By Zephyria 
“The captain said something suddenly came up on the boat, so I came to see the Director…”
Eun-myeong cut his sentences short in one breath, as if he had been poked in the ribs. However, his words were sliced in half, blocked by the man’s low voice.
“Is that so? That’s strange.”
The man tilted his chin slightly to the side. As always, the smile hanging on his lips looked sly, like the tongue of a century-old snake.
“…What is?”
“You told me you fucking hated that Director bastard.”
Eun-myeong inhaled sharply. His narrow chest tightened. The words he had babbled while half-conscious in the man’s arms flashed through his mind with a thud.
‘The, the Director hit me.’
Yes, he had definitely told the man that back then.
‘He called me a retard, and he said that’s why my mom and dad abandoned me. No matter how much I think about it, I don’t think that’s why I was abandoned, but he kept calling me stupid.’
Whether it was because he was drunk on sleep or fever, he had spouted such nonsense. He had no pride, no guts. Sunk to the very bottom, Eun-myeong had laid himself completely bare to the man who had reached into the darkness to find him.
Why on earth did I do that? A wave of regret seemed to swallow him whole like a raging torrent.
He wasn’t a dog that rolls over and shows its belly at a few hand gestures… Eun-myeong scrambled to find any excuse.
The only thing that managed to flicker through his mind was a congratulatory card he had seen a few days ago that read
“But he’s… like a parent to me. The holidays are coming up, so I came to visit.”
Of course, Eun-myeong had grown up without knowing anything about affection for parents. Even so, this feeling was not even remotely similar to what he actually felt toward the Director.
“Right. You did say you liked lounging in any random bastard’s arms.”
He wondered what he meant, only to realize it was something he had blurted out randomly in the past while making excuses. That he liked being held by others…
Thinking about it now, it was an utterly absurd thing to say. The only person around him had been Eun-joo noona.
“Yes, …that’s right.”
Eun-myeong smiled awkwardly and nodded in agreement with the man’s words. It was a blatant lie. Though no one else was there to hear it, Eun-myeong shrugged his shoulders in embarrassment.
“My, I almost misunderstood.”
What exactly was he about to misunderstand? Fearful, Eun-myeong wanted to let this pass without digging deeper, but if he acted too obviously like he was hiding something, it would only look more suspicious.
So, Eun-myeong asked cautiously on purpose.
“Misunderstand what?”
“Because Baby was sweating bullets.”
Only after hearing those words did Eun-myeong realize that his palms were damp. He felt as if moisture was pooling in the valleys of his palm lines, ready to overflow. Even Eun-myeong himself…
“I thought you might be lying.”
Eun-myeong swallowed hard. His throat burned as if he had swallowed a stone.
“But as you can see, the Director—who is like your father—seems to be away.”
Does that mean I should go back? The man spoke. Eun-myeong gave a small nod.
The man gestured with his chin toward the door of the director’s office, telling him to come out. Eun-myeong hesitated. What should he do? All he had were about five packets of aphrodisiacs clutched in both hands and stuffed into his pocket. This wouldn’t be enough to satisfy Jjangja; it was a disaster.
Clutching his complicated thoughts, Eun-myeong followed the man down the hallway. The small muscles in his face kept twitching. His lowered gaze watched the man’s shadow cast across the long corridor. It was pitch black and enormous. Since the man was ahead of him, his expression was completely unreadable.
Seriously, he was completely screwed.
Meanwhile, fearing that the sound of the plastic in his pocket might be heard, Eun-myeong intentionally took short, quick steps.
In the car returning to the hotel, the wheels slowly licked the road. The dawn light covering the sky was utterly gloomy. It looked as if a gray pigeon had spread its wings wide on both sides.
A chilling silence flowed. Fearing that the man might accidentally cast an awkward glance at his trouser pocket, Eun-myeong preferred to press his head against the window.
The side profile of the man in the driver’s seat was reflected in the glass.
‘Our Baby Eun-myeong is pretty and cute, isn’t he?’
The man’s words kept circling in his head like stagnant, rotten water.
Why had he had that kind of conversation with Chairman Go?
Unfortunately, it felt similar in tone to the conversations the Director and Chairman Go always had, which made him dwell on it. The Director had always been desperate to sell him to Chairman Go for the highest possible price.
Then this man must be the same…
Come to think of it, why on earth was CEO Kang Pyeong-won in the director’s office earlier? Especially when the Director wasn’t even there.
As the branches of his thoughts extended, a sticky feeling rose like an impurity.
The man appeared in the director’s office exactly when the Director disappeared…?
He felt a strange sense of déjà vu; it overlapped with the situation where he had encountered the man in the yard of the house his noona had left.
Earlier, he had been so consumed by the compulsion to make excuses to the man due to the fear of being caught doing something bad that he hadn’t realized it. Now that the situation had settled, questions piled up.
“Ce… CEO.”
He wanted to just let it go without knowing. But he couldn’t help but ask.
“Why did you come to the director’s office?”
“Ah, that.”
A casual exclamation escaped the man. Eun-myeong thought he would give a reasonable excuse like he did, whether it was a lie or the truth.
However, the words that came out were of a completely different nature.
“You said Baby was busy and going to dry the nets.”
Eun-myeong’s eyes darted around in anxiety.
“Yes, I did say that.”
“I thought you were commendably crawling back to the sea to pay off your debts, so I wanted to give your butt a little pat.”
Tap, tap. The man tapped the steering wheel with his middle finger.
“But you crawled into the orphanage instead.”
He thought you went back because you missed it. Since you’re still a baby, the man said, before adding the next part.
“But you went in through a dog-hole, didn’t you?”
By “dog-hole,” he must be referring to the window Eun-myeong had climbed through.
“It looked fun, so I followed you in.”
The man’s sentence ended in an unexpected place. Eun-myeong’s cell phone slipped from his hand with a thud. It was because his palms were slippery with cold sweat.
“Are you saying… you stalked me?”
Eun-myeong gripped his thighs with both hands. He hadn’t felt any sign of him at all. Eun-myeong looked up at the man, fully tense. The man’s face held no expression.
Then, suddenly.
He let out a smirk, and then his chest shook as he burst into a “haha” laugh.
“Look at you, being so scared.”
He chuckled as if he were looking at a cute pet.
“Mister is a person who does a lot of good deeds, too, right? I was going to pour some donations into the orphanage, but then I heard the Director had disappeared.”
“…Yes.”
He didn’t think a “good person” would use the expression “pour” (literally ‘slather/apply’) when talking about donations. Wasn’t the wording too vulgar? No matter how he looked at it, it seemed strange, but Eun-myeong didn’t bother to point it out.
“I stopped by the orphanage wondering what was going on, and the scent of your crotch was vibrating everywhere.”
Ah, Eun-myeong let out a low groan. Had his pheromones leaked?
Although he had received a plausible reason from the man, an immense feeling of discomfort covered Eun-myeong’s entire body like a shed skin.
However, he knew that even if he peeled it off, only his raw flesh would be exposed. Eun-myeong bit his lower lip.
While he was staring intently at his knees, his forearm was suddenly seized.
“Yes…?”
With his expressionless face still toward the windshield, the man kneaded Eun-myeong’s forearm. When Eun-myeong hunched his shoulders from the pain, the man spoke as if in passing.
“You can’t just detach and reattach a forearm, huh? Right.”
After muttering those incomprehensible words, he curved his eyes again out of habit. Erotically and sinisterly.
* * *
He had received the text while in the middle of serving. The vibration went zzing-zzing, and it was the first time he had ever felt so anxious. Eun-myeong went to a corner and secretly turned on his cell phone.
Sure enough, the sender was Jjangja.
[Got the meds]
[Come to my house right now]
[You’re dead if the meds go bad lol]
Eun-myeong sighed deeply all day long.
“Huuu.”
He was busy enough with the sashimi restaurant, but the sudden appearance of Jjangja in his life was making Eun-myeong’s hands bleed.
Still, he had no choice, so as soon as work ended, he hurried toward Jjangja’s house.
Eun-myeong rushed quickly through the darkness. Fearing that someone might be following him, he acted quite agilely, which was unlike him. The medicine was hidden deep inside his padding jacket.
After panting and climbing up the hill without rest, a house like a giant castle appeared, one that absolutely did not fit in a small seaside village like this.
“Ha, haaa.”
Eun-myeong struggled to catch his breath. He carefully reached out and pressed the doorbell.
“Hyung, it’s me.”
Soon, the door opened with a clatter. After walking a bit along the stone path leading inside, Jjangja suddenly popped out of the front door. The guy asked bluntly.
“The meds?”
Eun-myeong, eyes cast down, carefully slid his hand into the pocket of his padding jacket. He pulled out the sticky plastic pack caught on his fingertips.