Passion: Diaphonic Symphonia Novel - Chapter 12

The two men were already standing, even grappling each other’s collars, but no one seemed to be properly trying to stop them.

He sighed, thinking he might have to just watch the fight until the path cleared, when Richard, who had been watching them from across the table, spoke.

“Stop it now. There are many people here, so you’d better find separate seats.”

It was a soft voice, like advising a friend, but there was definite power in his words.

The man, who had been holding his opponent’s collar and hesitating for a moment, clicked his tongue when Richard called his name again, “Gunther,” then threw the collar away as if discarding it, releasing his grip.

“Hmph. Rat-like bastard.”

However, unable to return quietly and ultimately leaving a curse, the other man flared up, suddenly stood up from his seat, and grabbed his shoulder.

“What did you say?!”

“This bastard—”

Just as the man tried to twist his body to shake off the hand gripping his shoulder.

The elbow of the man, who had taken a couple of steps back to return to his seat but then abruptly turned his upper body to look back, struck the back of the head of the person sitting there, along with the chair next to him.

“Ah…”

“…”

Jeong Taeui unconsciously frowned and opened his mouth for a moment. There were several others who had a similar reaction.

The surroundings grew cold.

Christoph, who had been wiping his mouth with a napkin and was about to push his chair back to stand up when he was unexpectedly hit in the back of the head, remained motionless for a moment, as if frozen.

The man who hit him with his elbow identified who he was and his face immediately hardened. He seemed to have forgotten to shake off the hand that had been gripping his shoulder. That hand also, for a moment, lost its strength and slowly relaxed.

Christoph slowly raised his head. His cold gaze pierced the man.

The man, who should have apologized there and then—though the result might have been the same even if he had—trembled slightly at that gaze.

But then, realizing that he had trembled and retreated simply by Christoph’s gaze, he blushed in embarrassment, then puffed out his chest and approached him.

“What, if you’re done eating, why are you lingering instead of moving? Your plate’s already cold anyway, why are you acting like a starving mouse? Get out.”

The man pulled his chin back, lifted his head, and growled. His narrowed eyes gleamed fiercely as he looked down at Christoph. But seeing the almost fearful excitement in his eyes, Jeong Taeui clicked his tongue.

“…Your plate is cold too?”

Christoph said quietly.

The moment he heard that casually mumbled remark, Jeong Taeui could almost perfectly predict what would happen next. But before he could shout a warning, it happened.

Christoph, who had casually grabbed the man’s wrist as if holding a friend’s hand, brought the man’s hand to the sizzling hot iron plate where his own meat had been placed, and pressed down firmly.

It was a very instantaneous act.

“Ah, ah… AAAAAAAAH!!!”

The man’s scream erupted like a beast’s roar.

Though it had cooled somewhat compared to when it was first served, the iron plate still sizzled faintly beneath the meat.

The sound of burning flesh was heard even at the end of the table.

“You said yourself the plate was cold, so what’s with the dramatics just because your hand touched it?”

Christoph, speaking nonchalantly, remained unmoving despite the man’s violent struggles to break free, keeping his hand pressed onto the iron plate. With his other hand, he picked up any knife lying nearby. It was a butter knife.

“Hey, why don’t you use a real knife instead—”

However, before Jeong Taeui, who had once again abruptly predicted what would happen, could shout, the butter knife plunged vertically onto the man’s hand on the iron plate.

“…!!”

The blunt edge, with no sharpness whatsoever, deeply gouged the back of his hand, tearing into the flesh. The metal blade pierced his hand, cutting through bone and muscle.

The man screamed and flailed his hand wildly, but a fork was stuck in his hand.

After that, it became pandemonium.

The man, thrashing like a wounded beast; other men, their faces changing, rushing to help him; and the men who had been engaged in minor skirmishes with them throughout the meal—all intertwined, turning the dining room into a crucible of chaos.

Amidst all this, Jeong Taeui watched from afar Christoph, who nonchalantly made the men who attacked him taste blood in turn, and Richard, who cleanly knocked out the men who attacked him in one blow, feeling a strong sense of déjà vu.

He had seen trivial disputes escalate into gang fights before. It happened once when he was at the military academy—after which they all went through hell—and more frequently at UNHRDO.

He had thought he could finally live peacefully and not see such things anymore.

In this scene that almost evoked nostalgia, Jeong Taeui narrowed his eyes.

Yes, this was pretty much the kind of situation he mostly excelled in.

Jeong Taeui was lost in vague memories, recalling an old colleague he hadn’t seen in a long time.

“Damn it, what are you doing while eating so peacefully? Calm down, everyone.”

Next to him, Johan, who was taking a relatively neutral stance, clicked his tongue and instinctively gripped his fork. Jeong Taeui shifted back about a hand-span and stared blankly at the fork, while Johan frantically waved his hand.

“No, no, this is just for defense. You never know when sparks will fly. —Damn it, can’t we calm this down? If it were just one or two guys, maybe, but if it’s a whole group like this, it’s hard.”

“A way to calm this situation…”

Jeong Taeui gazed into the air with nostalgic eyes.

What was Alta doing now? Was he still like this at the Asia branch whenever they had joint training with the European branch?

Thinking he should ask his uncle next time he contacted him, Jeong Taeui got up.

“There was this guy I used to know who often did this… Hey, you there, step aside, step aside.”

Jeong Taeui waved his hand at the men sitting across the table. And with his other hand, he gripped the edge of the table.

The next moment.

A thunderous crash, loud enough to drown out all the commotion in the dining room, rang out.

The heavy mahogany table toppled, and all the dishes, food, and glass bottles on it crashed onto the floor. Clink, clink, clink, shattering and clashing sounds scattered everywhere.

Even the men who had been brawling in the front instantly froze and turned around, their eyes wide.

Eventually, after everything that could spill had spilled and everything that could break had broken, a small stainless steel flower vase rolled half a turn across the dining room floor and stopped in the dead silence.

In the deathly silence, Jeong Taeui shrugged and turned to Johan.

“This usually quiets things down. There was a guy who used to do this all the time, and he said it’s only hard the first time you flip a table, but it’s easy once you do it.”

*

Only after flipping it did he remember what Alta had added:

Three seconds to flip, three hours to clean up, three months to deal with the consequences.

But thinking of Alta, who received terrifying glares and nagging from the cafeteria staff every time he went to eat, not just for three months but even afterwards, it seemed he might have had to deal with the aftermath for a good three years.

If it were his wife, he’d have to be prepared to hear about it for the rest of his life, so Chaseon, one of the rare married men in the branch, had said.

Jeong Taeui, who had just come from helping clean up the dining room, receiving cold stares from the staff, firmly resolved never to do such a thing again.

The loud noise had indeed thrown cold water on the escalating fight, but the aftermath remained exactly as it was.

The attention of the men, who had suddenly become his public enemies, muttering grimly, “What’s that now?”; the pale gazes of the staff who had rushed over upon hearing the noise; and the countless invisible knives that stabbed him in the back as he tidied the dining room in silence with the staff after everyone had ebbed away like a tide.

He never wanted to experience it twice. He definitely never wanted to experience it again.

“To do this several times… Alta, you were an incredibly bold guy after all…”

Jeong Taeui mumbled exhaustedly.

The most hurtful part, however, was Christoph’s sudden remark as Jeong Taeui finished cleaning the dining room, sweating profusely, while Christoph had merely sat by the dining room door, watching him clean.

“The cost of the damaged items, that’s Kyle’s debt, right? …You’re going to have a hard time getting your book back.”

Jeong Taeui, whose body and mind were tattered after only a single day—no, half a day—in this house, was knocked out by those words, which foretold that he would never get the book back easily.

Yet, Christoph, who had survived the brawl perfectly unharmed even though it had taken him some time to flip the table, only turned and disappeared with a satisfied look after watching Jeong Taeui slide down to the floor, headfirst into the dining room door.

Jeong Taeui, limply rising and barely making it back to his room, collapsed onto the bed the moment he entered, without even taking off his shoes, sounding like a lead weight.

He felt like soaked cotton.

It felt like years since he had arrived here, but looking back, he couldn’t believe he had only just arrived today.

“Maybe the flow of time here is different from the outside world…?”

Jeong Taeui mumbled, burying his face in the duvet.

As soon as he collapsed face down on the bed, splayed out, the duvet seemed to swallow him whole. He felt like he was melting and being sucked into it.

He was so tired that he wanted to turn his head because his breath was stifled, with his face buried in the boundary between the pillow and duvet, but he couldn’t even move.

He couldn’t remember the last time he was this tired.

In truth, a few hours of cleaning itself wasn’t that big of a deal. He sometimes helped Peter with garden work all day in the scorching sun on holidays, and sometimes went to help a neighbor fix their roof and ended up taking on a major renovation.

Compared to those, a few hours of cleaning was nothing, but—

“As expected, it’s not the body, but the mind, the mind…”

Unwillingly moving and paying attention to everything around him, he felt like his brain had muscle aches.

Even visiting a harmonious family would be mentally tiring after a day spent among strangers, but to make matters worse, he had gotten caught up in a hostile gang fight as soon as he arrived. Moreover, he seemed to have unintentionally been labeled as Christoph’s ally by everyone.

When Kyle said that finding the book wouldn’t be easy, he had thought it was simply because of the personality of the person who took the book. Was Kyle’s warning perhaps meant to include this situation?

“…No way… This situation is also ultimately caused by his personality, isn’t it?”

Jeong Taeui slowly turned his head. His nose, freed from the soft pillow, finally inhaled the cool air.

Johan had said that Christoph wouldn’t harm anyone first unless provoked. It was probably a fact known not just to Johan, but to others as well.

“So why provoke him first…? The one who provokes, knowing better, is the fool.”

Jeong Taeui sighed deeply. Christoph’s indifferent face suddenly came to mind.

Indifferent, or rather, bored. To be precise, an expressionless face where everything was meaningless, where he had no interest in anything and was simply tired of it all.

That face didn’t change even at the moment he placed the man’s hand on the hot iron plate and stabbed it with a butter knife.

He didn’t hesitate to harm others, nor did he abhor or enjoy such acts. He even thought it would be better if there was a hint of mockery or pleasure.

“It’s going to be rough… Well, something Kyle said wouldn’t be easy couldn’t possibly be easy.”

Jeong Taeui sighed again, as if to make the bed sink.

“Kyle, this is too exhausting. Can’t I just go back…?” Jeong Taeui, who had been muttering to himself, opened his closed eyes again.

“Ah. I should call Kyle.”

Come to think of it, he had vaguely thought of calling earlier, but hadn’t contacted him yet.

He felt he should let Kyle know that he had arrived safely and met Christoph without much trouble.

Moreover, he was also worried if Ilay had contacted him—and if he had, whether Kyle had explained things well.

He thought about calling, but the bed held him captive, refusing to let go. He wondered how comfortable it would be if he just drifted off to sleep like this.

The phone was on the bedside table right next to the bed. To reach it, he only had to get up and lean over half a step, but it felt as difficult as completing an Ironman triathlon.

“…”

When was it again?

There was a time when he had been groaning in bed all day after completely overturning the backyard with Peter and redoing it. He had been lying there, motionless, and asked Ilay to pick up the phone because he had to call someone. Ilay had looked down at him blankly, then dragged Jeong Taeui over and placed him in front of the phone.

Back then, he had grumbled about why he had to be so troublesome, but now, he wished he would do even that…

“I wonder where that guy is and what he’s doing now.”

He hadn’t been that curious, but suddenly saying it out loud made him curious. He hadn’t been separated from that guy for over a month since they started living together.

“…I’m even missing that guy…”

Muttering that, Jeong Taeui slightly frowned.

If he got home later than that guy—if that guy was standing firmly at the front door to greet him when he returned home, this nostalgic feeling would vanish without a trace.

“Where did that guy put the book…? Maybe it’s better to just steal it all and run away, just like Kyle said.”

Jeong Taeui mumbled in a tormented voice, then eventually let out a groan and forced himself up.

“What was the area code for Berlin again? It’s a bit hazy,” he muttered, tilting his head crookedly as he fumbled with the numbers. Fortunately, it seemed to be the right number. Kyle’s familiar voice came from the receiver.

‘Tae-yi?’

“Yes. How did you—Oh, the number showed up, I guess.”

Jeong Taeui pulled the phone cord and lay back down on the bed. He lay sprawled out, taking off his shoes one by one with his other hand.

‘Did you meet Christine well?’

“Ah, yes, fortunately, without much trouble—No, wait, about that name, though.”

Only then did Jeong Taeui realize there was an issue he needed to address, and a “川” mark appeared between his eyebrows.

“You never told me I had to be prepared to have my flesh whipped off if I used that name!”

‘…Oh.’

Jeong Taeui felt what little strength he had leave his already weary body upon hearing that voice, which mumbled after a brief pause, as if it had only just occurred to Kyle.

“Kyle… I thought Kyle was on my side…”

As Jeong Taeui mumbled gloomily, Kyle’s hurried excuses were heard from the receiver.