NCBF Ch 3

“No. PE usually cancels all the rest of the class and gives free time anyway.”

“You’ll get in trouble if you get caught.”

“If they scold me, I’ll just get scolded. Is that scary? You being sick is scarier. Did you take the medicine?”

“Yeah. I’m feeling okay now.”

Hyun Gyujin, who roughly stuffed his phone into his pocket, took Yuwon’s hand resting on the bed. It wasn’t extremely warm, but seeing that it wasn’t cold either, it seemed he definitely didn’t have indigestion.

“…”

Watching Hyun Gyujin knead his hand, Yuwon felt heat rising to the back of his neck again and subtly pulled his hand away. Even watching Hyun Gyujin from afar felt strange, but seeing the guy right before his eyes and even being touched, it felt like his heart was truly about to burst.

“Can you do tutoring today?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. Did you finish all your homework?”

“No.”

Yuwon, who looked flabbergasted at Hyun Gyujin saying he hadn’t done it so proudly, shook his head. It must be hard to fail to do it every single time like this, but he sure was consistent.

“Why do you even take tutoring? When you don’t even do the homework.”

“Because you do it.”

It was a casual tone as if asking why he was even asking such an obvious thing, but Yuwon had to face his heart dropping with a thud once again at Hyun Gyujin’s unexpected answer. Today was definitely a very strange day.

“Ah, Auntie made big news in the articles.”

Hyun Gyujin, who picked up his phone, showed Yuwon the article that popped up on the portal main page. To be honest, there was also a reason he was trying to change the subject. It was because he knew he was right on the brink of being scolded by Yuwon, saying that since it was a lesson paid for with money and time invested by the teacher, he had to attend diligently.

“Mom turned out really pretty in the photo.”

“When did she say filming finishes?”

“Filming started a bit late, so I think they’re filming episode 8 now. It’s a 24-episode show, so since it’s episode 8 now…. It’ll take a few more months, right?”

Hyun Gyujin, who thought he should take care of Yuwon even more than now for a while, touched his slightly messy bangs after Yuwon sat up from lying down.

“…”

As a hand much larger than his approached and moved in front of his eyes, Yuwon flinched his shoulders without realizing it. Even though his eyes couldn’t focus well on the hand because it was too close, his heart began to beat wildly as if something had gone wrong.

“Let’s… go now.”

“There’s still about 10 minutes left though.”

“I want to drink milk. Banana milk.”

“Let’s go, to the snack bar.”

Yuwon, who got off the bed and put his feet into his slippers, tidied up his spot. Even at Hyun Gyujin’s touch touching his hair to see if the back of his head was messy, his lips kept drying up and his mood felt strange.

Yuwon was conscious of Hyun Gyujin all the way to the snack bar after leaving the nurse’s office. Even the sound of Hyun Gyujin unzipping his PE uniform or dragging his slippers all entered his ears differently than before, making his head feel crowded.

“How come you two are together during class? Did you ditch?”

“Mm, something like that. It’s PE free time.”

Hyun Gyujin, who responded to the snack bar lady’s friendly voice, picked up a banana milk and the lemon-flavored caramel that Yuwon liked. Then he also paid again for the chocolate milk he had tried to drink earlier but couldn’t because of that crazy bastard.

“If you stick together like that, don’t you fight?”

“We don’t fight. Because I lose to Jeong Yuwon in everything.”

“Really? We should hear Yuwon’s side of the story for that.”

Hyun Gyujin, who handed the banana milk to Yuwon with a thin straw inserted, laughed lightly and waited for Yuwon’s answer.

Yuwon, with the straw in his mouth, pondered deeply and soon nodded his head. He didn’t feel the slightest urge to dispute the claim that Hyun Gyujin let him win everything.

“Mm, I think so. But in the first place, there’s hardly anything to fight about. As long as Hyun Gyujin doesn’t play pranks.”

The snack bar lady, who was looking affectionately at Yuwon answering while sipping the banana milk, gave a hamburger-shaped jelly to Yuwon, and lifted one more to give to Hyun Gyujin as well.

“Thank youuu.”

Yuwon, who greeted her with a smile, left the snack bar. Hyun Gyujin followed behind him and put the hamburger-shaped jelly into Yuwon’s pocket along with the lemon-flavored caramel. He himself didn’t really like the squishy texture of jelly, but Yuwon loved anything as long as it was jelly. To the extent that his desk drawer was fully stocked by flavor and shape.

“Looks delicious.”

Yuwon, who opened the hamburger box-shaped plastic, took a bite of the jelly as if eating a real burger.

“Does that actually taste like a hamburger?”

“No, just a delicious jelly taste.”

“What, that’s a scam. The taste should taste like a hamburger too.”

“Then it would taste bad.”

Yuwon, who ate the hamburger jelly in three bites, sucked in another sip of the banana milk. Perhaps because the jelly was sweet, he couldn’t really taste the banana milk well, but still, eating his favorite sweet things definitely made him feel better.

Yuwon, who glanced at Hyun Gyujin naturally taking his position behind him before crossing the overpass and going up the stairs, moved his feet. Once in the past, on a day he had a severe cold, he had felt dizzy while going up the stairs and tumbled down, and ever since then, Hyun Gyujin always walked behind him like this whenever they went up the stairs. So that he could catch him immediately whenever he fell.

Normally, he only felt grateful, thinking he was very thoughtful, but today, just thinking that Hyun Gyujin was behind him made his fingertips tingle, and his heart thudded. Yuwon secretly pressed his palm firmly against his heart, which even felt sore.

Entering the classroom where no one was present yet, Yuwon sat in his seat in the third row and took out his 6th period textbook. Then he took out the worksheet he had to solve by tonight’s tutoring time.

“You hurry up and go solve it too.”

“It’s a hassle.”

“It’s a waste of money. And a waste of time.”

“Ah, I don’t know. Why go all the way over there.”

“Then starting next month, I’ll just do it alone. You don’t really like tutoring, so there’s no need to force yourself because of me. I’ll tell Auntie. That you won’t do it starting next month….”

“Ah, you’re seriously fucking good at blackmailing, really. I’ll solve it, I’ll solve it. I just have to solve it, right.”

Hyun Gyujin, shaking his head, returned to his seat at the very end of the same row as Yuwon. He wanted to sit next to Yuwon or right behind him, but because he was so tall and large in frame, the homeroom teacher said it would be better to sit in the back rather than sitting too far front, so he had no choice but to sit at the very back.

He tried to appeal that his legs were long so his seated height wasn’t tall enough to bother the person behind him, but the homeroom teacher didn’t listen. That’s why Hyun Gyujin disliked the homeroom teacher.

Honestly, it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t do things like tutoring, and it wouldn’t matter even more if he didn’t do homework and such, but strangely, he couldn’t budge against Yuwon’s words. If it were anyone else, he would have just flipped the middle finger and ended the situation by telling them not to raise hell whether he was wasting time, money, or whatever, but when it came to Yuwon’s words, he ended up at least pretending to listen.

Of course, thoughts like raising hell or whatever didn’t even cross his mind. How could he have such rough thoughts toward that small, weak kid who looked like he would fall over if flicked? To Hyun Gyujin, Jeong Yuwon was a being he had to protect by putting everything he had on the line.

“Ah, seriously fucking exhausting.”

As soon as he took out the worksheet given by the tutor, exhaustion rushed in. Hyun Gyujin solved the problems while leaning his head crookedly on one hand. It was just that he hated solving them, but once he actually did, he performed better than anyone, so he didn’t feel much difficulty in the solving itself. He just hated doing it.

“What are you doing? Studying all of a sudden?”

Kim Junjae, who came in after PE ended, rested his hand on Hyun Gyujin’s shoulder and looked down at the worksheet where numbers were wildly flying around.

“Because there’s tutoring today.”

“You’ve become a total loser. Doing homework dutifully just because of tutoring.”

“Did you just call Jeong Yuwon a loser?”

Kim Junjae, flustered by Hyun Gyujin interpreting it strangely when he hadn’t meant it in that way, knocked on the desk for no reason. Hyun Gyujin had a tendency to overreact to anything regarding Jeong Yuwon, whether it was a joke, a slip of the tongue, or sincere. It was an exceptional, extreme, and truly sickening degree of friendship.

“I’m talking about you, you. Spacey-Yuwon is originally a diligent, upright, and kind person, so what kind of wind blew into you when you’re usually not like that.”

“He said he won’t do tutoring with me if I don’t do it.”

“Spacey-Yuwon did?”

“Yeah.”

“Then isn’t that a good thing? You said you didn’t want to do it.”

“Piss off.”

Kim Junjae, who looked at Hyun Gyujin scribbling numbers horribly with a face saying he hated doing it to death as if he were amazing, patted the outside of his school uniform jacket’s inner pocket with his palm. At that touch, the pack of cigarettes inside rustled.