After locking the rooftop room, Seojin stood there a moment turning the key over in his hand.
Leaving it under the flowerpot like before seems way too risky.
It really did bother him. Seojin glanced around and found a pile of odds and ends, along with a toy car the little guest had probably played with and then abandoned.
He tucked the key inside the toy car, spread the junk around the flowerpot to hide the gap, and wedged the toy in among it.
It was still the kind of trick that wouldn’t fool anyone who really looked, but it beat a lone flowerpot sitting there.
“Can you come here a second?”
Seojin beckoned to the little guest.
“When Seyoung hyung wakes up later, tell him the key is in this car right here. Got it?”
Entrusted with a mission of enormous importance, the child’s eyes lit up. He pressed his lips into a firm line and nodded with grim resolve. It was so adorable that Seojin grinned and ruffled the round little head.
“All right, shall we get going?”
Seojin turned to Manager Kim, who had waited patiently through all of it.
“All done? Good, let’s go. Ugh, must be the hour. My whole body’s stiff!”
Manager Kim made a show of grumbling and set off first, with Seojin and the little guest trailing after him. The three of them had just picked their way down the narrow, steep stairs when it happened.
Creak.
Metal groaned as the front gate swung open from the outside, and a man who looked five or six years older than Seojin stepped in.
“Dad!”
Spotting him, the little guest brightened and ran over. Seojin took stock of the man too. A face heavy with exhaustion, pitch-black circles under his eyes, a shabby tracksuit, hair sticking up every which way.
So that’s the landlord. The problem one.
The man mussed the boy’s hair and looked over at Seojin and Manager Kim.
“Hey. But Jun, who are those people?”
Catching the wariness under the man’s voice, Seojin quickly fixed an easygoing smile onto his face.
“Hello. I’m a friend of Seyoung’s.”
He deliberately pitched his voice a little louder, like a man with no sense of the room.
“I came home with Seyoung and I was just about to head out.”
Having said his piece, Seojin threw the little guest a wink. The child must have understood the request to keep it secret, because his head bobbed enthusiastically all over again.
“A friend?”
The landlord looked Seojin up and down, then cut a sideways glance at Manager Kim standing beside him. However he looked at him, Manager Kim clearly didn’t read as anybody’s friend, and the suspicion never left the landlord’s face.
“Sorry for making a racket so late. We’ll be off, then. Get some rest.”
Seojin breezed through the goodbye without leaving room for another question and signaled Manager Kim with his eyes. Manager Kim caught the cue and stepped through the gate first, and Seojin hurried out after him.
“Byeee-byeeee!”
Jun’s clear little voice rang out behind him, so Seojin reached a hand back and waved. The two of them were back at the parked car in no time.
Seojin quietly eased the back door open and checked on Euni in her car seat. Thankfully the child was fast asleep, breathing evenly, dead to the world. Only then did a sigh of relief escape him.
“Manager Kim, where do you live? Should I drive you home?”
“No, no. I’m fine. I’ll just grab a taxi out on the main road. You worked hard tonight, Seojin. Thanks to you it all got sorted out. Get home safe and I’ll see you Monday!”
Manager Kim waved him off, rattled all that out in a rush, and started off down the alley.
“Get home safe!”
Seojin called after his retreating back, waited until he’d disappeared entirely, then quietly climbed into the driver’s seat.
The car soon pulled into the familiar parking lot of his building. He cut the engine and looked into the back seat to find Euni sunk deep in sleep, mouth hanging open. Seojin ran a fingertip gently along one chubby cheek, got out, and opened the rear door.
He lifted her carefully into his arms so she wouldn’t wake, and today of all days the weight of her settled heavy against him.
Oof...
Getting dragged all over the city must have drained every last drop of energy out of him.
I should go up, have a beer, and go to bed.
He’d never even gotten a sip of the one Euni had rationed out to him earlier; he’d left it sitting on the dining table. He’d pull a cold new one out of the fridge and at least wet his throat, he decided, and nudged the car door shut with his foot.
He shifted the child into a better hold and had just turned toward the entrance of the building when it happened.
“Gah!”
In the dark beyond the reach of the streetlamp, there was some huge black shape. Gooseflesh shot up the back of Seojin’s neck and he sucked in a breath and stumbled backward before he could stop himself.
“What’s with you? Why are you looking at me like I’m the grim reaper?”
Seojin recognized the voice, and with it the man.
“What are you doing here, President?”
How am I supposed to not be startled? With you staring like that! More to the point, why was a man who ought to be at the gallery standing here?
“No reason?”
Yoon Haegang came closer, slowly. With the faint streetlamp light slanting across it, his face read less as beautiful than as bone-chilling.
Forcing down the prickle rising over his skin all over again, Seojin asked,
“Since when have you been standing there, exactly?”
“Not long.”
Having given that half-hearted answer, Yoon Haegang looked at Seojin’s face, then at Euni asleep in his arms.
“Anyway, what happened with that friend you took off with earlier?”
“Ah, that... I got him home safely.”
From the way he said friend, he probably still didn’t know the man was Shin Seyoung.
And he’s still interested. So even when the plot gets bent out of shape, it doesn’t stray all that far from the original.
Even so, this much was a relief. Yoon Haegang hadn’t followed the whole thing all the way to Shin Seyoung’s rooftop room.
“I’ll be heading in now.”
Seojin made a point of shifting Euni in his arms as he inched toward the entrance. It felt like backing away one step at a time from a wild animal he didn’t want to provoke.
“Hmm. So you really do know him? Enough to take him home.”
But the remark Yoon Haegang tossed out slammed the brakes on his feet again. The man watched, as though enjoying the dismay spreading across Seojin’s face, and closed the distance once more.
“Shall we go in?”
“Sorry? Go in where?”
Seojin blinked and asked back.
“Your place.”
No, why? Seojin’s mouth fell open. Yoon Haegang didn’t retreat an inch; if anything he met the stare right back, shameless about it.
“I carried your friend all the way to the car, didn’t I?”
“And?”
“So I ought to be repaid for it.”
Who asked for help! The one who’d snatched Shin Seyoung up and hauled him off to the car was, strictly speaking, the Alpha standing right in front of him. Seojin let his shoulders droop and asked, limp as flat soda,
“Then... want to come up for some ramyeon or something?”
At this hour, that’s the only thing I can offer you. Otherwise, just go home.
“Shall we? I was getting a bit peckish, actually. Perfect timing.”
Seojin had fully expected him to scoff — are you kidding me? — and leave. Yoon Haegang was tougher than expected.
He just came from a VVIP gallery event and he’s hungry? They had a five-star hotel buffet laid out in there!
Seojin was dumbfounded, and yet his mouth watered anyway. Maybe it was saying the word ramyeon out loud — spicy broth and springy, chewy noodles rose up in his head and set his tongue going.
Come to think of it, he’d been running around nonstop, and it was already pushing eleven.
“Let’s go up, then.”
Seojin hitched Euni up again and turned toward the building. Yoon Haegang matched his pace, held the elevator, pressed the button for him — convenient enough. The trouble came at the front door.
Seojin looked from Euni to the keypad and back, and in the end chose to just give up the passcode.
“Um... just press one through six, in order.”
For a second he thought of Shin Seyoung, blithely hiding a key under a flowerpot. Not because he’d read the sheer disbelief in Yoon Haegang’s steady gaze, or anything like that. He simply hadn’t had the time lately to get around to changing the code, that was all.
Making that excuse to himself, Seojin slipped through the opened door.
“Wait here a moment. I’ll put Euni to bed and come right back.”
He hurried into Euni’s room and laid her down carefully. After tucking the blanket over her, he washed his hands in the bathroom and went to the kitchen.
Nobody had told him where to sit, but Yoon Haegang was already at the dining table, one leg crossed over the other. Seojin pretended not to notice the gaze on him and dropped the ramyeon into the pot.
While it came to a boil he opened the fridge for the green onion kimchi, and spotted cans of beer.
“President, would you like a beer?”
Even as he asked, he figured the man probably didn’t drink anything but wine or whiskey.
“Sure.”
But Yoon Haegang answered easily. Seojin set two cans and the green onion kimchi on the table, then brought the ramyeon over, pot and all.
A modest little spread came together in no time. Seojin cracked his beer open, hesitated a beat, then held the can out toward him.
“Um... anyway, thank you for all your trouble today. Cheers!”
Yoon Haegang looked for a moment at Seojin’s eyes, then at the beer in his hand, and huffed out a small laugh as he knocked his can against it.
“All right. Cheers.”
Pa-kimchi: kimchi made from whole green onions, a classic side with instant noodles.
