Dirty Sweet Baby Chapter 31

Staggering, Heeheon tried to prop himself up with his rifle. He tried to lean on it like a cane to steady himself, but he couldn’t straighten his posture at all. His vision flickered on and off. His senses grew dull. It was agonizing. It hurt. It was painful. And finally, his consciousness was severed.

As Heeheon collapsed to the floor, Cha Moogyul caught him in his arms.

He held him in his embrace, looking down with hardened eyes. The unconscious Heeheon’s face was as pale as a sheet of white paper. His body, burning with a high fever, was boiling hot. Cha Moogyul slowly reached out and wiped Heeheon’s cheek. The creature’s black blood had splattered on it.

He gently rubbed the blood away with the rainwater and neatly tidied the disheveled hair. His eyes, watching over him, were dark. Soon, the superpower that had lit up the sky died down, and all of creation was hidden behind the heavy rain and darkness.

Submerged in unconsciousness, Heeheon drifted through fragments of memory. Like a person walking backward through the desert, overcome with loneliness, Heeheon traced the path of his life in reverse. The familiarity that had now grown dull and worn faced the moments when it was still vivid and new.

The first time he killed a creature. The first time he held a rifle. The first time he awakened as a guide. The first time he became an adult. The first time he drank alcohol. The first time…

The first time he met Cha Moogyul.

It was a formal meeting of the families.

He was 16 at the time, and Baek Heeheon was 17. His mother had taken him to a fancy Korean formal dining restaurant, saying there was someone she wanted him to meet. He wasn’t nervous. He had seen Mister Kwon-il often before, and he was friendly, as he would always give Heeheon all sorts of gifts on important days. He also knew from before that Mister Kwon-il had a son who was a year younger than him.

In truth, there had already been several similar meetings. Each time, Heeheon went to the restaurant after being told there was someone to introduce, but Cha Moogyul never came. One table. Four chairs. Four people reserved. But it was always just the three of them who sat down.

It seemed they had finished their meal with his empty seat between them about five or six times—just Heeheon, his mother, and Mister Kwon-il.

Then, one day. It was raining heavily that day, too. It was the rainy season. Just like these days…

In the middle of starting their meal with one empty seat, just as usual, he burst through the door of the private room, drenched to the bone in rainwater, dressed in a neat school uniform. At first, he couldn’t believe this was the younger boy, one year his junior. Even back then, Cha Moogyul was as tall as any adult and had a large frame. Above all, that uniquely cool gaze of his was not something a normal kid his age would have.

Appearing late like that, he didn’t touch a single bite of food after he arrived, didn’t say a single word, and just sat there before leaving in the middle of the meal. When Heeheon came back from a quick trip to the restroom and saw his chair empty again, his heart strangely sank a little, and he grew concerned.

Honestly, he had thought, what kind of ill-mannered, crazy 16-year-old is this? He wondered how Mister Kwon-il was raising his child, and if all conglomerate heirs were such bastards. And why was his face so handsome? Was he an aspiring model or actor? He even got a little irritated.

Then, from a certain point on, Cha Moogyul’s empty seat kept catching his eye.

Will he not come again?

Will he not come next time?

When will he come again?

Why did he get soaked in the rain that day?

Did he not have an umbrella?

Why did he never show up for their appointments?

Is he against his father’s remarriage?

Does he hate our mom?

Because we’re poor? Because we’re a single-parent family with nothing?

Or is there another reason?

After always being absent, why did he only come that day?

Why did he leave without saying a word?

What is he thinking?

Will he ever come again…?

Next time, too.

His empty seat…

From that day on, wherever he went, the sight of an empty chair would first make him think of Cha Moogyul. When it rained, he would think of Cha Moogyul. When he saw Mister Kwon-il, he would think of Cha Moogyul. Even when he heard the news of his mom and Mister Kwon-il’s marriage, he only thought of Cha Moogyul.

The image of Cha Moogyul walking to the empty chair and sitting down repeated endlessly. Even looking at a closed door, he felt like he would open it and walk in, and that this time, he would say at least a single word.

So, in truth, Baek Heeheon doesn’t really know either.

The grandiose expression of “love at first sight” is rampant in the world, and he had determinedly said that it was ominous at first sight, that it was Cha Moogyul from the very beginning, but in reality, looking back, the beginning was just something so trivial.

He had just repeatedly mulled it over, chewed on it again and again, taken it out of his heart to look at, thought about it until it was worn out in his head, and then, at some point, had the bad luck to realize.

That something was strange.

It can’t be. It must be curiosity. It must be displeasure. I’m conscious of him because he’s going to be my little brother. Even as he tried to dismiss it lightly, a sense of unease steadily grew. Because from a certain point, Cha Moogyul’s existence bothered him more than his mother’s marriage. It was an inexplicable thing. For a person to contemplate another person to such a degree is impossible without deep interest and intense emotion, and Baek Heeheon had never in his life felt that level of motivation for anyone else. He thought he probably never would in the future, either. Still, until then, he comforted himself that it was nothing.

The wedding proceeded safely, and grandly.

Baek Heeheon and Cha Moogyul became family, and he finally sat in the once-empty seat.

Only then did a curse escape Heeheon’s lips.

His gaze began to greedily follow only him. Cha Moogyul’s way of speaking, his actions, his voice, his habits, his movements, the light laugh he would let out or his cold gaze, the heartlessness or cruelty he sometimes showed, the Moogyul-like completeness that needed nothing else, a solitary, unique perfection. Every piece of him that made him who he was was captivating. If he made one small mistake, he would stare, entranced, and at times, the impulse to touch him would surge up unexpectedly.

To be precise, he wanted to hold him with his hands and keep him there. In case he left again without a word.

In case there was an empty chair again.

He hated that, and because of that, he just realized, I’m fucked.

He thought that this wouldn’t do, that he should distance himself a little from Cha Moogyul. That was another trivial beginning.

Baek Heeheon began to avoid Cha Moogyul, to run away, and the more he did, the more he thought of him. This isn’t right. I think it’s getting serious now. I have to shake it off. I have to stop. I have to get away. I shouldn’t be bound to Cha Moogyul. I should just go back to how things were… to the Baek Heeheon of the time before I knew him. But there was no way that could happen.

Because Baek Heeheon had never once had difficulty with choices and decisions, and had never come to dislike something he had once liked.

He liked Cha Moogyul. He really liked him. He was just drawn to him. If one were to dig into the feelings of the young and innocent Baek Heeheon, that was all there was to it. It was thin, simple, a shallow depth with nothing to explain.

It was only that much… but dragging it out for eight years had turned it into such a mess.

Cha Moogyul, who had been a puddle shallow enough to just wet his ankles, had now become Baek Heeheon’s ocean. It was vast, frightening, inescapable, and he was mercilessly swept away. It seemed only natural to drown in it. Now, he might even be glad to be drowned by him. After all, even now, Heeheon was dying at his hands every moment.

He would look at an empty chair and think of Cha Moogyul, look at a closed door and think of Cha Moogyul, wondering when Cha Moogyul would come, when they would meet again, what they would talk about—it was nothing but such longings. It was obvious that even when his breath ceased and he was in his coffin, he would be thinking of Cha Moogyul. Because even Cha Moogyul’s absence was Cha Moogyul to Heeheon.

Because he was always alone, but they were always together.

Baek Heeheon was just Cha Moogyul.

Eight years were Cha Moogyul.

Running away was Cha Moogyul, and turning away was Cha Moogyul; he did so even knowing it was futile. He couldn’t escape. This was an intimate punishment to be hidden in his gut for a lifetime, an irreversibility. Until his last breath is drawn and he closes his eyes, Baek Heeheon will be with Cha Moogyul. They will enter the crematorium together and be buried together in the cemetery as ashes. The concept of an end was, in fact, non-existent for Heeheon.

‘…Ah.’

A faint light flickered on his closed eyelids.

A shadow moved in front of his eyes, drawing closer and then moving away.

Heeheon roused his consciousness and tried to get up. But his exhausted body was lumped together like hardened candle wax and couldn’t move. Heeheon could only vaguely sense something in front of him.

What he thought was just a shadow approached and slowly touched his forehead. The cool body temperature was familiar. The feel of the large, firm hand was also carved into Heeheon’s soul, distinct as a tattoo. Cha Moogyul was checking his temperature by placing a hand on his forehead.

“Hoo.”

Then, he heard the sound of a short, falling breath.

It was a trace of him, too short to be a sigh, yet a strange lamentation lingered in it for it to be just a breath. Cha Moogyul removed his hand from his forehead. Just as he thought he had moved away, the hand approached again. This time, it pulled the blanket up, tucking it in carefully up to Heeheon’s neck. Only then did Heeheon realize he was lying in a bed. A deep body wash scent emanated from his body.

The cool citrus and musky wood scent that had come from Cha Moogyul was now also coming from his own body.