#50
“Your phone. Please give it to me.”
His confidence was as if he had left his own belongings with her.
“Wait, I’ll send it for you. What’s the number?”
Ha Eun-chan, who had been startled by the conversation that naturally started between Joo Si-yeo and Oh-yul as soon as the bodyguard collapsed, now looked bewildered but soon watched the situation with curious eyes.
“……”
“Oh, come on, hurry.”
Knowing there was no way to win against the persistent Joo Si-yeo, Oh-yul recited Ho-woo’s number that he had memorized. She first saved the phone number and then, with her hands poised over the keyboard, asked “What should I send?” with an expectant expression.
There was also a mischievous intent to satisfy her curiosity about Oh-yul’s ‘love interest’.
“Please send that I’ll be back soon, so wait for me.”
“I’ll send something super cool for you.”
She quickly moved her fingers.
[ㄱㄱㄱ.]
“How’s that?”
Before he could stop her, Joo Si-yeo typed three Korean consonants ‘ㄱ’ and pressed send. Her face was full of satisfaction as she read the text on the screen.
“This can mean ‘I’ll be back soon’, or ‘go go go’.”
“…Noona. I don’t know who the recipient is, but who would understand this? How does this translate to ‘I’ll be back soon’?”
“These days, people use a lot of abbreviations.”
“…Esper Joo Si-yeo, give me the phone.”
At Oh-yul’s cold response, Joo Si-yeo handed over her phone to him, chattering.
[Make sure to carry what I gave you. Don’t leave it at home.]
Oh-yul left a message that could be interpreted by the recipient without writing a name, hoping that Ho-woo would understand.
If he doesn’t understand, I’ll have to get slapped once or twice later and beg on my knees. Ho-woo is soft-hearted and affectionate, so he might sympathize once he knows the truth.
[Who are you? Stop joking around and get lost.]
Contrary to Oh-yul’s hopes, the reply from Ho-woo was more disastrous than expected. A sound mixed with bewilderment escaped from the man’s throat.
“……Hmm.”
“Haha! I like this guy! Is it okay if I talk to him a bit?”
Ho-woo, who had gained Joo Si-yeo’s favor rather than Oh-yul’s, didn’t send any more replies. Well, it was quite early in the morning now. Oh-yul recited excuses to himself for the harsh response and returned the phone to her.
“Please refrain from unnecessary talk.”
“It’s okay to let slip a little about your boyfriend’s situation. It’ll probably work better if I explain rather than you making excuses yourself.”
Right? There was nothing more to add to her words, accompanied by a grin. Her words were absolutely correct.
“Boyfriend?! Who’s whose boyfriend?!”
Only Ha Eun-chan, who had been looking confused from the moment the bodyguard was knocked out until now, jumped up in surprise. His wide-open eyes and slack facial muscles showed how shocked he was.
“Hyung, did you get a lover?!”
“Ah, he does. And it’s not even a Guide, but an ordinary person. There was a commotion on the anonymous board, didn’t you see?”
“I’ve been too busy lately to see! If there was such a scoop, you should have told me too! You two were just whispering to yourselves, leaving me out!”
Ha Eun-chan showed his disappointment, then noticed Oh-yul looking uncomfortable with the situation and quietly observed. Still, he couldn’t stop glancing, apparently finding it incredibly surprising that Oh-yul had a lover.
This was because Oh-yul had never even received close contact Guiding. Even while always struggling with insufficient Guiding, he had endured by minimizing contact with Guides. His other nickname was ‘stone Buddha’.
There were even bets within the management complex about whether Oh-yul had his first experience or not (eventually, the bet fizzled out as the truth couldn’t be known). The sudden appearance of a lover was quite a hot topic.
“So you just contacted that lover?”
Ha Eun-chan recalled the rather bleak message content, which didn’t seem like a message to a lover, and once again felt that ‘even in love, Oh-yul is still Oh-yul’. In Ha Eun-chan’s mind, Oh-yul was a cold and ruthless tyrant.
“Hehe, that’s right. He’s in a crisis now, being locked up here for a week without being able to say anything to his lover, and then today at the press conference, there was that announcement with that little girl. First loves usually don’t work out well, right?”
“…Wow.”
“Let’s stop talking about me. And Esper Joo Si-yeo.”
“Yes?”
“There’s no such saying that first loves don’t work out well.”
Joo Si-yeo felt a chill run down her spine at the cool warning given with eyes downcast under long eyelashes, and laughed. Even among S-class, the man before her was uniquely strong.
If he wanted to, he could easily break the cage surrounding him and reign over the city, so it was strange that such a man obediently followed the orders of idiots. And now this man was reacting like this to the statement that first loves don’t work out! She found it hilariously crazy.
“My goodness, he really likes them.”
Like. Love.
To Oh-yul, Ho-woo wasn’t a being that could be defined by such meager words.
He was the North Star guiding him on the vast ocean, the sun shining overhead, and the heavy rain (豪雨) to quench his thirst. The sense of stability given by the one who looked at him, a monster feared even by his parents, with an upright gaze was incomparable to anything else.
“No.”
He’s unique.
At Oh-yul’s words, added with firmness, Joo Si-yeo was shocked and screamed “Ack!” Her expression twisted as if she had seen a grotesque monster for the first time. It was the same for Ha Eun-chan, who was quickly rubbing his arms with a similar expression. Goosebumps were visible on his exposed neck above his clothes.
“Are you sure this is really Oh-yul?”
“It really doesn’t suit you when you say things like that, hyung.”
Despite their shock, Oh-yul snorted and took another sip of the beer that reflected Ho-woo’s taste. The flat taste of the beer that had lost its fizz wasn’t to his liking.
From the beginning, Ho-woo and Oh-yul’s tastes were about a million light-years apart. Oh-yul liked simple, non-greasy food, and since he didn’t enjoy alcohol, there wasn’t much to say about his taste in that regard.
On holidays, he would quietly sit by a sunny window reading novels or flip through cookbooks like “100 Side Dishes for Children” for Ho-woo’s sake. Ironically, this led to him becoming better at making sweet side dishes that children might like rather than food to his own taste.
Oh-yul had been living for Ho-woo since he was 9 years old, so saying it didn’t suit him was somewhat inaccurate.
“There’s no need to make you understand.”
“Well, that’s true, but were you ever that type?”
“Hyung? What type?”
Ha Eun-chan asked briefly. At that question, Joo Si-yeo, who seemed to be struggling to find the right word for a moment, soon found an answer and blurted out:
“The romantic type.”
Romantic.
Wow, that doesn’t suit him at all. Ha Eun-chan muttered reflexively. If there was a word that absolutely didn’t match the man in front of them, it would be that word. However, the person in question thought that word suited him quite well.
“Maybe I am.”
“Haha, they say ‘never say never’, like a mad dog… Huh?”
Joo Si-yeo, who was denying it even as she said it, trailed off at Oh-yul’s simultaneous response.
“…Is that so.”
“If we’re going by the dictionary definition, then yes.”
Ha Eun-chan quietly took out his phone and searched for the word.
Romantic.
A person who considers love the highest value and devotes all their sincerity to the person they love.
Since we haven’t seen Oh-yul with his supposed lover, we can’t say it’s not true, but we can’t agree either.
‘To begin with, isn’t it too confident to think of yourself as a romantic?’ Ha Eun-chan muttered inwardly, unable to say it out loud. However, Joo Si-yeo calmly voiced what Ha Eun-chan couldn’t.
“It looks cheap if you call yourself a romantic. Don’t say that anywhere else.”
She stretched languidly as she got up from the sofa she had been sitting on.
“So, are we done here?”
“That’s right.”
“As expected, you’re not the type to suggest something without a purpose, even when you suddenly talked about catching up.”
Joo Si-yeo, who had realized from the beginning that this gathering was also created for Oh-yul’s purpose, clicked her tongue as she checked the time.
“If I sleep now, I’ll only get about two hours of sleep.”
“Huh? Aren’t we going to hang out more?”
“Ask Oh-yul. This gathering was probably just to borrow a phone to contact his lover anyway.”
At Joo Si-yeo’s words, Ha Eun-chan looked at Oh-yul with a considerably shocked face. To the gaze persistently asking ‘Wasn’t this a pure gathering?!’, Oh-yul coldly and ruthlessly delivered the final blow.
“You may leave now.”
“What about cleaning up?”
Ha Eun-chan’s gaze briefly fell on the unconscious bodyguard. ‘Should I take care of it?’ His ash-gray eyes sparkled like glass beads, without a trace of sympathy.
“I’ll handle it myself, so leave it be.”
At Oh-yul’s words, Joo Si-yeo lazily waved her hand lightly and left the office. In the quiet, dark corridor, the clicking sound of her heels echoed particularly loudly. As Joo Si-yeo left without hesitation, Ha Eun-chan, who had been anxiously looking back and forth between Oh-yul and the door, hurriedly bowed and dashed out like a bullet.
