Chapter 101: Turned Away

[Found Choi Han-geon’s location.]

The moment the message alert rang, Eun-gyeol lifted his face from where he had been lying face down on Han-geon’s bed like a corpse.

The instant he read the contents, his breath stopped.

It was the sender he had been waiting for.

The tips of his fingers went cold all at once.

Just as the man he had hired had warned, the message had arrived exactly one week later.

He threw on whatever clothes were within reach and rushed out.

He started the car he had left parked and turned the ignition in a hurry.

A wave of dizziness washed over his vision for a moment, but he ignored it.

Gripping the steering wheel and pressing down on the accelerator despite the spinning in his head, a violent bout of vertigo suddenly struck, slamming into his skull.

After barely eating or sleeping for a week, his body no longer obeyed him properly.

To make matters worse, a deep chill crawled over his skin.

Even as curses spilled from his mouth, Eun-gyeol gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on the wheel.

He did not want to bring anyone else along to meet Choi Han-geon.

Every second mattered, and he had no desire to sit in a car driven by someone else.

Pressing the accelerator deeper and deeper, Eun-gyeol forced his eyes open wide.

His body, unused for nearly a week, wobbled as if it might collapse at any moment, but he pushed forward purely on willpower.

One person rose vividly before his eyes.

Just thinking of him made Eun-gyeol’s breathing falter.

Staring straight ahead as if to kill, he drove at full speed.

He had thought about it again and again.

About how to force Choi Han-geon, who had so meticulously blindsided him and fled, back into his rightful place.

Han-geon must have been deeply hurt.

The secondary-gender change had been a tremendous shock.

Now, Eun-gyeol could admit it.

The wounds Han-geon must have accumulated while staying by his side all this time.

Trying to keep him from crossing the line he had drawn.

Feeling anger when seeing him laugh and joke casually with others.

Strange impulses boiling up when Han-geon rejected him.

Looking back, there had been many moments.

Moments when Eun-gyeol had said and done things that would have hurt Han-geon.

That must have been why Han-geon, so unlike himself, had planned something like this.

Choi Han-geon had never been good at hiding his feelings.

No matter how hard he tried to pretend everything was fine, he was like a dog unable to hide its wildly wagging tail.

And yet, he had succeeded in striking Eun-gyeol from behind with perfect precision.

This time, his acting had been on par with Eun-gyeol’s own.

So convincing that it made Eun-gyeol forcibly ignore the ominous premonitions that kept resurfacing.

With the same unchanging warmth he offered, he deceived him into believing that nothing would happen.

A few dry, hollow laughs slipped out.

Then Eun-gyeol’s mouth froze cold.

If Han-geon had targeted his blind spot, then Eun-gyeol would simply target Han-geon’s weak point.

Seventeen years.

That was how long Han-geon had liked him.

Eun-gyeol knew now that those feelings had never been light.

Even while handling the work of being his manager, enduring endless demands and hardships, Han-geon had treasured that devotion above all else.

He had bristled with thorns, begging that even if his body was used, the feelings he harbored be left untouched.

There was no way someone who had protected that heart for his entire life could abandon it so completely in a single moment.

He must simply be furious right now, briefly acting out.

In the end, he would return.

He could not fully leave behind someone he had clung to like a shadow his entire life.

So all Eun-gyeol had to do was soothe him while looking at the sea together and bring him back.

Since Han-geon had planned everything so carefully, he would of course resist fiercely at first.

But as always, if he saw Eun-gyeol desperately pleading…
In the end, he would forgive him.

If Eun-gyeol begged with the weakest 모습을 he had ever shown, Han-geon would never be able to push him away.

From long ago, Han-geon had always gone soft before Cha Eun-gyeol’s fragile, vulnerable side.

Yes.

He would show him that desperation without hesitation.

He would crumble as much as Han-geon wanted.

If necessary, he would cling to him and cry.

There was no way Han-geon could remain cold after seeing him sob with tears streaming down his face.

He would bring him back no matter what.

There was no other option.

He could not live like this without Choi Han-geon.

Whether he used pheromones to make him cling, acted pitiful to draw out sympathy, or caused a complete scene and threatened him, Han-geon would not come back on his own.

Thinking that, Eun-gyeol pressed the accelerator down even harder.

However.

“…..”

The moment he spotted Han-geon in the distance, Eun-gyeol had to fight with everything he had not to drive the car straight into the sea.

A beastlike groan bubbled up from his throat.

Veins stood out on his forehead.

Was this what it meant for one’s vision to flip upside down.

The Choi Han-geon he saw after a week was sitting on the white sand, smiling.

Unlike Eun-gyeol, who had been unable to do anything and had wasted away like a wreck, he was smiling so beautifully it was blinding.

It was as if he had been here for years, blending perfectly into the blue sky and ocean.

And beside him sat some burly bastard, sharing drinks with him.

The man casually took the cup from Han-geon’s hand as he drank juice, then handed him the coffee he himself had been drinking.

Han-geon accepted it happily and drank it.

The moment Eun-gyeol saw that, it felt like his insides were about to surge up and spill out of his mouth.

“Choi Han-geon!”

Indescribable rage boiled over.

The shout of his name exploded like a blast as Eun-gyeol got out of the car.

It was one thing for Han-geon to look at him in shock as if he had seen a ghost.

But the instant the man naturally stepped in front of him to shield him, murderous intent shot straight to Eun-gyeol’s head.

When he came to his senses, his fist was already flying toward the man.

And then Eun-gyeol was forced to face something even more unbelievable.

Choi Han-geon sided with that bastard instead of him.

He worried about him.

Even while Eun-gyeol himself was bleeding.

In that moment, the shallow, calculating plan he had made to act pitiful evaporated completely.

Choi Han-geon trampled it underfoot, mocking and ridiculing him mercilessly.

As if that were not enough, Han-geon turned away from him.

The moment Eun-gyeol saw the cold disgust on his face, a fear close to panic surged up.

Even if he were thrown in front of a camera with no script or preparation, would his mind ever go this blank.

From then on, he could not remember any of the calculations he had resolved to carry out.

“When you weren’t there, I felt like I was just going to die.

So… don’t go like this.

Talk to me.”

His lips trembled violently, and his raw thoughts spilled out without any filter.

The moment he confronted feelings even he had not known he possessed, Eun-gyeol’s eyes widened.

The voice that burst out was too desperate.

So desperate that even he himself was startled.

He reached out toward Han-geon with a bloodstained hand.

If he just held his hand out, Han-geon would surely take it.

He would sigh, make a complicated face, but in the end he would grab his hand and come to him, away from that bastard.

Since the day he had taken Eun-gyeol’s dirt-covered hand at the age of ten and brushed him off, Han-geon had never once refused a hand Eun-gyeol extended.

But Han-geon looked at the hand he held out with eyes as indifferent as if it belonged to a complete stranger.

And for the first time, he said this to Eun-gyeol.

“I don’t want to.”

It felt like someone had smashed the back of his head with a hammer.

He tried to take a step or two forward to grab him as Han-geon turned away holding the man’s arm, but his legs refused to move, as if they were broken.

While he stood there, Han-geon walked away with the man without once looking back.

He forced his frozen legs to move.

Like this… he could not retreat like this, not even if it killed him.

The world spun violently before his eyes, but he gritted his teeth and chased after the two figures growing smaller and smaller.

They opened the gate of the house whose address the hired man had sent him and went inside.

The moment he reached the gate, vertigo crashed over him like a wave that had been waiting.

He leaned against the wall and struggled to catch his breath.

No matter how many times he blinked, the shocking afterimage from moments ago would not disappear.

How could Choi Han-geon do that to him.

How could he.

What he had just seen was as shocking as the day Han-geon had vanished without a trace.

It felt as though the person who had spoken and acted like that before his eyes was not Han-geon, but someone else wearing his skin.

He was the man who worried endlessly over even the smallest scratch on Eun-gyeol’s face.

The man who would throw his body forward to protect him, knife-wielding attackers or not, regardless of whether his own face was injured.

That Choi Han-geon had not twisted the arm of the bastard who had done this to Eun-gyeol’s face.

Instead, he had supported that man and left.

Leaving Eun-gyeol behind like roadside trash.

How could Choi Han-geon turn his back on him while he was bleeding.

How could Choi Han-geon refuse the hand Cha Eun-gyeol held out.

His teeth ground together.

He wanted to smash down the gate and cause a scene to force his way inside, but the risk was too great.

He had not come all this way to attract police, reporters, and every media outlet eager to plaster his name across the headlines.

More than anything, if he were to lose Han-geon again in that chaos, then truly…

But he could not go back alone.

That option had never existed.

The moment he saw Han-geon coldly pushing him away, the thought crossed his mind that if he never saw him again, he might truly die.

So he waited.

He stood there for hours, staring at the house the boy had entered with another man.

Han-geon met his eyes through a window, then turned away as if fleeing.

A silhouette appeared briefly in a second-floor room, but only for an instant.

After that, there was not even the faintest sign of movement.

As he stared endlessly at the second floor, something inside him slowly collapsed.

It felt as though his chest had turned into a block of salt.

Each time the sound of the waves, ignorant and peaceful, crashed against the shore, his heart was carved away little by little.

He could not believe that with Choi Han-geon right in front of him, there was nothing he could do.

Never once had he been tormented by wanting someone he could not have.

Whenever he wanted to see him, he saw him.

Whenever he wanted to touch him, he touched him as he pleased.

He had never felt any lack in doing so.

But now…

His legs trembled and his vision gradually blurred, yet Eun-gyeol remained standing there, waiting for Han-geon.

With his face hidden beneath a hat and mask, he let an eternity-long stretch of time pass just like that.