Beep—beep—beep—beep—
“Hongdan!”
As soon as the door opened, Seonha rushed out in one breath. He had been waiting endlessly for Hongdan to come home, but Hongdan avoided him without even a glance.
Seonha’s eyes wavered.
“Hongdan…?”
Hongdan still said nothing. With unfocused eyes, he was only looking for a way to pass by without touching Seonha. He had skipped lunch and dry-heaved so much that the area around his mouth was all swollen.
Only then did Seonha hurriedly check Hongdan’s haggard appearance. His deep gray eyes turned cold.
“Did something bad happen…?”
His grip tightened around Hongdan’s forearm. However.
Smack—
“Don’t touch me.”
Hongdan coldly pushed him away as if he had touched something disgusting. The back of Seonha’s hand swelled up red, just like his heart.
“……”
Their eyes finally met. There was a hatred clearly etched in them that Seonha had never encountered before. It seemed to foretell the words he was about to spit out. As if saying, among everything I’ve whispered to you, this will be the most raw and painful.
“……You’re disgusting.”
Seonha’s complexion turned deathly pale. Even though he’d certainly heard those words once or twice before, this was the first time Hongdan’s sincerity had hit him so hard. It felt like all the blood in his body had drained into the ground.
Seonha instinctively stepped back.
As the dark shadow that had been cast over him retreated slightly, Hongdan didn’t hesitate to shove his body through the gap. Thanks to his characteristically slender build, he managed not to brush even the hem of Seonha’s clothes.
Seonha’s pheromones were stuck all over the house. Even when he moved away from him, the presence that wouldn’t fade at all made his solar plexus start to throb.
When he placed his hand on the doorknob to open his room door, Seonha, who was still standing by the entrance, spoke softly.
“Hongdan.”
It was a voice small enough to make an excuse that he’d missed it, but Hongdan couldn’t finish turning the doorknob. However, he didn’t turn to look at Seonha either. The former was instinct, and the latter was reason.
“Can’t you tell me… why you’re suddenly acting like this…?”
Had there ever been another time when that man’s words sounded so desperate?
At least there wasn’t any in Hongdan’s memory.
His steps had already stopped at just that one tone of voice, showing how much his heart had already leaned toward him—so it was obvious what would happen if he saw Seonha’s despair-filled face.
Hongdan kept his gaze firmly fixed on the door and only spat out the words he’d practiced all the way home from work.
“Suddenly?”
“Yeah. You were fine until yesterday…”
“No, I just wasn’t in my right mind until now.”
With each word he pronounced, he steadied his crumbling heart again and again.
“What you asked for was just to help find your memories, but I acted like we’d actually gotten back together.”
“……”
“After making all those threats that we’d never go back to that kind of relationship with you… How disgusting.”
“……”
“Your dick really was top-tier, I guess. Seeing how it made even me—who you hated enough to want to kill—able to laugh and have fun with you like this. If it was going to end up like this anyway, maybe I should’ve just overlooked it even when I found out about your affair.”
He had to catch his breath several times in between.
He couldn’t speak too quickly and reveal that he’d prepared this, and he couldn’t speak too slowly and get caught with words mixed in that didn’t align with his true feelings. It was fortunate that Seonha was in a state of considerable shock—with his usual perceptiveness, he would have easily noticed Hongdan’s agitation.
Hongdan opened the door and immediately secured an escape route to hide his distorted face.
“I just had that thought.”
“……What thought.”
After a brief silence, Seonha’s voice flowed out completely parched. Hongdan wished it had been moist like always instead. He forcibly ignored his toes that kept hesitating, wanting to turn back to him.
“That I’m sick of being played by the whims of a slut like you.”
“……”
“So cut the bullshit about liking me or whatever, and try finding your memories on your own if you can.”
Bang—
As soon as he entered his room, Hongdan collapsed on the spot. He took deep breaths, having held them in bit by bit the whole time, and listened for any sign beyond the door.
But no matter how long Hongdan waited and waited, all he could hear from outside was external noise. There were no sounds made by a person.
Was he still standing there?
……He must be cold.
Hongdan shook his head to shake off his foolish inner thoughts that were trying to interfere again. But he didn’t actually go to the bed. He sat there a little longer waiting for signs of Seonha, and eventually dozed off right there.
Only then could the sound of someone’s footsteps be heard. The direction was naturally toward Hongdan’s room.
Seonha slowly opened the old wooden door.
Soon it should have made noise at the joint, but pressed down by something heavy, it didn’t slide any further. At that moment, Hongdan’s left hand, wrapped in drowsiness, dropped with a thud at Seonha’s feet.
“……Ah.”
Only then could Seonha identify what had been blocking the door. He looked down at that hand, both familiar and strange.
Even though he’d already stolen glances at it dozens of times while living together, the ring finger that had already filled out with flesh felt strangely new.
Seonha bit his lip once, then slowly pushed the door with a bit more weight than before. Then he made a gap just wide enough for one person to enter. He squeezed through it.
Seonha lifted Hongdan up as he was and laid him on the bed. Perhaps because his sleeping place had suddenly changed, he rustled around a few times before his face became more comfortable. Not wanting to disturb that small peace, Seonha had no choice but to withdraw the hand he’d been about to use to change Hongdan’s clothes.
Instead, he quietly listened. Holding his own breath, he followed Hongdan’s breathing for a long while.
Shallower than anyone else’s, yet tenacious, and spreading evenly.
It resembled Hongdan.
Seonha briefly kissed the spot where that sound could be heard most clearly.
“I’m sorry.”
***
The next morning, Hongdan woke up with a sigh. Setting aside the question of when he’d gotten onto the bed during the night, what was important was the fact that he’d overslept more than expected. He had planned to leave the house at dawn to avoid Seonha like yesterday, but his resolution had become meaningless in just two days. Hongdan kept hesitating while holding the doorknob, and only came out to the living room after confirming that the noise that usually came from the kitchen wasn’t there.
“……”
Like any other moment, the house was quiet. Enough to create the illusion that he was the only one left in this desolate space. However, Hongdan wasn’t hard-pressed to notice that Seonha was still staying here.
It wasn’t simple intuition.
He couldn’t help but know because of the food filling the dining table and the pheromones reminiscent of warmth even in this cold season.
Hongdan looked at the firmly closed door across from him. Surely, being a light sleeper, even if he’d fallen back asleep, he must have woken up at the sound of him getting up.
Then this silence must be something you created for me.
Hongdan went back to his room and roughly threw on some clothes. Then he hurriedly escaped through Seonha’s continued consideration.
***
The reply he’d been waiting for from Cha Jaewon was there. Except the content was fucking terrible.
[010-XXXX-XXXX] ‘Ah yesss lolol nice to meet ya’
“Is this fucker seriously joking…?”
Above the message, ‘3:14 AM’ was stamped in faint letters.
Considering his profession was what it was, it might have been unavoidable for him to reply at this ungodly hour while burning with artistic passion, but it didn’t look that way at all to Hongdan’s eyes. Even though the text was only 24 bytes, it reeked so much of alcohol that without even conducting the interview, Cha Jaewon was clearly a trash bastard drunk on minor success and indulging in debauchery every day.
Hongdan pressed the call icon with his face thoroughly scrunched up. No matter how unwilling he was to do this, Hongdan’s position was ultimately that of an unavoidable servant.
Ring ring—ring ring—
As expected, Cha Jaewon didn’t answer the phone. He hadn’t expected him to in the first place.
But just for today, Hongdan was determined to act pathetically to match that level. Not caring about the friendly guidance message, he pressed the call icon again and again. He even borrowed a colleague’s work phone in advance in case he got blocked.
Was it exactly the thirteenth time he called? The ringtone that seemed like it would continue all day finally cut off.
—Fuck, who is this.
Who do you think, you fucking bastard. It’s your cheap packaging.
Hongdan forcibly held back the curse that was about to burst out in that instant and pulled up the corners of his mouth.
“Ah, you finally answered. Hello, Director Cha Jaewon. I’m Reporter Choi Hongdan who contacted you yesterday.”
—So who the fuck is that.
Does this bastard only know the word ‘fuck’ after learning his ABCs? Or did he live his whole life as a loser who didn’t know a single curse word and only recently learn them from YouTube?
Hongdan felt bloated from all the words he’d swallowed even though he hadn’t properly eaten anything yesterday or today. But he pressed down once more and scraped together what little social skills he had left.
“Noise’s Choi Hongdan, Director. You personally contacted our side first saying you wanted to do an interview with us. I was really honored… If you’re very busy, should I call you back a little later?”
—Choi Hong… Hong…….
Whether he’d barely come to his senses, Cha Jaewon chewed on that name several times. Hongdan had to cut off the impulse to hang up every time Cha Jaewon made his characteristic nasal sound. But that was merely the foreshock,
—Ah! That Yeonhwa daughter-in-law!
“……”
By those five syllables that burst out so clearly, Hongdan realized.
