Chapter 2: Echoes of First Meetings

Han Suyeon glanced over at him for a brief moment before turning his gaze back to the front.

His eyes, a light hazel that almost appeared golden whenever caught in the light, softened his sharp features considerably, piercing straight into Heesu’s heart.

While Heesu was caught off guard, the car smoothly pulled out of the parking lot.

The heavy body of the vehicle glided onto the road in an instant, the scenery outside the window shifting past at high speed.

His eyes spun.

It was far too much stimulation for a mind intoxicated on drugs.

Yoon Heesu threw his head back against the headrest.

“I feel dizzy…”

“Bear with it.”

“Can I throw up in your car?”

On the steering wheel gripped by Han Suyeon, an intricate vehicle emblem was visible.

It was an imported luxury sedan whose factory price easily exceeded hundreds of millions of won.

Just as Heesu wondered what would happen if he vomited all over this luxurious interior, Han Suyeon answered nonchalantly.

“I don’t have time to switch cars, so I’ll just have to drive with the windows open.”

“You’ll have to bear the cold yourself.”

“Ahaha!”

Yoon Heesu burst into laughter, clutching his stomach over something so trivial.

A brain drunk on drugs gave in to laughter far too easily.

Han Suyeon did not laugh at all.

After snickering for a long while, Yoon Heesu spoke without wiping the smile from his lips.

“They say laughing extends your lifespan.”

“I guess drugs really do have zero benefits.”

Han Suyeon ignored this comment from Yoon Heesu as well.

Whether he was ignored or not, as Yoon Heesu chuckled to himself, the car passed Olympic Boulevard and merged onto the Yangyang Expressway.

Yoon Heesu blinked his eyes as they cleared the expressway tollgate leading to somewhere far away.

Where on earth was he planning to go?

This really was a kidnapping.

Surely this wasn’t a dream?

Ah, right.

It could be a dream.

Or a hallucination.

‘A hallucination is the most likely.’

That had to be it.

Han Suyeon suddenly showing up after two years—maybe even longer—putting him into a warm car, and kidnapping him to somewhere far away?

Wasn’t this situation far too absurd?

He started shaking his head from side to side, but stopped when a rush of dizziness overwhelmed him.

Alternating between sighs and giggles while drifting through thoughts that barely counted as thinking, Yoon Heesu soon let out a long breath and fell asleep.

Or perhaps he had simply passed out.

“Wake up.”

“We’re here.”

A firm, strong hand shook his shoulder.

Opening his bleary eyes, Yoon Heesu looked around him in a daze.

He was in the middle of some rural mountain area.

Just how long had he been asleep?

As he fumbled about, the seatbelt unfastened, and Han Suyeon, who had gotten out from the driver’s seat, walked halfway around the car to open the passenger door.

“Get out.”

Only then did Yoon Heesu look straight at Han Suyeon’s face.

It was a face that looked as though not a single drop of blood would bleed if pricked.

Only then did the thought cross his mind: could this actually not be a dream?

‘If this were a dream or a hallucination, he’d be at least a little kinder.’

Right now, he was cold and curt beyond measure.

Yoon Heesu stepped out of the car as told.

Or rather, he tried to.

If Han Suyeon hadn’t clicked his tongue and stopped him.

Wondering why, he casually looked down at himself, only to find that he was barefoot.

Han Suyeon bent down, reached inside the car, lifted Yoon Heesu into his arms, and pulled him out.

The moment he was brought outside, an icy wind incomparable to the city’s swept over his entire body.

In his hazy vision, he saw layers of mountains encircling them as if slicing the sky in half, and the deep blue sea far off in the distance.

Where on earth were they?

Along with that thought, he also wondered if Han Suyeon, wearing only a dress shirt and slacks, was cold.

At the same time, a dizziness that felt as though the world were splitting open and a sudden wave of nausea surged up.

“…”

His awkwardly cradled upper body swayed limply.

Han Suyeon showed a hint of surprise.

Following the dizziness, a pounding headache surged, feeling as though a chisel were being hammered into his skull.

It was the process of coming down from the drugs.

I should have thrown up earlier.

Mumbling those words, Yoon Heesu truly lost consciousness this time.

***

The first meeting between Han Suyeon and Yoon Heesu had been quite cliché.

If a drama began like that, it would have been criticized for being childish.

The Yuseong Night.

It was an annual year-end charity event held at Yuseongwon, the orphanage where Yoon Heesu had spent his childhood.

It was an occasion where sponsors were gathered in a shabby auditorium rented from a nearby elementary school, and the orphanage children showed off their clumsy talents.

Yoon Heesu had grown up at Yuseongwon for as long as he could remember.

However, during the Yuseong Night of that particular year, Yoon Heesu was not an orphan.

For a year prior, he had been adopted into the family of one of the sponsors.

And he had returned to play the piano under the guise of an invited guest performance.

On that day, Yoon Heesu was a fine spectacle.

The former orphan, now the son of a wealthy family, the boy who played the piano so well…

At the very event where he went to showcase a piece he had practiced until his hands practically bled, Yoon Heesu met Han Suyeon.

“Heesu, that was a wonderful performance.”

“You are Professor Yoon’s son, correct?”

It was during the social gathering after the performance.

His adoptive parents ostentatiously rested their hands on Yoon Heesu’s shoulders.

Approaching them, Han Suyeon’s mother had asked that question in an elegant, beautiful voice.

Her tone was impeccably pure and clear.

She was a person from whom not a trace of unkindness could be found from head to toe, exuding only gentle warmth.

Yoon Heesu had never seen such a person in his entire life.

A person who seemed completely free of calculation or malice.

And beside her stood her husband, framed like a picture, alongside… her son, Han Suyeon.

While he had been astonished upon seeing the mother, he was even more stunned by Han Suyeon.

He was significantly taller than Heesu, and just like his mother, he was boundlessly clear and pure.

His father was the same.

A family that seemed fit for a special feature interview in a luxury lifestyle monthly magazine.

A boy who had lived a life surrounded exclusively by the finest among luxury goods.

Yoon Heesu instinctively sensed that this boy belonged to an entirely different class.

It could well be described as a difference in social standing.

His shoulders continually shrank inward, cowering with intimidation.

A sense of shame, entirely distinct from being cowed in front of his adoptive parents, kept daunting Yoon Heesu.

He was so preoccupied with Han Suyeon that he didn’t even have the leeway to read his adoptive parents’ moods.

He made several blunders.

His adoptive mother pressed her fingernails lightly into Yoon Heesu’s shoulder as a warning, but even then, he couldn’t come to his senses.

The sight of Han Suyeon clapping purely for the piece Heesu had practiced to death while enduring beatings was seared into his brain and would not fade.

Until the family departed, Yoon Heesu stared blankly at Han Suyeon, not even realizing how embarrassing it was.

The boy, who was said to have manifested as an Alpha early on, was a head taller than Yoon Heesu and already possessed a solid build.

Yet he hadn’t lost his youthful boyishness, giving him an exceptionally healthy and radiant demeanor.

“Your playing was really great.”

“See you again next time.”

It was a low voice that had already broken with puberty.

Yoon Heesu barely managed a nod, gazing blankly after the family as they moved to another table.

Upon returning home after the event, he was supposed to be reprimanded by his adoptive parents, but whether he should call it fortunate or not, he was spared.

Because he had fallen violently ill on the way home.

Yoon Heesu suffered from excruciating pain and a fever so high it felt as though his brain were melting.

It was manifestation fever.

At fourteen, an age neither early nor late, he manifested as an Omega.

When he woke up after suffering for a full week from the manifestation fever known as growing pains, many things had changed.

First was the attitude of his adoptive parents.

While he was bewildered by their words and actions that had become strangely gentler and softer than before, an additional private tutor was assigned to him outside his school curriculum.

Current affairs and economics, basic political knowledge, art history, aesthetics, and the like.

He only learned later that these lessons were meant to prepare him for marriage.

There was another surprising matter.

The fact that he was brought to meet Han Suyeon again, whom he thought he would never see after that charity performance.

“You must get along with him.”

“Understood?”

Under the strict urging of his adoptive mother, meetings were arranged on multiple occasions.

They took place either together with his adoptive parents or as a trio accompanied by his unrelated cousin.

Wondering why this was happening, he had still attended every gathering faithfully, secretly thrilled at the chance to see Han Suyeon and desperate to exchange even a single extra word with him, but it later turned out to be an embarrassment so deep he would slam his pillow in shame.

For they had been ‘preliminary matchmaking’ sessions that Yoon Heesu had been oblivious to, while Han Suyeon had merely found them uncomfortable.

No, to even call it a matchmaking session was humiliating.

Since his adoptive parents had merely shoved Yoon Heesu, who had manifested as an Omega, aggressively toward Han Suyeon, an Alpha from an illustrious family.

After such transparent meetings went on for some time, Han Suyeon smiled and spoke.

“I think Heesu and I could become good friends.”

It was an astonishingly graceful yet definitive rejection.

Even the young Yoon Heesu understood everything at that very moment.

And he still vividly remembered the sensation of his face suddenly flushing scarlet.

It was a feeling of shame so acute that even his fingertips went numb.

Yet even after suffering such a rejection, his adoptive parents did not give up.

Though the formal gatherings between families grew sparse, they arranged for Heesu to meet Han Suyeon several more times under the pretext of youngsters just hanging out.

It was orchestrated by his cousin, backed by his adoptive parents.

Giving himself the excuse that he could not refuse his adoptive parents’ orders, Yoon Heesu went to meet him.

In that manner, they progressed as far as becoming ‘friends,’ but never anything more.

Except for just once.

Just once, before both of them got drunk and almost crossed a line.

That was the single memory in Yoon Heesu’s life that he wished to erase most of all.

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