Desires Chapter 11.1 - My Cha Woojin

A window someone had left open for ventilation. Through that narrow gap, a refreshing, gentle breeze was blowing.

For several days and nights, Song Yeongin, who had stayed awake with eyes open, unable to speak, eat, or sleep with his lips sealed, tasted a dreamlike little heaven. He had woken up feeling so refreshed for the first time in a long while. He wondered if this was the kind of refreshing feeling one would have after sleeping soundly for three days and three nights.

Thin eyelids. The reddened corners of his eyes were moist with wetness, and his lower body was limp and relaxed. The space between his groin was damply wet.

Again, it was another wet dream.

After a very long time, Song Yeongin once again had that debauched and promiscuous fantasy dream. In the dream, the man with a body as sharp as a blade was stooping over, casting a long, dissolute glance at him like a prodigal son.

Just the arc drawn by those cool, long eyes made Song Yeongin’s lower abdomen ache with tightness. It hardened and clung to his stomach as if his insides would burst.

He was laughing in a low voice. That laughter alone was enough to send Song Yeongin into heat. The man sharply raised his tongue and licked his dirty hole. Song Yeongin told him not to, that it was dirty, and pushed away his high, straight nose bridge, the man’s hard head.

Song Yeongin did not mind even if it was a vulgar and promiscuous fantasy dream. It was the only way he could see that man who was not dead. So, that was good enough for him. He wished he could be trapped in that dream forever, never waking up. However, it was a fleeting spring dream.

The one and only spring that had come to his life.

Yearning for that spring, Song Yeongin’s winter was so painful and harsh that he had to endure the severe cold with the threadlike hope that a warm spring would come again someday.

However, once he realized that spring would never come to him again, he had completely lost the reason to endure and the meaning to live. His own fleeting spring dream had vanished mercilessly with the cold, biting wind.

His lower hole throbbed as if someone had prodded it.

As he flinched his trembling thighs, Song Yeongin shivered at the stinging sensation. His eyelashes trembled. His body quivered violently, like the way beasts stiffen right before they die.

He knew this dirty, familiar sensation of falling to the rock bottom mire. There was no way he would not know this feeling. Overwhelmed by the fleeting suspicion and fear that rushed in, Song Yeongin could not make a sound, as if he were a mouse that had been caught dead, his body just trembling like an aspen tree. Rape…. He was certain that his guess was not wrong.

And then, he closed his eyes again. A stream of hot liquid flowed from the corners of his tightly shut eyes to his temples. Song Yeongin did not question why his lower part was torn up and painful, as if someone had rummaged through it.

Song Yeongin was dead like a block of wood. He did not go to the bathroom to wash his body as if in a ritual to cleanse the filth. Nor did he vomit out what was in his stomach. He did not fall into self-loathing.

He just closed his eyes again, his groin still damp from the emission. It felt as if he could have that dream and meet that man if he closed his eyes and fell asleep again. It felt as if he could greet his spring.

Who cares about this outer shell, this empty husk. This body has already been violated countless times. What would be different if it was violated one more time? I can just throw it away. I can just disappear like dirt, like dust….

Song Yeongin would rather have welcomed death. However, there was something he absolutely had to confirm before he died.

One week, one week from now. There was one week left until the day he was scheduled to return to Korea. Yes, if I can just endure that time….

It was not the rape that was scary. Song Yeongin was most afraid that James Han would change his mind about sending him to Korea. Even if his suspicion was true, he could not make an issue out of anything. Whether Cha Woojin was alive. Please, he had to at least confirm that. And after that, he could just die for all to see.

Song Yeongin had to find Cha Woojin. If he was dead, he had to be buried willingly by his side. This was already just an empty shell that should have been buried when his own mother died. That man had deluded him from his terrible loneliness and pain, covering his eyes and bringing him back to life.

Song Yeongin closed his eyes. His fluttering eyelids remained shut for a long time, like a dead person’s.

An unkind life with no peaceful days, in his youth or now. My life is always winter. A continuation of harsh and severe cold. Drip, drip, water droplets fell from the corners of his thin eyes down to his temples.

Song Yeongin pictured the only spring of his life.

The winter, dry with a bone-chilling cold, remembered the past spring when flowers bloomed under the brilliant sun.

🌫️

“Has it been a year. For us.”

“……”

“I, I begged and pleaded with Mr. Han Joohyuk… I barely managed to come here by asking for a favor.”

She stared intently at Song Yeongin’s gaunt, pale face. But her face was just as gaunt and shadowed.

“The reason I came all the way to America to find Mr. Song Yeongin is….”

He had never dreamed that he would encounter her again like this in Montauk. He was only surprised by the fact that James Han had permitted her visit.

He blinked his dazed, slow eyes.

Song Yeongin looked her over very slowly, very leisurely. He was fumblingly searching her graceful and elegant face for any trace that he thought resembled that man in some small way.

“To deliver his belongings….”

Song Yeongin doubted his ears.

“That person is not dead….”

“……”

“He is not dead…! Why are you giving up on Mr. Cha Woojin when you are his only living relative?!”

At Song Yeongin’s sudden outburst of sorrow, Cha Woosun replied with a surprised face.

“Look here. I do not think my brother is dead either. I have always thought he was the kind of guy to come back alive and well even from a pit of fire.”

“……”

“He came back from the brink of death several times. He survived like that when he was eight years old too…! To survive, that little kid forced his fingers down his throat and threw up the poisoned juice until he lost consciousness!”

Tears of pity formed in the eyes of his sister, who had been as upright as a bamboo stalk.

“But, do you know what?! He is just an ordinary human who can also die. He is not a god….”

She, who had always been full of spirit, wore a very weak and exhausted face.

“If he suffers a fatal wound like a bullet penetrating his shoulder and doesn’t get proper surgery, he can die, since he is a human being….”

“……”

“It has already been three months. The chairman and I, my mother. Our family… we have tried everything we could, exhausted every possible means, both legal and illegal…. It got to the point where we called all the supposedly powerful shamans to his residence to perform a ritual.”

“……”

“For people like us to go as far as putting out a public search notice in the media, while revealing all the underpinnings of our family’s private affairs that get gossiped about, is basically the same as stripping down to our underwear and giving up everything.”

“Are you really… unable to find Mr. Cha Woojin?”

Song Yeongin asked back desperately, with a face that looked as if it would collapse at any moment.

“I thought that perhaps you, noona-nim, might know.”

“We are searching for his whereabouts in America too. Since he used to frequent New York as if it were his own front yard. The reason I came all this way is with the feeling of grasping at straws….”

“……”

“I will ask you directly. Mr. Song Yeongin… by any chance, do you know where our Woojin is?”

“……”

“Before he went missing, he left this for Mr. Song Yeongin through lawyer Jung, telling him to pass it on if anything happened to him.”

From her bag, Cha Woosun took out a heavy velvet case that looked somewhat familiar.

What she handed to Song Yeongin was the same wristwatch as his own, the one Cha Woojin had gifted him on his birthday, calling it a wedding gift.

“You know what this is, right?”

“……”

“The moment I saw it, I knew what it was.”

“……”

“Because the only person who would have heard the report that he gifted a 2.7 billion won wedding watch from W&G to Mr. Song Yeongin would be me, the CEO of W&G.”

Song Yeongin was aghast.

“Before going missing, he left just this one thing for Mr. Song Yeongin, without a single word.”

Song Yeongin was at a loss for words. His mind went blank like a white sheet of paper.

“I could not help but assume that my brother’s disappearance might be related to you. That is why I brought this all the way to America.”

Song Yeongin took the watch out of the case she offered. It was indeed the watch he had gifted him.

It was a Patek Philippe platinum metal watch, identical to Cha Woojin’s. It was a precious token of their love, imbued with memories of that man, which he had agonized over whether to take with him until the very end.

“Really, you do not have any idea?”

“I am sorry…. I truly do not know anything. The one who wants him to be alive more than anyone is me.”

“……”

“But, noona-nim… please believe me! Mr. Cha Woojin is not dead…! He is absolutely not dead…!”

Cha Woosun let out a hollow sigh with a vacant expression.

“……Take it. It might be his last keepsake…. It is just that my head cannot really comprehend why he would leave only this for one person, Mr. Song Yeongin, and then leave.”

She took out a business card from her handbag.

“If anything comes to mind, contact me anytime.”

“Please never give up and keep looking for him. I will be able to return to Korea soon, too. If there is anything I can do to help, I will do it.”

Cha Woosun let out a scoff into the air as if in disbelief. Her sharp eyes narrowed, and she asked Song Yeongin with a look of suspicion.

“Do you still, love our Woojin?”

“…Pardon?!”

“I asked if you still love him.”

“……”

When Song Yeongin hesitated in his response to her, Cha Woosun, with a sharp and confident face, grabbed Song Yeongin by the collar. She held the collar in a suspicious grip and whispered in Song Yeongin’s ear.

“If that is the case, do not hide it from me, and bring Woojin before me right now…! Then I will make it so you two can get your relationship acknowledged by the chairman.”

🌫️

Song Yeongin was staring intently at the watch Cha Woojin had left for him.

Why had that man, before his disappearance, arranged for this watch to be delivered to him through a lawyer? Perhaps from her perspective, it was only natural to suspect that Song Yeongin was hiding Cha Woojin.

Lying on the bed, Song Yeongin quietly examined the heavy platinum metal watch, identical to that man’s.

‘Really, you do not have any idea?’

Even if he did have an idea, he could not be stupid enough to disclose such a thing in a place where James Han’s eyes and ears were present.

‘If there is a place where Cha Woojin could hide as if he were dead, avoiding the eyes of the world…….’

Song Yeongin could not help but think of the closed brain-prison of Aschute, which was the core of Aschute and a secret in itself. A tomb where the shames of the highest upper-class figures were sealed. His secret hideout, designed to be perfectly concealed so that no one could find or discover it.

If Cha Woojin was truly hiding there, then he was clearly concealing his existence intentionally and plotting a scheme. If he were to carelessly run his mouth here about the reality of that place, he might put him in grave danger instead.

Therefore, he could not reveal the identity of that place to anyone. Whether he was truly alive or dead was something Song Yeongin had to go find on his own feet and confirm with his own eyes.

While touching the watch, Song Yeongin slowly scanned the back of the metal watch’s bezel. On the back, his English name and Cha Woojin’s name were engraved side by side. His words about it being a wedding gift were not wrong.

That day, at W&G, the Patek Philippe watches that the employee had presented from the showcase all had backs made of a special transparent glass. The watch’s movement was projected entirely onto the back of the watch.

‘See-through case back.’

The employee had explained to Song Yeongin that it was Patek Philippe’s unique signature technique. Song Yeongin examined the transparent see-through case back on the reverse of the watch bezel, where the movement was fully projected.

‘……!’

‘Is… this possible.’

Song Yeongin discovered something strange there. Embedded inside the special glass on the back of the watch, where the movement was transparently projected, was something familiar to his eyes.

Song Yeongin rubbed his eyes again because he could not believe it.

A small metal microcard, not even the size of a single finger joint, about the size of his fingerprint.

Because it was made of a metallic material similar to the internal components, it was enough for someone who did not know to overlook it inadvertently. However, Song Yeongin, the person who had used it himself several times, could recognize it immediately. The identity of the small embedded metal object was the key to the secret hideout that no one but himself could recognize.

That small microcard, not even the size of a single finger joint, was the key to the secret hideout that he had received from Park Sungjae a long time ago, along with the words that because it was specially made with Song Yeongin’s fingerprint for biometric recognition, only Song Yeongin himself could use it.

If Song Yeongin’s guess was correct, this was clearly a hint from Cha Woojin. The fact that he had planted the key to that secret hideout on the back of this watch, which he had left to him as a keepsake, could only be explained as him telling him to come find him at that place on his own feet without anyone knowing.

Song Yeongin held his breath and covered his mouth, afraid that a sound might escape.

A long time ago, he had definitely said that the only person who could freely enter and exit that hideout was him alone. Even Park Sungjae, his longtime subordinate and shadow, could not enter and exit that place carelessly without permission. He had said that only he had the key to that place. Even Park Sungjae, his loyal retainer and confidant, had looked unconvinced and displeased while handing it to him.

His heart began to beat fast, as if it were flickering. This was a hint and a suggestion for the game he had intended.

A reason to live, no matter what, had emerged.

Song Yeongin had to find him. He had to confirm whether he was alive or dead. If this was truly the hint he had left, if all of this was that man’s scheme. Song Yeongin had to bet his everything on finding that place and confirming his survival.

From his mother’s keepsake pouch that he had hidden by the bedside, Song Yeongin took out Cha Woojin’s listening device.

Now, a strange conviction grew that he would be listening to his words from that place. Into the still-active listening device, Song Yeongin whispered softly.

“I will not forgive you if you are not alive.”