By Zephyria 
The Boss was particularly enraged by the toilet.
‘Those fucking perverts, did they put the toilet out in the open like this just to see your lower half?’
That was impossible. This detention center had been around for over forty years.
However, with one glare and a single command to bring something to block it immediately, forty years of history were overturned.
Regardless, Eun-myeong had felt uneasy every time he had to use the restroom. Now that a partition had been newly installed, he should have been happy.
Yet, Eun-myeong didn’t smile once. He simply remained curled up in the corner like a hedgehog.
It wasn’t just the restroom. The flooring had been completely replaced, the blankets were fluffy, the toilet was new, and the sink was incredibly clean.
At this rate, it felt like he had become a hamster trapped in a cage.
The man had spread plenty of sawdust inside and even provided a new exercise wheel. He hadn’t forgotten to keep the bathroom clean, either.
“…….”
If Eun-myeong had actually been a small, plump rodent, he would have been scurrying around the cage in excitement by now. Perhaps he would have scratched at the acrylic panels with his tiny front paws, thrilled beyond measure.
But Eun-myeong just sat still, curling his body tightly. As if doing so would hide what was inside him.
The reason the toilet had been placed where everyone could see was simple. People kept hiding things like cigarettes or alcohol in the toilet bowls, so they had moved them outside.
…That was the kind of place this was.
A place with no secrets. A place where human rights were treated like a joke.
It was only natural. One could only enter here after committing some kind of crime. One had to hit the absolute rock bottom of the bottom to end up here.
But why had the man started frequenting a dead-end alley like this?
The warmth flowing across the floor turned Eun-myeong’s plump cheeks a reddish hue. A dry scab had formed on his lips, which poked out slightly like a duck’s bill.
‘I shouldn’t be like this.’
He really shouldn’t. Everything was wrong.
With what mindset had he come here? The man should not have come looking for him. Eun-myeong curled his small body even tighter.
“Cough, cough.”
A series of dry coughs broke out. The tips of his fingers and toes kept curling inward. Even though it was clearly warm, he wondered why his body felt so cold.
Eun-myeong hugged himself.
Sunlight fell like dust from the small window. That was the only light that entered this place.
Here, day became night, and night became day. Everything was so jumbled that he couldn’t tell the time properly.
“…….”
Hiding in a place as gloomy as mold, Eun-myeong withered away day by day. Since he could barely get any sunlight, unhappy thoughts gnawed at him like insects.
He truly thought he would never see the man again.
“…….”
Yet, he came here. Eun-myeong even secretly slapped his own cheek, wondering if it was all a dream. Despite his lack of strength, his cheek made a thumping sound, and his head snapped halfway around.
It hurt immensely.
It was truly strange. Shouldn’t the man not care whether someone like him disappeared or not? He thought the man would be eating well, sleeping well, and living in luxury.
The only time he had heard news of the man in the interim was when he called his Noona.
‘Um, lawyer, could I use the phone for just one call…?’
He had made a small request to the lawyer who came to visit him. For Eun-myeong, it had taken an enormous amount of courage. In response, a sigh of utter annoyance followed.
‘You know that saying anything reckless will work against you, right?’
An irritated gaze flickered toward Eun-myeong. Intimidated, Eun-myeong murmured softly.
‘Yes, I know.’
His body instinctively shrank. Being in a place like this, he couldn’t even straighten his back, making him look even more like a shriveled creature. Inwardly, Eun-myeong sincerely thought it was a great relief that others couldn’t see him in such a pathetic state.
‘I’ll be careful.’
Eun-myeong promised meekly, several times over, that he would not make any slips of the tongue.
Regardless of anyone else, he had to leave a message for his Noona. He had told the Boss he was going to get his luggage and then just disappeared like this. If he vanished for years, she would surely be worried. That was exactly how he felt when his Noona had disappeared.
Sure enough, as soon as Noona answered the phone, she let out a long, breaking groan and then fired off questions rapidly.
—Eun-myeong, where on earth are you? You left your cell phone at home; do you have any idea how much I’ve been looking for you?
‘U-uh, I’m sorry.’
—I naturally thought you went to Kang Pyeong-won. He came to the house asking where you were hiding and turned the place upside down. He looked like he was ready to tear someone apart….
At the sudden mention of the Boss, Eun-myeong fell silent. He had been deliberately suppressing those emotions. Suddenly, it felt as if someone had poked his Achilles tendon with a needle, stirring up a painful ache inside.
—I thought maybe it was because of the debt, so I told him I’d borrow money from another loan shark to pay it back.
‘Yeah…, thank you, Noona.’
That would be it. That was the only reason the man would be looking for him. A surge of emotion made the rims of Eun-myeong’s eyes turn red.
—Where are you now, Eun-myeong? Noona will go there. Please, just tell me where you are.
‘…Noona, I’m really okay. I’ve been eating and sleeping well.’
Eun-myeong opened and closed his lips in a small circle several times. Then, it stung, as if a piece of dry skin had peeled off.
Soon, he opened his lips slightly and explained the situation. Even though the scab on his lip stung, Eun-myeong spoke softly and calmly.
‘Noona, I’m really okay. It’s not as scary here as you’d think. They even said I might be released soon if things go well.’
He added a white lie to reassure her. That it would be okay, that everything would be fine. He repeated it over and over for his Noona, who was now alone. He wondered how many nights he had spent crying before he could become this composed….
—Why do you have to do this, why, because of that man….
Eun-myeong comforted his Noona, who was weeping sorrowfully, saying her heart was breaking. Knowing her longing, he wanted to absorb all that resentment and sadness if possible, but—
‘Noona, I think I have to hang up now.’
Unfortunately, he couldn’t hold the phone for long.
—My heart hurts so much… Fuck, they should have taken me instead. Why you, who did nothing wrong?
Thinking that he really had to go now, the rims of Eun-myeong’s eyes grew red and wet.
‘D-don’t cry, Noona….’
After hanging up, Eun-myeong swallowed his breath with stifled sobs.
He felt the cold gazes surrounding him. What is a piece of trash who committed a crime crying for? You idiot, you pathetic thing, you failure of a human….
But those looks didn’t matter anymore.
There was something else that truly terrified Eun-myeong. It was himself. Specifically, himself as an Omega.
When he first arrived here, he had shared a room with others.
They were all horrific memories. It was common for them to steal the socks he wore from the laundry basket. They would even rummage through the underwear he had taken off. Whenever he tried to change clothes, it was basic for them to stare openly and giggle among themselves. While doing so, they would aggressively grope their own crotches.
As days passed, their behavior grew worse. They would block the window with blankets and bury their noses in the nape of his neck, avoiding the guards’ eyes. When Eun-myeong tried to scream, they clamped their hand tightly over his mouth, suffocating him.
‘Mmph, mmph!’
He trembled in absolute fear, terrified that something might happen.
Eventually, one of them climbed atop Eun-myeong’s sleeping body and gripped his own crotch.
‘Aaaah!’
It was a moment of sheer terror.
‘Please save me!’
Eun-myeong screamed at the top of his lungs, bolted out, and gripped the iron bars with both hands. Though Eun-myeong avoided causing trouble for others at all costs, at that moment, warning alarms blared wildly in his head.
‘Guard! Guard…!’
His desperate pleas echoed through the hallway. Soon, a guard burst into the room. Eun-myeong quickly clung to his leg.
‘I can’t live here, please save me, please… just put me in solitary confinement instead.’
He had heard that solitary was the worst of all punishments here. They said anyone who spent three days there would go insane.
Still, it would be better than this place. He hated any touch that wasn’t the one he knew. If it wasn’t the man, he hated it intensely.
Due to that commotion, Eun-myeong became a subject of observation. He ended up in a position where he used a solitary cell.
All threats were removed, but there was little Eun-myeong could do there. At most, he would stare blankly at the wall or use his fingernails to press into the yellow flooring to draw pictures.
Sometimes he would gaze at the stars through the window and wonder what kind of stars they were, and then, when the moon caught his eye, he would secretly wet his pillow.
‘Ugh, h-huu….’
How could he miss him this much every single day? Whenever he tried not to long for him, he became even more immersed in that longing, and Eun-myeong spent every day drenched in loneliness.
The man has probably forgotten all about someone like me by now. He’s probably started a happy family, had a beautiful baby, and is living well.
Someone like me wouldn’t even be a handful of sand swept away by those waves.
Whenever such unhappy thoughts occurred, Eun-myeong felt as if his entire body was crumbling like a sandy beach. It was a maddeningly contradictory feeling. While he hoped the man would be happy, imagining him being happy without him caused a level of agony that nearly drove him insane.
Days continued where he painstakingly patched his torn heart together like rags, only to tear it apart himself once again.
As he was tempered and honed by such pain, Eun-myeong’s soft inner self gradually hardened.
The focus in his eyes slowly vanished. Calluses began to form even over the pain that had seemed eternal.
Then, at some point, he felt a gaze. When he slowly turned his head, a dark silhouette was standing there, looking at him.
‘Is this a dream…?’
Was it a dream?
Had he spent so much time tracing shapes in the air and pressing his name into the yellow flooring that he was now seeing things?
Eun-myeong was scared that he was gradually losing his mind.
But.
He was speaking.
He clearly called his name with those lips.
“Eun-myeong,” he said.
His empty stomach kept rumbling like thunder, and his mind was completely blank. Eun-myeong felt as if he were sinking, gurgling, to the bottom of the ocean.
A feeling of endless submersion…….
He clenched his hands tightly. He thought he would never see him again, so why was he in front of him now? He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, but the pitch-black shadow cast over his feet remained in the same spot.
He wished this was all just a nightmare.
After that day, the man visited Eun-myeong whenever he had the chance.
Then Eun-myeong would spend the whole day in a daze, and whenever the man arrived, he would press his cheek against the wall and avoid him as much as possible.
Today, too, a sweet voice reached him from behind. It was as sweet as the smell of dalgona that used to drift from afar when he played at the playground.
“Baby.”
He called him in a voice that sounded as if it were coated in candy.
“Why didn’t you eat again? You used to like this.”
He brought all sorts of delicacies. Sashimi, beef, grilled eel, duck, and now even steamed buns.
“Eat quickly, and let’s get out of here.”
Eun-myeong shrank his neck. He felt like plugging his ears with his fingers to avoid being seduced by the man’s words.
However, his forearm was suddenly gripped tight. Eun-myeong’s body was dragged away like a piece of dry firewood.
“You were scared here. You had nightmares, you suffered. Where are you trying to hide whenever it rains?”
And the face he was forced to look at….
“Were you planning to shove your face into the toilet?”
As much as he had missed him, he now terrified Eun-myeong. The man spoke with tattered lips, and his gaze was not that of a sane person.
“I told you I’d give you the love you wanted so badly, didn’t I?”
At that, Eun-myeong became even sadder. Because he realized that he had ultimately caused the man to fall this far.