PHUW 79

It felt too sordid to act on his desire against a patient flustered like a puppy cornered, and besides, there was an unbridgeable wall between having the will and actually carrying it out.

“…How can you joke like that.”

“I’m sorry. I just felt so good talking with you again… I went overboard.”

He added a flimsy excuse.

“I’m still mad at you, you know?”

“Really?”

Jeong Mok deliberately stuck both hands in his pants pockets as if troubled and asked seriously.

“Then should I leave?”

At the question, Ahn Haeri immediately shook his head.

“Stay. I have a lot to say.”

“Alright. What do you want to talk about?”

“Later. I need to organize my thoughts first.”

“Okay.”

While Haeri organized what he wanted to say, Jeong Mok sat on the sofa and opened his laptop. In that short time, work messages and reports had already piled up.

“Are you working?”

“Yeah. I’ll keep listening, so when you’ve sorted out what you want to say, just tell me.”

“I’m not in a hurry, so do your work first.”

With tasks waiting, he opened the laptop that a staff member had brought earlier. As he checked messages and gave instructions, Haeri suddenly exclaimed.

“What is it?”

“The convenience store! I need to call the store owner! After seeing that mess this morning, he must have been so shocked!”

“That’s all? Don’t worry about it. I already handled it.”

When Jeong Mok said there was no need, Haeri’s eyes went wide.

“Handled it? How?”

“I sent someone to meet the owner, explain the situation, and promise full compensation for all damages. And also expressed interest in buying the store at a very good price if he ever wants to sell.”

“What, you went yourself?”

“No. A representative.”

“…A representative.”

Haeri repeated the word.

The convenience store owner turned out to be quite reasonable, so reported Shin Chaehee, who had gone on Jeong Mok’s behalf. According to her, while checking the CCTV on site, the owner saw the footage of Haeri being attacked with a weapon by an assailant and immediately worried about his part-timer. He could not hold back his outrage seeing Gom-i and Haeri being assaulted indiscriminately.

Before the footage of Jeong Mok beating Jang could come up, Shin Chaehee cut off the CCTV and made the offer of compensation and possible purchase. At first the owner was taken aback, but when told the price was nearly three times market value, he quickly changed his mind. Shin Chaehee also purchased the store’s CCTV machines and records with a hefty amount of cash on the spot, before the police could get involved. She also made it a condition that the owner testify later that the machines had broken and been discarded long ago. Thanks to the owner’s flexible and cooperative nature, the matter was handled swiftly and without noise.

Instead of explaining all that detail, Jeong Mok shifted the subject.

“Do you like working at the convenience store? If you do, I can find you another owner position. But not at the current branch. Pick somewhere near a police station or inside a mall where security comes and goes.”

“It’s not that I like it, but it’s not that I dislike it either.”

He had started because it was the easiest option, but since it was manageable, he said he could keep doing it if needed.

“So it’s not something you absolutely want. Then fine. Either way, I don’t want you working alone anymore. It’s dangerous.”

“There’s nothing else I can do except work alone. It’s not like I can get a job at your company. I have Gom-i, and I live alone now. I’m not out of money at the moment, but I can’t live the rest of my life doing nothing. It’s not that kind of money.”

Jeong Mok straightened his posture.

“Don’t worry about money. I’ll give you enough that you can live easily without doing anything.”

“What? Why would you give me that?”

“Because that way I’ll feel at ease.”

Ahn Haeri’s expression twisted subtly.

“You’re trying to chase me and Gom-i away…”

“I know. I was the one who chased you.”

Same as with Gom-i, Haeri was sensitive about issues of being abandoned or cast aside. His background made that inevitable. Even if he did not remember it, the reaction showed how deeply he had been traumatized.

“At the time, I couldn’t think of any other way. It was rough and inconsiderate. I regret it deeply. I’m sorry. But in the long run, I thought it better for us not to see each other. If you hadn’t been dragged into the incident, you wouldn’t even have been exposed.”

Haeri bristled every time he saw Jeong Mok’s face, and so now he was pressing, why act like this after driving him away whenever there was a pretext.

“In fact, after checking on Gom-i’s condition, I meant to leave this place to someone else. I thought you wouldn’t want to see my face either. I only stayed to watch you sleeping one last time, but then you had that seizure.”

The one who had been sleeping so deeply it was hard to tell if he was in a coma had pleaded not to go, begged him to stay. Faced with someone soaked in loneliness and fear, Jeong Mok could not turn away.

“So what I mean is, whatever you want, I’ll do it for you.”

A clumsy kind of cheap compensation could instead fester and worsen the other’s deep wounds. But that did not mean he could keep pretending ignorance. At the very least, he wanted to provide a physically comfortable environment so that the other could take care of his own feelings.

“I was thinking of giving you a safe house, or maybe a shop. Not somewhere remote like this, but closer to the city, a business where Gom-i could be with you too…”

“Wait. What do you mean by that?”

Ahn Haeri glared at him. Meeting eyes burning with betrayal, Jeong Mok gave a bitter smile.

“You can’t keep working at the convenience store. Your foot’s injured.”

“No, that’s not it. You said it was better for us not to see each other’s faces.”

His clear eyes now filled with anger. His cheeks flushed red for another reason, and he snorted hard enough to show how furious he was.

Was that really the problem?
He had already said he wanted to kiss him. He had even said, though brushed off as a joke, that he wanted to sleep with him. Haeri had freaked out the moment he heard it, yet now he acted as if he could not understand what “better not to see each other’s faces” meant even knowing what Jeong Mok had almost done?

Or maybe something was wrong in his head again. With his sloppy yet precise way of being, it was easy to forget he was a patient with amnesia.

It was embarrassing to bring it up again, but he had no choice. Just then Haeri snapped with twisted words.

“What, are you worried the amnesiac orphan might ruin the shining future of Vice Chairman Hyeonsan?”

“Of course not. Never anything like that.”

Jeong Mok hurriedly denied it. The thought had never once crossed his mind.

“Then what is it? You said you wanted to kiss me, right? Then why don’t you want to see me… Ah. Because a gay scandal would be fatal to Vice Chairman Hyeonsan? That’s it, isn’t it?”

“I said it’s not.”

So he remembered. This time Jeong Mok’s face burned red.

“How is it not!”

Haeri burst out angrily. It was lucky this was a soundproof VIP room. In a normal ward, the neighbors would have come peeking already.

“It has nothing to do with that. Being vice chairman wasn’t something I wanted. It just ended up dumped on me. And as for kissing, if there’s no problem between you and me, I can do it anytime.”

“Really? I don’t have a problem. So go ahead, let’s see you do it.”

Not knowing his heart, the other provoked him. Why did he throw himself forward without thought? Normally his personality was nothing but cute, but now it was almost too much to handle.

Unable to hold back his frustration, Jeong Mok stood up from his seat. Haeri stuck out his lip with stubborn defiance.

“That’s not happening.”

You don’t take sexual gain from someone cornered. That was the most obvious social ethic, basic decency, and minimum morality. There was also a private narrative, harder to say aloud, but still rightly there.

“Why not?”

“An adult doing that to a kid is a crime.”

“I told you, I’m twenty-four. After my birthday, twenty-six by Korean age. Where’s the crime between two adults? You really think I’m a little kid just because I let you treat me like one.”

His cheeky retort almost made Jeong Mok grab the back of his neck.

Actual age didn’t matter. If everything was about age, then why did concepts like diminished capacity or incompetency exist? In truth, Ahn Haeri was acting like more of a child than anyone. That was enough.

“No means no. I can’t do that to you just for my own sake. And you don’t even like me in that way.”

“How can you be sure?”

Damn brat.

“I can see it. Even if you did feel that way, it would just be because you got swept up in the mood and situation.”

“And how would you know that?”

He trembled in fear every time Jeong Mok came closer.

That annoying mouth that kept retorting without knowing his heart could be shut with one move. But doing that would only wound this endlessly childish and innocent little devil all over again.

“I told you I’m fine with it. Let’s kiss. Let’s do it! Now! Right now!”

He shouted it brazenly, it was ridiculous. To force a kiss just for the sake of winning a power struggle? That was the kind of bluff only a kid would make.

Damn brat. He didn’t leave room for generosity.

Jeong Mok finally spit out the words he had been holding back.

“If you had been born in a normal home, with your parents alive and giving you love, would you be begging a man way older than you to kiss you?”

“Kiss…”

“If you had your mom and dad, your grandparents, friends, classmates to lean on, if you had people to help pay the hospital bills and look after Gom-i, would you be saying that to me?”

Jeong Mok stabbed without hesitation at his deepest wound.