The phone rang dully in the dark. Haewon was lying face down on the bed. The hand that was lightly resting on Haewon’s naked back gently touched the ridge of Haewon’s shoulder blade. It was a signal to get up and answer the phone. Haewon didn’t move.
The ringing continued without interruption. The man, who had been reacting sluggishly in his light sleep, eventually woke up groaning on Haewon’s behalf after realizing that the caller was likely not going to give up until the call was answered.
“Leave it be.”
Haewon was awake. He could feel the man’s gaze staring down at him. Haewon spoke again.
“Leave it be. It will stop ringing.”
“This is the second time already.”
To be exact, it was the third.
The ringtone was faintly cut off and continued for the third time within a few minutes. There was a fixed set of people who contacted Haewon. The man lying next to him, his stepmother whom he would call to beg for living expenses once a month, an acquaintance who went to the same high school, and so on.
The person calling now was probably the said acquaintance from high school. He usually called late at night. He was of the same type as Haewon. Get horny at the sight of a man and come thanks to him.
Ah, how annoying.
Haewon threw a pillow over his head and dug in deeper as there was nowhere else to go. He took refuge from things that bothered him.
The man, who raised his upper body, kissed Haewon’s naked back and got out of bed. He refused the spacious residence offered by the record company and stayed in a hotel.
Whenever he came to Korea, he stayed at this hotel for as long as a few weeks, or as short as a few days. Just downstairs from the executive lounge, he preferred to stay in the same room.
Haewon’s phone was not placed in the bedroom, but on the table in the meeting room. The man hadn’t taken more than a few steps out of bed when it stopped ringing. Still, he went all the way to the meeting room and brought his cell phone.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Haewon put the pillow away and lay down looking disheveled. The clock on the wall read 2:00 AM. The man sat with his back against the head of the bed, holding Haewon’s phone in his hand. He looked completely awake.
Haewon just watched in silence as he freely looked into his phone without asking for any consent.
“…… Lee Taeshin? Who’s that ?”
The man who was checking the caller of the missed call while looking at his phone screen glanced at Haewon. The glint in his eyes was not curiosity, but caution. Haewon looked up at his face as he was buried in the bed.
“1:30, 1:48, 2:00….. They called three times.”
The man’s memory was accurate.
“Lee Taeshin, that sounds like a man’s name. Who is it?”
“A friend from high school.”
Although Haewon was a year younger than him, Taeshin first told him not to treat him as a senior or older brother. Haewon also didn’t want to call him Sunbae or Hyung because he was only one year older than him. He didn’t even feel like a senior, and to treat him like an older brother would’ve been absurd. He was someone he didn’t even want to call a friend. Lee Taeshin was just an acquaintance who graduated from the same high school as Haewon.
Haewon was too lazy to elaborate, so he briefly answered that he was a friend from high school and turned to face the man. He was wearing nothing but boxers. Haewon’s eyes naturally turned to the man’s lower body.
“Are you two close? I mean he called you three times at this hour. Isn’t that considered rude in Korea?”
That’s considered rude even in America. He grew up and lived in the United States, so he didn’t seem to know that there wasn’t much difference between the etiquette of Korea and America. He wanted to be confirmed about the manners and common sense that worked everywhere else in the world.
“That’s why I told you to just let it be.”
“Is he like a stalker? You should report him.”
The man said, looking through the list of calls received not only today but also from other days. The number of people who called Haewon was limited.
Stepmother, Lee Taeshin, and Choi Sunbae. Every few months, when the man visited Korea, a new name would be added to Haewon’s receiving list, but usually, that list stayed the same.
There were very few people who visited Haewon. There were even fewer whom Haewon visited. It was as if he had a phone only to order delivery food. His busy father didn’t contact Haewon often. His stepmother, who wanted to exert influence over him, contacted him frequently. Like Lee Taeshin, the stepmother had a habit of talking too much to Haewon, which Haewon did not pay attention to. She didn’t care whether Haewon was listening to her or not, and just said what she had to say.
Of Lee Taeshin’s calls, Haewon usually received one call out of ten. If possible, he tended to answer his stepmother’s call at once. If he kept her waiting, she would cut off the money she was supposed to give him.
The man’s face as he was checking the missed calls log became somewhat serious, and the phone rang again. He showed the screen to Haewon. It was Lee Taeshin.
“He’s quite persistent. You’re not going to take it?”
He held out the phone for Haewon to take. It seemed like he wanted Haewon to answer the phone in front of him and tell him the details of the call.
He didn’t want to answer it. Haewon frowned, annoyed. The man’s expression soon became playful. He answered the phone on behalf of Haewon. From the beginning, it was clear he was going to do so. Haewon did not particularly stop him.
“Hello. This is Moon Haewon’s phone. Yes, that’s right. Do you know what time it is? Sorry, but what is your relationship with Moon Haewon?”
The man lowered his voice in frustration. He wanted to scare the other person. Looking at his relaxed expression, it seemed like everything was going as intended.
Lee Taeshin was such a man. He felt like he could hear Taeshin’s voice in his ears, cowering in fear and expressing regret. Haewon listened intently to the phone conversation, though he couldn’t hear much of the other side.
“I see. He’s right next to me. Would you like me to give it to him?”
The man, who could tell just by his voice in that brief moment that Taeshin did not have any charm that could attract Haewon’s favor, responded in a kind voice and mercifully handed over the phone to Haewon.
Haewon certainly had no interest in this type of person. It wasn’t because the man was sharp enough to recognize that Taeshin didn’t have a magnetic pull that would draw people to him in a short conversation. Even a fool could tell what kind of person Taeshin was after exchanging a few words.
A lackluster tone with his tail between his legs and a simple, crude choice of vocabulary. Being uncharismatic was a sign of poverty and insignificance in today’s society.
Letting down his guard, he thoughtfully held the phone to Haewon’s ear, who was not answering. Haewon had no choice but to open his mouth.
“Hello.”
―Haewon. Who just answered your phone?
“An acquaintance.”
―Are you with him? Right now?
“We have something to work on together.”
Haewon held the phone in his hand and closed his eyes. The man sitting with his back to the headboard also lay in bed.
He turned to Haewon, laid down, and ran his hand down his side. His touch and warmth approached him.
The air in the royal floor suite was dry. The man’s skin was rough. His bare skin rubbed against Haewon’s body. Hot lips touched Haewon’s shoulder, neckline, and nape one after another as if grazing. Haewon didn’t move. The man’s hair swept over his body. Haewon was working with someone he knew. It was past midnight.
―I talked to that person for the first time today.
“Oh.”
Lately, the purpose of Taeshin’s calls to me had always been about ‘that person’. He was the man Taeshin had a crush on. And Haewon didn’t want to know. He wasn’t interested in who Taeshin liked, why he liked him, how he’d run into him, whether he had a conversation with him or anything about the man, and he didn’t want to hear about it.
I feel for Taeshin. 💔