“He arrived home safely.”
Leo’s expression didn’t soften even at his secretary’s report. He had followed Hyedam with his eyes throughout the party. He wanted to keep him close by his side, but after seeing his face turn deathly pale while standing next to him greeting people, he couldn’t do that anymore.
The moment he told him to relax and rest, Hyedam quickly disappeared from sight, and Leo saw him wandering around the spacious party venue alone and diligently sampling the prepared food. The last image he had of Hyedam was holding a champagne glass.
He wondered where he was wandering off to alone, and when Hyedam didn’t appear at the party venue even after quite some time had passed, he had to go searching for him. The party was one thing, but he especially wanted to enjoy the fireworks starting at midnight together. As expected, when he saw him alone in the garden, many emotions mixed together in a complicated way.
Had he forced someone who didn’t want to attend to stay at this event?
With only the soft garden lights and moonlight, he couldn’t see his expression completely.
Along with the intoxication, Hyedam’s attitude that was never affectionate toward him made ugly feelings grow in his heart.
If he was going to come outside, he should at least dress properly. While he was considerate and caring toward others, he was completely insensitive about himself. On top of that, he had high self-esteem and a strong tendency to do everything himself rather than rely on anyone.
It must be a personality he naturally developed living alone with his grandmother after losing his parents at a young age. Still, if things are hard, he should say they’re hard, and if he doesn’t like something, he should say he doesn’t like it. Sometimes when he made a proposal, if an answer didn’t come right away and silence followed, it meant he was reluctant.
But after a brief silence, he always accepted his proposals.
As he held the body full of cold rather than warmth, having been outside for who knows how long, a sense of relief washed over him. While inhaling Hyedam’s two-sided pheromones that both drove him to extreme excitement and calmed him down like this, Leo savored that moment.
He used formal speech consistently, calling him “Team Leader,” and rustled about trying to escape from his arms somehow, trying to coax him with appropriate words to bring him inside—he knew all of Hyedam’s feelings but pretended not to.
If Hyedam wanted it, he wanted to keep pretending not to know until the end, but even he couldn’t guarantee how long he could treat him like this. Just as Hyedam wanted to bring him into the warm indoors, he also wanted to go inside with him.
His condition hadn’t been good lately either, so leaving him outside for a long time couldn’t be good.
But this moment alone together felt too good. It was by chance that he saw the moon reflected in the moonlight. And words he didn’t even know flowed from his mouth. The moment he heard Hyedam’s cold correction, saying it wasn’t Ondal but the full moon, his heart pounded.
Whether it was because of the intoxication or being drunk on Hyedam’s pheromones, something unfamiliar came to mind.
A cute, round Hyedam. He laughed widely showing his clear dimples that were rarely seen these days, saying “Ondal.” He kept chattering “Ondal.”
In the moment of confusion, Hyedam who escaped from his arms was the Hyedam he knew. His pheromones were covered with sharp thorns as he arranged his clothes with an expressionless face. He wanted to hear his own name from the mouth of this person who called him “Team Leader” in a stiff tone, as if scolding a disobedient younger sibling or junior.
The behavior of someone who didn’t call his name until the end and didn’t hide his discomfort kept overlapping with the image of one person. Younger than the current Hyedam and smiling more.
Hyedam had been calling him ‘Ondal.’ The person who called him Ondal.
The person who explained that Ondal meant a complete moon. It all seemed like Hyedam.
On the veranda at his grandmother’s house that he visited recently, they ate meat together and looked up at the night sky together. The déjà vu he had felt from the moment he first met him. The reason the road to his grandmother’s house didn’t feel so unfamiliar.
Those complex and subtle emotions he had felt from the moment he saw him mixed together in a complicated way.
He knew the small, insignificant village, the empty yard, and the old veranda. Even the low door frame that he would hit his head on if he let his guard down for a moment—at the illusions randomly floating in his head, his stomach churned.
He grabbed Hyedam’s wrist first, afraid that Hyedam who was right in front of him would disappear.
Hyedam was the only one who could confirm that his memory was correct. It was probably that time that disappeared from his memory. That time when he was an immature twenty-year-old. That time when what happened to him was overwhelming and annoying, so he shook everyone off and went traveling alone.
Was the person who shared that moment really Hyedam? Or was it an illusion created by his stubborn insistence hoping that Hyedam existed in that memory?
He stared blankly at Hyedam, who was gazing at the sky in a daze. Amidst the oncoming headache and tangled thoughts, only Hyedam’s face was clearly visible.
Unlike the calm expression he had when looking at him, now his face was accompanied by a bright smile. Along with the noisy sound, the fireworks lighting up the sky were breathing life into his eyes.
He felt worse than the fireworks casually added as the highlight of the loud and flashy party. Hyedam tilting his head back and looking up at the sky was so beautiful. He wanted those eyes chasing the fireworks to look only straight at him. He hoped his lips would touch those lips that were slightly parted with an exclamation of “Wow.”
Hyedam’s voice seeped into Leo’s ears as he watched Hyedam purely enjoying himself.
“Want to sleep together?”
He lost his mind at those words. He shouldn’t have, but it was spilled milk to regret.
He accepted Hyedam, who came at him more aggressively than usual, and his last bit of self-control collapsed. Not knowing he was being forcibly knotted, all he could do was hold him as he cried, telling him to stop because it hurt.
He held the fainted Hyedam and worried all night, but no matter how he thought about it, no matter how much he thought about it, what he had done was worse than trash and he couldn’t think of a way to fix it. When he woke up, he was debating whether to immediately get on his knees or write something like a letter that would surely be full of excuses, when Hyedam woke up.
He ended up pretending to be asleep, and as Hyedam waved his hand several times in front of his eyes, carefully confirming that he was asleep, he had to keep pretending to sleep.
As soon as the door closed with Hyedam leaving the room as if fleeing, he picked up his cell phone. Although it was early morning, it was a time when the people managing the house could easily be walking around, so he had them turn off all the lights in the house.
Just in case he ran into someone while secretly leaving and got flustered, he told all the working people not to even go near that area.
He had them move a cart to the house entrance for him who would have to walk a long distance, and from the moment Hyedam got in the car and left the house, he had someone tail him too.
At least he confirmed that he entered his house safely. But there was nothing he could do right now.
He was curious whether he was eating meals on time, but there was no excuse to send him food. Even if he contacted him, there was a high chance he wouldn’t answer, and even if he went to see him, he might not meet with him.
He couldn’t use work as an excuse to drag him out again. Leo, who was blankly watching the people cleaning up the traces of the party that had continued all night in the spacious garden, rubbed his face dry with a long sigh.
If he had known this would happen, he shouldn’t have given him time off.
He gave him three days off including the Christmas party. But all Leo was doing now was regretting his mistake.
* * *
“You said you felt like you were going to die, but you’re not dead yet? A cold?”
“Dead?”
“Abalone porridge, ginseng chicken porridge, cheese vegetable porridge, pumpkin porridge, bulgogi porridge. This is the extra-large brisket doenjang bibim I’m going to eat.”
As soon as Hyedam returned home, he burrowed into bed and took a good sleep, but when he woke up, he was still weighed down by body aches, so he ended up calling Junseok. Going to the bathroom was hard enough, but ordering delivery food, going to the front door to get it, and bringing it in to set it up—all those actions felt impossibly distant.
In a situation where he couldn’t move at all, it was fortunate that he called through Hera, because if Hera hadn’t been there, he would have starved while lying down just like that.
“Ginseng chicken porridge.”
“You said you were going to Team Leader’s Christmas party, what’s with the hangover?”
“This and that. Hey. I’m struggling. Bring it here.”
“If you’re like this, go to the hospital.”
Even while grumbling, Junseok put his hands between the armpits of him lying down and slumped, helped him sit up leaning against the bed, and placed porridge, a spoon, and water on the mini table, making a chuckle escape from Hyedam’s mouth.
“Hospital, my ass.”
“You’ve been feeling sick constantly lately. If it’s broken, you should fix it. Will enduring it solve anything?”
“Forget it, now go.”
“I brought porridge and am taking care of my friend who says he’s dying, and you’re telling me to get lost now?”
“Yeah.”
Not having the strength to talk at length, Hyedam grumbled and picked up the spoon, then clicked his tongue at the weight of a spoon he was feeling for the first time in his life. The porridge he had clumsily scooped up a little was dirtying the table.
No strength to even hold a spoon properly? If you don’t have strength to hold a spoon, you really should just die. What is this.
“What a fucking mess. You’re going to leave after this?”
While listening to Junseok’s nagging as he sat on the edge of the bed, Hyedam obediently opened his mouth. He had to eat first to have strength, and then he could go to the hospital or do whatever, right?
“Eat more, you bastard.”
“That’s enough.”
“Are you eating bird feed? Just open your mouth. Eat three more spoonfuls.”
Am I a child? They say mothers always tell kids who don’t want to eat to eat just three more spoonfuls.
Instead of answering, Hyedam glared. And seeing the spoon approaching his mouth, he shut his mouth tight.
“What’s with those clothes?”
At Junseok’s words, Hyedam lowered his head to look at his clothes, then closed his eyes and leaned back completely against the headboard. As Junseok said, it was a fucking mess.
