone brushing against him was so exceedingly fresh that Baek Haejun unconsciously shuddered his shoulders.

Reflexively, he almost released his own pheromones as well.

Baek Haejun quietly looked up at Moon Sijin, who shone softly and brightly alone in the dark alleyway.

‘He probably doesn’t know that I’m an Omega yet. Does he still feel uncomfortable around secondary-gendered people?’

At the question that suddenly crossed his mind, Baek Haejun hung his head low again.

He hoped that was no longer the case.

If his secondary gender, which he had never liked since the moment he manifested, would only draw hatred from Moon Sijin as well, Baek Haejun felt he wouldn’t be able to like himself either.

Moon Sijin smoking was not surprising, but Moon Sijin driving was remarkably cool and fascinating.

Sitting in the passenger seat, Baek Haejun endlessly admired Moon Sijin’s side profile with his mouth slightly agape.

Because Baek Haejun could not tear his eyes away, Moon Sijin even rubbed his own cheek awkwardly.

“Drop me off here.”

As they neared his home, Baek Haejun pointed to the mouth where the alley began.

He had to go a bit further in along that alley, but it was not wide enough for a car to enter.

When the car came to a stop, Baek Haejun unbuckled his seatbelt while surreptitiously checking Moon Sijin’s reaction.

Even though he used to frequent Moon Sijin’s house as if it were his own, he had never actually brought Moon Sijin to his own home.

Bringing him this close was a first today.

Even though he hadn’t shown him the dilapidated house itself, the neighborhood had nothing much to offer to begin with, making Baek Haejun inwardly worried about what Moon Sijin might be thinking right now.

“All the way to the front of your house…”

“Brother, should I buy you ice cream?”

Since it was easy to guess what Moon Sijin was going to say, Baek Haejun quickly beat him to the punch.

It wasn’t that he had merely been losing his mind over Moon Sijin the entire time they rode in the car thick with Moon Sijin’s scent.

Expecting Moon Sijin to show excessive kindness, Baek Haejun threw out a topic he had thought up in advance.

“I want to eat ice cream.”

Tilting his head as if asking what he was suddenly talking about, Moon Sijin let out a helpless laugh at Baek Haejun’s words.

Turning off the ignition, Moon Sijin stepped out, and they entered a nearby convenience store.

As Baek Haejun was aimlessly rummaging through the freezer, a hand reaching out from behind him firmly grabbed the most expensive ice cream in the convenience store.

It was ice cream in a tub.

Imported from abroad, the portion was small while the price was insanely high—and the taste was insanely good.

Baek Haejun’s eyes quivered in an instant as if an earthquake had struck.

He had brought Moon Sijin along saying he would buy it for him.

It meant he had held the naive thought of simply putting a popsicle in each of their mouths before sending him back.

However, he could not bring himself to say that wasn’t allowed.

When Moon Sijin followed behind him into the convenience store, Baek Haejun suddenly realized.

Come to think of it, this was the very first time he was buying something for Moon Sijin.

Whenever they entered somewhere, the person following behind had always been Baek Haejun.

‘If he wants to eat it, let’s just close my eyes and buy it for him this once.’

Although his fate meant he had to worry about this week’s lunch money right away, that was a problem for tomorrow.

“…”

Except it was a problem he had to worry about tomorrow.

Baek Haejun felt his mouth instantly go dry.

It was because Moon Sijin, even while holding one tub of ice cream in his arm as if it were not enough, began pulling out tubs flavor by flavor and stacking them up.

It looked as though Moon Sijin intended to clear out all the products displayed in the freezer.

“…Are you going to eat all of that?”

It was not an amount that could be eaten right now.

When Baek Haejun looked up at Moon Sijin with eyes that signaled he could not understand what on earth Moon Sijin was thinking, Moon Sijin nodded nonchalantly.

Thanks to that, Baek Haejun had no choice but to reply timidly that he understood.

Roughly calculated, it was equivalent to two months’ worth of cafeteria meals.

‘How much balance do I have left in my bank account…’

Hiding the feeling that tears were about to well up, Baek Haejun headed to the checkout counter.

With every scan of a barcode by the part-time worker, Baek Haejun’s heart beat as fast as the surging price.

“H-Here…”

“Charge it to this.”

Before his slightly trembling hand could hand over the card, Moon Sijin wrapped his hand around Baek Haejun’s and lowered it.

Then, Moon Sijin inserted his own card into the card slot.

“I… I was going to buy it for you, Brother…”

“Yeah. I’ll properly strip you bare later, Haejun.”

Moon Sijin casually grabbed the bag filled to the brim with ice cream.

After stepping out of the convenience store, he even handed all of it into Baek Haejun’s hands.

“Eat it at home. You used to like this.”

“You meant for me to eat all of this alone?”

“Didn’t you say you wanted to eat ice cream?”

Moon Sijin tilted his head slightly and let out a faint frown.

Only then did Baek Haejun realize that Moon Sijin had simply followed along when Baek Haejun said he wanted to eat ice cream.

And while doing so, Moon Sijin had bought it for him as a bonus. Just as he always used to.

“It’s too much.”

“Eat one every two days. I didn’t buy a lot so you’d get an upset stomach.”

“…Thank you, Brother.”

Hiding his complicated feelings, Baek Haejun bowed his head low.

A warm temperature touched the top of his head.

The hand gently messing up his hair soon pulled away, but Baek Haejun could hardly raise his head.

It was because he finally felt ashamed of his own self for having hesitated until the very end, even while wanting to buy something generously.

“Go first. I’ll see you off.”

“Our Haejun really has grown up. Even saying you’ll see your brother off.”

“Haa. Brother, I’m twenty now too…”

“So what? I’m twenty-five.”

Moon Sijin replied nonchalantly and returned to his car.

Standing in his spot, Baek Haejun watched properly until Moon Sijin climbed into the driver’s seat.

Just as the car’s engine started, the window on the passenger side where Baek Haejun was standing rolled down.

“I’ll be in touch.”

“Get home safely, Brother.”

When Baek Haejun waved his hand, the plastic bag held in his hand rustled.

Smiling with a satisfied face, Moon Sijin slowly pulled out of the alley.

Even after the car’s taillights—the brightest thing in the alley—completely vanished, Baek Haejun could not take a single step.

The unresolved feelings from his childhood flowed into the present, pooling and rippling beneath his feet.

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