The other students assumed he had pushed himself too hard again. When Dogyun stepped forward and offered to take Hansol to the hospital himself, Professor Minjun immediately stopped him.
"Hansol is my student," he said firmly. "I'll take him."
Years earlier, when Hansol and Dogyun were still high school students, Hansol had been cheerful, energetic and incredibly popular. He and his friends were always laughing and making noise together. Dogyun, who happened to be his classmate, found all that commotion irritating.
One of Dogyun's friends admitted that Hansol looked surprisingly cute. He always had a bright smile on his face, and there was something naturally charming about him. Dogyun, however, completely disagreed. Hansol was a boy, and Dogyun claimed he could not stand people like him.
Sometime later, the students' seats were rearranged. By coincidence, Hansol ended up sitting right beside Dogyun. Hansol greeted him with his usual friendly smile. Dogyun simply called him an idiot for smiling all the time.
During a maths lesson, Dogyun fell asleep in class. Unfortunately, the teacher called him up to solve a problem on the board. Still half asleep, he had no idea how to answer it.
Trying to help, Hansol quietly handed him his notebook. He had already solved the problem, so Dogyun only needed to copy the answer. Trusting Hansol completely, Dogyun wrote the solution on the board.
It was wrong. The teacher smacked him on the head for sleeping through class and punished him by making him clean the school bathrooms.
Hansol immediately apologised with an embarrassed smile. Dogyun suspected he had done it on purpose. Hansol, however, genuinely had not realised his own answer was incorrect. Feeling responsible, he offered to help clean the bathroom so they could finish more quickly.
To Hansol's surprise, he actually enjoyed cleaning. He proudly admired the sparkling floors after they were finished. Watching Hansol smile so brightly, Dogyun found himself strangely captivated.
In the middle of cleaning, a bucket full of water tipped over. Dogyun took the full impact as Hansol stumbled into him. Hansol apologised so sincerely that Dogyun could only stare at him in silence. When he noticed a scrape on Hansol's elbow, he immediately told him to visit the nurse's office for treatment before coming back to finish cleaning together.
Quite a while later, Dogyun went looking for Hansol after realising he still had not returned. As he approached the nurse's office, he heard cheerful laughter from inside. Peeking through the doorway, he saw the school doctor chatting happily with Hansol. The doctor was even inviting him over to his house, and Hansol smiled and happily agreed.
For some reason, that sight made Dogyun furious.
Hansol quickly apologised for making him finish the cleaning alone, explaining that he had got caught up talking with the doctor. But Dogyun was not angry about the cleaning. He simply did not want Hansol smiling at anyone else.
Later, the two of them rode home together in Dogyun's family's luxury car. During the ride, the chauffeur casually mentioned that Dogyun was the future president of Baecha Construction. Hansol laughed and joked that he should probably become friends with someone so important.
At first, Dogyun had been irritated by Hansol's constant smile. But as the days passed, something inside him changed. Every time he looked at Hansol, his heart raced uncontrollably. Before he realised it, he had started smiling back whenever Hansol smiled at him.
Eventually, those feelings turned into possessiveness. He wanted to be the only person who could see that smile. Whenever Hansol smiled at someone else, jealousy consumed him.
One day, he confronted Hansol. "Are you gay?" he asked bluntly. Hansol had barely been injured, and yet he had spent so much time laughing and blushing in the nurse's office. Was he involved with the doctor?
The doctor immediately denied everything, insisting it was all a misunderstanding. Ignoring him, Dogyun accused the doctor of making inappropriate advances towards a student. Hansol immediately shouted at him to stop. The doctor had not done anything wrong.
Hearing that only made Dogyun angrier. "So if the doctor didn't flirt with you," he snapped, "does that mean you're the one flirting with him? Is that why you smile at everyone?"
From that day forward, everything changed. Dogyun's followers began bullying Hansol. They beat him and spread rumours throughout the school, calling him gay. The same classmates who had once been his friends suddenly treated him with disgust, claiming they could not believe they had spent so much time with someone like that. Dogyun watched everything happen without stopping them.
Soon, the entire school knew the rumours.
Hansol, bruised and lying on the ground, desperately asked why Dogyun was doing this to him. He insisted nothing had happened with the doctor. The man had probably already been fired because of the misunderstanding. Hansol admitted that he did like men, but the incident with the doctor had truly been a misunderstanding. He begged Dogyun to believe him. After all, they were friends.
Dogyun coldly corrected him. "We were never friends. I never considered you my friend."
Unable to understand, Hansol asked why he hated him so much. Dogyun answered that Hansol had always smiled at him and acted as if he were flirting.
"If that's what you thought," Hansol replied, "then you're completely mistaken." Just because he liked men did not mean he liked every man he met. In fact, he especially hated people like Dogyun.
Enraged by those words, Dogyun slapped him hard across the face before striking him again and again.
The truth was simple. It was not because Hansol liked men. It was because Dogyun had been rejected by the very person he had fallen for.
In his hospital bed, Hansol lay unconscious. Even in his sleep, he whispered through his nightmare: "Please stop, Dogyun." Professor Minjun heard every word.
When Hansol finally woke up, he was startled to find the professor sitting anxiously beside him. Minjun blamed himself for not noticing sooner that something had been troubling his boyfriend. Although he was certain he had heard the name Dogyun, he could not bring himself to believe it. How could Hansol possibly know his younger brother?
Fortunately, Hansol's medical examination showed nothing seriously wrong. He simply had a fever and needed to rest. Thinking a kiss might help him feel better, Minjun leaned in. Hansol quickly stopped him. He did not want the professor catching his fever. Minjun smiled. He would rather get sick than go without kissing his beloved boyfriend. In the end, Hansol could not resist either.
Outside the hospital, Dogyun arrived, pretending to be concerned after Hansol had collapsed from answering a simple question. Without even knocking, he entered the hospital room. Hansol was fast asleep.
Watching him, Dogyun remembered the last time they had met. Hansol had asked him a question he had never answered. Are you in love with me?
Back then, Dogyun had denied it. Now, he wondered if that was why Hansol hated him so much. Or perhaps Hansol had simply been angry because Dogyun became jealous whenever he smiled at other men.
At the time, Dogyun had been too afraid to admit the truth. Instead, he had run away by studying abroad. But things were different now. He would not run anymore. Their reunion had not been a coincidence — it was inevitable. This time, he would finally answer Hansol's question, and he would do everything in his power to make Hansol his.
As Dogyun was about to leave the hospital, he spotted his brother approaching from a distance. He could not understand why Minjun would be at the hospital, until he remembered the desperate look on his brother's face when Hansol had collapsed in class. He did not want to believe it, but he began to suspect that the two of them might actually be in a relationship.
Without wasting another second, he called his secretary and ordered him to investigate both Lee Hansol and Bae Minjun immediately.