Chapter 41: A Name that won’t leave His Mind.

“Hyung, why are you so busy these days?”

Filling the refrigerator one by one with the groceries he had bought, Jeongmin spoke with a puzzled voice.

Yoojun answered with his eyes closed, lying stretched out on the living room sofa like the laziest person in the world.

“Busy? What’s busy about resting?”

“No contact, and whenever I call, you’re outside.”

“…It’s just that I’m wandering here and there since it’s a break after a long time, well.”

Honestly, Yoojun felt a little pricked by his conscience but retorted as if it were no big deal.

“Come to think of it, it really is a break after a long time. Hyung, seriously, that’s an addiction too, work addiction. It’s a relief there’s a term until the next project shooting… Take this chance to really rest well until the shooting.”

Fortunately, Jeongmin let it pass without much suspicion.

Just as Jeongmin said, Yoojun had worked truly without a break all this time.

It wasn’t for nothing that people said he worked like an ox.

It was to the point where even fans, who usually liked it the more their favorite actor worked, worried and begged him to please work while taking breaks now.

Considering Yoojun’s activity style he rarely did entertainment shows other than his works and didn’t even have the common SNS or video sharing service channels that are trendy these days—the fans’ request for him to rest now was quite unusual.

To that extent, Yoojun had run truly breathlessly until now, and that path remained the same even after he rose to a position no one dared to covet.

The fact that he maintained good results and evaluations without any major slip-ups despite being so prolific made Yoojun even more remarkable.

“What’s the use of playing? I wish the shooting would start quickly.”

Yoojun answered slowly, still without opening his eyes.

His eyelids were too heavy because he hadn’t been able to sleep a wink last night.

It was all because of Yoon Sayoung, but the fact that he couldn’t complain anywhere made it especially annoying.

Jeongmin, having no idea what a troubled night his actor had spent, answered Yoojun’s words that he wished shooting would start, intending to comfort him.

“Still, there isn’t much time left now. Before long, it’s already the audition….”

Simultaneously, Yoojun opened both eyes wide.

As soon as he heard the word audition, his heart started beating very roughly.

He had called Jeongmin for no reason to escape a little from thinking useless thoughts constantly when alone, but it had all become meaningless.

“Are you really going to attend the audition, hyung?”

In the meantime, Jeongmin, who had finished organizing the refrigerator, came to the living room and asked while sitting on the L-shaped sofa.

Yoojun blinked his stiff eyes and stared blankly at the ceiling.

Strangely, he didn’t like the shape of the ceiling today.

‘Should I completely change the interior?’

He nodded his head while thinking a thought he had never had even once since moving in.

“You must really have high expectations for this project, hyung.”

Unable to find any other reason why he would care so much about the casting of his counterpart, which he had never been interested in his whole life, Jeongmin carefully voiced the most plausible hypothesis he had deduced in his own way.

Yoojun answered, ‘Well, I guess so,’ without any particular refutation.

Jeongmin wondered why this hyung was acting like such a dazed person today, but instead of bothering him more when he looked too bothered to even speak, he picked up his phone while sipping the coffee he had bought along with Yoojun’s share.

If there were no particular requests until he finished the coffee, he planned to return and go on a date with his girlfriend as is.

“Huh?”

And a short exclamation flowed from Jeongmin’s mouth as he habitually checked entertainment news first.

It was just a trivial reaction.

If it were the usual Yoojun, it would have been a moment of nothingness he wouldn’t have been curious about.

But how keen human senses are.

Yoojun instinctively got a strange premonition that Jeongmin’s reaction was about something he absolutely had to know, or more precisely, about Yoon Sayoung.

“…Why? Did something pop up?”

Yoojun asked, trying hard to pretend it was a trivial curiosity.

While doing so, he subtly sat up from his lying position and naturally grabbed and drank the coffee placed in front of him.

Fortunately, Jeongmin, who didn’t find Yoojun’s behavior and question strange, opened his mouth while diligently scrolling down the screen with his finger.

“Looks like Han Jaewoo sent a gift to Yoon Sayoung? Didn’t they break up on bad terms?”

“What? How do you kn…!”

“Yes?”

“No, how did people find that out?”

Yoojun, who almost jumped asking how he knew that, barely calmed himself down and asked again.

His mind started getting tangled into a mess again.

Jeongmin continued speaking without taking his eyes off the phone.

“There’s an article out? It says he sent it through his manager after hearing Yoon Sayoung got hurt, but Yoon Sayoung turned him away at the door and kicked him out.”

“…….”

“Wow… Yoon Sayoung is getting sworn at tremendously again. How come there’s not a quiet day for these two even after divorcing?”

Listening to Jeongmin’s exclamation that wasn’t quite an exclamation, Yoojun bit his lip.

Han Jaewoo sending a gift was strictly a personal matter.

It wasn’t like it went through another route where information could be disclosed; only three people—Han Jaewoo, his manager Choi Eunseong, and Yoon Sayoung—were involved.

However, the fact that the story leaked to the press only meant that one of the three had spilled it.

“Give that here.”

Yoojun, jumping up as if he suddenly regained strength, snatched the phone from Jeongmin’s hand.

As Jeongmin said, there was a pile of posts swearing at Sayoung not only in the article comments section but also on SNS found through portal site searches.

Occasionally, there were posts blaming Han Jaewoo’s thoughtlessness or so-called ‘pushover-ness’, but even those posts were fundamentally sympathizing with Han Jaewoo.

Saying things like why he couldn’t come to his senses and was dedicating himself to that bastard Yoon Sayoung even after suffering so much.

His insides boiled.

It was funny and ridiculous that people who didn’t know anything were blabbering with their fingers.

Knowing nothing.

Really knowing nothing about what terrible times Yoon Sayoung went through and what he had to endure until the very end.

‘I know very well that I’m a person hard to endure. That I’m troublesome, selfish, and someone who becomes tedious the longer you’re with me. I know.’

Anger deepened further as Sayoung’s voice, calmly pouring out as if confessing, came to mind.

It’s not just Han Jaewoo’s problem.

Every single word of those who easily chattered about, judged, and habitually swore at others’ lives for fun crumbled Yoon Sayoung to that point.

Saying that he was spiteful, selfish, unlucky, and a person too lacking for Han Jaewoo.

These people drove Yoon Sayoung to the edge of the cliff together.

His hands trembled.

Thinking of Sayoung who would have been enduring this violence alone for countless days before dying, he felt suffocated.

“Hyung!”

What awakened Yoojun’s mind, sinking into deeper and deeper emotions, was Jeongmin’s high voice.

Only then taking his eyes off the screen and lifting his head, Yoojun looked at Jeongmin.

Jeongmin’s expression looking at Yoojun seemed greatly flustered.

“What’s wrong? Did you see something serious?”

“…Huh?”

“No, you suddenly made a hugely angry face….”

“Ah…. No, just because I was thinking about something else for a moment.”

“What were you thinking about for your face to look like that?”

As if he would catch and kill someone.

Jeongmin muttered, trying to shake off the sensation of goosebumps that had risen momentarily.

It was a face too murderous to say it was just an expression made while thinking about something else.

However, Jeongmin didn’t pry into exactly what thought it was.

The first rule of spending manager life smoothly was ‘Quickly notice when to pretend not to notice’.

Instead of prodding Yoojun for no reason, Jeongmin took back his phone that Yoojun held out and started chattering about what he felt.

“Anyway, everyone is saying Han Jaewoo messed with the wrong person or that he’s pitiful, but to me, he feels totally off, you know?”

“Really?”

“Yes. Well, I don’t know well, but looking at how he acts toward you and such, it’s doubtful whether he was really that devoted to Yoon Sayoung… Anyway, the person is just a bit mediocre. The feeling isn’t good.”

“…….”

“What’s more annoying is that if I talk like this somewhere, people always think I’m doing it because I’m jealous of Han Jaewoo? No, I’m Kim Yoojun’s manager, why would I be jealous of someone like Han Jaewoo? Don’t you think so, hyung?”

Perhaps getting annoyed the more he thought about it, Jeongmin’s voice became increasingly intense.

Thanks to that, Yoojun, feeling a little better, burst into a smirk and answered.

“Right. What is Kim Yoojun’s manager lacking to envy such a bastard?”

“That’s what I’m saying! Seriously. Anyway… Yoon Sayoung has been discharged now too, so you be careful not to get involved with him anymore, hyung.”

“…….”

“There’s nothing good about getting involved.”

Come to think of it, Jeongmin didn’t know that Sayoung was participating in the audition for the role of Seo Danwoo in the movie <Summer Solstice>.

Yoojun, feeling pricked for no reason even though he hadn’t done anything wrong, barely held back a sigh bursting from inside and turned his head to look out the window.

The words people said to Sayoung that he just saw kept glimmering before his eyes.

Would Sayoung know that an article like this appeared?

Is he perhaps looking at comments or something?

Even knowing it was none of his business, Yoojun kept wondering about such things.

Since there was no way Sayoung would report the fact that Jaewoo sent a gift to the press, this must certainly be information provided by Han Jaewoo’s side.

If they were manipulating public opinion like this even now after the divorce, he wondered how much worse it must have been during their marriage.

Even Yoojun, who had absolutely no interest in entertainment news unrelated to himself, found rumors about the couple were always widespread enough to be easily encountered.

And always in a way that implied the cause of the problem lay with Sayoung.

Trying to gauge now how terrible that time must have been for Sayoung, his heart naturally became heavy.

“Hyung… are you really okay?”

Thinking about that must have made his expression serious again, as Jeongmin asked with a voice even more worried.

The person who actually needs to be worried about is someone else.

Yoon Sayoung would be alone right now in that desolate house without even the slightest warmth.

“…I’m okay.”

Yoojun, who barely gave an answer after a long while, quickly lay back down on the sofa.

It was because he momentarily felt an impulse to run to Sayoung’s house right away.

‘Calm down, calm down.’

‘It’s not your business.’

Yoojun closed his eyes and repeatedly soothed himself.

He said he sleeps well.

He sleeps just fine even with an appearance like he’s dying, so there was no reason to worry about such a human.

Not knowing that his manager was looking at him with eyes full of suspicion wondering why this hyung was acting so strangely today, Yoojun ignored all impulses like that with his eyes closed.

From now on, Kim Yoojun intended not to care about anything unless Yoon Sayoung directly asked for help.