While eating margherita pizza with the cheese stretching long, his appetite suddenly dropped and he threw down the thin edge of the pizza.
“Haa, what am I doing right now?”
He brought back the phone he’d deliberately kept standing because he hated eating alone and laid it down. The sunset that had been dyeing the surroundings hotly had long since faded to tangerine, and the beach where couples had been rolling around was now covered with twilight. He wiped his sticky hands with a wet tissue. Even with a feast spread before his eyes, his hands didn’t reach for it. Eating alone meant his appetite didn’t rise.
He entered a portal site and searched for the three characters of ‘Gi Siyoung.’ For a while, the drunk driving article had been at the top, but now his airport departure photo was at the very top. The drunk driving title was still stuck here and there, and community sites were still going back and forth about his drunk driving incident.
“Boring.”
He left the terrace table where he hadn’t even broken even and just gulped down beer, then got up from his seat. With a flushed face, he sat in the dark living room and operated the remote control. The large television monitor turned on with a click. With an uninterested face, he swam through channels and put down the remote at a movie channel. A movie he usually liked had just started and hadn’t even passed 20 minutes yet.
It was a film where a girl visits her ornithologist father’s farm, meets birds, and moves the flock of birds to a safe place to escape developers destroying the environment. The sweet background music and the cute flock of birds following the girl like a mother. And cursing “fuck, fuck” at the environment destroyers trying to demolish the beautiful scenery, Gi Siyoung had somehow watched all the way to the ending credits.
“It’s over already?”
He looked around the deserted surroundings. It was dark and gloomy. While time had passed like this, the interior had been quiet. Thinking that perhaps they’d quietly entered so as not to disturb him watching the movie, he headed to Im Seungun’s room, but as expected, his room was completely empty.
Gi Siyoung was a human without hesitation when it came to action. He could be called an impulsive person when it came to acting as his heart led.
“……”
Before even putting a period on his thoughts, his body moved first. Still in the slippers he wore indoors, he trudged out of the hotel room. He took the elevator, left the main building, and walked on the promenade lined with palm trees.
Occasionally, Korean tourists passing by would cover their mouths and point at Gi Siyoung. However, he didn’t care and entered the annex entrance. An employee who recognized the face of the VIP customer staying in the suite room quickly attached himself to his side, but Gi Siyoung didn’t even respond whether the employee chattered beside him or not.
‘We decided to have a drink at the bar downstairs for a bit. I heard the bar here is famous, even featured in magazines.’
When the employee heard that Gi Siyoung was looking for the famous bar he’d seen in a magazine, he was delighted that he could help and began guiding him kindly. The employee who passed Gi Siyoung like a baton to the bar staff in front of the bar bowed in greeting.
Gi Siyoung pulled out whatever cash he could grab from his pocket and held it out as a tip. The employee left with a bright smile. The bar staff politely brought Gi Siyoung inside. The claim that it was famous wasn’t a lie, as it was bustling with people.
Thanks to that, Gi Siyoung didn’t catch anyone’s eye. Gi Siyoung didn’t listen to the staff guiding him to a seat and looked around. And he caught a familiar back of the head in one go.
Im Seungun and Patrick were sitting at the bar that stretched out in a straight line. They were having a quiet conversation in front of the bartender making cocktails. The back view of someone busy playing around with an idol, abandoning their assigned actor, could be called dereliction of duty.
“Living it up, aren’t they.”
Gi Siyoung refused the staff’s suggestion to go to the best seat and pointed to a secluded corner seat where he could see the bar seats best. If he sat closer, there was a risk of being caught by the two people. The leaves of large plants set up as interior decoration hung around Gi Siyoung, who immediately ordered a glass of the most popular alcohol.
With the booming music and the voices of people chattering even louder than that, hearing the voices of the two people sitting far away at the bar was like plucking stars from the sky. Im Seungun and Patrick also narrowed the gap between lips and ears and bumped shoulders every time they conversed to exchange each other’s voices.
“But why do I have to secretly spy on those bastards?”
Siyoung, who had been sipping the whiskey that was immediately served, muttered as if he’d gained a great enlightenment. This time too, he sprang up from his seat not long after sitting down. However, since he actually had nothing to say if he went, he sat back down. An employee who had been particularly watching Gi Siyoung immediately ran to him and asked if he needed anything. He waved his hand.
If the alcohol had tasted terrible, he would have left right away. However, as it was a famous bar introduced in a magazine, not only the atmosphere but also the taste of the alcohol was good enough to gulp down. After taking a sip and turning the glass to set it down, a foreign woman with voluminous light brown hair and a blonde woman stood in front of the table, blocking his view.
“What the.”
When Gi Siyoung looked up sharply, the women suggested moving seats and having a drink together with refreshing smiles. Because of where they stood, the long bar seats weren’t clearly visible. Gi Siyoung moved his head to see the bar seats through the gap between them. As expected, it wasn’t clearly visible.
He smiled amiably and declined, saying his companions would come soon. Then they even suggested sitting together since they also had companions. It seemed like they wouldn’t easily back off with any ordinary refusal. As the three conspicuous figures exchanged various words, the inside of the bar stirred for a moment.
“……”
At the somewhat noisy atmosphere, Seungun glanced behind him. Tall foreign women were talking with someone seated at a table. There was no way to know who that person was, but seeing that the foreigners sitting nearby were also watching that way, he roughly guessed they must be a celebrity.
If it were usual, he wouldn’t have stopped anyone coming and would have enjoyed the time together, but Gi Siyoung coming to the bar today had a purpose. When he firmly refused, the foreign women made regretful faces, blew hand kisses, and disappeared. A foreign elderly man watching them from the side said things like “If it were me, I would have said okay right away! What an ungreedy young man!”
Raising his head, Gi Siyoung completely got up from his seat this time for sure. The foreigners sitting around whispered, looking strangely at Gi Siyoung doing this and that by himself. The reason he got up was separate. It was because Patrick had casually held something out to Seungun. A flat, thin card. That was unmistakably a hotel card key.
“Those guys.”
Im Seungun didn’t know refusal. He was a man who would pour drinks while thinking, even if someone made him uncomfortable, he could endure it to a degree. Moreover, contrary to appearances, he was quite free when it came to skinship and sexual life.
On top of that, if the other party was Patrick? If he, whom the shy Im Seungun according to Myeongwoo had played well with, offered his room card and whispered secretly and kindly to play together with that fox-like smile that charmed girl fans, Im Seungun probably wouldn’t feel the need to refuse.
Gi Siyoung strode toward the long bar.
“What are you two doing right now?”
Like a man catching an affair scene, Gi Siyoung stood blocking between them. Both people were dumbfounded by Gi Siyoung’s sudden appearance.
“Huh?”
“Sunbae-nim!”
Gi Siyoung ignored their welcome and snatched away the item Patrick had handed to Seungun.
“What is this?”
Patrick, realizing that he was right before his eyes, sprang up from the round stool chair and bowed 90 degrees.
“S-sunbae-nim! Did you come out?”
“……”
Even until then, Gi Siyoung was checking the front and back of the item Patrick had handed to Seungun. It was difficult to recognize because the lighting happened to be changing flashily. What was certain was that the more he looked at it, it was a distant relative from the appearance of a hotel card key.
“Not long after we return to Korea, my concert will be held. If you two have time, please come to the concert! I was just saying it would be really great if sunbae-nim came together too, and they say even tigers come when you talk about them, but to think sunbae-nim would suddenly appear like this…! Oh, and that’s my photo card. I heard it’s traded at expensive prices on the internet, so keep it well, haha.”
It wasn’t a hotel card key. It was a concert ticket with the concert name, date, and seat number written on it, and a stiff photo of something called a photo card. Seungun confirmed the position Gi Siyoung had charged from. In the direction he had walked from, there was an empty secluded seat with a whiskey glass placed on it.
