From being treated like some pitiful, wronged kept-man, to the uncomfortable smear pieces about Beomwook — the spark hit Yeonjun’s fuse and it went up in flames. The fallout that had by now become accepted fact was entirely his own to deal with.
That night. Whether it was because of Yeonjun’s involvement or not, the anonymous community board at Hanguk University was buzzing nonstop with talk about him. Absurd rumors kept growing, snowballing in scale with every passing hour.
~Hanguk University Anonymous Board~
[You hear about the B.A. cutie?]
Apparently it was an affair lol. They hooked up before the wedding, and B.A. cutie showed up at the venue and caused a scene ㅋㅋ
┗ Wild. But wait isn’t B.A. cutie an alpha? Why go after a beta?
┗ If the guy’s an Executive Director at BS, what does designation matter ㅋㅋ isn’t that like, the jackpot?
┗ Disgusting piece of work
┗ But seriously who even is B.A. cutie
┗ You don’t know the Business Admin pretty boy? He’s super well known ㅂㅐㄱㅇㅕㄴ ㅈㅜㄴ
[Honestly isn’t B.A. cutie the victim here]
BS before being a chaebol is basically a gang, so he could’ve been coerced. And even if it was consensual, Do Beomwook was about to get married. In the end it’s the civilian B.A. cutie who gets screwed over.
┗ You think you writing this stuff over and over isn’t hurting a fellow student?
┗ B.A. cutie hasn’t even graduated yet ㅋㅋ everyone here is unhinged;;
┗ What the hell
┗ Yeah you’re getting reported ^^
Just skimming a few posts was enough to grasp exactly how his name was being thrown around. Yeonjun closed the app with an expression that had gone ice-cold. Strangely, he felt more numb than anything. Maybe it was because he’d experienced too many surreal things back to back. No — that wasn’t quite it, because the comments degrading Beomwook had set off a fury inside him that he genuinely couldn’t explain.
The Executive Director is probably used to this kind of thing.
An image surfaced — Beomwook reading through headlines attacking him and filthy rumors without so much as a change in expression. He probably was used to it. But did that really mean none of it reached him? He was human too — surely it still stung. There was no one to answer the questions that kept chasing each other through Yeonjun’s mind.
[Executive Director. It’s Yeonjun. There’s something I need to tell you. Please contact me when you have time.] 4:00 PM
The message he’d typed the moment he got back from school still had no reply. He pressed the call button one more time — only to hear the automated message telling him the phone was switched off.
[You’re not picking up so I’m texting. Today I told some close friends that we’ve met a few times. I’m sorry ㅜㅜ But it shouldn’t cause any major issues.] 11:25 PM
[Please make sure to contact me when you see this. Hang in there, Executive Director!] 11:30 PM
With a face that had settled into something slightly calmer, Yeonjun typed out his messages to Beomwook. It was late into the night, and since the message about burning the school down, Beomwook had gone quiet — clearly swamped.
Yeonjun stared at the phone that offered no reply for a while longer, then finally set it on the nightstand and switched off the lamp. The luxury bedding wrapped softly around him, but he felt no warmth at all.
What do I do from here. The moment he closed his eyes, a swarm of words and thoughts churned through his mind, unsettling him. The semester had started and Yeonjun needed to keep going to school. When would the overheated rumors about him and Beomwook finally die down? In the darkness, staring up at the high ceiling above, Yeonjun let out a long, slow exhale.
1 AM.
Returning to the hotel later than usual, Beomwook dragged his exhausted body into the room. He’d still had enough breathing room in the morning to check Yeonjun’s messages — but from his afternoon appointment onward, he’d been so buried he hadn’t even had a spare moment to think of Yeonjun.
The merger between BS Construction and Seosung Group was proceeding without issue. There had been a temporary dip in share prices due to Beomwook’s scandal, but fortunately it hadn’t amounted to a serious problem. If anything, recent reports of the merger going smoothly had even pushed the stock higher than before. Do Beomryeol, who preferred not to strain his mind too much, was clearly sitting back and contenting himself with the immediate returns.
After a quick shower, Beomwook hauled his sagging body to bed. The sudden aftermath of the broken engagement had been sending problems seeping out from every direction, and for the foreseeable future he needed to stay focused on the mountain of work that had to be handled.
Only now, lying down, did Beomwook properly check his phone. He powered it back on first. As expected, a string of message notifications had come in. They were from Yeonjun — sent hours earlier.
The way the messages played back through his mind in Yeonjun’s voice, naturally and without effort, pulled a faint smile to the corners of Beomwook’s mouth. Is he asleep? Or still awake like before, insisting he can’t sleep, nursing a can of beer? In the bedroom softly lit by the warm yellow glow of the bedside lamp, Beomwook lay back against the headboard and thought of Yeonjun.
Had he ever fallen asleep thinking of someone? The thought struck him as oddly new, cutting cleanly through his mind. And then the strangeness of sitting here having that thought at all made him vaguely self-conscious, and he curled his hands into fists and opened them again for no real reason.
Even so, Beomwook couldn’t stop the thoughts that kept coming, one after another. The image of Yeonjun’s face, flushed red with alcohol, laughing and laughing at him — it flickered through his mind. The slow, heavy blinks. The faint inner fold of his eyes. The memory sharpened, and like a balloon filling with air, it swelled to fill every corner of his head, all the way down into something deeper.
Turning someone else over in his mind like this — their face, their build, their personality, the way they spoke — savoring each detail at leisure — that was something that had never existed anywhere in the life Beomwook had lived until now.
Fighting off the drowsiness rolling in, Beomwook picked up his phone again. Yeonjun had been put in a difficult position entirely because of him — and that meant he was responsible.
[It’s me. I checked late.] 2:01 AM
[I’ll be in touch tomorrow. Get some rest.] 2:01 AM
He typed the messages out slowly, hesitated for just a moment, then sent them to Yeonjun. And not long after that, the full weight of sleep crashed over him, and Beomwook’s eyes slid shut. Almost immediately, the soft, steady sound of his breathing spread through the wide bedroom.
His phone — still in his hand, no new notifications — stayed there, held loosely in his grip.
“…Executive Director. Is something the matter?”
Choi Myeongjin, who had been briefing Beomwook on the day’s scheduled appointments, asked him directly. Beomwook wasn’t exactly a man of many expressions to begin with — but this level of visible worry on his face was a first in recent memory. At Myeongjin’s question, Beomwook stiffened and shook his head.
“Nothing. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“If you’re very tired, would you like to rest your eyes for a moment?”
Myeongjin asked again, concerned — but Beomwook declined his suggestion once more. The claim that he hadn’t slept was itself a lie to begin with. Beomwook looked past Myeongjin’s shoulder toward the phone sitting on the table. The screen was dark — still nothing.
Beomwook looked over the documents Myeongjin had given him with a neutral expression. But to a degree that should probably concern him, nothing was going in. He couldn’t concentrate — the words weren’t registering, bouncing right off him — and it had happened more than a few times now.
“You should rest, Executive Director. I’ll come back in an hour.”
In the end, Choi Myeongjin all but forced him to take a break. He took back the documents Beomwook hadn’t managed to properly read — practically snatching them — gave a short bow, and turned to leave. He was a little taken aback himself. Beomwook had iron-clad stamina that never so much as caught a cold — and there had never once been an occasion where he’d failed to concentrate properly on work while in the office.
Myeongjin paused at the door, bowed once more in Beomwook’s direction, then finally left completely.
Had Myeongjin’s presence ever felt this uncomfortable before? Realizing that his complete mental absence had been noticed — the embarrassment hit him like a wave, flooding in all at once.
He tapped the fountain pen in his hand against the desk. His gaze drifted, as it always seemed to now, to the phone on the table. The embarrassment of having his feelings clocked by Myeongjin had already been wiped clean from memory. The crease between Beomwook’s brows deepened.
…Yeonjun hadn’t contacted him since yesterday.
To be precise — there had been no reply from Yeonjun since the early-morning message Beomwook had sent before falling asleep. He’d assumed this morning that Yeonjun was busy now that the semester had started and that the delay was natural — but having heard nothing even well past lunchtime, it was starting to feel a little strange.
Wondering whether something might have happened, he’d even gone so far as to check Yeonjun’s movements through the private security guard he’d quietly assigned to tail him without Yeonjun’s knowledge. But the report that came back — that he’d attended his classes properly, gone to lunch with friends, and even stopped for coffee — had only made the worry worse.
Should he reach out and ask if something was wrong? But by now he’d already received the report confirming Yeonjun was fine at school. All Beomwook could do was sit there, brow furrowed, at a loss.
Then why — why wasn’t Yeonjun contacting him? If nothing was wrong on Yeonjun’s end, then the only conclusion he could arrive at was that the problem lay with Beomwook himself — the one who’d sent the last message.
Had it been wrong of him to reply so late because he’d been too busy? Or had he simply made some mistake with Yeonjun somewhere along the way? But no matter how many times he turned it over in his mind, Beomwook couldn’t figure out what he’d done wrong.
In an hour, Choi Myeongjin would be back, armed with tasks that couldn’t be put off. That much was certain. At this rate, he wouldn’t be able to pull himself together — and he’d only end up making Myeongjin more suspicious.
