Winter Season Chapter 60

It was impossible to gauge how much time had passed since he entered the bathroom, but no sounds of anyone searching for him could be heard from outside. He had been told the drug could put an adult male to sleep in ten minutes, so he figured that by now, it should be enough. Though he didn’t know exactly what he himself had consumed, he had to complete the assigned task before the effects of the drug spread any further. Yihyeon shut off the shower lever and cautiously opened the door.

The room was silent. Contrary to his worry that the man might still be awake, Jinhyeok was lying on the bed in his suit with his eyes closed. There was no time to feel relieved that the biggest hurdle had been cleared. Yihyeon quickly approached the table and picked up Gu Jinhyeok’s phone.

“Why… won’t it… turn on.”

His hands lacked strength and trembled incessantly. Barely managing to grip the phone with both hands to power it on, Yihyeon pressed various spots on the screen.

Eventually, he discovered a blue lock-shaped icon tucked away in a folder and quickly launched the app. He then pulled the tie pin from his pocket.

After a few clumsy attempts, he finally managed to insert the pin into the phone, causing white text and numbers to flicker across the black screen before vanishing.

Long strings of source code seemed to blink, followed by the appearance of a horizontal loading bar with the number 0 displayed.

It seemed that unlocking it would require some time. Gritting his teeth, Yihyeon held the phone while quickly picking up his clothes from the floor.

Once the lock was released and he found the password, he had to leave this room as quickly as possible. Anxiety onset at the thought that Gu Jinhyeok might rise from the bed at any moment and seize him.

“Ha, hng…”

As he fastened his shirt buttons while keeping his eyes on the phone screen, his hands shook violently. Every time he tried to thread a button, his hand missed several times.

He didn’t even have the mental capacity to think about how strange it was to put back on a shirt stained with wine. Yihyeon breathed heavily as he threaded his arms through his jacket and clumsily tied his necktie.

50, 60….

Watching the gauge rise slowly, Yihyeon clenched his fists tightly. Even while staying still, a tingling thrill rose from deep within his stomach, making his lower body ache persistently.

Fearing that if someone so much as touched him, a moan would escape instead of an answer, he panted while covering his mouth with both hands.

After a while, the number 100 appeared and the gauge was completely filled; the screen shifted and began outputting strange characters. Yihyeon, who stuck the tie pin back into the center of his tie haphazardly after removing it from the phone, lifted the device to clearly see the numbers appearing one by one.

6, 5, 8, 3, 9… 2.

The blinking screen stopped at the final digit and remained motionless. There was no way to know if Gu Seunghyeok was watching the situation through the camera attached to the tie pin, but his work here was finished.

Yihyeon quickly turned off the phone and set it back down in its original place. Fortunately, Gu Jinhyeok remained lying still with his eyes closed in the same posture as before.

“Puff, puff.”

As the tension broke from successfully finishing the assigned task, the drug’s effects began to run even wilder. Mentally, he knew that he should drink Jinhyeok’s wine—which contained the sleeping pills—and fall asleep beside him to avoid suspicion, but his immediate priority was escaping the heat that felt as though it were burning his entire body.

As he opened the door and stepped out with staggering steps, the softly lit hallway began to spin. Leaning against the wall, Yihyeon panted as he barely managed to take one step at a time.

Though he thought to himself that he must not be caught in this state by others, his mind was frantic due to his boiling insides and his vision, which threatened to go dim.

His lower body, already swollen to its limit, felt suffocatingly tight inside his underwear. He felt a sense of shame, as if he had become a beast. There was no way to stop his breathing from quickening or his eyes and face from flushing red.

Just then, he spotted the waiter who had entered earlier to give the medicine to Gu Jinhyeok passing by in the hallway ahead. Approaching the man with urgent steps, Yihyeon grabbed his wrist to stop him.

“Please, please help me, hng…”

Seeing Yihyeon suddenly appear and grab his wrist, the waiter’s eyes went wide, but upon confirming his face, his expression shifted to one of “as expected.”

He knew that the substance he had delivered to Jinhyeok was a high-purity aphrodisiac. However, Yihyeon, unable to see the waiter’s expression, clung to the man’s arm.

“A place… hng… with no people…”

It was at the moment he was stammering out words while suppressing the urge to cling to anyone and rub his body against them. He suddenly felt a force gripping his shoulders, and before he could realize it, his body was swung around.

“Ngh…!”

Seunghyeok’s face was reflected in eyes stained with terror and confusion. Because of the appearance of a person who shouldn’t have been here, Yihyeon’s eyes widened and then turned to despair. This was because there was no disaster greater than meeting Gu Seunghyeok in a situation like this.

As soon as Yihyeon realized the person holding him was Gu Seunghyeok, he hunched his body and tried to pull his shoulder away.

But it was futile. Seunghyeok, who was looking at Yihyeon with fierce, pitch-black eyes, pulled his slender arm and began walking toward somewhere with rapid strides.

“Let go, hng, let go of this…”

Yihyeon swung his arm while breathing heavily, but Seunghyeok did not budge.

The place they arrived at, with Yihyeon following behind Seunghyeok with steps that were practically being dragged, was one of the rooms along the hallway, similar to the one he had entered with Gu Jinhyeok. Seunghyeok entered abruptly, locked the door, and pushed Yihyeon onto the bed as if throwing him.

“Ha, ha…”

Yihyeon curled his waist while burying his face in the bed. His brain could not keep up with his flickering vision, making it feel as though the world were spinning. With every breath in and out, his thin shoulders rose and fell. Seeing Yihyeon so completely disheveled, a sight he had never seen before, Seunghyeok chewed and swallowed a curse through his teeth.

He had rushed up here without a second thought after seeing the screen shake unstably while he was checking Gu Jinhyeok’s phone. His stomach churned at the thought that if he had been even a little later in finding Yihyeon, he would have shown this pathetic state to others.

“Kwon Yihyeon, get it together.”

Until he heard the conversation between Jinhyeok and Yihyeon through the wiretap attached to the tie pin, Seunghyeok had thought that what Yihyeon consumed was a mild aphrodisiac intended merely to heighten sensitivity. However, Yihyeon’s current appearance looked more painful than aroused.

Seeing Yihyeon trembling and beginning to rub his bulging crotch against the bed, anger surged before disgust. Even when he had mockingly proposed this job to him, seeing how dry and calm he was when asking for a loan, he hadn’t imagined things would turn out like this.

He was annoyed at himself for dragging in a kid who had absolutely no connection to this sort of thing just to screw him over, and he was angry at Kwon Yihyeon for being stupid enough to accept and swallow an aphrodisiac just to get the job done.

“How much of that drug did he use, damn it.”

Looking around, Seunghyeok spotted a water bottle on the drink bar and quickly brought a glass of water. He slid his arm behind the back of the curled-up Yihyeon and lifted him. A pale face wet with cold sweat was close. Seunghyeok grit his teeth and brought the glass to Yihyeon’s lips.

“Drink some water first.”

However, Yihyeon struggled to get away from Seunghyeok and ended up slapping Seunghyeok’s hand away. The spilled water soaked Yihyeon’s shirt and seeped into the white bedding.

The white shirt, now blotchy with wine and water stains, clung to Yihyeon’s chest, revealing his skin beneath. Perhaps the sudden chill brought him to his senses, as Yihyeon blinked his eyes urgently.

“Hng, hng… Gu Seunghyeok.”

Bzzz, bzzzz.

Over Yihyeon’s faint, crawling voice, the sharp sound of vibration began to overlap. Seunghyeok quickly pulled his phone from his pocket and connected the call without even checking the caller. His gaze remained fixed on Yihyeon.

— Hyung-nim, I checked the underground generator room warehouse, and there’s a bit of a problem—

“Hang up. We’ll talk later.”

— Hyung, Hyung-nim…! This is something you need to come down and see—

The sentence was cut short and ended in silence. He had just rushed up frantically after leaving the task of opening the locked warehouse and checking for the presence of the drugs to Taeshik.