Yeonrok’s instincts blared alarms loudly. As expected, he had to stop this here.
Gritting his teeth hard, Yeonrok slammed down on the accelerator. The sports car roared roughly and shot forward. In an instant, Yeonrok overtook the sedan and sharply turned the wheel. He screamed out:
“Sorry, Yeonji!”
That’s right. Following Yeondoo, Yeonpil, and Yeoneo, this was the nickname he’d settled on.
CRASH! With a violent impact, the sedan rammed into the side of the red sports car. The sedan stopped, wedged between the sports car and the building’s outer wall. Pop—the airbag deployed. Even so, it was quite a big impact, so Yeonrok groaned.
“Ugh, uhhh…”
Even while moaning, he held onto his consciousness and crawled out after opening the car door. The person in the driver’s seat lay face-down without moving, either unconscious or stunned. Yeonrok staggered and opened the back seat door. Moon Gyeonwoo was sprawled out like he was dead, bleeding from his head.
“Moon Gyeonwoo! Try to come to your senses…!”
It wasn’t from the accident just now, but from the injury he got when he was hit earlier, right? I didn’t ram too hard and hurt him badly, right? Though worried, he couldn’t bring himself to touch his head and just earnestly massaged his hand. It was with the thought that since they were Name Partners, he wanted to help even in this way. Whether it was effective or not, Moon Gyeonwoo hazily opened his eyes a few seconds later.
“Are you conscious?”
“Ugh, what happened…”
Before Yeonrok could explain, he seemed to have immediately grasped the situation. He rolled out of the car right away. Fortunately there didn’t seem to be any broken parts, but perhaps because the shock was great, he soon collapsed to the ground. Yeonrok quickly caught Moon Gyeonwoo and carefully laid him down. Since it seemed bad to let blood rush to his head, he first had him lie down using his thigh as a pillow.
But rather than regaining consciousness, didn’t his face turn pale as his eyes rolled back again? After fidgeting anxiously, Yeonrok thought “whatever” and kissed him. Both from experience and according to the Name Manifestor community, the deeper the contact, the better for health. This seemed like it would be more effective than holding hands.
Moon Gyeonwoo’s lips were softer and warmer than expected… and tasted like lip balm. While pressing their lips together earnestly with the feeling of giving artificial respiration, he even slipped his tongue in slightly. Perhaps feeling something strange, Moon Gyeonwoo opened his eyes again. His eyes widened seeing Yeonrok kissing him. Seeing him, Yeonrok exclaimed delightedly:
“Are you conscious? For now, try not to close your eyes. People who can help will be here soon.”
Indeed, as he’d predicted, the bodyguards soon appeared in cars. As Yeonrok sighed in relief, Moon Gyeonwoo barely managed to grab his collar. His trembling gaze turned toward the crumpled sports car. Yeonrok, who turned his head along with him, turned deathly pale. The damage was more severe than he’d expected.
“Don’t tell me you rammed with that…?”
“Yeah. It was too urgent. When someone’s being kidnapped, what’s that much?”
Though he spoke coolly and calmly, his heart ached terribly. Even though he hadn’t bought it with his own money. Yeonrok deliberately smiled broadly to hide his bitter feelings.
“This time you’re indebted to me. Got it?”
Hearing those words, the strength drained from Moon Gyeonwoo’s hand gripping his collar. Thinking he was losing consciousness again, Yeonrok quickly grabbed the hand falling to the ground. Moon Gyeonwoo’s eyes looking up at him were different from usual and strange, making him a bit worried. How should he put it—he looked like someone missing a screw.
“Good heavens, Young Masters!”
The bodyguards who got out of the car panting immediately took action. One called an ambulance while another pulled out the person who’d fainted in the driver’s seat. Curious about the identity, Yeonrok stared intently at the kidnapper and let out a cry.
“Oh, that person is…!”
A familiar face. Well, of course, because it was Chief Kim who Moon Gyeonwoo had introduced as working together on research when they went to the lab last time! The stalker was him? The kidnapper, who regained consciousness while being dragged from the driver’s seat, started screaming.
“No! Sunbae-nim! It’s all a misunderstanding, I can explain!”
“What misunderstanding?! I saw everything—you hitting Moon Gyeonwoo and kidnapping him, you kidnapper!”
At Yeonrok’s words, Park Chungseong’s already merciless handling of the kidnapper became even more ruthless.
“Ahhh! Let go! Let gooo! Sun, Sunbae-nim! Please… Please listen to me…!”
Though the kidnapper pleaded and struggled, he was mercilessly dragged out and loaded into the bodyguards’ car. Regardless, Moon Gyeonwoo just kept staring at Yeonrok. Feeling burdened by that gaze, Yeonrok slyly covered his eyes with his hand. Then suddenly Moon Gyeonwoo let out a sigh-like lament that Yeonrok couldn’t understand the reason for. Worried, Yeonrok lifted his hand again to check.
“Why? Does it hurt somewhere?”
“You…”
His lips, which had burst and were bleeding from the accident, moved slightly before he closed his mouth again. The eyes looking up at him were complex and intense. Somehow they seemed resentful, and on the other hand seemed bewitched. He moaned quietly as if somewhere hurt.
“This isn’t fair…”
He sighed again and then pulled Yeonrok’s hand back to cover his face. The movement of the eyelashes touching his palm tickled terribly.
Not fair—what exactly? At words he couldn’t understand at all, worry appeared on Yeonrok’s face, thinking he must have hit his head after all. He thought Moon Gyeonwoo must be in a lot of pain.
Well, of course, because Moon Gyeonwoo’s face touching his palm was very hot.
* * *
The hospital examination results showed that Moon Gyeonwoo wasn’t seriously injured anywhere. It was a lucky result considering he’d been hit in the head and there was a car collision. However, as always, Yeonrok had no luck. He stared blankly down at his right arm in a cast. Apparently his bone was cracked.
Now that the endorphins were disappearing, his whole body started aching. Not just his body hurt. His heart hurt too. Yeonrok asked sullenly to Secretary Kim Jeongseong, who had rushed over as soon as he heard about the accident:
“Um, do I have to scrap my car?”
“For now, let’s have an expert examine it once. It’s too precious a thing to scrap…”
To Kim Jeongseong, who felt sorry as if it were his own affair, Yeonrok asked what he’d been curious about:
“But what exactly happened? Even with bodyguards, how did it come to this? Are the bodyguards okay? I did ram into them urgently, but there won’t be any major problems, right?”
He was worried because he had fairly good relations with bodyguards other than Park Chungseong and Jeong Boeun. He’d thought they might hide things ambiguously this time too, but unexpectedly Kim Jeongseong gave a sincere explanation. It seemed to be because it had now been clearly revealed that Yeom Cheonho and his father Yeom Cheonryul were in an adversarial relationship.
“There won’t be any major problems from the collision accident, and all of Moon Gyeonwoo-nim’s bodyguards are safe. It seems Yeom Cheonryul’s side approached the stalker and cooperated.”
“Cooperated, meaning…?”
“For instance, wouldn’t there have been that kind of deal exchanged, like ‘we’ll handle the bodyguards ourselves, so feel free to do as you please with Moon Gyeonwoo-nim’?”
Apparently, while the bodyguard following Moon Gyeonwoo at some distance, someone on a bicycle rammed into him with all their might. Subsequently, several people appeared and picked fights, preventing him from following Moon Gyeonwoo, and in the meantime, the incident occurred.
“I hope you’ll also stay as close as possible to bodyguards when going out in the future, Yeonrok-nim.”
Since they absolutely couldn’t touch him when he was in the tightly secured research lab or fortress-like house, they’d targeted his running time. They seemed to have taken advantage of the fact that Moon Gyeonwoo couldn’t hear surrounding noise well while running and listening to music. However, even after hearing the explanation, there was a part he couldn’t quite understand.
“With that much, it seems like kidnapping would have been possible without the trouble of cooperating with the stalker, so why did they do that?”
“Because if you borrow someone else’s hands, no evidence remains. Interfering with the bodyguards and directly kidnapping Moon Gyeonwoo-nim, who is a Name Partner, are completely different in terms of danger. And above all, because he’s the type who enjoys such things.”
Kim Jeongseong was a secretary who was always calm and composed like in a drama. However, when saying this, deep-seated resentment showed on his face.
“That person enjoys cleverly sowing discord and manipulating people’s hearts, making them suffer. That’s probably why he also approached Lee Yeonrok-nim secretly while pretending to be a good person. Fortunately it seems it didn’t work out well for some reason.”
Yeonrok agreed, though he didn’t know why Yeom Cheonryul had fumbled around with him. After finishing the explanation, Kim Jeongseong bowed his head deeply to express gratitude.
“Thanks to Yeonrok-nim, we were able to handle it in the early stages. Thank you. We keep being indebted to you.”
“I don’t really think of it as being indebted. It’s not someone else’s business.”
