“……”
Ian lifted his pajama pants to check and was left speechless. He’d had a bad feeling from the moment he woke up, and sure enough, his underwear was soaked with semen.
Moreover, not only the front but also the back felt wet, making him bite his lip. He never thought he’d have a wet dream now when he hadn’t even had one during puberty.
‘Aah, E-Executive Director……!’
When he recalled the moans he’d let out in his dream, he squeezed his eyes shut. The memory of whimpering while being pressed down by that firm, large body felt as vivid as reality.
Ian curled his fingers and hid them in his fist. It was because he remembered wildly caressing the tiger’s face with these hands.
He’d even eagerly bitten and sucked Ganghyuk’s nape, covering it with red marks. He’d moved so actively that even after waking from the dream, his lips felt tingly.
Checking the clock, it was 4:30 AM. Back when his grandfather was alive, he’d been such a heavy sleeper in the mornings that he’d never once gone to the market with him, but somehow ever since he started living in the same house as Ganghyuk, he kept waking up before his alarm went off.
He let out a deep sigh and threw off the blanket. Sleeping another 30 minutes would be awkward anyway, and the semen and slick sticking tackily to his sensitive skin was unpleasant.
With shuffling steps, he opened the bedroom door and headed for the bathroom. Knowing that Ganghyuk wouldn’t be awake at this hour, he walked with peace of mind, plodding along.
“Kid, did you get circumcised again?”
“Huk……”
At the voice he shouldn’t have heard, Ian flinched and shrank his neck like a turtle. A pitch-black silhouette walked out from the kitchen direction.
Judging by the water bottle in his hand, he seemed to have come out because he was thirsty. Since the lights weren’t on, Ian never dreamed he’d be standing in the kitchen watching him.
His flustered hands fumbled awkwardly like an infant in front of his pajama pants. Even though he knew it was dim and the sleep pants were thick enough not to show, he acted guilty and awkward out of paranoia.
Ganghyuk’s gaze, his head tilted at an angle, lazily swept over Ian from head to toe. His walk had seemed really strange, so he’d called out to him, but his behavior was suspicious too.
Why was he acting like that?
Unlike his first impression of seeming gentle and docile, Ian sometimes did unexpectedly odd things out of the blue. Even now, thinking about how he’d asked while drunk if he could kiss him was absurd.
“Don’t tell me you had a wet dream or something.”
“Hic, hic……”
At those casually tossed words, Ian covered his mouth with both hands. But it was no use—he couldn’t hide his bouncing shoulders and the sounds.
The corner of Ganghyuk’s mouth lifted slightly. When he was with Ian, a playfulness he never knew he had would sometimes well up. Just like right now.
Until now, there had been no one like Ian around Ganghyuk. Chairman Tae was a tiger-like figure, his children were always busy keeping Ganghyuk in check, and among Ganghyuk’s subordinates, only Sucheol occasionally tried to climb up while the rest were either overly cautious or excessively polite.
In a world full of blunt, brutishly large guys, Ian, who radiated a soft and gentle presence with his whole body, was fascinating.
As he approached holding the water bottle, Ian stepped back as if he’d encountered a molester. His vision, adjusted to the darkness, didn’t miss those round, tearful eyes.
“Why are you so startled? Ah, is that it? Was it me?”
When Ganghyuk pointed at his own face with his index finger and asked, Ian shook his head so fast his hair flew around. At the look in his eyes emphasizing it absolutely wasn’t, one of Ganghyuk’s eyebrows twitched.
“Then who was it?”
It was light curiosity. Ganghyuk had noticed that the way Ian looked at him had subtly changed. But he didn’t think much of it. He thought the clueless kid was just temporarily blinded.
Ian was in a special situation, and a child with nowhere to go was instinctively drawn to someone who could protect them. He deliberately pretended not to notice, knowing it was a momentary confusion of affection stemming from survival instinct.
Yet still, hearing that he’d had a wet dream about someone other than himself made him suddenly curious. Surely it wasn’t Jaehyun or Sucheol.
Until now, Ian’s range of activity had been limited to the house, the soup restaurant, and the market. According to reports, he hadn’t had any contact with any particular person either.
The only new people he’d met were those two. It wouldn’t be Sucheol, so was it Jaehyun? No matter how much he thought about it, Sucheol had too high a barrier to entry—from appearance to personality—for Ian to fall for him.
But Jaehyun was neat-looking even among Ganghyuk’s subordinates. He had no rough atmosphere that would reveal he was involved in this world. He was smart enough to have graduated top of his class from Korea University Law School, passed the bar exam, and was assisting Ganghyuk.
“Is it Jaehyun by any chance?”
If so, he was contemplating what to do with that bastard Jaehyun when Ian made a run for the bathroom.
“It’s nothing!”
The denying voice was desperate. Ganghyuk, who chuckled, headed to his room with the water bottle. He should have pretended not to notice, but seeing that bright face even in the darkness made him want to tease him a little. Childishly so.
He’d been too busy lately to exercise properly, so his whole body felt heavy. He moved his neck left and right to loosen his stiff muscles.
The aftermath of meeting Tae Minsu, Chairman Tae’s eldest son, a few days ago still lingered. Like Tae Minjae, Tae Minsu had also tried to persuade Ganghyuk to join his side.
He’d rented an entire high-end restaurant on the outskirts of Seoul and invited only Ganghyuk and the influential executives from Taehyun Construction.
Perhaps considering each person’s tastes, he’d even called in partners to accompany them with drinks. Ganghyuk’s partner was a beta woman with a seductive atmosphere.
Except for Ganghyuk’s partner, they were all Manifested. Between the pheromones emanating from the Alphas and Omegas, Ganghyuk ended up drinking beyond his usual limit.
From the moment he left the restaurant after pushing away the woman clinging to him annoyingly, his memories came in fragments. He remembered having a headache because the car was noisier than usual when Sucheol, who’d been sent on a business trip to the provinces, returned.
‘Who did you… drink with……?’
He also remembered the kid looking up at him and asking that brazen question. What had he said then? He couldn’t remember well, but he was certain the kid’s face had become blurry.
While massaging his nape with his palm, he looked at the closed bedroom door. Had he returned to his room by now? As the image of him flustered and not knowing what to do flashed through his mind, the corner of his lips unconsciously lifted again.
‘Executive Director, it’s nice to see that your expression seems to have improved lately.’
Jaehyun’s words from yesterday echoed in his mind. Certainly, he’d been smiling more since living with Ian. It felt exactly like returning to his childhood.
Back then, Hoho Soup Restaurant was the only space where Ganghyuk could breathe. A place where his exhausted and starving body could temporarily take refuge. The only person who still saw Ganghyuk as a child needing adult protection, who stroked his head with warm, wrinkled hands.
As if to prove he was indeed Old Man Yeon’s grandson, Ian had a talent for making people comfortable.
However, Ganghyuk’s smile soon disappeared soundlessly. While part of the reason he’d temporarily settled here was to protect Ian, it was also to successfully complete the Hyoseong-dong redevelopment project.
Making Hyoseong-dong into a Taehyun Construction kingdom was Chairman Tae’s wish. From when he’d picked up Ganghyuk here in the past, he’d resolved that if this place was ever redeveloped, he would absolutely build Taehyun’s landmark there.
It was Ganghyuk who was moving to fulfill Chairman Tae’s will. Originally, it was supposed to be the battlefield where Chairman Tae would decide his successor, but the situation changed when he suddenly collapsed.
The redevelopment project required a lot of attention. If things went wrong, there was a high risk of taking all the blame for failure. For that reason, the Tae siblings, at least regarding this matter, united and entrusted everything to Ganghyuk.
They blatantly showed they’d only add their spoon when all the complicated and dirty work was resolved.
Currently, they’d pushed Taehyun Construction’s person into the position of chairman of the redevelopment association’s promotion committee. Lobbying district councilors, city councilors, and the mayor was progressing smoothly, and they’d already secured an appraisal expert in advance.
