The trash area was a mess—cigarette butts ground into the floor, cardboard boxes strewn everywhere. After straightening the boxes that had been kicked crooked by someone’s foot and dumping the food waste into the bin, Ihyeon’s teeth were chattering hard enough to clack.
Hunching his shoulders as he turned around, Ihyeon looked at the building swallowed by darkness and ran his tongue along the inside of his mouth.
It would probably be faster to take the passenger elevator straight up to the hall than to go down through the back door and pass through the kitchen. He considered stopping by the staff room to throw on a coat, but more than anything, he wanted to avoid drawing attention by arriving late to a hall full of people. Ihyeon quickened his pace and stepped into the lobby.
After pressing the elevator button, he rubbed his ice-cold arms over and over, the rasp of fabric sounding unusually loud. When he moved from a place filled with ear-numbing music into somewhere this quiet, he often felt an inexplicable chill crawl up his spine.
On top of that, it was the kind of silence that settled in before dawn. With no windows and poor ventilation, only bluish, artificial light drifted through the space. The coldest, heaviest air of the day pressed down on his entire body like a thick winter quilt.
Leaning against the wall, soaked in cigarette smoke, alcohol, and fatigue, Ihyeon closed his eyes. He was breathing shallowly, waiting for the elevator chime, when the sharp clack of dress shoes striking the floor echoed through the quiet lobby.
Looks like there are still other staff who haven’t gone down yet. Guess I’m not the only one who’s late. Is that something to be relieved about?
The clicking stopped right beside him. With a sound like someone exhaling smoke, a harsh wave of cigarette stench washed over him.
Ihyeon frowned without thinking. Ever since a small fire caused by a cigarette butt a few years back, even staff were strictly forbidden from smoking inside the building. It wasn’t a time when customers would still be around, so it was probably a part-timer who hadn’t been here long enough to know the rule.
If it somehow reached a manager’s ears, the one who’d be bothered by it would be Ihyeon. He let out a short sigh and slowly lifted his eyelids. In his downward-angled view came into sight black dress shoes and the smooth hem of tailored pants. He peeled his head off the wall and raised his gaze—slowly, very slowly.
Those are eyes that devour people.
It was something his grandmother had once said while watching an actor on television—a beautiful actress with pitch-black irises so dark you couldn’t see the pupils, the whites of her eyes showing beneath them.
The instant his eyes met the man standing in front of him, Ihyeon was thrown back to that moment, watching television with his grandmother long ago. It had been the same nine years ago when he first saw those eyes, and it was the same now. Just a line he’d heard in passing ages ago, yet for some reason, that sentence flashed through his mind every single time.
“…Ah.”
Caught in an encounter he’d never expected, Ihyeon’s lips pressed tightly shut, as if he were trying not to let even a breath escape. An unguarded emotion flickered across his pale face, then evaporated as quickly as it had appeared.
The man standing opposite him, looking down at Ihyeon, showed no sign of agitation even as their eyes met. Even as memories long buried swept past like a flipbook, overlapping with Ihyeon’s face, his expression remained blank.
But the stark clarity of the face that surfaced in his mind and vanished again—that whiteness, that transparency that still couldn’t hide a single emotion despite no longer being young—struck him as absurd. Without meaning to, Seunghyeok let out a short, humorless chuckle.
“Hey, Taesik.”
“Yes, boss.”
Taesik, who had been standing with his hands clasped behind his back, stifling a yawn, quickly bowed his head. Seunghyeok lowered the cigarette holder he’d been smoking, flicking ash into the air with his thumb and forefinger. His gaze—impossible to read for temperature—remained fixed on Ihyeon.
“Since when did we start running a hole business here?”
“…Pardon?”
“I’m asking if we charge money for men’s assholes too.”
It wasn’t Taesik but Ihyeon who grasped the meaning of the cold sentence. For a split second, a sharp glint lit up his long, slanted eyes.
“What if you spread some disease around?”
The added remark, muttered as if to himself, was sharp and icy, as though meant for someone to hear. Startled by the sudden hostility and unsure of the reason, Taesik tensed, then answered quickly so as not to upset Seunghyeok further.
“I’ll check immediately and report back.”
A brief silence fell. Having spent a long time at Gu Seunghyeok’s side, Taesik sensed that his mood was off and promptly straightened his posture.
Ding.
The elevator—unusually slow compared to those in other buildings—opened its mouth. As the interior was revealed, white ceiling lights blazed noisily across the gold-colored floor.
Seunghyeok stepped in first. Once inside the elevator, he turned around. Ihyeon, still frozen in the same spot and posture as before, slowly lifted his eyes. Their gazes collided.
“You getting on?”
The voice was low and cold. Standing behind him, Taesik rolled his eyes and flinched.
Seunghyeok might be the boss he trusted most, but even as a courtesy, he wasn’t someone you could call kind or polite. In truth, he had no need or reason to be.
Even so, it was rare for him to display such blatant hostility toward someone he’d just met, which only deepened Taesik’s confusion.
The small-framed man standing outside the elevator simply looked up at Seunghyeok in silence. Since he was standing behind him, Taesik couldn’t see Seunghyeok’s expression, but it wasn’t hard to guess that the two were locked in each other’s gaze.
Judging by his pretty, handsome face, he seemed to be a club employee. Even in an atmosphere that left Taesik’s own lips bone-dry, the man looked calm. Taesik admired his nerve in spite of himself, while hoping the man would have the sense to leave on his own.
“……”
In the stillness, Ihyeon’s lips parted slowly. It was a voice far lower than Seunghyeok remembered from deep in his memory, yet clear.
“Please go ahead.”
Just as Taesik was about to sigh in relief—thinking at least the guy wasn’t clueless enough to get on with them—a cold snort sounded right in front of him. Taesik shut his mouth at once and glanced aside.
For a few brief seconds, a gaze cold enough to carry frost and another as indifferent as stone tangled together.
“Close it.”
Still staring at Ihyeon with an expressionless face, Seunghyeok dropped the half-smoked cigarette straight onto the elevator floor. His polished shoe came down slowly, grinding it out.
A subtle tension flowed through the air. A suspicion brushed through Taesik’s mind—could it be that Seunghyeok and that man knew each other? Maybe he was connected to the Seungri faction? He looked young, like he’d just graduated. He didn’t seem like someone from this side of the world, though.
But Taesik knew better than anyone that in situations this uncertain—and especially when Gu Seunghyeok was in a foul mood—it was best to shut up and keep his head down. Casting a quick glance at the dark back of Seunghyeok’s head, he pressed the elevator’s close button firmly.
The gold doors slowly slid shut, cutting off the space between Seunghyeok and Ihyeon. Through the narrowing gap, there were eyes that continued to stare until the very end.
The opening vanished, and on the gleaming elevator doors was reflected a white face whose expression was impossible to read. Ihyeon stared quietly at his mirror image, then belatedly let out a short breath.
“……”
Despite being indoors, a faint puff of breath escaped him. The cold he’d briefly forgotten wrapped around his body again. Ihyeon shuddered lightly, like someone about to sneeze after opening a dust-covered photo album, stubbornly ignoring the warning beeps—beep, beep—that seemed to sound from some part of his brain, as if it had sensed danger.
***
In the hall, staff who had come down earlier were gathered in small clusters. Given the nature of their work, many of them were the type who enjoyed meeting and talking with people, so despite their tired faces, they giggled as they chatted.
Ihyeon didn’t join them. He leaned against a wall in the corner, half-hiding himself. He hadn’t been the sort to be overly friendly to begin with, and right now, he didn’t feel capable of casually talking and laughing with anyone.
In contrast to his composed exterior, his heart was racing as if he’d just sprinted a hundred meters. Every time he felt his pulse pounding at his temples, an inexplicable anxiety coiled around his body.
Pressing the back of his head to the wall, he dragged a hand over his mouth, his fingertips icy cold. He clenched his fist as if grabbing at empty air, but all that followed was a strange sense of unreality.
Gu Seunghyeok.
Since his third year of high school, after being forced to transfer schools, Ihyeon had never run into him again—not even by chance. The man he’d come face to face with after nine years was completely different from the one in his memory.
The lips that had more often been split and bleeding than intact were now firmly sealed, tinged red, and the facial lines that had once been the closest thing to softness had sharpened.
That wasn’t all. The perpetually wrinkled school uniform shirt had been replaced by a silk shirt with a bold floral pattern, and the long bangs that used to cover his eyebrows were now perfectly set, not a single strand out of place.
Despite how hard he’d be to recognize at a glance, the moment their eyes met, Ihyeon had known his name. No—like a coiled spring crammed into a box buried beneath his consciousness, it had burst out in a flash.
What had he looked like the last time Ihyeon saw him? Was it that chillingly cold sneer? Or eyes reddened in a way that didn’t suit him, twisted with anxiety and disgust?
No matter how he tried to retrace his memories, they were too old, sunk into the past, and wouldn’t come clearly.
He sighed and dragged a hand over his face again, but it still felt as though that cold, sharp gaze—boring straight through him—was clinging stubbornly to his skin.
The eyes kept shimmering before him, like stumbling upon a scar he’d forgotten existed, impossible to ignore.