By Zephyria 
Lee Eun-myeong escaped through the bathroom window. Clad in a yellow raincoat that swallowed his slender frame, he scrambled breathlessly into the crowd.
Splash, splash, splash… The sound of rain splashing seemed to echo in his ears.
Like a herbivore being hunted, he fled frantically, never once looking back. Then, he hurriedly climbed into a waiting car.
“…….”
The man’s eyes landed on Eun-myeong’s feet on the screen. Ttap-ttap-ttap, he ran quickly, like a little sparrow. He was clearly moving under his own power.
Then, Eun-myeong whipped his head around for a brief moment. For a second, the man fell under the illusion that their eyes had met.
…Ah, Lee Eun-myeong was trembling. It was painfully obvious who he was running from.
He hadn’t been kidnapped by some bastard, threatened, or had his life endangered.
Yes, Lee Eun-myeong had escaped from his grasp of his own volition.
“Because the market was so crowded, we can’t be entirely certain from this CCTV footage, but as of now, this seems the most likely possibility.”
What nonsense.
Kik, the man laughed, his chest trembling. Just by looking at those ankles, so slender they looked as if they might snap, he could easily tell who they belonged to.
They had been so precarious, as if they would break the moment he gripped them… How ecstatic and dizzying it had been when the reddish veins stood out like goosebumps against that snow-white skin.
“Ah.”
And yet, you ran away from me?
Baby, you really ran away?
‘Boss, I want to be held by you….’
The nights he had called out to the man as if his heart were aching, the hours spent greedily craving breath and sharing body heat—was all of that a lie? Grind, the man pressed his teeth together harshly.
Should I have broken those ankles sooner?
Swoosh, the rain poured down as if the sky were a wide-open drain.
Everything around him was clamorous. Turbulent waves surged at the coast, and the land was chaotic. In the midst of that absolute turmoil of darkness, the man had not slept for days.
With bloodshot eyes, he looked down at the sea visible outside the window. The towering waves were offensively noisy.
He had ordered them to bring in anyone who looked like him, but it had been a fruitless search for days. Not a single piece of a fingernail was found. At this point, he wondered if the boy had died a lonely death somewhere. He was a pitiful, wretched soul who couldn’t do anything on his own.
So, he ordered them to find the body at least. But even that had not been recovered.
“That trivial thing.”
The man snapped his chin back. He jammed the mouth of a 2L water bottle into his lips and poured the liquid down his throat in a torrent. Water streamed down his sharp jaw and thick neck. Just one small thing had vanished from his embrace, so why was he plagued by such an intense thirst?
He crushed the plastic bottle, now empty, and flung it away. Clang, it rolled among dozens of other plastic bottles already piled up.
He was a man who kept everything under his control, cutting out anything that did not meet his standards.
Yet now, he was enduring a succession of days and nights that were utterly unlike himself. Like a white cloth turned into a rag, he was being shaken uncontrollably, as if sailing through waves.
It wouldn’t be strange if he capsized and shipwrecked at any moment.
“Fucking….”
Because of that tiny thing, fuck. Everything was falling apart, as if being swept away by those waves.
“Boss.”
As he shifted his gaze to the side, a silhouette appeared beyond the window. It was Park Woong.
“I believe we have found Lee Eun-myeong.”
The man slowly turned his head. Drip, drip, drip. His pitch-black eyes, like hellfire, rolled gloomily, cutting off all movement.
What, you found him? That thing is finally returning to my arms?
Every peripheral nerve in the man’s body stood on edge, attuned to every movement of Park Woong’s lips. He intended to hear every single detail—where, how, and in what wretched state he had been rolling around.
“They say a body surfaced off the coast of Gyeryong Bay. They said it was about 170cm tall and wearing a yellow raincoat….”
A body, huh. The man slid his dark red tongue inside his mouth.
“The decomposition is severe, making it difficult to recognize the face, but the description seems to match Lee Eun-myeong.”
The man processed this slowly. Yes, if he were dead, it would make sense. He had deployed so many subordinates, searched the entire coast of Gyeryong Bay, and even taken boats to scour the islands, yet hadn’t found a single strand of hair.
Since he had vanished from this earth as if he had evaporated, yes, it would make more sense if he were dead.
“Drowned in the sea.”
There had to be a reason that irrevocable, hadn’t there? Only then would it serve as proof of that aching love of yours.
He was someone who couldn’t even feed himself properly. At the restaurant, he had merely picked up food scraps like trash.
‘Boss, I will…’
A voice that whispered like a bird.
‘I’ll prepare the autumn marinated crab for you.’
The cheek that smiled softly while pressing against him. That small, plump, red tongue that had tasted of love.
“This way.”
Following his subordinate, he approached the sandy beach. A body, covered in a pitch-black cloth, lay there.
The rain lashed against the man’s entire body. He simply looked down at the lying form. The limp body had its arms fallen to the side. Thump, thump, his blood boiled. The blood clumped together, pressing against the man’s skin.
A chill struck his entire body, gnawing at his spine like a blade. The emotion flowing down his vertebrae was nothing other than a gruesome dread.
For the first time in his life, he felt a tremor that made his airway tighten. It was perhaps akin to fear, terror, or phobia.
“…….”
He slowly peeled back the cover. The cloth rolled down following his touch.
In that brief moment, the overwhelming sense of pressure the man felt… was something he could not possibly grasp with his own hands. He had to face the overflowing unpleasantness defenselessly.
The swollen skin was rotting in parts, perhaps eaten by fish. Was this your end?
Perhaps because he had once been trapped in a narrow fish hold, Eun-myeong feared the darkness. He feared the sea as if it were a monster that would swallow him whole at any moment.
So why, of all places, did he have to throw himself into that dark sea to die?
Did he think of him while dying?
‘Boss, please hold me, I’m scared like this.’
The man recalled Eun-myeong, who would burrow into his waist on stormy nights, saying he was scared. Eun-myeong would shed tears, aching because they weren’t close enough.
‘Boss.’
What those eyes wanted was obvious. Please hold me, cherish me, and love me.
They were moist eyes capable of easily turning a human into a fool. Anyone who looked up into those eyes would feel a thrilling sensation, as if they had gained the whole world.
The man could have caressed Eun-myeong’s cheeks or held him in his arms to soothe and comfort him… but even seeing through those feelings, he did not easily embrace him.
How had he behaved then?
Drunk on overflowing lust, he would ignore the hand reaching out to be held and instead grip Eun-myeong’s slender hair, slamming his face into the bed.
‘I’m scared, hng, I don’t like this….’
Eun-myeong would bunch up the blanket and stuff it into his mouth, swallowing his cries. When he penetrated from below, those suppressed sobs soon transformed into wet moans. And at the end of those crashing memories.
‘I’m scared, please hold me….’
The man felt a shock as if his heart had collapsed.
If the thing Eun-myeong thought of while being swallowed by the night sea was him, then what was he supposed to do?
Swoosh, the rain, falling as if to punish the earth, slammed onto the corpse’s cheek. As it gathered on the eyelashes and rolled down, it looked exactly like tears.
The man unconsciously raised his hand. He caressed the corpse’s cheek. Rain, like tears, clung to his fingertips. The state of having a dead person as a lover was exactly like his father’s.
Why was even this death so pitiful? A wretched, miserable thing.
He stroked the body and slid his fingers between the toes.
“…….”
But then, a strange sensation brushed against his highly sensitized fingertips.
This didn’t have the feel of fitting snugly into his grip, and the toenails were larger than Lee Eun-myeong’s. Above all, the thickness of the toes—it wasn’t the taste he knew.
…Ah, this was not Lee Eun-myeong.
“Fuck….”
He spat out a curse and immediately pulled his hand away. He opened his mouth, which had been twisted tight. Rain poured into the open mouth, which gaped like a black cave.
“Director Park, aren’t you doing your job right? This isn’t him, is it? The feel of the grip wasn’t like this.”
Park Woong, listening to this, was plunged into confusion. He was a man who would jump up from sleep and pretend to die if his Boss spoke, but these words were completely incomprehensible.
Wasn’t it a corpse floating in the storm-tossed sea? It was natural for it to be swollen. Since decomposition had progressed so far, it wouldn’t be the thickness the Boss remembered…
There was no way his Boss didn’t know that. He must know better than anyone that a water-bloated corpse swells more than anything else, yet he spoke that way.
“Yes, I will correct it. I am sorry, Boss.”
Park Woong quickly bowed his head and waist.
“Bring him back alive.”
The man ordered again. Bring Eun-myeong back alive. Even as he did, he mocked himself internally for the absurdity of it.
If he was going to taxidermy him anyway, then yes. If that were the case, it would be easier to just dry out a dead body and put it in a glass display case. That would be far less effort.
Since bright red suited him well, tying a ribbon on him would have been art. Since he wouldn’t be able to move on two feet, he wouldn’t be able to annoy him anymore.
But why.
Why had his own breath stopped as if his lifeline were being severed, simply because the child wasn’t breathing?
Then, snap, he heard something break inside him. It sounded like a skull splitting, or like several ribs shattering.
Why on earth.
The man stroked his jaw, where stubble had grown prickly. His middle finger trembled. The finger, which had lost sensation long ago, shook violently.
He cannot be dead.
Yes, he must be alive….