In that garden, only flowers without thorns bloomed.

The garden was a safe and beautiful place of memory that Dal Oreum had made. As the memories blooming in the garden all withered and turned into illusions, at last Dal Oreum met the man.

The floor was littered with broken glass cups. The man came closer, nudging the debris with the tip of his foot. It was a small movement, but somehow it gave off a threatening air. With both hands shoved in his pockets, a cigarette hooked on one side of his mouth, the man glanced down at Dal Oreum.

Dal Oreum was kneeling in front of him. Because his head was lowered, tears dropped little by little onto his thighs. There was no god and no law there, but Dal Oreum was repenting. So-called repentance to a person, to a man.

The man had an expression that subtly held a smile. He did not especially look pleased. Rather, it had an atmosphere where it would not have been strange if he beat Dal Oreum mercilessly right now. Dal Oreum only cried. When the man leaned against the corner of the dining table and crossed his arms, Dal Oreum barely opened his mouth.

“...I was wrong.”

“...”

“...I was wrong.”

Dal Oreum repeated his apology. The man snorted a laugh. There was not the slightest sign of forgiveness. Through that complete dismissal, Dal Oreum felt a slight expectation. He wanted the man to hurt him again, as before. He wanted him to pierce his body with something like a huge wedge, something not in the garden in his head. Then he would seem at least a little equal. Further, it would seem like he would be at ease. But instead of going through Dal Oreum, the man sighed. A dry answer came back.

“I was wrong, fuck. What am I supposed to do?”

He spread his legs a little wider, then lit his cigarette. Along with the smoke, a bored voice came out.

“Has teaching been worth it lately?”

“...”

“No bastard like me around, so it's easy, right?”

“...”

Dal Oreum's lips moved, but the words did not continue. His fingertips trembled softly. The man openly flicked cigarette ash toward Dal Oreum. His gaze turned toward the pitiful Dal Oreum.

“I got to see our Teacher Seok begging.”

“...”

“Life really is unpredictable, Dal Oreum, huh?”

Dal Oreum apologized again, with his bloodshot eyes lowered.

The man reached one hand toward the table and took a water bottle. Then he poured water over Dal Oreum without mercy.

Dal Oreum, soaked in the clear liquid, blinked blankly. Through his blurred vision, the worn past flickered leaf by leaf. When had it been. When had all this started.

The man and Dal Oreum had been teacher and student at university. At the time, Dal Oreum had no room even to look after his surroundings because he was busy holding together his shattered inner self.

It was a time when only his obsessive fastidiousness about not letting others discover his pain sustained him.

Therefore, he dismissed the man's approach toward him as a prank based on curiosity.

Of course, that was not entirely wrong.

Because that had clearly been the beginning, Dal Oreum's thought also had some merit.

The problem arose from arbitrarily deciding that the man's beginning and end would be exactly the same.

Not just at the level of a college, almost everyone who attended the university knew the man.

He had become famous for his striking looks, or for the clothes he wore, the car he drove, and the like.

He naturally had a great many friends, but he usually liked going around alone.

Outside of taking the same classes, there were hardly any places where he could be seen.

It was also hard to see him eating student cafeteria food or studying in the library.

He sometimes caused incidents outside, but inside school, he was fairly quiet.

The man's expressionless face, as if he had drawn an invisible line, was fit to be admired only from afar, but Dal Oreum, who had barely managed to get a lecture after working unpaid to death under the department chair he had been at odds with since his master's program and after being dumped, knew nothing about the circumstances at all.

At the beginning of the semester, to Dal Oreum, the man's existence was nothing more than one of the clumsy kids taking his liberal arts class.

People gossiped about how the ice-cold Dal Oreum was sometimes seen with the man.

Are those two dating?

Dal Oreum wanted to jump off a high place every time he heard someone half seriously joke like that. From some point on, he had been getting cut to pieces in every possible way by this man eight years younger than him.

The last summer.

Dal Oreum remained in an empty lecture hall after finishing one summer session class.

When the heat-prone Dal Oreum had lain face-down on his desk, unable to hold on, a cool wind suddenly blew in. When he opened his eyes, the man was fanning Dal Oreum with a clear file.

What was this monster doing?

Dal Oreum at the time had been frightened.

When asked what he was doing, to the man who answered that he was watching Teacher, to the man who smiled while lightly tracing a finger along Dal Oreum's bridge of the nose, to the source of that smile that looked so kind and so dangerous,

Dal Oreum should have answered for sure. Under the red and dark-blue waves of the pouring sunset, he should not have stiffened his face and told him not to play such jokes.

The man did not come to school from the next semester on. He dropped out. His number changed too. It was a breakup that was so easy it felt empty compared to the vicious harassment up to then.

It had already almost been three years.

Dal Oreum still thought of the man together with the faint breeze in the empty lecture hall.

In the end, wasn't I the one who made you cruel to the very end?

At the sudden loud sound, Dal Oreum was jolted out of his recollection.

“Move.”

“...Itae.”

It had already almost been three years, but the man Dal Oreum met again was the same.

Even the vulgar and rude way he used speech like that, saying Dal Oreum's name over and over despite being much younger.

When Dal Oreum still would not get up, the man pushed his shoulder hard with his knee. He searched through this room and that room with his shoed feet. The place the two of them were in now was Dal Oreum's house, that is, his new house.

After the man dropped out, Dal Oreum's life had been a downhill slope without any filter.

Joo Yoonhyuk, whom he had thought was his destined match, had soon held out two choices after Dal Oreum returned to him.

One was to break up for good this time.

The other was to hide out.

The former did not even need interpretation, and the latter meant living as Joo Yoonhyuk's lover on the side, longing endlessly.

He said he was separated from his wife, and that he would divorce soon, but it was pure lip service.

He even said that if Dal Oreum only volunteered to stay in the shadows, he would support him in a way favorable for appointment.

Hearing that absurd talk, Dal Oreum finally came to his senses late.

Sometimes he did not even know why he had loved Joo Yoonhyuk that much.

Around noon on an ordinary weekday, while he was barely scraping by, nursing his pain, with no happy or satisfying thing in his life, a new someone other than Joo Yoonhyuk pounded on the front gate as if to break it.

The identity of the surprise guest was the man standing in front of Dal Oreum right now.

The man had dropped out because of Dal Oreum.

He liked Dal Oreum too much and hated him too much to be able to stay together.

The difference between the Dal Oreum he knew and the real one was too great for him to turn back.

Dal Oreum was too different from himself.

Dal Oreum was stubborn, lovable, ordinary, and a single-minded person who believed that the fact that he liked a man itself was unfilial.

But a few days ago, the man had suddenly heard about Dal Oreum from a classmate he had run into by chance.

“I heard you've been going around asking the life sciences kids what you've been up to lately, what happened between you and that guy?”

The man got angry.

He was angry enough to become a wreck.

You pushed me away as much as you could because you were crazy about another man, played with me while acting as if you were the most innocent thing in the world, and then threw me away, and now you're desperately looking for me?

Was that fuck bitch messing with me?

“Where is your husband?”

“...”

“I asked where Joo Yoonhyuk was.”

“...We... broke up.”

“Do you know why I quit?”

Dal Oreum clamped his mouth shut.

It was clearly meant to mean that he did not know. Where had that sharp Dal Oreum gone, the Dal Oreum the man now saw acted as if a screw had come loose somewhere.

Dal Oreum muttered weakly.

“We really... had been a long time since we talked like this.”

“Long time? A long time?”

“...I missed you.”

The man laughed as if incredulous, placing his hands on both hips and leaning his waist back.

Even if his nature was selfish and cold, he had never wanted to kill someone this much.

Causing trouble in a relationship that had already been seen through and ended was, of course, not his taste either.

All this happened because he had poured every bit of his energy into keeping his mind intact.

The apartment was very small and plain.

Everything around was shabby.

The books strewn about were shabby, the glass cup Dal Oreum had handed him to drink from was shabby, and even the finishing of the entrance, living room, and kitchen that the man had stormed into was shabby.

Amid everything that was shabby and miserable, only Dal Oreum still had a pretty pale face and was on the verge of tears.

The man pressed his forehead with one hand and raised his voice. Contrary to his usual expression, his tone sounded utterly fed up.

“Dal Oreum-ssi, stop making a fuck scene!”

The man stubbed out the cigarette on the bare floor, then squatted down and faced Dal Oreum.

He brought a finger close to his face and flicked it, snap.

“I liked you. You knew that too.”

“You ignored it and chose to live like this kind of fuck idiot with Joo Yoonhyuk, didn't you?”

“Itae...”

“What was I to you?”

“If you were going to say some shit about a treasured student, I'd rip out the root of your tongue.”

“Was I a friend?”

“A pseudo boyfriend?”

“A lover?”

“Or your kid?”

“I, ... I really was wrong, I...”

“Then keep begging into the air.”

“I came here today to fuck you up.”

The man was angry.

That meant he still had not given up.

Being angry was proof that he believed there was still a solution, that he was so pissed he was going crazy.

“Itae, Itae. Please...”

To the man tearing off his clothes as if to rip them apart, that was all Dal Oreum had said.

“Please.”

As if.

The man did not even pretend to hear it and slapped Dal Oreum's cheek.

The instant the startled Dal Oreum instinctively twisted his body, the man undid his belt, reminding Dal Oreum of reality.

You had to know where to lie before you stretched your legs.

You were an idiot, so Joo Yoonhyuk was running around like that.

So brazenly, with not even the slightest effort to establish a relationship.

Rather, he had probably been the one making a big show of it.

Would a loser like you have broken up that easily at the first bite?

Think about our bond or whatever, you must have clung to Joo Yoonhyuk's pant leg and hung on.

So you broke up with that bastard, and what?

He'd take you back if you subtly rubbed up against him again.

This time you really split up?

No?

If you went, he'd probably do the same.

He'd go on and on about being a good person and not wanting to hurt you.

Anyway, our Dal Oreum is always dissatisfied with everything, so nothing will change, right?

What are you going to do?

Just keep your eyes closed and your ears shut and live as miserably as now.

Or stay buried in me all day and have my kid.

Dal Oreum stared blankly at the ceiling.

The garden he had painstakingly tended was collapsing in an instant.

His head hurt.

It was a mess beyond repair.

Could someone whose wish had been granted also be sad?

Could it?

It was exactly like us.

It was a reunion that was just like you and me.