GBH 25

Se-kyung turned on the light in his room, tossed his bag onto the chair, and collapsed onto the bed. After lying motionless on the undulating mattress for a while, he finally turned over. His face, with long bangs scattered to the side revealing a slightly rounded forehead, still retained a youthful appearance. His eyes, blinking blankly at the ceiling with a face poised between adulthood and boyhood, gradually slowed their movement.

He was exhausted. Due to his sensitivity to sound, the study hall, constantly filled with the small noises of many students, grated on his nerves. He couldn’t study properly, resulting in more than two wrong answers on the March mock exam.

Yet, even putting grades aside, all he could think about was finding Song Yi-heon.

Not the Song Yi-heon who dominated the basketball court and mingled effortlessly with classmates, but the real Song Yi-heon who had come to him trembling and asking for help.

The reproachful gaze he had seen in the darkness, illuminated only by moonlight reflected in rainwater, remained etched in his mind. Se-kyung instinctively knew that he could only escape the quagmire of guilt by confirming the well-being of the Song Yi-heon who had asked for help.

“Haa.”

Se-kyung roughly loosened and pulled off his tie. As the red string that had caused slight friction against his collar wound around his palm. He stretched his hand toward the ceiling, letting the limp tie dangle, its tip tickling the corner of his mouth.

He swayed the tie idly, enjoying the sensation of the thick, folded fabric brushing his lips.

What did Song Yi-heon’s bare face look like when he showed up in front of his house on that rainy day? Se-kyung tried to recall. It was blurry with tears, but the eye shape itself seemed similar to the short-haired Song Yi-heon. Though the atmosphere was completely opposite, the similarity in eye shape made him uncertain.

At that moment, his phone vibrated in his pocket, snapping him out of his thoughts. Speak of the devil. Se-kyung pulled out his phone and saw a message from Song Yi-heon displayed on the screen.

[What are you doing?]

Se-kyung chuckled softly, imagining Song Yi-heon’s distinctive gruff tone even though he had only read the message. Before he could reply, wondering if the contact was out of genuine curiosity, the phone buzzed again with consecutive messages.

Two photos of math problems were sent. It seemed he had already started studying at home, less than an hour after the night study session ended, as the problems were from the part he had been struggling with earlier. A new message appeared.

[Solve these for me]

They were easy problems, solvable even while lying down using just the phone. However, Se-kyung’s hand hovered over the call button in the phone log instead of the messaging app. When there was no reply after checking the message, the phone vibrated once more.

[Are you sleeping?]

Finally, Se-kyung returned to the messaging app and wrote out the solutions to the math problems. Shortly after sending the brief explanations, the phone rang again.

[Thanks for your help]

The reply was clear and simple, leaving no room for further interpretation. Se-kyung stared at his phone, lost in thought. How should he respond? Normally, he would have exchanged a few formal pleasantries and ended the conversation, but this time he didn’t want to stop talking.

It was refreshing to talk to someone who understood him without needing everything spelled out, someone who didn’t suffocate him, someone with whom he didn’t have to pretend to be kind. Of course, it made sense that talking to this changed Song Yi-heon was enjoyable. His sleepy eyes became alert.

“Hm?”

Another message had arrived in the meantime. It was another image. Expecting another math problem, he checked it to find a photo of a scenic night sea. It seemed that Song Yi-heon, feeling both apologetic and thankful for asking him for help so late at night, had sent the photo as a gesture. The caption on the image read, “A beautiful night, thank you. Here’s to a beautiful life.” 

Se-kyung’s brow, which had been holding a faint smile, furrowed severely.

If he was going to pretend to be Song Yi-heon, he could at least do it properly…

What kind of high schooler sends something like this? It was exactly the sort of image his uncle, nearing fifty, would send on rare occasions—a cheesy picture of a field of flowers with captions like, “Love you,” or, “Be happy.”

Frustrated, Se-kyung glared at his phone screen before exiting the chat. He then entered the conversation with his uncle, scrolled through the images his uncle had sent, downloaded one that seemed fitting, and sent it to the detestable impostor pretending to be Song Yi-heon.

He threw the phone aside and tried to quell his annoyance. If the person was going to claim to be Song Yi-heon, they should at least act believably.

The vibration sound broke the silence of the room. Se-kyung swiftly sat up and grabbed his phone. However, he couldn’t hide his disappointment when it wasn’t from Song Yi-heon but someone else. Without checking the notification, Se-kyung collapsed back onto the bed.

In the silence, his steady breathing filled the room as he worked to regain his composure. However, before long, the phone vibrated again, Se-kyung snatched it up in a flash. As Song Yi-heon’s name appeared on the screen, his nerves bypassed his brain and moved his fingers on their own.

[Goodnight]

A single line message without even proper spacing. Despite the long wait, Se-kyung felt a strange sense of satisfaction from the brief and indifferent message. He found it absurd how this mere line made his chest feel tight. However, if it were an emotion that would disappear by denial, Se-kyung, who had lived suppressing his feelings, wouldn’t have noticed it in the first place.

The Choi Se-kyung who was forced to be kind and good didn’t exist when he was with Kim Deuk-pal. He had put aside pretending to be nice since he approached him to find Song Yi-heon, and even when pushed roughly, Kim Deuk-pal handled Se-kyung skillfully. Next to Kim Deuk-pal, who could handle his emotional outbursts, Se-kyung existed purely as himself.

“Ha, hahaha…”

He could no longer deny it. Choi Se-kyung was attracted to the changed Song Yi-heon. Not to the Song Yi-heon who had come trembling to Se-kyung’s house on a rainy day, but to the confident Song Yi-heon who dominated the basketball court. Se-kyung was so attracted to Song Yi-heon that he wanted to believe, like others said, that Song Yi-heon had simply changed rather than being replaced by someone else.

And that was why it irritated him so much when the new Song Yi-heon behaved differently from the old one. He wanted to believe they were the same person, but time and again, Song Yi-heon made it impossible. The sensitive Choi Se-kyung couldn’t ignore the gap between the two.

“Ah, I don’t know…”

Couldn’t he just pretend not to notice and let things stay this way? If he didn’t make a fuss, didn’t stand out… It was like the forbidden fruit—so tempting that he couldn’t help but reach for it. All he wanted was to sit back and enjoy the sweet fruit without struggling. It was easy—no fighting, no digging up the past winter. If he could just forget…

As Se-kyung was recalling the comfort of the time spent with Kim Deuk-pal, he suddenly sat up. His heart, which had gone cold as if doused with cold water, soon began to beat rapidly. He couldn’t believe he had been swayed by temptation.

No.

He couldn’t give up on him—the boy who had trembled while making clumsy threats in the rain. Se-kyung couldn’t abandon him either.

The changed Song Yi-heon had told him to wait, but Se-kyung couldn’t wait. Before he fell completely for the changed Song Yi-heon, he had to find the original Song Yi-heon.

He was willing to do whatever it took to find the real Song Yi-heon.

* * *

Outside the window, the shouts of students in PE class rang like a lullaby. Song Yi-heon, sitting in a corner of the art room, was dozing off behind a big guy, holding a 4B pencil. Every time his head nodded, short lines were drawn on the sketchbook, until the bell signaling the end of class rang, startling him and causing a thick line to be drawn across the page.

“Yawn~”

Kim Deuk-pal stretched as he got up. Despite his teenage stamina, he was drowsy from not sleeping properly for the past few days while preparing for midterms. He rubbed his eyes roughly and followed his classmates out, carrying his sketchbook.

“They say it’s going to rain tonight, did you bring an umbrella?”

“Oh no, I didn’t. Don’t you think it’ll stop by the time night study is over?”

Kim Deuk-pal arrived late, walking leisurely while listening to other students’ conversations. However, when he sensed the stirring atmosphere in the classroom, his languid steps became alert. The source of the commotion was a group of girls gathered at the lockers at the back of the classroom. He grabbed the nearest person and asked,

“What happened?”

“Apparently, the money collected for buying English supplementary textbooks has disappeared.”

“How did it disappear?”

“Don’t know. It seems it’s gone from where it was kept in the locker.”

The vice class president, Kim Yeon-ji, had collected 10,000 won from each student to order English supplementary textbooks as a group. Song Yi-heon, her desk mate, was the first to pay due to Yeon-ji’s nagging, and he often saw Yeon-ji collecting money from students and putting it in an envelope. This morning, she had said she would go to the bookstore after school to place the order, so it seemed she had brought all the collected money and put it in her locker.

When Kim Deuk-pal made his way through the crowd to the back of the classroom, Kim Yeon-ji was searching through everything she had taken out of her locker. But despite thoroughly searching, the money envelope didn’t appear. She even shook books upside down, but only dust fell out.

“Didn’t you put it somewhere else?”

A student who had been watching Kim Yeon-ji rummage through her locker from the start questioned her. The tone suggested it was suspicious that only the money envelope was missing while the lock on the locker was intact.

“My friends saw me put it inside the locker and lock it…”

“That’s right, we saw it.”

Yeon-ji’s friends defended her statement, her voice trembling finely as if she was about to cry. The only people who knew the combination to Kim Yeon-ji’s locker were her close friends and Song Yi-heon. Her friends had been with Yeon-ji continuously from when they went to the art room until now, so they couldn’t be the culprits, which left…

“What.”

Kim Deuk-pal countered the suspicious glances focused on him with a single syllable. The students, cowed by his fierce demeanor, looked away.

“No. Yi-heon isn’t that kind of person.”

The other students soon agreed with Kim Yeon-ji’s assertion. They recognized the luxury sedan Song Yi-heon used for commuting and the expensive personal items he carelessly used. Song Yi-heon, who frequently visited the school store and monopolized the affection of the store lady, had treated every student he met there to snacks. He was definitely not someone short on money.

“It’s my fault. I should have been more careful with such a large amount.”

As suspicion turned towards a classmate, Kim Yeon-ji blamed herself, and her friends offered excuses to alleviate her responsibility.

“How could you have prevented it if someone was determined to steal it?”

“Let’s tell the homeroom teacher first. Where’s Se-kyung?”

Choi Se-kyung, the class president, was nowhere to be seen despite the crisis. It seemed they would settle on finding Se-kyung and going to the homeroom teacher. That is, if it weren’t for someone’s suspicious comment.

“…Did Hong Jae-min come to school today?”

The students fell silent. But the meaning hidden in their silence was the same. The class turned to look at Hong Jae-min’s desk at the end of the fourth row, where only an empty bag was hanging.

“He didn’t come to the art room”