The squabble that happened inside continued even after they came outside. If before it was a problem of how to walk, now it was a problem of where to go.
“Let’s go to the hospital. Is it normal to vomit like that just from eating some food?”
Gil Taeseo saying to go to the hospital, and.
“Going to the emergency room for vomiting from indigestion will get me cursed at, you crazy bastard!”
Lee Saehyeon saying he’d go home engaged in a fierce standoff in front of the car. The gazes of the two who wouldn’t back down clashed in midair.
Just looking at the momentum, it seemed like they could stay up all night like this, but the problem was that one side was excessively sickly for that. Saehyeon’s stamina had already been depleted long ago. It was suspicious whether what he’d thrown up earlier wasn’t food but stamina. If he could just lie down on a blanket right now, he’d have no other wishes.
But to do that, he had to get past the gatekeeper before his eyes. An opponent who was even terribly unpleasant.
Meeting that persistent gaze, saliva gathered in his mouth from tension. The subject that had been thrown over the dinner table earlier circled around above his head along with a bird. The bird that had transformed into the shape of a pelican cried out. Squawk, ae, squawk, ae…… like that.
Of course, words starting with ‘ae’ overflowed. Troublemaker (aemuldanji), greenhorn (aesong-i), brat (aesaekki), zucchini (aehobak), and so on. But between the two, the keyword ‘ae’ had, in Saehyeon’s thinking, only one meaning.
Lee Taesol.
‘What’s he plotting?’
Saehyeon had thought that the two would have reached some kind of conclusion in some form. Whether that process was one-sided or a complete mess didn’t matter. He thought they would surely have agreed to treat the things that happened between them, including the child, as if they never happened and each live their own lives.
To put it nicely, that was it. To put it properly, it was probably more like ‘if you ever cross my sight again, know you’re dead.’
He still had no memory from the accident to reaching the agreement. But Saehyeon had a strange conviction. The key to that decision was probably held by Gil Taeseo.
Just looking at the situation at the time, it was that way. Between someone whose traits suddenly changed and who even got pregnant versus someone who was unaffected—naturally, the latter had the complete advantage.
Looking at the current results, it was the same. Put side by side, it was obvious who was the winner and who was the loser.
‘Ah, I don’t know either.’
He didn’t know with what intention he’d mentioned the child. Saehyeon was too exhausted to gauge that. Originally his head wasn’t that efficient anyway—throughout his school days, he’d studied while stabbing his thigh with a mechanical pencil. Trying to make it work now, years later in the dead of night, felt like he was going crazy.
So first, he had to get out of here. The best plan was to think about the rest later with a clear mind. Saehyeon concluded thus and raised his face energetically.
“Hey. Open your earholes and listen well.”
From now on, it’s a war of attrition. He had to hammer in 101 reasons why he absolutely had to go home right now. While thinking, ‘I’m someone who memorized Korean history through rap, you bastard.’
Gil Taeseo, standing before him as if to say ‘try it and see,’ crossed his arms. Saehyeon, as if forcibly gathering courage, gulped down the saliva pooled in his mouth. And slowly opened his dried lips.
***
Right next to him, a person curled up tightly was asleep. Exhaustion was evident on his pale face. It was understandable since he’d worked until dawn, gotten severely sick to his stomach, and had a long squabble after that.
‘He must really hate it.’
Despite being fast asleep to the level where you couldn’t tell if it was sleep or unconsciousness, his body pulled toward the window as if unwilling to touch this side was amusing. Watching it reminded him of the squabble from just moments ago. It was the argument that occurred before getting in the car, over their destination.
The moment when Saehyeon saying he’d go home alone even by himself and Gil Taeseo saying to just shut up and go to the hospital were in a tense standoff. Lee Saehyeon had brought this up.
‘I got indigestion from eating while facing you. It’ll get better if you fuck off, I’m telling you?’
Eyes that were sharp, unsuited to the face that looked precarious as if about to collapse at any moment. At the words denouncing that it happened because facing him was disgusting, Gil Taeseo could only quietly open the car door.
‘Get in.’
‘Why!’
‘Because I’ll do what you want, so get in.’
Despite being so wary. Lee Saehyeon, who hesitantly got in the car until the very end, quickly fell silent like a puppet with its strings cut. It seemed he’d fallen asleep as if collapsing.
Perhaps there was a possibility he was pretending. But the breathing caught by his tensely alert ears told him the answer. It wasn’t the sound of holding one’s breath and gasping for fear of being caught, but small, natural breathing. After listening attentively for a while, Gil Taeseo was certain. Lee Saehyeon had really fallen into a deep sleep where he wouldn’t know even if someone carried him off.
It was a good thing. Dealing with someone asleep had surprisingly many advantages. In that as long as you didn’t wake them, they wouldn’t know what anyone else did.
The man who’d been silent for a moment held his breath and raised his hand. Beautiful fingers moved as if crawling over the black seat.
“What kind of bastard is it?”
Gil Taeseo’s hand, which had slowly approached Saehyeon’s, stopped just before touching. And tap tap. He tapped the leather seat as if quietly counting numbers.
To that rhythmic sound, his dizzy mind was being organized. Including the words he’d deliberately not brought up to the exhausted and thoroughly on-edge Lee Saehyeon.
In the first place, the man hadn’t planned to seek out Lee Saehyeon in this drunken state. This visit was actually an unscheduled, very impulsive choice.
The starting point was a few hours ago. It began when Gil Taeseo finished his ‘schedule’ and was returning home.
“Fuck, really like a damn vicious old hag.”
Gil Taeseo roughly pulled at the necktie choking his throat. Those gangster bastards who think nothing of people’s lives. The way they didn’t hesitate to do dirty things behind the scenes while wanting to act refined in front was disgusting and laughable.
Chairman Gil, who was now at an age where white hair was rising thickly, cherished his outstanding illegitimate son more than his legitimate son. Whether it was because he thought he was the most superior seed he could produce, or because of his ‘love’ for the mother, was unknown. In fact, he didn’t even want to know.
‘Love. What a laughable word.’
In Gil Taeseo’s thinking, this was a transaction. Mother got wealth and power, and Chairman Gil got a satisfactory child and a beautiful Omega lover.
Whether it was karma from doing countless dirty deeds, or simply bad luck, Chairman Gil’s illness was steadily deepening. He frequently called his two sons alternately and had them do work. And each time, Taeseo had no choice but to accept dirty work and see his mother standing by his side.
Whether she was honing and polishing her weapons or it was natural youthful looks, even with age, the woman’s beauty seemed to be preserved intact. It was something that even arduous caregiving couldn’t break down. Only gauntness and faint wrinkles around her eyes were lightly added.
That face draped with such pathos rather made her look like a ‘wife’ from a painting. A woman who loved her husband so extremely that she didn’t hesitate to become a concubine, and even bore him an outstanding son. It was a hackneyed story satisfying enough for Chairman Gil.
But Gil Taeseo knew. The woman was fundamentally lacking in such soft emotions from the start. She saw everything only as tools to sacrifice for a purpose. Her husband, and even the child born from her own womb.
“Ha.”
The man who roughly kicked off his shoes and gloves rubbed his eyes. The strong alcohol he’d downed to forget his irritation combined with fatigue and stuck thickly all over his body.
It was the moment when he was about to close his eyes while sprawling on the car seat just like that. Suddenly the envelope placed on the seat next to him caught his eye. It was something he’d received from Shin Seokwon on the way while entrusting him with the ‘cleanup.’ Naturally, his thoughts led to the contacts he’d postponed. Things he couldn’t bear to open while handling dirty work.
When he opened the messenger window, light poured down over his dim face. He frowned, but that was only for a moment. His terrifyingly focused face swept over the screen as if licking it. It was an appearance unlike the man who now wore a bored expression even when butchering someone.
Each time Gil Taeseo’s pale hand moved over the screen, the displayed image changed. The places and angles were different, but they were all photos of one person. Lee Saehyeon. Fragments of someone he’d so wanted to reclaim were contained there.
Power and wealth were indispensable to keep hold of what one wanted. But at the same time, in exchange for that, they took away time and freedom, morals and good feelings. That was why Gil Taeseo was now peering in like stalking someone else.
“What the hell kind of state is this?”
And the Lee Saehyeon in those photos looked quite shabby. His shabby clothes and gaunt face seemed like a sick person’s. Originally he didn’t photograph well, but whether this got worse or what.
He’d thought he couldn’t see well because it was dark, but perhaps reality could be even worse.
The hand of Gil Taeseo, who was flipping through the photos again and again with a displeased, crumpled face, stopped abruptly. It was because of an unexpected presence reflected in the photo. In front of Lee Saehyeon with his head lowered was a small, round back of a head facing him.
He flipped through the photos again and again and again. But as if by promise, that fluffy ball of fuzz kept appearing. Sometimes it was the back of a head, sometimes like a mongdal ghost, a face with no features appearing pale and blurred all over. It was a form like a ghost captured in a spirit photograph.
There were only two things Gil Taeseo could tell from the photos. The point that there was some child clinging to Lee Saehyeon’s side. And Lee Saehyeon’s face looking at that child.
After a long silence, Gil Taeseo opened his mouth with a bitter laugh.
“……Fuck. What kind of bastard child is this now?”
It was the start of a grand self-deprecation.
