Unlike the horrified Saehyeon, Gil Taeseo was calm.
“Well. Do you wash yourself with your clothes on?”
Just looking at his face showed that. It was clearly an expression that said ‘what the fuck are you talking about?’
The man vigorously rubbed his head with the towel placed on top. Water droplets splattered wildly from his dark, wet hair onto the body stretched below.
The body revealed under the old fluorescent light pouring from the open door looked definitely solid as if trained. It was ridiculous to compare it with his own shabby body that he saw when washing or changing clothes.
‘Why is this bastard suddenly stripping and making a fuss?’
Even as he recoiled, his gaze kept getting drawn there. Since forcibly wearing a 28-year-old body, Saehyeon had never once seen Gil Taeseo’s naked body.
So this wasn’t something perverted. It was just because it was right in front of him, and because of a bit of curiosity about something that had been unknown.
‘A witness facing a flasher… Yeah, well, something like that.’
Saehyeon, who’d forcibly swallowed his excuse, slyly rolled his eyes.
The small water droplets beaded on his skin sparkled like jewels reflecting the dim light. Combining the refreshingly extended skeleton with the flawlessly sculpted muscles, it was like a torso exhibited in a museum.
His gaze slowly descended along that body. Saehyeon’s eyes, anticipating a worst-case scenario, gradually narrowed. But fortunately amidst the misfortune, at least his lower body was covered. Though even using what seemed to be the largest towel, the knot looked tight.
Anyway, even with only his lower body barely covered, Gil Taeseo had no particular reservations. Standing crookedly, he just spoke calmly.
“If you’re going to pick up dirty clothes and put them back on, why wash? Fuck.”
It was a valid point. Moreover, Gil Taeseo had a severely germophobic side. He usually found it terribly unpleasant when something splattered on him.
There was no way such a person would keep wearing sweat-soaked clothes or put them on over a freshly washed clean body. If he found such a sight, he’d recall the phrase from some ghost story about how it’s not him so you should run away.
Unable to find words, Saehyeon’s mouth moved wordlessly. At that moment, the muscles receiving all the gaze and light squirmed dynamically. It was because the body’s owner had taken a large step forward.
He closed his eyes at the sensual muscle movement that became clearer the closer it got. But unlike expected, all he felt was the wind brushing past nearby.
“…?”
His eyes snapped open to see a large back. The man who’d walked quickly past Saehyeon was opening an old drawer set in the wall.
Whether he’d picked it up from somewhere or it had been an option attached to this house, the drawer had a very small and old appearance. As the large hand grabbed and pulled at the shabby drawer, it made an oddly creaking sound.
Soon the sound of Gil Taeseo clicking his tongue was also mixed in. He seemed to have found something unsatisfactory as he rummaged inside the drawer.
“What kind of clothes are these….”
Following his unrestrained touch, pieces of clothing fell to the floor one by one. Normally, a voice of protest would have burst out like thunder, but Saehyeon just blankly watched that sight.
More precisely, it would be most accurate to say he was looking at the back that rippled with each movement, not the hand digging through clothes.
At first, he noticed the shape. Things like the straight spine or broad shoulders. But soon, more than the shape, scars caught his eye. Countless marks were embroidered across the wide, white jade-like back.
‘Slashed, stabbed… that looks like it was torn.’
The places where sharp blades and such had passed were either bumpy and swollen or deeply sunken.
The viewing time was very short. Perhaps noticing the gaze, Gil Taeseo turned his body. A faint sense of dismay crossed Gil Taeseo’s face as he roughly guessed the situation.
The problem was that there were similar marks on the front that was exposed to cover his back. Definitely the frequency was much less than the back, but that was all.
In the turned man’s hand was one stiff piece of clothing. It seemed he’d managed to pick out clothes that would have been brought in by Gil Taeseo from among the native clothes of this house. Only then did the man lightly put down Taesol, who’d been tucked under his arm, onto the floor.
“Come here.”
“Eeng…”
After putting him down, the way he lightly caught the body trying to run to Saehyeon and then dressed him starting from the head looked quite natural.
Their eyes met around the time the child had finished getting dressed.
“Now it’s your turn, so what are you standing there for? Want to come in together or something?”
Those words brought him to his senses. The realization came belatedly that he’d been staring at Gil Taeseo’s naked body as if entranced.
“No? Just try following me.”
Saehyeon quickly fled and hid inside the bathroom. The faucet that usually had to run cold water for a while before warm water came out spat out hot water immediately just for today. It was proof that someone had used this bathroom first.
“What’s there to see on someone else’s naked body that you’re staring like that, you idiot….”
Saehyeon scrubbed his body under the stream of water that rushed at him as if to cook his pale skin. As if believing that his thoughts would also be washed away at the same time.
The man left outside the door was just as troubled. Gil Taeseo, who’d crossed his arms as if covering his body, disheveled his hair and swallowed a small curse. He swallowed instead of spitting it out as a result of being conscious of the kid who was staring fixedly at the bathroom door.
Gil Taeseo was fully aware of his circumstances and appearance. He was surely very hideous-looking. Just as his broken mind had been over the years, his body had also been distorted and defiled one by one into ugliness. It couldn’t be erased by hiding it, yet he found his own state of being anxious about being seen rather ridiculous. Since he kept him at close range, there was no way Lee Saehyeon wouldn’t know either.
But nevertheless. It seemed there was still a glimmer of expectation.
It was a painfully belated realization to have at a point that was already too late. Gil Taeseo chewed over and over the complicated thoughts tangling in his head. Each time, the words he’d swallowed at the doorway earlier repeatedly rose to the tip of his tongue. It resembled a time bomb fully prepared to burst out whenever the trigger was pulled.
***
“Daddyyy….”
“Yeah yeah, Tae… Sol-i. What is it.”
When he put on clean clothes over his warmly heated body, it felt like moving on to a new stage. The fact that Gil Taeseo, who had been half-naked until just now, had already become dressed in light casual clothes also contributed to that feeling.
‘…There’s no way this house would have clothes like that.’
Both the size and the texture of the clothes visible at a glance were like that. It was clothing that felt like what the man often wore, but couldn’t possibly be in this house.
Then the answer was set. Because the only thing left was that he’d had his subordinates bring it. His brief silent prayer for the work-life balance of gangster subordinates who had to do whatever they were told even until dawn was Saehyeon’s own form of escapism to avoid reality.
When it came to Gil Taeseo’s subordinates, the figures that came to Saehyeon’s mind were definitely Yoon Changwook and Shin Seokwon. One was attached to him like a shadow, the other to Gil Taeseo. And that Yoon Changwook had said something like this before. That Gil Taeseo was clear about rewards and punishments. Though Saehyeon wasn’t Gil Taeseo’s subordinate, he thought he roughly understood what that meant.
‘He’s definitely not someone who’ll take a loss.’
The current Gil Taeseo had the impression that even if he had to extort, he’d give a doe and receive a mal in return.
And today, he had made such a person run around in circles on this sweltering summer day. In the middle of the night at that. Naturally, there was no way he wouldn’t fear the aftermath.
So while washing, Saehyeon had been making steady efforts to strip away useless thoughts and steel his resolve.
“What are you doing? Not lying down.”
Sure enough. Gil Taeseo tilted his head crookedly and gestured with his chin at the bedding. Saehyeon’s teeth chattered at the meticulousness of getting dressed, drying his hair, and even laying out the blankets in the brief time Saehyeon was washing up.
Hugging Taesol who clung to him with giggles, Saehyeon gulped.
And after some time had passed. Saehyeon was indeed lying on the bedding. But it wasn’t the form he’d expected.
“……”
Saehyeon lay in place blankly glaring at the stained wall. His gaze and body were facing forward, but all his nerves were stuck on his back. Because the man who was the source of this tension and confusion was lying there.
Gil Taeseo hadn’t lifted a finger toward Saehyeon. It had been similar at the beach, but back then he… um. Didn’t he do that sort of thing?
“Mmng… Daddy…”
As he patted the back of the child who turned over and snuggled in, it wasn’t that he couldn’t understand.
‘Right. There’s a kid here too.’
No matter how much he was someone who said with his own mouth that he ‘sold his conscience yesterday evening,’ there was a kid right nearby. If he was human, it was a situation where he shouldn’t lay a hand.
However, even thinking that, he didn’t understand why Gil Taeseo was lying there. If he wasn’t even going to do… that sort of thing, he’d stubbornly stayed in this cramped house. Moreover, refusing a plush and expensive bed to lie down on a single blanket so thin that all his bones protruded, trying to sleep. This house didn’t even have a vigorously running air conditioner, just a dying fan.
‘He’s told me to come to his house before, but he’s never stayed over.’
Gil Taeseo had repeatedly urged him to move houses. But he’d thought that was just because of an alpha’s instinct or convenience to keep his object of obsession within his territory. Honestly, because coming and going and calling for him was also quite bothersome and labor-intensive.
But in the current situation, wasn’t there really no practical benefit for Gil Taeseo to gain?
The secret of his birth, the scars he’d seen earlier, this current confusion. His head was incomparably complicated, but sleepiness was a separate matter. The body and mind that had already been overworked melted limply once they released the last thread of tension. Like that, Saehyeon fell into a hazy sleep.
Until burning heat touched his body that had cooled to lukewarm.
