Salt Society Chapter 10

I was able to leave work only after being overwhelmed by tasks like that all day. Today, there was no contact from that bastard. Thinking it was for the best since I did not want to see his face anyway, I stripped off my clothes as soon as I arrived home and showered. I wondered how long it had been since I could undress in my own home without feeling self-conscious.

After grabbing a quick, makeshift meal, I sat on the sofa in front of the TV and cracked open a beer can, but I had no memory of what happened after that. I must have fallen asleep lying straight on the sofa.

Lately, I had been lacking sleep because that bastard Cho Yeonoh kept coming over to my house. Thinking I should turn off the TV and sleep properly in bed, I brushed my teeth and was coming out of the bathroom when I heard a noise at the front door.

Kihyun had no choice but to let out a sigh. It was obvious who it was. Feeling that it was better to face it than to suffer the anticipation, he approached the front door and opened it before the doorbell could even ring.

“Oh, Mr. So!”

Manager Yoo, Cho Yeonoh’s secretary, was standing there with a face drenched in sweat, as if he had been just about to press the bell. As soon as he saw Kihyun, his expression changed to one of pure relief. Kihyun frowned slightly.

“Is Cho Yeonoh drunk?”

“…That is… yes, he is.”

Manager Yoo answered with a look of shame. Knowing it was not Manager Yoo’s fault, Kihyun simply nodded. In any case, if he was drunk, it was obvious he was sitting in the car in the parking lot refusing to come up.

He had come this far because he told them to go to Kihyun’s house, but once they arrived, Cho Yeonoh must have stubbornly insisted on staying there until he sobered up. As for Manager Yoo, who needed to go home, he had no choice but to send an S.O.S. to Kihyun like this.

Understanding Manager Yoo’s situation, Kihyun stepped out of the entrance in his short sleeves. Rubbing his cool forearms with his hands, he asked Manager Yoo.

“But Manager Yoo, why do you look so exhausted?”

“Ah, my wife told me that if I come home late again today, I should consider myself kicked out. I wanted to hand him over, I mean handle him, I mean… get him safely home early and leave work.”

“You are working very hard.”

Since he knew the hardships of being a fellow employee, he offered his sincere condolences to Manager Yoo, and they went down to the parking lot together in the elevator. He did not understand why Cho Yeonoh hated showing him his drunken state when he could just come up.

If it was a relationship Cho Yeonoh wanted to protect so much that he even thought about having So Kihyun rely on others to satisfy his desires, Kihyun felt he could at least show his drunken side comfortably.

“Oh dear, the Director is sleeping…”

Inside the car they reached, Cho Yeonoh was asleep with his arms crossed and his head bowed. It did not sit well with Kihyun that the guy who had caused him such agony all day was sleeping with such an indifferent face.

“Where did he drink?”

“That… Haha…”

Manager Yoo gave a laugh that was worse than saying nothing. He probably drank with the kind of person that made the answer difficult. What Cho Gyudeok, Cho Yeonoh’s grandfather, had entrusted to Yeonoh was the Haeseong Foundation and the Naban Gallery, an art museum established by Haeseong. Cho Yeonoh, who had no connection to art, sat in the position of Director of Naban Gallery, handling matters of money laundering and taxation while waiting for the kingdom of Haeseong to one day fall into his hands.

Saying he had been drinking likely meant he had a dinner meeting while handing over paintings to a politician or a buyer for money laundering purposes. Otherwise, a guy whose alcohol limit was four cans of beer would not be drunk enough to fall asleep in the car like that.

Kihyun felt sorry for the guy who filled his sleep deficiency with naps due to insomnia, and since he was going to sleep anyway, he wanted him to change his clothes and sleep comfortably. Kihyun let out a sigh and turned to Manager Yoo.

“Give the keys to me, and you should go home now, Manager Yoo. It is already late.”

“Ah, would that be alright?”

Manager Yoo put on a sorry face, but because his personality—which Kihyun had come to know over several years—had a considerably thick-skinned side to it, Kihyun only half-believed that expression and smiled. Manager Yoo, perhaps aware that Kihyun knew his personality inside and out, simply gave a grin.

After receiving the car keys and seeing Manager Yoo off, Kihyun opened the back seat door and woke Cho Yeonoh.

“Wake up, Cho Yeonoh.”

“…”

But the other man did not budge. It was just as Kihyun clicked his tongue softly and reached out to grab Yeonoh’s waist to pull him out.

“Ugh!”

Cho Yeonoh pulled Kihyun into a hug. Out of surprise, an exclamation escaped him. Kihyun blinked his eyes. Cho Yeonoh was still asleep. Since he was not the type to have rough sleeping habits, it was absurdly strange that he would suddenly pull him into a hug.

To make matters worse, the guy tightened his grip on the hugging Kihyun’s waist, buried his head in the nape of his neck, and inhaled. The breath made the nape of his neck feel ticklish.

“…Cho Yeonoh.”

Even though his voice lowered from sudden irritation, Yeonoh showed no intention of waking up. Just as Kihyun was about to push his forehead away.

“You smell good.”

With a voice that was far too clear to be called drunk, Yeonoh whispered. The breath reaching the nape of his neck provided a terribly suggestive sensation.

Kihyun frowned like a person suffering from a dizzy spell, then his face slowly returned to an expressionless mask.

“Stop joking and get up. Let’s go in.”

Lifting a large Alpha who was limp like water-soaked cotton was a difficult task even for Kihyun. He tried to pull him by the waist, but the fact that it would not work was both annoying and ridiculous.

Fortunately, whether he had come to his senses or not, Cho Yeonoh sent a hazy gaze toward Kihyun and smirked. Just witnessing the moment his eyes, which had been unmoored, became clear as they focused on him made Kihyun feel as if the very center of his heart was splitting neatly in two. The feeling of a lake that had been frozen all winter cracking open at the news of spring. Kihyun felt a helpless sense of vulnerability.

Even in that moment, the mole on his high nose bridge, looking as if someone had deliberately placed it there, was beautiful. It was not a moment to be falling for his looks all over again, so he clicked his tongue and tried to straighten his waist, but Cho Yeonoh reached out and stroked Kihyun’s cheek. It was a tender touch. Just as it always was…

“Is all your anger gone now?”

The content spoken in that clear voice was outrageous. The gentle tone in which he asked, as if comforting someone who had been angry for no reason, was absurd. However, when he asked that, Kihyun could not give any answer.

Right. Why was I angry? Since I am going to stay by your side anyway. Since I cannot leave. What reason is there to specifically get angry and only make things awkward between you and me? It is not as if I can discard you, who are stroking my cheek this very moment, and declare that I am going to stop all these joke-like antics. So Kihyun was always no different from a dog that had lost a fight in front of Cho Yeonoh.

Kihyun straightened his waist without answering and pulled his upper body out from where it had been halfway inside the back seat. Cho Yeonoh, who rarely got dead drunk despite having a low tolerance, stepped out of the back seat perfectly fine on his own feet.

As expected, he had not been asleep, but must have been sitting there simply waiting to go up to Kihyun’s house after he sobered up. There was no way a guy as picky as him about where he slept would just close his eyes in the back seat of a car.

Kihyun, knowing that this was Cho Yeonoh’s drinking habit, glanced at Yeonoh who was standing perfectly well, and silently turned around to head toward the elevator by himself.

He heard the sign of the other following behind him. After pressing the up button and waiting while looking only at the numbers appearing on the display, Cho Yeonoh, who had staggered slightly while walking, quickly regained his balance and walked normally again. He must have been quite drunk.

Kihyun let out a sigh and looked at the display again. When the elevator door opened after arriving at the basement, he went inside, pressed the door open button, and waited quietly. Yeonoh entered the elevator, strode over, and wrapped his arms around Kihyun’s waist. He felt the other leaning slightly on him.

“You’re heavy.”

“What did you do today? No contact from you.”

“A bit late for that.”

It was a bit late for such talk, considering they were not the type to report to each other exactly what they did today. Kihyun just stared blankly ahead. Perhaps because he had been drinking, Cho Yeonoh’s body temperature felt warmer than usual.

If he were leaning with all his weight, it would be quite heavy, but since he just had his head resting on Kihyun’s shoulder, it was not unbearably heavy. Even so, the reason he found himself saying something unpleasant for once seemed to be because he was strangely conscious of Cho Yeonoh’s presence today.

The sensation that had touched the nape of his neck was still sticking to that spot, tickling him. Cho Yeonoh’s arms were hugging Kihyun’s waist. The sound of the elevator going up could be heard faintly. Kihyun squeezed his eyes shut and opened them. Fortunately, it seemed they had arrived just then, as the elevator door opened with a ding.

“…Get off.”

He felt pathetic for barely managing to squeeze out that one sentence in a voice that had sunk in the meantime. He felt he had no pride, considering what had happened just yesterday.

However, because So Kihyun had already given up on certain parts regarding Cho Yeonoh, such self-reproach soon lost its strength and withered away. It was a self-reproach that would not even last until the front door of Kihyun’s house. Kihyun had lived his life ignoring problems that could not be solved no matter how much he agonized over them.

Yeonoh, having stepped out of the elevator, pressed the keypad of the door lock instead of Kihyun. Even if he looked normal at a glance, the current Cho Yeonoh was in a state of being drunk enough to not remember today’s events tomorrow morning.