The elevator area right in front of the emergency staircase appeared.
“Huff. Huff. Huff.”
Jung Kyungwoo was leaning half-collapsed at the corner entrance meeting the guest room corridor. His bent back heaved.
‘This isn’t just simple tension?’
Jung Kyungwoo seemed like someone experiencing breathing difficulties. He hadn’t heard anything about chronic illness. To see it as being injured somewhere, he’d been too fine when climbing the stairs. It was increasingly a mystery.
“Damn it.”
The voice muttering curses was definitely Jung Kyungwoo’s. It was a tone indicating he himself knew his situation wasn’t good.
After catching his breath several times, Jung Kyungwoo continued with labored steps. The way he staggered down the guest room corridor looked like the gestures of someone drunk.
‘But there’s no smell of alcohol.’
Now he had no particular thought of hiding his presence. Not only did the carpet laid in the guest room corridor eliminate the sound of shoe heels, but looking at Jung Kyungwoo’s state, it seemed he’d need to stage a samba parade to catch his attention.
“Damn it. Damn it.”
Low curses continued. After a while, Jung Kyungwoo stood in front of a certain guest room. Jaeha quickly estimated while checking the surrounding room numbers. The room Jung Kyungwoo found was Room 416.
Having reached his destination, Jung Kyungwoo hurriedly searched his pockets. It looked like he was searching for a card key.
“This damn card…”
His hands searching his pockets trembled as if something was so urgent. With his other hand, he kept wiping away cold sweat.
Finally, Jung Kyungwoo took out the card key from his back pants pocket and hurriedly held it to the door.
Beep. Click.
The door opened. Jung Kyungwoo, gripping the doorknob tightly, broke expectations that he would enter inside right away and just stood there.
“I can do this. I can do this. Calm down.”
Jung Kyungwoo’s condition had worsened more than earlier on the emergency staircase. The knuckles of the hand gripping the doorknob protruded white. Because of his trembling body, small rattling noises came from the handle.
After a long while, Jung Kyungwoo finally seemed to make up his mind and slowly turned the doorknob. His complexion as he lifted his head was excessively pale.
‘Mental shock? Could it be murder?’
Jaeha’s doubts went to the extreme. But he soon erased the murder suspicion.
Not long ago, Jung Kyungwoo had attempted to murder, abandon, and cover up a current prosecutor without batting an eye. Though it ended as an attempt.
The living witness to that was none other than Seo Jaeha. In Jaeha’s opinion, Jung Kyungwoo wasn’t a conscientious human who would tremble after committing murder. Then?
“Ah… uh…”
Making strange sounds as if paralyzed, Jung Kyungwoo grabbed the half-open door and trembled. His long legs slowly gave out and he slumped down at the entrance. No, he let go of the doorknob and collapsed.
“No way?”
Jaeha completely threw off the cautiousness of tailing. He strode forward and approached Jung Kyungwoo.
Inside Room 416 was empty.
“Hey, Jung Kyungwoo.”
Even when he called his name, Jung Kyungwoo didn’t respond. Instead, he groaned while dripping with cold sweat. His condition was not normal.
He knelt down and examined his condition closely. His finely convulsing hands were shockingly cold. His face was completely soaked with sweat.
“What drug did you take?”
To his question, Jung Kyungwoo was still stubbornly silent. He seemed to be out of his mind.
“You’re completely wasted.”
Seo Jaeha clicked his tongue. Before mockery, great disappointment filled him. Had he struggled so much because of a mere druggie like this?
He took out his phone and had just pressed ‘119’. Jaeha paused as he was about to press the call button.
If he called emergency personnel now, there was a high probability of losing the opportunity to collect evidence of drug administration. Taeryoung’s power would reach any hospital, and the doctor who received their contact would push it as a simple seizure or whatever, anyway some other reason.
Even if he couldn’t immediately do blood or hair tests, he at least needed photos or videos. Only then could he hold cards to land a blow on this bastard.
“Hey, get up.”
Seo Jaeha shook Jung Kyungwoo’s shoulder. He was still mentally confused. Jaeha looked around and supported Jung Kyungwoo to bring him inside Room 416.
Click.
When he moved the obstructing body, the door closed by itself. In the meantime, Jaeha half-threw Jung Kyungwoo down onto the bed.
“Hey.”
He tapped and called once more. Jung Kyungwoo was still quiet. No groaning either. With a corpse-like pale appearance, he only swayed according to Jaeha’s touch.
“No way… is he dead?”
When he put his ear to his chest, the heart was beating vigorously and well. His breathing was also slightly rough but steady.
“This bastard scaring people.”
Jaeha frowned.
He immediately removed Jung Kyungwoo’s glasses and threw them on the bed. Then he undid the jeans buckle and took off the t-shirt.
The body he thought was thin was more muscular than expected. The body with intricately woven fine muscles was clean without a single common scar.
At the thought that it suited his precious body, the corner of his mouth twisted on its own.
On the inside of his left arm, sure enough, there were needle marks along with old bruises.
“As expected.”
Jaeha took out his cell phone and photographed it in detail. There were more than one or two old injection marks.
Judging by the severe withdrawal symptoms, it wasn’t a short-term symptom. There had to be more injection marks than this. But this was all on his upper body.
“His legs then.”
Thighs. Ankles. Druggies who were socially active often jabbed needles into their lower bodies, which were easier to hide than their upper bodies.
When he pulled down the jeans, tight boxer briefs were revealed. Even without trying to look deliberately, his gaze naturally went there. It was quite a decent size. Not erect.
“Not the upper class.”
It seemed to be an easily accessible downer class rather than drugs that encouraged excitement.
The skin covering his firm thighs was smooth without a single bothersome spot. He grabbed the knees to spread them slightly, then felt all the way to the inside. He couldn’t find bruises or scabs. Even under the buttocks was clean.
The tops of both feet and ankles after removing socks and shoes were the same. The only traces of injections were on the left forearm.
“Not much.”
Putting aside his disappointment, he photographed the entire body of the man wearing nothing but boxer briefs, so as not to miss any possible evidence.
Jung Kyungwoo in the screen strangely caught his eye. It was hard to describe in one word. If he had to explain, he was like a model with decadent beauty appearing in high-end luxury magazines.
In other words, he was exceptionally alluring.
Room 416 of Myungbu Hotel was filled with a thick and unpleasant smell mixed with dry mold and cheap deodorizer.
“Mmm.”
Jung Kyungwoo groaned lowly on the bed that filled the narrow room. Goosebumps had densely risen on his smooth skin before he knew it. Perhaps feeling cold as sweat evaporated, he trembled while curling up his body.
Once he started moving, the 2D pictorial suddenly became a 3D human. A sense of dissonance strongly set in.
“Huh?”
An old hotel room that could never wash away the accumulated grime of piled-up years. Another man secretly photographing the naked body after stripping the clothes off a man unconscious from drugs.
When he recognized the situation objectively, the natural discomfort he’d forgotten rose from his lower abdomen.
He felt an indescribable feeling.
‘Why do I feel like I’ve become a pervert?’
Seeing a naked drug offender was nothing. From his first year as a rookie called ‘Geumcho,’ he’d seen all kinds of things under the Chief of Violent Crimes.
Not to mention evidence photos that corresponded to hardcore, he’d also attended many autopsy processes in the autopsy room.
“This is your first time seeing a corpse today? Then we should go eat gopchang.”
On the day he first attended an autopsy, before the disgusting smell of human intestines even faded, his senior prosecutor deliberately made Seo Jaeha eat grilled gopchang, saying it was a prosecution tradition.
As a member of prosecutors boasting mighty acquired iron stomachs, he should be able to gaze at the naked body of the same sex without being affected, and rightfully should.
But why was Jung Kyungwoo, who was even properly wearing underwear, hard to look at directly?
‘Is it because a guy who doesn’t seem human is in too human a state?’
Seo Jaeha drove out the absurdity that arose in his head. Even so, he stopped video recording and hurriedly pulled the sheet to throw it toward Jung Kyungwoo.
Flap.
He spread the bed sheet to cover the finely convulsing body. Once wrapped in the white sheet, the druggie instantly transformed into a patient.
Pale appearance. Faintly ailing sounds.
The long limbs scattered haphazardly because Jaeha had rummaged through them stuck out awkwardly outside the crumpled sheet.
The words that a body covered awkwardly was more sensual than a completely naked body suddenly came to mind.
“How can a man be so…”
He swallowed the word ‘sexy’ inside.
Because it was quite an exceptional situation, his thoughts kept bouncing to strange places. It was better not to look at all.
When he turned his head, the clothes he’d stripped off earlier caught his eye.
“Syringes. Drugs.”
There was a need to secure more certain evidence than needle marks. Jaeha meticulously searched through Jung Kyungwoo’s belongings.
