# Chapter 44
It was a completely different place from Jinhyuk’s home that Seowoo had originally known. He couldn’t comprehend why he was here. What made it even more bewildering was that Jinhyuk, who was passing by, wore the same indifferent expression that Seowoo remembered.
Without realizing it, Seowoo sprang up from his seat and ran out of the cafe.
“Park Jinhyuk!”
There was no response, only the subtle glances from passersby that flickered toward him.
No matter how much he looked around, there was no one who even resembled Jinhyuk, let alone the man himself. After scanning his surroundings several times, Seowoo took out his phone and tried calling Jinhyuk’s remaining number.
— The number you have dialed does not exist.
It wasn’t that he had been blocked; Jinhyuk had completely changed his number. Seowoo stood still, looking down at his phone, conflicted between thoughts of ‘Surely it can’t be because of me’ and ‘He went this far?’
“Ah, geez. Why would I call just to nag… huh?”
As Woojae, who had just finished his call and came out, assessed the situation and looked out the window, Seowoo was pushing his phone into his pocket and beginning to walk away.
“Wait, what are you doing over there? Hyung!”
Woojae, without a moment’s hesitation, flung open the door and rushed out, but Seowoo was already quite a distance away. Looking around to see if there was something there, Woojae saw nothing but roads and shops.
He hurried over and grabbed Seowoo’s shoulder, stopping him. Seowoo looked down at Woojae with round, surprised eyes.
“Hyung, sheesh, why are you so fast… Where are you going without saying anything? Did something happen?”
“Ah, sorry. I was so distracted that I forgot to say I was leaving. Jinhyuk just passed by this way.”
“Manager-hyung? All of a sudden?”
As much as Woojae was flustered by Seowoo’s impulsive action, Seowoo seemed equally flustered in his own way; his complexion was noticeably poor. His voice was relatively calm, but his eyes were shifting uncontrollably.
“…Let’s go back inside and continue our conversation.”
Whether it was really Jinhyuk or someone who resembled him, there was no point in walking around like this anyway.
Woojae patted Seowoo’s back and gently pulled him along. However, Seowoo’s feet remained firmly planted on the ground, as if he had no intention of going back inside.
“He must be around here. If I just go a little further…”
“Hyung, Seowoo-hyung.”
The careful way he called out was both like soothing a child and kindly urging him, filled with concern.
“That person cut off contact with you without a single word anyway. Didn’t you say he wouldn’t even answer your calls? Someone who lacks even the most basic courtesy in human relationships and decides the relationship on his own—why are you so desperate to chase after him?”
“…We never got to talk.”
Seowoo looked directly at Woojae. It was a face that was neither quite a frown nor a tearful expression. If it weren’t for the lingering attachment in his eyes, it could have been called expressionless. Woojae let out a deep sigh.
“…I really do like that you’re this kind of person, but…”
Back in college, when Woojae first met Seowoo, he was like this. A person who kept his manners, was decisive, and didn’t do anything that could cause problems. He always had more rigid aspects than soft ones.
But in reality, if you’re too rigid to bend, you end up bearing all the damage yourself. Woojae lightly put his arm around Seowoo’s shoulders and patted him.
“You’re the one who’s stressed right now.”
“…”
“Just think of him as someone who was never in your life. Why do you keep clinging to this and worrying about it?”
“It’s not that I miss him, but…”
Of course, it would be a lie to say he didn’t miss him at all. If one person was deleted from his already small list of friends, the impact on Seowoo’s inner self was certainly not small.
But it wasn’t simply that he couldn’t let go of a past relationship because he missed losing a friend.
“I can’t come to terms with it. If he hadn’t just disappeared without a word, if he had just met me face-to-face and said ‘Let’s not meet again,’ I wouldn’t think anything of it.”
“You’re saying the exact same thing I am. I’m telling you, going silent and making people worry is the worst thing to do. You don’t need to care about him.”
“I’m not saying I’m caring for him. This isn’t about making Jinhyuk feel better. I just feel suffocated not knowing.”
Much of the time he had spent with Jinhyuk remained as pleasant memories. He hated the phenomenon of doubting those memories at their core by doubting Jinhyuk himself.
He wanted to keep good memories as good memories. If they couldn’t remain good memories, it was better to put them in the trash without any lingering attachment.
So the reason Seowoo wanted to see Jinhyuk was entirely his own and had little to do with Jinhyuk.
Woojae’s expression was complex. It seemed he had more objections he wanted to voice, but he didn’t bother and just nodded his head.
“…Let’s go back inside, hyung. We can’t find him now anyway. There are too many alleys here, so we don’t even know which way he turned.”
It certainly wasn’t wrong. In a street full of people, finding someone who had disappeared was not easy.
Fortunately, Seowoo didn’t insist on his opinion either. The two returned to the cafe and settled back into their vacated seats.
“But I don’t think you saw wrong. Honestly, even though he cut off contact unilaterally, he wouldn’t have left Korea just because of that, right?”
“…I suppose not?”
“Does he have that kind of money?”
“I don’t know about money, but I don’t think he would have gone abroad.”
Wasn’t it said that some people clam up in front of foreigners? When they had joked about immigration, Jinhyuk’s face came to mind as he had emphatically said, ‘I could never live in a foreign country.’
“If he’s still in Korea, he must be scrambling to make a living somehow in this small land.”
“True, Jinhyuk must be doing some other job… He had said we’d work together until retirement.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, a lump formed in his throat. Even though it had been several months, the emotion hadn’t diluted.
With a deeply furrowed brow, Seowoo took a large spoonful of cake and pushed it into his mouth. Woojae silently moved the cake plate completely in front of Seowoo.
“Unless he’s a third-generation chaebol, he has to work somehow. Anyway, if he can say ‘I was the manager of top star Han Seowoo for 10 years,’ other entertainment companies would be fighting to hire him, wouldn’t they?”
Seowoo repeatedly scooped up cake and put it in his mouth, as if recharging with sugar. He looked oddly dazed, like a robot with a loose screw. Only after repeating the same action three or four times did Seowoo slowly respond.
“But the more I think about it, the less I understand.”
“What?”
“Jinhyuk, I mean. Even though we were really close friends, officially, he was my manager. We were working together at the same company, legally bound.”
Moreover, they didn’t meet as friends—they met as manager and talent, then became friends. After they became close, the intimacy definitely preceded the manager title, but that was undoubtedly because Jinhyuk did his job well.
When Biro Management was still very small, before Jinhyuk and Seowoo had properly become friends, President Hwang, Jinhyuk, and Seowoo had gone drinking together. At that time, President Hwang had given them advice he called “words that would become their flesh and blood.”
‘The entertainment industry is really small. Everyone knows each other through one connection, and you never know how an innocent remark might get distorted as it spreads. So you both should always be careful with your actions and words. Problems caused by speaking are much harder to clean up than problems caused by not speaking.’
Indeed, as his career progressed, it proved to be a maxim without a single word to spare. Thanks to President Hwang’s caution, both Seowoo and Jinhyuk had become people who didn’t carelessly open their mouths or act recklessly anywhere.
So there was no way Jinhyuk wouldn’t have considered the danger of rumors. With just one misstep, rumors of his disloyalty could spread like wildfire.
“If Jinhyuk planned to continue working in the entertainment industry, isn’t it strange that he cut off contact with me like that?”
“Well… It was an unsettling conclusion. It’s too unscrupulous an ending for him to mention your name anywhere.”
So what could it be? Woojae, who had been groaning with his chin in his hand, suddenly perked up, tapping the table brightly with wide eyes.
“What if he never came back to the entertainment industry at all?”
“He’d just throw away 10 years of experience?”
“Well, he might have wanted to try something else.”
Even if he just wanted to keep one foot in the entertainment industry, he’d still be exposed to the power of rumors, so how drastically could he have changed his path?
Usually, the decision to abandon one’s career wasn’t easy to make. Even Seowoo, who had never had a proper office job, could understand that much.
Did Jinhyuk have concerns that Seowoo didn’t know about? Was the manager job too hard for him? Or did he really have a second dream he never talked about?
“But when he left, there was no conflict with the company, right?”
“Yeah. He talked it out well with the president.”
The president had even defended him, saying, “These things happen.” It meant he hadn’t left the company on bad terms.
“But from what you’ve said, it was essentially a same-day notice. Is that okay for a company? Actually, that’s pretty bad manners too.”
“With the president… he apparently brought it up a few days before he cut contact with me. The president said he tried to persuade him and that’s why he didn’t tell me first.”
“Wow, so he had time to tell the president in advance but didn’t say anything to you? That’s really messed up.”
Woojae’s expression visibly soured. He wasn’t hiding his displeasure at all.
“The more I hear about it, I can only think he deliberately cut you off, hyung.”
“Both the president and I know Jinhyuk isn’t the type to stab someone in the back without reason, which makes it even more curious.”
“Anyway, you’re both the kind of people who would sit at a bus stop forever after the bus has left.”
Though he said it jokingly, Woojae’s expression wasn’t casual.
The fact that Jinhyuk had backstabbed Seowoo remained unchanged, but even Woojae had to admit there were strange points.
The fact that he had perfectly closed out the professional aspect, as if he were running away from or avoiding something, but only cut off his relationship with Seowoo. And the fact that he had disappeared from Seowoo’s side with strange suddenness. Moreover, the reason for his disappearance remained unclear.
The hazy questions led to a single hypothesis, but Woojae deliberately didn’t voice it. Instead, he shifted the question in another direction.
“But I’m curious about something.”
Seowoo raised an eyebrow. Woojae, slightly examining Seowoo’s expression, casually yet cunningly dropped a comment.
“You get so worked up just seeing someone who looks like him, so why haven’t you ever thought about properly looking for him?”
“Hey, do you think finding someone is easy? That takes time and money.”
Even a simple errand service costs a lot. It would be inappropriate to use such methods.
With a composed retort, Seowoo sucked up his iced tea through a straw, which was still half full.
“I’m already overwhelmed with the Seo Dohyun situation—how could I go around looking for people right now?”
“Then you could delegate it.”
“What nonsense are you talking about? Who would I delegate this kind of thing to?”
Was he suggesting asking a friend to find someone? How would he explain it, and who would be available to do such a thing?
As he was about to dismiss it as nonsense with a derisive snort, Woojae suddenly cupped his own face and thrust it forward.
“Me, of course.”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
