Just as Liu, relieved at his words about going downstairs, was about to stub out his cigarette in the ashtray, Inwoo called out to Yeehyeon, who was walking around the table and about to exit the dining room.
“Yeehyeon-ssi, how are you feeling? It didn’t get worse during your trip, did it?”
“No… thanks to you….”
Ignoring the precarious atmosphere, Inwoo struck up a casual conversation, and Yeehyeon, with an awkward expression, answered stiffly.
Liu brought the cigarette he was about to crush in the ashtray back to his lips and took a deep drag. His hand, gripping the windowsill behind him, tightened involuntarily.
“You know that psychosomatic issues are harder to cure, right? If you lose your appetite or feel nauseous again, come to our hospital anytime. Even if I’m not at the hospital, for you, Yeehyeon-ssi, I can meet you personally and see you anytime, so leave the medical consultations to me. Okay?”
“Yes, thank you….”
Pretending not to notice Yeehyeon’s awkwardness, Inwoo turned and took a sip of the wine someone had left half-drunk on the table.
“While you two were on your business trip, something big happened at our hospital. After going through that, it really hit me that you never know what might happen to a person, when, or where.”
Holding the wine glass, Inwoo turned back around and draped an arm over the back of his chair, raising an eyebrow as he gave a meaningful smile.
“Always be careful, Yeehyeon-ssi. There’s no harm in being careful.”
“……”
Unable to grasp the precise intent behind Inwoo’s subtle emphasis, Yeehyeon wore a puzzled expression but nodded nonetheless. Then he looked toward Liu, who was standing by the window.
Being betrayed yet unaware of it, his eyes instead filled with a warm light of concern for him. Liu let out an inward groan, hastily crushed out his cigarette, and walked quickly over to him.
“You’re tired, aren’t you? Go on down and get some rest.”
He wrapped an arm around Yeehyeon’s shoulders and led him out of the dining room. The only thought in his mind was to separate him from Inwoo as quickly as possible.
Glancing back at Inwoo’s back as he sat at the table, Yeehyeon hesitated, seeming reluctant to leave the two of them alone.
“We’ll just have a drink or two. I was in the mood to get drunk today anyway, so this is perfect.”
It took a considerable amount of energy to pretend to be unfazed by Inwoo’s visit, even joking that it was a good thing. As if fully understanding the desire to get drunk, Yeehyeon nodded carefully. Liu cupped the nape of his neck, fiddling with his long hair, and whispered for him to go to bed first. Then, in front of the stairs leading down to the studio, he gave him a short kiss.
Still worried, it seemed, Yeehyeon looked back at Liu several times as he descended, his hand sliding down the railing. Leaning his shoulder against the wall with his arms crossed, Liu looked down at him and made a playful gesture of wiping away tears. Only then did Yeehyeon manage a faint smile.
The moment he disappeared from view, the smile vanished from Liu’s face. He strode across the living room and toward the dining room. He rushed straight at Inwoo, grabbed him by the collar, and hauled him to his feet. The wine glass Inwoo had been holding toppled over, spilling the dark red liquid across the table, but he paid it no mind.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“What.”
Inwoo didn’t even try to push him away, merely tilting his chin up.
“You find this situation amusing, don’t you?”
“……”
“Yeah, it must be. The guy you always thought was so arrogant has swapped bodies with a twenty-two-year-old, and now I’m terrified he’ll find out and I’ll lose him… How could that not be amusing to you?”
As if to avenge his own suffocation with Inwoo’s, Liu tightened his grip, twisting the shirt collar further. His eyes glinted with terror and madness.
“But, Choi Inwoo. If Seo Yeehyeon finds out because of you, whether by accident or on purpose, and everything goes to hell… you won’t find it so amusing then. Got it?”
Shoving Inwoo away as if tossing him aside, Liu passed him and staggered back to the table. He drank the wine straight from the bottle.
“I heard the rumors about the New York branch.”
“……”
Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Liu looked back at Inwoo, looking like a man ready to do anything.
“For someone who said they’d confess everything to Yeehyeon-ssi after coming back from Chicago, that’s quite an elaborate event you’ve prepared.”
Watching Liu’s eyebrows twitch and draw together, Inwoo snickered.
“I may not be an artist who gets the same treatment as Shushu, but I’m a Phantom artist too. And while it might not be as deep as the bond between you and Chief Han, I’m also friends with her. Or was it a special secret?”
How Choi Inwoo had found out wasn’t important anyway. Liu once again brought the mouth of the bottle to his lips, tilted his head back, and swallowed more wine.
Inwoo pulled a thick stack of napkins from the holder in the middle of the table and roughly covered the spilled wine with them.
“Everyone thinks it’s strange that you’re rushing the New York branch opening and is worried something might be wrong… but I think I know the reason. And that’s why I’m not worried about you, but about someone else.”
Slamming the empty bottle down on the table, Liu gripped its neck and scoffed. As if the very idea that someone other than himself could be worried about Yeehyeon was pathetic.
“A patient who attempted suicide was brought to the hospital.”
“……”
Liu glanced back. Inwoo, who had slumped into a chair, ran a hand over his face several times.
“It’s a play-it-safe, general-hospital-in-name-only place that sends any slightly risky patient to a bigger hospital… but the patient was in such critical condition, we didn’t have that option.”
It wasn’t his usual smirking tone or the sarcastic drawl he used to provoke him. Liu turned his body. Inwoo’s face was flushed red, and he looked somehow unstable.
“They drank insecticide.”
“……”
“It was a relatively weak insecticide mainly used for home gardening, and because the patient’s mother found them right away and rushed them to the hospital, we were able to save their life… but for the first time in a while… it was a hair-raising experience that made me feel like a real doctor.”
As if trying to shake off the dizzying memory, Inwoo forced his lips into a smile, but his eyes were steeped in fear.
“Acephate isn’t as fatally toxic as other pesticides, but the problem was that they drank a lot of it. We pumped over 3000cc of lavage fluid into their stomach. Their body temperature dropped because of the fluid, and they were shivering all over.”
Blue veins bulged on Liu’s hand gripping the bottle. The reason Inwoo had sought him out today, of all days, couldn’t have been just to unload the shock of the ‘big incident’ that had happened at the hospital while he was away.
“She was a twenty-four-year-old woman. Around Baek Yuni or Kwon Juhan’s age. Seems a bit young to get married, but she was scheduled to be married in a month.”
“……”
“To a Beta man.”
Liu’s brow furrowed, and a blue flame sparked in his eyes. He let go of the bottle, ran a hand through his hair, messing it up wildly, and snarled at Inwoo.
“Fuck, so what!”
He didn’t raise his voice, but it was a cry that sounded like it was being dragged inward and swallowed, a definite scream.
As if to burn away Inwoo’s eyes, which were staring straight up at him, Liu’s own gaze didn’t waver, filled with intensity.
“A bit early to get married… but very late to present as an Alpha.”
“……”
Though he stood frozen in place, Liu’s breathing was ragged, his broad shoulders heaving.
Inwoo twisted one corner of his mouth up into an awkward smile.
“You really never know what might happen.”
“It has nothing to do with us.”
As Liu turned his back, ignoring the situation, Inwoo shot up from his chair and hurled his resentment at him.
“Do you have any idea how I felt… looking at that patient? Why should I be the one suffocating over the trashy thing you did!”
Liu walked into the unlit, dark kitchen, pulled a can of beer from the fridge, and chugged more than half of it on the spot, like a man dying of thirst. He slammed the beer can down on the wide island counter used as a prep space, braced his hands on its edge, and bowed his head.
“You thought if you took him somewhere with no connections, and confessed there, the chances of being abandoned would be a little lower?”
Standing in front of the table, Inwoo’s face contorted as he tried not to raise his voice. Liu turned his head and licked his lower lip.
“Pouring in a huge amount of money and hurting the people of Phantom to open a gallery in New York was all something you set up for yourself, so you’re asking, ‘Surely you wouldn’t throw all this away and leave me, would you?’ You’re trying to burden Yeehyeon-ssi with that kind of responsibility?”
“……”
“Whatever your reason for trying to take him to New York, it seems you have no intention of keeping the promise you made to me. If that’s the case, then I, who trusted your word and took part in this bullshit, become a son of a bitch too, don’t I?”
Liu, who had been listening silently to the blame and attacks, finished the rest of the beer. Then, crushing the can in his hand, he spoke.
“I don’t care what you think. And whether you become a son of a bitch or a piece of trash to Seo Yeehyeon, that’s even less important.”
A sharp, cold gaze and an unvarnished confession—so raw he could taste blood—flew toward the smirking Inwoo.
“That’s right. Getting Seo Yeehyeon out of here as fast as possible, that’s the only thing on my mind right now. In a place where he has no one but me, no, in a place where I’ve thrown everything away and have nothing left but Seo Yeehyeon, I’m going to beg and cling to him for forgiveness in the most pathetic and pitiful way possible.”
“……”
“What other means do I have left to try? What cool, conscientious way is there to fix this, now that we’re at this point?”
After his rapid-fire tirade, Liu’s lips clamped shut. He stared down at the completely crushed and flattened beer can for a long moment before, with a low curse, he threw it into the trash.
“Any right to be by his side in a just and honorable way… I threw that away with my own hands that night, the night a rain-soaked Seo Yeehyeon was waiting for me.”
Speaking of ‘that night,’ a night Inwoo couldn’t and didn’t know about, Liu was no longer conscious of his audience. It sounded like a resignation, a surrender of himself, and also like an excuse directed at Yeehyeon, who wasn’t there.
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