Chapter 213
“Dad!!”
“Yes, Jerome.”
“Dad! It’s been four nights already! When are you coming?”
As expected, it was Jerome calling to hurry him.
“Yes, Dad will be taking the plane back soon.”
“Hurry! Hurry, Dad! What toy did you buy for Jerome?”
Hyeon-woo almost foolishly replied “Huh?” He remembered coaxing Jerome before leaving Korea, promising to bring back a nice toy. He teasingly responded:
“…That’s a secret.”
“Ah~ I’m so curious!”
“It wouldn’t be fun if I told you in advance, right?”
Jerome stomped his feet, making a playful fuss. After ending the call with Mrs. Kyung-ae with instructions to return safely, Hyeon-woo headed to a nearby outlet with Tae-geon.
As Hyeon-woo hurried his steps, he stumbled on the sandy ground. Tae-geon quickly grabbed his arm to support him and prevent him from falling.
After regaining his balance, Hyeon-woo quickly caught Tae-geon’s retreating hand and interlaced their fingers.
“…I thought I might fall again…”
“…”
Hyeon-woo’s ears turned red as he made the awkward excuse. Tae-geon looked at him with an unreadable expression and firmly grasped Hyeon-woo’s hand in return.
Their hands locked tightly together, as if they never wanted to let each other go again.
*
After leaving the crowded Incheon Airport, they got into a taxi.
Hyeon-woo gazed absently out the window at the setting sun, then suddenly noticed something surprising. The tree branches that had been bare all winter were now covered in tiny bumps.
Looking at the stirrings of spring preparing to sprout new buds, Hyeon-woo recalled a spring day when he was seven years old.
The spring day with shimmering heat haze and fully blooming yellow forsythia had suddenly approached right before their eyes.
Ring ring –
Tae-geon’s phone, which had been ringing frantically since they arrived at the airport, vibrated again.
“Don’t you need to answer that?”
When Hyeon-woo asked, Tae-geon reluctantly pressed the answer button. Immediately, someone’s angry voice burst through the speaker.
“You crazy bastard! This is your doing, isn’t it?!”
Although he couldn’t make out the words, the angry voice shouting sounded somehow familiar. Hyeon-woo soon remembered it was Mu-seok’s voice.
“How could you do something like this?!”
“Try to clean it up well. That vaccine shouldn’t be revealed to the world, should it?”
“You, you psycho-!”
Tae-geon unilaterally ended the call and turned off his phone. Hyeon-woo, who had been watching Tae-geon with anxious eyes, carefully asked:
“…Was it okay to hang up like that? Your father seemed really angry…”
“Ah, well.”
As Tae-geon brushed it off, Hyeon-woo’s expression grew serious.
“Don’t tell me it’s because of company business?”
“Something like that.”
…Hadn’t he already left? After being so cold, saying it was defective… Are they trying to bring Tae-geon back now?
“Is Taeryeong asking you to come back? Forcing you against your will?”
“…”
Tae-geon just stared at him silently, and Hyeon-woo shouted forcefully:
“Don’t go!”
He was furious at their shamelessness. He couldn’t send Tae-geon back to that den of beasts eyeing him greedily.
“Don’t go, I said!”
Tae-geon slightly crinkled his eyes, as if he didn’t dislike Hyeon-woo’s scolding. He leaned back deeply in his seat and lazily replied to Hyeon-woo:
“…Are you going to take responsibility for my life?”
“…Huh?”
“I’d be happy living like this with you in the mansion forever.”
“…”
Hyeon-woo lost his words, and his expression darkened.
He hadn’t wanted Tae-geon to just stare at him and live helplessly in the mansion. That would be no different from how he was before meeting Hyeon-woo.
Looking out the now-dark car window, Hyeon-woo began to concretize in his mind the ideas he had been formulating bit by bit.
Before arriving at the mansion, they first stopped by Mrs. Kyung-ae’s house to pick up Jerome.
Leaving Tae-geon, who seemed somewhat uncomfortable around Mrs. Kyung-ae, in the taxi, Hyeon-woo got out alone and rang the doorbell. Jerome came running out.
“Dad!!”
Hyeon-woo caught Jerome in his arms as he ran towards him, and nodded a greeting to Mrs. Kyung-ae who appeared behind him. He handed over the vitamins and souvenirs he had bought in America, which she happily accepted.
“By the way, it’s such a relief. I was worried you might not be able to enter the country.”
“…Pardon?”
“Ah, you haven’t heard the news yet.”
Seeing Hyeon-woo’s curious look, she began to explain.
“A cruise ship that sank due to a battery explosion was salvaged, and it seems some important people were on board. Apparently, they anchor in scenic spots and hold investment presentations or something? They even have fireworks, eating and drinking. I only learned about such things now.”
She shook her head and continued:
“Anyway, they need to find the bodies quickly for any progress, but they haven’t found a single one yet. Unfortunately, the ship drifted into Japanese waters, making the investigation really difficult.”
Hyeon-woo’s mouth gaped open at the unbelievable story.
“The passenger list was revealed the day before yesterday. With high-ranking people from various countries involved all at once, it seems the borders were closed due to terrorism concerns. I was worried you might not be able to return, but I’m so relieved.”
After finishing her explanation, Tae-geon asked Hyeon-woo, who had returned after a long while:
“What were you talking about that took so long?”
Hyeon-woo relayed the news he had heard from Mrs. Kyung-ae, secretly expecting Tae-geon to be surprised.
“…So we almost couldn’t enter the country!”
“Really?”
However, Tae-geon didn’t even blink, merely fastening Hyeon-woo’s seatbelt with a gentle hand.
Hyeon-woo left Jerome’s room after the boy had fallen asleep clutching the box of the limited edition block toy he had received as a gift. He lay his tired body down on the bed.
Reminded of the incident Mrs. Kyung-ae had mentioned earlier, Hyeon-woo searched for it on his phone and was flooded with related articles. His face grew serious as he scrolled through them one by one.
The detail about it being an electric cruise ship particularly caught his eye. Hyeon-woo frowned at the photo of the completely incinerated upper deck of the cruise ship, which had been illegally modified with a battery meant for vehicles. The sight of the cruise ship burned black as charcoal, its shape unrecognizable, reminded him of his father’s car at the time of the accident.
Coincidentally, the battery used in the modification was from the same manufacturer as his father’s car. Judging by the plummeting stock prices, it seemed they were struggling considerably. Though the mobility company couldn’t be held responsible for the battery explosion in an illegally modified ship, such details were of no importance to the sensation-seeking public.
Considering how it coincided with the lawsuit story McRae had told him, Hyeon-woo could understand why the reinvestigation of his parents’ accident had progressed so quickly.
…Could Tae-geon have…?
Hyeon-woo’s eyes narrowed for a moment, but he dismissed his suspicions as he read the next article. Shaking his head, he scrolled through an article with content impossible for even Tae-geon to accomplish with human power.
It was about vortexes. The cruise ship had apparently been anchored against a backdrop of majestic and overwhelming scenery with sheer cliff faces. In the past, the area had been left with large and small holes in the seabed due to reckless oil exploration.
The article suggested that a crack in the seabed had formed a massive turbulent flow in one of these holes, and the resulting whirlpool had swept up the cruise ship, causing it to collide with nearby rocks. A photo was attached showing the long tear in the side of the salvaged cruise ship. The battery was thought to have exploded due to this collision.
The next article was about suspicions of a cult. All those missing in this accident were top figures at the apex of the class pyramid from various fields. There was much speculation about why such people had gathered at the same place and time.
All sorts of conjectures were flying about what kind of evil they must have been plotting, for there to be no clues left besides the boarding records. One of these was the cult suspicion.
They argued that if it had been an ordinary business presentation, it wouldn’t be so difficult to find even a single clue, so they must have been conducting some kind of ritual on board. There were even occult interpretations. This was partly because traces of something being burned and destroyed were found in many of the homes of those under investigation. Hyeon-woo examined the photo attached to the article. Among the ashes of burnt remains, he could see red wax melted beyond recognition, clinging like drops of blood.
After scrolling that far, Hyeon-woo finally couldn’t take it anymore and turned off his phone screen. He couldn’t bear to read any more articles full of suspicions and circumstances without a single clear fact.
When he closed his eyes, his vision was instantly dyed in pitch-black darkness. Feeling as if he had just watched a sci-fi movie, Hyeon-woo slowly drifted off to sleep.
*
His heat cycle was coming soon. Hyeon-woo, who had been uneasy since returning to Korea due to a certain suspicion that wouldn’t leave his mind, took advantage of the weekend to visit a pharmacy.
“Um… Do you have condoms?”
“What size?”
“…The… the biggest…”
“Are you looking for any specific features?”
“Features…?”
Aren’t all contraceptives basically the same? Without thinking deeply, he blurted out:
“Just… give me whatever.”
It was his first time buying condoms. He hesitated many times out of embarrassment, but there was something he absolutely had to confirm.
It took courage just to buy them, but it would take even more courage to give them to Tae-geon.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
