Sweat beaded on Inho’s forehead and trickled down his pale cheek.
“Where would you like to go, sir?”
The driver glanced at Inho’s complexion through the rearview mirror and asked in a calm voice. Having just climbed into the car, Inho responded with a heavy sigh instead of words. He had just returned from his house.
When no answer came, the driver simply waited in silence, hands resting on the wheel. Inho’s pallor made him wonder if he should head to a hospital, but he kept his thoughts to himself.
Inho wiped the sweat pooling on his forehead and called Haon again. The dial tone rang endlessly, until eventually, the call was met with a cold message that the phone had been powered off.
Inho squeezed his eyes shut, his throat bobbing heavily as he swallowed.
He had believed Haon would be at home. Truthfully, it had been more hope than belief. He had wished that maybe Haon had just missed his calls because he was busy cleaning. But the house had been utterly empty. He had scoured every room, even checking the walk-in closet, but there was no trace of Haon anywhere.
Not a single word left behind about going out. Where the hell had he gone?
Inho pressed his fingers against his eyes and hesitated before speaking. He gave the driver the address of the bar near the university district where Haon worked part-time on weekends, ordering him to hurry.
It was the only place that came to mind. Haon had neither friends nor acquaintances, leaving only home and his workplace as possible destinations.
That thought alone made Inho’s chest ache painfully.
“…Are you alright, sir?”
The driver cautiously spoke again after checking the rearview mirror. Inho was sweating so profusely he looked as if he had been caught in a rainstorm. It was clear he couldn’t just sit back and do nothing; he looked like he might collapse at any moment.
Inho simply leaned back in his seat with his eyes closed, sending an unspoken warning not to engage further. Understanding the message, the driver focused solely on driving.
The sound of rain tapping against the windows filled the silence within the car. The sharper the pattering of the rain grew, the deeper the furrow between Inho’s brows became.
A gnawing anxiety twisted his gut at the thought that Haon might be caught in the downpour. Haon, whose body was already so frail—just imagining him standing helplessly in the heavy rain made Inho’s head pound.
Please, not that. Anything but that. Please, just this once.
Inho, who didn’t even believe in God, found himself praying. It was the first time since childhood that he had wished for something so desperately.
He scowled and rubbed his forehead, his fingertips trembling slightly. Whether it was the alcohol in his system or the surge of emotions, he could feel himself starting to unravel.
“We’re almost there.”
Even the driver’s steady voice did nothing to soothe the storm inside Inho.
The moment they reached the bar where Haon worked, Inho’s unease doubled. He hadn’t found Haon there either.
Three hours had passed since Haon’s phone had been turned off.
The bar’s owner, realizing the gravity of the situation, reached out to Tae-hwi and Ho-young—who weren’t even scheduled to work that day—to help search for Haon. Seeing Inho’s ghostly pale face and bloodshot eyes as he frantically searched for Haon, they hadn’t been able to sit by and do nothing.
He wasn’t there.
At first, the bar owner hadn’t thought much of it when Inho asked about Haon in a calm voice.
“Has Haon not come by today?”
But upon closer look, he saw that Inho was drenched in sweat, his lower lip faintly trembling. Despite the state he was in, Inho continued to repeat the same question in an eerily composed voice and expression.
“Haon… really hasn’t come?”
Only then did the owner grasp the gravity of the situation. He promised to contact Inho immediately if Haon showed up. Before Inho could even ask, the owner had already reached out to Tae-hwi and Ho-young for help as well. When Inho, just before leaving the bar, tried to pull out his wallet to offer a reward, the owner snapped at him.
“Save that crap for after you find your kid!”
Not that he would have refused it once given, but right now, the only thing that mattered was finding Haon.
Truthfully, even in his eyes, Haon—with his striking, delicate looks—seemed like someone who could easily get caught up in trouble. And knowing that Haon was an Omega, it made perfect sense that his lover would drop everything and come running. If the bar owner had known about Haon’s unstable heat symptoms, he would have been even more worried than he already was.
—Hello? Are you listening?
Ho-young’s voice rang out from the other end of Inho’s phone. Having just gotten out of the car, Inho opened his umbrella and delayed his response for a moment. Ho-young was currently riding his motorcycle around Inho’s neighborhood, searching.
“Let me know if you find him.”
Only after forcing down the nausea roiling inside him did Inho finally speak.
Ever since he had taken a suppressant earlier in the day, and then added alcohol and tranquilizers on top of that, the waves of nausea wouldn’t stop. Not that it was entirely the medicine’s fault.
—I’ll call you right away if I find him, so please don’t worry too much.
Ho-young, who couldn’t properly hear Inho’s strained voice over the heavy rain, shouted loudly into the phone. The pounding of the rain made it hard to make out any words through the connection.
—He couldn’t have gone far! He might even come back home soon.
Until the very end of the call, Ho-young tried to offer reassuring words. Having gotten a rough sense of Inho’s condition from the bar owner, he couldn’t help but feel concerned.
Inho ended the call with a brief acknowledgment. There was still no word from Tae-hwi. Tae-hwi had stayed behind to watch Inho’s house. Inho had given him the home address and security code, just in case Haon returned and they missed each other.
—The number you have dialed is turned off—
Hearing the automated message after trying to call Haon again, Inho bit back a curse. He had already gone to check Hangang Park and the entrance of the aquarium where he and Haon had once gone together.
Haon wasn’t anywhere. Nowhere.
Glancing up at the darkening sky, Inho folded his umbrella and stepped inside a building. It was the old goshiwon where Haon used to live.
He had already been here two hours earlier, but there was nowhere else left to check, so he came back. If Haon had lost his way, maybe he had instinctively returned to the place he once called home.
If Haon had come here, it would mean he wasn’t in a clear state of mind.
Even on a normal day, Haon was forgetful. Once his heat started, those symptoms worsened significantly. Inho had already experienced two of Haon’s heats before; the thought of seeing it happen again made his throat tighten painfully.
He had sworn he would never let Haon suffer through a heat episode in some strange, unfamiliar place ever again.
Last time, Inho had made a vow as he held the sleeping Haon in his arms. He had promised himself to take responsibility for Haon’s heats for the rest of his life.
It hadn’t been a drunken whim, nor was it a lighthearted promise.
Maybe it had started out casually, but now, Inho’s feelings had grown so deep that even he could recognize it. If Hyo-jeong had seen Inho now, she would have made a huge fuss, convinced he had found the one he would spend a lifetime with. And this time, Inho wouldn’t have denied it.
Bang, bang, bang!
Inho arrived at the door of the shabby room Haon used to live in and pounded on it violently. It was the same door he had once shaken with enough force to nearly break it down.
“Haon, are you inside?”
It was clearly someone else’s home now, yet Inho still clung to the slim possibility. He knocked so hard that even if someone were inside, they would be too terrified to open the door.
“Um, excuse me…”
Eventually, the man living next door couldn’t stand it any longer and cracked open his door. He barely opened it an inch, seeming to guess who Inho was.
“You’re looking for the guy who used to live there, right?”
The man, intimidated by Inho’s overbearing presence, couldn’t even show his face properly. Even the last time they had crossed paths, Inho’s aura had been unnerving, but today he looked like a thug come to beat someone half to death. Dressed sharply in a black suit, the impression was even stronger.
“Did you see him?”
As Inho stepped closer, the man’s shoulders flinched. From a distance, Inho looked perfectly normal, but up close, his eyes were slightly wild—seriously frightening.
“Uh, ahem. A few hours ago, yeah.”
The man stammered, compressing the earlier commotion into a few words.
When Haon had screamed and fled from a stranger, it had been this man who came out to tell them to keep it down.
“He was screaming like crazy for a while, then just—uh, sorry—he was really hysterical, and then he bolted outside. I don’t know where he went.”
The man quickly raised his hands in defense before Inho could press him further. Watching Inho’s face darken with every word made him regret ever speaking up. His mouth went dry, worried he’d end up caught in the crossfire for saying something unnecessary.
“You remember that bastard’s face, don’t you.”
Inho, who had been silently listening, pulled a wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket. The man, puzzled, looked down and immediately spotted a white check being offered to him—and nodded eagerly.
“You mean the guy who attacked him? Yeah, I remember. He lives just downstairs.”
All he had done was open his mouth a bit, and now he had a month’s worth of pay in his hands. With his face lighting up, the man hurried to offer to lead Inho straight to the room number.
“No. Not right now.”
Inho said he would come back later. Leaving those words behind, he quickly descended the stairs.
On purpose, he gripped the railing tightly as he went down. The cold, rusted surface of the handrail was rough to the touch—Haon had once clung to this very rail, struggling not to be dragged away.
He had fought back, screaming for them not to touch him, with that thin, fragile body.
“Where would you like to go, sir?”
The driver, having quickly gotten out of the car, rushed toward Inho while opening an umbrella. He moved swiftly to shield Inho, who had left his own umbrella behind, from getting even more drenched.
But Inho had already been thoroughly ruined long before.
His neatly styled hair was soaked with sweat and rain, now messy and disheveled. His shoes and the hems of his trousers were stained and damp with rainwater.
More than anything, it was Inho’s hardened expression and blank, unfocused eyes that looked dangerously unwell. The driver, sensing the gravity of the situation, had already contacted Inho’s secretary in advance. It was part of his job to prepare for the worst.
As the driver moved to open the back door for him, he was startled to see Inho stepping out from under the umbrella, heading straight out into the rain. He called out loudly, but the roar of the rain drowned his voice completely.
Even if Inho had heard, it wouldn’t have stopped him.
Inho walked toward an old, run-down convenience store with its lights still on. He took the sharp sting of the rain full on without blinking once.
If he so much as closed his eyes for a moment, it felt like Haon, captured in his sight, would disappear forever.
Why hadn’t he thought to check the store? It had been right there, practically in front of him.
“Fuck’s sake, what are you, Jean Valjean? You don’t even have 1,800 won?”
The store owner’s booming voice cut through the rain, reaching Inho’s ears. Through the thin glass doors, he could also hear the murmur of people inside the store.
The owner was swinging a red plastic flyswatter at Haon. It was meant to kill insects, but he was using it to strike Haon, who was collapsed on the floor.
No one moved to help Haon. They just stood there, wide-eyed in shock or watching out of morbid curiosity. Some asshole even openly laughed.
Inho’s body wavered violently at the sight. The driver, still following behind, had to lunge forward to steady him.
Shaking off the driver’s hand, Inho kept his gaze locked on the scene beyond the glass. His legs, weakened, refused to move properly, and he could barely stagger forward. Even though he was trying to walk, it felt like he was stuck in place, the door not getting any closer.
Was it because of the sedatives he had taken before getting out of the car?
Despite the seething rage boiling in his chest, his body felt sluggish, his mind freezing over—like someone had poured plaster into his skull and left it to harden.
The store owner raised his arm to strike Haon again.
At that moment, Inho crossed the threshold into the store.
The noisy atmosphere instantly fell silent.
Haon, with white cream smeared around his mouth, was shoving a piece of bread desperately into his mouth. It seemed, for a fleeting second, that he made eye contact with Inho. At least, that’s what Inho thought. He believed Haon’s gaze had briefly met his own.
But Haon wasn’t looking at him. His vacant, hollow eyes were focused only on the bread he was cramming into his mouth.
Inho slowly walked toward him, staring intently at the pitiful sight.
“Haon.”
His low voice filled the entire store.
“Haon-ah.”
Even after hearing his name, Haon showed no real reaction. His empty eyes, devoid of recognition, stayed glued to the bread and the void beyond.
“You’re not supposed to eat that,” Inho said quietly.
Inho spoke, forcing air into his aching lungs. His body, soaked in sweat and rain, felt like it would collapse into the floor, and he had to bite down on the tip of his tongue to stay conscious.
“Why are you eating something so dirty?”
Carefully, he pried open Haon’s mouth and pulled out the soggy bread wrapper he had been chewing into a paste.
“You’ve got good things right in front of you.”
With that, Inho did his best to wear the gentlest smile he could muster, whispering playfully.
He needed to make himself look relaxed—only then would Haon feel safe enough to lean on him.
