Complicated

Part 1

Things were getting complicated.

Kim Rok Soo felt that perhaps his life had been complicated for a while now.

He was twenty-five years old and while he had extremely stable friendships in his life, Choi Jung Soo and Lee Soo Hyuk as primary examples, he had some reasons to feel apprehensive about romance.

His relationship status wasn't something that he normally stressed all that much about. His general disinterest in dating and romance usually left him pretty satisfied in his day to day life regardless of whether he had a partner to share his time with.

There was the fleeting and hopeless crush from his teenage years that still haunted his thoughts, here and there, but mostly he missed that person's company above and beyond anything romantic. He was the sort of person that struggled to fall really romantically in love unless he'd already fallen head over heels for a person as a friend first.

Theoretically this should make his dating life simpler due to how little he engaged with it.

Theory didn't take into account the existence of Cale Henituse.

To say that his relationship with Cale over the years had been complex, problematic, and turbulent really didn't put enough emphasis on how strange it all was.

Despite all of that, it wasn't actually a toxic or negative relationship, just a strangely balanced one where neither of them quite got what they were looking for through it.

It had all started through that same pathetic crush in high school.

Kim Rok Soo and Cale had, without any connection with one another, developed a rather hopeless crush on the same grad student who just so happened to be getting extra credits through working as a teachers aide. Well, in Cale's case the man had been his sunbae in that same university.

It was a stupid and hopeless crush. An embarrassing memory that anyone would want to be able to erase from their personal history.

That's all it would have been too.

It wasn't like Cale or Kim Rok Soo ran in the same circles. Kim Rok Soo was a friendly loner and Cale was problematic trashy rich spoiled garbage. They weren't attending the same school, they weren't in the same social structures, they weren't even in the same economic groups.

So they really shouldn't have met, hung out, or even become connected with one another.

"What the hell are you thinking about with that stupid serious expression?" Cale poked between his brows, rubbing out the crease that had formed there with a worried frown.

Kim Rok Soo contemplated how to answer, inevitably deciding to go for the truth. "What a crazy punk you are."

Cale rolled his eyes, flicking his forehead before heading towards their kitchen while grumbling.

Kim Rok Soo rested his chin on the palm of his hand, watching as the hapless bastard fussed around with the pots and pans. It was Cale's turn to make dinner and that always led to a significant amount of entertainment. The spoiled rich kid in him always showed through at these times. He had a tendency to stare at spatulas like they were some sort of strange alien tool and then look down at his phone where the directions were with an honestly adorably confused expression.

Cale insisted on cooking though. At least one night a week. He didn't like the idea of always being on the receiving end of things and he didn't like how clearly inferior his cooking was.

He was lucky that his partner was Kim Rok Soo. He'd had enough terrible meals in his lifetime that Cale's cooking was actually quite nice.

When your childhood involved dumpster diving for expired corner store food, a lovingly yet sloppily made home cooked meal was actually really nice.