Chapter 36: Unexpected Rejection and a Budding Plan

Unexpectedly, Yoonwoo accepted the chocolate, yet after a brief moment of contemplation, he shook his head.

Eun Yoonwoo, refusing chocolate?

Yeon-chae’s eyes rounded in utter astonishment.

“I appreciate the gesture, but I can’t accept this,” Yoonwoo said.

“…Seriously?” Yeon-chae asked, his voice barely a whisper.

“I simply don’t have the time for a relationship right now. Could you return it? No, on second thought, I’ll give it back myself.”

“I’ll return it for you,” Yeon-chae insisted.

“Oh? Wouldn’t that be a bit impolite, though?” Yoonwoo questioned.

“It’s fine. It’s far more mortifying to be rejected face-to-face,” Yeon-chae reasoned.

“Is that so?” Yoonwoo mused, a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes.

Snatching the chocolate box from Yoonwoo’s grasp, Yeon-chae noticed the awkwardness etched on his face.

He struggled to keep his lips from curling into an eager smile, the effort almost making his jaw twitch.

Yoonwoo watched his peculiar expression for a beat, then a soft chuckle escaped him.

“Don’t make it so obvious,” Yoonwoo teased, a playful glint in his eyes. “Were you afraid I’d end up in a relationship by myself?”

“Um… yes,” Yeon-chae admitted hesitantly.

“Wow. You’re not even trying to deny it anymore,” Yoonwoo exclaimed, mock-astonished.

Yoonwoo playfully pointed a finger at him.

The tip of his long, slender digit was a delicate, pale pink, mirroring the soft blush on his cheek.

“Still, that chocolate does look delicious. A shame, really…” Yoonwoo remarked, a hint of regret in his tone.

“You shouldn’t get into a relationship just because of food, you know,” Yeon-chae stated with a serious expression.

‘He can fall for me, but definitely not for anyone else,’ Yeon-chae thought, a wave of blatant hypocrisy washing over him.

Yoonwoo, meanwhile, looked utterly dumbfounded.

He knitted his brows, puffed out his cheeks, and then grumbled in a petulant voice.

“Hey, who said I was dating anyone?” Yoonwoo retorted, a frown marring his features. “I told you I was going to reject them. What kind of person do you think I am?”

“I brought samgyeopsal gimbap,” Yeon-chae interjected smoothly. “Want to have lunch with me?”

“Really? Oh! Should we go eat it now?” Yoonwoo’s eyes lit up immediately.

In an instant, Yoonwoo’s smiling eyes crinkled into perfect crescent moons.

Yeon-chae, caught off guard by this sudden charm offensive, flinched in surprise, recoiling almost imperceptibly.

‘Why?’ he mouthed, his expression as kind and radiant as ever.

Yeon-chae simply shook his head, as if to dismiss his reaction as nothing.

‘Please, give me some warning before you smile like that,’ he thought, ‘it’s positively detrimental to my heart.’

Such a candid confession, however, was impossible for him to utter aloud.

The first week of summer vacation arrived.

Yeon-chae found himself accompanying Yoonwoo to the business department’s MT.

This marked his first overnight trip with him, and his heart pounded so intensely it felt as though a mere touch would send it exploding into a frenzied rhythm.

Yet, true to form, Yoonwoo, with his perpetually bright expression, managed to dash Yeon-chae’s expectations once again.

By now, he found himself unsurprised by this recurring pattern.

The sequence of events unfolded thus:

“I like you, Yoonwoo oppa! Please date me!” a voice declared.

Drunken classmates, engaged in some bizarre ‘King Game,’ had swarmed Yoonwoo, creating a raucous atmosphere before ultimately causing trouble.

Da-eun, who had been chosen as the ‘king,’ had brazenly confessed to Yoonwoo.

While everyone else treated it as a drunken jest, unlikely to be remembered, Yeon-chae knew with chilling certainty that Da-eun was entirely serious.

His insides churned with a burning frustration.

“Are you going to date her?” Yeon-chae managed to ask, striving to keep his voice from cracking.

He absolutely could not cry here.

“I’m going to reject her,” Yoonwoo replied, and Yeon-chae’s heart momentarily soared with relief.

“Just because I received a confession, how could feelings suddenly appear out of nowhere?” he continued, and his heart plummeted, sinking into a cold despair.

His words felt less directed at Da-eun and more acutely aimed at Yeon-chae himself.

“When you slowly get to know someone, and grow fond of them, a certain feeling naturally emerges, doesn’t it?” Yoonwoo explained.

“‘Doesn’t that person like me?’ When that mutual understanding develops, that’s when you naturally start a relationship…”

‘Would such a day ever truly arrive for him?’ he wondered.

‘Could he ever escape this shadow existence, unilaterally trailing behind Yoonwoo, always watching his retreating back?’

His throat tightened, feeling raw and scratchy.

Half-desperate, Yeon-chae finally voiced his question.

“What if that feeling—’Doesn’t that person like me?’—never comes at all?”

‘What should I do then? If I keep waiting like this, will you ever truly see me, Yoonwoo?’

“Then, I suppose, a confession wouldn’t really work out, would it?” Yoonwoo responded, completely unfazed.

It was as if Yeon-chae’s deepest emotions held no significance to him whatsoever.

A month into the summer vacation, Yeon-chae found himself simmering with anger towards Yoonwoo.

He was vexed by his implication that his confession would, of course, be rejected (though he hadn’t phrased it quite so directly).

It also infuriated him that he seemed to consider it fortunate for his genuine feelings to be dismissed as mere drunken ramblings (another slight misinterpretation on his part).

More than anything, Yeon-chae yearned for Yoonwoo to acknowledge his heart, even if only a fraction.

Thus, he resolved to wait him out, refraining from any contact.

Yet, despite clutching his phone for an entire month, no calls or messages came.

His heart, which felt like it had burned to cinders, would reluctantly prompt him to send a message, only to receive a terse, begrudging reply in return.

Their communication was nothing more than sporadic, back-and-forth exchanges, like a game of ping-pong.

When the yearning for Yoonwoo became utterly unbearable, Yeon-chae finally capitulated, boarding a bus bound for Tongyeong.

Though he worried Yoonwoo’s parents might recognize him, a confident assurance also settled within him that they wouldn’t.

Yeon-chae had been remarkably small as a child, but during his growth spurt, he had shot up so dramatically that his joints would ache every morning, sometimes even bringing he to tears.

Indeed, not a single person who had known the young Yeon-chae had ever recognized his current self.

Unexpectedly, Yoonwoo’s parents were absent, but he had the chance to meet his twin younger siblings.

The “little one” he hadn’t seen in ages was no longer a child, yet remained as annoyingly cheeky as ever.

Remembering how Jinwoo, even as an infant unable to speak properly, would fiercely contend with him to claim Yoonwoo’s attention first, Yeon-chae shot a covert glare at him.

Thankfully, due to Kangwoo’s intervention, he was able to share a room with Yoonwoo on the final night.

With each new memory that was etched into his mind, a warmth spread through his chest like a slow-burning fire.

As the second semester commenced, Yeon-chae had unwittingly gained the reputation within their department of being Yoonwoo’s shadow, or perhaps, his personal keyring.

While Yeon-chae was entirely unbothered by this, Yoonwoo, on the other hand, appeared subtly concerned.

“Yeon-chae. Are your classmates bothering you?” Yoonwoo asked gently.

“If anything happens, you absolutely must tell me. Don’t keep it bottled up inside, alright?”

“…,” Yeon-chae simply responded.

Far from being bothered by his classmates, Yeon-chae was already swamped trying to keep up with Yoonwoo, yet his peers incessantly called him out, giving him a perpetual headache.

Nevertheless, Yeon-chae meekly replied, “Yes,” and nodded, secretly enjoying the faint warmth of being worried about.

Yoonwoo’s life was a constant whirl of activity.

His enthusiasm and diligence in every endeavor were so profound, one might question if such earnestness was even necessary.

He stood in stark contrast to Yeon-chae, who had always led a languid and leisurely existence.

Despite all his hard work, he never seemed to achieve truly satisfactory grades, often sighing heavily with a grim expression each time his report card arrived.

“Yeon-chae. What score did you get on your Intermediate Accounting midterm?” Yoonwoo asked, his voice tinged with resignation.

“Ninety-eight points,” he replied simply.

A few points had been deducted for his hurried handwriting on the essay portion.

At his straightforward answer, Yoonwoo’s face crumpled in dismay.

“I truly despise you,” Yoonwoo groaned dramatically. “All you ever do is sleep in the department lounge!”

He wasn’t sleeping; he was waiting for Yoonwoo.

Though Yeon-chae felt a sting of injustice, he remained silent, intuiting that even the truth wouldn’t spare him from his disapproval.

“You’re preparing for the CPA, aren’t you?” Yoonwoo pressed on. “When did you actually start studying for it?”

“At the beginning of the first semester,” Yeon-chae answered.

“So, you’ll be taking the exam this winter, then?” he probed.

“No,” he admitted.

The accountant certification exam was scheduled for February of the following year.

To seriously contend with it, he should have committed himself to rigorous study much earlier.

Yet, ever since reconnecting with Yoonwoo at the semester’s outset, Yeon-chae had made it a habit to “clock in” at the café where he worked part-time, utterly consumed with stealing furtive glances at his face.

Consequently, not a single moment was spared for his exam preparations.

Each time he visited the café, even with several textbooks splayed open on her table, not a single word would truly register.

Instead, only Yoonwoo’s face would persistently dance before his eyes.

On one occasion, as he carefully placed a complimentary cookie from him onto her book, Yoonwoo had suddenly appeared, playfully chiding him, “Are you performing some sort of ritual?”

As he grew a little wistful, reminiscing about those days, Yoonwoo’s voice cut through his thoughts.

“Are you actually going to become an accountant?” he queried.

“Um… no,” he confessed, hesitating slightly.

He had started preparing for the CPA, the accountant qualification exam, because of his father.

However, it wasn’t a field he was particularly interested in.

His brief period of studying for the exam was merely to support his father’s side of an ongoing parental dispute.

Yeon-chae’s father was an accountant and his mother a lawyer, and an unspoken rivalry simmered between them, with Yeon-chae caught in the middle.

Even after their divorce, they continued their subtle power struggle over which parent Yeon-chae resembled more, or in which field he possessed greater talent.

Yeon-chae had announced his intention to study for the CPA exam at the start of his freshman year, partly because he had been slightly upset when his mother found a new boyfriend.

“Then what will you do?” Yoonwoo asked, blinking.

Yeon-chae paused, considering.

Since meeting Yoonwoo, much of his resentment towards his mother had dissolved, leading him to believe that both he and his mother deserved their own happiness.

Seizing this opening, his mother would often ask in a subtly persuasive tone, ‘Won’t you consider law school?’

Still undecided, Yeon-chae countered Yoonwoo, “What about you, Yoonwoo?”

Yoonwoo furrowed his small face, groaning softly.

“I’m not sure. I just want to go to whatever company hires me.”

Yoonwoo explained that he wasn’t particularly interested in specialized graduate schools like law school or acquiring professional certifications.

“I want to stop studying and start earning money quickly.”

Recalling the eviction notice with its yellow sticker that had once adorned Yoonwoo’s front door in his childhood, Yeon-chae quietly cast his eyes downwards.

Back then, he hadn’t understood its meaning.

When they had visited Tongyeong recently, Yoonwoo had revealed during a late-night conversation that his father’s business had gone bankrupt when they were children.

He and his siblings had been raised at their aunt’s house in Seoul, while their parents had fled to Tongyeong, working in factories for many years.

Although their circumstances had improved now, the values he formed back then seemed largely unchanged.

“From what my brother says, investment banks pay well.”

“Are you considering preparing for an investment bank?”

“I might. There’s a stock investment club, isn’t there? Maybe I should join it. But would they even accept an upperclassman? It’s already the second semester.”

The stock investment clubroom was located in the basement of Building 58.

Yeon-chae had won several mock investment competitions hosted by investment banks, making it a club whose president, Yoon Jung-joo, had desperately tried to recruit him.

Yeon-chae’s mind quickly churned.

“I’ve been thinking about joining that club myself. Shall we go together?” he calmly began.

It was a statement that would undoubtedly have shocked Yoon Jung-joo, who had been rejected by Yeon-chae about fifteen times despite his persistent efforts.