Chapter 100: A Week of Dying

The fact that Choi Han-geon had run away from him came crashing down like a horde of tens of thousands of evil spirits.

They tore at his entire body, crawled over his face, and covered his eyes.

They mocked him viciously and spat in Eun-gyeol’s face.

That precarious feeling he had sensed lately had not been an illusion after all.

The anxiety that had been so intense it repeated itself in his dreams had been nothing less than a premonition of what was bound to happen.

For a full month.

For an entire month, he had dreamed over and over of Han-geon disappearing from his grasp, of watching him fade away like smoke right before his eyes.

Yet now that the dream he had grown sick of had turned into reality, the present moment felt even more unreal.

Now that Choi Han-geon was truly gone, this felt more like a dream than anything else.

That was how devoid of reality the situation was.

It felt like some badly staged, half-assed play someone had cobbled together as a cruel joke.

Choi Han-geon running away from Cha Eun-gyeol.

No matter how many times he repeated it, the sentence felt awkward and wrong, as if it violated grammar itself.

He simply could not believe that this was something that could actually happen.

Dreams allowed it because they were illusions.

In reality, it was impossible.

The Choi Han-geon he knew was not someone who could do such a thing.

No, he should not have been able to.

For most of his life, Han-geon had lived like Eun-gyeol’s shadow.

Simply because he liked him, he had dreamed of becoming a bodyguard, and he had actually made that dream come true.

Even when a blade flew at him from right in front of his nose, he was someone who worried about Eun-gyeol’s safety more than his own.

It had been the same during rut.

He had escorted the person he loved to a hotel where another partner was waiting so that Eun-gyeol could get through it.

Even when his body was taken without mercy, he was the kind of man who could not bring himself to nod coldly when asked if he would abandon Eun-gyeol.

To Eun-gyeol, Han-geon had always behaved like a fool, like an easy mark, like a spineless idiot.

And yet that Choi Han-geon had left him.

The same Han-geon who had begged him not to trample on his heart, even if he wanted to toy with his body.

The man who had cherished his devotion so dearly had abandoned it with his own hands and walked away.

His vision turned white.

It was no different from having his eyes open and seeing nothing at all.

His chest hurt in a way that words like throbbing could never fully describe.

His body staggered.

With his eyes closed, Eun-gyeol waited for the violent dizziness to subside.

But whether his eyes were open or shut, the damnable tremor shaking his entire body refused to stop.

A sudden, unfamiliar sensation made him open his eyes.

His hands were shaking, trembling in a way that did not feel like his own.

It was not just his hands.

From the tips of his hair to the soles of his feet, there was not a single part of him that was not shaking disgracefully.

“…Ugh.”

A powerful wave of nausea surged up.

Covering his mouth, he hurried to the bathroom.

He wanted to expel every trace of this cursed sensation that was violently churning his stomach.

Since he had eaten nothing from lunch through the company dinner, only thin, watery stomach acid came up.

When Eun-gyeol staggered back out of the bathroom, his eyes were bloodshot.

With hands still trembling like quaking aspens, he pulled out his phone.

Eyes trapped in panic could not properly focus on the screen.

He clenched his teeth and tried to glare at it again, but strangely, no clear image formed in his vision.

To rein in a mind consumed by rage and despair, Eun-gyeol squeezed his eyes shut as if crushing his eyelids.

f*ck.

Get a grip.

This is not the time to be collapsing like this.

He tried to take a deep breath.

Even so, he could not regain his composure.

Far from holding onto his rationality, he floundered helplessly.

Inside his head, only foolish delusions continued to swell.

If all of this were just a misunderstanding.

If that were the case, how wonderful would that be.

If Choi Han-geon were to call right now, asking in a bewildered voice, “Where are you?”

‘Come quickly.

The manager and the director keep looking for you.

Where are you right now.

Should I come pick you up?’

That was exactly what the Choi Han-geon he knew would say.

In a gentle yet reliable voice, warm with concern.

He would rush over immediately, driving as fast as he could to come get him.

If only Eun-gyeol could grab his hand as he returned home, cheeks flushed and breath uneven, and go back with him again.

If only that were possible.

If only it really were.

Eun-gyeol staggered as he forced himself to stand.

The more he indulged in those thoughts, the more it felt as though someone were crushing his heart under a boot, grinding it down.

He needed to stop with these absurd fantasies and act.

He took deep breaths again and again, trying to regain his composure.

Squeezing out every shred of reason he had left, he called his attorney.

It was a lawyer he had employed for a long time to corner Yoo Junseong.

The man was also skilled at digging into people’s backgrounds.

Eun-gyeol told him everything he knew that could help locate Han-geon.

The lawyer replied that it would take at least a week and then ended the call.

Eun-gyeol collapsed into his seat as if his body had given out.

He already felt like he was dying, and now he had to wait an entire week.

The unfairness of it was unbearable.

The fact that Choi Han-geon was missing, and yet there was nothing he could do but sit here in complete helplessness.

It felt like searching for a needle in the middle of the ocean.

The vast wave of despair rolling toward him made his vision swim.

Back when he had searched for Han-geon through hospitals, parks, and the alleys near their home, it had at least been better than this.

At the very least, he had been able to guess that Han-geon might be somewhere nearby.

But now it was different.

Han-geon had prepared to be gone for a long time and had completely vanished.

There was no way he would be anywhere near the house.

He had not even left behind a single note.

Until yesterday.

No, until just a few hours ago, he had been someone who stayed right by Eun-gyeol’s side.

And now that same Han-geon had blindsided him and disappeared without a trace.

While Han-geon had been plotting something so dark, Eun-gyeol had been sleeping peacefully in the car Han-geon was driving.

“…f*ck.”

His low voice cracked harshly.

He clenched his fist so tightly that his nails dug painfully into his palm.

All this time, he had treated the anxiety that frequently raised its head inside him as nothing more than needless worry and had forcibly suppressed it.

If he did not, he felt as though he would be completely consumed by that pitch-black, ghostlike fear that threatened to overwhelm him.

The only thing he could cling to in those moments had been Choi Han-geon’s body heat.

Unable to tell what Han-geon was thinking, he had obsessively repeated the act of burying himself in his arms and breathing in his scent.

Only then could he breathe.

It had been the only thing that could save him from that crushing anxiety.

That was why he had behaved like a pathetic, whining mutt.

He had followed him even into the bathroom, asking for kisses.

When Han-geon coldly pushed him away in bed, he had begged just to be allowed to cling to him.

But now that he looked back on it.

He had been clinging to an empty shell that hugged him warmly with its body while thinking of abandoning him in its mind, begging it for warmth.

What must Han-geon have thought as he watched him like that.

Was he annoyed by Eun-gyeol clinging to him like a leech.

Or did he find it laughable, seeing Eun-gyeol act that way without knowing anything.

Had he felt refreshed and satisfied, finally able to leave the side of a selfish bastard who had toyed with him and even changed his secondary gender into an omega.

A hollow laugh escaped him.

He chuckled weakly, but it did not last more than a few breaths before fading away.

At this point, the biggest idiot in the world was none other than himself.

Everything he had done over the past month felt unbearably pathetic.

Even as he suffered from anxiety that clung to him like a shadow, even as he was terrified that Han-geon might leave, he had foolishly trusted him.

He had tried to trust him.

Because he did not want to fall out of Han-geon’s favor any further.

He had forced himself to ignore the hypersensitive instincts that kept leaning toward Han-geon and tried not to choke him by giving him space.

In his own way, he had truly tried.

But now he could see it.

It had all been pointless and stupid.

He should have thrown away that pretense of respect and consideration and trusted his instincts.

He should have locked Han-geon away somewhere no one could find him, bound him by force so he could never even think of leaving.

If he had done that, Han-geon might have hated him, but at least he would not have lost him like this.

He still could not believe this fucked-up reality.

It felt like he was trapped in a terrible dream.

He wished, desperately, that this was simply the nightmare that had tormented him for the past month, returning in a new form.

But at the end of every nightmare he had ever had, Han-geon had always been there.

Han-geon’s strong, healthy, beautiful body.

That was why no matter how awful the nightmare, he could laugh it off and fall asleep again.

Because he knew it was all an illusion.

The only reality had been Han-geon’s warm body, solid and present in his arms.

But now.

By this point, it felt like he should have woken up from this godforsaken dream.

Yet no matter how many times he blinked, the nightmare showed no sign of ending.

He clenched his fists until it hurt and squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, but it was the same.

What he saw was not Choi Han-geon’s sleeping face in the darkness, but the empty interior of a house without him.

Rage surged up without warning.

Blazing anger boiled over like lava.

He grabbed anything within reach and hurled it, swinging wildly.

Fragments of shattered objects flew everywhere, mocking Eun-gyeol.

Even to his own eyes, the sight of himself alone in an ownerless house, acting so disgracefully, was absurd.

“Hah, hah, hngh…”

His breathing came apart.

His palm stung as if it were on fire.

With a numb expression, Eun-gyeol looked down at his hand.

A small shard of glass was embedded in the center of his palm.

As he watched the red blood drip steadily onto the floor, what he felt more vividly than pain was the terrifying sense of reality crashing down on him.

The realization that no one would rush over to scold him, nag him, or worry about him no matter what he did.

At that moment, his legs gave out.

His body collapsed with a dull thud.

Sitting numbly in the wreckage of the house, Eun-gyeol stared at the scene he had created.

“…f*ck…”

The curse sounded more miserable and hollow than ever before.

An overwhelming sense of powerlessness washed over him, so strong he could not move a single finger.

Leaning against the wall, Eun-gyeol let his head fall back.

He grabbed the shard of glass lodged in his palm, yanked it out, and tossed it aside without care.

The bloodstained fragment rolled pathetically across the floor.

As he watched it, Eun-gyeol thought that perhaps it would be better if he were to die for a week and never wake up at all.