There were two colors of the jumper made with microfiber: beige and khaki. Cheon Sejoo stared at them for a moment, then picked the beige one, thinking of Sejin’s delicate, pretty face. The bright tone seemed like it would suit Sejin well.
He returned home carrying the jumper. As soon as he stepped through the door, he suddenly found himself wondering—how was he supposed to give it to him? Kwon Sejin had softened a fair bit compared to how he was at first, but even so, he didn’t seem like the kind of person who would just accept such an expensive gift without hesitation.
He couldn’t exactly force him to accept a present, and if he brought up Kim Hyunkyung, the thin layer of trust that had just barely formed might shoot right back up into full-blown defense. Sejoo was human, too—he didn’t like it when someone living under the same roof kept lashing out at him for no reason.
Still caught up in those thoughts, he stepped into the living room—only to be greeted by Sejin, who was setting the table for dinner. As Sejin turned his head to acknowledge him, then quietly went back to stirring something in the pan, Sejoo watched his back for a moment in silence before walking over to him.
“Kwon Sejin.”
When he called his name, Sejin turned to look. Aware of that gaze on him, Sejoo reached into the shopping bag and pulled out the padded jumper. Sejin, frowning like he’d just been dragged into an impromptu fashion show, watched as Sejoo forced his arm into the jumper that was clearly a size too small for him.
“I got this as a gift. What do you think?”
“……”
Of course, his expression didn’t look pleased. Sejin stared at the beige jumper—whose zipper wouldn’t even close, with sleeves that left nearly ten centimeters of his wrists exposed—and remarked dryly,
“Did you pick that up off the street?”
“……”
“Whoever gave you that clearly doesn’t like you very much. Don’t even know the recipient’s size?”
The critique was ruthless. Not at all what Sejoo had expected to hear. He twitched an eyebrow and took the jacket off. Still, the goal was achieved. It was now the perfect setup to hand it over.
“Yeah, guess it doesn’t fit. Can’t throw it away either… want it?”
Sejin, who had been squeezing mayo onto the rolled omelet, flicked his eyes up in surprise and turned his head. His hand kept rotating the omelet in the pan, but his clear eyes swept across Sejoo’s shameless face.
“……”
“If you’re not gonna wear it, toss it.”
The man said it like it was nothing, without even a trace of regret. And yet Sejin could tell—easily—that it was a lie. There was no way someone had bought Sejoo a puffy jacket designed for teenagers. And Sejoo didn’t strike him as the type to bring something home without even checking the size.
He’d clearly brought it intending to give it to Sejin.
Knowing that made Sejin bite his lip in hesitation.
From the moment that man had taken him to the hospital—or no, from the moment this strange cohabitation had begun and kept dragging on—he found himself leaning on Sejoo more and more. That maybe, just maybe, this man was different from his father or uncle. That this punk-looking guy might actually be the first responsible adult male to ever appear in his life. That maybe, until he was truly old enough to be on his own, he could stay here comfortably.
He’d tried so hard to suppress that hope, again and again—but now, it was getting difficult. No matter what kind of background that man had, Sejin couldn’t help but think that maybe he really was different from those other adults. He couldn’t hide that hope anymore.
“…Yeah. I’ll wear it.”
Sejin barely managed to get the words out. At that, Sejoo raised one corner of his mouth and held the jumper up under Sejin’s chin. Just as he’d expected—the beige jumper looked perfect on Sejin.
That gift marked a turning point. It felt like Cheon Sejoo and Kwon Sejin had taken one step forward. The atmosphere between them grew a little softer, and they no longer found each other uncomfortable to be around.
And so time passed, into December—early winter, when the wind turned razor-sharp and seemed to cut right through the skin.
On Monday morning, just like always, Sejin woke up, tidied his bedding, and headed into the living room. He made a protein shake for Sejoo, who never ate breakfast, then set his own rice and side dishes on the table.
Not long ago, they’d bought a high chair, and now both of them ate not on the floor but at the island counter. Still drowsy, Sejin sat at the table and started eating. Not long after, Sejoo returned from his workout, his body still radiating heat.
The white T-shirt he was wearing was damp with sweat, both front and back. Sejin, watching him pant from exertion, pushed the protein shake toward his side of the table. Sejoo opened the fridge, took out a bottle of water, and downed it. Then he leaned on the seat across from Sejin.
“Did you memorize all the words?”
That was the first thing out of Sejoo’s mouth. Every morning, it was routine for him to check on Sejin’s study progress. Without replying, Sejin nodded. He’d already memorized the words Sejoo had given him two days ago. They were a bit confusing, but with only twenty words, it hadn’t taken long.
He wasn’t dumb—just uneducated. Cheon Sejoo might never believe it, but that was how Sejin saw himself.
As he nodded, Sejoo reached over as if to pat his head. Sejin jerked his head to the side to avoid the hand, then glared at him.
“Don’t touch my hair.”
“I’m just curious how heavy it’s gotten. Yesterday it felt kinda light. Maybe today it’s gone up by a gram?”
“……”
He was calling him an airhead in the most roundabout way possible. Sejin clenched his teeth to keep from reacting. But there was no stopping the irritation. He shoveled rice into his mouth and stuffed in side dishes with quick, angry motions. After a rough rinse, he tossed his dishes into the dishwasher and turned to leave. As he passed by, Sejoo reached out again like he was going to ruffle his hair. Sejin smacked the back of his hand away and went to change into his school uniform.
By the time Sejin came out wearing his winter uniform and the puffy jumper over it, Sejoo was already dressed in a suit, perched on the edge of the sofa. His appearance wasn’t much different from the day they first met. But with that cool, sharply defined face, and the tailored suit layered with a coat, he looked like someone you might mistake for a movie star at a glance.
Sejin bit his lip as he looked at the man, who hadn’t noticed him and was just staring blankly at the floor. When he smiled that smug, mocking smile, he was the most annoying person in the world—but when he stood there alone like that, he felt completely different. Unreal. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
When Sejoo was alone, he always looked like that.
As if only the area around him had lost color. As if he were the only one glowing in the dark. A surreal sight.
The man—Cheon Sejoo—was truly a strange person. At least, that’s how Sejin felt.
His first impression of him had been nothing more than that of a thug—a useless punk the world didn’t need. The way he looked down on others, treated people’s resistance as nothing… Sejin had just thought of him as a rich, arrogant bastard.
But ever since he’d moved into his house under what could only be described as a threat—however veiled—Sejin had found himself questioning things. Was this man really the kind of lowlife who bullied others and squeezed them for cash?
Because at home, his behavior was nothing like what Sejin had seen outside.
At home, the man mostly just lay down.
Weekdays or weekends, once he ate, he would sprawl out on the sofa like someone with absolutely no desire to do anything. He only got up to drink water, use the bathroom, or when it was time to teach Sejin something. Once Sejin started working on problems, he would lie back down again and stare into space, doing absolutely nothing. At home, he was the very image of lethargy.
The man was handsome like a movie star. Hard to believe, but when he taught, he even seemed smarter than most people. He wasn’t the crude, ignorant thug Sejin had imagined. He didn’t look down on others or mock them without cause. When they’d gone to the department store, Sejin had felt it—how he tried to be considerate to everyone around him.
The man only acted like a thug when Sejin refused to listen to him. When he wouldn’t eat. When he tried to keep sleeping outside like a vagrant instead of coming home. When he didn’t want to study.
So it was only natural for Sejin to start wondering.
What does that man even do? Is he really a gangster?
Sejin’s curiosity grew.
Whenever the man went out, he wore a suit—no tie. That outfit was exactly the same as the ones Sejin had seen countless times while camping outside the Shinsa Capital building. Every single one of the gangsters there dressed the same way.
So the man seemed like one of them, without a doubt. But whenever Sejin saw him standing there alone, dressed in that suit and draped in a coat, those thoughts vanished without a trace.
Standing still with that blank face, the man looked less like a thug and more like an actor pretending to be one. Like someone who would snap back to himself with a bright smile the moment someone clapped the slate board and said, “Cut!”
Lost in those absurd thoughts, Sejin suddenly felt uncomfortable and twisted his lips. He erased the nonsense from his head and instead recalled the sight of men bowing to Sejoo at a perfect ninety degrees in front of Shinsa Capital.
If humanity had to be divided into good people and bad, the man would definitely belong to the latter. And yet Sejin kept finding himself idealizing him just because he’d been a little kind. The thought made him feel pathetic. He shouted toward the man.
“Aren’t we going?”
The sharp voice broke the silence. The image of the man standing alone snapped into focus, and the faded colors of the moment returned to vivid life. Now he looked like someone who belonged in this world again. Sejin walked past him and headed to the front door first. He could feel the man silently following behind.
The walk to school was as quiet as ever. The man occasionally quizzed Sejin on what he’d taught him. Sejin only answered the things he knew and stayed silent on the things he didn’t. At times like that, the man would nod and say, You’re finally starting to reach human level, then sigh like he was looking at some primitive ape.
It was when the car stopped in front of Dongseoul Boys’ High that the man reached out toward Sejin again.
While waiting for him to unlock the doors, Sejin noticed the man staring at him. Then suddenly, the hand that had been on the steering wheel reached out.
Lately, the man had been trying to touch Sejin’s head more and more. Every time, it made Sejin feel weird. There was something off about the way the man’s hand gently stroked his hair, like it was some benevolent thing.
Thinking he was doing it again, Sejin tried to swat it away—but this time, the man’s hand went not to his hair, but to his forehead.
“……”
The cold palm brushed aside his bangs and landed on his forehead. Startled, Sejin looked up—saw the man’s large, long hand quietly resting on his head as if checking for a fever. Sejin stared up at him in silence, unable to speak. That sharply handsome face was slightly tilted toward him.
“You feel like you’ve got a fever.”
The man withdrew his hand after a moment and spoke. Fever? Sejin blinked slowly. He hadn’t felt anything like that. But the man frowned slightly and reached out again, flicking the tip of Sejin’s earlobe.
It hurt.
“Your ears are red too. Not a high fever… about 37.6.”
“What the hell. You think you’re a doctor?”
“I’m serious. What if you catch a cold again?”
His tone was unusually serious. Sejin shook his head, thinking no way. He didn’t feel feverish, and the fact that this man was suddenly playing doctor was just… ridiculous.
Seeing his reaction, Cheon Sejoo clicked his tongue like he’d expected not to be believed, then finally unlocked the doors. As Sejin got out without a word, Sejoo called out behind him:
“Kwon Sejin. If you wanna see your mom, you better memorize all thirty words.”
“…Got it!”
Irritated, Sejin snapped back at the nagging voice and slammed the SUV door shut. He slung his backpack over his shoulder, ignoring the stares of the other students, and walked into school.
It had been two months since Sejin started living at the man’s house, but he’d only been allowed to see his mother three times. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Because he hadn’t met the man’s conditions.
To be honest, Sejin understood. Visiting Ihwagak was clearly a hassle for the man. So if he let Sejin see his mom once every two weeks—or even just once a month—that would’ve made sense. But people were selfish creatures. He’d said at first that Sejin could visit every week. And now he kept putting it off with the excuse of studying. It was enough to make anyone angry.
Where the hell was he supposed to use memorizing the 19 times tables anyway?
Sejin had no academic ambition. He didn’t believe studying would change his life. So losing the chance to see his mom over some completely useless task pissed him off.
To be exact, he was annoyed at the man—and furious at himself, for being too stupid to memorize the damn thing.
“Oh hey, the little whore’s here.”
As Sejin entered the noisy classroom, a voice hurled at him made his brows twitch. The one calling him that was Lee Haegyun, a punk who basically came to school for the sole purpose of tormenting him.
The day Cheon Sejoo drove the car onto the sidewalk and dragged Sejin away, Haegyun had witnessed it. And ever since, he’d obsessed over how a dirt-poor kid like Kwon Sejin, who used to live in a semi-basement and had even been evicted from there, could possibly be involved with a guy that rich and good-looking.
And he’d reached the only conclusion a punk his age could come to.
That Kwon Sejin was selling his body.
From that day on, Lee Haegyun started calling him a whore. His lackey, Kim Byungjun, did the same.
The only silver lining was that Sejin wasn’t the type to rise to shallow provocation. But that didn’t stop Haegyun. In fact, the lack of reaction just made him escalate the insults day by day.
“……”
Sejin looked down at the donut cushion placed on his chair. The hell is this? As he stared, Haegyun sidled up and snickered.
“Sejin-ah. I figured your ass must be sore from all that backdoor action, so I stole my grandpa’s hemorrhoid cushion for you. Pretty thoughtful, huh?”
It was through Haegyun that Sejin learned how men have sex—by putting it in there. At first, he’d thought it was the most disgusting thing imaginable. But after hearing it for two straight months, he didn’t even feel anything anymore.
Sejin lifted the cushion with his foot, knocked it to the floor, and sat down. Whatever crap Haegyun muttered from his perch on the next desk, Sejin ignored it. He took out his notebook.
It had thirty essential college exam words in it, handwritten by the man himself. The neat, careful handwriting made the words look more intimidating. Sejin found most of them difficult, but Cheon Sejoo’s Spartan teaching method had a clear rule: memorize first, ask questions later. Even if you didn’t know the verb, he said, you had to understand the sentence context.
You little whore, when someone talks to you, listen. What, you like it in the ass so much you can’t hear? Fuck, you whine like a bitch, too? Wanna do me next? Oh wait—no Porsche, no ride?
Haegyun kept spewing filth into Sejin’s ear like he was desperate to make him snap. But when Sejin didn’t respond at all, he finally ran out of steam, muttered some more curses, kicked Sejin’s desk, and stalked off.
The foul, cigarette-stained stench disappeared, and the classroom went quiet. Only then did Sejin relax his expression and pull out his mechanical pencil. He copied the man’s handwriting, drilling the words into his memory.
It was just after lunch when the fever and body aches finally caught up with him. As he lay slumped over his desk, his whole body started to ache like he’d been trampled. Still, the symptoms weren’t bad enough to send him to the nurse’s office. He simply pressed his cheek to the cold desk and endured. His eyes never left the notebook.
Memorizing thirty English words sounded hard, but it wasn’t, not really. You didn’t have to think—you just had to memorize. But since Sejin had never practiced rote memorization before, he was just jamming the alphabet into his brain, which made it impossible to retain.
Either way, Sejin kept memorizing until school ended. The man had once told him to listen in class, but focusing on memorizing meant he couldn’t do that. Given the choice between tuning out a lifeless teacher and memorizing words so he could see his mom, Sejin chose the latter.
By four o’clock, the last bell rang.
There were few students who stayed until the final period at his school. Most dispersed like a pack of hyenas after the lunch hunt. Those who remained into the afternoon were the ones still clinging to some vague hope of studying—but even they were weak-willed, often falling asleep after lunch. Among the boys sleeping like corpses around him, Sejin sat and stared only at the man’s handwriting.
As soon as the final bell rang, he slung his bag over his shoulder and left the classroom.
From the school entrance to the front gate was a straight path. So as soon as he stepped out the building, he spotted the black SUV parked in the distance. He’s early today, Sejin thought, remembering how the man usually arrived around 4 p.m., and quickened his pace.
It was early December. The wind was dry and bitterly cold. The padded jumper the man had bought him—after making up some flimsy lie—was warm, but it couldn’t keep his face from freezing. Sejin pulled his hood up, trying to hide the heat blooming in his cheeks.
The wind made his joints ache and sapped the strength from his muscles. It didn’t feel like another cold. For a moment, he thought it might be growing pains. The last time he’d had mild fever and muscle aches like this was back in middle school, when his height shot up to 168 cm.
Maybe there’s some painkillers at home, Sejin thought, planning to stop by the pharmacy just in case, and hurried along.
“Off to sell your ass again?”
Just as he stepped outside the school gate, Lee Haegyun popped out from beside the wall, grinning.
Sejin’s expression hardened. His eyes flicked toward the car behind Haegyun.
The SUV’s windows were heavily tinted. He couldn’t tell if the man inside had seen this or not. Either way, he didn’t want him to witness it.
Sejin turned, trying to avoid Haegyun.
“…Ah!”
But in that moment, Haegyun stuck out his foot.
Sejin, sluggish from fatigue, couldn’t dodge it in time. His body pitched forward, hands slamming against the pavement. He bit down on his lip as pain shot through his knees and ankles.
“Fuck.”