What did our President Han Yongwoo, who gave him a name himself and raised him for a short time before dragging the child to an orphanage with his own hands and leaving him there like luggage, explain about Taesung? He didn’t even expect embarrassing words like “someone who was once your older brother” or “I feel sorry about it.” He just wanted to know if he really still thought that Taesung had fed Han Yunseong something poisonous to harm him.
More than that, it was questionable how Han Yongwoo thought of the adopted son he’d abandoned the moment he heard Han Yunseong’s story, when Han Taesung wasn’t even a particularly rare name. Did he know from before? Did he watch how Taesung grew up after abandoning him?
Again, Taesung was stupid.
Even more so in that while knowing he was pathetic, he couldn’t let go of expectations that would appear in dramas or touching novels.
“You’re an omega, right?”
But Han Yunseong brought up something Taesung had never even anticipated.
“…What?”
Taesung asked back blankly, like someone who didn’t understand the sentence that entered through his ears at all.
“You sold your body to sit in the president’s seat. They said you were so disgusting you didn’t normally sell, so they forced heat on you and offered you around everywhere? You were so popular with impotent old men who only get hard from pheromones? I wondered why President Jang kept giving work to a thug like this, but after hearing what Father said, I understood. You worked hard sucking old men’s dicks, so he should at least give you one piece of candy.”
“That fucking…!”
Han Yunseong kept babbling something, but all the words sounded like buzzing tinnitus. Taesung grabbed Han Yunseong’s collar again while shouting to clear his muffled ears. The dark red bloodstains from the knuckles that had punched the wall got on Han Yunseong’s collar.
“How does your father know that!”
Han Yunseong coughed from suffocation but smiled weakly as if Taesung’s frenzy was amusing. Taesung was no longer a fearsome existence to him. He probably thought—why is this rag bastard who rolled his body around everywhere and sucks dicks with his mouth screaming so loudly?
“That’s why I said I tried not to bring it up because I was embarrassed that our old man played around so dirty? Now that he’s old, he doesn’t pretend to be proper and doesn’t distinguish between what he should and shouldn’t say, fuck, he needs to die quickly so I don’t see this shit anymore.”
Han Yunseong tightly grabbed Taesung’s wrist that was holding his collar. Then he pressed down firmly as if telling him to let go. Until Taesung acknowledged the ‘truth,’ he was a bastard who didn’t even dare to make proper eye contact, but now he was narrowing both eyes and looking Taesung up and down as if appraising his worth.
But Taesung didn’t even feel like getting angry at such presumptuousness from Han Yunseong.
Because he couldn’t believe the words he’d just heard.
Han Yongwoo was there?
At that place where those dirty, filthy bastards gathered, Han Yongwoo was there too?
Not knowing who the bastard dragged in front of him like a dog, getting beaten and panting like a beast, the bastard bearing the name he gave him, was.
He was there?
And Jang Hyeokjin, that dog-fucking bastard, knowing who Yeonggang Steel’s President Han Yongwoo was, fuck, fuck…
“Why are you so scared again? If a person wants to crawl up from the bottom, you have to do anything. I don’t look down on President Han. You literally sucked dick and ate ass and succeeded that way. Looks like you enjoyed yourself yesterday too? No wonder you kept trying to avoid drinking. You were working busily even at that late hour.”
Han Yunseong looked up at Taesung’s face distorted with despair and tapped the neck covered by the turtleneck.
“The employees don’t know what President Han’s been doing, right? Of course. They’re obviously thugs—if they knew President Han’s story, would they stay quietly underneath? They’d try to climb on top right away. So if you just proceed with the contract faithfully as President Jang said, I’ll guarantee your secret. Win-win for each other. How about it, President Han?”
Taesung shut his eyes tightly, feeling like tears would overflow any moment. He swallowed the surging grief, afraid that a scream would burst out the moment he opened his mouth. Still, the emotions he suppressed and suppressed made his fingertips curl.
If I beat to death this bastard babbling in front of me, can I make bloody tears flow from Han Yongwoo’s eyes? If I clearly tell the old man who comes running screaming ‘Why did you kill my precious child’ who I am, would he regret it?
“Why is someone who talked so much being so frustratingly silent? Just refreshingly…”
Han Yunseong couldn’t continue. Because Taesung grabbed his insignificant neck with one hand and roughly pushed him against the wall.
“Kuk, kkeok!”
Unlike when he grabbed the collar, this time his breath was really blocked as if he’d die. Han Yunseong desperately clawed at Taesung’s wrist and back of hand. The back of his hand, already torn from punching the wall, became completely covered in blood. But Taesung didn’t loosen his grip.
“Hey, Han Yunseong you fucking bastard, listen carefully. I’m someone with nothing to lose. No parents, no siblings, and I lived sucking the dicks of trash who can’t function as people, just like your father said. But you? Aren’t you a bastard with so much to lose? A bastard whose balls are trembling with fear of dying without being able to spend all that fortune lavishly, without hearing the word ‘president’ even once, without being able to fuck around everywhere like your father—who are you threatening right now?”
Only after Han Yunseong’s face took on a blackish color did Taesung loosen his hand. Han Yunseong collapsed on the spot and gasped for breath while retching. Taesung firmly stepped on the back of Han Yunseong’s head. Han Yunseong shoved his head into the vomit he’d expelled in a prostrating posture.
“Executive Director Han. You were babbling about serving me as hyungnim or whatever, so I’m advising you with a brotherly heart—someone with a lot to lose shouldn’t touch someone with nothing to lose. If you go around blabbing now, I’ll be fucking embarrassed. But if those bastards climb up, I’ll beat them. Beat them to death to establish the hierarchy, and those bastards will come to their senses. Then nothing changes. Only you die. Because I’ll definitely kill you.”
“Uuk, uup.”
Only then did Taesung remove his foot from stepping on the head. Han Yunseong was trembling, tears streaming down his face covered in vomit and nosebleed.
Taesung squatted in front of him and stared at the dirty face covered in filth.
I don’t know why tears keep surging even looking at this ridiculous state.
“Did you understand, Executive Director Han?”
“Up, uup…”
Han Yunseong nodded his head desperately.
Taesung patted the back of his head and stood up.
Only after Taesung’s footsteps had completely faded did Han Yunseong begin to cry out loud, gasping. It was the first time in his life he’d been beaten like this by someone. In fact, from Taesung’s standpoint, it wasn’t even something that could be called beating, but for Han Yunseong it was.
Having been soaked in the fear of possibly dying until just moments ago, Han Yunseong had no time to feel anger at being beaten to death by a male prostitute bastard who rolled his body around anywhere, or shame at his entire face becoming covered in filth. He just wailed at the top of his lungs, feeling relief and joy at being alive like a newborn baby.
Until he heard an unfamiliar person’s voice.
“Ahjussi, are you okay?”
Someone wiped Han Yunseong’s face with wet wipes. Han Yunseong finally closed his mouth in embarrassment and hunched his shoulders to swallow the grief choking his throat.
While doing so, he forcibly lifted his swollen eyelids and looked at the person who had approached him. A man who walked refreshingly into the damp, dark back alley squatted down in front of Han Yunseong. Under the pressed-down ball cap, cheerful eyes smiling in a half-moon arc could be seen. Han Yunseong stared at him blankly, forgetting even his own circumstances for a moment. The moment their eyes met, he felt his mind become distant, to the degree he wondered if this was what “bewitched” meant.
“You just got a bit dirtier. Not many wounds.”
Since he’d only had his collar grabbed, his neck choked a little, and his face shoved into the ground, there really wasn’t much to get wounded from. Han Yunseong rubbed his stinging forehead with an awkward feeling. His face was burning. The person in front of him was clearly a guy much taller than himself, but he didn’t know why his heart kept fluttering and he felt embarrassed.
The man tilted his head following Han Yunseong’s gaze as he turned away to avoid him. And the moment their eyes met again, looking into pupils that rippled like a water surface a skipping stone had passed over, he whispered intimately.
“But ahjussi, who are you?”
“Chairman Hyun Hongwon’s grandson? Uh, I think I’ve heard of it…”
As if trying to stuff back in what he’d vomited in the alley, Han Yunseong ravenously shoved in ox head soup with an entire bowl of rice mixed in. Jaeha, who had been leaning his elbow on the sticky table with his chin propped up and staring at him, nodded slightly. In the meantime, a staff member wearing an apron with a soju logo placed a plate with meat thinly clinging to it between the two. For something worth 40,000 won, it was an amount where you couldn’t distinguish whether there was meat on it or not.
