LLU 59

I snorted as insolently as possible and stared at him with gleaming eyes.

“Just kill me. Kill me and then do whatever you want with my corpse. That way I wouldn’t throw tantrums and it would be easier for you, so why don’t you do that?”

“Sorry, but I don’t have a hobby of fucking corpses.”

His usual calm voice replied. No matter how much I provoked him, Choi Junghan didn’t even blink. In the end, I gave up on provoking him and meekly surrendered my body.

After finishing the treatment indifferently, Choi Junghan began tidying up the messed-up room. Seeing him, who never looked like someone connected to housework no matter when you saw him, picking up pieces of the broken lamp, sweeping up the remnants of the torn pillow, and taking out new sheets to spread them felt quite alien.

“Now sleep. I’ll soothe you.”

He spoke as if coaxing a five-year-old child who had just had a terrible nightmare.

“Get lost.”

“I understand you’re embarrassed, but that mouth of yours is still too much.”

“…….”

Lowering my gaze mixed with shame and yet also relief, I let out a long sigh. Pretending I had no choice, I buried my face in the chest of the man lying beside me and slowly wrapped my arms around his waist.

“Yes, good boy.”

Choi Junghan patted my back. Even though his attitude clearly treated me like a child, I didn’t resist and obediently accepted his touch.

This much was enough for today.

In front of Choi Junghan, I acted as if I couldn’t stand the fact that he didn’t waver as much as I did, but in truth I knew very well that it wasn’t the case.

He did waver sufficiently every time I acted like this.

As proof, Choi Junghan was retreating little by little. Like dripping water piercing a rock, at a very faint and slow pace.

Every time the nights piled up where I wailed in anxiety over his absence, Choi Junghan broke down his solid boundaries and gave me space beside him. It was more than just shared moments; it was a bond that created a sense of connection. And that sense of connection soon settled inside Choi Junghan under the name of carelessness.

Yes, Choi Junghan had let his guard down. I could feel with my own skin how his attitude toward me was gradually changing.

To be precise, I had made Choi Junghan believe it was so. To achieve that, I had spent several months exercising the utmost caution and putting in painstaking effort.

After ‘that incident’ with Kim Junwoo, I had completely collapsed and become someone who couldn’t maintain sanity, dazed and broken. A person abandoned by the world, turned into a complete loner, craving the embrace of just one single person due to affection deprivation. A fool who couldn’t do anything without Choi Junghan.

That was the image of myself I had designed to show to Choi Junghan.

From the beginning, I had expected it wouldn’t be easy. He was a man surrounded by walls so solid that not even a needle could slip through. He was a cold-blooded person whose mechanism for feeling emotions was entirely different from ordinary people.

Therefore, to deceive him, I first had to deceive myself. Leaving behind only the minimum rationality necessary for the final goal, I began to hypnotize myself like that.

The only thing an empty fist with nothing left could grasp was the hem of his clothes. Now, the only thing left for me was Choi Junghan alone, and only that person was my sole path to survival.

So cling to him more, more, more. Obsess over him, express anxiety and affection.

The process went smoothly. I obediently went mad exactly as planned. Every day I screamed, threw things, scratched myself with my nails until I bled. Even when I scratched my ankles bloody complaining that the shackles were uncomfortable, the moment he removed them I would throw a fit asking why he was trying to abandon me. Without Choi Junghan, I refused to drink water or eat food.

I played the role of a beast trapped inside us and going mad perfectly. And in the midst of that process, I held my breath and observed Choi Junghan’s reactions.

The most fortunate scenario I could assume was that Choi Junghan would grow tired of me like that and discard me. If I could escape from him and gain freedom, the revenge that followed would become much easier.

Even if, unfortunately, Choi Junghan was the more difficult and hopeless type who felt ecstasy from my broken state—and unfortunately, Choi Junghan was exactly that type—at the very least, I calculated that I could perfectly deceive him and easily target his openings.

And my strategy succeeded.

The number of times Choi Junghan unlocked the chains gradually increased. When I whined that it was stifling, he sometimes took me out together. It had now become routine for him to bring me to work when, after crying and screaming, I refused to eat properly without him. Before long, Choi Junghan’s daily life had become completely filled with a person called me.

It was obvious that his once-strict guard had crumbled considerably. However, being satisfied here and acting rashly was absolutely forbidden. The carelessness had to be his, not mine.

“Take it off, this is suffocating….”

Burying my lips against Choi Junghan’s chest, I whimpered as pitifully as possible. My hands, tightly interlocked and wrapped around his waist, trembled with desperate longing.

With a light sigh, Choi Junghan sat up and unlocked the chain around my ankle. I burrowed even more coquettishly into his embrace.

“Put me to sleep….”

At my request thick with drowsiness, Choi Junghan gently patted my back. That damn lullaby of his quietly rang in my ear. He hummed it without lyrics, a melody that somehow felt chillingly cool.

Listening to the song with coldly lowered eyes, I thought.

It was almost there now.

Just a little more.

Then.

Sensual jazz music filled the interior of the bar at a volume that wasn’t bothersome. While blankly letting the music enter my ears, I accepted the glass the staff had just brought me.

I quietly stared at the painfully blue liquid, then took a sip. It looked sweet but had quite a strong alcohol content. The urge to drink more rose, but I held back. Starting from the day before, I couldn’t afford any mistakes if I wanted to keep my head clear.

The bar Choi Junghan had brought me to was small in scale but luxurious. The compact space was sensually and sophisticatedly decorated, and the bartender and staff attended with elegance and kindness.

Well, Choi Junghan never set foot in any place that fell even slightly short of his standards. All the places he had taken me to so far had been like this. Every single one was expensive and so luxurious it made your mouth drop open involuntarily.

I gazed indifferently at such things before turning my eyes back to my glass. I felt Choi Junghan’s hand casually grasping my thigh under the table.

“Why have you been so busy lately?”

I asked indifferently, hoping only that it would sound casual. He let out a short laugh and brought the glass to his lips. Unlike my drink, which had the childish color of juice, his looked extremely unappetizing.

“Nothing much. The shareholders’ meeting is tomorrow.”

A shiver ran through one side of my chest. Covering the hotly flickering agitation, I deliberately asked with an innocent expression.

“Shareholders’ meeting? What exactly do they do there?”

“Just a boring ritual that gets repeated routinely.”

“It’s the day before, and you’re still out like this? Doesn’t it seem important?”

“Not really.”

He replied leisurely.

“It’s just a spectacle of watching a few grains of sand—at most a cupful—acting arrogantly as if they own the entire sandbox. In reality, the true owner is already decided. All decisions have already been made, and there’s no room for them to interfere.”

“…You really have a terrible personality, even if it’s nothing new.”

It was an explanation dripping with arrogance, but there was no room to refute it. For me, who had been looking forward to this day, there was no way I didn’t know about the general meeting to be held tomorrow.

Contrary to Choi Junghan’s lukewarm answer, the shareholders’ meeting tomorrow had a slightly special character compared to the usual regular meetings.

Recently, CM Electronics’ new businesses had expanded dramatically, diversifying the portfolio accordingly. They were also aggressively pursuing additional mergers and acquisitions targeting overseas companies. To solidify the company’s smoothly rising image, I had already learned that this shareholders’ meeting would be conducted publicly.

I had gathered such information through eavesdropping, secretly peeked at business plans and reports whenever possible, and finally waited for the right moment to formulate the plan. The months spent holed up in Choi Junghan’s office hadn’t just been about eating cookies or performing fellatio under the desk.

Of course, during that time I had countless times sucked his cock under the desk and been bent over the table for insertion sex, but the thought of seeing Choi Junghan’s distorted expression tomorrow made it all worth enduring.

“Then I want to go too.”

I spoke in a subtle tone and tugged at the hem of his shirt. At my childish, babbling plea, he only let out one lazy chuckle with a drowsy face.

“It’ll be boring.”

“You’ll be presenting in front of people and all that. I want to see that. Not just you groping my thigh like a pervert every day.”

I slapped the back of his hand, which was still resting on my thigh, and pushed it away. The smile on Choi Junghan’s face deepened.

“You’re not seriously saying you want to go just to see that, are you?”

I silently glared at him, then gently bit my lower lip and lowered my gaze. It was to imitate a shy fool. At first it had felt awkward, but now it came out naturally like a habit.

Once again, Choi Junghan’s hand covered my thigh. His relaxed voice continued.

“Why would you want to see something like that. It’s like wanting to secretly watch your lover working.”

“…….”

“Does our Oon-ah love me or something.”

A powerful emotion suddenly surged in my chest.

Love. The moment a word that should never come out of his mouth—no, a word that must never come out—slipped out, an indescribable feeling brushed past me.

Murderous intent. Yes. The emotion rushing in right now should have been purely that alone. No other emotion should have had any room to intervene.

Yet the fact that even a single drop of impurity had mixed into my feelings was something I myself couldn’t understand. A monster wearing a human face, someone who knew nothing of such emotions, someone who only knew how to ruin other people’s lives, daring to speak of love.

The moments when, waking up screaming from nightmares in the middle of the night, he reflexively opened those large arms to hold me. The times when my fever rose so high I couldn’t see in front of me, and he silently wiped my forehead, cleaned up my vomit without complaint, and covered me with blankets. The countless moments when, if I sobbed asking to be put to sleep, he would pat my back with those large, cold hands and pour that chilling lullaby into my ear…

Why did hearing that abominable word from Choi Junghan make me recall all those moments?

“Don’t talk bullshit.”

I shook off the fleeting feeling in an instant and snorted.

“Then what about you.”

“Hm?”

“…Do you love me or something?”

From here on, it was pure impulse. A question I hadn’t calculated, didn’t need to calculate, suddenly burst out. In truth, deep in my heart, it was something I had secretly wondered about for a very long time.

Of course I knew. No matter how well he treated me, it was nothing more or less than the way one handles a toy. Not only was he skilled at breaking and damaging things, but he was also skilled at carefully tending and polishing them so he could play with them for a long time.

But Choi Junghan always held me through my nightmares without showing the slightest hint of annoyance. When I had high fevers, he checked my temperature and changed the wet towels more frequently than my own mother ever had. When I begged to be put to sleep, his lullaby continued repeating without end until I fell completely asleep…

So it was inevitable that I would harbor such an absurd curiosity.

“Oon-ah, how can you say something so outrageous.”

Choi Junghan laughed as if it were amusing. When he let out a soft chuckle, ripples formed in the glass he held.

“Love between brothers—would that be okay, or not?”

“…….”

“Then, what about you.”

Choi Junghan was still smiling with a loosely relaxed face. Yet the gaze he fixed on me was straight and unwavering.

“Do you want me to love you.”