Unable to stand listening to the shameless conversation, Yeonrok squeezed out his strength again and flailed. This time Choi Hwan also plopped his leg on top of Yeonrok’s body.
“Should I hold him together too? Then recovery would be faster. We could shorten the contact time much more.”
“No!”
“Ah, right? Then hyung, you can hold this arm.”
“I said no!”
Neither of the two listened to Yeonrok’s words. Soon Yeonrok became docile, exhausted on his own. He was annoyed and had his brow furrowed deeply when Choi Hwan kneaded his arm as if it were a toy, then said as if amazed.
“Wow. He’s really hot.”
“It’s because he has a fever. I gave him fever reducer earlier, so it should go down soon.”
Exhausted, Yeonrok didn’t even have the energy to react to the rude words about him. The porridge he’d eaten earlier seemed to have already been completely digested. The two began to chat with Yeonrok between them.
“Did you get the research funding you mentioned last time?”
“Yeah. CEO Yeom Cheonho’s investment was quite substantial. Since I’m also a Name Partner, the branch office would have found it difficult to ignore the request. Our Hwan, you even worry about hyung.”
“Honestly, shouldn’t hyung be receiving it all?”
It was quite an unfamiliar story to Yeonrok. No, it wasn’t a completely unfamiliar story either. He thought Yeom Cheonho had mentioned last time that he’d made investments in both Choi Hwan and Moon Gyeonwoo.
After that, Moon Gyeonwoo and Choi Hwan continued sharing each other’s trivial stories. They were all information Yeonrok was hearing for the first time. That Moon Gyeonwoo’s colleague was a parachute hire, that Choi Hwan had majored in science, that surprisingly Moon Gyeonwoo had a medical specialist license, or anecdotes with people around them.
Like someone not present, he just listened desolately while crumpled up in the blanket, feeling left out. Suddenly Moon Gyeonwoo brought up a story Yeonrok also knew about.
“But Hwan, can’t you not go to clubs from now on?”
“Uh…”
Yeonrok’s ears perked up. He was curious whether Choi Hwan would be shameless even in front of his lover. Instead of immediately promising not to go, Choi Hwan said this:
“Why don’t you just come with me next time?”
I have no idea where this guy keeps his common sense. Yeonrok expected Moon Gyeonwoo to get angry. However, after a brief silence, unexpectedly Moon Gyeonwoo agreed.
“Mm… Okay. Let’s go together.”
Moon Gyeonwoo seems to be putting up with a lot. However, having no intention of interfering at all, Yeonrok soon tuned it out. In any case, unlike with Yeom Cheonho, the two seemed to get along quite well, so at least they wouldn’t invite him on their dates, he thought.
Listening to the conversation the two were having, Yeonrok dozed off. Because of the flu symptoms his body ached, so he repeated waking and sleeping several times, and each time the two were still chatting away beside him.
They must have repositioned Yeonrok several times as his posture had changed too. Choi Hwan either had Yeonrok tucked under his side or had him half draped over his body like a cushion. Sometimes he woke briefly at the beep of the thermometer, and sometimes he woke startled when a cold wet towel—he didn’t know who put it there—was plopped on his face.
Even while groaning, Yeonrok somewhat eased his very sullen and wronged heart. Though one of them was treating him almost like a cushion, it was definitely better than suffering alone. Because there’s nothing more miserable in the world than that. When he fell asleep endlessly again and woke up, this time the two were rummaging through a fruit basket.
‘Isn’t that mine?’
Though he wasn’t particularly pleased, since Choi Hwan had bought it as an apologetic gift, the ownership clearly belonged to him. But too lazy to make an issue of it, Yeonrok lay there limp like a withered leaf. After debating whether to eat this or that, Moon Gyeonwoo picked up a few fruits and got up from his seat.
“Stay here. I’ll ask Ms. Park to peel them.”
“Okay.”
While Moon Gyeonwoo was away, Choi Hwan giggled while watching short-form videos. After plucking and eating a few grapes, seeing Yeonrok wake up with a grumpy face, he shoved a grape at him.
“Hey, you want some too?”
“No thanks.”
But he forcibly shoved the grape into his mouth anyway. He really didn’t listen to a word people said, not even with deaf ears. As Yeonrok reluctantly chewed, Choi Hwan moved his hand without hesitation. Only then did Yeonrok realize that Choi Hwan’s hand wasn’t groping his arm like before, but near his chest. When that shameless hand touched his ‘Name,’ Yeonrok screamed.
“Where are you touching?!”
“So touchy.”
Touchy… Annoyed, Yeonrok trembled. When he snapped at him to take his hand out of his clothes right now, Choi Hwan reluctantly withdrew his hand. His attitude was utterly shameless, as if he’d received an unreasonable demand.
“What, does it wear out if you touch it?”
“You must have touched your lover’s. Go touch that instead!”
But somehow there was a strangely absent response. Yeonrok looked at him suspiciously when Moon Gyeonwoo came back with well-peeled fruit. The two flirted with each other again while sharing the fruit, then Choi Hwan shoved an apple at him as if doing a favor.
“Hey. They say apples are good for you.”
“I won’t eat it!”
As Yeonrok turned his head this way and that, Moon Gyeonwoo snatched the apple piece and fed it to his mouth with a terrifying face. It was an action filled with defiance, as if asking why he was making him do this to his lover. Overwhelmed by that force, Yeonrok inadvertently bit the apple Moon Gyeonwoo fed him. Then Choi Hwan grumbled.
“You always refuse only what I ask you to do? You discriminate so damn much.”
If only I could punch that bastard’s mouth just once…
Yeonrok chewed the apple as slowly as possible, thinking to prevent them from feeding him more fruit. Crunch, crunch… Then something suddenly occurred to him and he hurriedly opened his mouth.
“Did you come to my room last night?”
“Me? I was so wasted I just slept. Come to think of it, you were trapped in the bathroom, right? That’s really funny.”
Though Choi Hwan openly mocked Yeonrok, he wasn’t even annoyed because he got goosebumps. If it wasn’t Moon Gyeonwoo or Choi Hwan, then who on earth was it? It could only mean that some unidentified person had entered his room and tried to do something to him while he was trapped in the bathroom. Yeonrok asked the two.
“Did anyone ever enter the room at night? Or try to enter?”
And the respective answers that came back were:
“I sleep with my door locked.”
“What idiot would trust enough to go around without locking their door? How many people work in this house?”
Then Moon Gyeonwoo said to Yeonrok in a rather pathetic tone.
“You seem to have some delusion about someone secretly invading your room, but if you try to force open a locked door, an alarm goes off. It’s impossible.”
Yeonrok, who’d become the idiot who went around without locking his door, shut his mouth tight. On the other hand, he was scared. Didn’t it mean that someone who knew he usually went around without locking his door had approached? If so, it was likely one of the people who came and went working in this house.
‘Huh? Then if the bathroom door hadn’t broken, could I have been in big trouble?’
It was unexpected that his misfortune could sometimes become good luck. Anyway, he felt he definitely needed to tell Kim Jeongseong or Yeom Cheonho about this. As Yeonrok pondered and wriggled to escape from the blanket, Choi Hwan wrapped him up tighter.
“Here we go again.”
“Let go of this! I have something to tell Secretary hyung.”
“At this dawn?”
Flinching at the word dawn, he looked at the clock to find it had already passed 1 o’clock. He thought it was afternoon because the two were loitering around without sleeping.
“Tell him tomorrow and just sleep for now.”
Choi Hwan spoke in an annoyed tone, then made a half-hearted patting gesture over the blanket. Moon Gyeonwoo rustled and took out cold medicine to feed him, as if telling him not to interfere with the lovers’ intimate time. Yeonrok hesitated because he felt a bit sorry to call the busy Kim Jeongseong at this dawn anyway. Moon Gyeonwoo drove the nail into that dilemma.
“You can’t reach him anyway. He said he urgently went on a business trip to America on last night’s flight, so even if you call he won’t be able to answer.”
While Yeonrok was bedridden, it seemed Yeom Cheonho and Kim Jeongseong had been continuously working hard. He gave up and closed his heavy eyes again. Though the fever had gone down a bit, since his condition hadn’t recovered yet, sleep came quickly.
How long had he slept like that… Yeonrok groaned and opened his eyes again. This time the surroundings were quiet. Thinking both had finally left, he struggled to lift his heavy eyelids. Unexpectedly, the two were still in his room.
Choi Hwan was lying spread-eagled with his phone in one hand, sleeping as comfortably as could be. To sleep that comfortably, he’d roughly shoved Yeonrok down toward his lower side. Moon Gyeonwoo was also sleeping curled up on his side next to Choi Hwan. A tranquil shadow had settled over both their faces. Yeonrok thought drowsily.
‘They’re the most annoying and unlucky people in the world, but since they’re sleeping, they seem somewhat tolerable.’
Though he could never agree with the saying that similar people are connected as Name Partners, he thought he could somewhat understand the saying that they have similar tastes. Otherwise, there’s no way they’d all be this handsome.
