Chapter 4

Was I really still pretending there was nothing personal about this?

With every drive they shared, Je-hee found it harder to defend his own motives. Having a familiar, reliable designated driver was undeniably convenient, yet convenience explained only a fraction of why he looked forward to these nights. Not that I’ve crossed any lines. He hadn’t made an improper advance or said anything that might put Si-woon on the spot. Asking for his number that first dawn had been an uncharacteristic impulse, certainly, but Je-hee was old enough to know the difference between nursing a private interest in someone and burdening him with unwanted attention. To Si-woon, they were driver and client—nothing more.

Could we at least make a little small talk? Probably not. Seeing each other regularly hadn’t made the man any chattier. He isn’t cold, exactly, just… An invisible boundary seemed to surround Si-woon at all times. Je-hee would steal a glance across the console to gauge his mood, debate how to open a conversation, and then somehow drift off to sleep before getting a single word out.

It baffled him. High-strung by nature, Je-hee rarely grew drowsy in cars even after drinking, and on the rare occasions he did doze off, he always jolted awake within minutes. Never like this.

“…Habit really is a frightening thing.”

Ever since their first trip back from Naeju, he had fallen dead asleep almost the moment Si-woon took the wheel. Half the time he worried he might have snored or talked in his sleep, and more often than not he had no idea they had reached his apartment until Si-woon gently woke him in the parking lot. How was it that a man who slept so lightly in his own quiet bedroom could sink into such deep, dreamless rest in a moving car?

Si-woon’s steady presence had become a quiet comfort, turning his exhausting late-night commutes from nearby Jigyo and Songcheon—or all the way from Naeju—into something he secretly anticipated. Of course, he couldn’t summon the man at a whim. On nights when Si-woon was already on another call, Je-hee had to use the dispatch app as before. After that happened a few times, however, Si-woon apologized so earnestly that he offered to keep his evenings open whenever Je-hee texted his schedule in advance. Je-hee had been genuinely touched; he was the one who had asked for this arrangement in the first place.

Before long, they settled into an unspoken routine. Nearly all of Je-hee’s late-night business trips ended with Si-woon behind the wheel, punctuated by a brief stop at a dim highway rest area for canned coffee and a cigarette—or at least, that was how it had started.

“I’m worried the habit might come back if I keep having one,” Si-woon had admitted one night when Je-hee held out his pack. “So I’ll pass.” He explained that he had quit for good because of his young nephew and offered to simply keep Je-hee company in the night air instead. Without ever discussing it aloud, they soon dropped the cigarette breaks altogether. What Je-hee had enjoyed was sharing those quiet minutes with Si-woon, not the nicotine itself; giving up smoking on their drives cost him nothing.

The front passenger seat, meanwhile, had become permanently his. An executive on a long trip might sit in the back, of course, but Je-hee was neither old enough nor important enough to want chauffeur treatment—and besides, he got carsick. There was nothing remotely strange about sitting up front beside Si-woon. Right? He liked watching the highway unfold through the windshield. He had no intention of giving up that seat.

“You travel for business quite often, don’t you?” Si-woon remarked, his eyes on the road.

“…!”

For the first time since they had met, Si-woon had initiated a conversation of his own accord. Sitting up straighter, Je-hee struggled to school the sudden delight on his face. Who knew such a mundane question could make his pulse jump? “Yes, I suppose I do,” he said, then heard himself rush on. “Our headquarters is in Yeonghyeon, you see, while the production facilities are down in the provinces, and we also handle direct deliveries to military bases fairly often. Since my role is essentially sales and client management, I end up at a lot of dinners where I’m expected to drink. That’s why I finish so late… so often.”

Realizing how much he was babbling, he trailed off in mortification. He sounded as though he had been waiting weeks for an excuse to talk—which, unfortunately, was not far from the truth.

“Military bases?” Si-woon echoed.

“Oh, yes. I work at KG Systems. Come to think of it, I never gave you my business card.” Reaching for his wallet, Je-hee figured a card would explain his job far more neatly than another rambling speech—until his hand froze halfway to his breast pocket. Searching Si-woon’s profile, he felt his nerve falter. “That is… if you’d like one.” With someone so reserved, an unsolicited business card might feel like an imposition, and the thought of Si-woon tossing it into a trash bin later made his stomach sink.

“Yes, I’d like one,” Si-woon replied without hesitation.

After handing the card across, Je-hee used the motion of returning his wallet to his pocket as an excuse to press a hand against his sternum. I’m losing my mind. It was a piece of cardstock with his office number on it; why was his heart hammering as if he had just handed over a love letter?

“Ahem.” He cleared his throat, though his pulse refused to settle.

“Doesn’t a schedule like that get exhausting?” Si-woon asked quietly.

Surely the man wasn’t doing this on purpose. If he was, he had the instincts of a master tamer, tossing out a scrap of gentle attention at the exact moment Je-hee was trying to rein himself in. It was a perfectly ordinary question, yet the possibility that Si-woon was genuinely curious about his life made him absurdly happy.

“The client dinners are the hardest part, honestly. Alcohol doesn’t really agree with me… though the work itself suits me well enough.” Rubbing a warm cheek, Je-hee realized he had turned halfway toward the driver’s seat without noticing. Thankfully, Si-woon kept his eyes on the road and made no comment.

“…”

Before long, the exchange tapered back into silence. Je-hee parted his lips once or twice, hoping to keep the thread alive, only to swallow the words again. There were a hundred things he wanted to ask, and almost nothing he could pry into without crossing the line into Si-woon’s private life. Did I talk too much just now? Around Si-woon, he dissected every sentence he spoke and always found something to regret. Embarrassed by how eagerly he had chattered after nearly two weeks without seeing the man, he rubbed his chin and faced the windshield again.

At least he hadn’t sunk to inventing fake business trips just to call him. Not yet… no, not yet. A wry smile tugged at his mouth. At this rate, he would start volunteering for every provincial assignment in the department, and once those ran out, he might be tempted to manufacture excuses out of thin air. He knew far less about Si-woon than he wished, yet of one thing he felt certain: a man as honest as Si-woon would not appreciate discovering he had been summoned under false pretenses. Don’t invent trips. Just make the most of the real ones. Surely Si-woon could forgive him that much. Probably.

* * *

“What’s this?” Je-hee murmured the next morning.

As he opened his car door, a tuft of brown plush caught his eye, wedged tightly between the driver’s seat and the sill. Bending down for a closer look, he tilted his head. “A pig?” No, the snout was the wrong shape, and the color didn’t match either. “…A bear?” Its legs were far too stubby for a bear, though the round, compact little body was undeniably cute.

Si-woon must have dropped it the night before; no one else ever sat in the driver’s seat. Why a tall, serious man like Si-woon would carry something so adorable was a mystery, but the floor mat was certainly no place to leave it. After a moment’s hesitation, Je-hee picked up the palm-sized plush keychain. Touching something that belonged to Si-woon felt slightly presumptuous, yet leaving it in the dirt seemed worse. Brushing the grit from its round belly and bottom—pat, pat—he slipped it into his coat pocket, where the little creature disappeared completely.

“…”

A faint smile tugged at his usually impassive mouth. The plushie was wonderfully plump and squishy against his fingers, and while he felt a twinge of guilt for pocketing it, he now had a completely legitimate reason to contact Si-woon again. That thought alone was enough to brighten his commute.

“It still doesn’t look quite like a bear,” he mused aloud.

By the time Je-hee settled into his office, the brown plush toy had claimed a place of honor on his otherwise spotless desk, drawing his gaze whenever he paused between documents. Were its eyes open or closed? Two tiny straight stitches crossed its broad, placid face, and while he couldn’t tell what expression it was meant to have, there was something oddly soothing about looking at it.

“Assistant Manager Kwon, where’d you get the plushie?” a colleague called over the partition.

“Wait, isn’t that a capybara?” someone else asked.

Lightly tapping the creature’s blunt snout as his coworkers peered over the divider, Je-hee blinked in recognition. A capybara? Of course. Once he heard the name, the resemblance was unmistakable.

“Did you win it out of a claw machine?” another colleague asked with a grin.

“No, it just… found its way to me.” Trailing off, Je-hee picked up his phone. Now that he knew what the creature was called, he could contact its owner properly.

When the call connected, Je-hee aimed for an even, matter-of-fact tone. “You left a capybara in my car.”

“—Pardon?”

“A capybara plushie. With a little tangerine on its head.”

“—Ah.”

“…”

“—So that’s where it went.” Si-woon’s low voice carried an unmistakable note of relief. He must have been looking everywhere for it. Je-hee’s spirits lifted at once; he had half-feared Si-woon would brush the trinket off as unimportant, which would have robbed him of his excuse to meet.

“Would you like me to bring it by?” Je-hee asked, taking care not to sound overly eager.

“—Oh, no. You don’t need to go to that much trouble.”

“Don’t you need it back?”

“—Well, yes, I do, but… not urgently. Could you just hang on to it until the next time we meet?”

Je-hee clicked his tongue silently. That was the one answer he hadn’t wanted to hear. And when is “next time” supposed to be? He was tempted to press, yet Si-woon had declined out of polite consideration, and insisting too hard would only expose his real motive.

“All right…” Looking down at the plush toy, now slightly squashed in his grip, Je-hee relented. Wanting to see Si-woon was his own problem, not something to burden the other man with; the sensible course was to wait. Even the capybara’s stitched eyes seemed to droop in sympathy.

“—Next week would be fine. Thank you for letting me know—I really was looking for it.”

“Next week?” Stopping mid-squeeze, Je-hee sat bolt upright in his chair. “Oh, that might be a little difficult,” he said carefully.

“—…?”

“I don’t have any provincial trips scheduled next week…”

“—Ah…”

Maybe there’s an opening here. “And it doesn’t look like we have any team dinners coming up for a while, either. Would it be easier if I brought it to you instead? I can swing by your neighborhood—my lunch hour is fairly flexible.”

“—In that case…” Si-woon hesitated on the other end of the line, plainly reluctant to make a client go out of his way.

Before the pause could turn into another refusal, Je-hee hurried to fill it. “It’s no trouble at all, really.” Alone at his desk, he waved his free hand in the air as though Si-woon could see him, grinning so hard his cheeks ached.

A moment after they hung up, a message pinged on his screen.

—[Map] Could you possibly meet me near here? My workplace is in this area.
—Sure. Don’t worry about it. 😄

Checking the pinned location, Je-hee noted that Si-woon’s office was in Yeonghyeon, not far from his own apartment. So he really does work a full-time day job, too. He had suspected as much, and it went a long way toward explaining the man’s perpetual fatigue; those brief answers and guarded expressions were likely all the energy Si-woon had left by midnight.

“…Now I feel guilty.” Perhaps he should have simply sent the keychain by courier. Now that the lunch meeting was set, his maneuvering felt far less innocent. Si-woon was already stretched thin working two jobs, and here Je-hee was claiming his midday break as well. Was I too pushy? Rubbing his face with both hands, he let out a sigh. “I shouldn’t be bothering him like this.” To Si-woon, he was nothing more than a regular client, and if he pressed too hard, a man that cautious might pull back altogether.

The prospect of Si-woon withdrawing for good genuinely frightened him—yet even that worry couldn’t quite dampen the flutter of anticipation in his chest. “Have I completely lost my mind?” What was he doing at thirty-four, inventing errands just to catch a glimpse of a younger man who was working himself to the bone? There was no point pretending anymore: convenience had nothing to do with it. He was drawn to Seo Si-woon—and even as he scolded himself for chasing someone who had shown zero romantic interest in him, a light, involuntary hum escaped his throat.

* * *