Seo Juhyeong asked, but instead of answering, Gyohyun pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed someone. The line barely rang before the other party picked up.
“This is Lee Gyohyun.”
— Well, who is this. Managing Director Lee!
The other person greeted him warmly, and Gyohyun’s lips curved up slightly at the corners.
“It’s been a while. Commissioner.”
A hearty laugh burst through the receiver. The two exchanged brief pleasantries.
— We both know how busy life gets, so that’s enough of the preamble. What made you reach out?
“As a concerned citizen, I witnessed a crime scene and couldn’t just let it go. I’d like to report it — and I’ll need your help with that, Commissioner.”
— What are you talking about? A crime?
At the Commissioner’s question, Gyohyun glanced briefly at Seo Juhyeong, then opened his mouth with calm composure.
“Attempted murder.”
“Hah. Hah.”
Siyun braced himself hurriedly against a tall stone wall. His skin was burning as if a fever were coming on, and his vision swam. The only sound that rang in his ears was his own ragged breathing. His legs had been giving out on him the entire walk, and he’d nearly stumbled to the ground more than once.
I feel like I’ve been walking forever — so why does it feel like I haven’t moved at all? It was Seoul, no doubt about it, but it was nothing like the familiar cityscape he knew. Between the dense trees and long stretching walls, only a deep stillness hung in the air, as though luxury residences lay hidden within. It felt like stepping into an entirely different world. Siyun, who already got nowhere near enough exercise on a normal day, felt like he was dying. Despite the cold weather, his clothes were soaked through with sweat and clinging to his back.
Where on earth is this? He’d bolted out of the man’s house without any plan, and now his sense of direction was completely gone. Houses lined the street — not ordinary buildings, but grand estates.
He froze for just a moment, then pulled out his phone. At least he had that with him. The first thing Siyun did was open a navigation app to check his location.
Myeonghui-dong? It wasn’t terribly far from Hongin-dong, where his workshop was — but it wasn’t within walking distance either.
In the end, Siyun opened the taxi app. A car was nearby, and it was picked up quickly. Only then did he sink down onto the ground where he stood, crouching in place.
2:12 PM. The sun was still fairly high in the sky. But it wasn’t as bright as he would have expected. It had been raining up until yesterday — thankfully it seemed to have let up for the moment, but it had rained continuously for well over a week, not snow, just rain — and it wasn’t even the late monsoon season. Whether it was the overcast sky or something else, his sense of time felt slightly off too. And on top of that, his head was blank, as if his mind had completely checked out.
Siyun was staring at his phone when he noticed, only now, that the screen was cracked at the bottom. It had been perfectly fine as of yesterday morning, so it must have gotten damaged sometime after that.
“…….”
The cracked, shattered glass — it looked just like me. He didn’t even know where things had started going wrong. It was just — all a mess. He couldn’t begin to figure out where to even start unraveling the tangled knot.
First, Kim Jinwoong. What am I supposed to do about this guy. Siyun thought back to the words Jinwoong had blurted out in the name of a confession, and let out a long, heavy sigh.
“Hey. To be honest — when you said you thought I liked guys, I was actually… happy? I kept wondering why. But then recently I figured it out. I think I like you. No — I do like you.”
“Go out with me!”
At first, he’d chalked it up to the spirit’s influence. But thinking it over more carefully, he wasn’t sure the spirit could take all the blame. Because no matter how powerful a spirit was, fully burrowing its way into the deepest part of a person’s heart still took time.
Which would mean some part of Jinwoong’s feelings had been real.
“Idiot. What is he even thinking….”
Siyun bit down on his lip. If there had been even the slightest sign all this time, maybe he could have understood — but the fact that he hadn’t caught on even once in all these years was the more shocking part. Siyun’s expression turned dismayed. He didn’t want to cut ties over something like this, but how was he supposed to face the guy from now on? That said, he had absolutely no intention of accepting those feelings. That was entirely separate from the fact that he was gay himself. He had never, not for a single moment, thought of Jinwoong as anything more than a friend.
Siyun shook his head hard, physically shaking Jinwoong’s confession out of his mind. He felt unsettled. But the bigger problem was something else entirely.
The man named Lee Gyohyun, who had appeared in his life out of nowhere one day.
“See you again.”
That low voice, and the gaze that had met his — it came back to him with startling clarity. It hadn’t even been thirty minutes, so that much made sense, but it didn’t feel like that was the only reason. It had been such a simple thing to say, and yet strangely, it kept circling inside his head.
His thoughts were a tangled mess.
“…….”
There were a mountain of things I wanted to ask — how much that man had seen, what he knew — and I hadn’t managed to ask a single one. The more he hadn’t asked, the more confused he felt. Strangely, Gyohyun’s gaze kept snagging in his mind. The more he tried to shake it off, the sharper the sensation became, and it grated on him.
“Haah.”
He was crouched on the ground, blankly catching his breath, when a taxi appeared in the distance, rolling toward him. It was the car he’d called.
Siyun climbed in limply and blinked. Now that the tension had drained out of him, his eyelids felt heavy. His mind wasn’t clear, and his thoughts were still a jumbled mess.
He turned his head and stared vacantly out the window at the scenery drifting past — and before he knew it, he had arrived at the workshop.
Siyun looked at his own workshop with a complicated expression. After the way he’d bolted out yesterday, it was bound to be a disaster inside. He drew in a slow, deep breath, steadied himself, and walked toward it.
Then he stopped short at the door.
The tteokbokki and fried food he’d ordered yesterday were still sitting there, untouched. The food inside the unopened packaging had gone stiff and cold. A sigh escaped without him meaning it to. He shifted his gaze and spotted the door chime lying on the ground beside the door, and bent down to pick it up.
Creak — he pushed the door open and stepped inside, and immediately stopped again.
The workshop, which had been the scene of utter chaos yesterday, was in far better shape than he’d expected. A few items were scattered on the floor, yes — but nothing was broken.
That was, if anything, what made it stranger. It was too clean, as if someone had deliberately erased all traces.
“What now.”
So many questions had piled up between yesterday and today. There was no way it should look this intact — it was strange. Or was it all just in his head. Confused, he was scanning the workshop in every direction, when Siyun suddenly went still.
As if to prove that yesterday had not been a dream — in one corner, the salt he’d scattered had turned a dark, discolored black.
His heart dropped in an instant.
He slowly pulled himself together and exhaled deeply.
His chest was pounding and his thoughts were a knotted tangle. His body felt heavy and he had no energy, yet the reality in front of him was vivid. The moment it was confirmed that what he’d experienced yesterday had not been a dream, his heart went cold for no clear reason.
I need to deal with that quickly. He grabbed a trash bag and dumped the salt in. The bag wasn’t even half full, but he didn’t care — he walked over to the communal waste disposal area near the workshop and threw it away. Getting rid of the defiled thing brought him a small measure of relief.
“…….”
But soon it felt pointless.
He stood there blankly for a moment, and then instead of going back into the workshop, Siyun turned his feet toward the villa. His body felt utterly drained — he didn’t think he could do anything more.
The villa where Siyun rented a unit was near Hongin-dong Market, same as the workshop.
About a five-minute walk from the workshop, the villa was old enough that small cracks had formed here and there in the outer walls, and the paint had faded considerably — but the landlord lived there too, so the place was generally well-kept and tidy. The faint sound of footsteps passing through the alley and the murmur drifting from the market drifted in, giving it a quiet yet lived-in feel. That was why he’d chosen it — the only drawback was that there was no elevator.
“Ugh.”
A pained groan slipped out on its own.
Siyun’s unit was on the fourth floor, one floor below where the landlord lived.
Climbing the stairs in his current state felt like torture.
“Huh— hah. Hah.”
His legs were shaking so badly he had to stop and rest several times before he finally made it.
Siyun didn’t even think about showering. He just made his way to the sofa and lay down. His feverish head was spinning, and his entire body ached as the pain from the bruising began to surface. He was shivering too — likely the start of a body ache. But he couldn’t bring himself to move. Siyun curled up and closed his eyes. The exhaustion he’d been holding back broke through all at once, and he slipped almost immediately into a drowsy, half-conscious haze.
Tick. Tick.
