CTL 7

Yoongeon, who had fled down to the parking lot as if being chased, hurriedly got into his car, locked the doors, and confirmed that there was no one around. He looked extremely anxious, but now, unlike in the past, there was no lover to silently stay by his side just because he was anxious, and Yoongeon was left all alone.

“…….”

Yoongeon looked down at his own hands, which were gripping the steering wheel tightly. He was holding it so tightly that his pale hands were trembling constantly. In fact, it had been like that all along. From the moment he realized the arm that had grabbed him belonged to Seohwi.

His two eyes, which seemed as if they would hold nothing, began to moisten. Even though he had confirmed that there was no one in the parking lot, Yoongeon kept his head bowed low while gripping the steering wheel.

“…….”

And at that moment, without any time to stop them, tears fell from Yoongeon’s two eyes in a torrent.

It felt as if his heart was being torn to shreds. He couldn’t control his sorrowful heart, and his unbearable body, screaming for salvation, began to spew out tears instead.

Even as his body, in agony and unable to endure any longer, betrayed his mind and began to pour out tears, Yoongeon did not make a single sound of crying. He just remained silently and waited. While enduring the suffocating feeling, he hoped for the tears to stop, for the tears that he could do nothing about with his own strength to cease.

✧ ✧ ✧

“…….”

Did I overstep my bounds? Seohwi pondered for a moment. He had been so surprised earlier that he had unknowingly cornered him as if reprimanding him, but on second thought, he wondered if he had unnecessarily interfered and hurt the other person’s feelings.

“But….”

Seohwi muttered.

If one saw that back view from earlier, that back that looked so precarious and as if it would disappear, anyone, not just him, would have acted the same way he did.

“Haaah….”

Even though he knew he had to go now, Seohwi couldn’t move a muscle, as if his legs were glued to the ground. It was because the thought of that person, Ko Yoongeon’s, eyes made his heart heavy.

From the first moment he saw him, Yoongeon had looked like a dead man. In his life, he had never seen a person with such sunken, completely given-up eyes. There was not a single spark of life, and they failed to properly capture anything of the world. The eyes of a dead person would probably be clearer than his. But, he acted so nonchalantly with those eyes that he had wondered if he had been mistaken. Until he saw him again here.

“Is he planning to die soon….”

Otherwise, it was a face he simply could not understand.

Why on earth does he have those kinds of eyes? Wasn’t Ko Yoongeon the son of the chairman of this Shinhyun Motors? For the eyes of someone who enjoyed everything in abundance without any worldly lack, they were excessively dry and parched. What could be so sad and difficult for him.

“Could he have depression or something.”

You know, there are people like that. People who, while being the envy of others, are unable to overcome their depression and take their own lives. If it’s something like that…. Seohwi was lost in thought, and then found this side of himself very unfamiliar.

Originally, he had little interest in others, and thus, he never stepped forward. Of course, it was an exception for someone attempting suicide. Yes, no matter how indifferent he was, he couldn’t be indifferent to something like this. He was a human being too.

Besides…. Seohwi bit his lip.

‘I’ve seen those kinds of eyes quite often.’

Yes, because this kind of thought comes up again.

“I’ve never even seen them, so what’s so familiar, familiar.”

Haaah…. He rubbed his face in frustration with both hands with a deep sigh, but his mind wouldn’t calm down at all.

Seohwi was sometimes like this. There were times when things he had never done felt so familiar that he was sick of them, and there were things he knew without having seen them.

He still hadn’t found the source of that strange feeling, as if he had forgotten something he had experienced before. For example, things like… just looking at cigarettes now makes me sick of them. Even though he himself had never smoked a cigarette.

Was that all? It was also the case that he, who was indifferent in all matters, was excessively weak when it came to his younger sister, Seoyoung. It felt as if he had once made a vow that he must treat that child well. It goes without saying, but he had never made such a vow or promise. It was the same when he first met his friend, Kong Taekyung. Although he always maintained a lukewarm attitude, the reason he acted a bit more affectionately toward Taekyung was precisely because of that familiarity. It felt as if he owed him a great debt.

And now, just when he thought he hadn’t felt it for a while, he had met a familiar man named Ko Yoongeon.

The moment he opened the door to the executive director’s office and saw the face of the man named Ko Yoongeon, he realized that this person too was not a stranger, and was very familiar to him. But it didn’t end there. From the moment he saw his face, Seohwi felt something welling up from deep within his chest. He just couldn’t bear it.

“This time….”

This time, I must catch him. I can’t let him go this time either.

It was an obsession to a strange degree. When had he ever seen him for the premise of ‘this time’ to be attached? As if he had missed Yoongeon several times before.

That was why. He had spouted nonsense, saying he was familiar with Yoongeon and what not, so unlike himself.

—Rrrrr.

So what should I do now… he was wondering. The bell rang, and when he took out his phone, Taekyung’s name was on the screen. When he answered, a barrage of rebukes poured out, asking where he was, and if he hadn’t arrived yet. Only then did he come to his senses and hurriedly left the rooftop.

A short while later, when he arrived at the promised pork belly restaurant, Taekyung, who was sitting in a corner seat, waved his hands enthusiastically. He had sounded quite angry on the phone, but now that he was here, it seemed he was just pretending.

“Hey! Over here!”

Seohwi walked over nonchalantly as he called. He took off his coat and placed it next to him, and said while wiping his hands with a wet towel.

“Sorry. I left my phone at the company.”

“What’s up with the guy who always takes good care of his stuff?”

It seemed he had ordered in advance before Seohwi arrived, as the pork belly was cooking appetizingly on the grill.

“I know, right.”

“Did you find it? These days, you often can’t find your phone if you lose it.”

“When I went, they were keeping it for me.”

He had put it down for a moment while washing his hands in the restroom and had forgotten it, but fortunately, it seemed someone had turned it in as a lost item.

“But why are we eating pork belly? We can eat something more expensive.”

If I had just gotten my phone back and left, Ko Yoongeon might have died…. A tail of terrible thoughts formed in his mind, but he couldn’t keep being lost in other thoughts in front of his friend, so he tried to shake them off. At Seohwi’s words, Taekyung gave a mischievous smile.

“Beef is for when you get your second paycheck.”

“Second?”

“The first one is for your parents, you punk.”

Taekyung clicked his tongue, saying this is why he fails, because he doesn’t even know things like this. Seohwi let out a deflating laugh. He liked this banter of his. He smiled, opened a bottle of soju, poured him a glass, then poured one for himself and clinked their glasses. Seohwi, who frowned at the harsh taste of the soju going down his throat, picked up a piece of golden-brown cooked pork belly and ate it.

“Hey, really, congratulations.”

Taekyung, who was fully savoring the taste of soju, offered his congratulations with an even more excited face than his.

“I told you I knew you’d get first place, didn’t I? The design is, huh? Extraordinary.”

“Who else would get first place if not you,” Taekyung said nonchalantly, something others would scoff at, and ate the pork belly at a frightening pace. Three pieces of meat to one shot of soju. As he alternated like that, the meat on the grill visibly dwindled.

“Eat slowly. You’ll get indigestion.”

“Hey, I wish I could get indigestion just once! It’s never happened to me. Because it never happened, I never once missed a training session that everyone else gets out of….”

The bitter end of his sentence somehow suggested he had wanted to slack off. Seohwi, who knew his appetite, ordered more pork belly and started grilling all the remaining pieces so that he wouldn’t run out of meat to eat. For Taekyung, it was quantity over quality.

“Hey, by the way, you met the boss of that competition today, right?”

“…Boss?”

“How’s the boss? Is he scary?”

“Bo…….”

He knew full well it wasn’t ‘boss’, but since Taekyung was confidently saying ‘boss’, for a moment he couldn’t think of the word himself, and Seohwi frowned.

“Not the boss.”

“Yeah. I know, I know. I know he’s not the boss, but he kind of felt like a boss.”

“Haaah…. Not the boss, the executive director. I met the Executive Director.”

“Ah, right. Executive Director. The names were similar, what a shame.”

How on earth are ‘Executive Director’ (jeonmu) and ‘boss’ (dumok) similar. But Seohwi was not the type of person to tease or rebuke someone for such things. He just thought, he must be disappointed, and only nodded his head.

“So, is he scary, I asked?”

“Umm….”

Is he scary, he wondered, but he wasn’t scary. Of course, since he was a person with almost no expression, he looked a bit cold, but it was far from scary. The secretary didn’t seem to find the Executive Director that difficult either.

“No. But he doesn’t… smile much.”

“He doesn’t smile? Why doesn’t he smile? Is he in a bad mood?”

At the question of whether he had pissed him off, Seohwi shook his head. He didn’t have the talent to piss off someone he had just met. That talent belonged not to him, but to Baek Cheongha.

“No, that’s not it….”

As he trailed off, Taekyung, thinking something serious had happened, slowed his chewing of the pork belly.

“It’s just…. No. He just seems like a person with almost no expression.”

A face that was like looking at something inorganic. There was no expression, and no will was visible. Was that all? Nowhere in his appearance was there a sense of stability. Didn’t his back look so precarious?

In that moment earlier, that person had scoffed at Seohwi as if he had needlessly interfered, but in fact, Seohwi guessed that if he hadn’t caught him, that person would have died. He probably would have fallen, limply, and crashed. In fact, even now, thinking back to that time, it’s full of things he doesn’t understand. Why on earth was he trying to die? Even more so, so suddenly, while he was perfectly fine working.

“It seems there are only guys who are pissed off about everything.”

Taekyung said nonchalantly. Seohwi, who had no intention of telling him in detail about things like depression, just chuckled.

“You know, there are those people. Guys who are particularly sensitive. If you get on the wrong side of those guys, it gets really tiring.”

He knocked back another shot of soju.

“Hey, Yoon Seohwi. If that executive director guy bullies you, huh? Just go ahead and report him. Ah, no. Never mind. Just bear with it. Bear with it for just one year. You might get fired for no reason. Just bear with it for now. If it’s Shinhyun, you have to bear with it.”

“…Why would that person bully me.”

“Why do you think. It’s your hobby, isn’t it, being bullied.”

“…….”

Since when was his hobby being bullied by others?

“You honestly look a bit… like you’d be fun to bully.”

So that executive director guy must have wanted to bully Yoon Seohwi as soon as he saw him. He didn’t know what kind of logic it was, but Taekyung was very serious.

“…Is there a separate face for that?”

Taekyung was great, but sometimes he said things that were incomprehensible. At Seohwi’s question, which he asked with a frown, Taekyung burst out laughing.

“This, I mean, this. You’ve got a bit of this, don’t you? No, it’s not just a bit. You’re handsome, exceptionally so.”

Taekyung said, making a gesture of stroking his face with his hand.

“So by bullying you—”

“…….”

“People try to get your attention. A face that makes people feel that way is a face that looks like it would be fun to bully. That’s why all the kids, boys and girls alike, treated you that way.”

“……?”

“Wow, why are you acting like you don’t know anything?”

“…I really don’t know.”

At his words that no one had ever told him such a thing, and that he had never actually seen anyone deliberately bully him, Taekyung shook his head from side to side and suddenly made the sign of the cross. …A guy with no religion.

“You get bullied less because you stay still even when you’re bullied, you do.”

“I was bullied?”

“Ah, for God’s sake.”

“…….”

“Pay attention, huh? Pay some attention to your surroundings, I’m telling you. Stop making the people around you feel like they’re suffocating.”

That was what Taekyung always said to him. To please pay attention to his surroundings. To not act so indifferent.

Actually, Seohwi did reflect on it every time he heard those words, but his innate nature was just like that. Even if he tried, it was only for that moment.

“You have to be more considerate of your colleagues at work. If you act like that there too, you’ll really be ostracized. It’s different from school, you punk. There, it doesn’t just end with being ostracized, your livelihood is threatened!”

“I understand.”

“Social life, you punk, what did hyungnim say?”

“…Aren’t we the same age?”

Despite the flabbergasted retort, Taekyung said with an air of dignity while picking up a piece of pork belly.

“Social life is about wearing a mask.”

“…….”

“Don’t act comfortably there. Try to get along with people, even if you have to force it. Got it?”

“I got it.”

They were not bad words to hear. Seohwi nodded his head and knocked back another shot of soju.

“You’re just the type to be misunderstood. Remember how the kids used to suspect you of being a sociopath back then?”

“…….”

“Pretending to be coy to a certain extent, that’s more important than you think.”

As soon as he heard the word ‘coy’, Seohwi’s face became very gloomy. It seems he had already failed at that. Hadn’t he been drawing a line with him all along and showing a strangely displeased demeanor?

“But well, since he’s an old guy, maybe he won’t be like that. He might act like a boomer, though.”

Thinking he had said all he had to say, Taekyung placed a perilla leaf on top of a lettuce leaf, added three pieces of pork belly, a piece of grilled garlic, and a Cheongyang pepper, topped it off neatly with ssamjang, and then stuffed it all in his mouth in one go. Seohwi cut the newly placed meat on the grill with scissors to make it easy to eat.

“But.”

“Yeah.”

“That person isn’t old. He’s young.”

“Eh?”

“He’s young.”

Taekyung, who had swallowed the wrap without chewing much, stopped drinking his soju and asked back as if puzzled.

“He’s young but he’s an executive director? What does he do?”

“The second son of the Chairman of Shinhyun Motors. Ko Yoongeon. That person is the executive director.”

Even a person who knew nothing would know about Shinhyun Motors. Chairman Ko Sanghyun, and his sons, Ko Yoonchul and Ko Yoongeon. Ko Yoonchul in particular was a troublemaker who often appeared in the news. Ko Yoongeon also appeared in the news from time to time, but not for as loud reasons as Ko Yoonchul. He was mentioned in the media as the new successor every time the eldest son, Ko Yoonchul, caused trouble.

“Wow…. Cough, cough…!”

He must have been quite surprised to hear that the executive director he met was a chaebol’s son, as Taekyung choked and coughed violently.

“Cough… Wow, cough, you, hoo… you better get on his good side. Huh? Do well.”

“…….”

He said that if you get on the bad side of chaebols, even if not other people, your life is really over, and explained in great detail what happened to the characters in a drama he had seen. Seohwi, who had been listening for a while, shook his head at the absurd words.

“…They don’t put a company employee in a drum can just because he didn’t listen to some words.”

“Ah, you never know! Reality is always harsher than fiction!”

If there was an employee who made a mistake and ended up in a drum can, that employee probably didn’t make an ordinary mistake. And a new employee like Seohwi, no matter how hard he tried, couldn’t make a mistake of that magnitude.

Seohwi let Taekyung’s nonsense go in one ear and out the other and drank another shot of soju. There was no need to pay close attention to his words, which were becoming more and more nonsensical as he got drunk, so Seohwi was lost in deep thought. As soon as he did, the person who came to mind was Ko Yoongeon, that man.

The man who was strangely familiar and who he felt a strange conviction to catch, seemed as if he would disappear at any moment, making Seohwi anxious. Was he bothered because he saw that back, which seemed to have no lingering attachments? Frustrated, Seohwi let out a small sigh.