“He’s dead.”
There was a cruel edge to the man’s voice.
“Pardon?”
His mismatched eyes gleamed quietly beneath the amber light. Open curiosity was unmistakable in them — a gaze that seemed to be probing, assessing. Meeting those eyes, an inexplicable chill crept down the length of Siyun’s spine.
The man reached out leisurely toward the frozen Siyun. He tried to flinch back and dodge — but the man was faster by a step.
“Ah—!”
The moment those cool fingertips made contact, Siyun’s breath stopped. He tried to pull his hand back again, but the man was already ahead of him, gripping Siyun’s hand firmly.
“Hck!”
The breath caught and coiled back down his throat.
“Cha Siyun.”
He tried to pull free, but his hand didn’t budge. The instant their eyes met, a chill ran down his spine for reasons he couldn’t explain.
The corner of Gyohyun’s mouth lifted slightly. His gaze left Siyun and swept over the red beans and salt placed throughout every corner of the workshop.
“As I mentioned — I’ll be placing just the one commission.”
Gyohyun’s eyes returned to Siyun.
“Will you make it?”
His pulse quickened. He didn’t know what it was beating for — but it was nothing good. Siyun quickly nodded.
“A-alright, so your hand—”
Siyun barely even knew what he was saying. Every nerve in his body was concentrated in the hand that had been caught. The moment Siyun gave his assent, Gyohyun let go, the corners of his eyes curving pleasantly.
As tenaciously as he had held on, he released it in an instant. Siyun wrapped his other hand around the wrist that had been held.
“Excuse me.”
Unlike the flustered Siyun, Gyohyun’s smile only deepened. It was as if murky blood had been cleared — his mind felt clean and sharp. This was an entirely new sensation. His expression lit up like someone who had just found a particularly choice piece of prey.
To Gyohyun, who had always lived the same stagnant days like still water, Siyun seemed like he might bring an unexpected kind of amusement. Final confirmation was still needed — but his instincts had already made up their minds.
Gyohyun rose to his feet. As the tall man stood, a long shadow stretched across the workshop. Siyun was frozen, unable even to swallow.
“I’ll bring the commission brief by soon.”
Even with that mild and composed voice, Siyun couldn’t shake the feeling that he was face to face with a ferocious beast.
“…….”
His body felt much colder than it had before. Invisible and intangible, yet some kind of energy seemed to be slowly passing over him.
The sound of Gyohyun’s footsteps rang through the quiet alley as he stepped out the workshop door. The rain had thinned to a fine drizzle by then.
Opening his umbrella, he glanced back once. Beyond the amber light, a small signboard was visible.
Cheongnang — 淸朗.
Cheon, meaning clarity. Nang, meaning brightness.
The first thing Gyohyun had sensed upon stepping into the workshop was the thick scent of mugwort. Since ancient times, mugwort had been used to dispel impurity and ward off misfortune. And throughout every corner of the space — jars filled with salt and red beans.
Those with Spirit Eyes can recognize others with Spirit Eyes, or so it was said. Gyohyun had known at first glance. Only — unlike himself, who had lived his entire life naturally seeing and sensing things from childhood, Cha Siyun was different. Perhaps because he had spent his life denying what appeared before him, it seemed he couldn’t perceive the deeper things. Still, it was almost amusing — the way he instinctively sensed danger and recoiled, his body acting on its own.
Thud. Thud.
The sound of his leather shoes echoed through the alley.
At the end of the alley, a sedan was parked and waiting. When Gyohyun appeared, Chief Manager Seo stepped out and opened the rear door.
“Director.”
Settled in the back seat, Gyohyun smoothed his damp hair back and gazed out the window. Raindrops traced their way down the glass.
“How was it?”
Gyohyun didn’t answer Chief Manager Seo’s question right away. Instead, he drew the keyring from his pocket and rested it in his palm.
“Hard to say…. One meeting isn’t enough to know.”
Gyohyun tilted his head. The moment their hands had made contact, a warm, soft, clear energy had come flowing in. Not enough to draw any conclusions — but it had left his mind feeling clean.
He looked quietly down at the hand Siyun had touched.
“I’ll have to find out from here. Whether he’s just another run-of-the-mill person with Spirit Eyes — or….”
Whether he’s the Noble One who will put an end to years of suffering and sleepless nights.
“On another note — did you look into what I asked?”
At Gyohyun’s question, Chief Manager Seo gestured to the documents beside him.
“Yes, I’ve prepared them right here.”
Gyohyun turned his head. A neatly organized file sat on the seat beside him. He picked it up and flipped it open.
Cha Siyun. 24 years old.
He looked young enough to pass for a high schooler.
He had dropped out in his second year of high school, then obtained his diploma through the GED. Around that time, he had been hospitalized multiple times for what was classified as psychiatric illness — hallucinations, auditory delusions, panic disorder. Whether he showed little improvement or something else, there were no further records of hospital visits after that — but it was likely that his Spirit Eyes had fully opened during that period.
Gyohyun continued going through the investigative documents. His eye then caught Siyun’s family relations.
“Sangwon Construction?”
As he read through the section on Siyun’s father, Gyohyun’s brow twitched. By an odd coincidence, it was the same company as the late Yoon Hoseong.
“Yes. He was promoted to Managing Director four years ago.”
It must have been after the divorce from his wife nine years ago. As if his blocked fortune had finally cleared with a fresh start, Siyun’s father had risen steadily ever since.
“No children with the new wife.”
The birth mother had one daughter from the man she had remarried. Two years after the divorce was finalized, she had met someone new and gone to the Philippines with him.
“Nothing particularly notable up to here.”
Gyohyun flipped through the pages one by one, making a dry comment. The face that had come to mind was so guileless it looked like someone who had never once strayed off the straight and narrow. Those large eyes had been wide and frozen, as though tears might spill out at any moment, and his lips had trembled finely.
“Lived exactly as he looks.”
For someone with Spirit Eyes — if that’s what he was — his intuition was quite decent. Gyohyun held the keyring up and looked at it against the air. The cool, clean sensation he had felt when he first held it was now almost entirely gone.
He recalled the way Siyun had startled at the brush of his hand and nearly dropped the keyring. And even after that, had blinked up at him wide-eyed in surprise.
“That was…a little…cute, maybe.”
He was murmuring to himself when Chief Manager Seo cautiously parted his lips.
“Director.”
Mid-page, Gyohyun lifted his eyes.
“What is it?”
“You’ll see it on the next page, but — regarding Cha Siyun. There are grounds to suspect he may be a sexual minority.”
“A sexual minority?”
“It seems he stopped going after opening the workshop, but — the moment he came of age, he worked for a year at a gay bar called Fever in Changwoon-dong.”
Of course, working at a gay bar alone wasn’t enough to conclude he was a sexual minority. It could have been curiosity, or the pay. Even so, there was clearly a reason Chief Manager Seo was bringing it up.
“The doctor who treated Cha Siyun noted that he has a markedly strong aversion to women.”
Even after coming of age, he had struggled to so much as hold a conversation with women. Given that some seventy percent of leather workshop clients would be women, it was an ironic situation.
“Is that why he only takes commissions online?”
People whose Spirit Eyes had opened sometimes developed a deep disillusionment with human beings. It was, in a way, unavoidable — seeing things others couldn’t often meant involuntarily learning someone’s hidden shames and secrets. But if the aversion was this pronounced toward one specific group, there was almost certainly a reason for it.
