**
17th floor lounge. Sinju was gnawing at the tip of his fingernail with an oddly anxious expression. In his other hand, he held his phone to his ear.
“I told you to cut him — did I tell you to put him on some other guy?”
Already hours. It had already been hours since Moon Heesung had gone into Park Ian’s room after being summoned. The 17th floor was where Park Ian’s room was, and Sinju had been holding his position there ever since Moon Heesung left after taking Park Ian’s call.
— …Do you really have to call and make a scene in the middle of the night?
Director Cha’s voice came through thick with exhaustion. Sinju felt the stares from people around him and buried his face deeper behind his mask, hissing in a loud whisper.
“Is this how you do your job?”
— I already fired your manager, didn’t I!
“I’m not asking who told you to fire him, I’m asking who told you to put him on some other guy.”
— What does that have to do with you?
“What do you mean what does it have to do with me!”
— So what exactly is Moon Heesung to you?
“What?”
— Whether I place Moon Heesung with another actor or not — what’s it to you?
That’s right. It has absolutely nothing to do with me. All that matters is that he’s not my manager. He knew that — and yet Sinju had no one but Director Cha to take this boiling feeling out on. The man was the root cause of everything.
“…I told him to stay out of my sight, and he’s still in my sight…!”
— That’s strange.
“…What is.”
Sinju frowned at the sudden remark. Then he looked over at Park Ian’s room door again. Still not a movement. Damn it, what are those two even doing in there? He knew well enough — they’d crossed paths at the same gatherings more than a few times. Park Ian was bisexual, and when his partner was a man, he was a bottom. Though he could be a top sometimes too. According to Seo Jaeha, his position would shift depending on who he was drawn to, and the type he went for was older men, dark-haired, with a mature air about them.
The reason Seo Jaeha had gone out of his way to tell him that multiple times was because the type resembled Sinju’s own. Similar taste, but obviously different inclinations. Sinju liked being the one on top with partners like that, while Park Ian liked being on the bottom. Shit. He’d honestly half-tuned it out and couldn’t remember, so he’d called Seo Jaeha a little while ago to ask.
Gone out of my way to call him. To ask about Park Ian’s type. Shit. Why did I.
— I heard Ian’s shoot got pushed — I figured that’s what you were calling about.
“……”
— Turns out you’re calling to make a fuss about Manager Moon.
“……Director Cha ignored what I said.”
— Ignored what? I fired the manager the second you asked.
“……”
— Well look at that — nothing to say, so you go quiet.
“…Either way, he keeps showing up in front of me.”
— Don’t think the world revolves around you. Aside from overlapping shoots, you’ll be seeing a lot less of him going forward.
That was true. Director Cha kept saying things that were true. Out of all those shoots, they’d only cross paths a handful of times. Honestly, that was all it was. Going forward, there weren’t even that many shoots with Park Ian remaining. Once this shoot wrapped, the only overlapping scenes were the overseas location shoot coming in a few weeks. After that, he’d barely see him at all.
Sinju ended the call without so much as a goodbye, snapping with irritation. His legs were trembling with this inexplicable mix of irritation and unease — shaking enough to vibrate the table, drawing glances from people passing by.
“Excuse me… sir?”
One of the staff members, who had been checking the time repeatedly, approached Sinju with a cautious word.
“I’m sorry, but the lounge is closing now. We’ll need to ask you to make your way out soon — would that be alright?”
The staff member bowed courteously as they spoke. Sinju, eyes still on the motionless room door, held out a card.
“Run up as much as you want — just stay open a few more hours.”
“…Pardon?”
Not quite grasping the absurd request, the staff member fumbled, and Sinju replied as if the whole thing was a bother.
“If you can’t, get me whoever’s in charge so I can talk to them.”
“The — the person in charge?”
“The branch manager? The general manager? Who is it?”
“……Pardon?”
“I’ve crossed paths a few times with the son of the Baekil Hotel representative.”
Baekil Hotel. A subsidiary of Baekil Group — he’d encountered people from that family a few times at official events. He’d paid attention partly because the Baekil Group Chairman was a rare type you didn’t often come across in those circles. Unlike his own father — the Dowon Group Chairman, who had illegitimate children scattered everywhere — Chairman Yeon was an extraordinary family man, someone who had even raised his own older brother’s son as his own, and was known to be a person of deep virtue and warmth.
There had been rumors going around that the youngest in that family wasn’t actually Chairman Yeon’s biological child — but funnily enough, the youngest happened to be the one Chairman Yeon doted on most, so the rumors died down quickly. Whether the rumors were true or not, in Sinju’s eyes, Chairman Yeon was remarkable regardless. He was the person who had made Sinju realize that a chaebol who didn’t wield power as a weapon, and actually knew how to cherish his family, could exist. And at the same time — he had envied the children who had a father like that.
“Ah, well….”
The staff member flustered at Sinju’s outrageous demand. It was apparently the first time they’d dealt with a guest who called for the representative on the spot — and while they were stumbling over themselves, Sinju’s eyes suddenly went wide as he finally saw the room door open. After hours, the sight of Moon Heesung stepping out of Park Ian’s hotel room and walking down the corridor made Sinju reflexively spring to his feet.
“Never mind. I’m leaving. Right now.”
The staff member let out a breath of relief watching Sinju walk out without a backward glance.
Sinju followed immediately after Moon Heesung. Without even registering why he was following him, he trailed behind him as naturally as breathing. He watched Moon Heesung step into the elevator, waited for the doors to close, confirmed it was heading down, then Sinju rushed breathlessly for the emergency staircase. From what the road manager had told him, the floor where the managers were staying was the 7th.
Sinju sprinted down to the 7th floor, breathless. He worked out regularly and staying in shape was part of the job, so running was nothing — but actually running outside of exercise, like this, felt like it had been a very long time. Rushing down so hastily that his layered long coat became a nuisance, Sinju burst through the emergency exit and checked the elevator indicator on the 7th floor. But the elevator didn’t stop at 7 — it kept going down without pause. Sinju stared at it in puzzlement, then broke into a run again. The emergency door slammed shut with a bang that rang out magnificently through the quiet hotel corridor.
Pushing through rough breaths down to the first floor, he spotted Moon Heesung’s retreating figure stepping out of the elevator and crossing the lobby toward the exit.
…Where is he going at this hour.
It was late at night, and while this was a hotel, they weren’t in the city — the only thing around was the pitch-black sea. Not even a single proper bar in this empty stretch of nowhere.
What did Park Ian send him out to do at this hour. Sinju let his imagination run to absurd places as he followed him in silence.
A few steps in, Moon Heesung stopped — and Sinju quickly ducked behind a parked car nearby.
Moon Heesung came out of the hotel and sat down on a bench lit by a single streetlamp, gazing out at the sea stretched before him. He looked at it with a vacant, distant stare for a while before pulling a crumpled pack of cigarettes from inside his shabby coat. The state of that coat had bothered Sinju from the start — the kind of thing you couldn’t get for even fifty thousand won at a market stall — but the completely crushed cigarette pack bothered him more. Did he smoke? He’d never seen it. There’d never been a smell of cigarettes either.
Moon Heesung put a cigarette between his lips and lit it with a cheap lighter that looked like it belonged in some run-down bar. He drew deeply on the filter until his cheeks hollowed and blew the smoke out toward the sea. The grey smoke drifted on the wind and disappeared without a trace. The smoke was gone, but Moon Heesung’s face looked just like it — grey smoke. Expressionless. He carried the atmosphere of something lonely, like hazy, bitter cigarette smoke.
“……”
Sinju had forgotten he was hiding. He watched from just a few steps away. For some reason the sight of it twisted something inside him. He had no idea what the man was thinking — but his chest ached and a strange irritation rose from somewhere deep in his gut.
The shabby clothes, the hair that knew nothing of grooming, the completely crumpled cigarette pack, the atmosphere filled with nothing but bitterness, the smell of loneliness and solitude. He found himself suddenly wondering how Moon Heesung had been living. The deeper Sinju’s resentment grew toward him, the less he’d wondered about how the man was doing. He’d been too absorbed in the fact that his own life had been miserable. At some point he’d stopped wondering how Moon Heesung lived, what he did.
Moon Heesung smoked very slowly. The burning ash fell at a leisurely pace. Even long after, Moon Heesung didn’t leave. Even as the cool wind turned his face cold and he was becoming ice, not a single change crossed his expression — he just stared straight ahead. Looking at the sea swallowed in darkness with nothing visible, Sinju let the curiosity he couldn’t hide show through. What on earth was going through that man’s mind.
What kind of life had he lived, to make a face like that.
Sinju was someone who understood loneliness better than anyone. From a childhood with not a single adult to rely on, to the feeling of the moment he abandoned his mother, to the stretch of years he spent cast aside with no one to turn to. He was someone standing upright while enduring loss and solitude. Sinju was a person packed tight with loneliness and isolation, hollowness and listless exhaustion.
But Moon Heesung…. He was.
“……Damn it……”
Sinju couldn’t bring himself to keep watching and turned away. He pushed his cap back from his face just to run his hand over it. The turmoil inside him sent profanity surging up. The person he resented most, the one he’d been deliberately trying to ignore and withhold any attention from —
He was furious at himself for finding that he was more curious about him than he’d ever been about anyone.
What an idiot.
