JKA 34

“Did you ask?”

“No, he just told me on his own. I kept calling him devil, devil, so maybe he felt bad about it, and he told me his name wasn’t devil but Aegis.”

“…”

“I guess even devils feel bad about being called devil.”

Hanbyeol said that and laughed. Jiwoon awkwardly laughed along, thinking to himself, ‘Calling a devil ‘baby’ is funnier.’ Of course, the name probably didn’t actually mean ‘baby’, but that was the thought that came to mind.

“I, I didn’t ask about a name or anything either. I didn’t think it was particularly important.”

“Right.”

Finally, the two of them found a convenience store, the only place lit up on the dark street. At that, Jiwoon stopped Hanbyeol, who was about to go in first, and asked.

“Do you, uh, have anything to, to buy?”

“No? Not really. I’m the one who suggested staying over first, so if there’s anything you need, I’ll buy it.”

“No.”

“…”

“Stay here. I, I’ll buy it and come out.”

“But still…”

Jiwoon blocked Hanbyeol quite desperately, even standing in front of the door, and at that sight, Hanbyeol surprisingly backed down meekly. It was because he guessed that since Jiwoon, who never insisted on anything, was doing so, there must be a good reason.

In the end, Jiwoon left Hanbyeol standing outside the convenience store and quickly went inside. Then, he quickly grabbed the necessary things he had been thinking about all the way there. A toothbrush and underwear to change into after washing up. And he bought some snacks and a few cans of beer. Then, he put everything except the underwear in a bag. He hid the underwear deep inside the bag he had been carrying.

It wasn’t like he was going to do anything of that sort, nor was he expecting anything; he was just buying it because he needed it. But because he had no experience with this, he couldn’t help but feel his face flush hot. Finally, when he stepped out of the convenience store, he saw Hanbyeol waiting for him, sitting on a plastic chair under the parasol placed in front of the store.

“You bought everything already?”

“Ah, uh… I just bought a toothbrush and things like that.”

Jiwoon answered awkwardly and placed the bag he was holding on the table. Hanbyeol looked into the heavy-looking bag, since he had only said he bought a toothbrush, and said.

“Beer?”

“Uh, that… w, we’re staying over, so it felt a bit weird to go empty-handed.”

“…”

“W, wouldn’t it be a bit better if we drink while we work?”

He hadn’t forgotten that he had made a drunken spectacle of himself before. It was just that he didn’t have the confidence to sleep while completely sober, so he chose just enough for the two of them to drink lightly. Hanbyeol, as if he understood Jiwoon’s words, reached into the bag and took out a can of beer.

“Oh, my favorite.”

“R, really? I like that one too.”

“I see.”

Hanbyeol didn’t put the can back in the bag but opened it right away and started drinking. At that sight, Jiwoon also pulled up a plastic chair, sat down, and took a beer out of the bag.

“Let’s just drink one can each first and then go in. We can drink the rest when we get there.”

“Okay.”

Jiwoon thought it was a good idea and, like Hanbyeol, opened a can and drank. What did I think when I first tried beer? He had thought it was bitter and tasteless, and wondered why people would pay money to drink something like this. But now, when he drank beer, he would always empty it without leaving any behind. He had gotten used to it.

“So where is the angel now? At home?”

“Could be, or, or maybe not.”

“…”

“Usually, he’s at, at home. He does the housework for me, cooks for me, and well… so.”

“An angel is an angel, I see.”

Jiwoon sipped his beer, and Hanbyeol watched him.

“When I first saw him, I definitely just thought he was a devil. It wouldn’t be a big deal for them to fabricate their appearance, right? I thought it would naturally be possible for them to make themselves look like an angel.”

“…Well.”

Since 1129 had said his current face wasn’t his real one, Hanbyeol’s words weren’t entirely wrong.

“But seeing you, it seems like he might be an angel. The fact that you cut your hair, and that you’re talking to me like this.”

“Ah.”

“You usually don’t like to talk when you’re in a difficult situation.”

Hanbyeol spoke as if he had seen right through him, and at those words, Jiwoon squeezed the beer can and looked away. The traffic light in front of the crosswalk, which no one was crossing because there were no people, was blinking. Jiwoon was acting just as Hanbyeol had said, even now.

“Because good changes are continuing. If you had changed like magic, it would have been suspicious, but you’re developing… that’s how it looks. It might be presumptuous of me, but.”

“No, it’s not. I don’t think that.”

At Hanbyeol’s positive assessment, Jiwoon felt like a smile might break out, but he hurriedly covered the area around his mouth with the beer can and just drank his beer for no reason.

“So, about that.”

“…”

“You’re hiding something from me, right?”

At those words, Jiwoon almost spat out everything he had in his mouth. But before he could, he put down the beer can, clamped his mouth shut, and forced himself to swallow the beer. Was it because of that? The carbonation rushed down his esophagus, and a cough burst out. Cough, cough. At the sight of Jiwoon coughing repeatedly, Hanbyeol took out a tissue from his bag and handed it to him. It was a promotional tissue, the kind they hand out in front of subway stations.

“Are you okay?”

“Th, thanks.”

Jiwoon wiped his mouth and hands with the tissue, his gaze still fixed downwards. It was because he couldn’t guess what he had been caught for.

“There’s more to the story that you haven’t told, right?”

“…”

“I thought about it carefully, and I got that impression. Let’s say an angel and a devil appeared to you and me respectively. But when I think about it, the reason a devil came to me is somewhat understandable, but the reason an angel came to you is a bit bothersome.”

“W, well, it doesn’t really fit, does it. I also thought… maybe we were switched.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“…”

“I mean, wasn’t there a more urgent reason for you than for me, that’s why.”

At Hanbyeol’s words, Jiwoon blinked his eyes. An urgent reason, he couldn’t immediately understand the meaning of the word ‘urgent’. When he turned his head to look at Hanbyeol, he had a rather serious expression on his face.

“I’m curious about what happened to you. I haven’t known you for long, but from what I’ve seen, you don’t seem like a bad person. You even want to help me now. I watched that sunbae person’s YouTooTube today, the one you mentioned.”

“…”

“He was a more famous person than I thought. Looking at his old videos, he often talks about his editors, and they all seemed to have worked for a long time. So I thought the person who quit probably quit for a reason. He seems like a good person, considering he’s willing to grant your request and give a job to someone like me with no video editing experience.”

Hanbyeol drank his beer while looking not at Jiwoon, but somewhere in the darkness. Jiwoon just watched him quietly.

“If I do get to work, I’ll probably try to take on as much work as I can. You said you’d just be helping out when it’s busy, so your workload might decrease. But you still want to introduce me.”

“I, I don’t do that much anyway… and for me, sunbae is just giving me work out of consideration, like telling me to at least do some work, s, something like that.”

Jiwoon chose his words carefully, in case it felt like he was being deceptive. If he said that he didn’t need a lot of money, that he wasn’t doing it for the money, he felt that might hurt Hanbyeol in some way, so he found himself being mindful of Hanbyeol’s feelings.

“I also watched the video you said you edited. I thought it was definitely different while watching your presentation videos and things like that. And I was right. You’re different from me, who just chose a place I could get into with a scholarship because my mom kept insisting I had to go to college.”

“…N, not to that extent.”

“If it were me, I wouldn’t do this.”

Hanbyeol uttered something unexpected.

“If I were you, I would have been greedier and asked for more video editing work. So I could make good use of it after graduation.”

“…”

“Jiwoon, you don’t have any ambition, do you?”

Jiwoon didn’t answer Hanbyeol’s question. He was right. He had no ambition. He had started editing in the first place because his sunbae had suggested, ‘Why don’t you try something like this? You might be good at it,’ and after that, he had just continued doing it because it was the only thing he could do. He was happy that he had a decent excuse to get out of the house, and that was all.

That I have something I’m good at, that I’m not clumsy at everything. And he had also chosen it because that work was distinctly different from the future his parents had wanted for his brother. Perhaps that was no different from him struggling to show that he and his brother were different people.

“As I see it, you have no ambition. That’s a separate issue from me thinking you’re a good person.”

“…”

“Maintaining decent relationships with people, earning money, doing what you want to do. Whatever it is, it just feels so-so. So that thought suddenly occurred to me. Is the reason an angel came to you really the reason you said it was.”

“…”

“There’s… another reason, isn’t there?”

It felt like a tightly woven net had been cast, making escape impossible. Jiwoon was helplessly caught in it, and there was nowhere to turn back to without giving an answer. Jiwoon wanted to help Hanbyeol. He didn’t want to let Hanbyeol destroy everything he had built up until now with one wrong choice.

“I, I had a hyung.”

“…”

“He was a really good hyung.”

Jiwoon managed to pronounce the word ‘hyung’. It was a word he had consciously tried not to say after he had left. The only person he called hyung now was Seungyoon. It was because when he called Seungyoon hyung, he didn’t think of his own brother. But even with him, he used the word sunbae more often than hyung.