Of course, he had received the man’s basic personal information through Director Jin Gicheol.
Bae Yiyoung, twenty-eight years old. A composer.
Perhaps because the income from his copyrighted songs was inadequate, he currently worked as an employee at a whiskey bar.
Surprisingly, it was his cousin noona Yang Hyeyoung’s establishment. Though it was still questionable what exact relationship he had with Chahyun, he thought they probably met there for the first time.
‘Come to think of it, didn’t they say the place where I got into the accident was also near Hyeyoung noona’s bar?’
Perhaps Chahyun had been on his way to meet Bae Yiyoung. He would find out what business he had by checking his phone.
After confirming that the phone worked properly despite the cracked screen, Chahyun said to Juhyuk.
“Get me a driver. The only memory I have of driving is getting my license.”
“Cut the crap and stay holed up at home until your memory comes back. Just thinking about all the accidents you caused until you were twenty-two still makes my blood boil.”
Chahyun shrugged with an expression that showed he knew nothing about it. As he feigned innocence with a deliberately guileless face, Juhyuk clicked his tongue as if disgusted and turned around. Still, as he stepped outside the penthouse, he called someone.
“Send a car to Executive Director Moon Chahyun’s place right now.”
Chahyun smirked as he watched Juhyuk’s back. He only had a fierce temper, but his heart was truly soft.
After Juhyuk left, Chahyun first opened the shopping bag. He picked up the neatly folded suit jacket inside the shopping bag, looked it over front and back, and tilted his head in puzzlement.
“Did my taste in clothes change?”
The style wasn’t bad, but it was excessively modest. It was a cheaper brand than even the t-shirt under the leather jacket Chahyun was currently wearing, and the wristwatch that seemed to have been worn with the suit wasn’t particularly good either.
Perhaps Chahyun had become conscious of others’ eyes after starting work at the company. There was already a lot of talk about hereditary management, so a young executive director couldn’t go to work dressed more flashily than his own superiors.
‘Of course, I have no intention of doing that.’
It seemed a waste to dress plainly when he had finally become this splendid.
Chahyun rummaged through the shopping bag looking for other interesting items. He soon discovered a small box. For a moment, goosebumps rose on the back of Chahyun’s neck.
‘No way…’
No matter how he looked at it, it was a ring case.
Chahyun grimaced and hastily opened the box. Sure enough, there were couple rings inside that even looked beautiful to Chahyun’s eyes.
Ugh, Chahyun screamed and flung the ring case away.
“Are you seriously insane?”
As far as Chahyun knew, the only person who would receive this was Bae Yiyoung.
An ominous feeling grew uncontrollably. On the day of the accident, Chahyun might have been planning to exchange rings with Bae Yiyoung. If that was the case, then that day’s accident was rather fortunate.
“Why would you give something like this when you can’t even take responsibility? Making him have expectations for nothing.”
He couldn’t believe he had grown up to be such an irresponsible person.
Chahyun wiped the cold sweat under his chin with the back of his hand and picked up his old phone. He opened the text message app on the phone with the cracked screen and skimmed through the list.
After scrolling through quite a few entries marked as unread, he found a chat window labeled ‘Yiyoung.’ Only after touching it did the number ‘1’ disappear.
The content of the text message he checked after ten days was this:
[Yiyoung:
Are we going to drop honorifics now?]
10:16 PM
It was a reply to the text Chahyun had sent just before that.
[I love you]
10:16 PM
Love? Love?
Chahyun had never acted cute by saying “I love you” even to Igyeong or Juhyuk. Too shocked, Chahyun stared blankly up at the ceiling with his jaw dropped.
“Did someone steal my phone and secretly send that?”
Chahyun, who had been blinking in dismay at the ceiling, looked back into the chat window with a thread of hope.
Only messages sent to Bae Yiyoung in a tone so polite it was almost servile continued in a line. They were mostly trivial things like ‘Did you sleep well?’, ‘What did you have for lunch?’, ‘I don’t think I can make it today. I’m sorry.’ The more he looked, the more absurd it became, making him snort involuntarily.
“What the hell is this…”
It was nauseating.
He was dumbfounded by his own aged self making a fool of himself, but Bae Yiyoung went one step further.
[I couldn’t sleep well ㅠ Because you kept appearing in my dreams, Chahyun-ssi! ㅎㅎ]
8:17 AM
[Kimchi stew and rolled omelet!]
[(Photo)]
[What did you eat, Chahyun-ssi? You’re not skipping meals because you’re busy these days, are you?]
12:40 PM
[Then can’t you take a picture and send it to me now? I miss you]
9:00 PM
Chahyun recalled Bae Yiyoung’s face and criticized him with tightly pursed lips.
“No wonder I became a crazy bastard.”
Who wouldn’t? When he’s so sweet and cute every time he speaks.
Even the emoticons he used were cute. If you combined his appearance with the content of his texts, it would be stranger not to fall head over heels. Even if he wasn’t gay, a hundred out of a hundred men would fall for such coquetry.
He couldn’t be doing this unless he had planned to seduce Chahyun.
He didn’t know how such a toxic person got attached to him. Chahyun hastily closed the message window and opened the gallery. The subject of the just over two hundred saved photos were all Bae Yiyoung. There were even only a handful taken together with Chahyun.
As Chahyun’s thumb scrolled through the photo album, it gradually slowed down.
“…What.”
Each time he opened one photo large and looked at them one by one in detail, his frowning expression also gradually relaxed. Chahyun muttered involuntarily.
“He’s pretty.”
It wasn’t just an observation about Bae Yiyoung’s appearance. It was a thought that naturally arose because each figure captured in the photos was bright and warm.
Chahyun, whose head cooled instantly, stiffened his expression seriously.
‘I must have really, really liked him.’
Chahyun knew enough about photography to feel the affection toward the subject. If he held an exhibition with these, he was confident that everyone would fall in love with Bae Yiyoung.
Chahyun lowered the hand holding the phone in dismay and admitted.
“We were dating.”
And it seemed he had been quite serious about it.
But how on earth? No matter how attractive, Bae Yiyoung far exceeded the gap that Chahyun could overcome socially, and he was a man.
He didn’t know what kind of spell Bae Yiyoung had cast on him.
Just as he was thinking that, thunder suddenly struck outside the window. Chahyun blankly cast his gaze beyond the penthouse’s large glass window and thought.
‘It’s raining.’
For some reason, he imagined Bae Yiyoung getting rained on after leaving work from the whiskey bar.
“…”
Anyway, if he was going to end the relationship, he had to meet him once. He absolutely wasn’t thinking things like ‘What if he doesn’t have an umbrella?’ or ‘Does he act as cute in person as he does in texts?’
Just then, a text message arrived on his newly activated phone.
[Director Jin Gicheol:
What model car should I prepare?]
3:38 PM
Chahyun was about to carelessly ask about the vehicle model he had driven before but stopped. He looked at the modest suit and wristwatch placed haphazardly on the table.
Really shabby.
Chahyun called Director Jin and said in an indifferent voice.
“Pagani Huayra.”
The dream car he would have gotten simultaneously with obtaining his license if only Juhyuk hadn’t threatened him not to be arrogant. This supercar, which cost 3 billion won, had fewer than 100 units produced per year, so even if you ordered it, you had to wait a year. But not for the twenty-eight-year-old Moon Chahyun.
That’s the level of the man that poor artist was dating.
***
It was just past 8 PM when Hyeyoung said.
“Yiyoung-ah, there are no customers, so go home early.”
“Is it okay?”
Although he asked that, on days when there were no customers like this, he usually left work early. Hyeyoung answered Yiyoung with a smile.
“Yeah. Just clean up the stage and go quickly. It looks like it’s about to pour.”
Yiyoung unconsciously looked at the whiskey bar’s stage. Since an unknown rookie singer had sung his own song and left today, there wasn’t much to clean up.
It was only once, but about four months ago, Yiyoung had also sung there.
‘Was it the first time in six years that I performed in front of other people?’
Even so, he had performed really comfortably.
It was a day when the band scheduled to perform in the evening had suddenly canceled. It would have been fine to play an album as usual, but instead of doing that, Hyeyoung asked Yiyoung if he would like to perform. He would have waved his hands in refusal at any other time, but somehow it was okay that day.
Like today, it was a day with no customers, and he happened to have his guitar with him. It was also a familiar space since he had worked there for a long time. Perhaps because of that, Yiyoung’s long-standing ailment of freezing up at just the thought of being on stage was also quiet.
Moon Chahyun had entered the bar when he was singing his favorite original song.
The moment Chahyun, who was looking around the bar with indifferent eyes, glanced at the stage, their eyes met. Only then did Yiyoung come to know what expression people who fall in love at first sight make. Yiyoung probably didn’t have a face much different from his either.
That day, Chahyun had shone radiantly even in the dim bar where only the stage lights were bright.
Recalling the moment he first saw Chahyun like this, Yiyoung became unsettled.
‘He changed his phone number.’
