Salt Society Chapter 25

Kihyun sat behind Yeonoh, let out a yawn wide enough to tear his mouth, and turned the dryer on to a low heat setting. A low whirring sound began to fill the room. As he ran his hands through the wet strands and shook the dryer to dry the hair, Yeonoh tilted his head back and rested the back of his head right on Kihyun’s lap.

“Don’t move.”

“…”

Seeing how silent he was, he must have been quite annoyed today. Still, he was usually less so with his mother. Whenever he met his father, it usually ended in a massive conflict because Yeonoh didn’t treat him like a human being at all.

Kihyun had heard that during a holiday, Yeonoh had lunged at his father intending to kill him, and the family bodyguards had to rush out to pull him away. Back then, Bumhee even had to put a cast on his hand because his finger had been bent backward. His recovery power was like a monster’s, though, and his finger ligaments were perfectly fine after just over a week.

Because of that incident, his grandfather had ordered him to stay in self-reflection for a while. It was said that Youngwon, who had refrained from visiting the Seongbuk-dong residence since her divorce, even rushed over to try to change the grandfather’s mind when he threatened to take back the stocks scheduled for donation. It was a glimpse into how angry Cho Yeonoh’s grandfather—who valued the eldest grandson above all else—must have been.

Regardless, even though his relationship with his mother wasn’t that severely bad, seeing the deep furrow between his brows made Kihyun think that either she told him to do something he didn’t want to do, or she stopped him from doing something he did want to do, or perhaps both.

“Did you throw a temper tantrum at your mother again?”

At those words, Cho Yeonoh, who had been leaning his head back with his eyes closed, said indifferently.

“Take my side. Or what, is your type older women?”

“Your mother is quite a beauty.”

When Kihyun replied just as impassively, Yeonoh lifted his head and turned to look at Kihyun in irritation.

“Are you crazy? These days, everyone is obsessed with Omegas—. Ha, fuck.”

“What about Omegas.”

When he asked in confusion, Yeonoh turned his head back and shut his mouth. Thinking he would tell him once his temper cooled down, Kihyun didn’t ask twice. The hair was fine and soft but thick, so it took quite a long time to dry.

Still, the texture felt nice and fluffy once it was dry, so Kihyun stroked it a few times more, which made Yeonoh let out a pained groan. Kihyun decided to provide a bit of service for once and told him to get up on the bed.

“Lie face down. I’ll give you a massage.”

“Why, after working all day. Forget it. I’m going to sleep.”

“Lie down, patient.”

When Kihyun tapped his shoulder and spoke again, Cho Yeonoh let out a smirk and lay face down on the bed.

“Hey, you know that even if you do this, your muscles will just knot up and I’ll have to give you a massage later anyway, right?”

“Mhm.”

Giving an answer that was neither a yes nor a no, he placed his hands on Cho Yeonoh’s prone back. He pressed down on the trigger points of the trapezius muscles and performed rolfing for myofascial release, but the guy didn’t let out a single groan as if it didn’t even hurt.

Other people scream in pain when they receive this, but only this guy’s reaction was peculiarly bland, as if he lacked a sense of pain.

“Doesn’t it hurt here?”

“It hurts.”

He was pressing down with his thumbs on the hardened, knotted spots in sync with Yeonoh’s breathing, but since he showed no sign of pain, Kihyun asked if it didn’t hurt. He said it hurt, but his voice was flat. Wondering if he should press harder, Kihyun climbed right on top of the prone man’s buttocks. It was a posture he often used with patients, so there was nothing strange about it. It was the moment he pressed along the spine with both thumbs and applied strong pressure near the sacrum.

“—Hey, get off.”

“Why. Does it hurt here?”

Suddenly, the guy let out a voice that was sunken low, unlike him, so when Kihyun pressed again, he actually jerked his body. Even though the weight of an adult male sitting on top of a prone person would be considerable, it was absurd how he moved without any hindrance.

“What are you doing, you’ll hurt your waist. Stay still, for a bit.”

“Get off.”

Now he was speaking in a voice that was almost a rasp. Wondering what was wrong, Kihyun was about to ask what the matter was, but Yeonoh just bolted upright. Kihyun had no choice but to get up from the guy’s body, nearly falling over in the process.

“What is it. Why are you acting like that. Did it hurt?”

He asked because the movement was strange, but Cho Yeonoh left the room without a word. Kihyun wondered where he was going, and then he heard the bathroom door closing quite loudly. Out of sheer absurdity, Kihyun stared at the door the guy had exited through for a long time. What is it, what’s with him? He seemed to be feeling better while his hair was being dried, but did he get angry again?

Still, his relationship with his mother hadn’t been bad recently, but it seemed Youngwon had nagged him severely today of all days.

After sitting on the bed for a while, Kihyun just flopped backward. His eyes were flickering. Looking at the time, the small hand of the clock was pointing to 10:00 PM. Pushed by the thought that a worker really should sleep before 10, he did not block the oncoming sleep.

In any case, he would surely wake up again when Cho Yeonoh returned to bed, and since he had showered at the hospital, he still had to wash his face and brush his teeth, but the lazy thought occurred to him that he could just do that when he woke up at dawn.

However, Kihyun ended up sleeping soundly until that morning. Cho Yeonoh did not return to the room. No, it seemed he had left the house entirely.

“…What.”

Kihyun, who opened his eyes at exactly 6:00, looked at his phone screen with a bewildered face. There were no messages from Cho Yeonoh, who had completely left the house. Did something urgent happen at the company? Kihyun simply thought that and put it out of his mind.

This was because his morning commute was more urgent.

⏳

As a rule, just having gone to work makes one’s workplace rank 12th in a horoscope, but the unluckiest things tend to happen after arriving at work.

“There’s a limit to ignoring people. Hey, tell the director to come out.”

“Other people are in treatment, so please lower your voice, patient.”

“Where do you get off being so arrogant. Hey, a guy who just does massages and calls it treatment, what did you say?!”

Kihyun’s day was just like that. With a bloodless face, Kihyun was thinking that today his zodiac fortune or his horoscope might be the lowest among the twelve signs and constellations.

While he was having such thoughts, the anger of the middle-aged man in front of him grew even fiercer. The man was originally Kihyun’s charge, but since he didn’t come down from the ward on time when it was time for treatment, Kihyun had made a confirmation call and then gone to look after a task Team Leader Lim had assigned him.

In the meantime, the man had come down and waited for Kihyun, but coincidentally, because all the other teachers were in the middle of treatments or examining new patients, he was left standing awkwardly alone in the middle of the treatment room. The only person left in the athletes’ room was Team Leader Lim; it would have been simple for Team Leader Lim to offer the man a seat and tell him to stay put, but he had just glanced at him, ignored him, left the room, and hadn’t returned.

The man was incensed, saying that he had been left standing on his injured knee, and the sparks were currently flying at Kihyun, who was the one in charge.

“Change my therapist! I feel so damn bad that I can’t receive treatment from a guy like you—!”

Looking at the man whose face had turned bright red as he bellowed at the top of his lungs, seemingly very offended by standing for about five minutes, Kihyun replied with an expressionless face.

“I cannot change the therapist for someone who starts by shouting like this.”

“What? You can’t change it? Who do you think you are! Are you a doctor or something—! A mere nobody of a therapist, huh?!”

The man now started actually pushing Kihyun. There was malice loaded in the touch that thumping his chest. He was wondering what the reason for this was, when the man spoke the answer as if he were someone who knew Kihyun’s question.

“Change the one in charge to an Omega, not some stiff bastard like you—!”

It was to the point of letting out a sigh that the reason for this commotion was such a low-level one. He was caught letting out a low click of his tongue in pity.

“Are you making fun of me now?!”

The man finally struck the side of Kihyun’s head with his hand. Only then did the other teachers rush over to restrain the man. This was why Kihyun thought his fortune today was the twelfth among the zodiac.

In any case, the short commotion came to an end. This was because the administrative manager rushed over and led the man out of the treatment room. In the meantime, Team Leader Lim, who had returned and apparently heard the details from another therapist, called Kihyun—who was holding an ice pack made by Byungju to the side of his head—into the office.

“How many years has it been for you, Mr. So.”

“It is my third year.”

I wonder what he’s going to say now. Kihyun blurred his focus while looking at a sauce stain on Team Leader Lim’s treatment uniform. Getting hit once didn’t feel that unfair. If it hadn’t been Kihyun, another teacher would have suffered the mishap, so it was better that he was the one who took it rather than a female teacher or an Omega teacher.

He had been hit much worse in the military. Even then, Kihyun didn’t feel particularly bad. Inflicting harm on the body cannot break So Kihyun’s soul.

This incident was the same. Kihyun just needs the patient who hit him to be blacklisted so he doesn’t see him at the hospital again. Because if he were assigned to another teacher, he didn’t know how much or how he would harass that teacher. However, the thing Team Leader Lim spat out was completely different.

“You’re not going to sue or anything, right?”

“…”

Kihyun shut his mouth. He wondered why he asked about his years of service, but it was because at three years, one is at the level to roughly know how the hospital works, so it was a way of telling him not to make a fuss over nothing.

“No, I’m not exactly forcing you… I’m just saying it because I figure you know everything there is to know at three years, Mr. So.”