“……”
Yoon Jooho remained silent. His eyelashes blinked slowly as he looked downward.
He had been lost deep in thought, eyes fixed on a single point before him, before finally speaking in a voice laced with fatigue.
“Remember the day I first took you to Seohye hyung’s bar? We talked about your friend back then. You remember?”
“I do. Though after I got drunk, the memories are hazy…”
That day, when he poured out his longing for Choi Hongseo and the shadow that incident had cast over him—how he still hadn’t found the courage to visit Hongseo’s memorial hall because of the guilt.
It was a special moment for Song Hyunsoo as well.
“Do you remember bringing up Lee Seokyung’s name during that talk?”
“……”
Hyunsoo’s expression instantly turned cold. The hand that had been gently stroking Jooho’s hair stiffened and froze.
“Of course. Lee Seokyung, Myung Dohoon. I can’t forget those bastards even if I die.”
“What about those three consecutive projects that tanked right after I was discharged? You’d remember that too, right?”
“Tank? Who the hell tanked them? They just had slightly… slightly lower ratings compared to the blockbuster shows.”
Jooho pressed his cheek against Hyunsoo’s chest and smiled bitterly, low and soft. The faint tremor in his body transmitted directly to Hyunsoo’s.
“Unfortunately.”
“……”
“My parents didn’t think like you do.”
Jooho slowly lifted himself up, his heavy body seeming drenched and weighed down as if struggling to pull himself from a swamp.
As he got off the bed, he added in a flat tone without fluctuation,
“People who heard the prophecy that Yoon Jooho’s acting career was over went mad and started rampaging.”
He walked over to the minibar and opened a sample-type whisky, pouring it into an ‘On the Rocks’ glass. Watching his back, draped in his robe, Hyunsoo sat up from his half-lying position.
Even when things were good back in the Director’s Room, Jooho hadn’t had a sip of beer with him…
Turning his back, Jooho threw back half the whisky and began telling an unbelievable story.
“Of course, it drained my blood. And I fought endlessly about who was to blame for how things turned out.”
His tone expressed how sick he was of the whole thing.
Shaking his shoulders with a bitter smile, Jooho leaned on the edge of the minibar and stared intently at the mirror before him.
“I thought it’d be better to die than live after hearing they called me washed-up. One day, my mother put a knife to her own neck.”
“Y-you mean she did that right in front of you?”
“It was a show for me to see.”
“……”
“She was the reason my mother became like that. And my father said we should all die together.”
After a bitter sneer, Jooho raised the remaining whisky to his lips.
“The solution they brought after over a year of that madness was Lee Seokyung.”
At that moment, Hyunsoo still couldn’t fully grasp what that meant.
He held his breath, unable to move even a finger, focusing all his attention on Jooho’s voice.
“They said Lee Seokyung was very interested in me.”
Only then did a sinister and nauseating premonition cause Hyunsoo’s eyebrows to twitch.
Before he fully understood the meaning, he instinctively covered his mouth.
He pressed down so hard that he could barely breathe through his nose or mouth, as if his flesh was being crushed.
“.”
“……”
“That’s the fee I got for selling my body to Lee Seokyung.”
Hyunsoo heard his own breathing loudly in his ears, gasping for air like a suffocating person.
Only after a moment of frantic breaths did he realize he’d been clamping his nose and mouth far too tightly.
“W-why would you say that?”
His voice trembled, filled with resentment.
“Because it’s the truth.”
In contrast, Jooho’s voice was cold and calm.
He put down the empty glass, turned, and looked Hyunsoo in the eyes.
“You said it earlier, right?”
“……”
“No one sane could commit murder. Hearing that, I really sympathized.”
Leaning loosely against the minibar, Jooho let out a bitter laugh.
No matter how hollow and bitter, Hyunsoo couldn’t understand how he could laugh at all.
“At that point, I’d given up. I was willing to do anything just to never see that damned fight again.”
Jooho wiped his face with both hands, stuck them in the pockets of his robe, and shrugged as if it were nothing.
“The lower half I’d spread around here and there? Doing it once more won’t make it rot.”
“Why do you talk like that? Please don’t say it like that.”
Hyunsoo kept repeating those words, his voice a little louder than before. Nothing else came to mind.
Why did you say it like you were worthless, like you deserved to be treated like that? That’s all I wanted to say.
Though rumors had long surrounded Yoon Jooho’s parents, it was hard to imagine it was this bad…
Thanks to Jooho, he’d tasted all the glory in the world.
If he couldn’t give him that anymore, was he worth nothing?
Is that what parents and children are?
If that’s all it takes to be a parent, then have I lived my whole life envying those who had parents?
“That role belonged to you.”
Hyunsoo’s voice hardened.
“If someone else had taken it, wouldn’t have done so well.”
Anger welled up, and he clenched the seat beneath him tightly, his cheek trembling as his eyes grew hot in an instant.
Jooho came closer and plopped down on the edge of the bed in front of Hyunsoo.
“Do you feel wronged and bitter?”
Hyunsoo didn’t want to cry because of those kinds of people. So he looked Jooho straight in the eyes with all the strength in his bloodshot gaze.
“You cry when you’re wronged and bitter, don’t you?”
Hyunsoo’s body trembled with shock and hatred, but Jooho, the person himself, seemed unaffected—as if recounting someone else’s story from a book or movie.
That made it worse. Because now Hyunsoo knew Jooho’s calm, indifferent attitude was his way of protecting himself.
He tightened his nose to hold back tears, then suddenly threw his arms around Jooho’s neck as if lunging.
“Hyung, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
His voice was firm and sure, like words pressed down hard with a pencil until the knuckles turned yellow.
“Why would I not have done anything wrong?”
“Whatever the law or morality say, to me, you didn’t do anything wrong. If you did, then I’ll pretend you didn’t.”
“……”
Jooho’s arms cautiously wrapped around Hyunsoo’s waist. A long, thin breath escaped his lips.
It sounded like releasing a dark poison that had festered deep inside his body and soul for far too long.
“Do you pity me?”
Hyunsoo grabbed his shoulders, pushing him away to look him straight in the face, raising his voice.
“Is that something you say in this situation??”
“Who thinks I’m pathetic? I’d tell them to fuck off. But strangely, when you say you pity me, it doesn’t feel bad.”
Looking into Jooho’s face as he said that, Hyunsoo almost cried. His nose stung, and he had to look away.
“Can you say things like that to me?”
“Going to spread it around?”
“Am I crazy?”
“Then it’s fine.”
“I’m not joking. I’m still an unknown with nothing to lose, but you’re different. What if someone tries to use it as a weakness? Director Bang would definitely know. Does anyone else know besides me?”
In the silence, Jooho’s eyes quietly fixed on Hyunsoo’s. It was the same shining, trembling gaze from the monitor at today’s shoot.
Is there really someone else who knows? Even someone I shouldn’t know?
That worry made Hyunsoo’s chest tighten. Just as that began, Jooho’s thin lips moved, shaking his head.
“No. There isn’t.”
The moment he heard that, for some reason, tears helplessly fell.
Not because he was naïvely happy that Jooho had confided in him, but because of the weight of the secret Jooho had carried without telling anyone all this time.
Before Jooho’s hand could reach him, Hyunsoo roughly wiped the tears from his cheeks with his own hand.
Then he pulled Jooho close again, embracing him tightly.
“Look Planning. Find them no matter what. Don’t ever hand him over to those people.”
“Yeah, I will.”
A secret and weakness Jooho had never told anyone, his scars shown only to Hyunsoo. Some would call them disgusting and repulsive scars, but Hyunsoo would be the one to protect them.
He ran his hand over Jooho’s back of the head, pressing it firmly against his own shoulder.
Grandmother, what should I do with this pathetic Prince?