His vision spun round and round like a whirlpool.
Minjun had his chin propped on the bar table, head hanging low. Beside him, Lee Byeongho checked the clock with a restless look on his face. At some point the second hand had come around to midnight.
“Jo Minjun, you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You really don’t have to go home tonight? What about Baek Gangha?”
Baek Gangha…. Minjun kept his silence instead of answering. Right now, just calling up that name made his head so tangled it felt ready to burst.
Bzzt. Bzzt. The phone in his pocket had been vibrating without pause for a good while. He didn’t need to take it out to know the two syllables printed there spelled ‘Princess.’
“…I don’t know. I’m not going home for a while.”
Minjun, who had ignored every last one of the calls, muttered it like a vow. He had declared he was staying out all night, bold as anything, and yet instead of freedom what came over him was the squirming discomfort of a guilty man. He had clearly spent too many years living as somebody’s flunky.
But Minjun was not Baek Gangha’s dog. He was a person with free will, and he had every right to go wherever he pleased.
“I’m…. I’m really not going home.”
Minjun swore it again, as if shaking off the guilt rolling in.
“I’m running away from home.”
From this moment on, he was a free man.
…Not for long, of course. Just a few days.
