“Newborns are fragile, aren’t they? I couldn’t take my eyes off it even for a moment.”
Now all Woonghee could feel was only his voice. It was a soft tone but strangely scratched inside his ears. It was a voice that burst out while suppressing emotions as much as possible.
“It felt like the only thing on my side I’d ever had.”
It was a calm tone as if it were nothing. That’s why it stuck in his ears more.
“Small, delicate, fragile.”
Saying this, he shook the wine bottle. Soon he turned it upside down and grabbed Woonghee’s ankle, pouring the alcohol over it.
“Wh, what are you doing?”
It had just been fetched from the valley stream. Startled by the ice-cold temperature, he struggled, but the man wouldn’t let go of his ankle.
“Don’t we need to disinfect it?”
The mark where the water snake had bitten remained on his ankle. As if it was about to swell, it was turning reddish.
“…Ah.”
Only then did Woonghee make a sound in his throat. When he relaxed the strength in his calf, his ankle drooped. It was easily caught in the man’s grip.
“When I look at Woonghee-ssi’s ankle, it reminds me of the swan I raised back then. Its nape was as slender and delicate as this ankle…”
At first listen, it was a voice no different from usual. However, that voice contained a bitterness like ash left behind after fire passed through. As if he’d picked up and eaten a bitter fruit.
“It was the only thing I gave affection to.”
Pfft, the man’s shoulders with muscles stuck like a shell twitched. He laughed like a deflated balloon.
“I cared for it like a younger sibling. But it died before long.”
Woonghee’s knee trembled. It was truly an uncomfortable truth.
He didn’t want to hear such intimate stories from him. It felt like learning the inner story of the snake that swallowed an egg with its mouth wide open in front of a mother bird.
It was like learning the fact that the snake also had eggs in its belly, so it needed nutrients.
Everyone has their circumstances.
However, Woonghee avoided looking into others’ circumstances as much as possible. His own well was already too deep. Even if he shone a flashlight-like emotion on it, the water pooled at the bottom would have already rotted and would reek.
So he didn’t bother to turn his gaze to others. No, he didn’t have the capacity to do so.
Moreover, this man—he’d said he was a concubine’s son. An Alpha by birth, with outstanding appearance and an excellent brain, a truly perfect man who had only walked the elite course.
Naturally, he’d received envy and jealousy from others. Those who felt inferior, including Woonghee, had judged him.
‘A concubine’s child.’
He didn’t want to grant this man a narrative, but what could he do about what he’d already heard? It was an uncomfortable truth, but only now did he understand him even a little.
Wasn’t it said that all personalities have environmental factors? Managing Director Gi was no exception either.
“So that’s why your personality is like that…”
Is that why you became such a mercilessly shattered psychopath? He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.
“Others apparently can immediately recognize joy, sadness, loneliness, emptiness, things like that just by looking at expressions, but I have to learn such things with my head.”
Tap, tap. He tapped his own temple.
Woonghee felt like he wanted to cover that mouth. It was far more mentally comfortable when the man just seemed like trash.
Learning about the environment he grew up in like this made him feel stifled. An unpleasantly uncomfortable emotion gathered inside.
It was none other than petty guilt.
Woonghee had to betray the others, patch up the lifeboat, and escape this island with Director Hwang. There was no other way now.
But there were still thoughts that popped up occasionally.
Director Hwang—could he really trust that bastard?
If it weren’t for that bastard, he wouldn’t have fallen off the raft.
It was a problem that wouldn’t have occurred if Director Hwang hadn’t pushed hyung out into the sea.
Woonghee was half-doubting that the owner of the shark fin approaching might be a dolphin, but the others, already seized by fear, had completely accepted it as a shark. Everyone except the man before his eyes.
If so, did Director Hwang really intend to make hyung into shark food?
Maybe he thought it worked out well. Because it was one less mouth to feed.
If all this was true, it was a big problem. Was it right to join hands with someone who so easily sacrificed others? Wouldn’t it be better to join hands with this man, Managing Director Gi instead…
This man’s mind worked faster, and if he had a goal, he had no hesitation in realizing it. Like a businessman.
…Aah, I don’t know. What’s right and what’s wrong now. What’s false and what’s true—I really don’t know anymore.
It felt like his head would burst with a pop.
Woonghee opened his eyes thinly. This man—he wasn’t bringing up this story to confuse him, was he? Since he was always two steps ahead of others, it was possible.
“…But why are you suddenly telling me such things?”
“Well, because I’m drunk.”
He shook the wine bottle. The brownish liquid inside sloshed. There wasn’t much left. Half he had drunk, and the other half he’d poured on his ankle.
“I can’t help but have a weakened heart.”
Woonghee said nothing.
A quiet night. Above his head, a night sky with the Milky Way spread out like a mat, and as background music, the cries of beasts from who knows where were laid. It seemed like a baby beast’s sleep-whining, or like the sea’s sleep-talking.
“No matter how much of a sociopath I am, wouldn’t I be afraid? When threats to survival lurk everywhere?”
Was he really drunk? The man kept revealing his weakness unlike himself.
Right… wouldn’t it be better for him to get drunk too?
“Give me that.”
Woonghee snatched the wine bottle from his hand. What was so special about something like this that he got drunk and revealed his intimate emotions?
Soon Woonghee snapped his head back. He bit the bottle mouth with his lips and gulp, gulp, swallowed the liquid. Sweet yet bitter water rushed down his throat. Then he roughly rubbed his lips with the back of his hand as if crushing them.
“…I thought I should disinfect the inside of my body too.”
He muttered like an excuse. The man before his eyes was now only staring at him.
The surroundings were quiet, and only the occasional sound of valley water rippling lingered in his ears. A strangely peaceful atmosphere flowed.
Woonghee clenched his fist. The twig gripped in his hand was held even tighter.
He liked washing in the cold valley stream, but just one thing. When he came out after washing, it was so cold that his molars clattered. But now a campfire was lit right in front. Naturally his tension eased and his body became languid and warm.
Was lighting the fire in advance the man’s kindness? With an appearance dressed like an emperor of the night, he had unexpectedly kind aspects.
Just looking at his appearance, didn’t he seem like he’d swallow illegal drugs like staple food and play around with two or three provocatively-looking Omegas tucked under his arms?
On top of that, it seemed like once he fucked something, he wouldn’t look at it twice.
But the reality was completely different. Like this, he carried him to the valley stream, washed him with his own hands, and filled his hungry stomach.
Also…
‘I cared for it like a younger sibling. But it died before long.’
This man had also lost something. He seemed like a man who had everything without lacking anything.
Whoooosh, the wind blew. He thought he knew everything about the man, but it was too great an arrogance. Tonight’s him seemed like a completely different human from before.
If there was a difference from usual… it was just that he’d mixed bodies with the man. Because they pressed skin together, was his head misunderstanding that they’d become that much closer mentally? To even cause such an illusion. Sex really was as wicked as drugs.
“……”
“……”
It was a night when a large full moon bestowed moonlight on the entire valley. A night when white silk-like light descended like an aurora, creating a dreamlike atmosphere.
Then fweeeng, a meteor shower fell. A flash that instantly split the darkness and crossed the sky. It seemed to have become a catalyst.
Inside Woonghee’s heart, buried in a very deep place. Unspoken words that he wouldn’t have known existed unless he dug them up began to float up carried by the wind.
“…Excuse me.”
Woonghee began speaking without realizing it. Just as shooting stars poured from the sky, something inside Woonghee was collapsing too.
“Hm?”
