Winter Season Chapter 33

With those words, Jinhyeok’s gaze dropped. It was a unilateral expression signaling that the conversation was over. Yihyeon started to say something but closed his mouth and gave a bow.

Here, and there, his opinion did not matter.

“Mr. Yihyeon, are you going somewhere after work? You look busy.”

Someone spoke to Yihyeon as he began packing his things ahead of quitting time. Yihyeon checked to see if he was being too loud about preparing to leave before opening his mouth.

“The Director asked me to have dinner with him.”

“Oh my, the Director?”

The woman’s eyes widened in surprise at Yihyeon’s words.

“He isn’t the type to hold people back for personal business once work is over.”

He couldn’t know the reason for the sudden dinner appointment, but for Yihyeon, it was a golden opportunity to get even a little closer to him. Tension and worry were simultaneously evident in his fingertips as he straightened his clothing.

A moment later, Jinhyeok emerged from the office and caught Yihyeon’s eye with a nudge of his gaze. Yihyeon said his goodbyes to the people in the secretary’s office, telling them he would see them tomorrow, and followed behind Jinhyeok.

The place Jinhyeok took Yihyeon to was a Korean full-course restaurant built in the style of a high-end traditional hanok with private rooms. Whether he was a frequent visitor, an employee who recognized him from the entrance guided them to a detached annex inside.

Facing Gu Jinhyeok across the table, Yihyeon felt as if his mouth was parching up. Unlike Yihyeon, who kept drinking water to hide his nervous face, Jinhyeok looked composed.

There was no conversation between the two until the sliding paper door opened and dishes began to be set on the table one by one. While thinking he should be the first to say something, what Yihyeon discovered was a scar on the back of Jinhyeok’s hand.

“You have… a scar on your hand.”

The scar remaining as a dark mark in the center of his left hand looked as though it had been there for a long time. Because it looked like the trace of a large wound, he spoke up, and Jinhyeok looked down at his own hand indifferently.

“Ah. It’s a wound from being bitten by a dog when I was young. I received a well-bred fighting dog as a birthday present, and the bite I got while training it still remains.”

A fighting dog as a birthday present. Imagining the image of a dog barking ferociously and lunging at a person, Yihyeon’s brow furrowed automatically.

“I’ve heard that… such dogs might keep doing that once they’ve tasted blood. That one has to be careful.”

“That’s right. Usually, euthanizing them is the standard. Because there’s no guarantee that a dog that bit its master once won’t do it again.”

“…”

“But it was a bit too wasteful of a dog for that. I kept it, and after it died later, I buried it well.”

He had brought up the topic thinking it was a scar from a simple accident, but he grew solemn the more he heard the story. When Yihyeon fell silent, glancing at his mood, Jinhyeok let out a breathy laugh.

“It looks like Mr. Yihyeon has hurt his hand too.”

He had managed to discover the scar on the palm of Yihyeon’s right hand. Yihyeon instinctively clenched his fist as he spoke.

“I hurt it while working when I was young. The wound was quite deep.”

“Dear me.”

“…We both have scars on our hands.”

When he mentioned the commonality he had barely found, the man let out a smirk. He was an opponent with whom there was nothing else to talk about besides such trivial things. It also meant they lived in different worlds.

The man ate with movements that lacked any waste. Around the time Yihyeon was awkwardly continuing to use his chopsticks in a silence devoid of even a single conversation, he suddenly opened his mouth.

“With Seunghyeok.”

“…”

“I heard you went to the same high school.”

The hand that was putting down the chopsticks trembled slightly. The fact that he had attended the same school as Gu Seunghyeok was something that could be known just by looking at the resume he had submitted for appearances, but his spine chilled as if he had been caught by the scruff of his neck.

“If it was before he dropped out, Mr. Yihyeon would have been in his third year.”

“…Dropped out?”

“You didn’t know? He went to juvenile reformatory in his second year or so, came out after a year, and then quit just like that, I believe. That bastard is a middle school graduate. It’s laughable that a middle school graduate bastard who is nothing has a business card made and is sitting there, leaving the decent employees alone.”

Yihyeon’s pulse quickened at the news of Gu Seunghyeok’s past which he hadn’t known. It was even more so because after transferring to a school in a far-off different region in his third year of high school, it was information he had consciously tried to avoid.

As Yihyeon’s expression turned serious, Jinhyeok also put down his chopsticks and crossed his arms. He stared at Yihyeon as if observing him, wearing a fishy smile with only one corner of his mouth pulled up.

“This is just personal curiosity. What kind of deal did you make with Gu Seunghyeok?”

“…Pardon?”

“You don’t look like a pair that’s particularly good enough to be called friends. And as for a pair that’s sleeping together, Gu Seunghyeok acts too fastidious in that regard.”

“…”

“Doesn’t that leave only a transaction?”

It seemed he failed to control his expression for a moment. He felt his heart drop as if falling from the top of a roller coaster. He merely parted his lips, wondering how to answer, before finally managing to feign composure and speak.

“…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What, did he tell you to steal the secrets of an ongoing project?”

Jinhyeok only smirked while looking at Yihyeon.

“An intern position that wasn’t even needed suddenly opened up, and you entered as if you’d been waiting; I’d be a moron not to realize.”

The conviction that Gu Jinhyeok must have already finished a background check on him flashed through his mind.

After hearing that he had attached someone to tail them, he had thought that he might have noticed, but he hadn’t expected him to bring it up so directly. Yihyeon tried hard to compose his expression so as not to be caught being flustered.

“It might be disappointing, but important documents go out directly without passing through the secretary’s office, so there won’t be any information to take. Will you still be okay with that?”

The fortunate thing was that he assumed Seunghyeok and his goal was the secrets of the project.

As long as you don’t know the fact that the target is you, Gu Jinhyeok. Yihyeon looked down with eyes framed by thick lashes and replied in a small voice.

“It’s nothing like that. I want to learn diligently until the period is filled.”

“You’re diligent in useless ways.”

Jinhyeok, who nodded, started eating again, but Yihyeon just sat still. He didn’t feel like putting anything in his mouth again, so he was just picking at his food with his chopsticks when there was a knock on the paper door and it burst open.

“To see you in a place like this.”

The person who suddenly appeared was Gu Seunghyeok, dressed in a low-saturation blue suit. Beside him, an employee dressed in a hanok stood restlessly. While Yihyeon’s eyes went wide in surprise at his sudden appearance, Jinhyeok picked up a napkin with a composed face.

“Where did you learn the manners of bursting into someone else’s dinner?”

“Since I heard it’s not just anyone but my hyung who is here, shouldn’t I show my face as a duty of a younger brother?”

At Jinhyeok’s cold words, Seunghyeok replied with a sly attitude.

“It also doesn’t suit my temperament to push a perfectly fine friend into the lion’s den and pretend not to know.”

It was a statement that seemed to acknowledge he knew Gu Jinhyeok had already caught on to the relationship between the two.

“I suppose you do know that the place you pushed him into is a lion’s den?”

“Why are you like that? Still, he was carefully selected to match hyung’s taste. Don’t treat him too roughly.”

Even at the sarcastically spat words, there was no change in Jinhyeok’s expression. He glanced down at Yihyeon with an indifferent face and let out a languid laugh.

“You’re right, he is quite alright.”

“…”

“He’s pretty.”

At the conversation being held as if discussing an object right in front of the person involved, Yihyeon let out a self-mocking laugh. He felt as if he had become the prize placed in the middle of a poker table where everyone knew each other’s hands.

Seunghyeok watched Yihyeon sitting quietly without making eye contact with him even once, and scanned the inside of his cheek with his tongue. Seeing him with a clear face, having erased his expression, his calm heart began to oscillate crookedly. Seunghyeok, who arched an eyebrow because his mood was twisted, let out a hollow laugh and sneered.

“Isn’t it disgusting to say a bastard with the same thing attached is pretty?”

“I don’t know. Rather than that, your attitude of not knowing where you belong and where you don’t is starting to get a little annoying.”

He could feel people passing outside the open door glancing in. The employees also began to dissuade Seunghyeok with gentle tones as if they had been waiting. Seunghyeok, who scanned the surroundings, muttered a small “Fuck.”

“Gu Seunghyeok, are you going to keep staying there? Or should we get up?”