His heart pounded. How did it come to this… He couldn’t shake the thought that this wasn’t like last time, when he’d spoken and moved just fine.
He felt like he might go insane from the anxiety. Lee Jaeha had never felt this kind of jittery urgency before. The moment he thought Jang Taegun’s body felt cold, nausea surged like he might throw up.
Taegun’s face was growing paler by the minute. Every time it showed, Jaeha pressed harder on the wound. He begged for the bleeding to stop.
Maybe he pressed too hard, because a small groan slipped between Taegun’s lips.
“Are you sulking at me? Why are you pressing so hard it hurts.”
Taegun gave a faint, amused snort at the sight of him. That hint of a smile made heat rush up Jaeha’s neck. His eyes felt like they were stinging red on their own.
A feeling he could hardly put into words swelled inside him. Whatever was pressing down on his insides felt like it might burst all at once, or else harden there and never wash away even after a thousand years.
With a choked voice he barely answered.
“…Sulking? He’s hurt—how could I….”
“Then why are you so mad?”
“……”
“No? Is it that you’re sad?”
It was absurd that a man whose eyes were going glassy could stab straight to the point.
When Taegun’s hand edged toward him, Jaeha caught it and pushed it down, then looked toward the door. He was desperate for Myungsoon to bring the first-aid kit, but more than that, he was afraid something might spill out of his mouth that he wouldn’t be able to take back.
That feeling was new too—his whole body shaking because he was worried about someone. Even spikes of fear, hitting him in flashes.
For Jaeha, these were emotions he simply wasn’t used to.
“Director!”
Just then Myungsoon brought the first-aid kit. Face drained white, Jaeha stood, took it, and folded several layers of cotton.
He sprayed hemostatic on the wound. There was no way to disinfect. The laceration, about five centimeters across, was smaller in diameter than last time, but the depth was different.
It looked as if a sashimi knife had been thrust in. He flooded the area with hemostatic and pressed down hard with the cotton. His hands were soaked in blood, the bed sheets a mess, but none of that mattered.
“It hurts.”
Jang Taegun murmured flatly. The way his pupils seemed dilated worried him. From blood loss alone, Jaeha could feel the heartbeat racing even with a hand on his abs.
Blood wasn’t returning to the heart; the pulse rate had climbed; the sympathetic nervous system was firing, and the pupils had dilated. Calling up the basic reflex responses to hemorrhage, Lee Jaeha felt a sick horror at watching his health-class knowledge play out in front of his eyes.
He didn’t want to imagine what would happen if the blood pressure dropped further. He had to do something, but he didn’t know what else to do.
Keeping him talking so he wouldn’t lose consciousness was the best he had. Inside, he kept praying to no one in particular.
Please let nothing happen. Please let someone—anyone—come and save this alpha. The sight of his own hands, soaked red where they held the wound shut, was so awful he could hardly stand it.
Then the doorbell rang. Myungsoon bolted out like lightning. A moment later, with a clatter and thuds, Myungsoon all but dragged in a middle-aged man who looked like a doctor, hauling him by the scruff.
Jaeha couldn’t lift the hand he was using to press down, but the moment he saw the stranger, his expression faintly brightened in spite of himself. In this moment there was nothing he wanted more than Taegun’s attending physician.
“Let go of me!”
Shoved into the room, the man snapped. Jaeha, still pressing the wound, stared up at him in a daze.
He wanted him to see Taegun immediately, but his body had gone rigid and no words came out.
“So he got married and now he’s out here giving innocent people crap experiences—typical Jang Taegun….”
“Doctor, watch your mouth. We’d appreciate it if you started treatment right now.”
Myungsoon’s voice came cold, almost like a warning. Jaeha wasn’t sure he’d ever heard him that frigid.
“I’m starting, aren’t I? I get dragged here at this hour like a dog and I can’t even complain? With all that money, why don’t you people go to a hospital instead of calling me every time.”
The doctor was irritable. Judging by the way he snapped at Myungsoon—who looked twice his size—this wasn’t the first time.
Fine, whatever; just look at Jang Taegun now, Jaeha thought. The man came closer, glanced at the spot where Jaeha was pressing, then slapped Jaeha’s hand away and took a saline bag from his case. He spoke to Jaeha.
“What are you, a doctor?”
“…No.”
“Then wait outside. I’m going to stitch this.”
“……”
Jaeha had meant to say he’d stay by the side, but when the doctor added that Myungsoon should wait outside too, he had no choice but to get up and step into the hall.
He hovered right outside the door. After a moment, Myungsoon came out. Through the crack of the slightly open door, Jaeha peered in.
The doctor was sliding an IV needle into Taegun’s forearm and hooking it to a blood bag. Myungsoon dipped his head to Jaeha.
“That must have scared you, Director. This won’t happen again.”
“…He got hurt last time too. Back then you said things like this might be frequent.”
“Well… even so, it’s really rare for it to go this far. He said so himself.”
Jaeha’s expression hardened. The fact he wasn’t saying it would never happen meant this wasn’t over yet—or was still in motion.
Weighing a few possibilities, Lee Jaeha asked Myungsoon,
“Is this about Myungwon Construction?”
Myungwon Construction was another corporate-gangster firm. When a solid company pulled off a successful listing, they’d kidnap the CEO and use threats to force a merger or acquisition, swelling their size that way.
Mergers and acquisitions by coercion cost them nothing; Myungwon was ballooning like a dinosaur.
Jang Changsik seemed to have a particular problem with them. Jang Construction had started later, and Myungwon was growing at a frightening speed. With Jang Construction recently losing momentum, Myungwon had struck at the opening; it was a real threat.
Before marrying Taegun, when he’d researched Jang Construction, Jaeha had also learned about Myungwon. The power struggle between the two groups was nothing new, and the head of Myungwon was said to be a hometown junior of Jang Changsik.
“Junior” made it sound mild; it meant a guy who’d once rolled under Changsik’s heel had gone off on his own, made it, and was growing his reach. With age, Changsik’s greed had only swelled; there was no way he would sit and watch that.
In a hair-trigger situation, Jang Changsik had recently jumped into the competitive bid to build Inhong New Town.
The problem was that Myungwon had entered the bid too. Other firms, hearing two gangster companies were competing, threw up their hands and dropped out, saying they wouldn’t touch that filth. If Jang Construction backed off here, it would be tucking its tail before Myungwon, the junior gang outfit.
A man that greedy—what orders would he have given his grandson? Obvious.
After calmly sorting the moving pieces, Jaeha asked in a cool voice. As he suspected, Myungsoon didn’t answer.
“Director!”
Myungsoon called after him, but he didn’t look back. He regretted not washing his hands only when he pressed the private elevator button by the door.
The dried blood made the skin tug and tighten every time he curled his fingers. It wasn’t so bad he couldn’t hold a wheel, but his hands were still shaking—could he even drive?
He tried to steady himself. If Taegun came home like this, and if there were more to come, then Lee Jaeha would protect Jang Taegun in Lee Jaeha’s way.
That was how he loved someone. He’d never known it before because no one had ever reached his heart. It was an action sparked by a somewhat selfish, one-sided love.
Stone-faced, he watched the elevator numbers count down. The doors slid open and he started toward the parked sedan.
“Director.”
“…Secretary Go?”
It was the chairman’s right hand, Secretary Go. He bowed to Jaeha, then opened the rear door of a black sedan whose engine was still running.
“The chairman would like to see you. Would you come with me, please.”
At that, Jaeha’s face went cold and flat. Coming all the way to fetch him—faster than expected.
At last it was clear what Changsik wanted. It was possible the stabbing had been inside Jang Changsik’s plan all along.
He must have known Lee Jaeha would move.
“Don’t do anything useless and stay put.”
Last time, Jang Taegun had made his wishes plain to Jaeha—with what passed for a kind warning from him: don’t step in.
Jaeha knew men like Jang Taegun. He wasn’t the type to give second chances. He wouldn’t allow a second warning.
Which meant that starting today, things between them would change, clearly.
There would be no more gentle dinners. No more using rut as an excuse to tangle their bodies. He might never again go home to a place where someone waited for him.
But he couldn’t watch those eyes—usually so clear—go glassy, couldn’t watch that face drain of color while a heart hammered, starved of blood, not twice.
What Taegun didn’t want was exactly what Lee Jaeha needed. He decided it didn’t matter if Taegun never looked back at him.
For a man in love for the first time, Lee Jaeha was doing something very foolish—struggling to give the other what he didn’t want.
Even knowing it, he couldn’t stop. More than he wanted to stay at Taegun’s side for a long time, he wanted to make sure a knife never sank into those abs like that again.
Jang Changsik was using Jang Taegun like a cleaner. Words about cherishing his grandson were only that—words. Jaeha knew too many blood relations capable of being that cruel.
So that was that.
“Director, we’re leaving.”
So he got in the car. A flicker of regret crossed him. That morning in Taegun’s room, when he’d woken there—he should have looked around a little more.
He’d wanted to know what his life looked like there, what things he fell asleep with.
“……”
Outside, Seoul slid by, half-asleep in the dark. Artificial lights tore at the night, leaving it incomplete. Jaeha’s regret blurred just that much—and then went indistinct.
Aside from the smallest things, he never regrets what he does on the day he does it.