#65
A text message from three days ago floated on the phone screen. Come to think of it, the messages that Eunsol sent every day had also disappeared.
I only realized it now.
Having turned off notification sounds a few days ago to avoid being disturbed by phone contacts, I hadn’t noticed that Eunsol had cut off communication.
Hyun-oh’s eyes darkened. Misty smoke flowed from between his lips, enveloping the phone.
His long fingers with distinct knuckles hovered over the phone screen before finding Eunsol’s number and pressing the call button.
—The phone is turned off. You will be connected to voicemail…
It was the first time he had called Eunsol. He had never even replied to the countless messages that had come before, so making a call was unusual from his perspective.
But the voice that came through the phone wasn’t Eunsol’s, but an impersonal female voice.
Blue veins bulged threateningly on the back of the hand holding the phone. Hyun-oh pulled the phone away from his ear and looked down at the screen, inhaling smoke deeply until his cheeks hollowed.
Sensing the ominous atmosphere, Kim Myungjun carefully asked about Hyun-oh’s intentions. The end of his voice trembled finely against his will.
“…What should we do?”
Hyun-oh leaned his body against the backrest and put the cigarette to his lips again, inhaling deeply. Only after more than half of the cigarette had disappeared did he raise his eyes.
For a moment, Kim Myungjun thought he saw a flash of light cross Hyun-oh’s eyes. The fragments of intense emotion strong enough to make him worry about Eunsol vanished without a trace as Hyun-oh slowly blinked.
“Find him right now. Use all available personnel.”
“…Yes.”
Kim Myungjun bowed his head deeply toward Hyun-oh. His chest felt oppressed by the acrid cigarette smell and Hyun-oh’s pheromones.
He wanted to escape this space as quickly as possible. After Kim Myungjun left the chairman’s office with more hasty steps than usual, Hyun-oh put what remained of the cigarette between his lips.
“…So it’s an escape.”
His fingers repeatedly tapped the now-blackened phone screen with a steady rhythm.
It was something he had never considered—the situation where Eunsol would leave his side of his own will.
Though he hadn’t checked the CCTV yet, judging by Kim Myungjun’s use of the word “disappeared,” there was clearly something more that hadn’t been reported to him.
Zing- zing-.
It was then that the silent phone rang. Hyun-oh’s eyes moved quickly to the screen.
However, the name that appeared on the screen wasn’t the person filling Hyun-oh’s mind, but someone whose voice alone was enough to grate on his nerves.
Instead of pressing the call button, Hyun-oh turned off the screen and stood up. He extinguished what was left of the cigarette by pressing it directly on the table.
It was something he wouldn’t normally do, but he had no time to think about such details now.
“Chairman, shall I have the car ready?”
The door to the chairman’s office swung open abruptly. Kim Myungjun, who was in the process of receiving real-time reports about Eunsol and checking them, approached Hyun-oh in surprise.
“No need. I’ll drive myself.”
If he had the presence of mind to sit calmly in the back seat while a driver took him, he wouldn’t have abandoned his work and come out like this.
Kim Myungjun anxiously followed behind Hyun-oh. But when Hyun-oh got onto the executive elevator and immediately pressed the close button, he had no choice but to press the button for the adjacent elevator.
“…This looks like it could turn into a real disaster.”
Hyun-oh’s demeanor was unusual. He was a man with few emotional fluctuations. Though he displayed all emotions freely as a child, even that disappeared before he entered elementary school.
Sometimes Kim Myungjun wondered if Hyun-oh’s emotional structure differed from others’.
The one person who elicited emotional changes from Hyun-oh was Eunsol. Though Hyun-oh seemed unaware, his condition would improve whenever he went home after spending days and nights at the company.
Whether Eunsol’s escape had affected Hyun-oh or not, Kim Myungjun felt anxious about the potential trouble that might arise.
Why did the elevator, which usually seemed so fast, feel so slow now?
The elevator Hyun-oh had taken had already reached the floor where his car was parked.
His fingertips trembled finely with the intensity of his emotions, fearing he might have an accident while driving. At last, the elevator arrived, and Kim Myungjun got in and pressed the button for the first basement level.
He was pressing his fingernails into the flesh of his palm, waiting for the elevator to reach the parking lot as quickly as possible, when he heard a vibration sound from inside his suit jacket. He hurriedly took out his phone.
It was Kang Ye-ryeong. She must have called him after Hyun-oh didn’t answer her call.
“Yes, Madam.”
—You can call me Mother, even though you’re being stubborn about it.
“This is more comfortable for me.”
Since Kim Myungjun’s mother had been Hyun-oh’s nanny, Kang Ye-ryeong had also known Kim Myungjun since childhood. She occasionally treated him with such familiarity, but Kim Myungjun wasn’t the type to act thoughtlessly based on superficial friendliness.
—I just got a strange call from Secretary Song. She was asking if Eunsol was with me.
Just as expected. She had extraordinary intuition.
From Secretary Song’s perspective, the number of people Eunsol might be with was limited, so contacting her was an unavoidable action.
But from Kim Myungjun’s position, receiving Kang Ye-ryeong’s call made him tense enough for cold sweat to dampen his back.
“No, ma’am. Eunsol is currently resting at home. It seems Secretary Song has made some kind of mistake.”
It was a lie, but if he had to deal with Kang Ye-ryeong’s anger now, he might not have the mental capacity left to handle the situation.
The falsehood would be revealed later when she questioned him, but for now, finding Eunsol’s whereabouts and preventing Hyun-oh from doing something rash took priority.
—…If you think I’m going to fall for such a lie, that’s a huge miscalculation. Director Kim, have you lost your touch?
Kim Myungjun closed his eyes tightly. It was clear from whom Hyun-oh had inherited his keen intuition.
—I’m almost at the kids’ house now. I’ll check for myself, so hang up.
The phone disconnected abruptly, and Kim Myungjun let out a long sigh as he looked at it.
This is serious trouble. If Hyun-oh and Kang Ye-ryeong were to clash in their current state, it would be catastrophic.
Until now, the mother-son relationship had been more peaceful than ever thanks to Eunsol’s presence as an intermediary. But now, that mediator had disappeared. Kang Ye-ryeong would certainly blame Hyun-oh, and Hyun-oh was unlikely to calmly accept his mother’s criticism.
The scene unfolding in his mind was horrifying just to imagine.
“…Where have you gone?”
A small resentment toward Eunsol for disappearing without a word arose, but it quickly turned into concern for him.
* * *
“Lee Eunsol.”
Hyun-oh called Eunsol’s name as he opened the front door and entered. He didn’t know what state of mind he was in when he drove his car here.
It was fortunate, if anything, that he had followed the road rules out of habit.
He strode down the long corridor, tracking any trace of Eunsol. The person who used to come out to the entrance to greet him whenever he heard the front door open was nowhere to be seen today.
Though Kim Myungjun had reported that Eunsol seemed to have disappeared, Hyun-oh couldn’t believe it until he saw it with his own eyes.
Eunsol liked him. And he was a person who couldn’t live without Hyun-oh.
Although he had coldly ignored Eunsol’s confession at their dinner together a few days ago, Eunsol wasn’t the type of person who would consider leaving because of that.
Even before, Hyun-oh had never been a good husband to Eunsol. Despite that, Eunsol had always orbited around Hyun-oh.
He was someone whose joy at being held and merely kissed was so clear you could almost grasp it in your hand. How could such a person leave him behind?
“Where are you?”
But as he wandered the spacious house looking for traces of Eunsol, Hyun-oh was enveloped by a feeling like a chilly wind blowing through a corner of his heart.
There was no warmth in the house at all. Even the faint pheromones that had permeated the place seemed imperceptible, as if they had never existed, no matter how much he strained his senses.
Like a madman, Hyun-oh roamed the house before opening the bedroom door. Inside the bedroom, only his own pheromones lingered faintly, not Eunsol’s.
Eunsol’s pheromones had never been particularly strong. But because he lived in the house every day, when entering intimate spaces like the bedroom, there had always been a sweetness that could be felt through the lungs and skin.
The bedroom only flowed with a cold atmosphere, as if no one had entered for a long time. He headed for the dressing room connected to the bedroom.
It was a space where his and Eunsol’s belongings harmoniously mingled. Hyun-oh knew well which items Eunsol favored the most here.
The wedding rings he had given to Eunsol as a marriage gift gleamed magnificently under the indirect lighting, not a single one missing.
Hyun-oh’s fingertips brushed lightly over each ring. Though they said Eunsol had disappeared, his belongings still existed here.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
