I Became the Lousy Side Top - Chap 55

The night passed by in anxious worry. However, even as the sun began to rise, Jaewoo still hadn’t returned. Hyunjin’s heart was throbbing with fear. It was already past dawn, and he would normally be waking up in less than 30 minutes in order to make it to work on time.

‘I’d rather skip work.’

If he just waited a little longer, would he be able to meet with Jaewoo? He’d thought so, but as time continued to drag on, his anxiety grew and grew. Up until now, no matter how sick or depressed he was, he hadn’t missed a day of work, because he knew that earning less money because he missed work would just lead to further troubles down the road.

It hurt. His feelings for Jaewoo were undeniably sincere, but he couldn’t afford to make them a priority. Just because he was poor, just because he didn’t have any money. His mood sank lower and lower under the realization that he couldn’t afford to prioritize his love for Jaewoo.

30 minutes had already passed. Hyunjin hesitated, then finally left the place where he had been waiting all night. One step, then two. The further away he got, the more pain he felt. He wanted to turn around and wait for Jaewoo until the bitter end. More than anything else, he wanted that.

Then he thought of his younger brothers. They were still just kids, and needed protecting. They gave him a reason for him to keep going in this painful world. He had no choice but to continue on.

‘Jaewoo-hyung.’

As Hyunjin walked away from the hotel, he kept glancing backwards, but he never spotted so much as Jaewoo’s shadow. If things kept going like this, he had a feeling that he’d never see him again. His head was swirling with negative thoughts, giving him a headache.

‘Can’t I just take a day off?’

Just one day. Please, just for one day. Hyunjin wanted to cry. He’d rarely cried before, but since meeting Jaewoo, it felt like it’d become more common. Why?

Hyunjin headed to work with a bitter smile.

Jaewoo couldn’t sleep. Thanks to everything that had happened, Jaewoo found himself lying awake for the entire night. He was worried about Mujin, sleeping next to him, and he couldn’t stop thinking about Hyunjin, who he’d left behind. Should he have just left things like that? He couldn’t stop worrying, and a thousand imaginary scenarios ran through his mind. He let out a sigh. After enduring like that the entire night, dawn finally came. Since he couldn’t sleep anyway, he decided he might as well get up and prepare breakfast.

Jaewoo slipped out of Mujin’s arms and adjusted his suit. He hadn’t had a chance to shower or even change his clothes, so he was a complete mess. In such a state, he rolled up his sleeves and tied his apron, and started boiling some hangover soup. His body moved around the kitchen by rote, boiling the soup and preparing the side dishes, while his mind wandered. By the time he was done, it was already 7 am.

When he turned around, Mujin was sitting on the sofa, looking at Jaewoo. He didn’t even know when he had gotten up.

“Come eat some breakfast.”

Jaewoo said calmly and took off his apron. He sat down at his usual spot at the table with Mujin, but he had absolutely zero appetite. As he sat there, staring blankly down at the food, he heard Mujin speak.

“I’ve eaten it all.”

“Would you like some more?”

Mujin paused for a moment, then nodded. Jaewoo scooped out some more food and then descended back into a daze again. He floated like that, never fully coming back to himself, while Mujin continued eating. Only once Mujin had finished did Jaewoo think, vaguely, that he shouldn’t waste the food that he had on his plates. He took a spoonful and instantly let out a pained groan.

‘It tastes awful!’

He must have lost his goddamn mind while he was making breakfast. The rice was undercooked and the soup was way too sweet. The rolled eggs also had this indescribable, mysterious taste to them. The only things that were edible were the kimchi and the pickled vegetables. But Mujin had eaten all of it? What? Jaewoo wondered if maybe it was just the food on his plate, so he tasted the soup directly from the pot and found that it was also way too sweet.

“Blech.”

He spat it out again. Jaewoo looked back at Mujin, his face pale.

“Did you really eat all of this?”

Had Mujin damaged his taste buds or something?

“Why do you ask?”

“It’s foul!”

“…It was a little sweet.”

“Then why did you eat it all?”

Mujin got a puzzled look on his face, and repeated back.

“That’s right, why did I eat it all?”

He didn’t even know the answer? Jaewoo looked at Mujin with an astonished expression and brought the pot over to the sink. It was a waste, but the soup was absolutely beyond recovery – there was nothing else to do but throw it away. After he finished with that and had cleaned up, Jaewoo suddenly started to feel weak. His head was spinning in circles, but he didn’t want to lie down.

He wanted to keep moving so that he was too busy to think about everything. Jaewoo applied himself to the housework diligently. The clean curtains were removed and laundered again, and all the dishes were washed and dried by hand. By that point, Jaewoo’s hands had started shaking. But who cared? Whatever he was suffering was nothing compared to what Hyunjin must be going through. Hyunjin, at least, didn’t deserve any of it.

Next, he was going to wash all the blankets. With that in mind, Jaewoo started to move again, only for Mujin to stop him.

“Alright, it’s time for a break.”

‘Why?’ As Jaewoo was looking at him, that question written all over his face, Mujin snatched the blanket away from Jaewoo’s hand. Immediately, Jaewoo grabbed it back again.

“You’re acting strange right now.”

“I’m not acting strange.”

“No, you’ve been acting strange since you arrived yesterday.”

Mujin raised an eyebrow. His stomach twisted as he roughly guessed why Jaewoo was like this. But he couldn’t help it – he hated seeing Jaewoo acting this way. What was it that was causing him to abuse himself like this? Without really meaning to, he spoke up and scolded him.

“You need to take a break.”

At those words, Jaewoo laid down the blanket and scrubbed his hands over his face. Then he responded, his voice cold. Mujin had never heard him sound like that before.

“You brought me here to work. So why are you complaining about me working now?”

It looked like Jaewoo had lost his temper, just for a moment. Otherwise he would never have confronted him like that. Mujin’s gaze turned cold. He knew that he had been treating Jaewoo more leniently than he did others, but that didn’t mean that he could take that leniency for granted. The blanket fell from Mujin’s hands.

He reached out, and wrapped his large hand around Jaewoo’s neck.

“Geh!”

Jaewoo was cornered against the wall. All he could do was try to feebly scratch at Mujin’s hand as he strangled him, but he couldn’t even make a dent. He tried to suck in air, but he was starting to feel increasingly out of breath.

“When I try to be nice to you, you dare to bark at me without even thinking about it?”

It was only after hearing the violence lurking behind Mujin’s voice that Jaewoo realized he had made a mistake. He knew exactly how dangerous Mujin was, so why had he suddenly snapped at him? But blaming the ‘him from the past’ didn’t change anything.

‘You really have a rotten personality!’

Tears began to well up at the corners of his red eyes. For some reason, the words Mujin had spoken earlier came to mind again. ‘Even if the police came, they’d find it difficult to enter the building.’ Mujin could kill him right here, and no one would ever know. When he thought about that, it was hard not to feel terrified. He’d sworn to himself that he would change Jaewoo’s fate, but it was all in vain. In just a few minutes, would the story continue as it was written?

The strength gradually drained from his body. Even as things started to get fuzzy, Jaewoo had the thought that it couldn’t end like this. He gathered all his strength and desperately hit and scratched at Mujin’s hand. But it was only once he was on the verge of passing out that Mujin finally took his hand away.

“Cough! Cough!”

Jaewoo fell to the floor, coughing violently. Mujin grabbed Jaewoo and dragged him from the room. He struggled to resist, but it was no use. What was going to happen now? Jaewoo was trembling, imagining what was to come. He flinched as his body was suddenly thrown onto a soft surface.

It was a bed. Jaewoo raised both his hands defensively, but nothing happened. He stayed like that for a long time, but all he could hear was the quiet sound of a door closing. He slowly dropped his hands and looked around, but no one else was there. It looked like Mujin had tossed Jaewoo into the room and then left.

“What?”

Jaewoo didn’t understand. Yes, Mujin was crazy, but he hadn’t expected him to act this way. Maybe Mujin had just been unusually calm all this time. Jaewoo lay back on the bed, his body going limp. Maybe it was because the adrenaline of struggling to live had worn off, but he suddenly felt exhausted. He just wanted to sleep.

Jaewoo’s eyes blinked closed and then opened again a few times, before they finally shut for good, leaving only darkness.

Jaewoo was having a dream. A figure was crying sadly, but no matter how he tried, he couldn’t see their face. Their tears fell to the floor silently, soaking the ground.

‘Please don’t cry.’

He wanted to get closer and comfort them, but he couldn’t. No matter how much he ran, his body stayed in the same place. But strangely, the crying figure started to feel more and more familiar to him…

‘Don’t cry.’

Suddenly, Jaewoo’s eyes brightened as he realized.

“Don’t cry, Hyunjin.”

Jaewoo blinked awake, his fingertips stretching out above him into the darkness of the room. Hyunjin had been crying. It was only a dream, but it had felt so real. He started to wonder if he had made a huge mistake. No matter what Mujin said, he needed to go home. It just hurt too much to think about the despair Hyunjin must be feeling now.

‘I have to go back.’

Jaewoo stood up and cracked open the blackout curtains. It was already dark outside. He must have slept for a long, long time. When he exited the bedroom, he saw Mujin looking at documents on the sofa.

“I’m going back.”

Jaewoo gathered up all his courage and spoke.

“Back where?”

Mujin asked without even looking up.

“I’m going home.”

Jaewoo’s heart was pounding as he spoke. It wasn’t like Mujin would actually try to imprison him, right? But knowing what Mujin was like, Jaewoo couldn’t stop worrying about the possibility.

“The contract says that I can leave as soon as my shift is done.”

Jaewoo timidly repeated the terms of their contract. At that, Mujin put down the documents he was holding.

“It does.”

“Then can I go?”

“There’s nothing stopping you.”

Luckily, it didn’t seem like Mujin had any intention of grabbing him. Then why had he acted like that earlier? As time went on, Jaewoo felt like Mujin was becoming stranger and stranger. Jaewoo quickly gathered his things and headed for the front door.

“You won’t forget to come tomorrow?”

“I won’t forget.”

With that final reminder, Jaewoo left through the front door. As soon as it closed behind him, he heaved a sigh of relief. Now he could finally go home. Jaewoo hurried his steps. He usually took the bus to and from work, but this time he caught a taxi. He wanted to return home as quickly as possible.

The slope leading up into the slums was too narrow and dangerous for the taxi to use, so Jaewoo got off at the base of it. He took a deep breath, looking up into his neighborhood. He had returned because he was so worried about Hyunjin, but he still needed to drum up a bit of courage in order to see him.