Even if he suffered great shock from this, he had to tell him the truth. That was his promise with Ian.
Putting aside his complicated feelings, he talked with Ian for a few more minutes before hanging up. With a reluctant heart, he rubbed the already disconnected screen with his thumb, then grabbed the topmost document from the pile stacked beside him.
To spend more time with Ian, he had to work like crazy when they were apart. He hadn’t coveted the chairman position because he didn’t want work to get busier, but he thought at this point there wasn’t much difference between being chairman or executive director, yet he quickly focused.
To keep his promise to come home before midnight, he stared at documents until his eyes were about to fall out, and by the time it was eleven o’clock, the whites of his eyes were bloodshot red.
When he arrived in front of the soup restaurant building in the car Jaehyun was driving, Sucheol, who had been puffing on a cigarette with the car window open, hurriedly got out of the car.
The motion of throwing the cigarette he’d been holding between his fingers to the ground and crushing it with his shoe was swift.
After Ian was kidnapped on his watch, Sucheol had voluntarily stepped up to protect Ian. Today too, he had guarded Ian all day, even saving time from bathroom breaks.
However, Ian had also gone upstairs to the house, and since quitting time was approaching, he’d been taking a break smoking a cigarette when he didn’t expect Ganghyuk to appear just then.
“Hyung-nim, I was really working hard. Don’t misunderstand.”
Jaehyun gave him a pitying look. Making excuses while being guilty looked pathetic.
“Get off work. Good job.”
Contrary to Sucheol’s worries, without saying much else, Ganghyuk patted Sucheol’s shoulder once with his hand and went up to the house.
Two pairs of eyes followed the sturdy retreating figure. Sucheol wrinkled his nose bridge for no reason and smoothly ran his index finger under his nose.
“Hyung-nim keeps getting softer, hey. Wow, this is strange. It’s creepy.”
Sucheol lightly hit Jaehyun’s forearm with his fist. Jaehyun frowned and smoothed the wrinkled area with his palm.
“That’s how people get when they’re in a relationship. The self-proclaimed dating expert doesn’t know that?”
“Ugh, hyung-nim in a relationship…… I still can’t get used to it.”
When Sucheol shuddered and brushed both forearms with his palms, Jaehyun shrugged his shoulders.
“Watch your speech around Ian-nim too. When he cherishes him this much, he’s your sister-in-law. Even if he’s younger than us, his rank is higher. Being able to control hyung-nim means he can do the same to us.”
“Why are you adapting so fast?”
“I like Ian-nim.”
“I like him too, you know?”
“Yeah, sure. Now go home. Didn’t you wash? Why are you so grimy?”
Jaehyun looked Sucheol up and down with narrowed eyes. Even though it wasn’t summer, his complexion was haggard as if he’d sweated buckets.
Then Sucheol gazed up at the brightly lit second floor and murmured in a wistful voice.
“……I feel a bit sorry for hyung-nim.”
“What are you saying?”
Jaehyun grimaced and took a step back at the moist eyes that looked like they were filming a melodrama.
“Hyung-nim probably saw it by now too. That bizarre food.”
Sucheol rubbed his stomach with a pale face. The chicken feet dish Ian had brought him to taste an hour ago was churning in his stomach.
The taste, which he’d never experienced before in his life, was strange. It was ambiguous to say it wasn’t tasty, and he felt sorry for the chicken feet to say it was delicious.
Since it was brought with good intentions, he forced himself to eat it all, and then his stomach felt bad again. He didn’t know how many cheongyang peppers were put in, but it was so fiercely spicy that he sweated profusely as if he’d been to a sauna.
Gurgle. At the sound coming from his stomach, Sucheol tensed his buttocks.
Jaehyun also sensed something ominous and moved a little farther from Sucheol. Being close to Sucheol, he knew well that his intestines were extremely sensitive. And that the smell of the farts he occasionally let out was quite terrible.
“Let’s go. I need to go eat some porridge. This is no ordinary job. It’s an extreme occupation, I tell you.”
At the tone that sounded detached from worldly affairs, Jaehyun shook his head but looked at the second floor with a curious face. Hearing Sucheol’s words made him wonder what was happening in there.
As Sucheol expected, Ganghyuk lost his words seeing the food filling the table.
“…Are we remembering our phone conversation differently?”
“Ah, well…”
Ian, with his hands clasped together, laughed sheepishly like someone with a guilty conscience.
“As I was doing it, there were various things I wanted to make. There was no laundry to do today, the floor was clean, and I cleaned the bathroom yesterday. Waiting for when the Executive Director would come, I was bored. Plus, my cooking speed has gotten really fast these days.”
As Ganghyuk remembered, Ian said he wanted to eat spicy chicken feet so he would cook them himself, and unlike yesterday, he requested ordinary food.
Ian making various foods was cute, but eating that food was quite an ordeal. Unlike Ian, Ganghyuk had no hobby of trying new foods.
He had no great interest in food to begin with, so when mealtime came, it was convenient to just consume adequate calories. Living with Ian and worrying about what to eat every day was also a novel experience.
So the foods on the table now were enough to baffle Ganghyuk.
“Can you make this many dishes with chicken feet?”
When he asked with a half-resigned face, Ian’s face, which had been watching for his reaction, brightened completely. Seeing that, he couldn’t say anything more and opened both arms. Ian scurried over and wrapped both arms around Ganghyuk’s waist while tilting his head back.
A light flush was spread over the face looking up with his chin resting on Ganghyuk’s chest. There was even a little red seasoning on one corner of his cheek, showing how hard he’d worked.
When he wiped that part with his thumb, Ian widened both eyes and chirped like a young bird.
“I was surprised too. I searched just in case, and there really were tons of recipes, you know? I got excited and just kept making things, and it ended up like this. But I did make ordinary chicken feet like the Executive Director requested.”
Following Ian’s fingertips, indeed, the familiar soup-based chicken feet were contained in a ttukbaegi pot. He hadn’t noticed because the things around it were too shocking.
Pasta with chicken feet, pizza, tacos, and chicken feet that were suspiciously black. There were even fried chicken feet. He couldn’t understand why Ian went this far when he could just eat them normally, so only a hollow laugh came out.
“I’ll go wash up.”
“Okay.”
After ruffling Ian’s hair until it was messy, he went to the bathroom, showered, and came out. When he came out covering only below his waist with a towel, Ian’s face, sitting on the sofa, flushed red.
The glancing looks were cute, so as he was quietly watching, Ian covered his mouth with a clenched fist and cleared his throat.
“Ahem. Should I dry your hair for you?”
Seeing him get up from his seat and approach hesitantly, Ganghyuk wanted to take him straight to bed, food and all.
Knowing that if he did that, all the food Ian had carefully prepared would get cold, he just held Ian’s chin with his hand and gave his cheek a light kiss.
“We should eat before the food gets cold. Since it’s chicken feet, it’ll harden quickly.”
He didn’t particularly like chicken feet, but Chairman Tae often sought chicken feet as drinking snacks, so he knew that if they cooled even a little, they’d harden like jelly.
He roughly rubbed his hair with a towel to just remove the moisture, got dressed, and came out. He chuckled at Ian’s face showing disappointment and pulled his hand.
When they sat side by side in the dining chairs, he was astonished, but ironically, the food smelled quite delicious.
“Did you taste everything?”
“Yes. The visuals are a bit unusual, but it’s delicious. Since the chicken feet are chewy, they go well with noodles.”
Ian transferred pasta onto a small plate and placed it in front of Ganghyuk. It happened to be cream pasta. The chicken feet covered in white sauce showed off their bumpy surface even more today.
“Should I just give you the soup chicken feet?”
When Ganghyuk didn’t readily touch the food, Ian asked subtly. He had put in plenty of cheongyang peppers especially. So even though it was cream pasta, it wasn’t greasy and the spiciness made it more delicious than expected.
