As the long fingers lifted his chin upward, the open mouth closed.
At the exact moment the fingers clicked against each other, Hakyung’s briefly wandering mind came back.
He rolled his large eyes to check Muheon’s arm.
He wanted to confirm once again whether the jet-black skin he saw was real.
“I also have the blowhole on my crown — a characteristic of the killer whale — even now as an adult, but my skin itself never changed to look like a killer whale’s. Then why on earth did the boss’s skin change like that?”
“Kang Hakyung.”
“…Huh?”
“I asked why you were standing there like that.”
His voice, asking the same thing again, came out a bit lower.
Only then did Hakyung snap back to reality and quickly cover the crown of his head with his hand.
But by then, the hat was already soaking wet.
If it had gotten any wetter, he might have run out of breath.
Hakyung pouted.
“Ah…! It’s wet!”
“That’s what happens when you stand without an umbrella. Come inside first.”
He already looked pitiful, being small and getting soaked by the rain.
Muheon clicked his tongue quietly inside and wrapped his arm around Hakyung’s shoulder.
In a daze, the small body of Hakyung slipped into the man’s embrace, and before he knew it, they were inside the dormitory.
“Wait here. I’ll bring a towel.”
Muheon brought a towel from the bathroom and started drying his wet hat and shoulders.
His large hand lightly touched various parts of Hakyung’s body.
Muheon now knew exactly how to handle Kang Hakyung — gently, like touching cotton candy.
Thanks to this, Hakyung didn’t wobble from his touch this time.
With delicate care, the man wiped away most of the moisture and placed his hand on Hakyung’s hat.
“Take off your hat. If your hair is wet, you need to dry it too.”
“No, no hats! Not the crown!”
Hakyung, who had been trusting his touch absentmindedly, quickly crossed his arms in an X shape over his face.
Seeing him flutter like a startled pigeon, Muheon raised one eyebrow.
“No?”
“Yes, yes! If you give me a towel, I’ll…!”
“I don’t want to… Is there some big secret on your crown? Could it be… baldness?”
Muheon’s eyes narrowed as he stared intensely at his crown.
It was a persistent look, as if he had X-ray vision.
Feeling wronged by the blatant scrutiny and wild guess, Hakyung stomped his foot.
The soft blowhole on his crown is a vital spot unique to killer whales, and he hides it carefully from others. It’s definitely not baldness.
“I have tons of hair! My grandpa and dad never went bald! And you saw it the last time I changed my hat!”
“You changed it too fast for me to see properly. Well, it could be stress rather than genetics.”
“Huh?!”
Not willing to lose to the boss’s teasing, Hakyung got angry and took off his hat to show him.
His pink hair, slightly damp, still held its curls and looked very full.
He proudly bowed his head to Muheon to reveal his crown.
It was probably so dense that he wouldn’t even know where the part was!
Muheon, surprised by his bold charge as if he would hit him with his crown, widened his eyes but then chuckled.
His fluffy hair looked cute no matter how many times he saw it.
“That’s really funny,” Muheon muttered to himself as he lifted his hand and gently flicked Hakyung’s pink hair.
Droplets of water hanging from the ends bounced around.
“Must be nice having so much hair, Kang Hakyung.”
Hakyung, finally coming back to his senses from the soulless compliment, quickly stepped back.
Now that he thought about it, the reason he got so wet was because he froze up, scared by the boss’s black skin.
To cling to a man like that and just brag about having a lot of hair… he still wasn’t fully aware of himself!
If his grandmother found out, she would probably have heated his back with a palm to the point it would catch fire.
“Anyway, I wear hats not because I don’t have hair! I’ll get back to work now!”
After saying what he needed to say, Hakyung picked up the hat that had fallen on the floor and quickly escaped.
Worried that the boss might call him again, he ran off as fast as he could, his tail disappearing from sight.
By then, the raindrops that had been falling silently from the sky had already stopped.
***
I was busy helping Bu Geunrim all afternoon.
Maybe because of that, or maybe because of something else, I completely forgot about the boss’s identity.
But sitting alone in the quiet dormitory, the black skin I had seen during the day kept coming to mind.
“What on earth could it be…?”
Black and smooth skin.
Among the races living in the sea, who would have such a feature?
First of all, it didn’t seem like the flamboyant-looking races such as Bu Geunrim’s Red Snapper race or Domi Hyun’s Stonefish race.
Could it be a whale?
No, definitely not.
Although Kang Hakyung was a bottlenose dolphin, a whale was a whale.
According to the dolphin’s instincts, there was no way the boss and he could be remotely related.
Even the killer whale race, which seemed to have nothing in common, recognizes each other as whales.
“No way it’s a whale. Dismissed.”
Hakyung shook his head very firmly.
But it wasn’t a shark either, which had a similar bulky size to a whale.
At first, because of the boss’s scary face, Hakyung thought he might be a shark.
But after seeing Gi Sang-oh, a true shark race, their auras were completely different.
Gi Sang-oh really looked like a hard stone that wouldn’t bleed even if you stabbed it, but the boss was not like that at all.
Though a bit fierce, Im Moo-heon was the most sculpted and well-formed person Hakyung knew.
By “person he knew,” he meant celebrities and YouTubers and famous people — so it meant the man’s face was so handsome you’d wonder why he wasn’t a celebrity but a gangster.
Sometimes he stared with snake-like scary eyes, but overall… wait, snake.
Uh… snake…?!
“Ah?!”
Something flashed in Hakyung’s mind as he continued his own wild imagination.
He quickly searched “eel” on the internet.
Then, right away, he clapped his hands when he saw the picture of an eel.
And the more he read the detailed explanation below the picture, the bigger his applause got.
“The scales are buried inside the skin, making it smooth, and the closer to the sea they live, the darker black the color becomes.”
It was perfect evidence to support Hakyung’s theory.
He had finally figured out the boss’s identity.
Hakyung stood up right there and shrugged his shoulders.
So that’s it — the boss’s skin was black and smooth because he was an eel, or rather, a sea eel, which made it darker and smoother than freshwater eels!
The boss’s skin shined because he didn’t have many scales…!
The reason everyone kept it hush-hush was probably because if the boss, who employs sharks as staff, was actually an eel, he wouldn’t seem as cool, so they kept it secret!
It was very plausible.
Considering the boss’s mysterious eyes sometimes seen and the black and smooth skin seen in the afternoon, and the tall slender body, it was almost 100% certain.
With detective-like deduction, Hakyung rubbed his forehead with his index finger.
“Damn… no matter how much you try to hide your cleverness, you just can’t, huh.”
Hakyung chuckled, flashing a sly smile into the air.
If anyone saw him, they might shake their head thinking he was self-absorbed, playing all the roles — drummer, gong player, and bell striker — all by himself.
He was itching to tease Bu Geunrim soon.
He just wished tomorrow would come quickly.
Even so, he didn’t come up with the bold plan of confirming it directly with the boss.
The next day, Moo-heon tilted his head while coming to eat breakfast.
Unlike usual colorful dishes, today’s side dishes were all rather dull and dark.
There was stir-fried eggplant, bulgogi stir-fry, lotus root braised, but even the rice was black rice, and the soup was chicken soup with Neungi mushrooms.
“Did you not want to prepare breakfast?”
“Huh?”
“Is this some kind of protest to just eat and leave?”
“Ah, no… it’s not that…”
Hakyung waved his hands.
It wasn’t on purpose.
It was just that while thinking about the boss nonstop, the ingredients he reached for happened to all be close to colorless.
It was after he found out the boss’s identity yesterday evening.
The boss’s face kept floating in his mind.
Unlike vaguely thinking the boss was just some big-time gangster, knowing the specific race made him feel strangely closer.
It was a strange thing even he couldn’t explain.
Anyway, as the boss said, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to prepare breakfast or was protesting by telling them to eat and leave.
It was a tribute breakfast for Im Moo-heon, the sea eel.
“Really? The side dishes are so dull.”
“Dull? They’re just black in color, but all the ingredients are healthy, and they shine beautifully!”
Hakyung jumped up, complaining how harsh that sounded.
They were all side dishes that resembled the boss…!
But he couldn’t say that out loud and just tapped his frustrated chest.
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