⚠ Content note for this chapter: violence.
“Yes. Much better.”
“You took another day off right after discharge, so I thought you were badly hurt.”
“…Yes, I was a little dizzy, but I’m fine now.”
“Good, good.”
What did he want? Eunseo eyed the team leader curiously as he beat around the bush without getting to the point. He’d caught a glimpse of some approval form on his laptop screen, but couldn’t tell what it was.
“Senior Shin, you went to school in Seoul, right?”
“Yes?”
“Then you’d be the best fit.”
Fit for what? And why ask whether he went to school in Seoul…? For an instant, something Han Jaeheon had said several times flashed through his mind. Didn’t he have any thought of coming to Seoul — as if proposing a very good position…
“You know about the newly formed innovation division, right?”
“…Yes.”
“One of your cohort went over there too.”
“……”
“Any thought of going there? The post is at the Jongno headquarters, and it’s directly under the Executive Director, so the work will be hard, but it’ll be quite rewarding.”
The team leader talked up the organization like he was Han Jaeheon’s avatar. The approval on his screen had clearly been a transfer approval. Eunseo felt like he’d been slapped across the cheek.
“From this year it’s running entirely around new business, so it’ll be easy to rise high within the company too. I think it’s a good opportunity.”
The pen rolled off his hand and onto the floor with a tap. Without even thinking to pick it up — without even feeling it slip from his hand — Eunseo asked in a cracked voice,
“Do I… get a choice in this?”
“Hmm… that’d be hard. The Executive Director personally named a few people.”
“…I thought so.”
Company transfers had nothing whatsoever to do with one’s own will. If someone above needed you, they brought you, sent you, moved you, entirely as they pleased. Even if it decided a person’s whole life.
“They said they’ll give you time to prepare, but he told me to have you wrap up as quickly as possible. The project’s in its early stages so there won’t be much to hand over… Seoul posts don’t normally come with housing support, but if you need it, he said they’d support that separately.”
His head spun. Eunseo had a hallucination of all his limbs tied down in every direction, unable to move a single one. No… it would be more accurate to say they’d been cut off entirely.
“The appointment comes down next week. Is that okay?”
“…Yes.”
He had no choice in the first place. He couldn’t refuse Han Jaeheon while Jin Seunghu was being held hostage, and his heart couldn’t bear accepting the relationship. What was he supposed to do, what on earth was he supposed to do…
“Right. All the kids who do good work in the lab are going, and you’ll learn a lot next to the Executive Director.”
“…Yes, understood.”
Back at his seat, Eunseo stared down at his desk for a long time. The moment he opened his mouth, a sob felt like it would burst out, so he chewed his already wounded lips all over.
He didn’t want to live like this anymore. Even when his father came from time to time, slapped his cheek, and extorted money from him, Eunseo had worried about him if anything — he’d never once thought of throwing this life away. But now, nothing entered his mind but the thought of running from this reality. In an instant, like someone had struck the back of his head, the fog filling his mind cleared all at once.
But how? No matter how he thought, he couldn’t come up with a way out of here — beyond the simple answer of quitting the company and disappearing. The best his pathetic self could manage was the thought that, just in case, cash would be better than cards. All he could do was sigh at himself.
But he couldn’t not do even that. Eunseo wiped his red-swollen eyes and lifted his head. On his phone was a name he never wanted to see again. The vibration stopped, then started again. He probably wouldn’t stop until Eunseo answered. Slowly, Eunseo picked up the phone, pressed the call button, and held it to his ear.
“…….”
“Sorry. Were you startled?”
The apology that came so easily — just days ago, Eunseo had wished for those words so, so much.
“You don’t need to prepare anything separately, Senior. I’ll send you the address, so just bring your important belongings.”
“…Executive Director.”
Han Jaeheon was calling him “Senior.” At times like this, he never once stepped out of his position as executive director.
“I know the sudden transfer is startling, but I’d like you to wrap things up quickly.”
He was acting exactly as if he were summoning him to Seoul for work reasons.
“Make sure you can report to headquarters starting next week.”
“…Understood.”
“See you this weekend.”
The call ended without waiting for an answer. Eunseo set it down as if throwing it and stood up.
He felt like he’d go mad if he didn’t do something.
***
The Boston bag held nearly twenty bundles of hundred 50,000-won bills. The volume was smaller than he’d expected, and it didn’t weigh much, but every time Eunseo looked at it, all he could do was sigh. Withdrawing the money had been fine, but he had no idea what to do with it from here.
Fortunately, Han Jaeheon had changed his word to say he couldn’t come this weekend, which bought a little more time to think. But thinking about it wouldn’t change much anyway. He wouldn’t change; he’d keep toying with him as his plaything… and Eunseo would only keep being tossed around, just as he always had.
Sitting in the dark room with the curtains drawn, grimly chewing over that feeling, Eunseo zipped the bag shut and put it back in the closet. Then he slowly went out and sat at the table.
His emotions still churned. The years he’d spent liking him — and that gulf was too deep to fill all at once. But… Eunseo truly couldn’t continue this relationship. Neither the “nothing relationship” he spoke of, nor the “mistress” relationship he’d have if Jaeheon married — Han Jaeheon had said it wasn’t even that — Eunseo couldn’t accept any of it.
He’d wanted to look away, even knowing he was being strung along, looked down on, deceived. At times he was so tender that Eunseo had wanted to foolishly believe he might come to like him once he learned he was an omega. Eunseo pressed his fingertips hard into his dry eyes and laughed hollowly.
Hiding his trait had been wrong. Was he being punished for it? But… he hadn’t hidden it to deceive anyone, and all he’d gained from it was loneliness.
“…Idiot.”
And yet he’d thought at least the way he treated him held some sincerity… Cursing his own foolishness, Eunseo hung his head, then lifted it. Strangely, since that day, not a single emotional tear had come.
The day he’d taken Han Jaeheon’s rut, he’d said he didn’t want to force him, and to stay as he was if he didn’t want to be trapped — but those words felt unreal somehow. Surely he wouldn’t do such a thing? What was he to him? Eunseo bit his lip hard and shook his head over and over, trying to forget that chilling voice.
Thinking he should eat something, he opened the fridge, but inside was nothing but bottled water and a few eggs. After staring in for a long time, Eunseo sighed, took out only a water bottle, quenched his thirst with it, and ordered a set meal delivered from a nearby restaurant.
Sitting dazed at the table waiting for the deliveryman, the phone in the room vibrated, stopped, vibrated again. With the feeling of his hair standing on end, Eunseo jumped up and snatched the phone from the bed.
Several missed calls, and messages. Seeing the screen smeared all over with Han Jaeheon’s name made his stomach turn. The first message had an address in downtown Seoul, along with word to sort his valuables and move by tomorrow morning. And the most recent message was: Why aren’t you answering?
Throwing the phone as if it had shocked him, Eunseo took the bag from the closet and slung it on. Rushing out of the house, he heard the machine hum before he’d even pressed the elevator button. Cold sweat beaded on his white forehead.
Feeling strangely, terribly wrong somehow, Eunseo hurriedly took the stairs down with the bag. The moment he’d gone down one floor, he heard the elevator door clunk open right above him, and sneakered footsteps treading the floor.
“Huh, what. Why isn’t he here?”
The deliveryman, who’d pressed the intercom a few times, left the paper bag with the already-paid food just sitting at the door and took the elevator back down.
Only then remembering he’d ordered delivery, Eunseo wiped his lightly sweating forehead and went up the stairs. Then the elevator, which had briefly gone down to the first floor, started coming up again. About to pick up the bag, Eunseo hastily set it back down and went down to the half-landing where he’d been before.
Footsteps in dress shoes — clearly different from before — then a brief silence. Then a thud as the paper bag dragged across the floor, and the intercom began ringing through the wall.
“Senior.”
Eunseo clamped his hand over his mouth, killing the sound. A drop of sweat slid from the roots of his hair, gathered at his chin, and fell to the floor with a tap. It sounded like thunder.
“This again.”
Han Jaeheon seemed to be making a call. A faint vibration hummed from inside the front door. After a long stretch of stillness like that, Han Jaeheon called him like a sigh.
“Hah… Senior.”
As if brainwashed, Eunseo nearly went to him — barely able to stop before his feet moved. Then came the clash of metal, the click of a lock opening, and the thud of a door closing.
Without even the presence of mind to be surprised that Han Jaeheon had a key to his home, Eunseo barely gathered his scattered wits and started quietly down the stairs. For several floors he walked without making a sound, watching what was above, and after that he ran down like mad. He nearly tripped a few times, but didn’t care.
He’d barely run at all, yet his breath was already at his chin. Eunseo slipped out of the company-housing apartment complex clinging to a dark flower bed, and the moment he reached the main road, he stopped short. He had no idea where to go. Like a child who’d lost his mother on a crowded street, he just stood there, looking around.
Avoiding the streetlights, he leaned against a wall for a while, then started walking anywhere. Through his black-blurred vision, light bloomed, then blurred again, over and over. Then Eunseo stopped walking for a moment and looked up at the apartment building before him. The officetel Jin Seunghu had mentioned in passing — where he said he was staying.
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