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“What is the problem? Just what on earth is the reason you are acting like this?”

Seowon stared at Baek Kanghyun with a calm face. He could have lashed out, saying that things between them had been twisted from the start, that it was a relationship that should never have begun in the first place, but he did not. Sometimes, silence is sharper.

“Do I really have to put it into words?”

<Do I really have to put it into words?>

Long ago, he ended up returning the words that the other had once said to him. When he had asked what kind of relationship they had, and what he meant to the sunbae, that was how he had answered. And the young and naive twenty-one-year-old Seowon had interpreted those words however he pleased. He firmly believed that he might be a lover to him; that even if the only thing they did when they met was mix their bodies, this, too, must be one of the many forms of love.

But.

<Sunbae, do you happen to know my name?>

<…What?>

His face, looking utterly awkward as if he never imagined such a thing would be asked, was still vivid before his eyes.

After struggling to hide his flustered expression, he soon wore a smile and laid out a sophism.

<Why are you asking something like that? It is a bit late for that.>

He had not even known the name of Seowon, whom he had been meeting for several months.

“There haven’t been any problems until now. Stop thinking useless thoughts and just…”

The moment he heard him say there were no problems, sparks flew from his eyes.

Thinking back, he and this man were a problem from the very beginning. Back in those old college days, at Seowon’s shy confession that he liked him, Baek Kanghyun answered by reaching out his hand.

He should not have taken that hand in the first place. However, Seowon, blinded by a long-standing unrequited love, snapped up the hand he offered, and the love Seowon conducted alone met a miserable end. No, in truth, it could not even reach a proper end.

Because their relationship did not even have the right to use common words like ‘meeting’ or ‘breaking up.’

“Jeong Seowon.”

Baek Kanghyun called Seowon. Not Deputy Jeong, nor Secretary Jeong, but Jeong Seowon. At that moment, Seowon was forced to recall the most painful of his memories.

The old memory still clawed at Seowon fiercely. At the time, he didn’t even realize he was hurting, but now he knew. Back then, he had been hurting very much. At the fact that even his name was not remembered by the person he liked, and that he had given both his body and heart to a person who did not even know his name.

Supplanting the lump of emotion trying to surge up, Seowon spoke calmly.

“My name, do not call it.”