ASD 1

Click, clack. The sound of footsteps on the corridor floor fell into a straight line. About ten hosts, adorned as splendidly as flower petals, crossed the dim corridor. Upon reaching the door, the manager standing at the front gave an instruction in a whisper.

“Serve them well. If any complaints come in, I’m putting them all on your tab.”

Then, the sharp gaze of the manager, who was wearing a microphone, glinted in the darkness. Knock, knock. After a careful knock, he opened the door with a polite gesture.

The cigarette smoke that already filled the room rushed out all at once, stinging eyelids and noses. Gawon forced himself to hold back a cough and entered the room with his head bowed.

The men sitting lazily let out whistles as the hosts entered. “Well then, have a good time!” said the manager, bowing at a ninety-degree angle before leaving the room.

“Good evening. We will serve you with all our hearts.”

The women, standing in a line, all bowed. Sandwiched among them, Gawon silently kept his head down and waited for the men to choose. The long, flowing wig was a nuisance.

They had said there was one customer who wanted a man, not a female host. That was the reason Gawon was wedged between the female hosts, having to endure an awkward atmosphere while receiving looks of contempt just for being there with them.

The gazes of the men in suits scanned the line. It was a look of someone picking out goods according to their taste. Immediately after, familiar ridicule and harassment poured from the mouths of the men smoking cigarettes.

“Wow, hey, pretty! Your t**s are killer. You, come right over here later.”

“I’ll take her. Look at that a**. Totally my style.”

“Huh? But where’s the d**k, hyung-nim?”

“I think it’s this one? Hey you, you’re the one with the d**k, right?”

The man who seemed to be the highest-ranking among them grabbed the arm of Gawon, who was wearing a wig and a slip. When Gawon answered with a small, “Yes,” the men guffawed loudly.

“It’s a perfect disguise, hyung-nim. I didn’t know it was a d**k.”

“Hey, baby. Come over here.”

The man snatched his slender wrist and forcefully pulled Gawon onto his lap. Gawon sat on the man’s thigh, biting his lip firmly. The man chuckled as he roughly grabbed Gawon’s small, white face and turned it this way and that.

“F**k, what a killer face. But why am I seeing this one for the first time? I’ve never seen a kid like this before.”

“Don’t the kids here change out pretty often? He must be a new guy.”

“But, hyung-nim, is it okay for us to make our choices like this before the Team Leader gets here?”

One of them asked the high-ranking man, cautiously checking his mood. The man who had Gawon on his lap then waved his hand magnanimously, as if it were no big deal.

“Hey, hey. It’s fine. The Team Leader doesn’t even fool around with the kids anyway. I’ll take responsibility, so for now, just have fun, you b**t**ds. Ah, d**n it, stop being so timid!”

The hesitation was brief. With excited looks, the men chose the hosts standing in a line. Soon, upbeat dance music began to flow from the machine.

When one of the chosen hosts went out and danced scantily clad, the men laughed loudly. Everyone sat with a woman next to them or on their lap, drinking and chain-smoking. One man, while pouring a drink into the glass of the man who was groping Gawon’s thigh, gave a playful wink.

“But, hyung-nim! No matter how pretty a d**k-fucker is, isn’t he still a d**k? Why of all things are you playing with something like this?”

“Hah… This punk doesn’t know a thing. Hey, can you guys live on just rice? This kind of thing is a delicacy, a delicacy.”

With the mischievous voice, a hand roughly dug into his g**in. He almost screamed. Gawon, who was wearing only a thin slip without even underwear, had no choice but to helplessly accept the brutish hand that mercilessly gripped his g**itals.

“You bring a guy with a pretty face and f**k his hole, and the things you guys are holding and groping right now are nothing, I tell you. He chomps down on your d**k so tight, the feeling is different. Heh heh.”

“Come on, hyung-nim. Still… wouldn’t it kill your appetite if that thing is dangling—dangling in front of your eyes while you’re fucking?”

“A b**t**d who doesn’t even know this taste. Hey, pretty boy. This won’t do. You, get up here.”

The man, tossing the cigarette he’d been holding in his mouth into an ashtray, gestured at Gawon with a sleazy lift of his chin.

“Watch carefully, you b**t**ds. How appetizing our pretty boy’s hole is. Just because he’s a guy doesn’t mean it’s dirty, you know. Kids who roll around in places like this have pretty ones down there too.”

A gaze full of wretchedness hesitantly turned toward the top of the table. But that, too, was brief. Taking off his clothes in the room was as natural as breathing, and today was nothing special.

Gawon slowly climbed onto the long table. Cheers filled with blatant jeers and ridicule swirled chaotically in his ears. After kneeling, he bent over, raising his hips, and then pulled his slip up to his chest so his hole was clearly visible. His body, now almost completely n**ed, was laid out pathetically on the table.

“What the f**k, what kind of s**t is this? Hey, where and how the h**l have you been rolling around for your body to be in this state?”

The man grumbled, listing complaints about the bruises and contusions on Gawon’s body, but that was all. The men’s gazes quickly shifted to something else.

“Wow, f**k. For a d**k-fucker, look how pretty his hole is.”

“What’s with the pink, the pink. F**k.”

“Look at that a**. Looks like it’d feel amazing to pound.”

A torrent of raw harassment poured down.

Gawon rested his forehead on the table, held his breath, and closed his eyes. He just… decided not to think about anything. He had to. The thing on this table, under the greasy gazes of the men, was just a hole. A cheap hole that anyone could easily look at, ridicule, and touch, and if they felt like it, immediately shove a c**k into.

‘I’m not going to be a gangster.’

A small auditory hallucination arose in his ear. It was the voice he least wanted to hear at this moment.

Gawon’s hunched back trembled. The timing was truly cruel. Recalling the owner of the voice that gently wrapped around his ear was incomparably more painful than the hands that were carelessly touching his a** and groping his private parts.

‘I’ll make you a promise, I swear.’

Your straightforward voice, making a vow. Your eyes, holding a kindness that poured down like a meteor shower.

That person was someone who, by birth, belonged to the world of men like these, to this dark and intricate underworld. And yet, he was never hurt by Gawon’s words and actions that showed his loathing for gangsters; instead, he deeply sympathized. He apologized to the wounded Gawon on their behalf.

The one and only existence for Gawon, because he had loved him like no one else in the world ever could. The person who had gently held his hand and hugged him when he was driven to the edge of the world that felt like a cliff, crying sorrowfully. The person who had comforted the injured Gawon by kissing his eyelids and cheeks again, and again, and again.

You, who were so gentle and precious, are now….

‘Gawon.’

Gijun, you son of a b**ch.

‘My wish is you.’

…Where are you?

Where on earth are you, that you’re so vivid before my eyes, yet I can’t touch you? Why did you make a promise like that and push me into an endless wait? Why did you love me, make me love you, and make it so I can’t even end this painful and shabby life?

“Still, I don’t feel like fucking him, hyung-nim.”

At the thick voice of another person, Gawon snapped back to his senses. He hurriedly cleared his vision, which had blurred with tears. The man who had first chosen Gawon clicked his tongue as he looked at the subordinate who spoke as if disgusted.

“Ah, these b**t**ds, really. Does hyung-nim have to give a demonstration, huh? Do I have to show you myself?”

The high-ranking man put on an air of importance. A loud cheer erupted at his vulgar hip-thrusting motion.

“Show us, hyung-nim! Make it a real hot one!”

“Make the little b**t**d cry and c** his brains out!”

“Hey, hey. Just you wait. I’ll make him so scared he’ll tremble at the mere sight of my c**k.”

The man chuckled and unbuckled his belt. Zzzip. The sound of the zipper being pulled down was not buried by the loud noise and rang clearly in Gawon’s ears.

He squeezed his eyes shut. But that, too, was brief; soon, the strength that had been pent up in Gawon’s closed eyelids slowly seeped away.

So what if it hurt, and so what if he tore. His body was like a tissue that anyone who came here used and threw away carelessly. If you leave the body alone, it heals someday. Then someone else will rummage through it, and tear it apart, and then it will recover again… just a meaningless and tedious repetition.

Just then, the door burst open.

“Welcome, Team Leader!”

The resounding shouts of the men echoed loudly. The background music that had been filling the room came to an abrupt stop. As if they had never been disheveled and playing around, the men uniformly straightened their appearances and bowed toward the doorway.

From behind Gawon, who was hastily trying to get up, came the sound of neat dress shoes. The sound of someone striding in and slumping heavily onto the sofa.

The high-ranking man who had been behind Gawon just a moment ago quickly took out a lighter and approached him. The man who had acted like a king in this room and played with Gawon as he pleased had, in an instant, turned into a loyal dog wagging its tail at the feet of the man called Team Leader.

Gawon, though stumbling, hurried his hands as he got down from the table and straightened his clothes. He wanted to get up quickly, but perhaps because he had barely eaten recently, his vision was spinning. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to look at the men and had his back turned.

“What is that?” a low, deep voice asked. A tone that was clearly laden with the emotion of disgust. It must have been asking while pointing at Gawon’s n**ed body.

And the moment he heard that voice, Gawon’s hands stopped.

“……”

No way.

I must have misheard.

…Your voice, it shouldn’t be heard here.

Even while thinking that, his entire body wouldn’t move. Gawon’s face, frozen in mid-motion, was like that of a corpse that had died with its eyes open. On his stone-like face, only his lips trembled.

“Hey, you fucking b**t**d. What are you doing? Hyung-nim is asking you a question. Aren’t you going to turn around and greet him?”

A gangster standing nearby muttered lowly to Gawon and glared at him. Gawon knew it, too. What he ought to do as a host working here.

He shouldn’t be standing here so insolently. He had to turn around immediately, bow deeply, and offer his greetings. He had to state the name he used here and flash a flirtatious, smiling expression, saying he would do his best to please. If the customer wanted, he had to do as he was told, whether it was burying his head between his legs or getting on the table like he just had.

But he couldn’t. His mind and body were refusing. The tiny sliver of heart that had survived within his chest, and the one and only memory he could declare was his everything—a memory he had hidden away like a treasure and cherished dearly—stopped him.

“…What’s he doing?”

Because, the owner of the voice that was now being directed at him so coldly….

‘I like you. Yoon Gawon.’

It was the person he had never forgotten for even a single moment in five years. That’s why, even though it was a voice he hadn’t heard in all that time, he could recognize it at once. No, he had no choice but to recognize it.

“Huck, … ngh.”

At that moment, his frozen heart shattered into a thousand pieces. His sense of pain, which had been worn down and all but frozen solid through countless sufferings, rose up all at once.

Despite the men’s urging, despite the threats and approaching blows, Gawon could not turn around. Hot tears poured from his eyes, which had been preserved like glass.

We, who first met at the end of the world, were still at the end of the world when we met again.