The streets tangled with countless crowds swayed like fierce currents. Pushing and pulling roughly, flowing without any fixed direction, colliding and splitting apart again.
Through the gaps, a white body fled.
“…….”
The man’s eyes were chasing it. Having climbed to a high place, the man stood before a glass window. Casting his jet-black shadow on the glass window, he pressed both eyes into the binoculars. His flickering pupils spun around rapidly in pursuit. Like that, he groomed over him through a 3x magnifying glass, examining every single eyebrow hair, the shape of each ear.
Soon the man bit his thumb irritably, making a grinding sound.
His neat fingernail broke into a disgusting shape and jutted up sharply, bright red blood seeping out.
…I tamed you so thoroughly.
Like Pavlov’s dog. If I disappeared, you would chase after me—didn’t we share such sweet promises like lovers?
‘You came to find me again today.’
‘…Yes, when I woke up, you weren’t beside me, Junhyuk-ssi….’
When the man disappeared, Lee Woonghee would bring his white body and come find him directly. Then he would rub his nose against the man’s nape. The man had to witness that sight clearly with his own two eyes every time to feel satisfied. That’s why he deliberately left while Woonghee was asleep, while Woonghee was showering.
Yes, how many times had he done that.
Because Woonghee always tried to slip out of his grasp.
The man tried to tame Woonghee like that. If you ring a bell before giving food, the dog drools profusely. When that process is repeated, even just hearing the bell sound makes the dog roll its eyes back white and drool wetly.
If he couldn’t tear out and replace Woonghee’s heart, he at least wanted to occupy his brain. He thought that even this meaningless love game, this hide-and-seek, might someday remain as something significant to you.
But what the hell is that sight right now?
When he despised other humans so much. When he scorned skin and body odor, sweat, all those things. What is that fierce body trying desperately to escape now, getting its face crushed against the shoulders and arms of the rushing crowd?
He was struggling desperately to get away from him. He showed no sign of being emotionally attached to him at all. The man slowly stroked his jaw with his hand.
“Fuck….”
His chest, buttoned up to the neck, heaved as if harboring hot heat.
It felt like somewhere below his chest was collapsing hotly. Every moment he doesn’t smile, Gi Junhyuk wants to destroy something inside. An emotion he’s experiencing for the first time gnaws at Junhyuk’s insides.
No, it’s ruining him completely. No, that’s not it. This is trying to swallow him whole.
“Should I catch him?”
Daehyung asks from the side. And that’s when it happened. When Woonghee stopped dead in his tracks. It felt exactly like their eyes met. Though that couldn’t be. Of course it wasn’t a distance where they could meet eyes. All of this was just his misunderstanding.
However, nevertheless, all of Woonghee’s expressions seemed vividly embroidered before his eyes. On that white face, in those eyes that seemed drowsy with their thin eyelids, on those plump lower lips like an especially well-ripened red fruit—that emotion spreading like poison was…
Definitely fear….
Soon Woonghee turned his head again. And ignoring the man, he ran. Anyone watching would think he’d met a monster in a dream. A dream where a house-sized terrible monster rushes at him with its maw wide open to tear off Woonghee’s head. Startled by Woonghee’s fierce momentum, a bird nearby in the river quickly spread its wings and flew away.
And beyond the bird flying away with its large wings spread wide on both sides, Woonghee’s figure disappeared. Despite how patiently the man had waited so persistently, what Woonghee showed in the end was a signal of flight.
How dare he.
“Catch him.”
Finally the man threw out a cold word.
“Yes, I’ll be back.”
Daehyung, who bowed 90 degrees in greeting, straightened his broad shoulders and left the room with precision. The man remained turned toward the glass window.
The dark gray suit wrapping around his broad back muscles rose and fell steeply. His breathing gradually became rougher. The man repeatedly clenched and unclenched his large fists, trying somehow to grasp something.
Though he didn’t even know what that something was. As strength entered his nape, the pheromones enveloping his whole body spread around like smoke.
“Damn it….”
The man’s thick eyebrows twitched. Soon he swung his thick arm widely. Just as the hem of his suit fluttered, the binoculars flew toward the glass window. Soon the glass shattered with a crash.
And through that broken hole, rain and wind blew in violently. The damp and heavy wind flew in bitterly cold, digging into the man’s side. As if representing his empty heart. He felt pain as if glass shards were stabbing his lower abdomen.
Huu, he swept his hair up. The lighting swept past, revealing his outline. Intense anger spread across his deeply sunken eyes. On his face with one corner of his mouth twisted, the fury and resignation he’d been hiding was revealed.
‘…Gi Junhyuk-ssi, I said I’d stay by your side, this time I absolutely won’t run away like a fucking idiot.’
But then why again this time?
The man knew too. He had observed and dissected Woonghee’s facial muscles countless times over and over. Sometimes he was deeply absorbed in the thought of wanting to dig inside and caress each muscle one by one.
So he couldn’t help but know. Those eyes confessing false love, that mouth speaking lies—none of it was truth.
Two months. The period he asked him to promise was merely two months. Didn’t he say that after that, the man would personally send him back to Korean soil? Didn’t he say he’d even make him the beta he so desperately longed for? Wasn’t Woonghee the one who got on the cruise and threw his life into the mud for such shitty pocket change?
“But why the hell…!”
He spat out a brutish curse. The man’s mouth was parched dry.
“Did you hate it that much?”
Was I that repulsive? Thirst arose. It felt like a fish bone was deeply lodged in his throat, blood flowing profusely. Even when he forced himself to cough from the frustration, all that came out was dry saliva. This fucking thirst….
How much time had passed like that?
After more than 30 minutes, a commotion arose in the densely gathered crowd. The crowd scattered all at once.
And among them, black suits took their positions. A white body was even briefly visible. His subordinates had grabbed Woonghee by the scruff of his neck and were dragging him out. His white skin contrasted with the jet-black suits, drawing even more attention.
The attention of the noisy crowd also focused on Woonghee.
He was causing a ruckus like an alley cat caught stealing fish, and the surrounding people couldn’t take their eyes off him as if nails had been hammered in. Every single one had an entranced expression. It was human desire and primary instinct to lose one’s mind and yearn for a brilliantly blooming flower.
It was natural to be entranced by that pretty face, that white body radiating vitality, the fragrance of fruit flesh wafting from his whole body.
If one was human, one couldn’t help but want Woonghee.
Even he himself, for that matter.
“…….”
The man leisurely rode the lift down. Then he approached Woonghee step by step, the sound of his shoes echoing. When he appeared with his large build, the crowd that had been clumped together like rice cakes scattered. People lowering their postures as if surrendering parted to make way for the man.
“You fucking pig bastard! Get your trotters off me, fuck…!”
And at the center was Woonghee. Pinned beneath Daehyung’s thick knee. His narrow chest pressed down tight, his limbs flailing.
“You little shit, go fuck Lee Ijun instead!”
“Won’t you stay still? This tiny bastard, that temper really!”
But Woonghee, kicking up at Daehyung’s back with his knees, was barefoot. Like traces of trying to escape with all his strength, his soles were black and his insteps were covered in tangled scratches.
Moreover, however violently he’d struggled, one side of Woonghee’s mask was completely broken. White powder was falling off in flakes.
The man slowly approached him and grabbed his bangs with his hand.
“Darling, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
The man spat out ominously. Woonghee obediently lifted his head. Through the broken mask, his ruined complexion was visible. Both cheeks were flushed, and damp sweat had seeped into his philtrum, subtly giving off a sheen.
His two pupils were trembling violently with anxiety.
“…Listen, Gi Junhyuk-ssi. It’s a misunderstanding. Ho-honestly, at first I did want to run away. I fucking wanted to hide. But the thing is….”
Evil thing. You’re trying to deceive me again and blind my eyes, aren’t you? Wasn’t he being lenient in the first place? He should have grabbed and pulled out the tongue in his throat so he could never make this voice again.
Just because he wanted to hear laughter….
Like an idiot, he had been tolerating this thing flowing with words to bewitch him.
“But then I remembered what you said….”
Woonghee’s left eye was looking up at him. The man completely removed the broken mask. Messy emotions were tangled complexly in his right eye. Regret, remorse, desperation, even wretchedness.
“Managing Director Gi, no, Gi Junhyuk-ssi…. That damn swan Baekjo is at the dock.”
Swan. Those things weren’t swans. Their beaks were shorter and plumper than swans. When they took flight, their wing shape drew a V. They were merely geese.
Why was he poking at the man’s emotional trigger at this timing? Was he stirring up the man’s most vulnerable part to try to manipulate him again?
“So.”
As expected, he should have cut off this three-inch tongue…! The man gripped that small chin in his fist.
“So… I couldn’t go, I couldn’t go at all.”
Look even now, does he expect him to believe such words? When he’d been so desperately trying to escape from him?
“I… mean it, it’s real.”
The man’s grip gradually tightened. Under the pressure that seemed to crush bone, Woonghee’s jaw trembled. Thwack, thwack, thwack! Woonghee repeatedly struck the back of the man’s hand.
“Ugh, urk…!”
In that gap, something fell from Woonghee’s grasp. It hit the floor with a thud and rolled. The man’s two eyes were naturally drawn to it.
…It was some kind of Zippo lighter.
The man slowly lowered his waist and picked it up in his hand. Initials that seemed to have been engraved by heating a needle or something in fire were embedded there. KJH. It was the man’s.
“…….”
The man’s heart thumped and fell as he caressed each letter with his eyes. Because the meaning the lighter intimately held was this: You are my first love.
