The adults around us always called Han Taeyun and me 'childhood friends who have been close since birth,' but that was a serious distortion and an irresponsible delusion regarding our 21-year history. To be precise, we have never once defined each other as affectionate friends.

The starting point of this terrible ill-fated relationship was our mothers. Because our mothers met as postpartum care center roommates and have been best friends for nearly thirty years, we were stuck rolling around each other's living rooms since we were infants who couldn't even open our eyes properly. In a daily life where we naturally gathered for family trips and meals on weekends, a guy named Han Taeyun was always stuck in my field of vision like a set menu.

When I first met him, Han Taeyun was much smaller and quieter than the massive PE major he is now. He was a fragile kid who was busy hiding behind his mother's skirt whenever he saw a stranger, and even when I approached him first to talk, he would barely nod instead of answering.

But strangely enough, if I was playing at the playground with other kids in the neighborhood, he would eventually sneak up and linger around me as if he had gotten bored. When I asked if he wanted to play with me, that brief moment where he would hesitate before nodding might have been the first page of our business friendship.

Of course, those fresh memories didn't last three days. From our kindergarten years when we started getting a bit older, we evolved into rivals who growled at each other whenever we met. I think my puberty started back then. It wasn't that we hung out because we liked each other; we were just "forced" together because there was literally no one else in the neighborhood to play with.

On sunny days, we risked our lives competing to see who could climb the highest slide at the playground, and on rainy days when toys were spread across the living room floor, we fought bloodily every time to claim the best toy first.

Han Taeyun would find fault with and disapprove of everything I did, and it was my daily routine to contradict whatever words came out of his mouth. A destructive relationship that ended only after we both cried our lungs out over petty arguments about what was yours or mine, or after getting smacked on the back by adults. The funny thing is that even after fighting like that, I would be pressing his doorbell the next day as if nothing had happened.

Even after entering school, this grueling orbit didn't change. Using the excuse that we lived in the same direction, we always walked home together. Since we held each other's dark pasts and pathetic weaknesses like a computer hard drive, it was less annoying and more cost-effective to deal with each other than to make new friends and adjust.

Whenever I lost my mind and forgot my school supplies, Han Taeyun would openly click his tongue and call me clumsy, and whenever I tried to run away from academy homework, he would block the desk with his wide frame and nag me. While making the annoying excuse that he was only going with me so I wouldn't get lost, he waited for me in front of the school gate every day.

From high school to being college students now, we are still that way. Instead of helping, we interfere; instead of worrying, we laugh and say it serves the other right; and no matter what accident happens, we blame each other first.

Whenever someone looks at us and gives a warm smile, saying, "You two have been close for a long time," we would simultaneously scrunch our faces without a second's hesitation and express extreme disgust. Grumbling about who followed whom or who is monitoring whom, but eventually walking in the same direction. That was the reality of our long-standing childhood friendship that others talked about.

And just today, it finally exploded.