Chapter 19 (2/2)

“Well, it’s not like I want to do that to you.”

Shit. They could almost hear Myo Cheong cursing. Myohan put a hand on his shoulder and smiled with ease, just like O Shin. Jagyeom mouthed what he was about to say.

“Then you should help, right?”

Wow, so evil. Jagyeom muttered. Myohan had gone down to O Shin’s level already.

***

“You’re going to sleep?”

It’d been a long day. Myohan almost got beaten up by bullies, did a play, and caught the rabbit. Tiredness took over him the moment he entered his home.

Myohan didn’t say anything. O Shin, who had followed him in as if it had been his home, came. Myohan, who was lying on the sofa, felt his presence and opened his eyes. On his stomach was the kitten he had saved a while ago, fast asleep.

“What?”

O Shin didn’t say anything. Instead, he sat in front of Myohan. Myohan didn’t like the way he was looking at him, so he got up carefully so that the kitten wouldn’t fall.

“What is it about?”

He had been like that for a few hours. More exactly, ever since he saw Myo Cheong had transformed. He kept looking at Myohan, craving something. When Myohan waited for him to speak, he said nothing, and when Myohan kept staring at him, he looked away, pretending it was nothing.

As it was in Myohan’s nature to not like ambiguity, he felt like going crazy. But yet again, O Shin quietly looked at him. And then, he suddenly put a hand on Myohan’s cheek.

“O Myohan.”

His hand made Myohan feel ticklish. He carefully caressed his face and slowly asked, “What were you going to do if you had been wrong?”

Myohan narrowed his eyes, trying to guess what he meant by the question. He was now touching one of Myohan’s ears now.

“What if Myo Cheong hadn’t been the rabbit?”

The man sometimes touched Myohan liked that. He caressed him as if it was only natural. Myohan couldn’t understand it, but what he couldn’t understand even more was himself not refusing his hand.

“What if the kiss hadn’t turned him into a rabbit?”

Their eyes met, O Shin’s thirst more serious than ever.

“What would you have done?”

“I couldn’t have been wrong.”

It felt so strange. Talking while looking into each other’s eyes wasn’t awkward at all. Myohan looked down from the binding gaze.

“It was you who told me so.”

When they first met, Myohan had said, ‘I’ll help you, even I can’t trust you.’ So, what he was saying now didn’t make sense.

“And, even if it was wrong…”

Myohan just placed his trust O Shin without even realizing it. He had accepted his words and even carried them out. He had done it only because he trusted O Shin’s words to trust his own guts.

Provoking Myo Cheong, picking a fight with the bullies, kissing for the first time in his life. How had all of that been possible? O Shin had lied to him only about one thing. But how could he be so sure of it?

“I don’t give much shit to kissing.”

The experience of the moment when the soul leaves the body? Bullshit. While Myohan kissed Myo Cheong and put his tongue in, he hadn’t gotten any kind of feeling. To think about it, even Sajun had kissed him. Myohan knew himself to be quite dull, but there was no reason to take a kiss so seriously.

“Really?”

O Shin wasn’t smiling. Normally, he would have looked at Myohan and smiled, but now he was serious. His hand moved from Myohan’s ear to the back of his head. He rubbed his hair like caressing a small animal, and then he fixed his gaze on Myohan’s lips.

Myohan couldn’t know why, but he thought, O Shin was about to close his eyes, come closer, and their lips were about to meet. He slowly closed his eyes. O Shin whispered, “I guess Plato was a liar.”

It felt like a dream. O Shin tilted his head right where they could feel each other’s breath, and their breaths actually met.