…I love you, I love you, you fucking bastard. Woonghee’s voice spread like torn waves.
It was a situation where he couldn’t know if the man was properly listening, if his ear canals were properly open. Yet Woonghee couldn’t overcome the surging emotions. Trembling all over, he released the breath he’d been pressing down so hard.
And that was when it happened.
Cough, cough…!
The man vomited water. His large body shook as if an earthquake had struck. Woonghee lowered his face and hurriedly checked his complexion.
A reddish color was returning to his face, his hands, his feet. He was coming back to himself. His body trembled with relief.
“Gi, Gi, Gi Junhyuk…!”
Woonghee pressed his lips to those lips. As if pulling him up from the sea, he received and drank the water the man spat out. The smell of blood and seawater mixed together. Tears pooled at the tip of his nose. Breath burst out.
The man barely opened his eyes, receiving the teardrops Woonghee shed, plop plop.
“Did you come back?”
Did you come back to me? He asked. Those were the first words he uttered while fresh red blood dripped messily from his large shoulder. He was asking if Woonghee had come back to him. When he’d barely grasped the thread of life…
“I, I heard the gunshot…”
You wouldn’t know. That cheap sincerity was mixed into those words of love I nagged you with countless times.
He couldn’t bring himself to say it. Because he was afraid at the thought that someday you would leave my side. Because I’m a damn coward, being abandoned by you was more terrifying than death.
So I wanted to cut off my tail, turn my back on the heart that loves you, and run away.
“Hic, uuk…”
But seeing you hurt like that, I couldn’t endure it any longer. So, so I came back, to your side…
Sobs came surging like vomit.
“Gi Junhyuk, I, I thought you were really dying.”
Those words burst from between Woonghee’s lips. His fingertips trembled. The arm gripping the man’s shirt also trembled. The afterecho of the gunshot still lingered in his ears. Bang, when that gunshot rang out, Woonghee thought his heart would stop.
Yet the reason he deliberately went back to that cruise was because he wanted to be together until your breath went out.
“I was trying to die.”
He slowly pulled up his wet lips. Shaking, Woonghee’s forearm gripping the man’s shirt collar trembled. How could he spit out those words so easily? When the moment of death approaching him was something he never wanted to experience again. It was so dreadfully horrible, it seemed like it would leave a bullet hole in his head like an eternal trauma.
“But…!”
He wailed as if vomiting resentment. Blood flowed from inside Woonghee’s open mouth. Cough, cough, cough…! His throat felt like it would die from pain. Woonghee quickly blocked his mouth with his forearm.
His throat was burning up, his lungs felt like they were flipping over. His whole body ached and throbbed, his throat burned like crazy, but now it didn’t matter anymore.
Nothing mattered. You were alive. You were alive.
You were alive, you were alive…
“I wanted to die by your side.”
The words the man had said came to mind.
Tell me you’ll come back to me even now, then I can forgive everything, as if nothing happened, just come back…
Was the man then the same as me now? Rather than leaving me and losing you forever, in any form is fine, so please stay by my side.
Just stay with me…
Now he felt relieved. Woonghee buried his forehead with a thud against his chest.
What’s going to happen to me now? I’ll lose you eventually anyway, someday you’ll leave me, and I’ve said everything like this.
Now he’d put that key in this man’s hands. Still, since he’d spilled everything out this refreshingly, since he was listening to this man’s heartbeat, relief washed over him.
Perhaps he’d always wanted to say it like this.
I, I, you…
The surroundings were a mess. Had an ambulance come? Bright white lights flashed crazily. People’s shouts mixed and rumbled through the street.
But whatever happened didn’t matter.
…Even the fact that the poison that burst in his throat was flowing through his entire body.
He didn’t want to see, didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to think. Because he didn’t want to be disturbed from his time with this man.
“……”
He buried his face in the man’s chest and gasped for breath. His heart was still beating. The world was crumbling, yet only the two of them seemed to have stopped.
Like a movie, how nice would it be if this moment could flow forever instead?
You and I, preserved here forever.
If only I weren’t some shabby omega with nothing, who learned nothing, and if only you weren’t some poor alpha who grew up mentally abused by your father…
How nice would it have been if you and I were just the protagonists of a wonderful movie?
But Woonghee’s fantasy was soon awakened. As if slapping Woonghee’s cheek saying this is reality, wake up.
[Are you injured?]
Because the paramedic’s voice reached him, cutting through the waves. Yellow light flashed, illuminating the two.
The imaginary film set Woonghee had created was now mercilessly destroyed.
The backdrop that had been set up was removed, the set was pushed down with a excavator, and the actors, every one of them, threw off their makeup and scattered in all directions with a “Goodbye!”
“What…?”
Woonghee slowly lifted his wet face. Seawater and blood mixed and flowed down around his eyes.
It wasn’t his blood. It was blood from the man’s shoulder. His shoulder was horribly shattered. He had really pulled the trigger on himself.
If the cruise hadn’t collapsed and the floor hadn’t shaken, he would have died on the spot. Like a pure white bird with his head smashed, he might have been preserved in Woonghee’s memory.
Ah, no…! In an instant, he came to his senses. This wasn’t some movie. Because the man and he were existing humans.
“Here, over here!”
He quickly raised his arm high. Saying he was here, waving both arms crazily that there was an injured person here.
“Get it together, stay conscious, you absolutely can’t sleep, keep your eyes open, Gi Junhyuk-ssi!”
The man’s thick body was loaded onto a stretcher and moved to a helicopter. Woonghee also followed in a rush. He held the hand that still had a faint warmth remaining, rubbed his body to generate heat.
Wooong, a floating sensation was felt as the body lifted.
Finally, they were departing. Finally escaping this place. There was no joy or anything. Just, he wished very desperately.
“Just stay alive. Please.”
The man’s face was half-covered by an oxygen mask. The paramedic shouted out the man’s condition. Words were heard.
…Blood pressure, pulse, damage, emergency.
None of it entered his head.
Woonghee was clinging to the man, collapsed as if falling into his embrace, sitting there. The man’s chest rose and fell faintly. Woonghee pressed his forehead to that small movement. His heart was beating again.
The helicopter’s propeller made an ear-splitting sound. Woonghee murmured quietly inside it.
“I won’t run away anymore.”
Those words mixed with the wind and disappeared. The helicopter kept flying. The noise gradually grew distant, and the sea spread endlessly. The evening glow licked across the sea.
***
As soon as they arrived at the hospital, the humans were in chaos. Trying somehow to separate Woonghee from Gi Junhyuk.
“Let go, let go, you bastards!”
Woonghee made a scene asking who are you people, where are you trying to steal Gi Junhyuk’s corpse to.
While gripping the man’s body, he tried not to hand him over to anyone.
The skin that had been white like pearls was colored red and purple like poisonous mushrooms, his tongue was swollen and protruding outside his lips, and both pupils were grotesquely bulging, looking exactly like a doll’s eyes, disgusting.
“Fucking bastards, you’re all trying to sell Gi Junhyuk’s organs, right? Don’t be ridiculous, this man is a psychopath so he’ll get revenge even after death…”
The poison had spread, showing symptoms of mental confusion.
That’s when they were in that standoff. The man’s subordinates came rushing in droves.
As if capturing a wild beast, they pinned down and bound Woonghee.
“You fuckers who are just big for nothing and utterly useless, what were you doing when Gi Junhyuk was dying!”
You didn’t do anything, you just watched with your hands off! While he thrashed his limbs around, jabbering roughly, a doctor quietly approached from behind. Then stuck a syringe into that thin nape.
“No, what, did you stick in me, this, this is poison too…!”
He raged saying he wouldn’t let this go.
“Can a doctor do this, you bastards? The educated ones are worse, fuck!”
Until the very end, Woonghee, who had protected him while gripping the man’s body tightly, soon lost consciousness with a thud.
Slump, his lithe body drooped like candle wax. Like that, he collapsed over the man’s unconscious body. With both fists tightly gripping Junhyuk’s collar.
“……”
Woonghee, who had fainted from the tranquilizer like that, opened his eyes again on a very quiet night.
The surroundings were so silent, he woke up because this stillness was eerie.
“Huk…!”
Exhaling a rough breath as he woke from sleep. The first thing he encountered were deep eyes. A gaze so excessively black that its depths were unknowable.
“I heard you caused a scene. …My subordinates couldn’t get themselves together.”
Saying you can’t hold back even for a moment, the man laughed quietly, chuckle chuckle.
