“Are you really not going to the department party?”
Bae Jung-yoon kept asking, trying to hold him back until the very end. But Hoon responded firmly, “Yeah. I’m not going,” then hurried out of the lecture hall.
Up until then, Bae Jung-yoon had never shown this kind of interest in him. The sudden change in behavior felt off. The way he acted all friendly, as if they’d been longtime friends, felt both unfamiliar and unsettling.
“If you were going, then I was going to go too.”
What the hell was with that smug attitude? Was he just overreacting?
“Hey, dumbass, we’re out of materials. What are you doing, spacing out like that?”
The gruff voice of the factory manager snapped him out of his thoughts.
“I was just about to get on it.”
“Yeah, right. After disappearing for three months, did you leave your brain behind too?”
Damn, the grudge this guy holds is no joke. He’s been this cranky lately, and he kept throwing around the word “disappeared” so much that Hoon was starting to develop neurosis over it.
Ignoring the nagging, Go Hoon moved to get back to work. But the manager trailed behind him, chattering on.
“Come on, admit it. You were off having a fling, weren’t you? Found yourself some sugar daddy and thought, ‘Hell yeah, time to quit this job,’ huh?”
“No, I told you—it’s not like that. Seriously. What do you take me for?”
Scowling, Go Hoon effortlessly lifted a container filled with chemical solution in one hand.
“Then what the hell was it?”
“How many times do I have to say it—I was sick. You really need to stop watching those weird dramas, sir. No wonder your brain’s full of nonsense like that.”
“What do you mean weird? Those dramas are more realistic than the crap going on in the world these days! And you—don’t think I didn’t notice—you don’t look like someone who’s just been sick! You look great after all that time away.”
Was it that obvious he’d been living it up at Bae Jung-yoon’s place? That comment about how his face looked better made Hoon flinch slightly, but he shook his head in disbelief.
Then the manager tried a more threatening approach.
“You better work your ass off, you little punk! I’m always watching you!”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Go Hoon lazily replied while watching the manager dramatically point two fingers at his own eyes, his glare intense. But that response wasn’t enough to put the old man at ease.
“If you’re gonna date, make sure it’s with someone decent! Don’t go getting yourself strung along by some weird freak, you got that?!”
The manager’s nagging voice clung to his back like a burr. Hoon simply opened the lid of the machine and silently dumped in the materials.
Romance? Yeah, right. That crap was a luxury way out of his league—a fantasy from a faraway land.
“Pick the right partner, dammit! If you don’t wanna end up like me at my age! Got it?!”
The man’s frustrated yelling, born from painful experience, echoed in his ears.
And yet, the moment he got drunk, he’d be the first to call his wife, gushing about how she’s the most beautiful woman in the world and how much he loves her, laying on the affection thick.
Unable to hold back a small smirk, Hoon set the empty container aside, and inevitably, his thoughts drifted back to Bae Jung-yoon.
“Hey, Kkongddeok-ah, I’m your owner—don’t go acting all cute with someone else like that.”
An “owner,” huh? Yeah, he had been one, for a little while at least. A fleeting bond between a person and their cat. Even if it was only for a very short time.
***
[Kang Soo-yeon: Jung-yoon! You coming to the after-party tonight?] <Now>
[Kang Soo-yeon: Everyone seems like they’re waiting for you] <Now>
[Kang Soo-yeon: (Bunny character emoji with sparkly hopeful eyes)] <Now>
Bae Jung-yoon glanced down at his phone with a cold stare. The messages had just popped up at the top of his screen as he walked in. Without replying, he shrugged off his coat and threw it onto the couch along with his bag.
With a heavy thump, he slumped back against the sofa and closed his eyes in the silence. His thumb pressed hard against his temple, trying to ease the pulsing pain that came and went.
A long time passed before his eyelids slowly lifted. His gaze drifted toward one corner of the living room. His eyes, polished and glassy, scanned over the cat tower, hideaway cube, hammock—each one in turn. Then his sight moved to the rear of the couch, to the spot where he’d removed the bookshelf and expanded the vertical space.
It had been nearly a month since his cat disappeared. And yet, his home was still overflowing with signs of him.
If anything, the items had increased, not lessened. He hadn’t put away a single thing he used. After the accident, he’d removed anything he thought might be hazardous and filled the space with even more cat supplies.
Rubbing at his dry eyelids with his fingertips, Bae Jung-yoon stood and headed toward the closet. He opened the drawer tucked farthest inside and pulled out a wallet resting deep in the back.
The old bifold was worn and stained with age. Opening it, he found a single card, a 10,000-won bill, and his ID. He slid out the slightly protruding resident registration card and stared long at the face in the photo.
“Go Hoon.”
Go Hoon (高熏). He traced the tidy characters with his gaze, then pulled out the Hankuk University student ID tucked beneath it.
Same photo as the ID card. He quietly looked down at the person in that picture, then slowly turned and stepped out of the closet.
Bae Jung-yoon headed straight to the bedroom and opened his laptop. With practiced ease, he moved the mouse and clicked play on a video.
The video had been shot with an angle that captured both the kitchen and living room. However, there was one key flaw: because the camera had been installed on top of the bookshelf, everything directly beneath it was a blind spot.
“Ugh…!”
There was a burst of noise, followed by silence. Then a cat began crying and scurried restlessly around the house. The ball of fur wandered between the front door and the living room before vanishing into the blind spot. Several minutes later, a human voice could be heard.
“That’s my voice!”
The person—muttering something under their breath—sounded like they were calling emergency services, dialing 119. The call went on for a while before an unfamiliar man suddenly stepped into frame.
Jung-yoon focused his jet-black eyes on the screen. A well-built naked man was walking toward the closet. When he returned to the living room, he was fully dressed from head to toe.
Bae Jung-yoon paused the video and immediately clicked on another file. It was CCTV footage from the elevator and shared entrance, which he had requested from the officetel management office.
The footage showed a man with the same build and features, wearing a cap pulled low over his face. He had boarded the elevator on Jung-yoon’s floor and exited at the first floor.
That was the only entry record. Even after scrubbing through multiple surveillance clips, there was no footage of him entering the officetel from the outside or coming up to the apartment from the lobby.
Without blinking once, Jung-yoon stared at the video until the man appeared closest to the camera. He paused it, then held the student ID photo right beside the screen.
The footage was blurry and lacked clarity, but the silhouette alone was unmistakable. Which meant, the moment Jung-yoon had called out “Kkongddeok-i” when he ran into Go Hoon—it hadn’t been a slip of the tongue at all.
“Found you.”
A smirk tugged up one corner of his lips into a crescent. He slowly brushed a long finger across the man’s profile frozen on the screen.
“What should I do with you from now on?”
***
What the hell was he supposed to do now? Go Hoon pressed his fingers to his throbbing forehead, lost in grim thought. Why did this kind of fucked-up shit always happen to him?
Sure, since they were in the same major, he’d expected to share some elective classes with Bae Jung-yoon. It was statistically unavoidable, and he’d resigned himself to it. But fuck’s sake—why this?
“The teams for this group project have been randomly assigned by me,” the cheerful professor announced.
And when the team list popped up on the screen, Go Hoon was struck by a wave of despair.
Group 4: Kim Yeo-jin, Bae Jung-yoon, Go Hoon, Park Ki-cheol.
Of course it had to be Group 4. The number four—synonymous with death in Korean superstition—glared back at him from the screen, as if mocking him.
And that wasn’t even the worst of it. Of all the damn people—why did it have to be him?
Park Ki-cheol. Go Hoon stared at the pudgy figure with a nasty expression. Judging by the fact he hadn’t shown up to previous lectures, the guy had probably ditched the first day entirely—likely hungover from a night of heavy drinking.
He didn’t even glance in Hoon’s direction. Good. Apparently the feeling was mutual.
As Hoon turned his head, his eyes met Bae Jung-yoon’s, seated right beside him. No telling how long he’d been watching. And why the hell was he smiling like that? What was he so damn pleased about?
Narrowing his eyes, Go Hoon shot a sour look at the idiot grinning beside him.
He scanned through the team list again: one timid-looking student, Park Ki-cheol the bastard, and Bae Jung-yoon. A chaotic bundle of misery.
All right. Logically speaking, Bae Jung-yoon wasn’t that bad. He just made Hoon personally uncomfortable. But as far as group work went, he had a reputation for being insanely competent.
Which meant the real problem was…
“Hey, with Bae Jung-yoon on our team, we’re solid,” Park Ki-cheol said, slapping Jung-yoon’s shoulder like they were old pals.
Here we fucking go again.
This was the second time Hoon had been grouped with Ki-cheol for a project.
Park Ki-cheol was infamous in his own right. Just like Bae Jung-yoon—but for very different reasons. Ki-cheol was notorious for freeloading.
His freeloading was so excessive that he’d even been called out anonymously on the student forum, Everytime.
The post had been brutal, filled with profanity: “How the hell did someone with that brain even get into Hankuk University?”, “Stop creeping on girls during group work,” “If you’re not gonna contribute, just drop out already.”
Naturally, Ki-cheol flipped his shit. He stormed the first floor of the department building, yelling about which bastard had dared to write such slander. Then, absurdly, he pointed the finger at Go Hoon as the supposed culprit behind his “public execution.”
And Go Hoon’s “crime”?
He happened to spot Ki-cheol throwing a tantrum and stood nearby, watching from the crowd.
“Go Hoon!”
Their eyes had met as Ki-cheol scanned the area with a murderous glare. Even then, Hoon had no idea what was coming.
“It was you, you fucker!”
The sheer weight of those words was enormous. In an instant, every eye shifted from Park Ki-cheol… to Go Hoon.
I am SO glad that he already knows and there’s no mucking about with hintng and not being able to believe the transformation
Pray to the heavens that there won’t be much misunderstandings….