Yeon Haejeong threw a few more words down with a voice that hadn’t yet cooled, still seething. Whatever was raging inside him, at some point he flung the first-aid kit he’d been holding onto the bed beside him. Then he shot a sharp, irritated glare at Munyeong, who sat there like a man awaiting sentencing — and a moment later, kicked the infirmary door open with full force and stormed out. At the deafening crash, as though he meant to knock the door off its hinges, Munyeong’s shoulders jumped. At last, as the footsteps faded away, Munyeong was able to breathe properly again.
With eyes brimming, Munyeong stared blankly at the medicines that had been sent scattering off the bed when Yeon Haejeong flung the kit. His heart had been hammering with the fear that he might cry in front of Yeon Haejeong. Showing tears in front of someone trembling that hard with revulsion felt like it would only invite worse fury.
“……I’m sorry.”
Munyeong murmured quietly, slowly turning his gaze toward the spot Yeon Haejeong had just vacated.
He had forgotten. Because they wore the same uniform. Because Yeon Haejeong treated him differently from the others. Because he had shown him something that felt like real human kindness.
He had completely forgotten that someone like him needed to be careful — needed to look at who he was dealing with — before letting himself fall.
At that, Munyeong’s eyes flew open as though he’d been struck by lightning, and he drew in a sharp, ragged breath. The dream was a past reality, but the sorrow he had felt back then was still sitting in his chest, unchanged. The feeling was so vivid that Munyeong pressed a hand to his heart in alarm, breathing roughly.
And then, as he turned his head without thinking, he saw Yeon Haejeong’s fine profile right beside him — sleeping soundly, one heavy arm draped over Munyeong’s body. The face of the Yeon Haejeong in the dream, who had looked at him with such contempt, and the Yeon Haejeong sleeping blissfully beside him now — they overlapped. They didn’t feel like the same person. The thought that the person who had trembled with revulsion at the very sight of him was now sleeping at his side — the present felt more like a dream.
Munyeong looked at his face with hazy eyes, studying it slowly. A smooth forehead. Neat, composed eyes. A nose bridge so sharp it was almost severe, almost irritable-looking. A jaw that was distinctly, unmistakably male. Taking it apart piece by piece, it was only now that the present began to feel real to Munyeong. And as reality set in, the cruel words that had tormented him through the night came flooding back.
“Lift your hips properly.”
He really hadn’t penetrated him — but he had done every other strange thing imaginable. He had made him get on all fours like an animal and thrust himself between his thighs from behind, pushing his cock in and out. Then he had turned him back over, lifted both his legs up high, and pressed down from above, grinding his cock between his thighs. Every time he pushed in and pulled out, he mashed and ground against Munyeong’s cock without any restraint.
It had felt like being turned into something subhuman. Toward the end, he had even made him lie on his side, then curled up behind him and rubbed his cockhead mercilessly up and down between his buttocks. At the same time, he had lifted one of Munyeong’s arms up and shoved his tongue deep into the hollow of his armpit, thoroughly. It had felt genuinely deranged. And he had ground against his entrance so relentlessly that the thick head had slipped just barely inside the rim at points.
“N-no, I don’t want — ngh, ah!”
“Haah…. Just rubbing, that’s all I’m doing. Damn. Your ass is unbelievably soft.”
When Munyeong had shaken his head and cried out against it, he had bitten out a curse and redirected all that restless frustration onto the poor armpit. It had been mortifying enough to want to disappear — but Munyeong hadn’t had a scrap of composure left to stop him. The repeated surges of pleasure, the heat that had filled the room, had blurred his sense of what was normal and what wasn’t.
The moment he opened his eyes, those memories of the night before streaked through his mind in rapid succession — and Munyeong scrambled out of the bed and fled the room. He hadn’t even gotten his clothes on properly before getting out, so he looked every bit the mess of someone who had done something very stupid the night before.
Both his heart and his head were spinning. He had no idea what to do with himself — no idea what kind of foolish thing he had just let happen. And on top of that, the coldly rejecting Yeon Haejeong of the past and the Yeon Haejeong of last night seemed like they resembled each other and yet were completely, disturbingly different, and the confusion wouldn’t settle. Last night had felt more like a dream than any dream. It had been wild and rough, but Yeon Haejeong had been so relentless, so relentlessly driven, that it created the delusion — however false — that he genuinely wanted Munyeong.
Munyeong made it all the way out of the building, and without thinking, stopped and looked up at the five-story building with a blank, lost expression.
“Have a good time?”
At that moment, a voice he recognized came from behind him.
“I had a feeling… something was off.”
Munyeong turned around with an expression of shock. The words wouldn’t come through the flustered panic, and he opened and closed his lips uselessly.
“The secretary just fit Yeon Haejeong’s type a little too well.”
The person who had appeared behind him was Chu Dowon — who, by the look of him, had also spent the night here. Munyeong blinked with the look of someone whose thinking had stalled entirely. It was an acutely embarrassing situation. Hair disheveled, clothes in disarray, having come bolting out before dawn — it was the kind of sight anyone would find suspicious.
“That… it’s not what you’re thinking… nothing like that hap——”
“The two of you going up to the bedroom was all captured on CCTV.”
“…….”
“I knew Yeon Haejeong didn’t discriminate between men and women, but really… he doesn’t discriminate by level either.”
Chu Dowon looked Munyeong up and down with a dismissive, belittling gaze and tilted his head to the side.
“Is the secretary just a cover, and you’re actually his personal toilet — carried around for his own use?”
It had been apparent since the inauguration ceremony. Chu Dowon had called Yeon Haejeong “hyung, hyung” to his face in a friendly manner, but it was clear that he harbored a peculiar hostility toward Yeon Haejeong. Nothing else explained why he would insult Munyeong like this without any provocation.
“…It’s true that I’m not a formal secretary…. But that is not the purpose for which I am brought along.”
“Ah — is that so?”
“And whatever misunderstanding you may have… I really — nothing happened.”
Munyeong decided he had no choice but to deny it flat out. He thought it could only be bad for Yeon Haejeong’s position if it became known that Yeon Haejeong had done something like this with him. Truly — if a sexual scandal involving someone like him and Yeon Haejeong came to light, the only one who stood to lose anything was Yeon Haejeong.
Chu Dowon looked at him with an expression that made clear he believed none of the feeble denials, and scoffed.
“How loyal of a subordinate he has.”
“……Th-then, I’ll be going now.”
Munyeong bowed, doing his best to keep his voice steady and conceal the sound of his heart threatening to pound its way out of his chest, and stepped back. What a disaster. The memory surfaced of Chu Dowon’s gaze, staring hard at Yeon Haejeong on the day of the inauguration ceremony — the day Yeon Haejeong had humiliated the twins and their father. And yet yesterday, Chu Dowon had greeted Yeon Haejeong with a bright, easy smile as though none of it had ever happened — but away from Yeon Haejeong, he didn’t even address him properly as “hyung.”
A creeping unease came over him — but all Munyeong could do was vanish from the spot as quickly as possible, as though he had never been there at all.
**
Going home first would make him late to work, so Munyeong headed straight to the company. He had arrived earlier than usual, and mercifully, no one was in yet — so Munyeong made his way to the shower room inside the changing area and washed up. Dried bodily fluids of indeterminate origin were stuck and crusted across his body in various places. And when he looked in the mirror, there were bruise marks all over his neck, across his chest, even below his armpits. His body was mottled with marks as though he’d come down with some kind of skin condition, and Munyeong couldn’t help but recoil at his own reflection.
After being put through the wringer all night, his body felt heavy — and the skin between his thighs, rubbed raw by what must have been hundreds, thousands of strokes, was red and chafed. It stung and ached enough that even his walk was off. It all felt pathetically, mortifyingly embarrassing — but there was no time to dwell on it. Munyeong washed quickly, changed into his uniform in short order, and dried his hair at speed. People would start arriving for work soon.
He exchanged light greetings with the employees trickling in one by one, and sat in a corner to rest until morning briefing time. He’d always thought of himself as reasonably fit — but his body felt heavy and sluggish. As the exhaustion pressed down on him, Section Chief Jo spotted him and approached with an awkward look on his face. A sense of foreboding settled in.
“Munyeong, I’m really sorry to have to say this…….”
Section Chief Jo slid quietly into the seat beside him and spoke with care.
“Is there something you need to tell me?”
Munyeong asked politely, making an effort to lift the heaviness that wanted to drag his voice down.
“Ha…. I know you’re having a hard time…. But word came down from above.”
“Yes?”
“Senior Managing Director Yeon seems to be quite taken with you.”
Section Chief Jo thought back to yesterday’s hellish encounter. Yeon Haejeong had kicked the management office door wide open when he arrived, and the moment he stepped in, he had gone straight into a torrent of abuse directed at Section Chief Jo. Who gave him the authority to reassign his staff, what kind of way was that to do his job, did he want to get fired — he had thrown his fit and left. Before he went, he had made one thing clear: don’t go reassigning his staff without his say-so. Section Chief Jo had watched the space Yeon Haejeong left behind with a drained expression. It had seemed quiet for a while. Having lived abroad for a stretch hadn’t put a dent in that temper, clearly. And he hadn’t thought for a second that Yeon Haejeong had been directing that level of attention toward Munyeong. He had assumed Munyeong was in the man’s bad books — but it turned out to be exactly the opposite. Senior Managing Director Yeon had taken a liking to Im Munyeong.
“He says not to reassign his staff without asking…? He’s not usually like this.”
Section Chief Jo continued cautiously, watching Munyeong’s face. The reason Munyeong had asked to be reassigned in the first place was because it was too hard — so if the decision was reversed, would Munyeong now be thinking of quitting entirely? The worry nagged at him. But before that, there was the matter of his own job being on the line.
“Ah…….”
Munyeong let out a quiet, leaden sound. There was no surprise in his expression. It wasn’t entirely unexpected. From the moment last night when Yeon Haejeong had come at him with that relentless persistence, Munyeong had already known to some degree that he wasn’t going to leave things alone.
