Chapter 1: You Are Lying There

Sniffle, sniffle—

I was taking a short nap when I heard someone continuously crying beside me.

‘For crying out loud, who’s crying in a library?’

I tried to go back to sleep, thinking they would stop soon.

But…

Sniffle, sniffle—

The crying only got louder, and it showed no sign of stopping.

In the end, I rubbed my sleepy eyes and opened them.

But then…

‘Huh?’

‘Why am I lying on a bed?’

There were seven hours and thirty minutes left until my next exam.

The only class I had today had ended early because its exam was in the morning, but the problem was my online lecture.

Because of the nature of online-lecture exams, the test time inevitably got pushed into the evening.

It was a painfully long stretch of free time.

But I was also a painfully long-distance commuter, so going home wasn’t really an option.

I felt awkward about spending that many hours sitting in a café, and I didn’t want to waste the money either, so I decided to go to the university library.

As expected for exam season, every seat in the library reading room was occupied.

The only seats left were a few scattered around the reference-material section.

As usual, I filled my stomach at a convenience store, then sprawled across one of the library tables and took a nap.

I had been exhausted from commuting since early morning, so I slept quite a while.

Even so, I still had six hours left.

In the end, I decided to do something I normally never did.

That something was…

Reading!

It wasn’t as though I wanted to read some boring major-related textbook, though.

Instead, I headed toward the shelves containing the few fantasy and mystery novels in the library.

I normally never read books, and I had no particular interest in fantasy or romance, so I figured I’d just pick something that looked interesting from the title.

And then I spotted one.

The title of the book was .

Unlike the other books, whose titles rambled on about reincarnating in another world or falling in love or whatever, this one had a simple elegance to it.

More than anything, I liked the plain red hardcover, with nothing but the title embossed on it.

The title gave off a vaguely mysterious or romantic feeling, but it still seemed preferable to fantasy or martial-arts novels, genres I knew absolutely nothing about.

Of course, despite the title being Confinement, I never imagined it would contain anything particularly risqué.

This was a university library, after all.

I opened the book.

The story went roughly like this.

First, the protagonist’s name was Park Ha-min.

He was an impoverished eighteen-year-old high school student who had been raised by his grandmother without ever knowing his parents.

And the book went into an absurd amount of detail describing this ‘high schooler.’

His skin was incredibly, unbelievably pale, his eyes were large, and his hair was pitch-black.

In short, according to the novel’s own description, he was ridiculously pretty.

I assumed it was probably protagonist privilege.

Thus began his tearful life of poverty, attending school while secretly working a part-time job that the school prohibited.

One day, while working an early-morning shift, the protagonist met a wealthy young man.

His name was Yoo Hyun.

Just one syllable for a given name.

He had sharp eyes, was tall, had an excellent physique, and was unbelievably handsome.

To top it all off, he was the youngest son of an extremely wealthy family.

This perfect young master was exceptionally kind to the protagonist.

He offered to keep the protagonist’s part-time job a secret from the school in exchange for spending time with him.

After that, he repeatedly came to the convenience store where the protagonist worked in the early mornings, bought him delicious things, and kept him company.

Eventually, he even transferred from his prestigious private high school to the protagonist’s school and began bringing him luxurious lunches every day.

The protagonist developed an enormous amount of affection for the rich young man, thinking of him as a wonderful senior.

Sometimes, he heard unpleasant rumors about Yoo Hyun, or got the feeling that Yoo Hyun was trying to separate him from his friends.

But because he believed his senior was a good person, he convinced himself that there was no way any of that could be true.

Then, one day…

As usual, the protagonist was working his part-time job after drinking a beverage his senior had bought him and eating some snacks.

Suddenly, his surroundings became hazy, and he fell asleep.

When he opened his eyes, he found himself lying on a huge bed.

When he tried to move, something around his ankle clanked.

He had been shackled.

Just then, his wealthy senior entered the room, and the protagonist innocently asked him what was going on.

‘What the hell? It was you, Hyun-hyung. I woke up and suddenly found myself tied up on a bed, so you seriously scared me. But, hyung, what kind of prank is this?’

Then Yoo Hyun, the ridiculously handsome son of a wealthy family, answered:

‘This isn’t a prank.’

‘I’m the one who locked you up.’

And that was where the real story began.

The reason for the confinement was supposedly because the protagonist had talked and laughed with people other than him.

It all stemmed from a completely baseless obsession:

You should only look at me.

What the hell was this ridiculous soap opera?

Apparently, the ‘senior’ had been doing all sorts of things behind the scenes, including stalking the protagonist and even threatening his friends.

But what the hell?

Wasn’t this supposed to be a romance novel?

No…

‘It is romance, but… is this that bromance thing that’s popular these days…?’

Even while thinking that, I’d never encountered such a stimulating novel before.

So I continued reading with my nostrils practically flaring with excitement.

Was this what a housewife felt like while watching a morning drama?

A novel this outrageous in a university library.

And yet, the further I read, the more I began to suspect the author wasn’t in their right mind.

The story had the wealthy senior drugging and abducting the eighteen-year-old protagonist, locking him away, and repeatedly subjecting him to sexual violence when the protagonist refused to accept him.

When the protagonist subsequently withdrew into himself and stopped eating, the senior threatened him using his grandmother, the protagonist’s only family.

Eventually, the protagonist was reduced to tears and continued suffering under the senior’s control.

‘Aren’t these two minors?’

‘And isn’t all of this a crime?’

‘Is it even okay to write a book like this?’

And although I didn’t normally read erotic novels, even I could tell that the content of this book was extremely explicit.

It was practically pornographic.

Actually, some of the descriptions were even more detailed than that, and I couldn’t understand how something like this had ended up in a university library.

‘Hmm, the author’s writing ability is…’

Even someone like me, who had never really had an opinion about homosexuality one way or another, felt that continuing to read descriptions like this might be dangerous.

I considered giving up because there was no way I could get up to anything strange in a university library.

But the wealthy senior was such an unbelievably insane piece of trash, and I felt so sorry for the protagonist that I desperately wanted to know how it ended.

In the end, I decided to skim through it quickly, skipping the explicit scenes.

As the novel approached its latter half, the senior’s behavior became even more appalling.

The protagonist’s grandmother desperately searched for her only grandson after he disappeared, and her chronic illness worsened in the process.

The senior hid the grandmother’s illness from the protagonist.

Then the grandmother died, and he even concealed her death.

The worse the rich son became, the more pages I simply skipped.

‘They’re minors, so why the hell are they doing this so much…?’

And besides, was this protagonist even sane?

Even if he didn’t know about his grandmother’s death, how could he possibly start developing feelings for the senior who had abducted and abused him every day?

‘What the hell is this complete disaster of a story?!’

‘Does the protagonist actually enjoy suffering?’

‘Or is this Stockholm syndrome?’

‘How can he fall in love with someone who committed crimes against him?!’

The moment the senior noticed that the protagonist had begun to open his heart to him, the story abruptly entered a lovey-dovey phase between the two.

Of course, I skipped through a ton of pages here too.

The level of explicitness was truly…

It was almost enough to make me respect the author.

While the two continued their private little romance, the rich son became increasingly busy and began spending more time away from home.

During that opportunity, the rich son’s fiancée discovered the protagonist and stormed into the house.

She told the protagonist everything, including the truth about his grandmother’s death.

The protagonist was devastated.

With the fiancée’s help, he escaped.

After getting out, the protagonist returned to the old house where he had lived with his grandmother and broke down sobbing.

That was when men in suits suddenly burst in and dragged him away.

The place the protagonist was taken to was V Group, the world’s number-one corporation within the novel’s setting.

He was immediately brought to the chairman’s office.

There, a middle-aged man suddenly pulled him into an embrace and shouted:

‘I’m your father!’

‘I’m sorry!’

It turned out that the protagonist was the illegitimate son of V Group’s chairman.

Back in the days when the chairman had merely been an executive, he had been in love with someone.

That person was the protagonist’s mother.

However, because of his own father—the protagonist’s grandfather, who was chairman at the time—he was forced into a political marriage.

Even so, the protagonist’s father intended to continue his relationship with the protagonist’s mother.

No matter how unavoidable the arranged marriage supposedly was, the protagonist’s father was still a complete piece of trash.

But then it turned out that the protagonist’s mother was pregnant.

When she heard about that bastard’s marriage, she ran away.

She gave birth to the protagonist alone and raised him in poverty.

After suffering through years of hardship, the protagonist’s mother eventually died from illness.

The elderly woman who owned the house they had rented took pity on the poor child and raised him herself.

Sniff.

My eyes stung a little at this part, but I held back the tears because I was conscious of the people around me.

The grandmother had known that the protagonist was V Group’s illegitimate child ever since she had helped his mother after she ran away and later assisted with the birth.

Yet because she was worried that the child might be in danger, this complete stranger had kept his birth a secret and raised him herself.

Then she died because of that bastard.

As a result, the protagonist’s true identity had nearly been buried forever.

Fortunately, when her grandson disappeared, the grandmother had contacted V Group.

That was how V Group eventually learned of the protagonist’s existence.

And the reason the rich bastard had suddenly become so busy was because the formidable chairman of V Group had begun searching for his son.

After that, the protagonist made a spectacular debut as a bona fide heir.

The bastard who had been frantically searching for the protagonist after his escape finally encountered him at the protagonist’s debut party, which he had been forced to attend under pressure from his parents.

After seeing the protagonist again for the first time in a long while, the bastard desperately tried to speak to him.

The protagonist ignored him.

Only then did the bastard finally regret what he had done and leave the party.

And although the protagonist pretended not to care, he kept watching the bastard out of the corner of his eye.

‘Our senior looks thinner.’

‘He looks sick.’

‘Is it because of me?’

He behaved like such a hopeless sweet potato.

‘Is this a characteristic of protagonists in these kinds of ridiculous stories…?’

If it were me, the moment I became rich, I’d be living it up as a wealthy unemployed man, proudly enjoying my peaceful ‘outsider’ life.

But this guy remained hopelessly naive and innocent right to the very end.

‘Yeah…’

‘The protagonist is just a sweet potato.’

While the sweet-potato protagonist was worrying about the bastard, the bastard’s fiancée came to see him.

She said that the bastard was sick and told the protagonist that he should go see him.

Then she gave him the location where the bastard was staying.

The protagonist muttered:

‘Why would you…?’

The fiancée calmly explained that she had lost interest in a man who loved someone else.

Then, after the protagonist left, she finally burst into tears.

‘Wow, f*ck.’

I actually got goosebumps from how cheesy that was.

Anyway, the protagonist went to find the bastard.

When he saw him lying sickly in bed, the protagonist began to regret everything.

He tightly held the bastard’s hand and finally confessed the love he had spent so long denying.

But then—

What a miracle!

The bastard opened his eyes in response to the protagonist’s confession.

And so…

Yeah.

The two confessed their love for one another, creating a miraculous happy ending.

And then came another round of their intimate reunion…

The novel ended in an absolutely monumental disaster of a conclusion.

I wanted to buy a pair of eyes that had never read this book.

‘Why did I bother getting my hopes up just because I wanted to see the ending?’

‘Why did I put myself through this ridiculous excuse for a novel…?’

Even after squeezing every last drop of lingering emotion out of myself, I simply couldn’t understand it.

I couldn’t understand the protagonist, this Stockholm-syndrome sweet potato who fell in love with that piece of trash.

I couldn’t understand the domineering, abusive senior who had committed practically every crime imaginable.

I couldn’t relate to a single one of the novel’s ridiculous premises.

He had even become rich, only to go running back to another lunatic?

‘Th-that’s right…’

‘It’s just a story, anyway.’

‘Even ridiculous soap operas are ultimately just made-up stories…’

I decided to let my shocked mind and body calm down.

It was only a novel.

What good would it do to get angry about it?

Besides, even after finishing the thick hardcover novel, I still had two hours left before my exam.

I figured it was probably because I’d skipped almost all the intimate scenes in the middle.

‘I’ve got two hours left.’

‘I’ll study for an hour, grab something to eat, and then head to the exam room.’

With that thought, I opened my major textbook.

And, astonishingly, sleep immediately came crashing down on me.

‘As expected of the power of major textbooks…’

In the end, I couldn’t overcome the overwhelming drowsiness and closed my eyes.

But even as my eyelids drooped, I thought of the protagonist from the novel.

The protagonist who had drunk the beverage given to him by that bastard and collapsed because he couldn’t fight off the sleepiness.

‘I’m really just like that sweet potato.’

I smiled faintly and surrendered myself to sleep.

How long had I been asleep?

Sniffle, sniffle—

I heard someone crying beside me.

It was so damn noisy that I became irritated.

‘For f*ck’s sake, who’s making a damn racket in a library?’

‘Did they bomb their exam or something?’

Still, I figured they’d eventually stop, so I endured it and tried to go back to sleep.

But…

Sniffle, sniffle—

The crying wouldn’t stop.

‘f*ck, this is seriously annoying.’

Unable to help it, I rubbed my sleepy eyes and opened them.

But…

‘Why am I lying on a bed?’

Sniffle, sniffle—

Moreover, the sniffling was coming from right beside me.

A sense of foreboding crept over me.

Slowly, I turned my head to look.

And right beside me was an unbelievably beautiful young man, wearing a shirt that exposed both of his shoulders, crying—

Uh…

‘Oh, my God…’

I suddenly wanted to close my eyes again.

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