“No way, did you really give that person money?”
Jeonghan, looking at Wooyeon, said nothing. It was a person he didn’t even want to call father. When he was young, he was someone who mercilessly beat Wooyeon and his mother, and he was someone who tried to sell Wooyeon off for his gambling debts. Meeting after more than ten years, he was someone who tried to sell Wooyeon to another alpha to reduce his debts. Wooyeon’s ears felt completely blocked from his heart beating unbearably fast.
“Why would you pay off that bastard’s debt? Why!”
“I did it because I hated that side tormenting sunbae. There’s no other meaning.”
He even felt wronged. Ha, it was so absurd and ridiculous that tears seemed about to burst out. In case tears fell, Wooyeon bit his lips painfully. He couldn’t believe this matter had been carried out without a single word to him.
“Who are you to…… I told you to forget it!”
“It wasn’t a large enough amount of money for sunbae to worry about.”
Jeonghan answered with an indifferent face. The debt that man had told Wooyeon about was 300 million won. To Jeonghan it would be like pocket change for a child, but to other people, especially to Wooyeon, it wasn’t. To survive desperately with his sick mother while avoiding that person, he had lived working part-time jobs while getting nosebleeds every day. But that 300 million won, money he’d never held in his hands even while living like that, that person had received it so easily.
A sense of futility rushed in. At the same time, his hatred toward Jeonghan grew.
“Everything is easy for you.”
“Sunbae.”
Right now he didn’t want to see Jeonghan’s face. When Wooyeon, who had been looking at Jeonghan resentfully, turned his body and left the terrace, Jeonghan, who hurriedly put out his cigarette, followed Wooyeon in. Jeonghan, who grabbed Wooyeon’s wrist and stopped him, questioned Wooyeon.
“Why are you getting angry?”
“Don’t follow me.”
Wooyeon tried to pull out his caught hand, but Jeonghan didn’t budge. His large eyes looked up at Jeonghan filled with wretchedness and resentment. Even though he knew it wasn’t something to be angry at Jeonghan about, there was nowhere else for this anger and resentment to go.
“Let go!”
“I hated that sunbae was suffering! So is trying to solve it for you something to be hated this much by sunbae? Because I hated that sunbae was troubled over just that money. Is that so wrong?”
“You’re always like this.”
His affection wasn’t always warm to Wooyeon.
“I don’t want to see your face, let this go. Mm……!”
Jeonghan, who covered both of Wooyeon’s cheeks with his hands, lowered his head and swallowed his lips just like that. Wooyeon struggled and hit his shoulders and arms, but Jeonghan didn’t budge and roughly opened his lips.
The tongue that dug in instantly roughly ravaged the inside of his small mouth. The intense kiss that continued until he was out of breath only ended after Wooyeon bit Jeonghan’s tongue.
Smack!
As soon as Jeonghan released the strength in the arms holding Wooyeon, Wooyeon struck Jeonghan’s cheek just like that. The two were no match whether in physique or anything else. It wasn’t clear whether he really couldn’t avoid it, or whether he could have blocked it but didn’t avoid it.
Wooyeon exhaled roughly gasping for breath and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. The lips that had roughly met and rubbed stung. His reddened cheeks trembled under the cold air.
“Does that hurt your pride that much?”
Whether his mouth inside had burst from being hit on the cheek, or because Wooyeon had bitten his tongue, it seemed Jeonghan was bleeding from inside his mouth. He asked while dabbing at the blood coming from inside his mouth with his thumb.
“Then, do you know that, bastard?”
Knowing I can’t let go of that pathetic pride.
Wooyeon answered while covering his eyes carelessly with the back of his hand. Jeonghan, who heard Wooyeon’s answer with an expressionless face, slowly approached Wooyeon. At the oppressive pheromones wafting from him, Wooyeon unconsciously stepped back.
“Then I’ll break my own pride instead of sunbae’s, so listen well. I want to do everything for you because I like sunbae. I don’t even know why I have to make excuses like this.”
Because of the darkness, Jeonghan’s eyes weren’t visible well. Wooyeon tried hard to read his gaze with eyes rippling with moisture.
He likes me……?
Wooyeon wanted to confront him right away. How can you get engaged to Seoha while saying you like me?
But his lips absolutely wouldn’t part. As if his throat was completely blocked, it was so full of sadness that he couldn’t say anything. Even in the midst of this, Wooyeon thought that he was beyond help for thinking about his relationship with Jeonghan.
“Don’t make me beg over something like this. Because honestly I still don’t understand well why I have to go this far.”
Could this be false affection again? Even though the truth was close by, he couldn’t open it or believe it. He couldn’t understand what Jeonghan was saying.
He clearly treated me like a toy of his own possession all this time, but now his face is as if he really likes me…….
Tears flowed transparently down his cheeks again.
* * *
In the hospital room that you’d believe was a hotel if told so, water mist created by the humidifier rose up. Wooyeon held his mother’s hands that had become dry and rough at some point under it.
Whether health was something that couldn’t be held onto even with money, over the past 5 years his mother’s condition had gradually worsened. Most of the time his mother had her eyes closed, and even when they were open, there were many times she couldn’t recognize Wooyeon.
“……Mom.”
Wooyeon gripped her dry hand with strength again and called to his mother with a blank gaze.
“Sorry I can’t come often.”
The caregiver who had been changing the water in the vase in the hospital room tactfully left the room. Wooyeon, pale and thin, let out a sigh and lowered his head. When he turned his head again to look at his mother, she still had her eyes closed.
A face with a complete sickly appearance to the point where you wondered where that beautiful face from before had gone. Above it, the oxygen respirator repeatedly fogged up and became transparent.
“Actually, I’ve been having such a hard time lately.”
The first thing that came to mind was Jeonghan’s face. Because it seemed like tears would well up out of habit, Wooyeon kept blinking his eyes.
“Mom. You know, there’s someone I like…… there is.”
After spitting out those words, his lips trembled on his dropped head.
“He says he’s getting engaged to someone else. I thought engagement was something that only happened in dramas, but there really are people who do it……”
Rich people seem to do it. A futile laugh burst out like a sigh.
“But mom…… that fiancé is Seoha. Funny, right.”
Even as he spoke, it didn’t feel real. Could he be dreaming, Wooyeon had thought that many times, but painfully, it was reality. The face of Seoha trying to kiss Jeonghan in the dream wouldn’t be forgotten and kept popping up constantly.
“I really couldn’t believe it either……”
After saying that, Wooyeon was silent for a while. With a blank gaze, only his pupils moved occasionally. No matter how much he mulled it over, it didn’t make sense. Among all those numerous people, why Seoha of all people. Why not someone else but Seoha of all people. His face and gaze looking back at himself came to mind again.
“I tried to understand…… but it doesn’t work well.”
If it was going to be like this, why were you good to me? Why did you say you liked me?
As if in agony, Wooyeon pulled her hand and brought it to his eyes. Wooyeon thought he wished his mother would say something. So she could scold him or comfort him. To do something about this despair and loneliness.
“Mom told me when I was young to be good to Jeonghan.”
Wooyeon’s voice speaking as if talking to himself was shaking. He wanted to just disappear like this.
“But that bastard, he’s a really bad bastard. Really……”
While making his heart ache like this, he made it so he couldn’t hate him freely or resent him. Eventually tears flowed down from his heated eyes.
“Wake up, Mom. Say something to me. Please……”
Whenever he felt his mother’s fading life force, the thought that he was ultimately alone came desperately. Wooyeon cried for a long time while holding her hand.
* * *
In the living room with the lights off, Wooyeon sat on the sofa hugging his knees and looking at the rain falling outside the window. After working overtime every day, when he left work early, even though he’d been to his mother’s hospital, it was an earlier return home than usual.
Every time raindrops fell, the bamboo in the small garden between the living room and corridor swayed. With his gaze captured by the small bamboo forest beyond the full-length window, Wooyeon remained still.
Then, there was a presence as if someone had opened the villa’s door and entered.
“Ah, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were here.”
It was one of Jeonghan’s attendants. He, wearing a suit with several shopping bags hanging all over his body, had a flustered face. As Wooyeon turned his head with an indifferent face and blinked, someone else followed in behind him.
“Well, look who it is.”
Seeing Wooyeon’s face frozen in surprise, Seoha laughed mockingly. Wooyeon unfolded his crossed legs and sat up straight.
“It’s Seo Wooyeon-ssi?”
Has it been 5 years? Since he went to study abroad in Germany, they’d never met even once. As the face that had been seen only in dreams or on TV moved before his eyes, for a moment Wooyeon felt like it didn’t seem real.
Seoha took one small one from among the numerous shopping bags the Jeonghan’s attendant was holding with a leisurely attitude.
“I’ll talk with him for a bit. We know each other.”
The attendant who glanced at Wooyeon bowed deeply to Seoha, then bowed his head slightly toward Wooyeon and left Jeonghan’s villa. The door closed again with a beep sound.
And as soon as he left, Seoha entered the living room with his shoes still on and approached Wooyeon just like that. Wooyeon’s heart looking at him approaching closely beat thump-thump, gradually louder. Seoha threw down the small shopping bag he was holding onto the sofa where Wooyeon was sitting, then grabbed Wooyeon by the collar and pulled him up.
Smack-!
Being hit on the cheek was in an instant.
“You, I told you to stop your male prostitution bit by bit.”
Pain flared up hotly on the skin where his cheek had been hit. It was enough to make his ears ring, but the mental shock was greater than that pain. With his head turned from being hit on the cheek, Wooyeon froze without counterattacking or moving. Red marks formed here and there on his skin that had been white.
