SLC 60

Mok Seongha scanned the room without saying anything. Blood trickled from his mangled hand.

‘Young Master, please, your hand first….’

‘Track his phone.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I installed a tracking app before.’

‘…It is impossible if the phone is turned off.’

‘He will turn it on.’

The golden eyes that surveyed the surroundings as he muttered those words were terrifying. They were the eyes of a beast stalking its target.

‘I understand. I will set it up so we can track him the moment it is turned on. Young Master, let’s go home for now.’

‘No. I will stay here for a while.’

‘I don’t think the teacher will come this way today. You should go home, sleep, and then come back….’

‘It will only take a moment.’

‘Pardon?’

‘I only need to meet him and talk for a moment.’

His voice was cold and his expression was calm. However, Secretary Kang could tell that he was not in a normal state. Something inside him had twisted. Knowing that no amount of persuasion would work in this state, the secretary immediately stepped back.

‘Then I will come to pick you up tomorrow morning. You must also pay your respects to the chairman.’

If Chairman Choi Dojung found out that Mok Seongha was wandering around in the middle of the night, he would not sit still.

‘Fine.’

Mok Seongha sat on the bed. Secretary Kang closed the front door and left. He stayed in front of the building all through the dawn and called Kim Jinkyung. However, the phone never turned on.

When morning came, Mok Seongha returned to the mansion. When night fell, he came back to the apartment. In the room with no owner, Mok Seongha waited for Kim Jinkyung the entire time. He called without a single moment of rest. When the phone battery ran low, he simply kept the cord plugged in and repeatedly pressed the call button.

Secretary Kang had sent people to Kim Jinkyung’s family home early on, but they found nothing there either.

‘What about the school?’

‘There are no results yet.’

‘Watch the front of the lecture hall. There is no way he would skip class. He said he had to do well on his exams because he ruined his midterms.’

He believed that things must be so. However, Kim Jinkyung still did not show up at school. Eventually, Mok Seongha went to Kim Jinkyung’s school himself. He asked around among the students of the same department until he heard something completely unexpected.

‘I think Jinkyung-sunbae took a leave of absence.’

‘A leave of absence… he did?’

‘Yes. Well, we don’t really understand it either…. It’s very rare for someone to take a leave when the finals are almost here. Unless they are very sick or had an unavoidable accident….’

Mok Seongha went to the school’s academic affairs office. The staff member said they could not disclose personal information, but when Mok Seongha refused to leave, they finally confirmed that Kim Jinkyung had indeed applied for a leave of absence a few days ago.

‘Young Master, let’s go back for now. It is supposed to rain this afternoon.’

Secretary Kang, who had been checking the rain probability on his phone since morning, cautiously spoke.

‘His family home?’

‘If you mean Teacher Kim’s family home, I have already checked. It is certain he did not go there.’

‘Search the call logs and make a list of people he spoke to frequently. He only has one friend. He must have gone to that bastard’s house.’

‘I already checked. I sent someone to search Seo Sangil-ssi’s house, but no one was there.’

‘Then where is he?’

‘….’

‘Why did he suddenly disappear? He… to me….’

Mok Seongha mumbled as if he could not understand. The atmosphere under the gloomy sky felt ominous.

‘Please get in the car for now. I will continue to look for the teacher.’

In this day and age where everything leaves a record, it was not difficult to find a person. It was only a matter of time.

Mok Seongha stood still with an expressionless face. He seemed unable to believe that Kim Jinkyung had left the school.

‘…The chairman is waiting.’

In the end, Secretary Kang used his final resort. Mok Seongha got into the car and returned to the mansion. However, when night came, he headed back to Kim Jinkyung’s studio apartment. He pulled all-nighters in the empty room and returned to the mansion in the morning. He waited for Kim Jinkyung for days without a single wink of sleep.

Every time Secretary Kang opened the door in the morning, Mok Seongha, who sat alone on the bed, repeated a cycle of hope and disappointment. Secretary Kang could no longer bear to watch him look like a discarded pet, so he called out, “Young Master,” to say something.

He intended to tell him not to wait. He wanted to say that waiting for such a person to return would be meaningless. He wanted to tell him to just forget.

‘…Is it because my eyes are too yellow?’

‘Pardon?’

Secretary Kang doubted his ears.

‘It might be because my teeth are too sharp. …Or maybe it is because I bit his tongue too rough when we kissed.’

Damn it, did you kiss him!?

…Suppressing the urge to interrogate him, Secretary Kang asked what he meant by that.

‘He said he cherished me. He cherished me so much that he could kiss me even if I am not ugly…. Fuck, so why?!’

Mok Seongha’s breathing grew ragged. The pupils of his golden eyes turned into slits and his sharp teeth lengthened.

‘Why, so why did he disappear? No one ever told me the reason! My mother, my father, and my younger sibling! Fuck, what did I do wrong! Why does everyone just disappear? At least you should have told me. Tell me not to wait. No, you should never have appeared in the first place!’

Secretary Kang could not say a word in the face of this sudden outburst. Mok Seongha’s condition was critical.

‘Young Master. Let’s return to the mansion. Here….’

‘Are you afraid I will transform?’

‘…….’

‘Are you worried I might change and bite your arm off?’

‘No, sir.’

‘If I do that again, just shoot me.’

‘Young Master!’

‘Otherwise, get out. You can leave me alone. I am not human, so it is fine to leave me by myself.’

Mok Seongha returned to the mansion while he mumbled words that were hard to understand. It rained that night and Mok Seongha’s form changed. The rain stopped, but Mok Seongha did not return to his human shape. It was as if he no longer had a reason to be human.

“Young Master. Have you had anything to eat?”

Mok Seongha only ate food given by Chairman Choi or by those the chairman approved. However, he now refused to touch any food.

“..The chairman is worried.”

Secretary Kang had strictly ordered everyone to keep quiet so this news would not reach Chairman Choi’s ears. However, it was only a matter of time before the sharp-witted Chairman found out.

The panther bared his teeth and glared at Secretary Kang.

Don’t tell the chairman.

“He will notice even if I do not speak. Your condition right now is….”

The beast’s body had thinned noticeably and his once glossy fur was now dull. He did nothing. He spent all his time lying in the glass garden and staring at the flowers.

“You must not be like this if you consider the chairman.”

Secretary Kang admonished him with a stern voice. He knew that the young master was weak when it came to the chairman. He had a blind trust in his own bloodline that was almost pitiful. He acted as though every decision regarding his life or death was in Chairman Choi’s hands.

“You must think about why the chairman returned to the mansion. The more you act like this, the more the chairman will….”

“Uicheol.”

Secretary Kang turned around, startled by the sudden voice. Chairman Choi was entering the glass garden in his wheelchair.

“Chairman.”

Secretary Kang immediately bowed his head.

“I have something to say, so everyone else leave.”

At Chairman Choi’s command, the employees exited the garden.

“Secretary Kang, you stay outside too.”

“Chairman, but….”

“Uicheol. Do not you start troubling me as well. This old man is already exhausted just from him.”

Secretary Kang bowed his head deeper while he clenched his fists.

Mok Seongha was not the only one weak against Chairman Choi. He closed his mouth and walked out of the glass garden.

“Seongha.”

The old man called his grandson. The beast turned his head and met the old man’s eyes.

“Why do you remain in that form?”

The old man showed his disapproval. The beast lowered his head back to the floor without any change in expression.

“What are you dissatisfied with this time?”

“…….”

“Do you intend to stop speaking to me now?”

“…….”

“Do you hate your grandfather?”

The beast lifted his head.

“I know I have made things very difficult for you all this time. I will not ask you to understand me.”

The two did not have a normal relationship between a grandfather and a grandson. It was a tragedy from their very first meeting. Due to the shock of the accident, Mok Seongha could not even remember the past, and Choi Dojung remained trapped in that horrific history.

“When you first came to our house, it was hard to accept. Suhyeon, my daughter… I couldn’t believe she gave birth to you…”

For a while after he brought the young beast home, the chairman did not seek him out. He stayed holed up in his study and only faced the boy briefly when he provided meals.

“I suppose I was stubborn because I felt like accepting you meant accepting your father.”

However, whenever the young beast took a human form, the old man could find traces of his daughter in him.

“Do you know that you and Suhyeon look alike?”

The panther shook his head. He had only seen his mother once in a picture. He had no room to think about whether he resembled her.

“You look exactly like her. Stubborn, disobedient, and only caring about yourself.”

The panther tilted his head.

You are like that too, Grandfather.

“Yes. Haha. Suhyeon took after me. That is why her mother said she was worried about that. She only worried about Suhyeon until the moment she closed her eyes.”

His mother’s mother.

To Mok Seongha, who barely remembered his own mother, his grandmother was unfamiliar.

“I promised her I would raise Suhyeon well, so she should not worry. Perhaps a thunderous scolding awaits me when we meet again. She will ask what I was so busy with that I let my child go before me.”

The wrinkles of the old man trembled slightly.

“I should have raised you better.”

“…….”

“Only then would I have the face to see Suhyeon, …I am sorry.”

His eyes, filled with regret, were clouded. The old man said many times that the eyes are windows to the soul. The beast knew that the vessel containing his soul was cracking.

The old man’s life was leaking through those cracks.

The beast lay on the ground and watched that time leak away in silence.

“You resemble your father a lot, too.”

It was the first time. It was the first time a story about his father came out of his grandfather’s mouth.

The golden eyes stared quietly at the old man.

“Especially your smiling face. I did not see your father’s smiling face in person myself. But I also….”

I only saw your father once.

“…….”

“The day Suhyeon brought him home and said she would marry him, that was the first and last time. He never set foot in my house again.”

Why?

The old man continued as if he saw the question in the beast’s eyes.

“I used wicked words. I told him never to think of stepping into my house again.”

“…….”

“A child who went away to study brought back a man and said she would marry him. She even said there was a child in her womb. I was so angry that I could see nothing else.”

The wrinkles between the old man’s brows deepened slightly as the memory of that day surfaced.

“Suhyeon and I fought while we screamed at each other, but your father just sat there in silence without a word.”

The scene of that day was vivid in the old man’s mind. Even as the man listened to all sorts of verbal abuse and insults, he remained seated with his back straight and his expression unchanged. It was as if he felt that treatment was his natural due.

‘How dare a thing like you!’

Choi Dojung, his anger reaching the top of his head, picked up a teacup from the table and threw it at the man. Even as blood flowed from a cut on the side of his face, the man wasn’t angry. Instead, he simply turned his body to shield Choi Suhyeon in case the hot tea splashed on her.

‘Why did you just take that?! You should have dodged!’

When Choi Suhyeon grew angry, the man replied calmly.

‘I was afraid you might get hit. Without realizing it….’

It was the same that day. When the old man splashed water from the kettle in the hospital room to test his grandson, Kim Jinkyung naturally took the hit instead.

Then, he replied with a vacant smile on his characteristically kind face.

‘…I thought it was hot water, so without realizing it….’

The old man slowly closed and opened his eyes.

Every time he saw his grandson transformed into a beast, he thought of the man who took his daughter away. In the car, that beast was licking the corpse of his dead daughter. The police who arrived on the scene shot and killed the beast.

The letter his daughter left behind was full of stories about her husband’s special circumstances and the child. After he read the letter, his anger only intensified. That beast was a creature that deserved to die. He felt nothing but loathing for a beast that could not suppress his instincts and tried to devour the woman he loved. He brought the child home, but he could not bring himself to meet those eyes because the image of that filthy beast overlapped with him.

However, he learned later that those actions were meant to save his daughter. Even after he knew the truth, he could not accept it.

It was because of his own inadequacy. As a father who failed to protect his daughter, he simply needed someone to blame.

Even while he kept something more important than that right in front of him….

‘If you look attentively, he is cute! His fur is black and glossy, his teeth are sharp and strong, his mouth is big, and also…. Because his eyes are golden, they shine even in the day and shine more at night. Just like… stars….’

The face of the kind young man who found and listed things he had failed to recognize came to mind.

Chairman Choi raised his hand and tapped his knee.

“Seongha.”

“…….”

The beast knew what the gesture of that gaunt hand meant, but he could not move. Chairman Choi had never once touched his grandson while he was in the form of a beast. Far from touching him, he had rarely even met his eyes.

“Come here. Hm?”

The hesitant beast slowly rose. Then, he carefully placed his chin on the old man’s knee. The old man stroked the beast’s head with a trembling hand.

It was just as the young man said. He was simply a cute child. His eyes shone like stars and his fur was soft.

“Your grandfather was too much all this time.”

The beast shook his head.

“You do not have to forgive your grandfather. You can hate me.”

His eye sockets, hollowed out by illness, quickly grew wet.

“I wanted to raise you well, but I was so inadequate, …I am sorry.”

The beast buried his head in the old man’s lap. He could smell the scent of a person he liked from the skin clinging to the bone. The scent of a person he should trust and follow.

“Instead, I will grant you one request. Whatever it may be.”

The old man spoke while he caressed the soft fur of the beast. The animal slowly raised his head.

“Tell me anything. Hm?”

The old man held the beast’s face with both hands and spoke. His eyes looked directly at him. He could be certain that the old man no longer saw anyone else through him.

“…Don’t.”

Mok Seongha, who had returned to his human form at some point, spoke as he hugged the old man’s waist.

“Don’t die. Grandfather…. Please….”

“Yes. I understand.”

The old man smiled and held his grandson’s head.

“I will not die. I give you my promise. I will receive treatment and everything.”

The old man repeated a sincere promise he could not keep as he patted the back of the child who had grown so much.