LCS | Chapter 1.3

And so, on the day his father died, Chaegong slept with Hyeonjo. By filling his mind with nothing but pleasure, the space left for grief and guilt grew smaller, and breathing became easier. So Chaegong clung to Hyeonjo even more. He wanted to drift away from reality.

The reason Chaegong had come to Hyeonjo’s house was because of his dad. He had stayed here for a while to isolate himself from that violence, but once the reason itself vanished, there was no longer any need to remain in this house.

But Hyeonjo did not throw Chaegong out. He only said that if he wanted, he could stay here as long as he liked. Swallowing the contraceptive pills Hyeonjo prepared for him, Chaegong nodded. He had no way to survive on his own right away, so there was nothing he could do. He felt terribly sorry, but the risks of kicking away the opportunity were far too great.

“I’ll find a job and leave as soon as I’m stable enough.”

Hyeonjo smiled without saying a word. Chaegong swallowed hard, a nameless tension tightening his throat. He knew he was being a burden, but he had nowhere else to lean.

So the two of them began living together. Chaegong had intended to leave as soon as he found even a part-time job, but while staying with Hyeonjo he learned many things. He watched the TV shows the kids used to chatter about at school, and for the first time he realized there was so much food in the world that tasted this good. Hyeonjo gave him those precious things without holding back.

Of course, Chaegong felt bad about simply living by clinging to him, so he began looking for things he could do on his own. Whenever cleaning, laundry, and the like needed doing, he would gladly do them first.

He even tried cooking with the cookbook Hyeonjo had bought him, and aside from the disastrous early attempts, he became quite good at it. He was practically no different from a housekeeper. Of course, there were differences from a housekeeper too.

“Ugh, r-right there…”

“Here?”

“Mm, ah!”

The two of them shared each other’s beds quite often. At first, they only slept together during Chaegong’s heat cycle, but little by little, even on other days, they began to meet each other’s eyes and devour one another.

Hyeonjo was kind, and he was even cool. That alpha touched Chaegong as if he were in love, told him the food was delicious, and slept in the same bed with him. It was the first time Chaegong had ever felt the world to be so warm and gentle.

That was why. Looking for a job became slower and slower, and instead of searching for a goshiwon or a cheap place to live, he paid more attention to the side dishes he would make for Hyeonjo’s dinner. It was as if he meant to settle in here for good.

Shamelessly so. Hyeonjo was feeding, clothing, and sheltering Chaegong, who had no ties and nothing to his name, without asking for anything in return. This house was not a shelter, and if he did not want to keep burdening Hyeonjo, he needed to leave as quickly as possible. Chaegong was a useless, shabby recessive omega, after all. There was no way he had anything to offer Hyeonjo.

But as time passed, the daily life he shared with Hyeonjo grew more precious, and at the same time his anxiety piled up bit by bit. What if one day, all of a sudden, Hyeonjo told him to leave? What if then he could no longer see Hyeonjo? What would he do then?

Chaegong realized it then. I like Kwon Hyeonjo. It was his first love, but Chaegong had read quite a lot of books, because he had spent lunchtime in the library every day when he couldn’t pay his lunch fee, so he knew.

His heart raced, and his fingertips tingled. He kept wanting to see him, and he could not get him out of his head. This was love.

The day he realized it, Chaegong ended up crying in silence. It was a relationship that could never be fulfilled. Cinderella is a story from a fairy tale. If Hyeonjo was the prince, then Chaegong was at best a mouse transformed into a coachman. Truly, it was a level of shamelessness beyond reason.

Who were you to dare like him? What were you, anyway? How disgusting was it to wag your tail alone over a favor born of pity? His dad was gone now, but that voice still remained in Chaegong’s chest.

And so, hiding those feelings and suffering for days and days, one day Hyeonjo called Chaegong over with a serious look on his face. It was the day the convenience store nearby contacted him to offer Chaegong a part-time job.

“Are you really going to leave?”

“I can’t leave right away, but as soon as I’ve saved enough for a goshiwon, I’ll go. I’ve really depended on you a lot until now.”

His fingers moved restlessly. Hyeonjo’s face looked as though he were thinking over something, but Chaegong could not for the life of him tell what. After living in such a spacious house, moving to a cramped goshiwon would probably feel stifling. He found himself ridiculous for thinking like that, having lived his whole life in a tiny single room and then, for a few weeks, shamelessly stayed in a place far beyond his station.

Chaegong lifted his eyes a little and looked at Hyeonjo, who was staring into space with a slight frown. What was he thinking? His face was a little creased, but even that looked cool. After a little time passed, Hyeonjo opened his mouth.

“Why don’t you just live here?”

“Huh, no, what?”

“Couldn’t I hire you as something like a housekeeper? I’ll pay you a monthly salary. I don’t think I can do without you anymore.”

What Hyeonjo meant by he could not do without him was surely cleaning, laundry, meals, and the like. There really was a housekeeper who came twice a week, but after Chaegong began finding work to do on his own, they had stopped bringing one in. Honestly, it was a very, very good offer for Chaegong. But on the other hand, it did not seem to give Hyeonjo any benefit at all.

Even providing food, clothing, shelter, and a salary, Chaegong’s domestic skills were not all that great. The food Chaegong cooked was only ordinary-tasting at best, and for Hyeonjo, who had likely tasted dishes by famous chefs until now, it would surely seem merely decent.

His head kept telling him not to cause any more trouble and to refuse, but his heart whispered for him to accept right away. When he quietly turned on the battered old phone, there was a text offering a wage even lower than minimum wage, telling him to come over.

Chaegong lifted his head. Hyeonjo wore a serious expression, but when his eyes met Chaegong’s, he flashed a grin. Thud. Chaegong’s heart dropped.

…I’m not even the one clinging to stay, so what. If they tell me to leave later, I can leave then. A prickly little voice buzzed in his ear. Chaegong decided to be a little greedy.

“…Okay.”

At that small nod, Hyeonjo smiled brightly. Suddenly, nothing seemed to matter anymore. With just one smile from Hyeonjo, it felt as if all his worries had been solved at once.

Hyeonjo really did even hand Chaegong his salary. When Chaegong asked if that wasn’t too much, Hyeonjo said it wasn’t really that much. Chaegong had never before held a bankbook with so many zeros on it. He carefully tucked it into the drawer of the room Hyeonjo had given him.

As time passed, the two of them settled into a steady routine. Hyeonjo woke up at the same time every day, and Chaegong woke a little earlier than him. Like a proper housekeeper, Chaegong would prepare a simple breakfast, and Hyeonjo, handsome even just after getting up, would come over with a grin. Unlike Hyeonjo, Chaegong’s face was a little puffy, and when he gave a shy morning greeting, Hyeonjo would nod and lightly kiss Chaegong’s cheek.

Embarrassed, and always wondering whether someone like him was even allowed to do that, Chaegong had never once kissed Hyeonjo first unless he was in a heat cycle. But one morning, after gathering all his courage, he approached Hyeonjo as he was coming out of the room and stretched up to brush his lips against his. It was so fleeting that it was barely even a kiss, but Hyeonjo simply laughed as if he found it adorable.

When Hyeonjo went to school, Chaegong was left alone to start the housework. Cleaning such a large house was hard even when he only ran the vacuum once, but it still felt rewarding in its own way.

After he finished the dishes and even folded all the laundry, Chaegong had nothing left to do, so he mostly spent his time sitting on the sofa, watching TV or reading books. There had been no TV in the house where he had lived with his dad, so watching the idiot box, packed with all sorts of information and entertaining things, had become Chaegong’s hobby.

Before long, the sun would begin to set, and just as Chaegong was preparing dinner, he would hear the sound of the door lock being opened. Then Chaegong would run to the entryway with a bright face. Like a puppy waiting for its owner, his cheeks, flushed pink with happiness, would sometimes be pinched without pain, and other times a light kiss would land there.

Chaegong loved those moments very much. In truth, he loved all the other moments too. Very rarely, the two of them would go out together, and on leisurely weekends Hyeonjo would sometimes take Chaegong along for a drive. When Chaegong said he had never once been to a movie theater in his life, Hyeonjo rented out the entire theater that very day.

At Hyeonjo’s smile as he asked how it was, Chaegong could not say a word. Since he had no idea what the place had originally been like, he could not tell the difference anyway.

Still, the dark movie theater, with just the two of them seated inside, had a screen so, so huge that it surprised him a little. And because of the small laugh from Hyeonjo sitting beside him, his heart trembled so badly that he could not even remember what the movie was about.

“How was it?”

There was an unreadable expectation in Hyeonjo’s face as he tilted his head and asked. The ending credits were rolling, and the lights had not yet come on. Hoping the white letters spilling light would not fully illuminate his cheeks, still flushed red, Chaegong steadied his trembling breath and smiled brightly.

“It was amazing.”

“Really? I’m glad.”

The enormous screen, the plush seats, the sweet popcorn. Everything was nice, but the best thing of all was Hyeonjo’s side profile as he focused on the screen. It was Chaegong’s first time at a movie theater, but after that one experience, he grew to like the place.

When Chaegong kept talking about the movie theater, Hyeonjo asked if he had liked it that much and then signed up for a service that let them watch the latest movies right from the TV. He probably thought it was the movie itself that Chaegong had liked. After learning how to use the remote, the very first thing Chaegong watched was the exact same movie he had seen with Hyeonjo at the theater before.