It was just past five in the morning. Yoo Sinju came home fairly drunk, and with nothing but the repeated thought of surely not, it couldn’t be — he washed up, lay down in bed with a cynical surely there’s no way on his lips. He must have drifted off somewhere in the middle of repeating that premise hundreds, thousands of times. Even if Moon Heesung had been grinding away there all night, it had nothing to do with him. Whether he did or didn’t — he was someone Yoo Sinju had no particular reason to care about, and someone not worth caring about regardless.
But contrary to his thoughts, Yoo Sinju began to move in a hurry. He threw himself together and rushed down to the parking garage, got into his car. He drank often, and ever since starting the psychiatric medication, Director Cha had implored him over and over not to drive himself. Yoo Sinju himself had moments while driving where his vision would go hazy, so he tended to avoid driving — but he’d forgotten all of that, and started the car in a daze. The supercar cutting through the quiet streets roared with its engine as it raced forward. The urgency on Yoo Sinju’s face as he pressed the accelerator was plain to see.
A distance that would normally take over an hour, he covered in forty minutes. He parked roughly at the entrance and rushed inside the building. Beneath the pulled-down cap, Yoo Sinju’s eyes darted around without rest. Like a child’s anxiety — a searching gaze that moved in quick, desperate sweeps.
“……Surely not.”
He muttered to himself without realizing it and checked every door he could find. There’s no way, and even if there were, it shouldn’t matter — and yet his heart was hammering so hard that the tips of his fingers had begun to tremble. The face of Moon Heesung — who had declared without even a flicker of doubt that he would find it — kept surfacing before his eyes.
“For f——”
Yoo Sinju, now running without realizing it, was out of breath. But no matter how much he searched, not a single strand of hair was to be found. With each passing moment that he saw no sign of him, Yoo Sinju’s ragged breathing began to slowly settle. Right, there’s no way. A bleak cynicism and a strange, faint relief seeped in simultaneously. Confused by the contradictory emotions, he came to a stop — and at that exact moment.
“Zzzz——”
From somewhere in the emptiness, where not even a mouse could be found, came a faint sound. Yoo Sinju frowned suddenly and turned his head toward it.
Realizing in the next moment that the sound repeating itself was snoring, Yoo Sinju, now looking even more bewildered, slowly made his way toward it. Heading behind the main backdrop of the set, he found the area cluttered with lighting equipment and various other gear scattered about haphazardly. Tucked into that space was a narrow folding sofa that had been set up for staff to sit on briefly — and on top of it, someone was sprawled out.
Yoo Sinju approached with a feeling of surely that’s not — this time for an entirely different reason.
“Ha……”
A helplessly baffled exhale escaped him without resistance.
There was Moon Heesung, asleep as if he owned the place. Moon Heesung, alone and fast asleep in this bare, cold space without so much as a blanket in this cold weather.
“……Insane……”
Yoo Sinju pressed a hand to his forehead, unable to conceal his stupefied expression. It was absurd enough to be passed out flat on his back here — but what made it even more absurd was the fact that he was sleeping so peacefully, in such complete contrast to Yoo Sinju’s frantic worry.
Where does someone like this even come from……
“……Hey.”
Yoo Sinju called out to Moon Heesung — who was, in every sense of the word, dead asleep — in a low, dark tone. But only the snoring grew louder, and there wasn’t a twitch of movement, so Yoo Sinju erupted.
“Hey!”
The shout rang out and reverberated through the high ceiling, and only then did Moon Heesung slowly open his eyes. Blearily blinking himself awake, Moon Heesung took in Yoo Sinju standing before him and, like an animal waking from sleep, languidly hauled himself upright.
“……Came on your own two feet today.”
He rubbed his eyes and slowly added. Yoo Sinju let out another humorless laugh and demanded roughly.
“What are you?”
At the blunt, out-of-nowhere question, Moon Heesung blinked with a blank expression.
“What do you mean, what.”
“You……here — did you sleep here?”
Not even knowing what to ask first, Yoo Sinju’s voice turned sharp even as he fumbled over his words. Moon Heesung looked around with a puzzled expression and replied listlessly.
“……Can’t you tell by looking.”
As if finding it strange that the very person who had just woken him was now asking.
At that unfazed response, Yoo Sinju let the dumbfounded look on his face show fully.
“You really slept here? Like this?”
“What……is that a problem?”
As if asking whether there was some rule against sleeping here, he replied carefully — and Yoo Sinju, unable to make sense of that reaction either, snapped.
“That’s why I’m asking — why here, why are you sleeping here like someone with no home to go to.”
“Well……by the time I came to, it was late.”
“…….”
“And there was a place to lie down.”
“…….”
“And I was sleepy?”
At his perfectly matter-of-fact tone, Yoo Sinju let out a low exhale as though he didn’t even have the energy to be angry. No matter how he thought about it, sleeping so blithely in a place no better than out on the street made no sense — and the fact that he had stayed here all the way until then made no sense either.
“Just how long were you here doing this?”
“……Two-something, three-something.”
He answered the hour gap loosely, as if he couldn’t even remember, and slowly yawned.
“Until that hour……you actually found it?”
“Said I would.”
“…….”
At the unhurried, indifferent answer, Yoo Sinju was briefly robbed of words. The sensation of something clenching tight inside his chest made it hard to even breathe steadily for a moment.
“Why did you come so early. Should’ve slept in.”
Moon Heesung checked the time roughly on his phone and added in his usual tone. Of all things, a remark showing consideration for him — it was almost laughable. He couldn’t fathom what Moon Heesung was after, and it only felt more and more like an unsolvable maze.
“……Why are you doing this to me?”
Yoo Sinju fixed his gaze on Moon Heesung, eyes drifting and unmoored. Emotions crashed through him like a storm. Irritation and revulsion, anxious impatience and worry, and then — that warm feeling he had felt toward him as a child — all of it hit at once and he couldn’t find his footing. The scheme of this person who had appeared out of nowhere and was shaking him to the core made him curious, and afraid.
“Why are you doing this to me.”
“…….”
“Appearing out of nowhere……and then suddenly to me……”
Yoo Sinju’s breathing began to grow labored. A terrible headache and a ringing in his ears crashed over him, and as he staggered, Moon Heesung’s composed expression crumpled all at once.
“Yoo Sinju.”
“Hah……why to me……why……”
Moon Heesung was beginning to look double to Yoo Sinju, who buckled at the waist and crumpled to the ground, losing all strength. “Yoo Sinju!” — Moon Heesung’s startled cry rang in his ears, but he gasped for air as though even breathing had become a burden. A suffocating tightness seized his throat, and Yoo Sinju instinctively grabbed at his own neck, thrashing in pain. Through blurring vision, Moon Heesung’s face — filled with worry — flickered before him. And once again, overlaid on top of it, the face of a young Moon Heesung looking at him from childhood. The face of the hyung he had loved so much. The figure who had been the only adult in his world. The person whose absence had ultimately driven him to destroy himself.
“……Hyung……”
With a choked gasp, barely enough air in him, Yoo Sinju murmured weakly. His vision began to go dark soon after. Moon Heesung, who had been looking down at Yoo Sinju with anxious eyes as he writhed in pain and struggled to draw a single breath, quickly moved to position himself.
“……Breathe. Yoo Sinju.”
The shock lasted only a moment — as if he had anticipated something like this, he moved boldly, loosening Yoo Sinju’s clothing and repositioning him to stabilize his breathing. Moon Heesung cupped his hand over Yoo Sinju’s mouth, helping him exhale deeply. Yoo Sinju’s breath pushed through the gaps between Moon Heesung’s bristled fingers. With no other option in that moment, Moon Heesung’s face twisted with the same kind of pain. As if watching Yoo Sinju writhe in agony was its own kind of torment.
“Damn it……”
“Ugh. Hk……”
Moon Heesung, expression wrenched into something raw, lowered his head to press their foreheads together, as if to calm him. Yoo Sinju grabbed Moon Heesung’s arm desperately, as if begging to be saved. But alongside it was a touch full of reproach.
Why did you take so long to come back.
**
The beginning of Yoo Sinju’s memories was the sound of his mother screaming. Born as the illegitimate child of a chaebol family, Yoo Sinju had grown up crushed beneath the bitterness of a mother who, despite having borne a child, was treated not even as a mistress — let alone as a first wife. They say mental illness is hereditary. Watching his mother slowly lose her mind, Yoo Sinju had sworn he would never live that way — and had turned that same bitter laugh on himself, again and again, seeing the person he had grown up to become.
Please just disappear from my sight.
His mother had been a woman who dreamed of climbing the social ladder in a capitalist world. To give birth to him, she had turned her back on everyone around her. Intoxicated by the dream that if she bore a child, she would earn recognition from his father — maybe not the position of first wife, but at least that of a kept woman.
But having coldly turned her back on everyone and given birth, what came back to her was nothing more than a mansion with a courtyard on the outskirts of Seoul. And not as a gift — as a place to confine her. As it turned out, around that same time, gossip had been spreading loudly about his father having several more mistresses, and the existence of another illegitimate child born from a different affair had been exposed to the world. That too was something Yoo Sinju’s mother had not known. It had already been hard enough to accept that she was a cast-aside — the realization that there were several more women in the same position as her made her someone who could no longer breathe without venting the fury she had buried in her chest.
