NHL 17

“‘Ex-’girlfriend. I was only 15.”

“Yes. I suppose so.”

“…”

“Was she your first love?”

Dylan smiled and slowly shook his head. It was a gesture that was neither denial nor affirmation, but simply one that said he did not want to talk about it.

“Other than family, I’ve never expressed love for anything besides my dog and hockey, so I wouldn’t know. Was it love?”

Joeon let out a light laugh at the answer, which sounded just like something a man crazy about hockey would say.

“Perhaps it was, if you miss her sometimes.”

“Then I guess it wasn’t.”

“It’s harder to believe you when you say you’re not sure if it was love, even though she was the reason you didn’t want to leave.”

“That wasn’t the only reason I didn’t want to leave. What about you, Joeon?”

Dylan asked again.

“Someone you miss.”

The moment he traced back their earlier conversation and understood what he meant, the car entered the huge parking lot in front of the grocery store.

“Is there? A first love you left back in your hometown, or something… Ah, besides your parents.”

Pretending to focus on driving, Joeon could feel Dylan’s gaze glancing toward the passenger seat.

As if retaliating for the earlier test of patience, Joeon just shrugged his shoulders instead of giving the other man a straight answer. Dylan bit his lip as if frustrated and muttered.

“You’re not going to tell me? Are you serious?”

“Who knows.”

“I see you’ve already mastered the art of playing with me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

As Joeon responded playfully, Dylan whispered in a low voice, a gentle smile on his face.

“I’m curious about everything about you. You know how I feel about you.”

Flustered, Joeon couldn’t continue speaking, so Dylan quickly finished parking to dispel the tense atmosphere and said.

“Do you like steak?”

“Pardon? Ah…”

“Let’s go pick out something you’ll like.”

The engine turned off, and silence fell. Joeon scratched his cheek for no reason as he undid his seatbelt.

“I’m not a vegetarian, but I tend to eat more vegetables than meat.”

“That’s good. Let’s start by getting to know your eating habits. Do you drink wine? Or are you a beer person? Whiskey?”

Getting out of the car, Dylan gestured with his eyes toward the LCBO [LCBO—Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the main liquor retailer in the province of Ontario] next to the grocery store.

“I can drink a little of everything. Though I don’t particularly enjoy it.”

“That’s good too. What about dessert preferences? Do you like sweet things?”

“…I’ll eat them if they’re there.”

Answering the trivial questions, Joeon suddenly realized one thing. That the person named Song Joeon was not a person with firm preferences.

This wasn’t just limited to his taste in food. It was the same when he looked back on his entire life so far. It had been a continuous series of a life without conviction or direction.

“What about you, Dylan?”

“Me?”

Dylan, who had taken out a cart and was pushing it, made a humming sound as if contemplating, then gave a disappointingly frivolous answer to the person who had been waiting.

“I’m not a picky eater, I eat everything well.”

“…I see.”

Then he added affectionately.

“Who I’m with is more important than that.”

For some reason, after picking and buying groceries according to Joeon’s preferences, Dylan’s car left the store parking lot and headed north on Highway 400. The farther they got from the city center, the fewer concrete buildings there were, and the skyline grew lower.

Instead of crude fences, Gambier-trees, which looked like Christmas trees with unmelted snow, stretched unevenly as if they didn’t know the sky was the limit, and began to densely fill the edges of the highway. With nothing much to see around, Joeon could only guess that they were a long way from any residential areas.

The car entered a secluded coniferous forest, as if deliberately choosing deserted roads. As the surroundings grew dark, Joeon became alert and his nerves were on edge.

“Dylan, where are we going right now?”

“We’re almost there.”

The wooded path, with trees tens of meters tall, was neatly paved. However, Dylan’s car was so large that the path felt narrow enough to be troublesome if an oncoming car appeared.

As brick pillars that looked like signposts came into view, the car’s speed dropped rapidly. Joeon only realized what they were after getting closer.

They were the pillars of a gate with a built-in security system to prevent outside vehicles from entering. It was clean as if brand new, without any moss or faded parts, suggesting it had been built recently.

Dylan stopped the car in front of it and lowered the driver’s side window. When he held a card to the black sensor, the gate opened with a noise, welcoming the two of them.

However, the car had to drive for quite a while even after passing through the gate. It was the first time he had seen a house with such a long driveway.

Finally, when the car came to a complete stop, Joeon couldn’t believe his eyes even as he looked at the mansion, and he rubbed them.

“…Dylan, is this your house?”

“It’s my parents’ house. Like I said, my parents are in Puerto Rico right now, so I’m here alone. Also to check if there’s anything that needs fixing.”

“I thought your parents lived in Midtown.”

Joeon asked, recalling the day he had coincidentally reunited with Dylan. He remembered that when he met Dylan again at the public ice rink near his house, Dylan had mentioned his parents’ house was nearby.

“That’s right. They live in that neighborhood for now, but they said they wanted to live a little more leisurely after retiring, so they started building this house. The construction just finished not long ago, so family members have been stopping by from time to time to check on things.”

Dylan briefly explained the situation as he got out of the car. He pointed at the house with a nod, his hands full of things he bought from the grocery store.

“Come on in. I’ll give you a tour of the inside.”

“Is it okay for me to go in?”

“Of course. I’m inviting you right now.”

Even as he took some of his bags, Joeon couldn’t hide his bewildered expression. His conscience pricked him for being invited into someone else’s house without any preparation.

If he had known this would happen, it would have been better to buy something as a gift at the grocery store. Though he never imagined Dylan would invite him to his new house in the first place.

However, his curiosity was greater than his conscience, so he followed Dylan without complaint. Before Dylan opened the door, he turned back to Joeon for a moment and put some unnecessary pressure on him.

“You’re the first guest.”

“I, I should have bought something…”

“You don’t have to worry about that at all.”

“Then… Excuse me.”

As Joeon hesitantly stepped into the entrance, Dylan responded smoothly.

“Welcome.”

Opening the door, which was slightly larger than that of a typical house, revealed a spacious entryway at a glance. A long hallway stretched out, offering a glimpse of a part of the drawing room at its end. To the right of the entrance was a small den, designed so one could comfortably sit on a bench to change shoes and check their appearance in a full-length mirror.

Joeon hung his coat in a room that looked like a changing room, stored his shoes, and changed into slippers. In the meantime, Dylan moved the groceries to the kitchen.

“The house is really nice.”

As he followed him inside, Joeon’s eyes were restlessly scanning the surroundings. Sculptures and framed pictures that added accents to the neatly painted walls, and light-colored wooden furniture unified with a similar feel gave off a warm atmosphere.

Perhaps because it was a newly built house as Dylan had explained, there wasn’t a lot of furniture. There was empty space in each area, making it feel somewhat vacant.

Reaching the end of the hallway, Joeon slowly looked around the spacious drawing room. A fireplace was installed in the corner, and it wasn’t just a decorative imitation but a real one connected to a chimney.

On one side of the wall next to it, there was a long panoramic window that provided a clear view of the backyard. The snow was still piled up, so he couldn’t fully grasp the landscaping of the garden hidden beneath it, but he could clearly see that it was quite large, big enough to play ball in.

It was a house he could never afford even if he saved his meager, handful of a salary for his entire life. The gap was so immeasurably large that he didn’t even feel a sense of inferiority. Only the surprise that a day would come when he would get to see a house like this.

Then, a question suddenly arose about why Dylan had brought him here.

“Wait, Dylan. Weren’t we supposed to go to the ice rink?”

Dylan came up close behind Joeon, who was standing by the panoramic window, and placed a large palm on Joeon’s shoulder, who was wearing only a thin knit sweater. The hot body temperature and weight transmitted from it pressed down firmly on Joeon. The moment he flinched his shoulders from the tension, Dylan smiled brightly and, while still holding his shoulder, moved Joeon’s body to turn him in a different direction.

“Do you see that over there?”

A warm whisper was delivered from Dylan’s lips, which had come close to his ear. Joeon’s eyes widened as he examined a corner of the backyard where his gaze was directed. There was a facility enclosed by a white fence that would likely come up to at least his waist.

“No way… Is that an ice rink?”

“Yes. It’s just the two of us today.”

Aren’t you excited? Dylan, who asked that, looked much more excited.

“Wait, there’s something to do before we go.”

Dylan said, grabbing hold of Joeon, whose eyes were shining as if he were about to dash out onto the ice at any moment. Joeon followed behind him as he walked, stepping down a spiral staircase.

The lower floor, as is the case with most houses, was a ground floor with direct access to the backyard. The mansion itself was built on slightly sloped land, so the risk of flooding seemed low, but a ground floor directly connected to the backyard is prone to bugs coming in if not careful.

Fortunately, the McClain family’s new mansion was quite far from such worries. The marble laid on the floor was so smooth and shone so whitely that it seemed even bugs would be afraid to set foot on it.

The lower floor looked solely like a space for enjoying pleasure. On one side, a home bar and a pool table were installed, and a soft, wide sofa that seemed cozier than most beds and a huge screen were reminiscent of a typical playroom.

Dylan didn’t pay much attention to that area and walked down the hallway behind the home bar. It stretched in a straight line with several doors, and the two of them arrived at the very last room at the end of the hall. Just as he was thinking that the door was much wider and larger than the others, Dylan opened it wide to show him the inside.

It was a room that resembled a professional team’s locker room. It displayed Dylan’s hockey history just like a museum.

From the uniforms Dylan wore as a child to his helmet, skates, sticks, and protective gear. The size of the uniforms, differing in color and pattern, grew progressively larger to the right, eventually becoming the official uniform of the Toronto Polar Bears, the team he currently played for.

“Are all of these the uniforms and gear you wore?”

“Yes. My parents kept them without throwing them away and are storing them here.”

Dylan led Joeon, hiding a smile as if he were secretly embarrassed.

“More importantly, have a seat here.”

Joeon sat on the long bench in the middle of the room and just stared blankly at the equipment Dylan was bringing over in his arms. Although Joeon was still close to a novice when it came to hockey, it was clearly hockey equipment no matter how he looked at it.

“Hmm. This should be about right, I think?”

Dylan, who had placed the equipment on the floor and knelt on one knee in front of Joeon, took off Joeon’s slippers and touched the sole of his foot with his hand, muttering to himself. It seemed he was guessing the size.

“A generous 8 to 8.5 is plenty. They won’t fit perfectly anyway.”