NHL 19

After scoring the goal, his gaze as he celebrated seemed to momentarily wander somewhere into the stands. The duration of his glance was not long, so Joeon completely ruled out the delusion that Dylan might have been looking for him.

That would be megalomania. Thinking that he had become something special just because he had shown a little interest was a huge miscalculation. Besides, Joeon had already rejected him. In such a situation, there was no act more futile than agonizing over his relationship with Dylan.

Perhaps, like most hot-blooded young men, he had just been swayed by a momentary curiosity or a pulse of lust and had nearly crossed the line by mistake. Dylan wasn’t the only person in existence who was like that.

Backgrounds—whether physical strength, wealth, or connections. Even in a society where cultures and races are diverse, the way boys determine their hierarchy is not much different, and Joeon was always treated as someone who could not fit into the mainstream. As a result, there were often people who misunderstood his sexual orientation.

Of course, there was definitely no one among them whose approach was as excessively affectionate and cautious as Dylan’s, which made him feel like he was being unwittingly swayed in a split-second moment.

In fact, Joeon could not quite grasp what exactly he had seen to misunderstand. His own polite pleasantries might have sounded ambiguous to the other person, but….

Even so, he judged that he had not appeared to be someone who openly liked men.

Before long, Joeon’s face was reflected on the monitor that had gone pitch black. It was a common face. He was merely an ordinary man with height and looks that reached the average, to say the least. While his personality was calm and quiet, that shouldn’t be a reason for his sexual identity to be questioned.

Joeon turned off his phone, vowing to ask why he had misunderstood if he were to ever meet Dylan again. Though for now, there was no way of knowing if such a day would ever return.

Around the time the afternoon began, the office started to get dark, and people appeared here and there, turning off lights and encouraging others to head home.

The vice president was one of them.

The most bustling moment of the day was when the vice president’s partner visited, personally pulling a large dog to take him home.

The backs of those “two men” and the one dog, which Joeon would have watched without any feeling until before, lingered strangely in his mind.

“Everyone, do head home. Have a happy holiday.”

Joeon, who never let his boss’s advice fall on deaf ears, also packed his bag and left the office early. The overcast sky was giving an indication that it would snow again.

Fortunately, the subway was empty, and Joeon traveled comfortably, sitting until the terminal station. Then, he waited for quite a while in the area where he transferred to the bus.

The world reflected through the windows, which were opaque with layers of grime as if they hadn’t been washed in a long time, looked blurry.

Even though buses decorated for the year-end atmosphere passed by in front of him, he didn’t feel elated. It was that kind of feeling—a period where one feels a distance, as if watching someone else’s festival, just like a colleague from India had said.

In that colleague’s case, it couldn’t be helped since the religion he believed in was completely different. On the other hand, Joeon was raised in a devout Catholic family. This is because Catholicism is the state religion in Spain.

“John! Welcome.”

As soon as he opened the door, Maya, his host mother with a substantial build, opened her arms wide to greet Joeon and gave him a cheek kiss.

His host mother, who started her studies by moving from Spain to Canada at a late age, married a host father with a receding hairline and gave birth to three children. And she took Joeon in as a boarder around the time the first and second children were old enough to attend school. It was when Joeon was still a high school student.

“Maya, you’re suffocating me.”

Joeon struggled to escape from Maya’s embrace. She was still as strong as a bull.

“My baby, you’ve grown a lot in the meantime.”

“Grown? Not really. I’m the same.”

“John, welcome.”

Isabella, Maya’s second child, greeted him by only turning her head while sitting on the sofa. Isabella, who had grown quite a bit in height since he last saw her, was still a teenager who looked like a baby. It seemed she might have reached puberty, but that appeared to still be resting on the first-born, Aaron, rather than Isabella.

Aaron, who had come out to the kitchen under the pretext of grabbing a bite to eat, opened the refrigerator door as if someone suffering from shyness and greeted him with a nod. To the awkward response, Joeon answered by nodding his head as well.

“John! John! I missed you!”

Ben, the youngest who had been sitting on the sofa with Isabella, ran out in his pajamas and welcomed Joeon. He, who had been a newborn baby when Joeon first started boarding at Maya’s house, had already become a child overflowing with mischievous energy.

“I missed you too, Ben. Have you been well?”

“Yes! I started playing hockey a little while ago. I have a helmet, a stick, and a uniform! Should I show you?”

Joeon, whose face stiffened for a moment at the word “hockey,” nodded and answered, “Sure, later.” Just then, Tony, who was coming up from the basement, discovered Joeon and began a welcome greeting with a hug, just as Maya had, and finished it with a cheek kiss.

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Tony.”

“We’ve taken in a new boarder on the second floor, so your room has been moved to the basement. I’ll introduce you at dinner time. For now, would it be okay if you used the basement?”

Even though it had been well over six years since Joeon became independent from Maya and Tony’s house, they still kept one room empty for him. They were also immigrants without a foundation and had three children to support, so they could have earned quite a tidy sum if they hadn’t left the room idle and kept taking in boarders as they used to, but they still did that.

In fact, Joeon hadn’t intended to stay long, so he wouldn’t have minded sleeping on the sofa. Somehow, he felt it would be best to convey that message before he left. That there would be no need to keep his space empty next time. Though the two would be saddened.

“Of course. Naturally. Thank you so much.”

“The room is across from Aaron’s room.”

“Yes. But, Tony. Next time….”

It was the moment Joeon was hesitating, about to say there was no need to keep his room empty. Suddenly, an arm popped out from somewhere.

“Ack, Aaron?”

“Excuse me. I’ll be borrowing John.”

Aaron cut between the two and headed toward the basement. At the same time, because he grabbed Joeon’s arm, who had been standing still, and pulled him toward himself, Joeon stumbled and was dragged away by him before he could finish what he was about to say to Tony. Tony, having witnessed the scene, scolded him fiercely.

“Aaron! What are you doing right now? John is talking to me right now.”

Joeon, suddenly caught between the two, waved his hands.

“It’s nothing, Tony. I’ll tell you later. Don’t worry about it!”

As Joeon, being dragged by Aaron, passed it off blandly as he always did, Tony seemed to take it as merely a mischievous prank between two brothers reunited after a long time, so he clicked his tongue lightly and turned away.

“Don’t bother John too much, Aaron!”

Aaron, who had led Joeon by his arm without answering, quickly climbed down the stairs to the basement.

“Wait, wait. Aaron. Let go of me and talk.”

“Oh, did it hurt? Sorry.”

Aaron, who had only shown a blunt side in front of his family, raised both hands into the air the moment they arrived at the small living room prepared in the basement.

He had followed Joeon well since he was little. Although they weren’t blood-related, he had opened his heart and gotten along like a friend, perhaps because he was the only one close to his age among the family members and they were the same gender.

“I have a song I just made this time. This one will be really good. I really want John to hear it before I upload the sample.”

It must have played a role that Joeon generously accepted his unique worldview of music that his family couldn’t understand. To express it precisely, it was because he didn’t show much resistance.

Aaron, who sat Joeon on the sofa, brought headphones and placed them on his ears. A heavy metal sound that seemed to tear his eardrums apart flowed out immediately. Joeon narrowed his brows and blinked his eyes.

“Wait, the sound is too loud.”