Chapter 17: Secret Love.

When you enjoy the things you do, the time can fly and Daehyun really enjoyed his time with Youngjae, so the time flew and now the sky was dark, welcoming the night. Numerous people began to appear in the park, mostly couples that walked hand in hand, sharing ice creams and cotton candies.

    The river turned colorful with hints of red, pink, white, yellow, green and blue thanks to Banpo Bridge. It was an extremely romantic setting, Daehyun thought, he dreamed of going there with Natalie many times, but instead he was there with Youngjae..., a man.

    Ew, no, no, no, Youngjae and me are just friends. We’ve only met twice, we're just two people walking Kanji... Where is Kanji? Daehyun looked around for the dog, that supposed to follow him, however there was no sign of him.

    “Oh my gosssshhhhh, I lost Kanji!!!” Daehyun said to Youngjae who walked by his side.

    “What you talking about?” Youngjae carried the picnic basket with Kanji inside.

    “Nothing”

    “He can't live without me” Youngjae pinched Kanji's cheek and blew him a kiss.

    “Ha! He loves you” Daehyun said sarcastically as Kanji avoided Youngjae’s kiss “The one he loves it’s me” Daehyun took Kanji in his arms and tried to kiss him, but the dog moved his head away like he did with Youngjae.

    “Ha, ha, ha, he doesn't like you either!” Youngjae chuckled.

    “Oh my, it's Dasom!!!” a girl screamed insanely and ran towards Daehyun while her friend took out the phone and started recording.

    “Oh, sorry, I mistook you” the girl said as she got a better look to realize it wasn’t the model, but a young man that looked pretty similar to her.

    “It's Daehyun, her twin brother” Youngjae clarified.

    “Oh my, Dasom has a twin brother?” the fan approached Daehyun excitedly “You're attractive too!!!”

    “Then you're also a model?” the girl with the phone asked, she came so close to Daehyun that beat him with the camera.

    “Oh my, Dasom and you should do a photo shoot together!!!”

    “That'd be super hot!!!”

    “There aren’t many twin models, you'd start a thing!!!”

    Daehyun looked at the girls, they were petite, but seemed like they could eat him up. Scared, he stepped back, Youngjae was behind him, so Daehyun fell into Youngjae's arms.

    “Who are you? A model?” one of the girls asked Youngjae.

    “It's the guy on the cover with Dasom, the one where she wears a wedding dress”

    “I remember!!! You and Dasom looked so hot together” she advanced towards Youngjae and pointed the phone at him.

    “That magazine said you and Dasom were dating and marrying each other, I was so happy, but it turned out to be a lie”

    “But now you’re with Dasom’s brother, it means you're dating her brother?”

    “What?!!!” Daehyun and Youngjae cried out in unison.

    Youngjae’s hands were holding Daehyun's arms protectively, but he freaked out so much with the dating thing that threw Daehyun into those girls.

    “We're just walking the dog” Daehyun said as he felt a rush of heat.

    “Aw, that's cute, boyfriends love to walk their dogs here”

    “Ok, it is, I'm done, let's go back to the apartment” Youngjae barked.

    “You live together, so cute” the girl said.

    “No!!! We live in the same building, not the same apartment!!!” Daehyun said.

    Youngjae grabbed Daehyun's wrist and walked away fast from those fans. He didn't stop until they melted in the crowd, hoping those girls wouldn't follow.

    “You were kind of rude” Daehyun said.

    “And you were going to say our address or what?!” Youngjae fought back “If they post videos of us together, the tabloids will tear me to pieces! They said I dated Dasom and now they’ll say I date his brother, they'll say I'm gay or a ert with a kink for twins and Himchan will laugh his off!!!”

    “You're overreacting, it's not like we're Twice or BTS, I'm just the brother of a newbie model and you're editor of a fashion magazine”

    “I'm editor of the most famous and number one fashion magazine”

    “Whatever” Daehyun said, getting tired, he held Kanji with one hand while Youngjae held his free hand “Where are we going?”

    “To my car”

    “The parking lot is in the opposite direction”

    “And you tell me now?”

    “You're the one who took my hand and started running”

    Youngjae’s whole face went red as he realized he held Daehyun's hand tightly.

    “Let's go” he released the man rudely and walked towards the parking lot.

Since the park was full of people, Youngjae thought that the parking lot was full of cars and that worried him, he didn’t remember where he left the car, he wasn’t even sure whether he locked the car or not.

    Did I close the doors? I think so, hell, I didn't lower the roof... Youngjae thought about the convertible, even if he closed the doors, but not the roof, it meant easy robbery although he had nothing important in the car, besides the car was Himchan’s.

    Youngjae thought that a convertible would impress Dasom, but he ended up going out with Daehyun... Well, it's not my fault Himchan trusted me his car, ha, ha, ha Youngjae said mentally the only victim is me, I wanted Dasom, not Daehyun. He’s ok though, except the part where he fell on me, my back still hurts...

    Youngjae touched his forehead, he still carried the stupid Frozen Elsa band aid, he wanted to go home and look into the mirror in search of scars and bruises. He turned around to ask Daehyun to speed up, but there was no sight of him or Kanji.

    Youngjae went back on his steps, looking for them and panicked when he didn’t find any. He thought calling Daehyun, but he only had Dasom's number, and then he thought calling the police, however, he refrained from doing so, because Daehyun was an adult. “Maybe he returned home by himself” Youngjae said out loud and stopped in the middle of the crowd and that's when he saw Daehyun with Kanji, standing and drooling before food stalls.

    “What on earth are you doing? You supposed to follow me!” Youngjae said, running to Daehyun.

    Daehyun turned to face Youngjae and regretted it, their faces were very close. Youngjae’s face was pink and sweaty and all, Daehyun could feel his warm breath against his skin, that gave him goose bumps, he was cold because he only wore a t-shirt and Youngjae's warm was crazy and it felt so good.

    “I was” Daehyun said “But I'm hungry and there's plenty of food here” Daehyun stared at the stalls, hypnotized.

    “We can have dinner in a real restaurant on the way home” Youngjae said.

    “What's wrong about eating here?”

    “Street food is bad, dirty and unhealthy”

    “Stop talking like a rich ajumma from doramas” Daehyun said “There's nothing wrong with street food, I've eaten a lot in night markets and it's the best”

    “Ok, if you want to get poisoned, go”

    In reply Daehyun walked into the food stalls, some sold meat and some, ramyeon, cakes, crabs, sandwiches, spicy food, etc. He was so hungry he wanted to eat everything, but he didn't have money enough, so in the end he chose a stall that sold ramyeon and grilled meat.

    “Good night, sir” a young girl said as Daehyun sat at the counter.

    “Good night”

    “What would you like?”

    “Everything looks so delicious” Daehyun said and Kanji barked seconding him.

    The girl laughed and said:

    “We have a wide variety of ramyeon and meat, but our specialty is sausage stew with kimchi, anchovy, ham...”

    “Stop it! I'm dying!” Daehyun said making her laugh “Mmm... I want noodles with shrimps, grilled ribs with a lot of chilli, I want grilled corns... and of course, the house specialty, sausage stew!!!”

    “In a flash” she said and reached the ajumma by the stoves.

    “If you don't get poisoned, you'll get a for all that food”

    Daehyun recognized Youngjae's voice, he turned to see him, the young man was sitting by his side.

    “I thought you left” Daehyun said as he laid Kanji on the floor. 

    “And lose my chance to take you to the hospital and rub my told you in your face?”

    “Oh, you got company” the girl said as she placed a plate with silverware on the counter.

    “He isn't any company” Daehyun said as she went to get another plate.

    And then she came a third time to serve the noodles, shrimps, ribs, corn, and stew that Daehyun ordered.

    “Ok, all this food is mine, you don't even look at it” Daehyun said to Youngjae.

    “Don't worry, getting poisoned on the streets isn't my cup of tea” Youngjae said although the food looked and smelled appetizing.

    Daehyun ignored him and started with the noodles, he finished it in a blink and went for the stew meanwhile Youngjae grabbed the chopsticks and went for the ribs, but before getting one, Daehyun smacked him with his chopsticks.

    “Don't touch my food”

    “I just want to help you to stay in shape, you’re nearly to be cow”

    “You said street food is bad”

    “I'm sacrificing myself in order to keep you thin, thank me” Youngjae grabbed the rib with a hand and ate like he never ate before. He was hungry and the rib was the best thing ever.

    “Tsk” Daehyun hissed “For someone who used to be fat and bullied for that, you're really mean”

    “How do you know I was fat?” Youngjae froze, he threw all the photos of when he was a fat teenager “Wait... I told that to Dasom... Did she tell you?”

    “Yeah... We're twins, we tell everything” Daehyun said, fearing that Youngjae might make a scene.

    “Well, now you have to tell me a secret of yours” Youngjae shrugged as if nothing and kept munching the ribs like a chipmunk.

    “What?”

    “Being a fat cow is my biggest secret and you know it, so you have to tell me a secret of yours to be even”

    “You're crazy”

    “Start talking”

    Youngjae stared at Daehyun so inflexibly, the older felt like he could learn his secret, so he had to say something...

    “Well, I have a secret” Daehyun gulped nervously.

    He didn’t have energy to make up more lies, so decided to share one of his secrets. Yes, Daehyun had more than one.

    “I've never told anybody. You'll be the first”

    “I'm waiting” Youngjae smirked as he his own lips.

    That was tempting, Daehyun thought before he started his story.

    “I'm from Busan, my parents died in a car accident and I moved to the city with my uncle. The first weeks at my new school I couldn't talk and everybody picked on me, they stole my food and money because they knew I wouldn’t say anything, then a girl from my class stood up for me, she fought those bullies...”

    Unexpectedly Youngjae laughed aloud, but he shut up when he noticed Daehyun's serious face.

    “Sorry, a girl defending a boy is laughable”

    “I won’t talk to you anymore”

    “Come on, you haven’t told me the secret yet”

    “Fine, but if you laugh again, I'm going to drop your face on the stew” Daehyun warned.

    “Like I said, she fought those bullies and spoke in my behalf, and the bullies started to bully her and her friends stopped hanging out with her, but she never gave up on me and she always talked to me and in the end I started talking and we became best friends... She was my hero and I fell hard for her as the time went by... I love her so much, but nobody knows, less her, so here is my secret”

    “Mmm, you've been in love with her like forever and she doesn't know?”

    “Uh-huh”

    “Why?”

    “Because she is my best friend and I don’t want to scare her. She sees me as a brother, not as a man. Things would get awkward between us if I confess. We’d distance from each other and I don’t want that”

    “Where is she now?”

    “I don't know” Daehyun said, the last thing he knew it was that Natalie lived in a hotel, planning the wedding with his cousin.

    “You don't tell her, because you're afraid of getting awkward and distant, but aren’t things already awkward and distant? You ran from her to keep the friendship intact, that means you don't hang out like you used to; If you were still friends you'd be with her right now instead of me”

    “Hell, you're smart and it's not sarcasm, you understand” Daehyun said “Have you gone through this too?”

    “No. My only friend is Kim Himchan and I've never had romantic feelings for him” Youngjae said “And if I like a girl, I just tell her, if she turns me down I move to another one”

    “You telling me you’re a playboy”

    “What I'm telling you is there's tons of fish in the water. If you like, you say so, if you get rejected, you move on, there's nothing to think about it” Youngjae said “Thinking too much is your problem, what if she loves you back? You'll never know if you keep it for yourself”

    “You’re losing her anyway, so tell her, you’ll be happier even if you're rejected and if she's a real friend, she'll stay and things won't be awkward”

    “Everything you say makes sense” Daehyun replied “But it's too late, she’ll marry my cousin in a few weeks”

    “And?”

    “Didn’t you hear? She’ll marry my cousin”

    “She will, she hasn’t yet” Youngjae said “Maybe she's with your cousin because it's the easiest way to be near you”

    “Ok, that sounded like a dorama”

    “It happens” Youngjae said “Just tell her, maybe you'll have your happy ending” Youngjae insisted “If you want to, I'll go with you in case you chicken out”

    “Excuse me” the waitress interrupted them “I forgot to offer you drinks. We have coke, water, aloe vera, juice, milkshakes, wine, beer, soju...”

    “I'll take beer” Daehyun said.

    “Soju” Youngjae said.

    “No he don't” Daehyun shook his head “Give him coke”

    The girl nodded and headed to the fridge.

    “Coke?” Youngjae said.

    “You're driving, so you aren't having alcohol”

    “Soju is not that strong”

    The girl came back with the beer for Daehyun and coke for Youngjae.

    “Take your coke” Daehyun commanded and returned to his food.