Saehyeon walked out unsteadily with a bleached-white face. It was the complete opposite of the vigorous stride he’d had when entering.
“Are you alright?”
At those words, Saehyeon, who had been walking with his gaze fixed on the ground, lifted his eyes. The driver stood right in front of the cafe door with an awkward expression. It seemed he’d stubbornly followed along despite being told not to.
“…I told you he’d run away if you followed.”
“I didn’t follow him inside, did I? And….”
A sigh escaped involuntarily at the sight of the large-framed man furtively glancing around. Honestly, Saehyeon didn’t have much to say either. It had taken quite a lot of time just to buy two cups of coffee. For someone whose boss was an alpha with germophobia, distrust of people, and control issues on top of that, it couldn’t be helped.
“There were a lot of customers, so I waited a bit. Whatever. Let’s go now.”
Having given up on arguing further, Saehyeon pulled out one cup of coffee from the carrier in his hand and held it out. After several refusals, he’d practically forced it into the driver’s hand.
Walking over with that nonchalant expression and getting into the car, Saehyeon immediately buried his head against the window. If he had his way, he would’ve wanted to slam into the glass hard enough to crack it, but he decided to leave that in his imagination. He didn’t have the confidence to handle amnesia from external trauma on top of everything else.
‘…Fuck.’
Having been helplessly beaten down by such shocking words, it was hard to collect himself. His brain creaked and strained as it worked to digest and process the sheer volume of information.
Saehyeon began digging into his memories in earnest. He’d brushed off the chatter about some director or other moving due to insufficient specs with vague responses.
What his vigorous first excavation dragged out was money. He thought it was quite an appropriate choice for an opening. The ways of the world all started with money, after all.
At his dazed question, Lee Soohyun immediately made an expression that said, ‘Here he goes playing dumb again.’
‘You went to Mom and got the money in advance, didn’t you? On the condition that you wouldn’t receive an inheritance later.’
It was hard to believe from the very start. For that to work, several things that would be difficult for Saehyeon to do while sober would have had to come together. He would’ve had to visit his detestable stepmother, accept a loss to ask for an advance on the money, and make a ‘request.’
‘It’s definitely nonsense.’
Yet to dismiss it outright as a lie—there was something that came to mind as soon as he heard those words. The bank account balance he’d checked right after waking up in his 28-year-old body.
At first, he didn’t know how the world worked and had just let it slide in shock and horror. But after living a few days, he immediately felt something was off. Calculating this shabby body and income against his consistent spending habits, he should’ve already gone bankrupt long ago and been eating dirt to survive.
The reason that hadn’t happened was definitely because his account balance had been quite generous at the start.
He’d wondered how someone who hadn’t even graduated college yet could have obtained such a large sum of money. If it originated from that, it would make sense.
His pre-amnesia self must have been quite desperate. After suddenly manifesting as an omega and even getting preg… nant. It wasn’t hard to imagine someone in that state doing something crazy to secure the necessary money.
‘It was hyung who fought with Father too.’
The unbelievable words didn’t end there. The degree of shock and disbelief only intensified as it went on.
Honestly, it was something he could have predicted to some extent. Hadn’t his 28-year-old self been living alone in a pathetic way, barely scraping by? That was clearly the typical appearance of a loner. Right, up to here it made sense. The problem was the subject and expression used to convey that meaning. He found it questionable whether “fighting and standing up against that father” was even a possible sentence.
‘Unless he was one-sidedly scolded and removed from the family register, maybe.’
And the last thing was…….
“What are you doing? Sitting there spacing out. Are you not going to get it together?”
At those words, Saehyeon, who had been blankly staring outside, suddenly raised his head. When he turned to look at the seat beside him, the man he’d grown accustomed to was already sitting there. The heat had definitely intensified, so his outfit was relatively lighter. The thin, single-layer black shirt creased and wrinkled repeatedly along the lines of his body and muscles. Below the roughly rolled-up sleeves, pale ivory skin stood out. Ivory, of all colors. It was an excessively elegant and pure-looking color for someone like Gil Taeseo to wear. He always thought this, but there were aspects of the man’s appearance that really didn’t match his personality or occupation.
Though if he had to pick the existence most mismatched and discordant with him, it would be Lee Saehyeon himself.
“…Yeah.”
At the lackluster response, Gil Taeseo frowned as if he’d been waiting for it. He’d deliberately poked at him bluntly. If it were the usual Lee Saehyeon, it would be normal for him to have already been yapping and lunging at him.
After handling urgent business and instructing the driver to bring the car over here, Gil Taeseo habitually fiddled with his phone. There was a lot of work but only one body, so there was a mountain of things to receive reports on. Among those were naturally matters concerning Lee Saehyeon and Lee Taesol. The flood of countless reports was generally full of shitty content. But lately, and especially today, there were particularly irritating matters added on top.
‘What should I do.’
Having deliberately redirected the car here, Gil Taeseo mulled over this concern the entire waiting time.
He wasn’t unaware that this was a matter he should roughly pretend not to know and let slide. Nevertheless, having seen that state, it seemed he wouldn’t be able to bear it without opening his mouth.
“I told you to just keep doing that going forward, but I guess that was too hard for you.”
“What?”
“Once you pretended not to know, you should’ve kept pretending not to know till the end. What good did you think you’d see by giving him the time of day and getting involved?”
Though it was a provocative remark thrown out of the blue, its meaning was easy to understand. He’d just been dealing with someone related to that situation, and was in the middle of forcibly handling the bombs that person had thrown around.
‘Pretended not to know. So that’s how it looks after all.’
It seemed other people took it as Saehyeon deliberately ‘pretending not to know’ Lee Soohyun. The truth was he’d simply forgotten even the memory of seeing the brat who’d suddenly grown up.
As Saehyeon mulled over the words thrown at him unexpectedly, a flash of realization suddenly crossed his mind.
‘Wait. How does that bastard know about this?’
Since things had been hectic, he couldn’t gauge how far they’d driven from the cafe. But no matter how generously he estimated, it wouldn’t have exceeded a few hours. Saehyeon glanced down at the coffee cup in his hand. The ice still filling it generously clinked against itself.
“…Did you secretly receive some kind of divine revelation or something?”
But having just arrived, how did he know who he’d just met?
Saehyeon’s gaze, confused for a moment, suddenly shot to the driver’s seat. At the same time, their eyes met in the small mirror attached to the front window. Yoon Changwook awkwardly averted his gaze.
True to being a surveillance agent, it seemed he’d already reported. And Gil Taeseo had figured out like a ghost who it was.
“If I’d received a divine revelation, I wouldn’t be rolling around in this shitty way.”
Before Saehyeon, who’d learned the whole story, could protest, Gil Taeseo continued. The way he casually leaned back and flicked his fingers was utterly natural. His tone was just as nonchalant too.
“If I could just blow away all those irritating human specimens that get on my nerves, how convenient would that be? That wouldn’t even leave evidence, so I wouldn’t need to deal with the fucked-up aftermath either.”
But beneath that leisure, ennui, and perfectly healthy physique was something he couldn’t hide. Even though it wasn’t the first time experiencing it, it was enough to make him instinctively shiver. Even knowing that inside there was a pervert wallowing in filth and an enemy-like bastard, it was still like that.
“…You say such things so easily.”
Saehyeon, muttering as if half-appalled, turned his gaze away. He felt something like a poke on the cheek exposed in Gil Taeseo’s direction. The man who’d been staring intently for a moment suddenly tossed out these words.
“Don’t even think about meeting him going forward.”
“…Meeting who.”
Saehyeon played dumb without realizing it. It wasn’t like he had anything to feel guilty about, but since the other person was being like that, he somehow felt like doing so. Though if he got away with it too easily, it’d be something wearing Gil Taeseo’s skin.
“Who else.”
The way he scoffed as if it was ridiculous was really irritating. At the deflating sound, Saehyeon couldn’t help but glare sideways at him.
“Whether I meet someone or not.”
He really didn’t intend to meet again anyway since he felt like he’d actually faint if he met a second time. Nevertheless, his retort bristled with sharp thorns.
It was a situation where, on top of reports coming in immediately without much delay, he was even trying to control his human relationships. Even if he’d heard it when he was fine, he would’ve been annoyed, but right now both his mental state and mood were all fucked up, so it couldn’t be helped.
“You won’t see anything good from meeting anyway, so why bother? Unless you have the bizarre taste of getting hard the more you torture yourself.”
“…Can’t you speak without that perverted talk?”
Part of him had also anticipated this conversation would devolve into threat-like dirty talk.
“If that’s what it is, just say so comfortably. Accommodating that is no trouble at all.”
All sorts of things were mixing across the man’s face as he said that. The colorful lights and shapeless shadow-like things that came through the car window.
Perhaps because that intersection was so chaotic. He couldn’t read any clear emotion or intention from that face at all.
‘Why?’
Saehyeon swallowed back down the question that had risen to his throat. Like a large-sized hard candy, it went back down with difficulty along with an uncomfortable feeling.
Did Gil Taeseo already know all of this? Was that why he was acting like this? He couldn’t know without asking, but Saehyeon couldn’t ask. Into Saehyeon’s stagnant mind, the final recollection reclaimed its turn. The brief reprieve that had occurred with Gil Taeseo’s appearance had ended.
‘Between clinging to a man who doesn’t share a single drop of blood and that kid, wouldn’t your own flesh and blood be better? Even if it’s half, he’s still hyung.’
Naturally, it seemed Lee Soohyun didn’t think Saehyeon had given birth to the child himself. That’s why he’d said such things. Asking wasn’t his own flesh and blood better than raising a complete stranger of a man and that kid.
But the problem here was this. Lee Soohyun was Saehyeon’s stepbrother. He’d come in fully grown, holding his stepmother’s hand, with only a two or three-year age gap. Therefore, originally, expressions like “half” or whatever shouldn’t have fit.
Revealing one’s true feelings in a conversation where information wasn’t equal was a careless act. But having been caught off guard, he’d ended up asking back without realizing it.
‘What kind of nonsense is that? Why would we….’
A light of realization crossed the face of the person who’d heard up to that point. After pausing for a moment as if gauging something, Lee Soohyun smiled knowingly.
‘…Aha. I thought you were acting a bit strange from earlier. Hyung, you don’t remember this, do you.’
And then, just like he’d done at some point that Saehyeon couldn’t remember.
‘We have the same father.’
He unexpectedly stabbed a skewer called truth into his heart.
