Chapter 46

[Are you out of your fucking mind?]

“You wouldn’t be completely wrong to think so.”

Rummaging through the refrigerator, Gi-hyeon let out a soft chuckle. He had been holding his phone pinned between his ear and shoulder, but his neck started to ache, forcing him to switch it to the other side.

[Stop sprouting bullshit and get your ass back here to take this back. I am absolutely not processing this resignation, so don’t even think about it.]

Because Beom-hee had a naturally booming voice when she was angry, the volume made Gi-hyeon’s ear ring, causing him to wince.

“Then process it as an unauthorized absence and fire me, Beom-hee-ah.”

[Are you seriously saying that to me right now?!]

In truth, it wasn’t something he should be saying to Beom-hee. She was the one who had saved So Gi-hyeon when he was practically clinging to life, barely breathing with steel pins screwed into his ruined ankle. She had saved his life and even given him a job at her newly established clinic. Simply dropping a single piece of paper and walking out definitely pricked his conscience.

But if he didn’t do this…

“…I’m sorry, Beom-hee-ah.”

[…What is the exact reason you’re doing this?]

From Beom-hee’s perspective, the entire situation must have been entirely incomprehensible. Gi-hyeon cleared his throat with a low hum before answering.

“We broke up.”

[Who.]

He had practically handed her the answer, yet she completely missed the point. Giving up on finding anything in the refrigerator, Gi-hyeon headed for the dress room. Laying two massive suitcases wide open on the floor, he began sweeping everything that didn’t belong to him into them.

“Who do you think? Me and Jo Yeon-oh.”

[Where did you guys split up? In front of the clinic? Why, is Jo Yeon-oh not answering your calls?]

Wondering what on earth she was talking about, Gi-hyeon realized she had taken the phrase ‘broke up’ in the most literal, platonic sense—as in, they had physically parted ways for the day. Well, of course she did. There was no way Lee Beom-hee could have ever guessed about a breakup when she hadn’t even known they were dating. Because his neck was still throbbing from tilting it earlier, Gi-hyeon finally pulled out his wireless earbuds, put them in, and began packing in earnest as he spoke.

“I’m saying I decided to end things with Jo Yeon-oh.”

End what, Beom-hee mumbled in confusion, before a beat of absolute silence was suddenly shattered by an ear-piercing shriek.

[You guys broke up?!]

“How many times do I have to tell you.”

Answering with profound apathy, Gi-hyeon carelessly chucked Jo Yeon-oh’s dress shirts into the suitcase. He really brought a ridiculous amount of clothes over. Having a separate dress room in the first place was entirely because of Jo Yeon-oh. Gi-hyeon could easily fit his entire four-season wardrobe into a single wardrobe closet, but because the bastard practically lived in tailored suits for work, Gi-hyeon had been forced to convert an entire room just to hold his clothes.

…There’s no way this is going to fit in just two suitcases… While Gi-hyeon let out a low sigh, Lee Beom-hee was having an absolute meltdown on the other end of the line.

[Hey, why the hell are you only telling me this now! Wait, no, did you quit your job because of that fucking bastard Jo Yeon-oh…]

Her intuition was terrifying. Gi-hyeon hadn’t intentionally confirmed it, but Beom-hee seemed to instantly put the pieces together.

[HEY! If you guys broke up, HE’S the one who should be avoiding you! Why are YOU the one quitting—!]

Once again, Beom-hee’s arm was fiercely bending inward to protect So Gi-hyeon. Gi-hyeon let out a soft laugh. Whenever a conflict arose between the two of them, Lee Beom-hee unfailingly took So Gi-hyeon’s side. Jo Yeon-oh used to absolutely despise that, and whenever their arguments finally settled down, he would aggressively scold Gi-hyeon, telling him to stop hanging out with Lee Beom-hee.

But all of that was ancient history now. Gi-hyeon casually corrected Beom-hee.

“Actually, no, we didn’t break up…”

[…]

“We severed our friendship.”

[Hey…]

Beom-hee called out to him in a soothing, consoling tone. As if begging him not to speak so cruelly about himself. But with absolutely no one around to see him, Gi-hyeon simply shrugged his shoulders.

“What can I do when it’s the truth.”

Their relationship, which had dragged on for years, was nothing more than a desperately, haphazardly stitched-together wound. A wound that was always destined to rip wide open; it just happened to finally tear between yesterday and today. How could anyone be blamed for that?

He knew the bastard harbored a visceral disgust for sexual relationships with Betas. That was exactly why he thought as long as Jo Yeon-oh never found out he was the one he spent the night with, everything would be fine. Gi-hyeon’s assumption was completely wrong. So whose fault was it?

So Gi-hyeon, who had confessed his feelings fully knowing Jo Yeon-oh was repulsed by the idea of dating a Beta? Or Jo Yeon-oh, who had accepted the confession, only to spend the next seven years acting exactly as if he were enacting a brutal, one-sided revenge for a shattered friendship by refusing to show a single ounce of genuine romantic affection?

“Beom-hee-ah, don’t be upset. He and I just gave each other exactly what we deserved.”

[Are you seriously calling that…]

“I’m serious. Honestly, from Jo Yeon-oh’s perspective, I’m probably the bastard who deserves to die.”

That was undoubtedly why the bastard had made that devastating expression when Gi-hyeon told him they were severing their friendship. The image of that face had permanently burned itself into Gi-hyeon’s retinas, refusing to be forgotten. Gi-hyeon paused to take a slow, steadying breath.

“Because we were stuck together for so long, I didn’t realize it, but I think Jo Yeon-oh and I were always an ill-fated match from the start.”

[Hey, I told you not to talk like that…]

If it hadn’t been an ill-fated match, there was no way the bastard would have looked so profoundly shattered at So Gi-hyeon’s final words. The face of a man whose entire world was collapsing beneath his feet. Gi-hyeon was intimately familiar with that expression. Because it was the exact same expression he used to wear. Therefore, the only thing left to curse was the twisted fate that had forced the two of them together; calculating who was the worse person was entirely pointless now.

“Beom-hee-ah, you must be feeling incredibly sorry for me right now. I get it, so please just hang up the phone and express your pity with money. I will exclusively judge your sincerity based on my severance pay.”

[Spouting absolute bullshit to the very end! You crazy bastard, you’re just as venomous and stubborn as Jo Yeon-oh, you know that?! Anyway, I am absolutely not processing your resignation, so get that through your thick skull! That son of a bitch Lim Hyeong-seop didn’t even breathe a word of this to me! And you still call yourself my friend?!]

They were friends. The title he could never truly give to Jo Yeon-oh, he could freely and endlessly bestow upon Beom-hee. Even though the one who had desperately coveted that title the most was Jo Yeon-oh.

Listening to Beom-hee furiously screaming before abruptly hanging up on him, Gi-hyeon let out a soft laugh. He pulled the earbuds out and tossed them aside.

“Let’s pack, let’s pack…”

Muttering a tuneless, profoundly unenthusiastic rhythm to himself, Gi-hyeon continued aggressively clearing out Jo Yeon-oh’s belongings. Realizing that carelessly shoving the tailored dress shirts, suit pants, and expensive jackets into the suitcases would likely ruin them, he decided it would probably be better to just call Manager Yoo to handle the wardrobe.

Deciding to tackle the other items first, he pulled open a drawer, only to be confronted by Jo Yeon-oh’s underwear, folded and organized with borderline obsessive-compulsive precision. There were even stacks of brand-new, unopened packages perfectly aligned in rows.

“Crazy bastard, exactly how many pairs of underwear does one person need.”

Baffled by the sheer absurdity, Gi-hyeon shook his head. Because the bastard was an extreme germaphobe who absolutely hated letting anyone know he was a germaphobe, he had simply stuffed the drawers completely full of backup underwear to avoid any issues.

Gi-hyeon dumped the entire drawer directly into the suitcase. But as he did, a strange sensation washed over him. They had clearly been freshly laundered, yet he could vividly smell Jo Yeon-oh’s unique body scent clinging to them. Tilting his head in confusion, Gi-hyeon moved on, opening the drawer containing t-shirts and loungewear.

When he finally snapped back to reality, he found himself violently crushing Yeon-oh’s t-shirts and lounge pants in his fists, his face buried deeply into the fabric.

“Why am I…”

Beneath the crisp scent of fabric softener, he could detect a faint, underlying fragrance that made his entire body feel dangerously lethargic. His mind felt hazy, almost intoxicated. Staring down at the t-shirt with the dazed, foggy expression of a drunkard, Gi-hyeon abruptly stood up and stumbled out into the living room.

Collapsing face-down onto the sofa, he buried his face into the t-shirt he was still clutching. The faint scent wafting from the fabric felt impossibly good. It even brought a profound sense of comfort. Yielding to the sensation, Gi-hyeon drifted into a light doze before waking up shortly after. After waking, he spent a moment blankly wondering why he had come out to the living room, but his memory was completely unhelpful.

Standing back up, Gi-hyeon suddenly remembered he was in the middle of clearing out Jo Yeon-oh’s belongings and headed for the bathroom. He stood there quietly, staring at the blue toothbrush resting in the holder.

“…”

It took several agonizing seconds before he finally reached out, grabbed it, and threw it in the trash. A voice that didn’t even sound like his own was relentlessly replaying in his head. The voice of a man driving the final nail into the coffin, declaring they were severing their friendship.

But his hesitation ended there. Gi-hyeon ruthlessly swept up every single one of Jo Yeon-oh’s belongings. Even though the lights in the dress room were still on and the half-filled suitcases were lying open on the floor, he felt an inexplicable, intense aversion to stepping back into that room.

Instead, he went into the master bedroom, grabbed the specific pillow Jo Yeon-oh always used, and shoved it into a recycling bag. He even threw away the apron—an item Gi-hyeon had never once worn himself, as he rarely cooked.

The items that had once been frequently used by a single person looked exactly like garbage the moment they were piled together. It was a bizarre phenomenon. When Jo Yeon-oh had worn them, used them, and touched them, they had been perfectly fine, but scattered haphazardly across the floor, they looked like nothing more than abandoned junk that had lost its owner a decade ago.

“…”

Gi-hyeon knew full well that if he looked in the mirror right now, he would see a face exuding that exact same aura of abandonment. Because of that, he hadn’t glanced at the bathroom mirror even once.

After aggressively clearing things out for quite a while without a single break, the bastard’s belongings were mostly gathered. Because the clothes were exceptionally high-end, he planned to tell Manager Yoo to come pack them himself. Scanning the apartment to see if he had missed anything, Gi-hyeon’s gaze suddenly landed on the fish tank.

—These are our children. Raise them well.

—You gave birth to them? You must have had an easy delivery.

Sometime in the past, Yeon-oh had suddenly brought in the massive tank, meticulously decorated the aquascape, and eventually brought home two goldfish, prompting that exact conversation. Gi-hyeon had responded with a sarcastic joke, but internally, he had been incredibly happy.

Even though the bastard vehemently denied it, Gi-hyeon knew Jo Yeon-oh’s severe germaphobia made it impossible for him to ever consider raising a dog or a cat. Finding a compromise in goldfish, something even Yeon-oh could comfortably handle, had been a genuinely pleasant surprise.

Of course, Gi-hyeon hadn’t exactly been a model father. Managing the water quality and feeding the fish had almost entirely fallen to Jo Yeon-oh. Still, Gi-hyeon had cherished the goldfish in his own quiet way.

Just like his mother, whose greatest dream had been to build a happy family, Gi-hyeon had desperately wanted a family of his own. He had foolishly, lightly assumed that if they adopted goldfish as their children and lived exactly like this for the rest of their lives, things wouldn’t be so bad. That was already several years ago.

Vows faded, and the things he had convinced himself would be fine were now actively hunting him down, their jaws unhinged wide behind his back. So it was finally time to turn around and face exactly what was chasing him.

The moment he realized he could no longer live like this was the exact second Jo Yeon-oh had demanded they break up. It felt as though a thick layer of skin had been violently ripped from his heart—it was horrifyingly painful, yet profoundly liberating. The outer shell had probably been completely torn away. It might even bleed a little.

But the most important thing was that a scab would eventually form over the wound. So Gi-hyeon only needed to endure until then. Endurance had never, not even once, betrayed So Gi-hyeon.

Letting out a heavy sigh, he dragged all the meticulously sorted recycling bags out the door. He planned to drop them off at the apartment complex’s designated recycling area.

They weren’t heavy, but the sheer volume meant he would have to make several trips back and forth, which was incredibly annoying. He had just stepped out of the elevator and was heading toward the recycling bins when it happened. Hearing the unnaturally loud, aggressive roar of a car engine, Gi-hyeon snapped his head up just in time to see a vehicle violently surging toward him as if experiencing sudden unintended acceleration. Startled out of his mind, he threw himself toward the flowerbed, practically tumbling over to dodge the impact.

With a deafening screech of slamming brakes, the acrid stench of burning rubber filled the air. Gi-hyeon furrowed his brow fiercely. Who the hell accelerates like a maniac inside a residential apartment complex?

“Are you alright?!”

However, the person who practically threw himself out of the car, staring at Gi-hyeon with wide, panicked eyes, was a face Gi-hyeon had actually seen a few times before. It was a British-Korean tennis player who had visited Haeseong Rehabilitation Centre Clinic the week before last complaining of Achilles tendon pain.