Dusk (BL Light Novel)

“Jaegyung-ssi, you don’t have anyone else to walk around with today, right?”

“...Um, no. You’re just asking if I’m tagging along with someone, right?”
“Would I be asking that to someone who looks like they’ve got way more friends than me?”
I mean, if he walked outside and grabbed a random stranger to say, “Hi, I’m lonely. Want to be friends?”—anyone would reply, “Of course! I’d be more than your friend. Wanna hit a motel together?”
(Not that people would actually say that, obviously—it was just the point.)

“Let’s go to the 11th floor. We’ve got time, and we can check out what merch they’re selling. And grab lunch. You haven’t eaten anything but a few roasted chestnuts, right?”
“So that’s why you asked your friend to buy three meals?”
“Two birds with one stone.”

We started heading back the way we came, out of the stadium and toward the elevators. Jaegyung jogged a bit to catch up and walked in sync at my side.
“I’ll buy the drinks.”
“You don’t have to.”

“Still, I don’t want to be a total freeloader.”
“What, like I picked those chestnuts up off the ground?”
“That was a gift.”

“Then let me call this a gift too. I’m not great at eating stuff people give me anyway.”
That shut Jaegyung up. He looked like he wasn’t sure how to respond.
Maybe I’d worded that wrong. The mood felt like it was darkening, so I rushed to clarify.
“It’s not like I have trauma or anything. It’s just… I was really overprotected at home growing up. You saw how my uncle tried to check the chestnuts earlier, right?”

“Ah… I thought I might’ve overstepped.”
“Offering someone food is overstepping?”
I gave a deliberately light laugh to put him at ease, and sure enough, the slight tension on his face relaxed.

By then, we’d reached the door. I raised my hand to pull the handle—then paused when I caught sight of my nametag.
We were going to spend time in crowded areas before the event started, and I couldn’t just walk around flashing my nametag. My in-game nickname got posted around all sorts of community sites. If some stranger recognized it and approached me, that would be a problem.
“What’s wrong?”
Jaegyung, who had been watching me hesitate while looking at my tag, leaned in to ask. His voice was so close it landed square in my right ear, making it burn slightly.

“Feels weird to walk around with a nametag on.”
I rubbed my earlobe and hesitated a while longer, then finally untied my jersey jacket from my waist. I shook out the creased sleeves and put it on, looped the lanyard around my neck, then zipped up the front. The air conditioning inside the building was strong enough—this would work fine.
As I adjusted myself, Jaegyung tugged lightly at his own t-shirt, checking under it. His expression was dead serious, like he was measuring whether the nametag could be hidden inside his shirt.
Knowing him, he wasn’t just thinking about it—he really meant to do it. What the hell. Why would anyone try to stuff a lanyard under their bare shirt? Freak.

Startled by the thought, I flicked the bottom of his t-shirt with my fingers, making him let go of it. Then I reached toward him.
“Why would you put that directly on your skin like some kind of pervert? Give it here.”
“What’s wrong with that?”

Despite his words, he extended the lanyard like he was about to hand it to me—
—but before I could grab it, he twisted his wrist, smoothed the cord, and placed it gently over my neck. Not only that, he tucked the tag under my jacket, into my shirt, and then tapped it—right around my stomach—with one pale finger while softly smiling.
“Thanks. Take good care of mine for me.”
It’s just a nametag. Not exactly a big responsibility. I shrugged.

As I was straightening out my jacket, my uncle—who’d been standing behind us—opened the door first and scanned the surroundings, holding the door open so Jaegyung and I could follow. He was essentially escorting two grown men at this point.
We took the emergency stairs down. Maybe because he’d noticed my uncle sticking close behind, Jaegyung kept casting sidelong glances toward the back of my head. I let it slide before, but since we’d be walking around together for a while, I figured I should say something first.
“He’s my bodyguard. Don’t worry about it.”

“Ah… so he really is a bodyguard.”
He didn’t seem surprised. Must’ve guessed it already, being in the same line of work.
“He’s been with me since I was a kid. Honestly, he’s basically part of me at this point.”

“Part of you, huh.”
“He feels bad when people notice him, so just pretend he’s not there.”
After that incident when I was younger, I had to start attending school with a bodyguard. It made most kids keep their distance. My uncle, who had just joined my mother’s company’s security team at the time, ended up getting assigned to protect me. He was still green then, pretty stiff, and not exactly warm toward kids, which only made the gap worse.

Eventually, it reached the point where the only person I could call a friend was Moon Seonhwa. When my uncle realized that, he completely panicked and cried his eyes out.
Back then, I’d just come back from therapy and felt more comfortable with a protective adult around than a bunch of kids, but I think that moment stuck with him. Even now, he prefers to pretend he’s invisible when we’re out in public.
The image of a fully grown adult crouched and sobbing drifted hazily into my mind, and I got lost in thought—until I heard a quiet mumble beside me and turned my head.

Jaegyung was walking just behind me, head tilted slightly as he looked over.
“What is it?”
He looked at me with a guileless expression, pretending not to know what I meant.

“Didn’t you say something just now?”
“Hm? Oh. I just said it must’ve made you two really close, being together since you were little. You must know a lot about each other.”
So he did say something—I’d just missed it while reminiscing.

“Yeah, he knows everything about me. Every move I make, really… But what can you do? After a while, you get used to it. It really does feel like he’s part of me. Like a shadow. Sometimes I forget he’s even there. Oh, and ‘Uncle’ is just a nickname.”
Hearing that, Jaegyung’s eyes sparkled like he was being told an interesting story. His gaze made me start talking more than I meant to—rattling off random memories like the time I wore mismatched socks to school, or when I tried to sneak into the PE storage room to get a soccer ball and ended up in a chase with the vice principal and the gym teacher.
When I said my uncle knew every single one of my embarrassing childhood moments, Jaegyung’s eyes crinkled in amusement.

“So… you’ve basically never gone anywhere alone?”
“Pretty much. Actually… yeah, never.”
“No rotating shifts? Nobody ever substituted in?”

“Nope. For… personal reasons, it’s hard to switch.”
Maybe because he was a bodyguard himself, Jaegyung was genuinely curious, and I ended up answering all sorts of things until we finally reached the 11th floor. Through the metal door at the bottom of the stairs, we could hear the muffled buzz of chatter.
“So ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) today, you’ve got two bodyguards.”

We stepped down the last few stairs, and Jaegyung whispered that in my ear before skipping ahead. Then he turned back and waited for me with a grin like a happy dog. It didn’t match the image of a trained bodyguard at all.
Of course, if I told him that to his face, he’d get sulky. I swallowed the urge and followed after him, watching his metaphorical tail wag.
After he pushed open the fire door, we came out into a break area—unlike the narrow halls on the previous floor, this one had vending machines and benches. A small group of people chatting nearby turned to look when the door opened. Their gazes briefly lingered on us before flicking away again.

Not surprising. I’d probably look too, if I were them.
Beyond the break area, we could see crowds moving en masse from the lounge toward the elevators and escalators. My stomach gave a small churn, but with the event starting soon, we had to meet up with people and get food fast. I’d eaten a little already, so I could manage—but I wasn’t sure about Jaegyung.
I gave him a quick gesture, then pulled out my phone and placed a call. The group in the lounge, who had been stealing glances at us while snacking, began to pack up and leave one by one.

I was just thinking, we can sit here, when the ringing stopped and the call connected. I could hear messy background noise over the speaker.
—“Where are you?”
“Uh… opposite the escalators, where the vending machines are.”

As I spoke, I lifted my head to double-check the location—and saw someone I hadn’t noticed before.
Far away, a figure in a white fur-lined hoodie with the hood up, their neck weighed down with bulky accessories, stopped mid-step and turned to face me.