Chapter 114: By fountain (12)
Part 23
“Come on in!”
“Looks like you guys started without me,” Yoonseo said.
“Started? We’re just warming up,” Seongyun replied.
“If my guess is right, you’re probably the only one who thinks that,” Yoonseo teased.
Chuckling at the laughter, Yoonseo walked leisurely toward the corner table, appreciating the consideration for her. Juyoung casually pulled out a chair, and she nodded lightly in thanks, a small smile on her face.
“I drank most of what we ordered. Six glasses, solo,” Seongyun bragged.
“Then what’s with these two passed out?” Yoonseo asked, pointing at Youngjin and Sihyun sprawled across the table.
Sitting down, her skeptical expression met Seongyun’s nonchalant shrug. She’d assumed they were paired up because they worked at the same bakery, but seeing them both drunk and collapsed side by side made her wonder if there was another reason.
“Weaklings. Embarrassingly so,” Seongyun said.
His cackle sparked muffled laughs among the sober ones. Seongyun’s claim of drinking most of the alcohol wasn’t a lie—Juyoung and Seokyun looked only slightly flushed, otherwise fine.
“I knew Youngjin was a lightweight, but Sihyun-ssi?” Yoonseo asked.
“No lie, just three glasses,” Seongyun said.
“Liar.”
“Crazy guy, I even clarified it’s not a lie!”
“No way there’s another person as bad with alcohol as Youngjin. That defies cosmic logic,” Seokyun chimed in.
The trio’s laughter-filled chatter turned into incomprehensible noise, blending with the chicken joint’s late-night clamor—meaningless TV static and faint music. What should’ve been annoying somehow felt… okay. Poking Youngjin’s squished cheek, Yoonseo got a groggy mumble and a twitch in response.
“Anything happen?” she asked.
“If by ‘anything,’ you mean what’s happening right now,” Juyoung replied.
Following his playful tone, Yoonseo saw Youngjin’s squirming drag Sihyun along, both collapsing into a heap on the sofa-like corner seat. Another wave of laughter erupted. Youngjin’s heavy, isn’t he? The amusing thought hit, but then she froze. Youngjin’s one thing, but Sihyun—won’t he flip out when he wakes up?
“…Sihyun-ssi looks heavy. Shouldn’t we help him up?” she suggested.
“Nah, people who don’t know their limits get filmed when they’re plastered and—huh? What’d you say?” Seongyun asked.
“Help him up. Youngjin seems fine, but Sihyun-ssi looks rough,” she repeated.
“They’ll just pass out again. Let ’em sleep it off,” Seongyun said.
I can’t exactly say Sihyun’s a former soprano, obviously a woman, and probably has the same condition as me—turned into a man. Keeping a strained smile to avoid suspicion, Yoonseo felt a growing sense of crisis. Sihyun’s contorted face looked ready to snap awake and ruin the mood.
“Still, if he’s drunk and throws up like that…”
“Yoonseo, sorry, but—” Juyoung interrupted.
“Huh?”
Only then did Juyoung, who’d been tossing out silly jokes amid the noise, speak carefully. His voice, no longer buoyed by alcohol, was closer to his usual calm tone. The sudden shift made Yoonseo stiffen, her gaze locking onto him.
A bitter smile. The overly excited vibe, which she’d chalked up to drinking, seemed to sink. The chicken joint’s noise remained loud, but—
“He told us everything. Drunk or not, I don’t know why. All of it,” Juyoung said.
His voice pierced through, clear as if fed through earphones.
Part 24
The earlier clamor felt like a dream as silence settled. Meaningless noises tickled her ears, but they were as good as nothing.
Freshly fried, sauced chicken arrived, but no one touched it. A faint call for more drinks—Juyoung’s or Seongyun’s, she wasn’t sure—faded into uncertainty.
Yoonseo stared at the cooling chicken. The occasional clink of glasses on the table echoed, but she wasn’t in the mood to drink.
“…What do you think he said?” Juyoung broke the silence, his voice as cautious as before.
Swirling his two-thirds-full beer glass aimlessly, he gave a bitter smile, glancing at the passed-out pair—likely at Sihyun.
“…About what?” Yoonseo asked.
“What do you think Sihyun-ssi told us?”
“About what, exactly?”
No answer came. Instead, his sad smile turned to her. Normally, Seokyun and Seongyun would be trading playful insults, but now they sipped quietly, their subtle glances at her impossible to miss.
“…That he used to be a woman,” Yoonseo ventured.
“Yeah,” Juyoung confirmed.
“That he’s rich, talented, with tons of connections—a golden spoon.”
“Yeah.”
“That too.”
“…Don’t tell me he said he’s interested in me,” she added, half-joking.
“Pfft,” Juyoung let out a dry laugh.
“Never mind, then.”
Her offhand remark got a nod, as if it were true. It was half a joke, but…
“…Seriously?”
“Not the kind of interest you’re thinking,” Juyoung clarified.
“Like?”
“Not love or like. Not that kind of interest. …Or maybe it’s because of some fondness.”
“What did he say?”
The biggest secret Yoonseo knew about Sihyun was his condition—likely the same as hers. She went from man to woman; he, from woman to man. Only she, the doctor, and his family knew. She didn’t know any secret bigger.
But Juyoung’s demeanor, as if it were no big deal, suggested he’d heard something massive, something acceptable but hard to empathize with. Not a suicide wish. Not family history. Then what?
“He seems meticulous and sharp, but he’s dense where it counts,” Seongyun said.
“Yoonseo’s always been like that. It’s a miracle Sihyun hasn’t caused a mess with that cluelessness,” Seokyun added.
Frowning at their cackles, Yoonseo saw them shrug as if they’d said nothing wrong, turning back to their drinks. Her gaze, unable to connect, closed with a sigh. Something happened.
“So, what is it? Stop dragging it out like a quiz show,” she pressed.
“Hm… It’s something we can understand but not relate to,” Juyoung said.
He sounded apologetic, his voice heavy, as if the alcohol had evaporated. Apologizing to whom? Sihyun? Her? Both?
“He said he was jealous of you. So jealous he wanted to ruin you. He envied what you have that he doesn’t, wanted you to lose it too,” Juyoung said.
His words felt like a betrayal of trust. The time spent together, their connections, the forced overlaps—it was as if those were being negated. Yet, oddly, she wasn’t angry. Maybe, deep down, she’d always suspected it.
“…I see,” she said.
“So, knowing you wouldn’t talk about him, he approached us pretending to be a guy, acting clueless to mess with our relationship with you. …Thinking back, some things make sense now,” Juyoung added.
“…But why now?”
Fine, she could accept that. That’s who Sihyun was—someone who acted on whims, driven by life’s impulses. Wanting to make others lose what he couldn’t have, consumed by jealousy, wasn’t out of character.
But why reveal it now? The Choi Sihyun she knew wasn’t clumsy enough to make such a fatal mistake, even drunk.
“No idea,” Juyoung said.
“What?”
“He didn’t say. It wasn’t like answering a question. He just rambled, drunk or not, spilling it all.”
Juyoung slowly lifted his glass. As if parched, he downed over half of what remained, foam clinging to the glass in a thin white ring.
“…But maybe, he realized it late,” Juyoung said.
Yoonseo didn’t believe in fate or gods, but in that moment, she wished an angel would descend to untangle this messy web of relationships.
“Behind ‘I want you to lose it’ lies ‘I want it too,’” Juyoung said.
“Beer tastes like crap, doesn’t it?”
Despite his words, Juyoung gulped down the last of his beer.