Hover over the footnotes~
Translation: Ranka
Editor: defiant.potato
Top Secret – First Book (Intro)
Because of the nice weather, the streets were overflowing with couples. Jaeyoon unlocked his cell phone to check the time and quickened even more his already impatient steps.
“I’m sorry.”
It wasn’t easy to walk through a dense crowd. He courteously apologized to a woman who frowned at him as he had bumped into her and ran, it was already past 7:05 o’clock. As he began to see the gorgeously decorated department store’s tree, Jaeyoon started to look around the surroundings nervously and stopped at that certain place. He was tall, so he was easily seen even in the flood of crowd. And the crease engraved in the middle of his small face1, which could be clearly visible even from afar made his handsome face stand out even more. With the delusion that black smoke was rising behind him, Jaeyoon quickly hid himself inside the crowd and began to calm his petrified self. However, no matter how brave he tried to be, his legs trembled constantly and as he hesitated for a while, Jaeyoon was soon found out by the other’s sharp eyes.
“Idiot!!!”
“I’m sorry.”
An angry, heavily blaming voice struck the crowd like a lightning. And following that was Jaeyoon’s apology that came out instinctively.
“How dare you make me stand here!!!”
Before long, the man who came up to Jaeyoon’s nose snarled at him as if he would strangle him at any moment. The people around who had been sneaking a peek at his sculpture-like handsome face seemed to freeze at his words.
“I’m sorry.”
Jaeyoon apologized again in a trembling voice.
“You made me stand in this damn place with all sorts of things, wasting 6 minutes and 42 seconds of my life? You want to leave the world2 like this? Wanna get buried?”
He was angry as if he had been waiting for 6 hours and 42 minutes. Jaeyoon’s face paled. A few of the women who had been watching him also turned pale. With a heart yearning to be able to talk to him, their faces were filled with disappointment. Jaeyoon, who scanned the curious buzz of people stealing glances around them, closed his eyes with the thought of rather being killed right then and there.
“Cursed day where even fatso’s covered in blood are striding on the street. Ha Jaeyoon, you’re full of guts3 today, huh.”
It was a mistake to schedule it on this day from the start. It was another mistake to agree on this place. With a sigh of self-reproach, Jaeyoon furtively opened his tightly closed eyes again. When he saw a group of Santas attracting customers from one side of the department store’s entrance, Jaeyoon’s face darkened again.
Fatsos covered in blood.
Sieon was referring to Santa Clauses. It started a few years back because of a certain advertisement featuring Santa in winter when he began to call the ‘Santa grandfather,’ that is the world’s childrens’ dream, love and hope, by such a dreadful nickname without the slightest bit of hesitation. Recently, even a polar bear joined him as a man ran through the wind to the airport trying to stop him. Of course, with a hunting gun at his side.
“Quickly spit it out.”
“Eh?”
“If it’s a trivial reason, I’ll throw you to the eighth lane.4“
Jaeyoon opened his eyes wide as even his hair stood up, the other being a man capable of doing just that and stammered out.
“Wha. What?”
“The reason you made me stand here.”
His gloomy voice contained the force of him being ready to grab Jaeyoon and throw him into the road at any time. Maybe because it was a nice day, he looked at the tortoise-like road, and was relieved for a moment, then Jaeyoon flinched at the other’s angry behaviour as the man was scarily approaching. It was a natural reaction to step back.
“If you don’t speak in 10 seconds, 7. 8 9”
Gives you 10 seconds but counts from 7.
“We, We’re dating.5“
Jaeyoon who urgently cried out felt despair at Sieon’s poker-face.
“What about that?”
His shoulders drooped at his blasé voice. Jaeyoon couldn’t even imagine until recently that he’d get the chance to meet this man, who was shrouded in rumours like a celebrity would and was also his friend’s cousin, personally. And even less that they would have dated. The lover’s day, Christmas Eve. Whatever the occasion, he wanted to make an appointment on this special day. However, even though the streets were overflowing with couples, and the whole of Earth was excited about the festival of love, this man was snorting without a care in the world and exuded a bloody atmosphere. Your partner was your adversary after all.6 As soon as he entered junior high and senior high, all he heard were the scary legends of this handsome yet intimidating man. With the age difference of six years, he had never encountered him at school, but his story, which was old enough to be forgotten, was still living on, told from mouth to mouth, and accompanied by exaggeration, was becoming more frighteningly sublimated. (Even at this moment, it’ll be passed on to prospective freshmen who were scheduled to enter next March.) Yoonjae, his7 cousin and a long-time friend of Jaeyoon’s, denied the man’s entire existence, saying ‘It was a problem itself that my aunt even married my uncle in the first place.’
“That’s pretty daring, huh.8“
Pretty daring? Repeating again Sieon’s words whose meaning he couldn’t quite understand, could Jaeyoon take these words as something positive? He held a faint hope. It seemed so, judging from the fact that his voice had gotten softer.
“I’m hungry.”
If this was the reaction, it was okay. When he started walking, Jaeyoon was relieved that he passed the first crisis.
“Of course, you’re going to pay for everything, right?”
Sieon, who was walking in front, turned around and smiled cruelly. Was this something a man, who was wrapped in designer clothes all over his body, should be saying to a senior high school student who has had just finished his college exams? At that moment, Jaeyoon sincerely cursed the day when he had found out this man’s top secret.
TN(ko-fi):
1) small face – Koreans are obsessed with people’s small faces and see it as an indication of one’s beauty.
2) leave this world – to die
3) full of guts – Literally translated as “to have a liver out of one’s stomach”, it’s a Korean saying used to make fun of, condemn or criticize someone who acts way too recklessly without fearing possible consequences.
4) eighth lane – Basically, South Korea has a wide range of x-lane roads and the eighth lane one has the fastest speed, I guess. Don’t quote me on this tho.
5) dating – Wow, I would have never guessed lmao
6) Your partner was your adversary. – Not completely sure about his one but hopefully it’s not wrong.
7) his cousin – Sieon’s if it’s not obvious.
8) daring, huh – Hmm, not entirely sure about this one, took a slight liberties with it, but the Korean is ‘제법 꼴값이군.’ if anyone has any input.
Ahhhh, and so here’s my new translation project~!! (Please, feel free to add it to NU, I don’t really know my way around that…)
I’m really, really curious what his top secret is (got spoiled lol, it’s a fun one hahaha) and why is he such a jerk lmao, I can’t wait to translate/read more soon~
I will be trying to stock pile a little so I can post regurlarly, which would probably be weekly, also I’m contemplating on whether or not to cut the chapters into parts (max to 2-3, I’m not a fan of too much chopped up chapters) since the chapters are REALLY long but I guess I’ll see about that later~ (Oof, I just checked and the whole of it is like 138 Word pages so OTL, we’ll see how that fares… xD Btw, PUIW was almost 300 pages soo this is half of it but still, it only has 7 chapters lol) But to get some general idea, would you rather wait a bit longer to get a full chapter or would you prefer me to chop it into a few parts and wait for a shorter time for a new chapter? (On average, one chapter is like 20 pages in MS Word lol) I’m not really saying any set timeline for now because I will decide on that after I have a bit of a grasp on my translation speed~ ^^ But I’d say chopped would be about weekly and full definitely slightly longer than that. (That is without TLC/Editor, it could very well change with one~ The language the author uses is also a little harder, more casual/unique/slangish(?) so trying to bring that to life will be bit of a struggle and probably slow me down a bit, too.)
Also the chapters will be unedited since I don’t have an editor for now (please, don’t hesitate to hit me up if you wish to help with TLC/Editing~ ^^)
Oh, and whenever I want to take a break from this (of course it won’t interrupt normal updates), I’ll translate some teasers (which I could be picking up later or not) and post them~ ^^ Ah, and don’t hesitate to recommend me some Korean novels (doesn’t have to be necessarily BL~) if you know of something~
Sorry for the massive TN lol, anyway vote what you prefer and hope you’ll enjoy it~ (As I’m reading this while translating, I don’t know what’s gonna happen later either so I’m as clueless as you all, hehe)
Oh and btw, do tell me if you find any mistakes or if there’s something you don’t understand ^^
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