Chapter 11

“Thanks for the ride,” the customer slurred, slamming the car door shut.

“Thank you, sir. Have a good night,” Si-woon replied with a bow.

Phew. Having completed his third call of the night, Si-woon walked briskly out of the apartment complex and exhaled a cloud of white breath into the winter air. Tonight, standing in the freezing wind between calls had worn him out more than the driving itself.

Should I pack it in and head home? It was 12:40 a.m.—still prime hours for designated driving—yet dispatch requests had been unusually sparse all week. Normally the year-end season brought a flood of company dinners, but the economic slump had thinned out the crowds while drawing even more part-time drivers onto the app.

Just a little longer. He was finally within striking distance of the sum he had been scraping together since last winter to pay off the remainder of his housing loan in a single lump sum. It wasn’t a massive balance, nor was the bank demanding immediate payoff, yet after growing up in a house shadowed by debt, owing anyone money felt like an iron weight around his neck. He wanted it cleared before he moved out.

[Hello. This is Changseong Law Firm, legal representative for Mr. Kim Chan-taek, the successful bidder in the compulsory auction of Eunwon Villa. We apologize for reaching out by text message. We are writing to inquire whether you would be able to vacate the premises following December 27. Please let us know a convenient time for a brief phone call, or we will reach out again shortly. Thank you for your cooperation, and please accept our apologies once again for the inconvenience.]

The message from the new owner’s legal representative had arrived several days earlier, and Si-woon still hadn’t brought himself to reply. Putting it off wouldn’t change the reality, of course, yet every time he opened the message to call back, a cold knot of dread stopped his thumb. Finding a new room he could afford before the end of December was practically impossible; he needed to ask for a grace period until late winter, and he had no idea whether the new owner would show that much leniency.

Bzzzt.

[Kwon Je-hee]

An incoming call cut through his brooding. Kwon Je-hee? Ever since that painfully awkward afternoon at the café when Si-woon had turned him down, he had assumed he would never hear from the man again. Watching the name glow on the screen, he meant to let it ring out—and then, before his head could talk his hand out of it, he swiped to answer.

“…Hello, this is Seo Si-woon.”

“—Si-woon-ssi…” Je-hee’s voice came through the receiver faint, slurred, and unmistakably unsteady.

“Yes, Je-hee-ssi?”

“—I’m sorry to call out of the blue like this, but… could you come out right now? It’s nothing weird… I, um, need a designated driver.”

After days of silence following a rejected confession, he was calling strictly for a ride? It was an absurd request—and yet not one Si-woon could bring himself to turn down. “…Send me the location. I’ll head right over.”

Even to his own ears, his voice sounded clipped and stiff. Lowering the phone, Si-woon let out a quiet sigh at the unreasonable sting in his chest. We were never anything more than driver and client anyway. Having been the one to draw the line at the café, he had zero right to feel hurt when Je-hee treated him like a driver again.

When Si-woon arrived at the pinned street corner fifteen minutes later, however, he stopped dead in his tracks. “…Je-hee-ssi?” He had heard the slur over the phone, but he had never seen the composed, fastidious man in a state like this.

“I surprised you, didn’t I? Calling out of nowhere… I’m sorry. I knew I shouldn’t have, it’s just…” Trailing off mid-sentence, Je-hee swayed on his feet beside a coworker who was struggling to prop him up.

“You’re his designated driver, right? Please get him home safely,” the colleague said, looking relieved to hand him over.

“Ah, yes—of course. Get home safely, sir.”

Taking Je-hee’s weight against his shoulder, Si-woon was still trying to process how a man who hated drinking had ended up barely able to stand on a freezing sidewalk. Whatever had happened at his dinner, leaving him like this was out of the question. First they had to walk the two blocks to where Je-hee’s car was parked.

They had gone barely fifty paces in silence when Je-hee’s knees buckled without warning, pitching him forward toward the asphalt.

“Watch out!” Catching him squarely around the chest with both arms before he could hit the pavement face-first, Si-woon jolted at the sharpness of his own shout.

In his arms, Je-hee blinked up at him with a flushed face and murmured in an absurdly conversational tone, “…Aren’t we standing a little too close?”

What is wrong with this man? He had come within an inch of splitting his forehead open on the curb, and his first concern was how close they were standing? Frowning to mask the sudden jolt in his chest, Si-woon hauled him upright. “Please stop talking nonsense and try to keep your feet under you.”

“…It isn’t nonsense, though,” Je-hee muttered under his breath, too drunk to walk straight yet somehow sober enough to talk back. Still, he made a visible effort to bear more of his own weight as they resumed walking, which made Si-woon swallow the rest of his scolding.

Their footsteps dragged along the quiet pavement in the cold. Je-hee was nearly his own height, and supporting him down the block put a steady strain on Si-woon’s shoulder—though the physical weight was nothing compared to the tangle of thoughts in his head. What am I doing right now? At the café, he had told Je-hee they couldn’t get any closer, convinced that a man with nothing to his name and an eviction hanging over his head had no business inviting someone like Kwon Je-hee into his life. Yet during the week and a half since that refusal, not a single day had gone by without Si-woon thinking of him.

“…Are you angry with me?” Peering up at his profile, Je-hee sounded slightly clearer—perhaps chilled by the night wind, or perhaps finally noticing Si-woon’s tight jaw.

“No.” Angry? What right would I have to be angry with you? Seeing the man so uncharacteristically helpless had simply shaken him. Having been the one to push Je-hee away, Si-woon ought to have been relieved that they had returned to a simple professional transaction. That’s how it should be. So why does the distance I asked for feel this heavy?

“Did you have to drink a lot tonight?” Si-woon asked more softly.

“Mm… a little?” Exhaling a warm cloud of breath, Je-hee let a disarmingly boyish, mischievous smile curve across his flushed face, his dark eyes catching the glow of the streetlamps as his long lashes fluttered.

For a full second Si-woon forgot how to breathe. Turning his burning face away before Je-hee could read his expression, he guided him hastily toward a bench outside a brightly lit convenience store. “…I’ll grab you something to drink. Please sit right here for a minute.”

“…?”

Leaving a bewildered Je-hee on the bench, Si-woon practically fled inside the store. That unguarded smile had completely undone his composure; cowardly or not, putting a glass door between them while he bought a bottle of water and a bag of hangover tonics was the only way to steady his pulse.

Returning outside, he uncapped the water and held it out. “Here. Drink a little before we get in the car.”

Watching Je-hee take obedient, small sips to soothe his parched throat, Si-woon let out a long breath. Je-hee had never been the problem; Si-woon’s own cowardice was. I told myself that if I drew a firm line, these feelings would quiet down on their own. Instead, the days apart had only made it impossible to keep lying to himself. He had known for weeks that Je-hee’s eyes lingered on him with more than friendly interest, and while he had rejected the confession out of fear that their lives were too far apart, he had secretly cherished every scrap of warmth the man offered him—pulling away the moment he felt himself wanting too much, and hurting Je-hee in the process.

By the time Si-woon drove them back to Yeonghyeon and pulled into the apartment complex parking lot, Je-hee was dead to the world in the passenger seat. Ordinarily he stirred the moment the engine shut off; tonight, even after ten minutes passed, he didn’t budge an inch.

“Je-hee-ssi?” Leaning across the console, Si-woon placed a careful hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle shake. “Je-hee-ssi… we’re home.”

When a firmer shake only made the man’s head loll against the window, Si-woon sighed, stepped out into the cold, and walked around to pull open the passenger door. Even the rush of winter air failed to rouse him.

“…Excuse me for a moment,” Si-woon murmured to the unconscious man. If Je-hee wasn’t going to wake up before dawn, there was no choice but to carry him upstairs. Drawing Je-hee’s limp arm across his shoulders and bracing a grip beneath his thighs, Si-woon hoisted him onto his back in one steady heave. “If you wake up on the way, just say my name and I’ll put you right down, okay?”

He knew he was talking to himself, yet hearing his own voice gave him something to focus on besides the solid weight pressed flush against his spine and the warm puff of Je-hee’s breath brushing just below his ear. Don’t think about it. Pressing his lips into a tight line, he carried him into the elevator and up to his floor.

“Haah…” Only after coaxing the front-door keypad code out of a half-conscious Je-hee—which took nearly ten minutes in the hallway—and lowering him onto the living-room sofa did Si-woon finally release a long, shaky breath. Despite the winter chill outside, sweat had soaked right through his knit sweater. Still, he had gotten the man safely inside; his job was done.

“Je-hee-ssi, you’re inside now,” Si-woon said, crouching by the sofa to rouse him enough to move to his bed. “Je-hee-ssi—Kwon Je-hee!”

“Mmh…” Slowly blinking his eyes partway open, Je-hee licked his dry lips and rasped, “Water…”

“Would you like some water?”

“Yeah.” Somewhere between the street corner and his living room, Je-hee had dropped his customary polite endings altogether, answering with an almost childlike directness that Si-woon barely registered in his hurry to fetch a glass from the kitchen.

When Si-woon held the glass to his mouth, Je-hee gulped it down greedily, his throat working with every swallow as half the water spilled down his chin and soaked the front of his dress shirt and silk tie.

I really need to head home now. Yet looking down at the man slumped dazedly on the sofa in a drenched collar—so far removed from the immaculate, self-possessed Kwon Je-hee he knew—Si-woon couldn’t bring himself to walk out the door. Leaving him passed out on the couch in wet clothes guaranteed he would catch a terrible cold on top of his hangover. Just until I get him into bed.

“Can you change out of your shirt before you sleep?” Si-woon asked gently.

Nodding vaguely, Je-hee lifted clumsy fingers to his collar and tugged at his wet necktie, only to pull the knot tighter until a frustrated frown creased his brow.

Si-woon hesitated a beat before leaning down. “Would you… like me to help with that?”

At the offer, Je-hee’s heavy-lidded eyes brightened, looking up at him with such open expectation that stepping back became impossible. Leaning over the sofa, Si-woon took hold of the silk knot. Under his fingertips, the damp fabric slipped and caught stubbornly, his own mounting self-consciousness making his hands clumsier by the second. Worse, from two inches away, Je-hee’s dark eyes never left his face—tracing the line of his jaw, the slope of his neck, the curve of his mouth with an unblinking intensity that made the air between them feel scorching hot.

“P-please stop staring at me like that,” Si-woon stammered, half rebuke and half plea.

“You still haven’t gotten my tie off, though.” Lightly tapping his own collarbone with a finger, Je-hee let a slow, unmistakable smirk tug at the corner of his mouth. “Hurry up.”

Flushing to the roots of his hair at the shameless command, Si-woon finally wrestled the knot loose and drew back at once, clenching and unclenching his trembling fingers at his sides. “There. It’s off.” Helping him change the rest of his clothes is completely out of the question. If loosening a necktie had rattled him this badly, unbuttoning the man’s shirt would finish him off before dawn.

“Je-hee-ssi, you need to move to your bed and sleep now,” Si-woon said, extending a hand to help him up as gently as he would coax Do-gyeom.

“Si-woon-ah…”

The low, intimate murmur of his given name filled the quiet living room as Je-hee’s cool, slender fingers brushed against Si-woon’s palm—and before Si-woon could flinch back, Je-hee caught him firmly around the waist with both arms and pulled him down against his chest.

“Haah…” Burying his face against Si-woon’s midsection, Je-hee let out a long, contented breath and held on tight. Frozen in place with his breath caught in his throat, Si-woon felt every inch of the man’s warmth through his sweater. It took him several racing heartbeats to find his voice and brace his hands carefully against Je-hee’s shoulders.

“W-wait—you need to lie down in your room.”

Though Je-hee’s hands lingered reluctantly at his waist for another second, he finally allowed Si-woon to haul him to his feet and guide him down the hall into the master bedroom. Pulling the duvet all the way up to Je-hee’s chin—as though tucking him in tightly might keep him from reaching out again—Si-woon stepped back from the mattress.

“I’m not even sleepy…” Je-hee murmured against the pillow.

“You still have to sleep.” Making his voice as firm as he could manage, Si-woon set the bag of hangover tonics by the pillow and practically bolted from the bedroom, snatching up his coat and stumbling into his shoes in the foyer.

Out in the cold corridor, he pressed a hand hard against his sternum. “If it keeps hammering like this, my heart really is going to burst…”