Ji Haesu flicked Choi Suho down onto the bed and wrapped him in his arms as he spoke.
“I told you—I keep work and personal matters strictly separate.”
“…Strictly?”
Choi Suho blinked his unfocused eyes, then shut them completely.
“Then don’t half-ass it. Just throw me away.”
“I told you I don’t want to. If everyone’s already decided you’re unnecessary and tossed you out, I’ll be the one who picks you up.”
Something everyone had decided was unnecessary and thrown away. Choi Suho.
Realizing the state he was in, Choi Suho let a faint smile touch his lips—but it soon twisted into something sorrowful. Even knowing it was all karma he’d brought upon himself, an unbearable grief spread through him. Instead of soothing him with words, Ji Haesu simply embraced him quietly from behind. That was all—but clinging to even that scrap of warmth made him feel so pathetic and wretched that he couldn’t even manage to cry properly.
“…Bring it to me, hyung.”
“What? What did you just say?”
Startled by the faint, barely audible words ahead of him, Ji Haesu lifted his head— and at that moment, he blinked as soft skin brushed against his cheek.
“Bring me a suit.”
With tears streaming down his face, Choi Suho clutched Ji Haesu’s shoulder as if it might crumble in his grip and pleaded,
“I want to see my dad one last time.”
For the first time, Ji Haesu hesitated.
It would be better not to go.
The words lingered on his lips, but when he heard the voice calling him “hyung,” his body moved despite himself.
Well, it’s not really my problem. He’ll deal with it himself. I just need to pick up discarded Choi Suho and enjoy him—that’s all.
He shook the thought off without dwelling on it.
Right now, protecting the request entrusted by the client came first.
Choi Suho had become an Omega, and he had indirectly killed Choi Suho’s father as well. All that remained was for Choi Suho to get pregnant—and then miscarry.
In any case, Choi Suho had to pay for his sins exactly as the client intended.
A sin is a sin. A price is a price. And repentance is repentance.
***
What kind of person was Ji Haesu, really? When they first met at the hotel, Choi Suho had assumed he was just some low-level thug scraping by at the bottom. But the more time he was forced to spend with him, the more questions piled up.
“You said you wanted a suit, right?”
Fiddling with the pitch-black suit Ji Haesu had brought—more precisely, a suit meant for mourning—Choi Suho muttered in a gloomy voice, “I just… didn’t expect you to get it in ten minutes.”
Ji Haesu’s eyebrow lifted at the sight of Choi Suho’s uncharacteristically drooping posture and voice. It wasn’t like he’d been doused by water from above while walking past, yet his mood was foul and irritated all the same. Watching Choi Suho hang his head and endlessly toy with the mourning clothes made him want to shove him down and fuck him senseless—but he wasn’t depraved enough to rape someone whose father had just died.
He was just about to say that, considering what Choi Suho had done to Do Si-in, he had no right to be this devastated—when Ji Haesu unconsciously clamped a hand over his mouth, flustered by the sorrow-soaked eyes staring straight at him.
“If it weren’t for me… he wouldn’t have died this quickly, right?”
Ji Haesu dragged a hand down his face, then crossed his arms and looked at Choi Suho.
Slowly slipping out of his hospital gown, Choi Suho spoke in a flat, lifeless voice.
“If I’d realized my love for Si-in, then my dad would’ve…”
Again. Not only did he casually call him Si-in, but he even said “my love for Si-in” as he wallowed in regret. Watching him, Ji Haesu let out a wet, twisted laugh and hurled a bomb of a statement.
“Yeah. It’s your fault. If you hadn’t done that to the client, your dad would still be alive right now.”
Choi Suho’s hands froze just as he was about to put on the mourning suit. Even though Ji Haesu knew he should stop here, his mouth kept moving on its own.
“But do you really think you should go to the funeral hall? You think anyone there will welcome you? Even your dead father?”
Choi Suho’s hand gripping the mourning clothes trembled faintly. Ji Haesu grabbed the back of the suit he was about to put on and lifted Choi Suho’s face. His face was paler than ever, on the verge of crumbling if someone so much as touched him.
Seeing that, Ji Haesu felt reassured, a gentle smile curving his lips.
Yes. This is how it should be. You should fall apart like this because of me. Don’t regret anything while thinking about Do Si-in. Don’t feel sorry while thinking about your dad. Suffer only in my hands. Break down. And in the end, beg while calling me “hyung.”
Then at least I’ll stop it from going as far as gang rape and a psychiatric hospital.
But Choi Suho violently slapped Ji Haesu’s hand away and instead grabbed him by the collar, sneering in his familiar mocking tone.
“Who the fuck are you to worry about me?”
“What?”
“Going to my dad’s funeral is my choice. You just keep doing what you do—rape me like Si-in asked, pass me around to other bastards. That’s your job, isn’t it, Ji Haesu? Ah—right. You’re not even Ji Haesu, are you?”
Choi Suho let out a dry laugh, released Ji Haesu’s collar, and shoved his shoulder aside.
“I don’t even know a single thing about you—what’s with the concern…”
Ji Haesu laughed softly.
“Concern? Me? For you?”
The boomerang-like mockery thrown back at him made Choi Suho’s face stiffen. Anyone could hear it—it had sounded full of concern. Telling him not to go to the funeral, worrying about him. Was that really just his imagination? As Choi Suho failed to hide his confusion, Ji Haesu lightly tapped his cheek—unpleasantly so—and spoke as if snapping him back to reality.
“Listen, Mr. Choi Suho. Why would I worry about you? There’s not a single person left in this country who worries about you anymore.”
It was true. With his dad gone, there really was no one left who would worry about him. Once the final blow landed, his chest hurt so badly that every breath stung.
Still, not wanting to show his pain or misery, Choi Suho screamed while hurling plastic objects at Ji Haesu.
“Fuck—then fine! Get out!”
“Even if you didn’t tell me, I was going to.”
For reasons he didn’t even understand, Ji Haesu’s anger had flared to its peak. Like a catcher, he snapped his hands out—swish, swish—snagging the objects Choi Suho threw. Then he neatly put everything back in place, stroked Choi Suho’s head as he panted for breath, and whispered into his ear.
“But don’t worry. I’ll be in Korea at least until I throw you into a psychiatric hospital.”
“…!”
Choi Suho’s eyes shook violently. Ji Haesu laughed—“Hahaha”—and added in a rich, sultry voice,
“The client risked his life to escape from there. Do you think you’ll be able to escape from the psychiatric hospital I lock you in? Or will you live trapped there until you die? Well, once it comes to that, you’ll be listed as missing, so who would even know? What difference does it make?”
Every word Ji Haesu spoke turned into a finely honed blade, splitting Choi Suho’s chest open and making him bleed.
His end was already decided. It was practically decided by Do Si-in himself. No matter how much he struggled, it would be useless—he knew that.
That was probably why his leg had been broken too. So he couldn’t run. Ji Haesu hadn’t done it for no reason.
After lightly tapping the shoulders of a frozen, trembling Choi Suho, Ji Haesu straightened up.
“Then—have a good time at the funeral.”
Turning his back, Ji Haesu swallowed the bitter taste lingering in his mouth and quickly left Choi Suho’s hospital room. But even as he walked away, the bitterness remained strong, his chest feeling so tight it was as if he’d swallowed a pile of eggs, forcing him to punch it with his fist.
Leaning against the wall beside Choi Suho’s room, Ji Haesu touched his cheek, which stung where Choi Suho had left a scratch, lowered his head, and opened his eyes sharply.
Why did I do that? That wasn’t like me. I let my emotions get the better of me and deliberately said only the things Choi Suho hated to hear. Knowing how starved he was for affection, how easily he was hurt by anything related to his father—I still chose those words on purpose.
That no one would welcome you.
And yet—it was true. If Choi Suho went to the funeral hall now, no one there would welcome his presence…
In fact, even when he’d told his subordinate to prepare the mourning suit, he hadn’t wanted to give it to him. He’d planned to stop him from going to the funeral altogether.
He’d had no intention of hurting each other like this, of fighting like this. Rubbing the cheek where the scratch still faintly lingered, Ji Haesu sank into thought.
Should I go back in and stop him, even now? But who am I to stop him?
No—more than that, why am I even standing here agonizing over this? I can just leave.
Let’s go. Whatever kind of humiliation Choi Suho faces at the funeral, what does it have to do with me? It’s all his fault anyway. If he’d lived decently from the start, he wouldn’t be paying this kind of karma.
Even as he tried to turn away with that thought, his feet wouldn’t move—as if his ankles had been coated in cement and left to harden. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to easily enter Choi Suho’s room either, so he stood near the door with his hands in his pockets, striking a pose as if he were waiting for someone.
That was when he heard the door open, followed by the sound of crutches tapping against the floor. Ji Haesu reflexively turned his head—and there was Choi Suho, hair neatly slicked back, dressed immaculately in mourning clothes.
Recently, he hadn’t been hit by Ji Haesu, and the bruises scattered across his body had faded significantly thanks to the ointment Ji Haesu had brought. The sight of his refined, chillingly handsome face—so strikingly similar to Choi Juho, whom Jang Yuguk had loved and whom Jang Jihyeok still loved—made Ji Haesu clamp his mouth shut for a moment.
