By Zephyria Song Hyun-soo had been emptying his glass for over ten minutes without saying a word.
They had moved to a private room behind the heavy curtains, leaving Yoon Joo-ho and him completely alone, but he still couldn’t bring himself to speak.
He had chugged liquor because he felt he couldn’t possibly speak sober, but strangely, he didn’t feel drunk at all. Instead, his mind became clearer and clearer.
Every memory, every emotion, every single expression of Choi Hong-seo’s in life, and every single hateful comment.
Song Hyun-soo swallowed another drink.
On the circular sofa, which curved and joined into one, Yoon Joo-ho and Song Hyun-soo sat with enough space between them for about two people.
Yoon Joo-ho, who had been smoking slowly and waiting, rubbed above his eyebrows with the hand holding the cigarette and let out a long sigh. He tilted his head and looked at Song Hyun-soo.
“Are you going to keep your mouth shut like this?”
Right. He had waited long enough. This was almost miraculous patience for Yoon Joo-ho.
Song Hyun-soo, resting his arms on the table and clutching his on-the-rocks glass with both hands, glared at the drink and swallowed hard.
“Last time, hyung asked me, right?”
“……”
“Why I was so worried.”
Yoon Joo-ho squinted, as if he didn’t quite remember the vague explanation, and Song Hyun-soo added a clarification.
“The day I was pissed off after coming back from the theater troupe.”
“The day you told me to sue the malicious commenters?”
“Yes.”
“Why was that?”
“I probably said that because of my friend back then.”
He was afraid of losing Yoon Joo-ho, just as he had lost Choi Hong-seo.
Even if it didn’t lead to an extreme outcome, he was afraid Yoon Joo-ho might be irrevocably damaged.
That’s what Song Hyun-soo had worried about at the time.
“Friend?”
“Choi Hong-seo, who died in the X-boy Scandal…”
It had been so long since he had spoken that name and that incident aloud in front of someone else. Song Hyun-soo’s voice was heavily suppressed and trembled violently.
“He was my friend.”
“Not just a colleague from the same agency?”
Song Hyun-soo shook his head.
“We were each other’s only friends.”
Having finished the little alcohol left in his glass, Song Hyun-soo immediately reached for the bottle in front of him. He then poured it generously into his on-the-rocks glass and downed half of it in one go.
Yoon Joo-ho reached out and pulled Song Hyun-soo’s hand down.
“Are you trying to die?”
“I can hold my liquor. I won’t die from this much.”
His eyes bloodshot, Song Hyun-soo roughly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Acute alcohol poisoning. Don’t you know?”
Yoon Joo-ho moved the bottle far away from Song Hyun-soo’s reach and dropped a few ice cubes from the ice bucket into Song Hyun-soo’s glass. Song Hyun-soo stared at Yoon Joo-ho’s face.
He thought he wasn’t drunk. But the world started to spin.
Many things tangled in his mind, and Yoon Joo-ho in front of him repeatedly multiplied and divided like a hallucination in a kaleidoscope.
If there were multiple Yoon Joo-hos, maybe one of them could end up with me.
Song Hyun-soo let out a weak, hollow chuckle at such a silly thought, but his smile gradually darkened.
Lowering his head, Song Hyun-soo glared at the drink in his glass again and moistened his lips with his tongue.
“If you hear this… you might despise me, hyung.”
“I don’t particularly like you right now, either?”
His lips smiled, but his face contorted as if he were about to cry at the joke.
“You might tell me to quit my part-time job, or maybe… you might not want to work on projects with me anymore.”
“What, were you secretly posting malicious comments behind my back pretending to be Yoon Gyeol-ho?”
His calm demeanor, his indifferent jokes, were helpful in moments like these. Song Hyun-soo, with an awkward smile that was either a bitter smile or self-mockery, mumbled, his chin almost touching his collarbone.
“I was one of the victims too.”
“Victim of what?”
Yoon Joo-ho’s voice was stiff, as if he already knew the answer.
“The X-boy Scandal.”
Yoon Joo-ho’s expression contorted severely for a moment. His face was filled with pain, as if someone had driven a sharp object into his thigh. But Song Hyun-soo, with his head lowered, didn’t see it.
“You’re a victim, so why would I despise you? For what reason?”
“Even my friend’s articles had comments like that? They said since he was hanging around the entertainment industry in the first place, he deserved what happened to him.”
“Those inhuman bastards are just spouting nonsense. It’s all been revealed how that UB president lured young kids.”
Song Hyun-soo shook his head vehemently.
“People don’t care about that. If they weren’t threatened with a knife, kidnapped, or imprisoned, they don’t even consider them victims. It becomes as if they chose to walk into it themselves.”
“What the hell kind of bullshit is that? If that’s the case, then aren’t victims also to blame for power-based sexual offenses?”
He would subtly corner them into an unavoidable situation, seize the decisive moment, and then use that as grounds for blackmail. — This was President Myung Do-hoon’s method, and it was similar to the pattern of power-based sexual offenses Yoon Joo-ho spoke of.
He had said he might despise Yoon Joo-ho if he knew the truth.
But in reality, he had a stronger belief that he wouldn’t.
So he felt relieved, and as he felt relieved, he felt a sudden release of emotional tension. Trying to hold back the tears that threatened to spill, Song Hyun-soo focused his features and stared intently at his drink.
Then, Yoon Joo-ho’s hand suddenly reached out and blocked his vision for a moment. He placed his hand on Song Hyun-soo’s forehead, which was bowed down, and pushed back with force, lifting Song Hyun-soo’s face.
“So. What about you? It’s not just your friend who’s the problem, you can’t be okay either.”
He never knew he would find such solace in the anger he saw in his eyes, directed not at him but at the perpetrators.
He had thought that other people’s comfort, other people’s empathy, was just a one-ply pity that was utterly useless.
It felt as if I were naked before Yoon Joo-ho, stripped of all emotional defenses. It was an unfamiliar state for Song Hyun-soo, so before it could feel comfortable or cozy, it was embarrassing and awkward.
Turning my head away from his hot palm, I rubbed my mouth as if to crush it.
“I’m okay. I wasn’t exploited as much as Hong-seo. I wasn’t as obedient as Hong-seo…”
Choi Hong-seo and I understood each other’s situations. We were like each other’s only comrades. But we didn’t have the luxury to share each other’s burdens. Just knowing that there was a comrade sharing this dark, heavy secret was enough to comfort each other.
Song Hyun-soo had to take responsibility for his grandparents, who were older than his peers’ parents, from an early age. He never considered it a burden. It was true that, unlike Choi Hong-seo, he had tried to earn a lot of money using his looks. He hadn’t known that such ill-gotten gains, no matter how much you earned, would melt away without accumulating. He was foolish enough to believe he knew the world as much as he did.
“Simply put, I wasn’t a ‘product’ that made as much money as Hong-seo. Not to those people. So I was exploited less.”
Haha, Song Hyun-soo forced a laugh and picked up his glass.
However, Yoon Joo-ho stopped him again. Reflexively, I looked back at him, feeling the grip on my wrist. His expression seemed calm at first glance, but his tone did not. Neither did the strength of the hand gripping my wrist.
“You went through a fucked-up experience. And you’re okay because it was less fucked up than others? Do you think that’s possible?”
Song Hyun-soo, who had been summarily indicted in connection with the case, was ultimately acquitted.
This was because it was recognized that he had only been exploited by Myung Do-hoon and had gained no profit. It was also taken into consideration that Myung Do-hoon had targeted only those who had just graduated high school, who were legally adults but still minors in emotional and social terms.
Choi Hong-seo, Song Hyun-soo, and the other victims. All of them were children who had just graduated high school, mere adults in name, when they first met Myung Do-hoon. Moreover, they were children who grew up in what are commonly called disadvantaged households.
“Still, I survived.”
“…”
“I survived, saw Lee Seo-kyung die. And now I’ve seen Myung Do-hoon die.”
This time, Yoon Joo-ho didn’t just stop at gripping my wrist. He pushed Song Hyun-soo’s shoulder, almost shoving him towards the sofa behind him. The composure he had precariously maintained crumbled, and his eyes trembled violently.
“Did you ever deal with Lee Seo-kyung too?”
Yoon Joo-ho reacted sharply to the name Lee Seo-kyung.
Song Hyun-soo shook his head with a bitter smile.
“How could I? I’m not handsome enough to deal with Lee Seo-kyung.”
Lee Seo-kyung, the third-generation chaebol heir with the formidable backing of Hanseo Group.
Myung Do-hoon, who, acting on his orders, intentionally approached targets, trapped them, and then bled them dry through blackmail.
For years, Myung Do-hoon had amassed wealth by committing various sex crimes under Lee Seo-kyung’s protection. In simple terms, Myung Do-hoon scouted the sacrificial lambs to be ‘offered’ to Lee Seo-kyung.
The exposé detailing all of that was ‘X-boy Scandal’. Through ‘X-boy Scandal’, their atrocities were revealed to the world after many years.
“Lee Seo-kyung is a pervert beyond imagination. What’s reported in the media is less than a tenth of it. He doesn’t discriminate by gender or preference. When he’s the one doing the pursuing, he likes guys like Hong-seo…”
He couldn’t continue speaking. Song Hyun-soo, pushing away Yoon Joo-ho’s hand on his shoulder, downed more alcohol. Yoon Joo-ho didn’t stop him this time.