“You said you had something to discuss? With me?”
Had there ever been a time like this before? As far as Joo Tae-hyun could remember, it was a first. Seo Baek-han had asked for his understanding as if he were simply informing him of something already decided, but he had never been curious about Joo Tae-hyun’s opinion.
Could it be that he had found another partner?
Or perhaps, now that he had risen to the position of Director of the Royal Hospital, he had decided it was better to get a divorce? Maybe he had found a more suitable spouse than him…
No, no. That couldn’t be it. Surely he wouldn’t bring up such a thing on their wedding anniversary. Joo Tae-hyun tried to ignore the ominous assumptions that were fueling the fire within him, as if he had been waiting for them. Even if it didn’t mean much to him, he knew that it was a day when he should send flowers and a gift, even if he had to ask his secretary to do it. So, it couldn’t be about ending their marriage.
“…Yes, I don’t think I’ll be going to bed early anyway, since I have a paper to read today.”
— That’s a relief. Then let’s meet at home later.
Joo Tae-hyun stared at the phone after the call ended. Should he send a message asking if something had happened? Well, even if he did, Seo Baek-han wouldn’t even think of telling him what it was.
Only after the screen turned black and blank did Joo Tae-hyun get up from his seat. A servant who had been quietly waiting nearby took the flowers. He was one of Seo Baek-han’s people, and as always, he would decorate the house here and there, but in a way that wouldn’t bother Seo Baek-han.
He thought they were finally starting to get closer, but was he wrong? Every time a moment like this came, Seo Baek-han still felt difficult and scary. In front of him, he always felt infinitely small. He knew that such a weak spouse, friend, or comrade could never give Seo Baek-han absolute trust.
“Young Master, where should I put the gift?”
This time, it was someone sent from the main family in Seoul who stepped forward.
Flower arrangements required Seo Baek-han’s opinion, but how to use the gifts received was entirely Joo Tae-hyun’s right. Because of this, the servants seemed to have fought a lot among themselves for about a year after the marriage, but now they handled it well without even exchanging words.
“Um, put it in the dressing room. It’ll probably be perfume and a watch anyway.”
“Yes. I’ll put it with the gifts from the Director.”
“Thank you.”
Watching the servants walk away in different directions, Joo Tae-hyun sank deep into the sofa.
Twenty-six…
He wished he could turn thirty soon. He knew that getting older wouldn’t magically solve anything, but he wondered if he would feel more relaxed than he did now.
He wanted to become a solid adult who wasn’t treated like a kid by Seo Baek-han, someone who could draw up blueprints together, but when would that be possible? How much more effort did he have to put in here…?
* * *
He hurried as much as he could, but it was well past 1 a.m. Seo Baek-han parked the car in the parking lot and glanced at the tightly locked guest room as he climbed the stairs.
Unlike the initial plan, that space was not being used for its intended purpose.
Even after the marriage, Joo Tae-hyun took time to visit the United States. Since he couldn’t neglect his connections at the University of Washington after deciding on a career in welfare, Seo Baek-han also encouraged it.
And every time, Joo Tae-hyun bought a Switch. Sometimes it was a Dirty Switch, like before the marriage, and sometimes it was a normal Switch, but he always bought something and brought some of it back to Korea.
Seo Baek-han was convinced that Cheon Seung-pil, the grandson of the Yoonra Foundation, was Joo Tae-hyun’s long-time sex partner. There was no sweet atmosphere between them to call them lovers, and Cheon Seung-pil was known to be seeing some formidable people as well.
Well, there must be a reason why he enjoyed being knotted by the same Alpha but continued to have relationships with Cheon Seung-pil, who was a Beta.
He seemed to meet Cheon Seung-pil’s friends from time to time, so he might have been enjoying orgies with them…
What was certain was that he was not in any relationship with the person from the same lab that Joo Tae-hyun had called his lover. Without looking into it deeply, he could quickly see that it was just a smokescreen. He didn’t want to be caught taking Dirty Switches with a Beta, so he wanted to pretend he had a relatively normal lover?
Anyway, Seo Baek-han pretended not to know about Joo Tae-hyun’s lies. The biggest reason was that the other party was Cheon Seung-pil, and Joo Tae-hyun was living more quietly than he had expected.
If something related to that were to happen, the grandson of the Yoonra Foundation would be much easier to talk to than the graduate student Joo Tae-hyun had claimed was his lover. The other side would also try to fix things actively.
He was a little worried that he was using Dirty Switches even with a Beta… But anyway, he seemed to be steadily seeing only Cheon Seung-pil, and there was nothing particularly problematic about it yet, so he decided to turn a blind eye.
Then, did Joo Tae-hyun still like him?
Well. That also seemed to be true. Compared to when he confessed that he liked him at seventeen or when he asked him to marry him at twenty, he had become much better at hiding his feelings, but still, there were times when he couldn’t hide his heart and let it drip. For example, yes. Four years ago today, when he sent a perfunctory gift for their wedding anniversary.
There was an old saying that poverty, coughs, and love could not be hidden. He didn’t know about poverty and coughs, but yes, love certainly seemed to be like that.
Well, Seo Baek-han had no complaints about that either. Joo Tae-hyun didn’t bother him because he liked him. He didn’t try to test him for no reason, and he didn’t expect or want anything from him just because they were married. He was happy and satisfied enough with just the right amount of kindness that a married person would give to their spouse.
Above all, Joo Tae-hyun perfectly fulfilled his role as a spouse. He wasn’t the type to manage people in a friendly way first, but that was even more to his liking.
How good of a prey would the young youngest son of the DH Group be, away from his family and in a distant land? But Joo Tae-hyun was equally indifferent to everyone and consistently treated everyone with a cold face. Thanks to that, bribes and lobbying didn’t work at all.
However, he wasn’t just stiff. In moments when he had to be sociable, he showed sociability only to the extent necessary not to spoil the atmosphere, and he had basic manners. Thanks to that, he knew that there were quite a few women and men who secretly gave Joo Tae-hyun their contact information.
Furthermore, thanks to having a spouse of the same Shifter gender, he was able to easily obtain cooperation at international conferences and associations, and the project to improve, commercialize, and standardize Switches internationally was progressing smoothly.
In many ways, Seo Baek-han was very satisfied with this marriage. To the point where he felt more intimacy with Joo Tae-hyun than he had expected.
“Hyung, you’re here.”
He thought that Joo Tae-hyun might have come down because the lights on the first floor were on, but he didn’t expect him to come out to the front door. Seo Baek-han narrowed his eyes as if he was surprised, then smiled briefly.
“You weren’t waiting here the whole time, were you?”
“No, I came down to get some water and the parking alert popped up.”
Joo Tae-hyun, who was pressing his eyes, looked the most tired he had been lately.
Joo Tae-hyun was spending busy days getting his combined master’s and doctoral degree. He said that he was planning to start taking over the DH Group’s scholarship foundation work from this year, so he would be twice as busy as he was now.
“I hurried as much as I could, but it was a conference call with people overseas, so I was late.”
“It’s okay, I’m not going to sleep yet anyway… But what’s going on?”
As they passed through the hallway with a good view of the yard and reached the living room, a vase filled with flowers that his secretary seemed to have sent today immediately caught his eye. As he had instructed, pale roses and lilies of the valley were densely mixed, and they suited Joo Tae-hyun well. If you looked closely, they looked bold and fancy, but they had a quiet and calm feel.
“Um, you must be tired, so let me get straight to the point. From now on, your drug tests will have to be done by the Royal Hospital, not Donghwa Hospital.”
“Ah… Is that so?”
As expected. Joo Tae-hyun didn’t seem to know what a big deal it was. It was just a regular health checkup, a regular blood test with an additional drug test, so he probably thought it didn’t matter whether it was done at the Seoul hospital or the Royal Hospital.
“The Director of the Royal Hospital is also classified as a high-ranking public official, because it’s a national institution. Strictly speaking, it’s quasi-civil servant status, but… anyway.”
“Well, I will.”
“Tae-hyun, don’t you know what this means? You’re still taking Switches, aren’t you? And Dirty ones.”
“…Ah.”
It had been quite a while since they had brought up this topic. In the first year of their marriage, he had held Joo Tae-hyun and asked him about everything in detail, but since then, he had only received periodic drug test results and Switch purchase records. And that was from Joo Tae-hyun’s secretary, not Joo Tae-hyun himself.
He knew that Joo Tae-hyun was particularly uncomfortable whenever this topic came up. But he had judged that it was enough to just find out on his own and hear from his secretary, so he hadn’t asked him. It wasn’t that he was being considerate.
The Switch issue was a difficult negotiation that they had argued over until just before signing their marriage contract. Just because Seo Baek-han felt a little more comfortable and intimate with Joo Tae-hyun than before, it wasn’t an area that he could gloss over with personal feelings.
“Th, that… Hyung.”
“I know that the tests came back normal every time. It was a test result from Donghwa Hospital, so I assumed you had tampered with the results, but I didn’t feel the need to argue about it.”
“…”
“It didn’t matter until now who you slept with in the United States or what kind of Switches you took. But it’s not the same anymore. The Royal Hospital is different from Donghwa Hospital.”
It wasn’t that he couldn’t tamper with the test results, but it was difficult now. Even though this was Pyongyang, and Seo Baek-han was a member of the Seo family, which had absolute support in the vicinity of Pyongyang, it wasn’t that there was no backlash against his young age when he rose to the position of Director of the Royal Hospital. Rather, it was because the Royal Hospital was in Pyongyang that it was able to pass by at this level.
“It’s a time when it doesn’t hurt to be careful in everything. So, for the time being, only take the Switches that I give you.”
“Hyung… you’re going to give me Switches?”
“Yeah. It’s not a Dirty Switch, so it’ll be blander than what you’re used to, but it’s not classified as a quasi-narcotic, so it won’t show up in any tests.”