"Disgusting. Get away from me."
"……."
Cheon Sejoo fell silent, his lips sealing shut. This time, his pride was genuinely wounded. It wasn’t even comparable to being lumped in with the dumbasses from Shinsa Capital.
There was something all the men who had brushed past him over the years said in unison. That not only was his face handsome, even that part of him was good-looking. Cheon Sejoo’s cock, perfectly smooth without a single stray hair, was a consistently deep pink tone, straight without any bend, often compared to a 3D-modeled replica of an idealized prosthetic. He had actually heard someone say that.
And she had the nerve to call that thing disgusting...
What the hell do you know.
Sejoo had the impulsive urge to grab a towel and show Sejin just how straight and well-shaped it really was, but that would’ve been clear sexual harassment—so he couldn’t actually go through with it. Left with no choice, he sat there and struggled to come up with some kind of response, but before he could speak, he saw Sejin with a sulky expression start to clear the dishes. And that drained all the energy out of him.
The sight of Sejin neatly cleaning up and quickly doing the dishes from behind looked oddly mature. Realizing he was the one acting immature for his age, Sejoo let out a brief sigh and stood up from the couch.
He went straight into the room, changed his clothes, and came back out. A pale blue shirt, navy suit, and as usual, he left the top button undone and skipped the tie. Of the three watches he owned, he chose the silver metal one that exposed the movement. He slicked back his hair with wax and sprayed on some cologne. He had a feeling he’d be seeing Doyoon, so he put in a bit more effort than usual.
When he stepped back into the living room, Sejin was already sitting on the sofa, ready and waiting.
"Let’s go."
With a jerk of his chin toward the front door, Sejin silently followed behind Cheon Sejoo. The two of them descended to the underground parking lot and got into the car, heading for Gangdong-gu.
The falling rain struck the windshield in fine streaks. Each time the sound of rain mixed with the hum of the engine, Sejoo’s gaze cooled further. Since he didn’t speak, Sejin stayed quiet too. The two sat in silence, their minds preoccupied with entirely different thoughts.
It took around forty minutes to reach the front gate of East Seoul High School. Right before 9 a.m., Cheon Sejoo dropped Sejin off and issued a warning.
"Take a picture of the class schedule and send it to me as soon as you get in. And when you come out later, make sure to pack all your textbooks in your bag."
"…Okay."
Despite sulking, Sejin didn’t argue. He seemed to have finally realized that no matter what he said, Cheon Sejoo was going to do whatever he wanted with him.
Sejin took an umbrella and got out of the car. After watching him disappear past the school gates, Cheon Sejoo picked up his phone. A message from Doyoon had arrived at some point.
Kang Doyoon
My exams ended yesterday! But I have a dinner meeting tonight for the end of term—would it still be okay to meet for a bit?
8:26 AM
Instead of replying, Cheon Sejoo tapped the call button. After just a few rings, Doyoon answered in a bright voice.
"Doyoon-ah, I’m coming over."
He whispered sweetly, then steered the car toward Kang Doyoon’s officetel.
He had met Doyoon about three years ago, thanks to a boldly passed note. Back then, Sejoo had been aimlessly shopping at a department store, just to burn through his piled-up cash. A guy who had been glancing at him from the same store walked up with a neatly folded memo and handed it to him.
People hitting on him, asking for his number, or handing over business cards happened all the time. But getting a number from a guy in such a public place? That was a first. A little thrown, Sejoo stared at Doyoon. But Doyoon, unfazed by the gaze, gave him a pretty smile and said, “Please call me,” before walking away. After some thought, Sejoo called him two days later.
They met at a café, and Doyoon turned out to be cheerful and confident. A charming guy—but Sejoo wasn’t interested in dating. He made that clear and proposed a partnership instead, and the two agreed: for three years now, they had been sex partners.
Most of their meetups happened at hotels, but sometimes they’d visit each other’s homes—especially when they didn’t have much time or plans changed at the last minute.
Cheon Sejoo parked in the officetel garage and rode the elevator to the 19th floor. When he rang the bell at Unit 1907, Doyoon poked his head out.
"Hyung!"
"Hey."
When Sejoo smiled as if it had been drawn onto his face, Doyoon gave a small grin and reached out to hug him. He buried his face in Sejoo’s chest and nuzzled in, then wrapped his arms tightly around Sejoo’s waist before letting go. As the youngest of four, with three older sisters, Doyoon had grown up showered with affection, so he was naturally full of aegyo. But he wasn’t immature or overly sensitive—just a cheerful, easygoing man.
Cheon Sejoo was fond of that about him. And Doyoon liked how fond Sejoo was of him. Thanks to that, they’d maintained their relationship without a single fight.
Doyoon was wearing only a white T-shirt and a pair of drawers. Fresh out of the shower, he smelled sweetly of shampoo as he draped his arms around Sejoo’s neck. When Sejoo picked him up with practiced ease, Doyoon’s slender legs wrapped around his waist. Still practically one body, the two headed to the bedroom.
***
The day Cheon Hyein died was September 15th, in the middle of the autumn rainy season. At the time, Cheon Sejoo was working as a thoracic surgery resident at Korea University Hospital.
That day was supposed to be the one short break he had after a week of nonstop shifts—he had planned to go home. But just before clocking out, a patient came in with a severe thoracic aortic injury from a car accident. As one of the rare residents in thoracic surgery, Sejoo naturally had to join Professor Kim Cheong-geun in the OR, so his departure was delayed.
Eight hours passed. Nearly twenty units of blood were pumped in due to hemorrhage. Just as they finally managed to control the bleeding, news came of another patient’s arrival.
A fall victim. Massive chest trauma. Discovered late, the bleeding was so severe they were close to cardiac arrest. The situation was so bad that EMTs hadn’t even been able to start CPR in the ambulance.
Hearing the news first, Sejoo had a passing thought before relaying it to the professor—The current patient still has a decent chance of survival, but the new one already went into cardiac arrest. Maybe it’s better to just finish this surgery as is…
Ultimately, the decision was Professor Kim’s. Sejoo relayed the message, and the professor told him he’d finish this procedure—Sejoo was to go out and assess the new patient first. So Sejoo took off his gown, washed his hands, and stepped out of the OR. Find the original chapter at g.com.
He ran toward the emergency center where the ambulance would be arriving, checking his phone as he went. There was a missed call from Cheon Hyein, five hours earlier.
With no time to call back, he simply sent her a message: Looks like I won’t be able to come home again today. Make sure you eat even if I’m not there. Then he powered off his phone.
When he stepped outside to meet the incoming patient with the nurses, a violent downpour greeted him.
Whooosh—a torrential rain fell hard enough to bleach the world white. After being trapped in a cramped OR for hours, Sejoo felt a brief, liberating relief. He liked rainy days. The one and only family he cherished had come to find him on a rainy day. That cool, cleansing feeling brought back lost motivation. For a fleeting moment, he felt a little better.
It was the last time he would ever enjoy the sound of rain.
Moments later, the siren began wailing through the downpour. The silhouette of an ambulance—so familiar now—drew closer. Sejoo and the nurses waited for the patient to be unloaded.
The white ambulance stopped in front of the ER. The siren died down. The back doors burst open. When the stretcher was pulled out, Cheon Sejoo was barely a meter away—and could instantly tell the situation was dire. The patient’s hands and feet were bloodied, corpse-pale, and the shattered ribcage, likely impaled by something, was protruding through flesh.
In the brief second he saw her, Sejoo had one clear thought—This is going to be bad.
And sure enough, as they urgently moved the stretcher, the EMTs said the patient had been in cardiac arrest for five minutes. That’s when something started to feel off.
Clunk—the gurney wheels unfolded as it hit the ground, and the patient rolled right up to him. The stench of blood was overwhelming. And yet… the school uniform the girl was wearing seemed oddly familiar.
Forgetting even to assess her condition, Cheon Sejoo looked down at the face of the unconscious girl.
Time stopped.
The reek of blood, the frantic shouting of voices—it all dissolved into nothing. Only the sound of rain remained sharply intact.
The nurses tried to shake him from his trance, jostling his shoulders, but he felt nothing. Like he was nailed in place, he simply stood and stared at the face of the patient he had already deemed beyond saving.
At the peacefully closed eyes of Cheon Hyein.
As if she had no regrets left in life.
***
From that day forward, rainy days became nightmares for Cheon Sejoo. No matter what he did, no matter how much time passed, he could never erase the last image of Cheon Hyein from his mind when it rained. The memory, soaked in remorse, always came back with the sound of rain—tightening around his throat and dragging him into an abyss of black.
Each time he felt himself suffocating from it, Cheon Sejoo wanted to just let go.
But he couldn’t.
Because he had already given his life to Singyoyeon in exchange for avenging Cheon Hyein.
Because it had been a choice for Hyein’s sake.
Cheon Sejoo had no choice but to stay alive—until that man discarded him.
So he found a way to escape the suffocation. To shake off the memories filled with despair, he went through various stages. First it was alcohol, then it was near self-abusive exercise, and now it was sex.
The way Cheon Sejoo had sex with men was relentless. He was the type who pushed his partner until they lost consciousness. He couldn’t help it. Unless he did that, there was no way to erase the sound of rain that filled his head.
At 2 p.m., after being tormented under Cheon Sejoo for nearly five hours, Doyoon had fallen asleep in tears. Meanwhile, Sejoo, as if even his bodily fluids and emotions had been drained out, had a perfectly clear mind. It was an inner peace achieved through Doyoon’s sacrifice.
Seeing Doyoon groaning in his sleep, Sejoo belatedly felt sorry. He cleaned Doyoon, who had passed out like he’d fainted, laid him on a freshly made bed, and lulled him to sleep by patting him as he mumbled incomprehensibly.
Sejoo gazed down at the sleeping Doyoon for a while, then carefully applied ointment to his swollen and reddened area, which looked scraped from how much it had puffed up. No one enjoyed sex as much as Doyoon, but it was still true that seeing the marks he left made Sejoo feel uncomfortable.
By then, it was just past 3 p.m. As much as he wanted to rest beside Doyoon, he couldn’t fall asleep. He had to go pick up that disobedient mutt.
Mutt
[Photo]
8:52
As soon as Sejin entered the classroom, he snapped a photo of the timetable and sent it. Today was Tuesday, and the last class ended at 3:50 p.m. It seemed he should head to the school around 4.
Sejoo stayed beside Doyoon, who was still sluggish, and when the clock pointed to 3:30, he covered him with a blanket and left the bedroom.
But when he went to put on his shoes at the front door, he noticed a small shopping bag left next to the inner door. He was about to ignore it, assuming it belonged to Doyoon, when the note stuck beside it caught his eye—“Hyung, this is delicious.”
He peeked inside and found something like cookies. Seeing Doyoon’s cute handwriting, Sejoo let out a chuckle, grabbed the shopping bag, and left the house. He headed straight to the parking garage, placed the bag in the backseat, and started the engine.
From Doyoon’s house to Sejin’s school was just under thirty minutes. Sejoo arrived in front of Dong Seoul High School at exactly 4 p.m. But Sejin was already standing by the front gate. Hugging what looked like either a bag or a bundle, staring blankly at the sky, Sejin turned his head at the sound of Sejoo’s car’s exhaust.
Their eyes met through the lowered passenger-side window. Even from afar, Sejin’s delicate and sensitive-looking pretty face was striking, but the moment he recognized Sejoo, his expression turned sullen. At that change in expression, Sejoo gave a dry laugh and unlocked the door.
“You said it ends at 3:50.”
The first thing out of Sejin’s mouth as soon as he got in the passenger seat was a complaint. It didn’t feel unfamiliar. Sejoo figured it would’ve been weirder if the kid had greeted him cheerfully. He shrugged as he started driving.
“So I came at 4. Doesn’t your school do end-of-day homeroom?” Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
“We don’t do that stuff.”
“……”
Sejoo frowned and looked at him. There was no way a school wouldn’t do homeroom, right? But judging by Sejin’s face, it didn’t seem like he was lying. Besides, 4 p.m. was prime dismissal time, yet the front of the school was eerily empty.
Surely they couldn’t all have left already? Sejoo found the idea ridiculous and shook his head. No way. There couldn’t be that many kids like Kwon Sejin. If what he said was true, the future of South Korea was doomed.
“I’m serious. Our homeroom teacher doesn’t do it.”
But unfortunately, Sejoo’s suspicion was correct.
Kwon Sejin had been one of the last five kids remaining in the classroom. His homeroom teacher, who also taught the final class—math—had walked in while tapping on her phone, then actually yelped in surprise when she saw Sejin still sitting there.
Dong Seoul High was a school for the most hopeless kids in Seoul. It was the place where those who were rejected everywhere else eventually landed. Sejin was one of them. So the school atmosphere was completely different from what Sejoo, a graduate of a top-tier liberal arts high school in Suwon, imagined. In most classes, there weren’t even five kids who actually studied. Just like Sejin said, even if you wanted to concentrate, it was nearly impossible in that kind of environment.
But Sejoo, unaware of the school's atmosphere, simply couldn’t understand Sejin’s words. He looked at him with a face that said, Are you messing with me?, but when he saw the frustrated look in Sejin’s eyes, he started to wonder if the kid was telling the truth. Still, Sejoo was someone who believed studying was entirely up to the individual’s will. No matter what anyone said at school, if you closed your ears, opened your eyes, and stared at a book, that was studying. So from Sejoo’s perspective, Sejin’s words were nothing but excuses.
The two of them fell silent, each frustrated in their own way. After parking the car and getting ready to get out, Sejoo grabbed the shopping bag he’d thrown into the backseat. While waiting for the elevator, Sejin’s gaze drifted from the bag to the nape of Sejoo’s neck. Sejoo casually rubbed the spot where Doyoon had bitten him and gave Sejin a flat look.
“What.”
“……”
It was an awkward kind of mark to ask about. Sejin turned his head straight ahead as if it was nothing. During the ride up to the 41st floor, they stayed quiet, but as soon as they stepped out and Sejoo entered the code on the keypad, Sejin couldn’t hold his curiosity anymore.
“What do you actually do for a living?”
“What do you mean, what do I do.”
Not understanding the intention behind the question, he asked back, and Sejin, stepping inside and taking off his shoes, said:
“You really are a loan shark, huh? Don’t you work? All you do is mess around every day.”
Sejoo didn’t really see what the problem was. If he was free, it meant there were fewer bastards who needed to die in the world. This peaceful time was something he liked. Ignoring the clear disdain in Sejin’s tone, Sejoo replied:
“If I were busy, then pitiful kids like you would only increase. Would you like that?”
“……”
When he looked back, Sejin, who had followed him into the hallway, was standing there with an openly disgusted expression. The fact that even a single sentence could elicit such visible reactions made Sejoo feel a little better. He chuckled and left Sejin alone as he headed into the kitchen.
While he unpacked Doyoon’s gift from the island counter, Sejin placed his school bag on the table, went to his room, changed clothes, and came back out. He was finally getting the hang of things—acting with a bit of awareness without needing to be told.
Sejoo brewed coffee and headed to his room. He started to put on his usual loose robe over his bare body but then remembered Sejin’s grumbled complaint. So instead, he put on a T-shirt and running shorts before coming back out. Grabbing the Florentine cookies and mug off the counter, he sat down on the floor by the table.
“Come here.”
At his words, Sejin, who was curled up sulking on the couch, came down. They sat facing each other with the table between them.
Sejoo picked up one of Sejin’s textbooks from the worn-out bag. It was obviously brand-new. He didn’t even need to check the inside. It was the second semester, and it didn’t even have a single crease—like it had never once been opened. He looked at it with curious eyes. So this is how bottom-of-the-class idiots store their books. That thought led him to say:
“Perfect preservation. Planning to donate it to a museum someday?”
“……”
Sejin twisted his lips in annoyance. His pretty pink lips looked like they were ready to spit out complaints at any moment, and as Sejoo watched them twitch, he flipped through the rest of Sejin’s textbooks.
The titles on the covers were different, but the content didn’t vary much. At this level, Sejoo felt like he could probably score a perfect grade on the CSAT again if he took it now. As he skimmed, he suddenly asked out of curiosity:
“What’s your mock exam ranking?”
Sejin pretended not to hear, staring at the cookies on the table and keeping his mouth shut. Watching him, Sejoo let out a sigh and set the book down.
It looked like he really had to start from the very beginning.
“You do know your times tables, right?”
“…Sort of.”
“What the hell do you mean, ‘sort of’? That’s not something you can just sorta know.”
Sejoo had confidence in his tutoring skills, but he’d never taught someone who didn’t even know their multiplication tables. All the students he’d tutored before had hovered right around the top tier, kids who needed intensive study. In fact, he could count on one hand how many times he’d ever even spoken to someone this dumb.
But what could he do. He’d promised to take responsibility. There was no backing out now. With a sigh, Sejoo began throwing out questions to assess Sejin’s level. As expected, Sejin couldn’t answer most of them, and the more time passed, the more Sejoo’s frustration turned into genuine exasperation.