#099
Lee Gyo-ha’s right hand finally showed signs of improvement a week after the visit to Jirisan. Hwi-kyung, who had been worried all along despite the shaman’s apparent intervention, could finally relax.
He had almost denounced the innocent shaman as a fraud due to Gyo-ha’s hand not getting better. Of course, while the bleeding had stopped, the burn scar remained. Still, it was fortunate that the wound no longer opened and bled, making it much easier for him to use his hand than before.
Lee Gyo-ha, far from being physically delicate, didn’t care what condition his hand was in. Rather, it was the people around him who were often startled to see him using his right hand so freely.
“Sometimes I find our young master baffling. It’s awkward to say this about my employer, but…”
Marcia was one of those ‘people around him’. Being the third person to see Gyo-ha’s hand after Hwi-kyung and the shaman, Marcia had long been exasperated by Gyo-ha’s consistent “I don’t know” responses to questions about how he got injured.
“How can you not know how you injured your hand when it’s in that state?”
“……”
“Really… our young master is truly unfathomable.”
Hwi-kyung couldn’t agree or disagree with Marcia’s words, which seemed to be a mix of concern for her superior and gossip.
After all, he couldn’t suddenly tell someone who knew nothing about it that the injury was due to a system window. Moreover, perhaps because he had attended too many graduate schools, Gyo-ha sometimes truly exhibited unfathomable behavior.
“Did you perhaps have an accident in the United States?”
“…I don’t think so.”
“But otherwise, there’s no reason for you to suddenly return to Korea. The hand injury is suspicious too. Hwi-kyung, you weren’t with him in the US, right?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Oh my, then how did you two meet? Did you spill coffee on our young master’s clothes like in a drama?”
Coffee, no, but he did spill regression.
No matter what misunderstanding Marcia might come up with in her overflowing imagination, this time Hwi-kyung truly had nothing to say. It wasn’t like they met at a small gathering; they met while regressing… That would sound strange no matter how you put it.
Hwi-kyung had recently moved into Gyo-ha’s officetel. This was because Gyo-ha had whined for three days about not wanting to leave him alone.
Even without that reason, Hwi-kyung had been thinking about living with Gyo-ha eventually. Staying alone in a space with an irritable neighbor wasn’t as easy as it used to be.
He had lived just fine in that villa before meeting Gyo-ha, but now everything about that villa felt uncomfortable. After experiencing a better place, staying there alone felt like self-abuse.
Even the ready-made clothes he used to wear without a second thought now sometimes bothered him with their long sleeves or ill-fitting sizes. He had become too accustomed to the tailored suits Gyo-ha had gifted him.
Not only that, but Hwi-kyung’s taste had also become unnecessarily picky. It was entirely Gyo-ha’s fault that he now found the taste of Ok-ja’s hospital patient meals terrible. Now, if it wasn’t the soybean paste soup Gyo-ha made, all other soybean paste soups in the world seemed fake.
Thus, Jung Hwi-kyung ended up entrusting the three essentials of human life – clothing, food, and shelter – to Lee Gyo-ha. Because Gyo-ha frequently provided Hwi-kyung with only high-quality things, Hwi-kyung had gradually become accustomed to luxury items, like clothes getting wet in a drizzle.
He was in the same situation as the monkey with flower shoes in the fairy tale. Just as the badger merchant made the monkey, who didn’t need shoes, unable to walk without flower shoes, Gyo-ha had completely hooked Hwi-kyung by giving him only good things.
However, no matter how uncomfortable he felt, Hwi-kyung didn’t want to rush the move. If Gyo-ha hadn’t insisted on living together, using his right hand as an excuse, he wouldn’t have moved his belongings so hastily.
The biggest reason Hwi-kyung was reluctant to move was Yoon Marcia. Having been caught in an embarrassing situation before even properly greeting Marcia, he felt awkward about facing her again.
But the result of the battle of stubbornness was always Gyo-ha’s victory. Hwi-kyung was led by Gyo-ha, who suddenly barged into his villa, and once again became his roommate.
Having settled in the officetel, he naturally had to become acquainted with Marcia again. Marcia welcomed Hwi-kyung with a pleased smile, as if she knew everything.
As Gyo-ha had said, it seemed that God wasn’t so narrow-minded these days. Marcia was the type of person who would accept it even if Gyo-ha brought home a walking stag beetle instead of a male lover.
Still, Hwi-kyung couldn’t shake off his embarrassment. Although Marcia didn’t say everything to Hwi-kyung like in the fourteenth iteration, true to her friendly nature, she asked him all sorts of questions as her superior’s lover.
From whether our young master exerts himself in bed to how the two of them started dating, a barrage of questions crossing all levels of propriety poured out.
Marcia seemed convinced that Gyo-ha was head over heels for Hwi-kyung. Even Hwi-kyung felt dizzy at her open-minded statement that men will be men.
Given how their first meeting had gone, he thought they couldn’t get close in this iteration. But Marcia defied all expectations and quickly became friends with Hwi-kyung, using Gyo-ha’s right hand injury as an excuse. It was natural in a way, as they both cringed at Gyo-ha’s careless use of his right hand.
In this iteration too, Hwi-kyung quickly won Marcia’s favor. In any case, Hwi-kyung tended to be weak to middle-aged women, and middle-aged women tended to give high scores to Hwi-kyung’s neat appearance.
For this reason, Hwi-kyung was now out shopping at a large department store with Marcia. Taking advantage of the moment when Gyo-ha, whose return to Korea had been quickly discovered despite attempts to hide it, was dragged away by Jung-hye, Hwi-kyung had embarked on this cozy outing with Marcia.
If Gyo-ha knew about this, he would probably lie down and cry, asking how Hwi-kyung could go shopping without him, but this time, Hwi-kyung couldn’t bring Gyo-ha along. The purpose of Jung Hwi-kyung’s department store visit was to buy gloves suitable for Lee Gyo-ha to use. It lacked romance to shop with the person who was to receive the gift.
But Hwi-kyung had one fatal flaw. He was surprisingly lacking in aesthetic sense.
All his casual clothes, apart from suits, were black, and even for suits, unless they were the tailored ones Gyo-ha had bought him, he wore whatever was available.
Because his base appearance was good, he seemed to dress neatly on the outside, but essentially, Jung Hwi-kyung had no fashion sense. It wasn’t that he lacked it; he simply ‘didn’t have it.’ Fortunately, few people met Hwi-kyung privately, so few noticed that he was a one-suit gentleman.
If Gyo-ha had been a fashion-indifferent person like Hwi-kyung, whose energy started depleting as soon as he entered the department store, Hwi-kyung would have put in the effort to choose a gift on his own. But Gyo-ha was not fashion-indifferent. The possibility of someone who had left home to become a model having the same aesthetic sense as Hwi-kyung converged to zero.
Although Gyo-ha would probably gratefully accept even if Hwi-kyung bought him some old sackcloth, Hwi-kyung wanted to give a gift good enough to surprise Gyo-ha. Fortunately, he had just sold the stocks he had bought in bulk at their peak price. For once, he had enough funds to comfortably buy a gift for someone else.
If not now, he would never be able to set foot in the brands Gyo-ha usually used. Hwi-kyung decided to go to the department store as soon as he finished selling his stocks. Don’t worry about strange things and just buy gloves? Well, I’ll show you I can buy them!
…But feeling he couldn’t do it alone, he had requested SOS from Marcia. Hwi-kyung lacked the courage to wander alone on the first floor of the department store lined with luxury brands.
Fortunately, Marcia gladly accompanied Hwi-kyung. Having worked as the Baekgyeong Group’s exclusive household helper for a long time, she knew Lee Gyo-ha’s luxury tastes inside out. Although he had clung to Marcia for lack of anyone else to ask, Hwi-kyung had chosen quite the right person as his companion.
“How about this?”
“Oh my.”
“It’s nice, right?”
“No? Rejected.”
“……”
“Hwi-kyung, why do you like black so much? Are you a child of darkness?”
“Gloves are usually mostly black…”
“That’s true, but I’m surprised because everything you think is okay is pitch black.”
Is it because he’s only worked for black companies that he’s really drawn to black? Hwi-kyung knew that black suited him. Lee Gyo-ha, a walking personal color analyst, had told him it suited him. But he didn’t think he preferred black.
Rather, Hwi-kyung tended to dislike black because he had suffered too much from black companies. The reason his closet was full of black clothes was that they were relatively plain and easy to wash. Isn’t practicality more important than color preference? For efficiency-prioritizing Hwi-kyung, ‘black’ was just a rational color choice.
“How about this then?”
“Are those gloves too?”
“They’re half gloves, half gloves. Even if they don’t cover the whole hand, wouldn’t these be more convenient for activity if he’s only going to wear them on his right hand?”
The half gloves Marcia recommended to Hwi-kyung were also black. There weren’t many other choices for men’s gloves anyway, with white or brown being the only other options.
The department store employee timely brought the displayed half gloves and presented them to Hwi-kyung. All sorts of persuasive words spilled from the employee holding the packaged gloves.
“These come in an active design, so they’re good for people who enjoy sports.”
“Ah, I see…”
“Being black, they don’t go out of style! With both the department store card discount and our brand discount applied, the price is very reasonable compared to the design. They’re so popular that stock runs out quickly every time we get them in, and we only have one left besides the display item.”
The employee passionately appealed the good points of the half gloves. Every word flowed smoothly.
Hwi-kyung felt a sense of kinship with the department store employee, recalling his past of working hard in sales positions. The luxury goods section of the department store probably emphasized performance no less than BK International.
In the end, Hwi-kyung bought the half gloves Marcia had chosen. It wasn’t out of pity for the department store employee, but even to Hwi-kyung with his lack of aesthetic sense, they seemed to suit Gyo-ha quite well. Given Gyo-ha’s personality of disliking constriction, he would at least pretend to wear half gloves.
“By the way, I thought only our young master liked you, Hwi-kyung.”
“……”
“Looking again, you’re completely smitten with our young master too. Are you two, like, soulmates or something?”
Hwi-kyung, receiving the characteristically over-packaged shopping bag from the employee, smiled softly.
“Well… if you put it that way, yes. Soulmates.”
It wasn’t entirely wrong. A parachute boss and a job-hardened deputy who finally met after thirteen regressions. You’d be hard-pressed to find a fate like this even if you searched the whole world.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
