Nevertheless, Yeo Dowoon didn’t dare rebel. Kwon Jeonghoo trudged toward him.
“I won’t deny that it’s late.”
“…….”
“Even if it had been early, I would’ve ended up in handcuffs, but well. Still.”
Kwon Jeonghoo truly believed that. He needed time to perceive, time to understand, and time to acknowledge. No matter how slow and gradual it might be.
“Let’s discuss this gradually. The operation is urgent right now.”
In the meantime, Yeo Dowoon had flown away and built his own nest. The nest the guy built was extremely solid and firm, firmly repelling intruders and making them lose their will to fight whenever they tried to squeeze in.
Five steps, no. Kwon Jeonghoo, who stopped walking with about six steps left, tossed an external hard drive to him. Then he returned to being a superior and ordered.
“The detailed plan for the Yeongjong Island Gate suppression operation and simulation videos are all in there.”
“…….”
“Memorize it thoroughly by tomorrow and come to work.”
Yeo Dowoon, who easily caught the external hard drive thanks to his excellent reflexes, glared at it stubbornly. Soon he complained in a deflated tone.
“Well, regardless of the purpose, I told you I have no intention of participating.”
“Where does a registered Esper have the right to refuse an operation?”
As if he was spouting all kinds of nonsense, Kwon Jeonghoo laughed quietly.
“The only right you can exercise is demanding a salary increase.”
“…….”
“You rested and came back, so you have to work. Don’t make the Secretary-General’s narrow-mindedness even narrower than before.”
Even at the words that followed like a joke, Yeo Dowoon couldn’t readily smile back at him.
“The Secretary-General?”
“How do you feel seeing him after a long time?”
Yeo Dowoon, who hadn’t even mentioned anything about Kwon Hyeokun by mistake lest he burden him with useless worries, let out a long sigh. He asked back, trembling.
“That unpleasant old man, I thought he’d left before you came, but he hadn’t?”
Then Kwon Jeonghoo answered calmly.
“He left.”
Just as Yeo Dowoon raised suspicious eyes, he added in a tone that wasn’t overbearing at all.
“He left a memo though. Telling me to manage the kids properly.”
“…….”
“It seems like, Dowoon, hyung raised you too well?”
Yeo Dowoon grumbled as soon as he finished his mischievous question. He disparaged Kwon Hyeokun under the guise of a common joke.
“That grandfather won’t even know the saying ‘the pot calling the kettle black.’ It’s more like the pot calling the clean kettle black.”
Kwon Jeonghoo replied as usual even in the situation where his father was being disparaged.
“If he’d lived sensibly, he wouldn’t have been able to scramble up there.”
Following that, a few cheeky words fell.
“Hyung is an exception, so don’t worry.”
“…….”
“There’s nothing lacking about him as your lover material.”
As soon as the words ended, Yeo Dowoon crumpled his expression as if heaven and earth had collapsed on his back. When he left the office without answering, Kwon Jeonghoo burst into loud laughter like someone who had put all worldly matters behind him.
So without a doubt, Kwon Jeonghoo must have lost even his minimal pride. Damn it! Yeo Dowoon, who put a brief curse in his mouth, eventually kept fiddling with his heated earlobes endlessly.
Whether it was because he was dumbfounded or because he was stunned couldn’t be gauged, but there was no room to deny that a strangely subtle feeling kept welling up.
***
‘This isn’t something to discuss here, so let’s meet at the dormitory back gate around 11 PM.’
‘…….’
‘I’ll come pick you up.’
When causing a commotion at the training ground, he had set a specific time and mentioned it, but thinking about it, it seemed like it was already a ruined promise. With Yoon Minoh having disappeared, there was no need for him to take the trouble to make a wasted trip.
“I’ll think about it later.”
Moreover, he was in a state where all his energy had been drained by the two-stage combo of Cha Haseong and Kwon Jeonghoo. Now he just wanted to go home and lie down. Even while searching for his car, he felt powerless throughout.
“It’ll be cold when I get home.”
Kwon Jeonghoo had returned to his officetel, and Yoon Minoh would have to return to the dormitory within the base where he was the only lodger according to the contract terms, so now only Cha Haseong remained.
But Yeo Dowoon didn’t even hope that he hadn’t moved his belongings out.
By now, even the traces of the person called Cha Haseong having existed in his home would have disappeared without leaving a single particle.
“Should I stop by a bookstore on the way.”
Since there wouldn’t be anyone waiting anyway, Yeo Dowoon changed his destination dozens of times while turning the steering wheel, being capricious.
There were multiple options such as bookstores, movie theaters, bars, and so on, but coincidentally there was no option that attracted him at all.
“The title of the book the Guide-nim was reading was probably ‘Bel Jar’…”
He thought a bookstore might be better, but only the lethargy of needing to just go home welled up. He thought, what business does someone like him have at a bookstore? He might fall asleep the moment he smells books.
“I should just order it online.”
Additionally, if he wandered around crowded places for no reason, there was a high possibility of attracting unwanted attention. In that case, he would be the one to suffer a great loss.
Not only was it not easy to run away avoiding crowds in the city center, but his current condition wasn’t good enough to give autographs and take pictures with people who recognized him.
“If I can’t manage my expression, it won’t matter whether I take them or not…”
Yeo Dowoon was finding people’s hospitality toward him more burdensome as he got older. Not in the sense that he disliked or detested it, but in the sense that his mental and physical strength couldn’t keep up.
Really honestly, sometimes suppressing public sentiment felt harder than suppressing gates.
To make matters worse, he tended to lead both fans and antis simultaneously.
『Esper Operations Base that had been silent announces official position on the afternoon of the 12th, “We urge Yeo Dowoon… to show a more mature personality in the future” Public opinion still cold despite belated excuse?』
It might be because he rose to stardom all at once, but to begin with, his image shown in the mass media itself wasn’t entirely good.
Unlike other Espers who mainly put forward actions that could win people’s favor, Yeo Dowoon readily performed actions worthy of criticism and always dragged controversies around.
‘Fuck, who the hell are you?’
Didn’t he worsen the situation by openly cursing at reporters demanding explanations.
‘The people have a right to know too!’
‘Yeah, I’ll protect your rights. If I don’t protect them, I’ll kill you.’
Didn’t it cause ripples when a young reporter who got into a war of words reported his aggressive appearance as is.
In the end, the enraged Secretary-General issued a 3-month inspection measure, and Yeo Dowoon had to clean monster scraps and dungeon waste for a while with his salary drastically cut.
‘I want to rip his nostrils apart…’
He’d been digging up piles of corpses with a shovel all day, so his sense of smell was paralyzed by the rotten smell. But this incident had already become several years ago.
—Deviating from route, searching again.
Yeo Dowoon ignored the navigation’s clear voice and looked for timing to make a U-turn. He reduced his speed and tapped the steering wheel. His eyes slowly moved around checking surrounding vehicles.
“The way home is particularly congested today.”
After driving on the road for a while and facing familiar scenery, his sharply standing nerves gradually subsided.
After parking his car in the parking lot, he visited a nearby 24-hour convenience store. The part-timer who had his face close to his phone greeted him without even looking.
“Welcome.”
Perhaps because he was wearing his hat pulled down low and wearing a mask, he didn’t recognize Yeo Dowoon even when he passed right in front of him. If he had known that the tall man who entered as a customer was the number one contributor to the Esper base, he would have demanded an autograph on his convenience store uniform.
“They’ve come out with all kinds of beer.”
Yeo Dowoon picked and put in a few cans of fruit-flavored beer that wasn’t too heavy in taste. He also randomly picked up some salty snacks to put down as side dishes.
“That’s 26,850 won. Please insert your card in the reader.”
“Yes, understood.”
After smoothly finishing the payment, he bowed and left the convenience store. The ringing bell sound was quite clear and bright. Yeo Dowoon walked around the area with the convenience store bag hanging on his wrist.
The reason he didn’t go straight home was, though he didn’t want to admit it, that he was feeling lonely.
“Should I bring a few goldfish.”
He heard that Baek Seonwoo came to know the happiness of a life lived together cohabiting with goldfish that cut through the water with their golden tails.
But bringing in new family members who needed care when he couldn’t even take care of his own body properly felt like a situation where the cart was put before the horse.
“…Never mind. It’s hard enough managing my own body.”
Yeo Dowoon became disheartened and ended his short walk.
Ah, I don’t want to go home. It’ll be really cold. Recently, even when he finished going out and returned home, warmth greeted him instead of cold air. It was because one of the three—Kwon Jeonghoo, Yoon Minoh, and Cha Haseong—was always sitting in the living room waiting for him.
Kwon Jeonghoo was mostly checking documents, Yoon Minoh was almost lying down sprawled out sleeping, and Cha Haseong was reading with a book with a different cover from last time held up in one hand.
…Looking at it this way, it seems like it was quite harmonious.
Beep, beep-beep, beep, beep.
“I should change the password to something else too.”
If he left it alone and Yoon Minoh suddenly attacked, it would be very troublesome. Feeling empty was one thing, and being wary of that bastard was another.
