By Zephyria “I didn’t care that your face was different. Did you think I’d change my mind over some spots?”
The tears he had held back in his burning eyes finally streamed down his cheeks. He hugged his back in return.
“Let’s drink, oppa. Let’s drink until we’re drunk.”
“Yes, let’s. Let’s do anything.”
Lee Hae-sung stroked Choi Hong-seo’s head as if pressing it down. He nodded repeatedly and squeezed his eyes shut. As if to compose himself.
When they returned to the bedroom, drinks and snacks were prepared on the tea table by the window. The lighting, with only a stand lamp on, was dim, and a vase with a single flower was placed on the table.
“The atmosphere is nice, isn’t it?”
Wiping the remaining moisture from his face with the back of his hand, Choi Hong-seo sat down first. Lee Hae-sung, gazing at Choi Hong-seo, took the seat opposite him with a resigned air. The night view outside the window was indistinct due to the cloudy weather. Nevertheless, Lee Hae-sung drew the curtains, blocking out the scenery.
“Last time we were here. The time we were supposed to meet Dong-ha.”
“Mm.”
“Was it for that reason we stayed on a lower floor then, too?”
“……”
Lee Hae-sung’s hand, which was uncorking and capping the red wine to pour it into a glass, paused for a moment. However, he didn’t offer a separate answer.
The Nox Hotel had various facilities like restaurants, ballrooms, a fitness center, and a spa up to the 7th floor, making the 8th floor the lowest floor for guest rooms. He had thought the rooms were somewhat smaller compared to the large suites Lee Hae-sung usually used, but he hadn’t realized it was for ‘that reason’ at the time.
Lee Hae-sung wordlessly offered his glass, proposing a toast.
The wine he poured seemed closer to a transparent ruby color than a deep blood red, like a jewel. As he responded to the toast, Choi Hong-seo spoke as calmly as possible.
“I’m not bothered by high places. I’m not afraid.”
“……”
Lee Hae-sung nodded with an awkward smile and, as if out of habit, swirled the glass a couple of times in his hand before taking a sip of wine.
He looked exhausted.
His shirt, with the tie off and a couple of buttons undone, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, was terribly wrinkled. It was from Choi Hong-seo clinging to him, holding him, and hanging on. For someone who always maintained a flawless appearance, as if he had stepped out of a men’s magazine photoshoot, his current state looked exceptionally disheveled.
Mimicking him, Choi Hong-seo took a couple of sips of wine and then opened his mouth with an effort to sound cheerful.
“Isn’t it hard to commute from Bundang? It would be closer if you lived in Seocho-dong.”
“Bundang is better for us to come and go from together. If we want to prevent any noisy incidents.”
“Ah, I see…”
The heir apparent to ARA Group and a former idol actor living in the same house. And, both men.
Given that Lee Hae-sung was involved, no media outlet would dare break a story without prior notice, but caution was never a bad thing. The mansion in Seocho-dong was inevitably more exposed.
Or, because they were men, it might even be dismissed as a low-quality rumor.
“And places with old memories… are not good for Hong-seo.”
Lee Hae-sung said this hesitantly and drank more wine. When he had first suggested they live together in Bundang, he hadn’t known what was causing Choi Hong-seo to collapse.
“When I visited the director’s house, Pyeongchang-dong looked nice too! Is it too far from your company?”
Lee Hae-sung’s stiff expression softened slightly, and he let out a small laugh.
“Why are you suddenly recommending real estate? Do you want to live in Pyeongchang-dong?”
Choi Hong-seo smiled sheepishly and shook his head. The smile didn’t last long. After drinking several mouthfuls of wine, he finally managed to speak.
“After the incident in Bangkok… you said you’ve been living in Hannam-dong since then, right?”
“……”
“My things are still all there.”
“……”
“Please don’t do that.”
Don’t do that. This time, he couldn’t add the words. He couldn’t even look directly at Lee Hae-sung.
“What do you mean by that?”
The voice from across the table was stiff and trembling. It sounded like the tremor of anger.
If he were to leave again, he would have nowhere to hide. The residences in UN Village and Seocho-dong, the mansion in Bundang, all of them had become imprinted with the memory of ‘Choi Hong-seo’.
Choi Hong-seo emptied the remaining wine. With his mind made up, he looked at him this time. With his face blotchy from the spots.
“They say changing your environment is good. To move forward.”
“Where am I moving forward to?”
“Being surrounded by the things I used and memories of me… I don’t like being bound only to the past like that.”
If I don’t say this, if I don’t clearly state that I don’t want that, he’ll do it again.
“Why is what happened with you the past?”
“……”
“We’re together like this now, is this also the past?”
Lee Hae-sung was pretending not to know. Even as he sensed something that no one, not even someone at the pinnacle of power and prosperity called a ‘demigod’ in this secular world, could stop was approaching, he was denying it with his entire body and mind.
As far as Choi Hong-seo knew, Lee Hae-sung was a rational and logical person. The only thing he stubbornly refused to acknowledge and shut his ears to was this matter. As if the thing he feared wouldn’t happen if he didn’t mention it…
“Dong-ha said he liked you.”
“……”
“He might have said it because Jo Seong-hyeon threatened him to create an opportunity to meet you, but I didn’t know that at the time.”
What was he trying to say? Lee Hae-sung refilled his empty glass without relaxing his guard.
“You don’t like Dong-ha either. But I didn’t like that.”
Choi Hong-seo smiled bitterly, embarrassed by his confession of feelings.
“It was a strange feeling I’d never experienced before. No, I have experienced it.”
“You have?”
To Lee Hae-sung’s surprised question, Choi Hong-seo nodded and swallowed his wine. He emptied half of it in one gulp, like chugging beer after being thirsty.
“The day we were supposed to start dating. Before we actually agreed to date… the foreigner who was talking so nicely with you in the garden was so cool…”
“Is it Gaspard again?”
“I was also anxious because he was so different from me.”
“Baby, are you drunk?”
Lee Hae-sung’s voice, deliberately playful, reached out across the table and gently overlapped Choi Hong-seo’s hand.
“I’ve never seen you drunk, so it’s interesting, but I’m worried about our schedule tomorrow?”
“We can just sleep a lot on the plane. I’m curious to see you drunk, too.”
“Hmm… there’s no good for you if I get drunk.”
“Why? What are you like when you’re drunk?”
Taking another sip of the remaining wine, Choi Hong-seo looked at Lee Hae-sung. He felt a flush of heat rising to his face, perhaps because he drank quickly, though he wasn’t a heavy drinker to begin with.
“When I get tipsy, I tend to want to be alone. So I rarely drank with anyone.”
“Why is that no good for me?”
“Until now, when I got drunk, I’d lock myself in my study and read Camus. I think it would be different if I drank with Hong-seo.”
Lee Hae-sung’s hand, which had been covering the back of his hand, slipped into the end of his sleeve and rubbed Choi Hong-seo’s wrist.
“All the relationships I’ve had until now were so dry and flavorless. But it wasn’t like that with Hong-seo.”
“What about him?”
“Him?”
“Mr. Gaspard Aichmann.”
“You even remember his name correctly now?”
Lee Hae-sung, who had raised his eyebrows, leaned back as he drank his share of the wine.
“Why are you asking about that? Are you going to get upset again?”
“I’m not upset. It’s just… a normal amount of jealousy.”
Choi Hong-seo picked up a green olive from the appetizers he hadn’t touched. He intended to buy time while he chewed the olive. Lee Hae-sung, who had been gazing at Choi Hong-seo with his chin propped on the table, suddenly stood up. Choi Hong-seo’s gaze followed his movements.
He took his chair and moved it to the seat next to Choi Hong-seo. He reached out his long arm, took his own glass, and refilled both glasses with wine.
“What are you so curious about today?”
“Your past is all part of you, and you’re with me now after going through that past. So… I want to know everything about your past. Even if I feel a little jealous.”
Lee Hae-sung turned to Choi Hong-seo, who was sitting right beside him. Even though his blush should have hidden the spots, it only made them more prominent. They were distinct even in the darkness. If only he could get rid of them, he would spend all his fortune. If only he could get rid of them, if only…
Realizing that his gaze was fixed on the spots, Choi Hong-seo looked away first. Watching Choi Hong-seo’s profile as he tilted his glass, Lee Hae-sung brushed his lover’s now much longer hair behind his ear.
“Not just Gaspard, but I always chose foreigners among those in similar situations. It’s because there would be fewer complications. How much genuine emotion could I have felt for someone I chose by meticulously checking off each condition? It always ended with us dating long-distance for a few months, testing each other, and then fizzling out.”
Even after he finished speaking, Choi Hong-seo didn’t look this way. He fiddled with the glass he had emptied again in an instant, gazing down at the faint trace of wine left inside for a long time.
It wasn’t long before his lips, stained with the red hue of wine, moved.
“Still, he wasn’t the only one you loved, was he?”
“……”
“You can love someone again, right?”
“What is our Hong-seo trying to say by acting like this?”
Lee Hae-sung tried to lighten the mood, feigning composure. He gently stroked the lover’s ear, which was only showing its profile, and then gently pulled his chin to make him look this way.
In their eyes, sadness and fear churned.
“Everyone in the world… loves several times in their lifetime. They love, then break up, hurt, then forget… and then they love again… That’s natural… ly, um…”
He couldn’t listen anymore. He couldn’t bear to listen.
Lee Hae-sung tilted his head and covered the lover’s lips. The bitter taste of alcohol vanished, and he fully embraced and sucked the lips, which now held only the sweetness of fruit juice. He rubbed the spot that let out a pained groan with his lips, filling his mouth with wet flesh. Please, don’t let him say those words.
He slipped his hand into the t-shirt he had changed him into while he was unconscious. As his hand touched the warm skin of his side and lower abdomen, the lover flinched and tensed. It was the same reaction as before.
He pulled out his tongue, which had been tickling and stimulating every corner of his mouth, and kissed and bit down on every spot as he moved down his neck. As he broadly massaged his chest and twisted his nipples between his thumb and forefinger, Choi Hong-seo’s breathing became completely ragged. The hands that gripped and pushed away Lee Hae-sung, who lunged at him, lacked strength.
“Hyung… we, we’re still talking…”
Lee Hae-sung, who had left a hickey on his neck, pressed his nose tip firmly against Choi Hong-seo’s nose tip. Breathing his heated breath into him, he wrapped his arms around Choi Hong-seo’s waist from inside his clothes.
“Shall we go to bed? I want to.”
He stood up and pulled his wrist. However, Choi Hong-seo stubbornly resisted Lee Hae-sung’s strength. Choi Hong-seo, who had dropped his head so his chin touched his collarbone, had red ears.
“Are we going to break up like that again, without saying anything you want to say?”
“Break up? Who?”
“I don’t want to. This time, I want to say what I want to say. I hope you can be happy again, loved and loving someone, even without me.”
“Choi Hong-seo, I’m really getting angry? I told you not to say things like that?”
As he shook the wrist he held, Choi Hong-seo raised his head this time. Tears flowed from his eyes as he looked up, sliding down his cheeks to his chin in an instant.
“I saw how much you were suffering… I didn’t know it then, but I see it all now, I know it all… How can I leave you alone?”
He tightened his grip on Choi Hong-seo’s wrist, as if to break it, but the voice that left Lee Hae-sung’s lips had no strength. It was a voice that was breaking.
“If you hate that, then don’t leave me alone. Stay by my side. Don’t think about finding a replacement.”
“……”
“Then it’ll be fine.”
In the highest suite of the hotel, he looked like someone waiting endlessly for someone, standing in the pouring rain. Waiting for someone who wouldn’t come.