NHL 73

Joeon, who had been subtly expressing his dissatisfaction for a while, shut his mouth tight at Dylan’s rebuke. Dylan turned his body completely toward Joeon, rested his arm on the back of the sofa, and leaned in close.

“Look here, Joeon Song.”

Dylan let out a long sigh and suppressed the surging emotions along with it. Having regained his composure, he fidgeted with his fingers over the hem of Joeon’s shirt, which was fluttering over his thighs, and said,

“I told you. I’m on your side.”

“…”

“I want to help you. And this amount is nothing difficult for me at all. I don’t understand why you’re trying to take the long way around when there’s an easy path.”

“I’m doing it because… I’ll have too much to pay back later.”

“Pay back? This is me paying back the ‘debt I owe you.’ You act like an adult wearing a mask when you want to seem innocent, but when you actually need to be shrewd, you act naive.”

Whether it was because of what Dylan’s cold-headed assessment brought to mind or because of the insult, the auricles of Joeon’s ears turned bright red.

“Think about useless things later. You have more important things to do.”

Joeon looked down at the end of his cheap shirt that Dylan was toying with and thought. What were the things more important to him?

“Problems that are more important in your life. Let’s solve those first. I’ll be your cheerleader right here.”

“I am….”

Dylan, having read Joeon’s burden once again, said what the other person would want to hear, even if he still didn’t want to.

“Only until you’re ready. You won’t say you don’t want that either, right?”

Having set the condition, Dylan immediately fell into a dilemma. Should he cheer for Joeon, or should he not?

“And take it, because it’s truly fair. Otherwise, you might have to hire a lawyer.”

“What are you going to sue me for? For not accepting the money you’re giving me?”

“No. I’ll be needing a lawyer because I’ll be turning myself in for stealing someone else’s passport.”

“…Phew. All right.”

Unable to defeat Dylan, who spoke with the intention of never backing down, Joeon gave up shortly after. Dylan closed the checkbook and tossed it aside, acting as if he had no intention of rewriting the check. As he leaned sideways against the back of the sofa, the distance between them became quite close. Joeon subtly pushed his body back to maintain some distance.

“Joeon, is your precision with calculations an occupational disease?”

He asked in a soft voice, but it was a question hidden with a rather sharp thorn. Joeon chuckled as he folded the check and put it in his pocket.

“Maybe. Or….”

Trailing off, he groaned a low “Umm,” as if wandering somewhere in the past he was recalling.

“Or?”

Joeon looked up. He was watching the expression of the person waiting patiently for him to finish his sentence, reading the room. The conflict of someone who never bares his inner feelings to others was laid bare. When Dylan shrugged his shoulders as if to say he could wait, Joeon’s hesitant lips finally parted.

“People are bound to adapt to their environment. Perhaps I’ve just become too accustomed to such an environment.”

“So, it is an occupational disease?”

“No. It’s not so much that, but….”

Joeon shook his head with a smile and managed to speak.

“Human relationships are ultimately transactions. It wouldn’t matter if the size of the help or the size of the heart were equal, but as you live, an imbalance eventually arises. I generally haven’t had anything to help or pay back the other person with. I didn’t have anything….”

“Then do you want to pay me back with your body?”

“…What?”

“I’m joking.”

Joeon punched Dylan in the chest with his fist. Dylan clutched his solar plexus with his palm and collapsed forward. Making a groaning sound as if he were pretending to fall from pain, he sneakily laid his head on Joeon’s thighs and looked up at him. His very natural demeanor made Joeon confused. Trying hard not to overreact, he continued.

“Anyway, I think it’s because of the environment I grew up in. It’s because many people employed by the house came and went since I was young. It was like that even after I grew up. My parents were people who lacked nothing financially. Even though there is no tipping culture in Korea, my parents would often give tips to people when they experienced generous service outside. So, naturally, I….”

“So you’re saying you thought there would be other expectations behind the reason why people were kind to you.”

“That’s about it.”

Dylan stared at Joeon’s jawline, which looked even prettier when viewed from below, and asked.

“If so, that’s even stranger.”

Dylan was not someone who lacked financial resources, and Joeon was well aware of that.

“…”

Then, what kind of compensation did I expect from you when I gave you that money?

Dylan, lost in thought as if self-deriding, suddenly swallowed an expletive and jolted upright. Surely, it couldn’t be that. It shouldn’t be.

Joeon stared at Dylan’s stiff back for a moment, then rose from the sofa.

This is not good. Dylan had a tendency to have too much physical contact, even with his male friends. If he got swept up in that, it would just be a repeat of the same thing. Remembering the worst-case scenario that his ambiguous attitude could trigger, Joeon made a cold decision.

“H-ha, anyway, I’ll look into the lease agreement myself. Since this amount is excessive, I’ll use it to pay the rent.”

Joeon ran into his room as if fleeing. Even after hearing the sound of the door closing, Dylan could not lift his head.

I shouldn’t have even made that trashy joke. Hiding his flushed cheeks under his palms, Dylan fell into self-loathing.

If he’s finding my kindness so burdensome because he thinks I’m after his body…. Just how much of a piece of trash did he think I was?

This was a level of treatment that Dylan deserved to feel insulted by. But at the same time, he was secretly intrigued.

‘Maybe I am a piece of trash….’

But more than that, his heart ached when he thought of Joeon, who must have struggled to figure out the inner thoughts and expectations of others every single time.

Judging by his refusal and his insistence on paying monthly rent to return the money somehow, there didn’t seem to be any sign of Joeon maintaining the same relationship as before. A shadow of disappointment fell over Dylan’s face as he held his forehead.

It seems I’ve been dumped again, just now, without even having confessed.

🏒🥅

「A friend request has arrived.」

The notification vibrated briefly. The library was quiet with no one talking, but the sound of the phone vibrating wasn’t enough to be a nuisance.

Joeon, who had been staring at the monitor for a long time with his laptop in front of him, tapped his stiff shoulders and turned his head. A notification from a social media app he barely used appeared on his phone, which was connected to the library Wi-Fi. Pressing the message with a tilted head, Joeon found himself letting out a deflated smile.

Is it okay for someone who should be focused on training right now to be doing social media? Contrary to his useless worries, Dylan was the type of person who could get his work done in an amazing way. Therefore, Joeon only needed to worry about his own future.

“Yeah, look who’s talking.”

Joeon, who pressed the accept button with a look of absurdity, turned his gaze back to the monitor. There was his resume, summarizing his short career thus far.

He didn’t even list the jobs he quit after moving regions. He hadn’t learned anything properly, and if the interviewer asked any questions about them, he would have had to recall memories he didn’t want to think about.

The coworkers who treated him like an invisible person, the others who took the side of the wrongdoer and covered for him just because they had deep ties to him instead of pointing out what was wrong, and the superior who said they wanted to get along well but couldn’t mediate the personal grudges that had piled up one by one.

It didn’t even take a month for him to realize that the choice he had made was completely wrong.

Joeon was puzzled. They had never had a proper conversation, so what kind of personal grudges had built up? He could have confronted them, told them to express their complaints in words if they had any.