‘…Seong-ah. …Haeseong-ah.’
Haeseong looked with familiarity at the sight of the woman sinking into the deep water beyond the impassable glass wall. In the young eyes gazing at her was a detachment as if not watching someone whose breath was stopping.
‘Dad… Hm? Where is Dad… Haeseong-ah. Show me Dad…’
The female body was sinking into the depths of the water, but the desperate voice clearly pierced into Haeseong’s ears. However, as always, the existence she was looking for until the last moment was not Haeseong.
‘Mom. Dad’s not coming anymore.’
The woman’s persistent gaze scanned Haeseong’s face here and there. Even while dying, she tried to find something in her son. If she could find even a small trace of the man she loved, she looked like she couldn’t ask for more.
In the facial features that resembled the woman more than the man, it was difficult to find the trace of the man the woman wanted to see. The tears that leaked from the woman’s eyes mixed together with the water.
Haeseong, who noticed his mother’s behavior, turned his back without attachment as if familiar. Soon after, a piercing scream and eerie crying sound were heard, but he paid no attention and moved forward.
The background had changed before he knew it. The pitch-black sea that had swallowed the woman disappeared and countless crowds appeared. Haeseong, who had fallen in the middle of it, became conscious of thousands of pairs of eyes looking at him and unconsciously managed his expression.
It was like a reflex. His body, conscious of others’ gazes, naturally made him smile and act as if at ease.
However, that proper smile began to break around the time the people watching approached closely.
The people approaching Haeseong had abnormally large eyes. When the horrible existence whose eyes covered half its face approached with big strides, Haeseong stepped back.
‘D-don’t come closer—!’
It wasn’t that those large eyes were disgusting. It was because he was afraid they would dig into his very bottom with those big eyes, that they would see even what he didn’t want to be caught.
That was what Haeseong was afraid of.
‘Don’t come close. If you approach, I’ll kill you!’
Tears rolled down from Haeseong’s eyes as he realized that the scream he was letting out was exactly the same as his mom’s scream he had heard moments ago. In the end, Haeseong was surrounded by people with big eyes and disappeared as if being eaten.
At that moment, Haeseong’s eyes snapped open.
“Hah—!”
Haeseong, who looked around with a face full of cold sweat, let out a long sigh of relief as soon as he realized this was his house, his room.
“Fuck… what a fucking terrible dream.”
He released the tension from his body that had been tightly wound up. His heart beating violently told him how tense he had been.
The bed and room interior, excessively large compared to his small body, created a somehow empty atmosphere. Haeseong, who wiped his forehead covered in cold sweat with his sleeve, lifted the blanket he had been covered with. As expected, it was soaked with sweat he had shed while sleeping.
Haeseong, whose sleep pattern had originally been irregular, was losing even more sleep recently due to the sudden onset of growing pains.
He had a complex about his short height, so he knew how important sleep was and tried to go to bed early, but these days he couldn’t sleep properly because of the pain spreading up from his joints.
With nightmares piling on top of falling asleep with difficulty, Haeseong’s already sensitive condition fell to rock bottom.
“Damn it…”
Haeseong muttered a curse quietly. Getting up from bed and heading to the bathroom, he washed off the sweat he had shed all night with a shower. Roughly putting on a gown, he habitually went to the height measuring scale prepared next to the bathroom door and measured his height.
「161.9 cm.」
As expected, he hadn’t grown today either.
“Fuck—!”
Haeseong irritably kicked the bedside table with his foot.
Crash—!
The glass ornament that was on it broke unsightly.
‘If it’s going to be like this, then just don’t hurt.’
The pain of someone stepping on each of his bone joints with boot soles with sharp thorns didn’t come all at once and end quickly. The continuous pain made his already sensitive nerves stand on edge even more and shattered what little peace there was in daily life.
Haeseong, who had been irritably kicking the wall and throwing things, finally calmed down, seeming to have vented a little. Haeseong, who took a breath all at once, leaned against the wall and slowly began heading to the kitchen.
Was it because of the rampage? The feeling of his joints being stabbed with glass shards intensified, so he bit his lips. The unnecessarily spacious house didn’t help even at times like this.
Haeseong, who passed through the spacious living room and headed to the kitchen with its wide entrance, roughly looked around the food laid out on the dining table and sat down. The meal prepared and left by the servant had various ingredients and nutrients evenly included.
However, it wasn’t a menu that others would prefer to see. Although it was a solid menu where nutrients could be consumed evenly, the pile of greens and unseasoned chicken breast didn’t necessarily taste good.
Haeseong familiarly picked up his utensils and ate his meal. Since he was sitting at the wide dining table eating alone, only the sound of spoons hitting bowls occasionally echoed in the kitchen.
It was an excessively quiet house. His mechanically moving jaw was slower than usual.
After finishing his meal, Haeseong took out the herbal medicine from the refrigerator, warmed it up, and drank it. Besides that, he took nutritional supplements full of various elements one by one, which were all medicines composed only of things helpful for growth.
After that, he entered the bathroom, meticulously inspected his appearance, and began applying various things to his face. The process was so naturally flowing that one could clearly see how long this routine had been going on.
No matter how much he had a job where external factors were important, Haeseong’s obsession with his height, and furthermore his appearance, was abnormal to anyone who saw it.
The public clamored that Haeseong’s flawless appearance was very rare and precious, and said it should be cherished like a treasure until he became an adult. They revered Haeseong’s appearance and loved his beautiful appearance without rough edges.
Haeseong, who had no intention of quitting this job and was now feeling a sense of accomplishment, had to respond appropriately to that.
Haeseong, who had even finished light running despite being in pain, sat on the sofa with a tired expression and leaned his body. Picking up his phone that was constantly vibrating from messages, he scrolled through the countless worthless messages piled up and checked a message from Jang Yeonguk.
「Euiju hyung is going to your place today to deliver herbal medicine, can I come along too? lol」
Haeseong, who was indifferently reading Jang Yeonguk’s text filled with messy spacing and spelling, found something oddly irritating and read the message once more.
‘Euiju hyung?’
His eyebrows twitched slightly at the friendly title.
Since it was a short break period without a schedule, today was the fourth day since Haeseong had lent his manager to Jang Yeonguk, telling him to eat shit. Although Jang Yeonguk’s way of speaking was strange, Haeseong sent a reply without much thought.
「Do that.」
“Haa…”
Thinking that from tomorrow that fucking manager would follow him around again made irritation rise instantly.
Since Haeseong was still a minor and was popular enough that they worried some accident might happen, the company kept someone by Haeseong’s side most of the time except for sleeping hours. It was because there was no guardian in the first place.
Originally there were several managers who stayed 24 hours, but the company generously reduced the number due to Haeseong’s fits and hysterics. It was because Jin Yeongseol, who had been pressuring Haeseong not to cause trouble, realized that having many managers actually made him throw more fits.
To Haeseong, who was going through his turbulent adolescence, managers were not welcome existences.
However, there was a reason he came to hate managers this much, so Haeseong recalled his stiff manager and scrunched up his face.
Haeseong went up to the theater room and watched a movie in which Lee Siwoo, a child actor like himself, had appeared. Although it had been released a while ago, the VOD had just come out so the viewing was a bit delayed.
“What the hell. They said he gave his all in acting but there’s fucking nothing special.”
After finishing a moderate viewing and coming down to the first floor, Haeseong headed toward the kitchen to drink water.
However, he suddenly stopped walking at the sound coming from inside the kitchen.
“Can’t you at least just ask? Ah— hyeeong.”
When Jang Yeonguk’s peculiar nasal voice was heard from inside the kitchen, Haeseong’s brow quickly furrowed.
“Can’t you really just make time once? I’m not joking, you can really see them right up close, I’m saying. I got four tickets because hyung’s siblings like Unicorn Girls so we could all go together. It’s too much to reject without even thinking about it!”
A nasal voice mixed with whining. His friend Jang Yeonguk was pestering someone as if begging. Haeseong, who witnessed Jang Yeonguk’s coquettishness that he had never heard in his life, let out a scoff as if dumbfounded.
“Ha.”
He wondered what kind of new fit this was.
“Sorry. Let’s go next time. Okay?”
At the gentle voice heard next, Haeseong, who had been wearing a sneer, froze in place.
Since he was with Jang Yeonguk, it was obvious it would be his manager Lee Euiju’s voice, but Haeseong had never once heard such a kind and gentle tone from him.
‘What is this?’
It was strange for such a friendly conversation to be exchanged in this combination.
