‘I’ve smelled this scent somewhere before.’
Saehyeon sniffed. It was acrid yet fragrant, seeming dry yet moist at the same time. Things that shouldn’t go together were somehow exquisitely mixed, a scent that simultaneously carried both intimidation and sensuality.
A memory flashed through his mind. Things so vivid they seemed to be playing out right before his eyes.
A leather sofa that creaked with each press. A gaze that looked down and pressed from above. Large hands that wrapped around his entire neck and reached up to his chin. A low voice. Even that intense sensation that awakened every cell in his body and filled his lungs.
That had been the first and last time. There was no second time.
“……Gil Taeseo?”
Though he couldn’t see the face, Saehyeon was certain. Certainty, drunkenness, and drowsiness mixed together, making his voice small like a whisper. But as if he’d caught that faint sound, the man flinched. The large chest that had been rising and falling rapidly slowly subsided.
From the man whose face he couldn’t see, complex emotions seemed to emanate. Saehyeon tried to gauge that complexity with his hazy mind. But the man moved first. As he slowly lowered his body and knelt on one knee, their gazes roughly aligned. Only then could he see the face a little. It was already their third meeting in a short period.
Countless scenes overlapped above that. On the sofa where ankles and neck had been caught, on the bed where morning sun had shone in, inside the bathroom stall where fingers had dug into his mouth. Like changing film reels, images rapidly overlaid on that face as he reached out his hand as if entranced.
His fingertips pressed against the tightly closed lips just as they had in that dream once before. A slightly dry and soft sensation transferred to his frozen fingertips like a burn.
The fingers that had fallen away as if startled stuck to the body again with a slap. The Adam’s apple touched by the hand that traced the jawline and descended to the neck bobbed. The hand that went down slowly but without hesitation soon reached below the nape.
And then.
“You……!”
Thwack. Both hands grabbed the collar completely.
“You son of a bitch!”
It was the moment when emotions he’d been holding back met the alcohol and the perfect target, and exploded with a bang.
“……I think I had a dream with that kind of content.”
The next morning, Saehyeon muttered this while writhing with a terrible hangover. Those dreams were all hazy and sparse, yet strangely vivid.
But there were many awkward parts befitting a dream. Dress pants with crushed sneaker heels? He had no idea where he’d seen such a ridiculous outfit. They say in dreams things like wearing shoes backwards happen. That seemed to be true.
Saehyeon squeezed his eyes shut, clutching his splitting head. It was so hard to open his eyes it was as if they’d been glued shut. Barely opening them to slits to confirm the presence of a ceiling, Saehyeon let out a small sigh of relief.
‘At least I didn’t sleep on the streets.’
The moment of relief was brief. Soon a tremendous hangover rushed in and pummeled his entire body. Being so weak that 2 cans got him drunk, the hangover was proportionally severe. As he spent a while groaning and clutching his head, he wanted to beat up yesterday’s self who had giggled about being cost-effective when it came to alcohol.
But they say the protagonist appears late, right? The result of the drunken antics that would really make Saehyeon want to beat himself up was yet to come.
That came after he gratefully accepted and drank the honey water that suddenly appeared. Like a belated hangover.
“Gil…… Taeseo?”
“Hi. We meet again.”
Gil Taeseo’s slightly tired-looking face alone was shocking enough. But next to him was even Lee Taesol, who looked like the man’s carbon copy. The two faces he’d thought were like a set but would never see side by side were simultaneously staring holes into Saehyeon.
His complexion, which had been pale white from the hangover and low blood pressure, was now almost blue with shock. It was a face like he’d seen a ghost. Watching that, Gil Taeseo tilted his head to the side. After all, it was he who had seen a ghostly sight.
Around dawn the previous day, Gil Taeseo had dragged his body, drenched in foul mood and sweat, home. As soon as he entered the house, he irritably threw off his gloves.
The leather gloves made a squelching sound as they stuck to the wall and fell to the floor. The man who undid his buttons with the white hands finally revealed frowned as he looked down.
“Tsk.”
Having dealt with one thing, another bothered him. As he dragged his shoes on the floor, dark red smeared along their path. After repeating that action a few times, as if realizing it was pointless, the man threw off his shoes and stepped on the floor barefoot.
Despite someone clearly living there, the house had a desolate impression. In the large living room, a lone sofa was all the furniture there was.
The man who’d roughly draped his coat somewhere lowered his body onto the sofa in the same manner. His white fingers hanging limply glowed pale in the dim light.
The man dressed entirely in black was quite a sight to behold. His well-balanced physique stood out even more against the monotonous color. The same was true of his hair carelessly swept back over his face, collapsing along with his tilted head.
But separately from that, the man didn’t give off the vitality characteristic of the living. His limbs draped carelessly with released tension and his clouded, murky pupils resembled those of a corpse.
As if matching that appearance, his breathing slowly slowed and he was falling into shallow sleep when it happened.
“Fuck.”
The man muttered a curse at the vibration pounding the sofa. It was going to be a night he’d spend with open eyes anyway. But spending it quietly versus being interrupted was worlds apart. The fact that contacts coming at late hours were rarely pleasant was another factor that ruined his mood.
The man who retrieved his phone with just an outstretched hand tapped the screen on. Bright light poured out, casting clear shadows over his face. His frown was brief. Gil Taeseo’s eyes widened. Because the name displayed on the screen was quite unexpected.
“……Lee Saehyeon?”
The process after that happened in an instant. Gil Taeseo, who’d roughly stuffed himself into whatever he could grab, hurriedly drove his car. There was no need to hesitate. Lee Saehyeon’s crumbling house—after finding out his radius of activity on the first day of their reunion, he’d perfectly pinpointed it through stalking. It had to be somewhere around there. As for the specific location, he could coax and interrogate the drunk person on the other side of the screen. The other party fell asleep midway, but it wasn’t a problem. Though it was long ago, he’d experienced it several times and was familiar with it. It was when Gil Taeseo, who’d parked the car roughly nearby, was running around combing the area thoroughly.
“……”
In the distance, Lee Saehyeon really was there. The sight of him sitting alone in a place clearly deserted was odd. Except for one a few steps away, all the streetlights seemed broken as the surroundings were pitch dark. And in the middle of that, curled up alone hugging his legs tightly? He looked like lost property someone had dropped.
Gil Taeseo ended the call and strode over to stand before him. Glancing at Saehyeon’s hand, a phone was clutched tightly in it.
“I thought you’d gotten over this drunken habit.”
If Lee Saehyeon drank alcohol, there were only two possible outcomes for his subsequent behavior. Either being relatively fine and going home on his own, or getting drunk and being difficult. In the case of the latter, Lee Saehyeon’s peculiar drunken antics would start with calling Gil Taeseo to curse him out.
It was a repertoire that had continued for ages until Lee Saehyeon, who’d learned about this through some incident, quit drinking. He’d even deliberately taken him home quietly and deleted the call history, yet he’d somehow found out.
Even during those few years when his whereabouts were unknown, such calls hadn’t come. So he’d naturally assumed the drunken habit had been fixed, but it seemed he’d just quit drinking altogether. Drinking this time was probably because he’d become unemployed. It was intentional pressure, but the result was unexpected.
“You’ll get facial paralysis if you sleep here.”
For waking someone up, Gil Taeseo’s voice was low and quiet. The words he’d tossed out a few times like that also stopped abruptly after some time passed. His still gaze swept over Saehyeon’s forlorn appearance.
He clearly hadn’t lived smoothly. There was no way he’d have good feelings toward him either. But somehow Lee Saehyeon acted exactly the same as before. As if it were before everything had twisted and gone wrong, as if nothing had happened before that.
So he kept wanting to play along. Deep guilt and stale emotions made him feel that way. Even knowing he couldn’t.
It was when Gil Taeseo, lost in thought, kicked at the ground a few times out of habit. The head that had been hanging limply lifted. Lee Saehyeon’s eyes snapping open was simultaneous. After a brief search, after gazes exchanged for quite a long time, Saehyeon finally succeeded in making out the man standing before him.
“You…… you son of a bitch!”
Of course, in grabbing his collar too. Even with his collar grabbed, Gil Taeseo’s face was calm. This wasn’t an unexpected outburst but an already scheduled drunken routine.
Phone call mixed with curses, collar-grabbing, violence. After these three stages passed and he was exhausted, Lee Saehyeon would enter a lull.
“How dare you just abandon me?! I, I, you bastard……”
“Right. I’m a fucking bastard.”
Gil Taeseo, who’d been getting hit by the fumbling hands for a while, moved purely because of the other party. Drunk and with his legs completely weak, Saehyeon staggered himself while trying to shake the collar he’d grabbed. He also released the fist he’d been swinging and shook out his hands in the air.
“Ah, my hand hurts…… Damn it. Why are you so fucking hard!”
“What kind of bullshit is that when you’re the one who hit me.”
Even while saying that, the man grabbed the clenched fist. The joints of the hand that was nothing but bones were already swelling red. Seeing that, Gil Taeseo clicked his tongue quietly.
“Fuck, I was going to make so much fucking money……”
Lee Saehyeon shouted continuously with a face that didn’t know if it was crying or angry. Gil Taeseo calmly swallowed up the things spilling out haphazardly.
“I have a shitload of money now. You can use it.”
They were all nothing but rambling stories. But the man’s face listening to them looked much more lively than when he was alone.
The strangely noisy and bizarrely peaceful moonlit drunken ranting and violence seemed like it would continue forever. What changed the atmosphere was the sound of a small sneeze.
“Fuck, damn it! A…… achoo!”
Only then did Gil Taeseo realize the flush on Lee Saehyeon’s face wasn’t simple color. Even while having his collar grabbed, the man skillfully removed his coat and draped it over him, naturally pulling his shoulder.
“Hey, you drunken old man. Where’s your house key?”
“Why do you need to know!”
“So I can break in and rob you blind. Do I need to spell it out?”
“What? Go ahead and try, you beggar bastard! You…… you……”
“Whatever. Where’s the key?”
Lee Saehyeon was uncooperative to the end. Gil Taeseo, who barely found the key in the back pocket of his pants, threw open the thick iron door.
