My Brother's Friend Wasn't a Guy - Chapter 6

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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6.

With her eyes closed, she found herself studying his features all the more intently.
She’d always known he was handsome, but examining him this openly, this deliberately, was new.
Realizing how lost in his face she’d become, Lee Jin spoke hurriedly.
“Stop that. Enough.”
Dirt on a face sculpted like a statue—the very thought made her hesitate.
She couldn’t bring herself to touch it. Lee Jin shook her head firmly.
“Why? Do you think chances like this come around often?”
Kang Hyun cracked open one eye as he spoke.
He seemed to be hinting that opportunity still lingered, though the sight of him with that single eye barely open held its own peculiar charm.
Lee Jin’s fingertips twitched without warning. She was mortified by the image that flashed through her mind—what would happen if she grabbed his cheek with her dirt-covered hand.
If she were the type to act without restraint, she wouldn’t have hesitated to touch his face.
But Lee Jin was cautious by nature, her courtesy so ingrained it bordered on excessive.
“There’s no need for you to get dirty too.”
When Lee Jin refused to move as he’d hoped, Kang Hyun clicked his tongue silently. There was still so far to go.
“The moment you laid a hand on my face, I was planning to declare war.”
He smiled, a hint of regret in his expression.
“You still think I’m a child?”
Lee Jin laughed clearly, recalling a day from the past when the three of them—she, Kang Hyun, and Lee Hwan—had tumbled through foolish games together.
‘If I treated you like a child, I wouldn’t be doing any of this.’
Kang Hyun regarded her with eyes that held a faintly wry gleam, then spoke.
“Want to stop by Cheongchuk-je later? I’d like to show you the night scenery. It’s completely different from daytime, and seeing it will help when you make ceramics next time.”
“Sure. We’ll finish all this, clean up, and then head over.”

The two of them stopped at a restaurant they frequented for dinner, then made their way to Cheongchuk-je.
The streetlights glowing on all sides blended with the wooden pillars distinctive to traditional Korean architecture, casting warm light across the grounds.
“Wow, this is amazing. The atmosphere at night is completely different.”
Lee Jin gazed around, her face flushed with quiet excitement.
“Shall we walk?”
Kang Hyun led her down a path toward the bamboo grove.
As the wind picked up, the towering bamboo seemed to reach toward the edge of the sky and swayed, striking against one another with a whispered shush-shush sound.
That sound stirred something sentimental within the heart.

“Why are you coming home so late?”
“You came home even later than this yesterday.”
“That’s different. You’re beautiful—you absolutely cannot wander around at night.”

The voice of Lee Hwan, who spoke without hesitation even when it was embarrassingly sentimental, seemed to blend with the rustling of bamboo leaves.
“Do you miss Lee Hwan?”
Kang Hyun’s voice cut through her reverie so suddenly that Lee Jin stopped dead in her tracks and turned to face him.
The wind that had blown through once more made the bamboo leaves whisper again, a prolonged shush-shush.
“I miss him terribly. If I’d known then that I’d have to let him go like that, I’d have spent more time with him. I don’t know how much I’ve regretted that.”
Taken aback by Kang Hyun’s candor, Lee Jin’s eyes wavered for a moment.
Caught off guard by an overwhelming wave of longing, she scrunched up her eyes.
Her throat felt constricted, as if clogged, and she had to force the words out with effort.
“Me too. Even now, whenever my phone rings, I jump. I know he can’t call anymore, but I still do.”
She couldn’t share this with anyone else. Only Kang Hyun, who knew Lee Hwan well, could hear the truth of her heart.
“Forgetting him is impossible anyway. Let’s take our time. That’s all right.”
Strangely, those words brought genuine comfort.
In that moment, Lee Jin realized she’d been whipping herself with the knowledge that she mustn’t be consumed by sadness.
“Thank you. That really does help.”
Lee Jin smiled at Kang Hyun with genuine gratitude, unaware of how achingly sad that smile appeared.

***

What greeted Lee Jin when she entered her home was darkness.
The house, without a single light burning, lay submerged in shadow.
“Hic-up, sob…….”
The sound of weeping squeezed through the crack in the doorway, and Lee Jin’s face hardened into stone.
Mother again…….
For a brief moment, Lee Jin wrestled fiercely with herself.
Whether she should open the bedroom door, go inside, and tell her mother to stop crying—or simply pretend she hadn’t heard.
Perhaps because she’d just finished talking about Kang Hyun and Lee Hwan, the ache felt sharper, more unbearable.
She understood her mother’s sorrow as natural, inevitable—but the realization that she herself barely registered in her mother’s eyes cut deeper still.
Yesterday, today—there had only ever been her brother in her mother’s world.
The certainty that tomorrow would be the same, and the day after, felt like the ground giving way beneath her.
Did her mother truly regard her as a daughter? If so, how could she have never once asked how Lee Jin was doing?
Her mother was so consumed by the grief of losing her son that she noticed nothing about her daughter—not what she did, not what she ate, not what occupied her thoughts.
Nothing at all.
And today, that indifference stung in a way it never had before.
She ought to understand her mother’s pain. She ought to think of how much her mother must be suffering. But she couldn’t.
Lee Jin stood motionless in the darkened living room, steadying her breathing.
No tears came, but a crushing sensation gripped her heart, making each breath a struggle.

“Lee Hwan is the head of this household, so you need to accommodate him.”
“You need to be patient.”

Her mother’s familiar words rang in her ears like a constant ringing.
Though she had heard them a thousand times before and found nothing new in them, those old words now pierced her like invisible thorns, drawing blood.
‘Even without him, nothing has changed.’
Why? How long? Even as resignation settled over her, she couldn’t fully accept it—her mind a tangled, chaotic knot of contradiction.
Lee Jin felt her breath catch in her throat as though strangled, gasping for air, and without thinking, she found herself opening her mother’s bedroom door.
Cree-eee-eek—
The hinges of the old door let out an awful groan.
“Mom…….”
At the sound of Lee Jin’s voice, Go Myung Suk lifted her head. Then, crawling across the floor to the doorway, she seized her daughter’s ankle and spoke.
“My Lee Hwan, my Lee Hwan isn’t the kind of boy who would die. Right? Hmm? I must have misunderstood something.”
Looking at her mother’s tear-ravaged face, something inside Lee Jin snapped silently, cleanly, like a taut string breaking.
“Mom, he’s dead. We won’t see him again. He’s never coming back to this house.”
She forced out the words she’d been avoiding all this time, pressing them down and then releasing them all at once. Emotion surged through her, and her eyes burned hot with sudden tears.
Lee Jin groaned like a wounded animal, repeating herself again and again.
“He’s gone now. We’ll never see him again!”
“No, no…….”
Go Myung Suk shook her head violently, as if it were impossible.
Watching her, Lee Jin felt tears spill down her cheeks.
“What am I to you, Mom? Am I even your daughter?”
Seeing the twisted anguish in Lee Jin’s eyes, Go Myung Suk asked numbly in return.
“What……?”
“My daughter is alive. But all you see is your dead son—you don’t even see the daughter who’s alive!”
Go Myung Suk was bewildered. She couldn’t begin to understand what her daughter was saying.
Lee Jin had always been obedient.
This was the first time Go Myung Suk had heard her thoughtful, considerate daughter raise her voice in anger like this.
“If I died, would you cry for me the way you’re crying now?”
The words that Lee Jin let fall, almost to herself, struck Go Myung Suk like a physical blow.
“What? You—how could you say such a thing?”
At her mother’s reproach, Lee Jin’s expression twisted further with pain.
“Why? You never listen to me anyway.”
Go Myung Suk opened her mouth to ask when she’d ever refused to listen, but the memory wouldn’t come.
No matter how hard she searched her mind, she could find no memory of truly listening to her daughter.
The unfocused, wavering of Go Myung Suk’s eyes was answer enough.
Lee Jin had never expected comfort or a convincing excuse from her, so she drew in a long breath and struggled to rein in her surging emotions.
“Just go to sleep. Don’t worry about me.”
Though she said not to worry, she was terrified of what her mother might answer.
Without waiting for a response, Lee Jin fled the house.
Go Myung Suk stood staring blankly at the motion-sensor light in the entryway as it switched on, then slumped her shoulders in defeat when the light died and darkness closed in.

Once outside, Lee Jin walked without direction.
She clamped her teeth together, trying not to cry, but the sobs kept escaping despite her efforts.
As she struggled to swallow the whimper rising from her throat, her phone vibrated.
Could it be—was it her mother? She pulled out her phone with a flicker of hope, but no; it wasn’t her mother after all.

She saw Kang Hyun’s name—someone she’d come to lean on more than family itself—and after taking a steadying breath, she pressed the call button.
[Did you get home okay?]
The moment she heard his voice, the tears she’d been holding back suddenly poured out.
“Yeah. I’m home.”
She’d tried to sound unbothered, but her voice came out broken and thin.
[Lee Jin, where are you?]
And Kang Hyun knew instantly that something was wrong.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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