At Hui-myeong’s question, Geum-gang answered indifferently. Still, it wasn’t bad. The fifty thousand won he’d handed to the delivery person felt just like money for peppermint candy meant for him. It was Hui-myeong’s long-standing habit to assign meaning to trivial things and fill in the lacking affection himself.
Around the time they arrived near Ugok Station, Geum-gang opened his mouth.
“Where exactly is your house? Don’t think about wandering around with that bag, just tell me.”
“Triple Palace.”
Hui-myeong had no choice but to answer truthfully.
“You live in a nice place.”
He muttered and drove the car to Triple Palace. Hui-myeong looked around while holding the bag like a chicken brooding eggs. Since it was a road where people rarely walked and there weren’t many cars, the uphill street was quiet. Only then did Hui-myeong realize how dangerous what he’d done was. He had been about to walk alone on night streets carrying a bag with hundreds of millions of won worth of watches.
“Where do you live, hyung?”
Hui-myeong asked without missing the timing.
“Signature.”
“You live in a nice place too, hyung. You must make a lot of money.”
“I live in a place that suits me well. It’s crawling with criminals and con artists.”
Hui-myeong laughed quietly at Geum-gang’s words. Do-ha had once said the same thing about Signature. He’d said it was a place vulgar con artists aspired to? Being a genius at dividing classes, Do-ha didn’t hesitate to disparage places he didn’t belong to.
They finally stopped at the entrance to Triple Palace. It seemed like he should say goodbye, but Geum-gang rolled down the window and lit a cigarette.
Does this mean I should go home now since we’re in front of my house? He didn’t say it so he couldn’t know, but he had to read the situation. He didn’t want to be hated even by Geum-gang.
When Hui-myeong put his hand on the door handle, he said “wait” before exhaling smoke. Hui-myeong, whose mood had improved for no reason, couldn’t hide his twitching lips.
“Hyung, do you have something to say to me?”
Hui-myeong asked while hiding his anticipation.
“I wasn’t interested at all, but seeing you going around like that, I can’t not ask.”
“What are you curious about?”
“Why are you desperate because you can’t borrow money? Where are you trying to run away to?”
So that’s what it was. He’d been foolish to hope they might resolve their relationship by talking about the past. Well, considering his current state, Geum-gang’s question was on the normal side.
“My boyfriend of 10 years got married today. He’s on the plane to his honeymoon right now.”
He couldn’t bring himself to say it was Do-ha. Saying his mom sold him to Do-ha and he’d been used for 10 years would make him seem too pathetic. At least in front of Geum-gang, he didn’t want to be treated like a fool.
“Fuck, like a guy getting married would really be a boyfriend.”
As soon as he heard Hui-myeong’s words, Geum-gang spat out curses.
“Boyfriend… right, I guess so.”
Hui-myeong muttered in an uncertain voice. Even he found it ridiculous. It would be even more absurd if he revealed that beyond getting married, the guy had even seated his ‘lover’ at the wedding hall like a decoration. But there was no other expression to define their relationship. One side gave infinitely while controlling, and the other side just got used as told, so ‘master-servant relationship’ would be more fitting, but lover was better than that.
“Then just break up.”
As expected, Geum-gang answered lightly.
“He won’t let me go.”
“What bullshit. Are you a kid? Do you need permission to break up?”
“He’s a scary person. That’s why now is my chance. Can’t you help me, hyung? You’re the only person I know.”
Hui-myeong naturally held Geum-gang’s hand tightly. Geum-gang’s gaze slowly moved downward. Compared to his dark-skinned, scarred hand, Hui-myeong’s white and smooth hand that looked like it had never suffered stood out contrastingly even in the darkness.
“And I’m not a scary person?”
At his question, Hui-myeong took a moment to choose his answer. A chaebol family’s second son and a thug. Objectively, the latter was more dangerous. But for Hui-myeong who knew both their inner selves, choosing an answer wasn’t difficult. As far as he knew, Geum-gang was someone who would never do anything Hui-myeong disliked or found difficult.
“Hyung… I’m not scared of you, hyung.”
At Hui-myeong’s answer, Geum-gang raised the corners of his mouth bitterly. For some reason he didn’t know, it was a face that looked very hurt. But it was the truth. No matter how much Geum-gang beat his subordinates and went around doing bad things as a thug, to Hui-myeong he was no different from 10 years ago.
“Let’s go for a drive.”
He put out the cigarette and started the engine again.
“Whe-where are we going?”
Hui-myeong stuttered in confusion.
“You said I’m not scary, right? No need to be afraid.”
“You’re not, not scary.”
Not scary. Because Geum-gang was the person who gave the most sense of relief in the world to Hui-myeong. But an inexplicable anxiety kept digging into his heart.
The more nervous he became, the more tightly Hui-myeong held the bag while watching ahead. No matter how much they said he couldn’t sell them because of serial numbers or whatever, he was holding hundreds of millions of won worth of watches, so he was naturally wary of anyone.
If both the pile of watches and Hui-myeong had problems, that would be one thing, but if only the watches were lost, an even bigger disaster could occur. It wasn’t about the money. Do-ha had already left in an anxious state, and if he found out Jung Hui-myeong had other ideas, it wouldn’t just end with him going crazy.
Hyung wouldn’t do that, would he?
Hui-myeong couldn’t even gauge what a thirty-two-year-old thug could do. Moreover, from what he saw when he was on the phone earlier, he wasn’t the only one involved, and didn’t he say something about sending things to China? All kinds of horror stories he’d only seen on the internet floated around in Hui-myeong’s head.
He’s not just a pawn shop owner, is he?
Hui-myeong cautiously glanced sideways at the driving Geum-gang, but he had his usual blunt face. It seemed like he was angry, yet also indifferent. At least Do-ha was easier to read.
After driving for about 30 minutes, their car headed out to the outskirts of Gyeonggi Province. The place where the car stopped was a large warehouse parking lot.
As the engine turned off, Hui-myeong clutched the bag like a lifeline and cautiously looked around. It was all warehouse complexes in every direction, so no people were visible, and it was too dark with only one streetlight barely illuminating the surroundings. In short, it was a dangerous place by anyone’s standard.
As soon as Geum-gang unbuckled his seatbelt, he leaned toward the passenger seat.
“Why did we come he— ungh!”
Without even giving him time to finish his question, he fiercely grabbed Hui-myeong’s collar and crashed their lips together. Hui-myeong received his lips with wide-open eyes without even time to be surprised. His body froze stiff at the completely unexpected development.
Every time the soft tongue swept through his mouth, the cool peppermint candy and acrid cigarette scent mixed. It was a scent he’d never once felt when kissing Do-ha. After the persistent lump of flesh thoroughly stirred inside his mouth, their lips parted.
“Hyu-hyung.”
While stuttering and reading Geum-gang’s expression, Hui-myeong’s gaze trembled anxiously. Just a while ago they’d eaten jjajangmyeon well and he’d taken him home well, so he had no idea why the genre had suddenly changed.
“Why? You’re asking to be fucked, aren’t you?”
“Wha-what? When did I… Ah!”
Before he could finish speaking, Hui-myeong recalled the source of that sentence.
Last time, when told that borrowing money from such places would get his asshole fucked and organs harvested, Hui-myeong had answered Geum-gang with “hyung can do it.” Geum-gang had said he’d fuck his asshole raw until next time they met.
“Tha-that was.”
“It’s a bit cramped here, Hui-myeong-ah.”
Whether he was flustered or not, Geum-gang got out of the driver’s seat, then grabbed Hui-myeong’s nape as he sat in the passenger seat and threw him into the back seat.
“Hyung, why, why are you doing this?”
Lying on the cramped seat, Hui-myeong gradually moved his body backward. He instinctively sensed danger. It was the precursor to an act he’d done very familiarly with Do-ha.
“Why? Isn’t this what you were hoping for when you came to me? Coming to a thug bastard two, three times without fear, what good treatment did you expect to see?”
Unlike his lips spewing cold words, a strange light glinted in Geum-gang’s eyes. Hui-myeong knew those eyes well. It was the look Do-ha showed every time he got aroused.
“Ha, heuk!”
Without giving him time to think of anything else, Geum-gang climbed on top of Hui-myeong’s body. As the heavy body overlapped in the cramped space, his breath was blocked. It was just as his hand entered inside the top and Geum-gang was kissing his neck.
“Are you hurt?”
