HPK 96

Taejung’s flabbergasted face was reflected in the cleanly wiped window. The corners of his mouth were still curved with a lingering smile.

“Wow, he’s using informal speech just like that?”

He was now speaking informally as if he had never struggled before, even when given the green light. And he only did it when he was landing a punch.

It felt like a distant past when he used to tremble and be cautious in front of him. It wasn’t that he was entirely at ease now, but it was markedly different from when he would only say, “You can’t, I don’t want to, please don’t.”

So it was just like…

Like a kitten picked up from the street, trembling and hiding under the bed, that starts to kick out every now and then once it thinks its owner is a pushover.

Taejung, not hiding his smile, picked up the phone he had casually tossed aside. Then, he passed it to Wooseung. While catching it in surprise, Woose-ung looked at him with a “what do you want me to do with this?” expression.

“Zero, zero, zero, zero.”

Taejung suddenly said four numbers.

Wooseung still had a sullen look on his face.

“Press zero four times, it’s the passcode.”

When he gestured with his eyes to unlock it quickly, Wooseung reluctantly lifted the phone. His thumb tapped the screen, waking it up. When he swiped up from the bottom, the words ‘Face ID’ appeared in the center. He pressed it and then entered the number ‘0000’ as Taejung had said. It unlocked immediately.

“Go into Telegram and tap on the conversation at the very top.”

When he clicked on the conversation with ‘song’, a picture was the first thing he saw.

“This… what is this?”

Wooseung’s brow furrowed slightly as he carefully examined the picture. He looked back and forth between the phone and Taejung, asking again what this was.

“You said you were curious if he was doing okay.”

Hyojun was in the picture. He was popping a bottle of champagne with a string of what appeared to be Thai women next to him. The area under his eyes was flushed red as if he were drunk, and his shirt was half-off. Because of that, his straight collarbone and one side of his chest were completely exposed. It was the image of someone who was clearly partying and getting drunk debaucherously.

Wooseung turned off the screen and set the phone down with a thud. It was uncharacteristic for Wooseung, whose movements were usually slow.

“I showed it to you because you said you were curious, so why the attitude?”

Taejung jeered at Wooseung’s action with a sly smile. Wooseung bit his lower lip hard with his front teeth, swallowing the irritation that was rising up.

“See? He’s doing damn well, isn’t he?”

“…”

“So just mind your own business.”

Taejung’s right hand gently wrapped around the steering wheel. There was no sign of his aggressive driving habits. The way his index finger lightly tapped the wheel also suggested… he seemed to be in a pretty good mood.

“…”

Wooseung kept his mouth tightly shut and fixed his gaze on the rapidly passing scenery. Taejung’s humming, which flowed into his ears, was annoying.

After driving on the road for a while, the car turned into a side lane under a sign that read ‘DRIVE THRU’. It slowly came to a stop behind the line of cars ahead.

“What do you want to drink?”

Taejung asked as he swept his hair back with both hands a few times as if combing it.

Wooseung, who had been maintaining his silence, couldn’t help but turn to look at Taejung, dumbfounded. Just moments ago he was prodding and poking at him with all that talk of pretending, and now, all of a sudden, a cafe…

“Should I order whatever I want for you?”

“…”

“I’ll have to pick something that tastes really bad.”

At the playful response, Wooseung let out an audible sigh, “Haaah.” Yet Taejung just kept watching Wooseung with a sly smile.

“I’ll have the grapefruit honey… tall size.”

“Alright then.”

Taejung took the drinks, put a straw in his mouth, and handed the other one to Wooseung. Wooseung took the drink in his hand with a reluctant expression.

The humid air drifted in through the window that had been opened to receive the drinks. The midsummer night held the warmth that had built up during the day. As the car started moving, the window was closed again.

As they entered a wide boulevard, Taejung looked back at Wooseung.

“Should I floor it?”

A voice full of playfulness, a mischievous smile. Light streaked across his handsome face in long lines. On his face that alternated between bright and dark, only his eyes sparkled as if they had stars embedded in them.

“Huh? Should I step on it, or not?”

He played around, stomping on the accelerator and then the brake. Every time the car lurched, it felt just like being on an amusement park ride. He could see the car that had been following behind them hastily changing lanes in the side mirror.

“Do whatever you want.”

Taejung drew a broad, cool smile as if he knew he would say that. Soon, with a bright laugh, the car roared and shot forward.

Wooseung unconsciously grabbed the seatbelt as if it were a lifeline. But he couldn’t take his eyes off the scenery that was flying past too quickly to even hold on. The sense of speed, something he had never experienced in his entire life, made his heart pound, thump, thump.

♡

Wooseung stared down quietly at the sleeping Taejung. Perhaps because he didn’t snore, nor was his breathing loud. Taejung slept as if he were dead. If his chest hadn’t been slowly rising and falling, Wooseung might have woken him up.

He carefully pulled up the blanket that was barely covering his waist. He didn’t seem to toss and turn much, but whenever he woke up in the middle of the night, it was always like this.

Even at the rustling sound, Taejung breathed evenly without a single movement.

It should be fine, right?

After checking him one more time, Wooseung cautiously leaned his upper body forward. A dark shadow fell over Taejung, and soon, his hand grasped what he wanted. It had been less than five seconds, but his heart was pounding as if it would explode.

[06:17]

Beyond the curtains, the morning had already dawned. The sunlight pooled on the floor shimmered like ripples on water. Wooseung lowered the screen’s brightness to its minimum and then slowly pressed the number ‘0’ four times.

The lock was released.

‘Then you can look at mine too.’

That was Taejung’s reaction one day when he had expressed his displeasure at Taejung’s actions of checking his phone as if it were a matter of course.

‘I’m fine… I don’t really need to look.’

“Why?”

Faced with an expression that genuinely couldn’t understand, Wooseung had turned away without answering. That was just a few days ago.

But now, Wooseung was secretly looking at Taejung’s phone. It was by no means to check his every move. Nor was it out of simple curiosity.

‘…I’ve scheduled a round with Mario at Thai CC, and Pro Song has agreed to accompany him until he moves to Malaysia.’

‘That is all I have to report, and I received a text a little while ago that the player has departed the country. I will let you know as soon as I hear from Pro Song. Well then—’

Pro Song, mentioned twice by Hoonyoung, was a designation that was also familiar to Wooseung. The conversation at the very top of Telegram was the one with ‘song’.

Wooseung cautiously tapped on ‘song’. His thumb moved quickly from the top of the screen to the bottom.

“Uh…”

However, contrary to his expectations, he couldn’t see the conversation from before the photo was sent. It had all been deleted.

He went back and tapped on other conversations. But similarly, all the other conversations had also been deleted. The only thing left was that single picture of Hyojun.

“…”

Wooseung zoomed in on the picture. He brought his face right up to the screen and moved the picture around.

It doesn’t seem to be photoshopped. Hyojun, who was completely drunk, also looked just as he remembered him. Though it was almost off, the shirt was also one he had often seen him wear at the lounge.

But…

[Golf Escort Guide]

‘I lost interest because I don’t have the confidence to deal with pot-bellied old men for a week.’

Combining the sentence Chanil typed in the notepad with what he had said, it could be inferred that Hyojun went to Thailand for the purpose of entertaining some elderly men.

If he was in a position where he had to entertain them, was it okay for him to get that drunk and party with a bunch of women next to him?

Or was he given a day off? And so he went to a club to have fun…

He seemed to be on the verge of finding a clue, but it remained elusive.

“Hah…”

Just then, a pained sound came from Taejung. Startled, Wooseung practically threw the phone onto the nightstand. Then he scurried back under the blanket and turned over.

“Ah, shit…”

Taejung, who had been sleeping on his stomach, tossed and turned, muttering a low curse. Fortunately, it seemed he hadn’t woken up, as he flopped his head back onto the pillow. Wooseung, with his ears perked up, focused all his attention on any signs of movement from Taejung.

He heard a rustling sound, and soon a thick arm wrapped around his waist. Then, he felt another person’s warmth on the nape of his neck. He barely managed to stop himself from flinching instinctively.

Taejung, who had been nuzzling the tip of his nose against the vertebra below the round protrusion of his neck, soon fell quiet again.

“Haaah…”

As the tension in his hands, which he had been clasping in front of his chest, released, the breath he had been holding escaped. Wooseung stared into the darkness, still feeling his heart pounding away.