‘Yeah, let’s call it even.’
Moon Heesung replied lightly, despite the heavy atmosphere. Suspended in the air, their eyes met at the same level. Heesung’s calm and quiet gaze was always steady — dry and expressionless, but never shallow. The child met those heavy eyes and let his hidden weakness show. Only then did he ask back in a voice that trembled faintly, fragile like a small child’s.
‘Even…?’
Seeing him so visibly shaken, Moon Heesung answered matter-of-factly, as if to soothe him.
‘Calling it even means we each give and take one thing.’
‘…….’
‘You stay by our Huijae’s side.’
‘…….’
‘And I’ll protect you in return. Whoever it is. If you want, I’ll pay it back.’
The child froze for a moment, his lips trembling slightly. He fidgeted, looking as if emotion was welling up inside him, and then carefully wrapped his arms around Moon Heesung’s neck. It was warmth. The warmth of the child’s body was felt just as it was. A warmth he had never felt from his own parents transferred directly through the small child’s body and skin.
The little one — young Yoo Sinju — buried his face in Heesung’s chest as if it were his own. The truth was, young Yoo Sinju had always been envious. Of the embrace that Moon Huijae always curled into. Looking at Moon Huijae’s face as he slept nestled against the other side, young Yoo Sinju finally pressed himself into the embrace he had always been curious about.
The next moment, the warmth of that embrace — still so vivid — receded in an instant. And as the solid feeling of those arms and the side of Moon Heesung’s face, indifferent yet reassuring, faded until they were no longer visible, Yoo Sinju slowly opened his closed eyes. When he opened them, the room was dark with only dim lighting on, and a damp, stale smell hung thick in the air while his head spun. His vision swirled and he couldn’t make anything out clearly. All he could vaguely make out was that he was half-naked, and that someone was sitting between his legs, working enthusiastically at sucking his cock.
“So the rumor’s true?”
The man who had been licking Yoo Sinju’s cock for a good ten minutes — over ten full minutes — spoke with irritation. Yoo Sinju, who had just woken from a dream, couldn’t care less. He leaned back lifelessly and stared blankly into the distance. His mind was an absolute mess. The face from the dream hovered at the edge of the darkness, flickering in and out of sight, and countless shapes gnawed at his brain. Who was it. It was a question, but he already knew. It had only been a short while since he’d injected, so he was simply numb. But drugs made him forget. The person who surfaced so vividly in his sober mind became hazy when he was high. That alone was enough.
Being sober is too painful.
Because that person keeps coming to mind, relentlessly.
“The rumor about erectile dysfunction was real.”
The man, his lips smeared with saliva, wiped around his mouth with a rough, wounded expression.
“Yeah. That bastard’s a eunuch, a fucking eunuch.”
At that, one of the actors enjoying himself nearby snickered and said. The surroundings were complete chaos. There were naked people everywhere, and syringes and white powder were scattered all over the table. Empty liquor bottles rolled around the floor like it was nothing out of the ordinary, while people tangled together regardless of gender. It was a familiar sight. A gathering where people who swam in roughly the same waters came together to mess around and have fun.
Yoo Sinju’s erectile dysfunction had been going on for quite some time. With the rumor quietly spreading that he was impotent, many who had set their sights on him had tried their luck — and all had failed. Not a single one had actually managed to get his cock hard. They’d tried blowjobs, toys, performed all manner of sex acts right in front of him for visual stimulation — and Yoo Sinju hadn’t budged. Yet for someone like that, he frequented these kinds of gatherings often. He couldn’t actually have sex, yet he showed up faithfully to every filthy gathering like this. As if he wanted to fall apart.
‘…….’
But something was strange. He had recently felt a chill run down his spine — something he had never felt in his entire life. He didn’t remember the details clearly since he’d been heavily drunk, but it had definitely been a voice. A voice that had struck his ears. Familiar yet unfamiliar, carrying a sense of déjà vu. When he turned it over in his mind, a cold shiver crawled up from the base of his spine. And that itch in his lower abdomen — something else he had never felt before. Nothing else came back to him, yet that one sensation surfaced on its own, and it was driving Yoo Sinju insane. Whenever he revisited that memory, something that stirred his lower abdomen tickled at him from below.
The night of the awards ceremony, a parking garage somewhere, the sound of arguing voices buzzing in his memory — and cutting through that turbulent haze, an out-of-nowhere voice had slipped in. But he couldn’t remember it properly. Who the voice belonged to, who had suddenly appeared and thrown his already rotting mind into even more disarray.
“Keep going…”
Yoo Sinju, draped lifelessly like a corpse, tossed the words out toward the grumbling man.
“What?”
“…I said keep going.”
He blinked with those dead eyes and added, and the other man’s brow furrowed. But the man buried his face back between Yoo Sinju’s legs again with a hopeful look. The physical stimulation was there, but strangely, he felt nothing from it. Just moments ago, when he’d been turning that memory over in his mind, some strange sensation had stirred him — yet external stimulation left him cold.
Boring. Yoo Sinju let out a hollow laugh, high on the drugs, and sprawled out on the sofa. Everything was boring. This pointless gathering, his acting career, his life as an actor — all of it was boring. Thinking that none of it meant anything, he couldn’t find the will for any of it. The reason he had started acting was clear. The reason he had wanted to become an actor, the reason he had stubbornly pushed forward even when the elders in his family opposed and scolded him, the reason he had held his ground even when they called him a lowly entertainer.
“What’s going on? Who is it?”
As Yoo Sinju lay there without a shred of motivation, the entrance grew noisy. An uninvited guest had appeared at the front door. Everyone was too drunk and high to stop the outsider who had appeared out of nowhere. Then one person moved to intercept.
“Who are you?”
Security here was airtight. Given how provocative these gatherings were, and given that most attendees were public figures, security was the most critical and sensitive element. No uninvited guest could ever get in. One of the more sober actors stepped forward to block the way, but the intruder brushed off the hand with the lightest touch. The force of it sent the blocking actor stumbling and falling.
“Ugh!”
The fallen actor knocked into the people around him, bringing others down with him. In an instant the chaos deepened further, but the intruder walked without hesitation toward one person. The approaching intruder came into Yoo Sinju’s field of vision too. But because of the drugs, he appeared blurry — splitting into two, then three. Yoo Sinju soon gave up trying to see and groped around for a liquor bottle instead.
“Ack!”
The intruder, reaching Yoo Sinju, shoved the man sitting between his legs out of the way first. The man wasn’t small by any means, but a single gesture sent him toppling backward, and he glared up at the intruder with venom.
“What the fuck, are you insane?!”
Though he had been sucking Yoo Sinju’s cock just moments ago, the man was Seo Jaeha, a member of what was currently considered the top-tier idol group. He had recently charted on the Billboard and his overseas activities had been going so well that his stock was skyrocketing. He was in a different field from Yoo Sinju, but he was one of those celebrities no one dared mess with.
He looked up at the intruder, indignant at being shoved aside like a piece of luggage. A tall height that required quite a tilt of the head to look up at, thick forearms with veins running up them, and the sheer physical presence that came from a fundamentally different build — Seo Jaeha paused for a moment. On top of that, long hair obscured the face somewhat, but the deep-set eyes and somehow static atmosphere left a strangely striking impression even through the haze of intoxication.
“…New member?”
Caught off guard by the unfamiliar face, Seo Jaeha asked the others, and the rest shrugged, making clear they didn’t know either.
“Who are you? How did you find out about this place?”
A rookie? This is a gathering people who are only halfway known don’t even dare attempt. The man narrowed his eyes and asked, but the intruder dismissed him entirely and grabbed Yoo Sinju — draped there like a lifeless doll — by the collar.
“Open your eyes.”
The intruder hauled Yoo Sinju forcibly upright and said firmly. Yoo Sinju’s body refused to cooperate, but the voice that struck his ears made him struggle to pry his eyes open. His vision spun, though, and he couldn’t make out the person properly.
“…Fuck….”
This voice. The one I heard not long ago. But his neck had no strength, as if his spine had disappeared. He was in no state to pull himself together — the drugs he’d injected were hitting brutally hard.
“Hey, I’m asking who you are.”
Seo Jaeha turned back to the intruder again, in Yoo Sinju’s place since he couldn’t move.
“You can’t just walk in here. You’re someone I’ve never seen before — how did you get in? You going to let go of him right now?”
“I don’t think I will.”
“…What?”
“Outsiders, step back.”
“You’re the outsider here.”
“Then do you want to be the one to wake this bastard up instead?”
“Wha, what…?”
The provocative question made Seo Jaeha pause. While he faltered in bewilderment, the intruder — Moon Heesung — gripped Yoo Sinju by the collar and dragged him off somewhere. It was already astonishing to drag the tallest person there by one hand, but it was the intruder’s attitude toward Yoo Sinju that seemed to shock everyone even more — all eyes followed the scene, wide with disbelief.
