His drunken behavior was absolutely ridiculous. He insisted his alcohol tolerance wasn’t weak. He’s asking for a beating, really asking for it. Daehoon shook his head.
“Woo Ilkyung must have gotten hit a lot as a kid.”
Daehoon muttered as he folded his long legs and crouched down in front of Ilkyung.
“Woo Ilkyung-ssi, let’s go home.”
Daehoon had no intention of listening to Ilkyung’s answer. When you talk to a drunk person, the probability of getting a proper answer is remarkably low. Ilkyung pulled Woo Ilkyung, who had become like mush, and carried him on his back. His small body flopped onto his back.
“The smell of alcohol is overwhelming. How much did he drink?”
Daehoon clicked his tongue with a tsk, and stood up with Ilkyung on his back. Woo Ilkyung whined on his back as if looking for a comfortable position, then pressed his cheek against his back and made strange humming sounds.
“How did I get tangled up with something like this?”
Daehoon was full of regret. If he’d known he was this high-maintenance, he would have found someone else as a contract relationship partner. The reason Daehoon pointed out Woo Ilkyung wasn’t because he was cursing at him. It was because he was hetero.
Daehoon was annoyed. This guy and that guy would cling to him and after sleeping together once, act like it meant something. Some would get ahead of themselves after just having one meal together or exchanging a few conversations. It was absolutely ridiculous.
Of course, there was Daehoon’s background behind that. Even if he wasn’t the next owner of Hasin Group, everyone in the know knew that Chairman Ha doted on his eldest grandson Daehoon like his own alter ego. That’s why Daehoon couldn’t carelessly have a contract relationship with just anyone. Because you never know how people might change.
So he chose Woo Ilkyung, who had no interest in him at all and didn’t seem like he would cling to him even after a month. Because he thought Woo Ilkyung would coldly go his own way without looking back at any moment. But calling him out in the middle of the night like this was quite troublesome.
He had been having dinner with his grandfather. Last time when Woo Ilkyung fell asleep feeling sick at the movie theater and he brought him home, using treatment as an excuse to cause all that commotion, he had pretty much achieved his major goal. Sure enough, his grandfather called him urgently in the middle of the night.
Though Daehoon found it bothersome, he thought it was time to visit the main house once to drive the point home. That way his grandfather wouldn’t be suspicious and would at least believe him a little. So he visited the main house and had dinner together. Sure enough, throughout the meal, Chairman Ha stared at him with suspicious eyes.
“Are you really dating that, what’s his name, that young man who came to your house?”
Still looking unconvinced as he asked, Daehoon answered plainly.
“Yes, we’ve been dating for a while.”
Even at those words, Chairman Ha squinted and stared at him. Whether his grandfather did that or not, Daehoon picked up the abalone on his plate.
“Bring him over sometime.”
“He’s really shy around strangers. By the way, the soup is a bit salty.”
Daehoon said indifferently.
“Bring something other than this soup here.”
“Yes, Chairman.”
In this household, Ha Daehoon eating at the main house for once and saying “The soup is a bit salty” was like a bolt from the blue. Chairman Ha was one of the main people who found it most disagreeable that Daehoon stayed in England for such a long time. How hard it was to have a meal with his beloved grandson—this was worse than dining with royalty.
Such a grandson came to the main house as if bestowing grace, and it doesn’t suit his taste? Then Chairman Ha’s anger had no choice but to soar to the heavens. Because his picky and damn difficult eldest grandson could use any trivial matter as an excuse not to come. He was more than capable of doing that.
“Didn’t I say I understood that you’re gay?”
Chairman Ha quickly changed the subject.
“Grandfather, I’d be fine even if you were gay, but this is Korea. Who likes being forcibly outed like that?”
“Then does that boy not know yet? Other people?”
“Isn’t that obvious? No one knows except you, Grandfather.”
Chairman Ha let out a sigh.
“And it’s enough that you know I’m not a sociopath, why do you want to see that person so badly? For that person, just meeting anyone related to me is burdensome.”
“Then why did you let him meet Executive Secretary Min and Dr. Ahn!”
“Should I have taken a sick person to the emergency room then? If I wait two or three hours at the emergency room, another tabloid article will come out right away, won’t it? Hasin Group, estrangement due to succession fight. Wouldn’t some sensational article like that spread?”
Chairman Ha, who had such a precedent, trembled. Who knows how many speculative tabloids circulated when Daehoon manifested as a Guide and went to England. Though such articles only circulated underground out of consideration for Hasin Group, most people thought Ha Daehoon had been cast out and chased to England.
In fact, the brothers Daehoon and Daeyoung didn’t have a bad relationship. Daeyoung originally thought Hasin Group belonged to his hyung and had no interest until Daehoon became a Guide. In a way, Daeyoung ended up shouldering an unexpected burden. But people loved to speculate about other people’s family affairs and hoped for provocative fights. Because people naturally can’t stand seeing others do well.
“Will you stay the night today?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“What’s there to think about! If you’ve come to the main house after so long, you should stay over and take a walk with this old man the next day.”
Daehoon shook his head.
“Come on, Grandfather. You have lots of friends. Why are you so obsessed with me?”
“I’m doing this because I’m upset, upset! What’s the point of meeting friends! I have nothing to talk about.”
“Grandfather, you can brag about your great-grandson like other people do.”
That’s exactly why Chairman Ha wanted to get that great-grandson through Daehoon. But no matter how he calculated from every angle, this damn grandson seemed to have absolutely zero percent possibility of marriage.
“Grandfather, if you keep doing this, Daeyoung will be upset. What will you do if Daeyoung gets angry and says he won’t inherit Hasin?”
Now Daehoon was starting to get annoyed.
“People who hear this will think I discriminate against Daeyoung.”
“I can’t say you don’t.”
Chairman Ha didn’t really discriminate against his second grandson. Though Chairman Ha spoke like this, he loved both his grandsons tremendously. But among them, he had hoped Daehoon would succeed him, and since that wasn’t happening, he was acting like this out of lingering attachment.
“That Daeyoung kid is just too kind. To run a company, a person needs to have some ruthless aspects… I’m worried he’ll just get hurt.”
“Grandfather, are you indirectly dissing me as a rotten person right now?”
“No, when did I ever…!”
“Fine. I’ll have breakfast tomorrow and then leave. Is that okay? Now get some sleep. When you stay up late like this, the people around you get tired.”
Daehoon said that and left. And he had tried to get some sleep at the main house for once, but the phone call that came was this mess.
In the end, Daehoon, who came to his own house instead of the main house, laid Ilkyung down in the guest room. In the midst of all this, Woo Ilkyung slept soundly. The saying that someone wouldn’t know even if they were carried away might be referring to Woo Ilkyung.
To be continued in the next volume ▶
