Chapter 3: Poison and Protection

Through his hazy, returning vision, a white, pristine ceiling came into view.

The well-balanced harmony of indirect and main lighting looked just like a hotel.

No, was the surroundings perhaps too entirely white to call it a hotel?

Rather than a hotel, it was more like a hospital…

A hospital?

The moment the thought crossed his mind, he felt a foreign sensation in his left arm.

An IV line was inserted there.

A tingling sting pulsed through his right arm, which was wrapped snugly in bandages.

‘Haah…’

At the sudden surge of exhaustion, Yoon Heesu let out a long sigh.

It felt as though every single cell in his body was drooping in utter lethargy.

It seemed he had been rushed in from drug shock once again.

Had things been properly taken care of on their own?

Still, it was fortunate that there was always someone looking out for him to ensure he didn’t end up in prison.

‘Wait…’

Something was off.

An unfamiliar sight, an unfamiliar bed.

This was not the hospital his cousin always had him dumped in.

Had they switched hospitals?

That shouldn’t be the case.

Because that was a clinic they had dealt with for a long time through bribes.

Just as he began searching for his phone while pondering what could have happened, the door to the room opened quietly.

Involuntarily raising his head at the presence, Yoon Heesu narrowed his eyes.

Right.

It was only natural that the interior was unfamiliar.

Because this was not the clinic he usually went to.

And the person who had brought him here was that man standing by the hospital room door.

It was Han Suyeon.

Yoon Heesu felt his shoulders instinctively shrink back, but pretended otherwise.

Even upon seeing that Yoon Heesu was awake, Han Suyeon didn’t utter a single word, striding over to pull up the visitor’s chair and take a seat.

He thought about tossing out a quip asking if he hadn’t even brought flowers to visit a sickbed, but stopped himself, thinking it foolish.

He would have said it if the drug were still running in his veins.

Yoon Heesu cautiously looked at Han Suyeon.

Even perched on a shabby visitor’s chair, he was a man who looked dashing and dignified, unlike Heesu who was always like a torn rag.

The Alpha’s appearance, impeccably styled down to his coat and gloves, carried an intimidating aura that would force anyone to bow their head.

A faint scent of his pheromones drifted in the air.

Even with his pheromones reined in, the scent lingered like an afterimage from a single strand of hair, his exposed nape, and his straight back.

A scent he could detect only because he had inhaled it thickly once before.

Han Suyeon kept his lips pressed in a firm, straight line without saying a word.

Silence.

The atmosphere grew increasingly suffocating.

Just as Yoon Heesu reached to pick at a hangnail, unable to endure the awkwardness, Han Suyeon gently covered that hand from above and spoke.

“From now on, you will receive treatment here.”

“…What?”

Yoon Heesu wondered if he had misheard some polite greeting.

Treatment?

Did he say treatment?

What did the word treatment even mean again?

Ha, the drugs had finally eaten away at his brain.

It was obvious his intelligence had dropped, too.

The meaning of the word wouldn’t come to mind.

No, he knew the definition, but he couldn’t grasp the context of the sentence.

It merely sounded like a sequence of scattered, broken fragments.

“Are you listening?”

“…I’m listening, but.”

At that, Han Suyeon looked quietly at Yoon Heesu, emphasizing each word as he repeated himself.

“You are going to receive treatment here.”

“…”

Thanks to him enunciating clearly as if speaking to a child, Heesu understood this time.

The very first thing he felt upon understanding was utter bewilderment.

Treatment, me?

Here?

How… and why?

“What are you talking about…?”

“We’re going to treat your drug addiction here.”

“And until the doctor gives permission, you cannot leave.”

“W-what?”

Dumbfounded beyond sheer bewilderment, Yoon Heesu stared blankly at Han Suyeon.

In South Korea, simply possessing illicit drugs was a severe crime.

Even if he had never been caught before, there was no way Yoon Heesu, whose dosage was substantial, could nonchalantly check into an addiction center.

“What kind of place is this?”

“An alcohol rehabilitation center.”

“Uh-huh… I might have alcohol addiction too, for all I know.”

Yoon Heesu muttered in a low voice.

Now that the effects of the drugs had worn off, facing Han Suyeon properly was indeed difficult.

But no matter how he looked at it, this whole situation was bizarre.

What did he plan to accomplish by dumping a junkie into an alcohol rehab center?

“There are plenty of people like you here.”

“P-people like me?”

“Troublemakers who go around doing drugs.”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“There are always ways around it.”

The short sigh that followed felt like an arrow of accusation aimed straight at him.

Han Suyeon asked.

“Just from the drugs found in your house, haah…”

“You aren’t a dealer, are you?”

“I don’t do that kind of thing…”

“It’s too much of a bother…”

It was simply that he lived in an environment where drugs were easy to obtain.

Because there was someone who supplied him constantly.

Everything in his house had been for his own personal use.

Not that there was any need to explain all that in detail to this man.

Just as he turned his head and felt the sudden approach of pheromones, a large, warm hand grasped his arm.

Held effortlessly inside that powerful hand, his forearm looked particularly gaunt.

Without hesitation, Han Suyeon rolled up the sleeve of Yoon Heesu’s hospital gown.

The loose hospital gown was pushed up almost to his shoulder.

“…”

Yoon Heesu clamped his mouth shut.

The exposed forearm was completely covered in needle marks.

From mottled reddish-purple spots to fading yellowish hues, the bruises came in various colors.

The moment he saw his own forearm, his stomach churned and his face burned hot.

He could not bring himself to look at Han Suyeon.

He could hardly bear it, feeling as though the filthy arm displayed before him were nothing more than sewage.

So much so that he wanted to shove it into an incinerator right this instant and burn it away.

“…You really did quite a lot.”

Yet Han Suyeon’s reaction upon seeing it remained entirely rational.

His ears burned even hotter at that detached tone.

Fortunately, his messily overgrown hair would hide his ears.

Yoon Heesu yanked his arm back toward himself with all his strength.

The tension left Han Suyeon’s grip, and his arm came free obediently.

Anyone could tell that he hadn’t lost his grip, but had deliberately let go.

Yoon Heesu clutched his arm, which had an IV connected to the back of his hand below his thumb and was littered with needle tracks further up.

His breathing grew ragged.

Why on earth had Han Suyeon appeared so suddenly?

“Why are you showing up out of nowhere… and doing this?”

His physical body felt like it was dying from exhaustion, and his mental state was utterly shredded from exposing such a pathetic sight before Han Suyeon after all this time.

He even felt the urge to cry.

In fact, his eyes began to sting.

It was because lingering traces of the drug were making his emotions rollercoaster wildly.

“Just why?”

When he pressed again, Han Suyeon remained silent a moment longer before speaking.

“I heard from Kwon Seungjae.”

“And I looked into things myself.”

“…”

He felt as though the blood in his entire body had drained straight to the floor.

A name he had never imagined hearing spilled from Han Suyeon’s lips.

Kwon Seungjae.

The cousin who managed every aspect of Yoon Heesu’s daily life and with whom he had grown up since childhood.

Even if they shared no blood.

But hadn’t the two of them stopped associating with each other?

As far as he remembered, they hadn’t gotten along and had drifted apart, yet to think they were still in contact.

How had Kwon Seungjae… talked about him to Han Suyeon?

In what light had he been brought up as a topic between them?

A chill ran down his spine because he knew all too well how Seungjae described him when talking to the people around him.

Could Han Suyeon have reacted just like the usual Alphas around Kwon Seungjae, surely not?

Following the sensation of his face burning, complex and sticky emotions flooded his sponge-like brain.

Soon, his mind breached its critical limit and gave up thinking altogether.

Standing still for a moment, Yoon Heesu let out a hollow smirk and spoke.

“What did he say?”

Han Suyeon did not answer.

“Did he say… that I’m so steeped in drugs, languishing and sleeping around, that I look like I won’t even last another year?”

“Heesu.”

“Don’t call my name…”

“Then again, I’m an Omega who clung to you saying I liked you, so with your personality, having me die alone in a gutter would leave a bad taste in your mouth…”

“Yoon Heesu.”

“Look, can we please not do this?”

“You’re taking your management training properly, right?”

“Do you even have the time to care about a piece of trash like me…?”

“Does it make you feel good to talk like that?”

“…”

Han Suyeon shut Yoon Heesu’s vulgar mouth with that single, short sentence.

“Degrading yourself and putting on bravado at the cost of carving away your own flesh doesn’t look good.”

Well, of course, because he hadn’t said it to look good in the first place.

These were all words Kwon Seungjae had thrown at him, and none of them were particularly wrong.

He wasn’t putting on bravado; he was merely stating facts.

“Why are you acting like this now, of all times?”

“What do you mean, now of all times?”

“…Why, do you regret not f*cking me back then when you look back on it now?”

His response came as a sigh.

Bravado that carved away his own flesh.

Self-deprecation.

Even if it wasn’t bravado, flesh was undeniably being carved away with every word he uttered.

Even though his heart had grown thoroughly numb, it pricked and throbbed in pain.

Yoon Heesu clenched his fists tightly over the blanket.

“Instead of wasting your energy bristling like that, read this.”

What returned after a brief silence were those calm words.

As Heesu glared at him in silence, Han Suyeon moved several paper brochures from the side table onto the bed.

Feeling the weight pressing down on the blanket, Yoon Heesu frowned and lowered his gaze.

The words [Treatment Curriculum] caught his eye.

“…I don’t want to read it.”

“Read it.”

“I said I don’t want to…”

“It’s about life here, so you’re the only one who loses out if you don’t know.”

“Han Suyeon.”

When he called his name, Han Suyeon looked directly at Yoon Heesu.

They were the eyes of a person who had never once averted his gaze from another, unlike Heesu himself.

Though his shoulders drew inward, Heesu spoke anyway.

“Why on earth are you doing this?”

“Even going so far as to commit a crime.”

Taking a drug addict and subjecting him to private treatment.

Someone who had never even been placed under investigation.

There was no way this could possibly be legal.

Han Suyeon let out another short sigh, then spoke.

“So I don’t have to watch you die.”

📚 Also on NHV Novels

A Tangy New Life After Breaking Up with My Girlfriend

HaremRomanceSlice of Life

Read Now →
Not interested