Lee Woonghee couldn’t even turn his head this way. As if he was going crazy with embarrassment. He was only showing his reddish nape. His white toes, pooled with yellow lamplight, wriggled.
You know, don’t you? That I’m listening even to your breathing.
…Right, Lee Woonghee was playing along with the lover act. Even knowing that, the man’s heart pounded. He felt dizzy as if his vision would shake. His head shook as if he were standing at a dizzying height.
The man frantically rummaged under the nightstand. He took out a cigarette case from the drawer and opened the hook with his thumb with a snap. Several cigarettes were revealed, and when he pushed them aside with his thumb, medicine packets appeared.
‘Patient Gi Junhyuk tries not to trust other people as a defense mechanism. He puts distrust forward as a shield. …The pathological aversion to physical contact is also to protect himself.’
The man grabbed the medicine packets in a lump, tore them all at once, stuffed them in his mouth, and crunched them.
‘Empty your mind, empty it as lightly as possible. Only then will you see the other person properly.’
He licked the powder remaining on his palm with his tongue, slurping it up while continuing to watch Lee Woonghee. The area around his arm that he had frantically rubbed felt hot as if burned.
Empty my mind? How the hell do you do something like that? The more properly he could see Lee Woonghee, the more his brain boiled as if his head had been shoved into magma.
***
Bubbling, in the large kitchen. The most Korean food was being boiled on the fire spewing white steam. It was kimchi stew with green peppers chopped up and added.
It was the first pork rib kimchi stew he’d made in his life. Woonghee had no skill in making it fancy, but he knew how to make it taste quite good. The pork rib kimchi stew he made for the first time was spicy and tasted better than expected.
“Bravo.”
The server said it was very delicious and lavished praise, asking if he was someone who could make such perfect food.
“Mm, it’s so delicious though?”
What’s with that person? Woonghee raised his guard. He always had a knife in his mouth spewing harsh words….
“But sir, I hate to say this, but the visual is still absolutely terrible. If the taste is an A minus, with this visual it’s at a level where even a C would be difficult to get?”
Saying it wouldn’t be like this even if boiled in hellfire, he sliced people up with a smiling face.
“So why am I learning what cooking….”
Fuck, why are you suddenly making me learn fucking cooking? It’s not even bride lessons. While making him cook, the man became busy as if preparing for a wedding. When he woke up in the morning, there was a pile of catalogs in the reception room.
Like an overzealous parent who’s only been on one blind date but is already looking into English kindergartens for their second child….
And the icing on the cake was, of course, the wedding catalog. Holding up white wedding dresses to Woonghee and critiquing them was the start of the man’s daily routine.
I’m going crazy with this shit. He was really no different from a crazy bastard, to be so serious about the lover act.
But the man really looked genuinely happy, so Woonghee just left it alone. It naturally looked better than suffering from anxiety symptoms.
…Right, it would all end once time passed anyway. Once I become a Beta, this tingling sensation will all disappear too. That damn rope of fate connecting Omega and Alpha would be severed.
Then I would definitely be treated like livestock by the man too.
“Then I’ll see you again tomorrow.”
“Yes, thank you for your hard work.”
Woonghee stepped out into the corridor, receiving the greeting from the server who wore a bright smile mechanically. Creak, the dining room door slowly closed behind him.
“……”
Silence came to the corridor. Only then did Woonghee slowly look around. He looked around carefully several times to see if anyone was coming, and kicked the carpet with his foot.
When the carpet rolled up like that, the handle hidden beneath was revealed.
Below this, those people are there. When the hell were they frantically struggling by any means necessary to escape that island, and now they’ve had their freedom castrated on their own and crawled underground like that….
“Haa….”
He was worried about those people whose humanity had collapsed being shoved together in one place. Wasn’t it a situation where something could explode at any time?
And apart from everything else, Tula, that bastard was very suspicious.
He acted docile as a dog in front of him, but he was someone who had killed people. He was a bastard who had been dirtily worn down in the back alleys of rotten entertainment districts. He would have done anything for his own gain.
Moreover, now he had nothing left to lose….
He’d mixed such a guy in among them. Wasn’t that like releasing a hungry shark into the sea? Even if he usually lived crouched down, if even a little smell of blood spread…?
He knocked lightly on the door with the back of his hand. Thinking it might not be heard well, he knocked again, and the door opened slightly.
“……!”
And through that gap, large eyes with deep double eyelids peeked out. A disheveled black head of hair grown carelessly shot up.
“Tula.”
Woonghee lowered his voice as much as possible and shoved what he’d brought. It was a pouch. Inside was an armful of jewels that Gi Junhyuk had arbitrarily bestowed on him. When light flashed through the slightly open gap, Tula’s eyes gleamed. It was an utterly greedy gaze. Should I call it the gaze of a beggar kid who discovered bread dripping with white cream?
“Take this and get out of here.”
The guy tried to quickly snatch the pouch, but Woonghee didn’t fall for it so easily. He raised his hand high and dodged quickly.
“You have to promise you’ll leave before I’ll give it to you, you crazy bastard.”
Perhaps thinking it had been snatched from before his eyes, Tula’s eyes momentarily became haggard as if starving. But soon Tula slowly shook his head.
[…Woong, I can’t leave here with just that money. I need a really large amount of money.]
Woonghee had tried to persuade the guy, but it seemed useless. He hadn’t expected the deliberation to be this short at all. When Woonghee gripped the jewelry in his hand tightly, the hard things twisted in his hand with a creak.
[Gi Junhyuk reported me.]
Gi Junhyuk, that man was mentioned again from Tula.
“What are you saying, say it again.”
[Police, he reported me to the police. That I killed the Captain…. Really, I really didn’t intend to kill him, really….]
At the word “police,” Woonghee clicked his tongue inside his mouth. Being threatened is all….
[If I go out, I’ll be caught right away.]
“Then you’ll rot here forever? Without even knowing how Jjokko is growing up?”
[No, no, I, I…. Then, then, Woong, please run away with me, we can buy passports and cross the border! You also fucking hate being by that bastard’s side. That bastard to you!]
The guy’s two eyes, frozen stiff, were fixed straight on Woonghee’s neck. It wasn’t targeting the necklace again. Beyond that, they were fixed on the kiss marks that man had left all over him.
[That bastard forcibly confined you, right? That’s why you couldn’t come find me, right? I don’t believe you became lovers with that bastard! You wouldn’t do that, fuck, how could you and that psycho!]
Flames rose in the guy’s eyes. That was clear jealousy. The filthy speculation that Woonghee had tried to crush and break several times.
“Shut up, you crazy bastard.”
Am I crazy? I only followed you because of Jjokko, I, I’m here by my own choice—he was about to shout but urgently lowered his voice.
But the guy whose eyes had already rolled back seemed to have no intention of lowering the decibels at all.
[Huh? That bastard forcibly took you! Hurry up and say you were raped!!]
As the atmosphere grew increasingly menacing, Woonghee’s hand moved toward his pocket. There was a bread knife he’d sneakily grabbed before leaving the dining room. He was a docile guy only to him, but money was involved. This place threatened survival instincts. Woonghee’s child did too….
So even Tula, if cornered, how he would act was anyone’s guess.
Then from somewhere, creak, the sound of a door opening was heard. Gasp, Woonghee drew in a breath.
‘It’s Gi Junhyuk…!’
This cruise’s staff don’t open doors that slowly. Only the man moved like that.
Woonghee quickly stomped down hard on the underground door where Tula was popping out like a mole. Fingers got caught and wriggled like a severed lizard tail.
[Ugh!]
A pained groan burst out, but Woonghee didn’t care either way.
“Shut up…!”
He shoved the hand through the less-than-closed door. Then he quickly spread the carpet back out. Huff, gasp. He was out of breath even though he hadn’t run.
Soon after, step, step. The heavy sound of shoes grew closer and closer. He quickly came to his senses and approached him. So he couldn’t come any closer to this place.
“Woonghee-ssi.”
“…Did you come looking for me?”
“I came to see if you did well with your bride lessons.”
He glanced at his complexion sideways. The black eyebrows, the prominent nose bridge, the arrogant-looking lips were all at the same angle as usual. His mood didn’t seem uncomfortable at all.
“I don’t think this kind of thing is my taste.”
“But to become a precocious adult, you have to learn cooking well, right? I already mastered it all at seventeen.”
The man embraced Woonghee as if pulling a beloved thing into his arms, as if coveting something missed. Woonghee obediently entrusted his body to that firm embrace.
“That way you can become a good spouse, can’t you?”
Woonghee returned to the suite room half-held by the man. And before turning the corridor, he glanced back one last time.
“Then couldn’t Gi Junhyuk-ssi just do it?”
It was a very narrow gap. Through the thin gap like a belly sliced open with a knife, flickering pupils were visible.
…Tula was watching him.
He would never join hands with that bastard again. He now knew it was a swamp. A terrible quagmire that neither that bastard nor he could escape from.
“That’s right, I can just do it.”
And above all, he couldn’t betray this man anymore.
