NUTMEG 20

From the inside of the glove, which the props team member held open with a dumbfounded look, clumsily broken-off cutter blade pieces fell with a clatter. Im Kihwan was so furious he looked like he was about to breathe fire. He was making a fuss, yelling about calling the police right now and getting a fingerprint analysis, and he was so loud that Wonoh furrowed his brow.

“Hyung, I get dizzy when you keep shouting.”

“Gasp. Hup. Right, Wonoh, you go rest with Minje. I’ll call you when things are cleaned up. No, you need to go to the hospital first! Go to the hospital! Hey, someone call his manager, Minje!”

“I’m fine. I just bled a lot because I was cut by the blade. It’ll get better as soon as the bleeding stops. I’m sorry for making you worry, Team Leader.”

Wonoh bowed his head to the props team and the other staff members, then left Im Kihwan to handle the aftermath and left the area first. As he walked, he scanned his surroundings thoroughly, but the little rat was nowhere to be seen. Wondering if the culprit might have left a faint pheromone behind like he had on the glove, he was about to sharpen his senses when Minje, who had been following him, called out to him plaintively.

“Wo, Wonoh.”

“Minje hyung.”

“You’re, you’re bleeding. Wait a minute.”

Although he had brushed it off to Kihwan as nothing serious, the wound was actually quite deep. It seemed that blood had seeped through, red, from the wound that hadn’t stopped bleeding yet despite the first aid. Minje pulled a chair over to a secluded spot, had Wonoh sit down, and examined his injured hand. As Minje peeled off the dressing band, which was soaked with blood, his hand trembled slightly.

“It’s cut so deep. You have to go to the hospital… This is going to leave a scar.”

“Yeah, in a bit.”

It was a wound that clearly required a hospital visit, even at a glance. But there was something he had to take care of first, as quickly as possible. Nevertheless, Wonoh didn’t mind the feeling of Minje examining his wound, so he stayed still. Minje’s hands continued to tremble as he disinfected Wonoh’s wound again, folded a piece of gauze to place over it, and wrapped it with tape.

As he watched his fingers and the back of his hand get wrapped up together in the bandage, growing larger and larger, he lifted his head to look at him. He had suddenly become curious what kind of expression he was making. Unexpectedly, Cheon Minje’s long eyelashes were wet, strand by strand.

“Hyung. Were you crying?”

“…No?”

Minje shot his head up and stared with his eyes wide open, as if to prove he hadn’t been crying. His eyes were filled with just enough moisture that it didn’t spill over. Because of that, his irises glittered like glass beads. It looked like tears would flow at the slightest touch, but it was funny how he was desperately denying it. When Wonoh let out a soft laugh, he spoke again with a complicated expression.

“…I’m sorry, Wonoh. It was my glove. You wore it… Because of me…”

“Why are you apologizing, hyung?”

“Still… It was meant for me. Because that man thought I stole the role…”

His stammering words were pointing to someone specific. Well, he wasn’t an idiot, so there was no way he wouldn’t know. But before that.

“Why would that be you stealing it?”

Wonoh furrowed his brow, unable to understand.

“It was yours, hyung.”

Minje held Wonoh’s treated right hand tightly and said nothing. This hyung is so frustrating.

At that moment, the rat he had been looking for appeared for a second at the end of the hallway before quickly disappearing.

“Let’s go together, then.”

“…Where?”

“To beat the shit out of that little rat.”

“It, it wasn’t me!!!”

Wonoh grabbed the man by the collar with his left hand and threw him into a storage room in a corner of the set. With a loud clatter, the man crashed among the filming equipment and struggled, sending up clouds of fine, white dust.

“I haven’t said anything yet.”

Wonoh, still smiling, asked Minje to close the door. At those words, Lee Jingi desperately crawled on all fours toward the door. Just as Wonoh stretched out his long leg to block him, the storage room door shut with a click.

“I thought we had an agreement that we wouldn’t see each other again. I guess I was mistaken.”

Wonoh grabbed the man’s collar and forced him to his feet. With terror in his eyes, Lee Jingi unsteadily put strength into his legs and stood up. Wonoh, who seemed to keep wanting to laugh, smiled until his eyes curved and pointed at his bandaged hand with a finger.

“See this wound? I got cut by the blade that you, Mr. Lee Jingi, put in there.”

“It, it wasn’t me!! What proof do you have to be fucking with an innocent person?!!”

“Really? Then why did you leave your pheromones on the glove? Did you get excited while putting the cutter blade in? You perverted bastard.”

“Th, that can’t be…”

“Why don’t you check for yourself.”

Wonoh waved the black glove in front of the man’s face. The man’s complexion turned deathly pale, as if he had actually sensed his own pheromones.

“I told you once before. That you’re not very smart. If you had just quietly kept to yourself, it wouldn’t have been a hassle for either of us…”

Click, click. A sharp blade emerged from the cutter in Wonoh’s pocket. He slowly snapped off the cutter blades one by one, making snap, snap sounds. The man, and Minje too, swallowed dryly with a gulp.

“And I wouldn’t have had to get hurt, would I?”

It hurt like a motherfucker. Wonoh looked at Lee Jingi gently as he said that. Then, he poured all of the snapped-off cutter blades into the glove. And just like that, he held it out to the man.

“I like things to be fair.”

A deep dimple formed on one side of Wonoh’s face. Incongruous with the situation, his smile was even beautiful. When Lee Jingi, his face stiff, didn’t take the glove and let it drop, Wonoh firmly supported the man’s wrist and forced the glove into his hand.

As Lee Jingi’s hand trembled violently, he muttered things like, “Why should I, fuck, why…” The muttering soon changed into a grating, metallic voice.

“You, you, you wore it on your own! This is Cheon Minje’s glove!! If only that bastard disappeared, I, I would’ve, fuck… Aaack!!!”

Suddenly turning toward Minje, Lee Jingi swung his fist with a whoosh that cut through the air. The movement was utterly clumsy. It was slow enough that even Minje, who reacted a half-beat late in surprise, could have easily dodged it. However, Wonoh stepped in front of him. A thudding sound landed somewhere on Wonoh’s stomach. The flustered Lee Jingi gasped for breath with a dazed expression.

Choi Wonoh was displeased.

The reason he had put on the glove with the blades inside was to create a justification to beat the disgusting man senseless with his own hands—the man who had shamelessly released his pheromones in front of him and, on top of that, had blabbed about sleeping with Director Choi. But now that he realized this bastard had genuinely looked down on Cheon Minje and plotted such a stupid thing, it got on his nerves immensely.

A moment ago, too, he swung that pathetic fist because Cheon Minje looked like a pushover, didn’t he? Come to think of it, this bastard had also torn up the script.

“Did you just hit me?”

Wonoh blinked his long eyelashes.

“Then this is self-defense, right?”

Before the man could even say, “Uh,” Wonoh balled his right hand into a fist and slammed it straight into Lee Jingi’s left cheek. A dull thud, like hitting a punching bag, rang out, incomparable to the sound of the blow when the man had hit Wonoh. With his head snapped to the side, Lee Jingi tumbled to the ground with a loud clatter. Inevitable tears of pain streamed from the eyes of the collapsed man.

He had intended to hold back, but he had put too much force into it. His throbbing hand began to sting, as if the wound had opened up. But even this wasn’t enough to make the unpleasant feeling go away. Would two hits be within the range of justifiable circumstances, or not? As he was thinking that, he heard a small presence beside him.

“…”

Minje was blinking his widened eyes, looking back and forth between Wonoh and the man. His pupils were dilated, as if in shock. Wonoh remembered that he hadn’t provided much of an explanation.

“That bastard keeps looking down on you, hyung. And I don’t like that. With the glove, too, if it hadn’t been me, you would have gotten hurt, hyung.”

“…”

“Are you still sorry to me?”

Minje gave a small shake of his head.

“From now on, don’t go around blaming yourself just anywhere. The more you do that, the more people will just look down on you. But you’re not that kind of person, hyung.”

“Wonoh!”

Cheon Minje, suddenly shouting, threw himself forward urgently. When he turned a step too late, a cutter blade fell with a sharp noise and spun on the floor. Lee Jingi, who had been pushed by Minje, hit his head on a shelf of equipment and fell to the ground. The man was pathetically sniveling, letting out disgusting moans like, “Ah, ooh, ugh…”

Wonoh glanced at the cutter blade and Lee Jingi, and then at Minje. It was Cheon Minje, the one who had just saved him from the weapon, who looked more shocked, his hands trembling.

“You should hit him again properly, hyung. He even used a weapon, so it’s self-defense.”

Minje, his eyes welling up with moisture, shook his head vehemently. He reacted like someone who had never hit a person in his life.

Wonoh muttered, “What a shame,” and approached Lee Jingi, lowering his body. The man flinched and trembled, but Wonoh couldn’t care less. He then grabbed Lee Jingi’s chin and snapped his head toward the injured area. It was an indifferent motion, like someone inspecting a scratched object.

The inside of his mouth seemed to be torn from hitting his teeth, and all the capillaries in his eye had burst. His already rapidly swelling cheek would likely be so swollen that his face would be unrecognizable for a while. He had thought, oops, after hitting his face, but seeing this, it seemed he could have hit him even harder. A feeling of regret naturally made his eyes narrow.

When his business was done and he roughly let go of the face, the trembling Lee Jingi threw a tantrum.

“You, you think you’re so clean? I’m going to post everything online…!”

“Mr. Lee Jingi, are you confident you can win the lawsuit?”

Tap, tap. Wonoh tapped Lee Jingi’s knee with the tip of his shoe.

“Or what. Do you have someone to back you up because you sucked that person’s asshole so much? You don’t. It’s been a long time since that connection was cut.”

Wonoh smiled, his eyes crinkling.

Lee Jingi let out a grating scream, “Aaaah!” and started throwing whatever he could get his hands on in the warehouse at the two of them. A few miscellaneous items hit the wall with thuds and fell. Just when it seemed Choi Wonoh’s smile had deepened, the warehouse door burst open.

Lee Jingi’s complexion momentarily brightened like a castaway who had spotted a rescuer, but the person who opened the door was Im Kihwan with a hardened face.

“Lee Jingi. The police are outside. Are you going to walk out on your own four feet, or should I drag you?”

It turned out that the making-of camera Hyesle was filming with had caught Lee Jingi entering and leaving the props room right before filming began. The situation was resolved in an instant. The dumbfounded Lee Jingi admitted it was his doing without much resistance.

Im Kihwan snatched the phone from the assistant director, who was in the middle of a long call, shouted, “Fuck, I’m telling you we’re dropping the criminal bastard! I don’t care if you pull your investment or not, do whatever you want!!” and hung up. The assistant director, who had been shaking his head saying, “Oh my, that temper…,” pressed the call button again and continued to sort things out with someone.

Lee Jingi was dropped from the show.

Since it wasn’t a very significant role, Im Kihwan declared that he would cut all of his scenes and reshoot them. The investment company didn’t add any particular comments this time either. They seemed relieved that the troublemaker they had been saddled with due to his relationship with Director Choi had ruined his own prospects.

In response to the police’s questions, Wonoh said in a genuinely worried tone, “For a while now, Minje hyung’s script kept getting torn up, and other strange things were happening. Today’s incident also involved something being put in Minje hyung’s glove. It’s a relief that I was the one who wore it instead… I remembered that he was a final candidate for the role of ‘Eunseong’ a while back. It seemed suspicious, but since there was no evidence, we were just going to ask him about it quietly amongst ourselves. But then he suddenly rushed at me and threw a punch first, so I was surprised and… What should I do? Is he badly hurt?”

Director Im, who was listening to the story with him, flew into a rage, saying, “Your hand is a much bigger problem!! I’m just so relieved you got to hit him at least once!!” According to procedure, he should have gone to the station to write a statement, but since Lee Jingi had already confessed and taking into account the severity of Wonoh’s injury, the police left after a brief questioning.

Once the situation was settled, Wonoh was sitting on a sofa in the waiting room, waiting for his personal doctor. The assistant director had called an ambulance along with the police, but it wasn’t serious enough to cause a commotion by going to a regular hospital.

A staff member whose name he didn’t know came over and asked if he was okay. It was already the tenth or so time. He knew they were worried, but it was tiring to keep smiling and saying he was fine. Even after hearing his answer, the staff member didn’t leave and worriedly asked the person sitting next to him a question. Minje just rubbed his reddened eyes and nodded in response. The staff member stared at Minje for a long while, and only moved away when Wonoh gave him a look. It seemed he had been worried about Cheon Minje, not him.