Passion Novel - Volume 5 - Chapter 130 - Volume 5 End

ONE-ACT

The person he was looking for wasn’t in the room.

Gable glanced around the empty room for a moment, then stepped back into the hallway. If the person who was clearly on the second floor wasn’t in their own room, the only place left was the adjacent one—the young man’s room, who had accompanied him.

As he approached, sure enough, he heard a faint stirring from inside the door. It sounded like voices or perhaps a struggle, but it was muffled by the door. However, it wasn’t the presence of just one person.

Gable didn’t hesitate to approach the door and knock. After all, the man Gable was looking for would have sensed Gable’s presence from the moment Gable stepped onto the first stair leading to the second floor.

“Excuse me for a moment.”

Gable knocked and spoke briefly, then, after a second or two, pushed the doorknob. There was no answer, but he didn’t care much. The man inside wasn’t one to bother responding to every little thing anyway.

He opened the door. Gable stepped one foot inside, then stopped. Just as he’d guessed, there were two people in the room. And as he’d also expected, it was the man and the young man. Up to that point, everything was as he’d surmised, but there was one thing he hadn’t anticipated: the situation.

“……”

No one spoke. Not Gable, not the man, not the young man—no one said a word. The young man didn’t even move. He was stiffly frozen, his back to Gable, not stirring.

The timing isn’t very good.

Gable felt a slight sense of apology, not for the man, but for the young man.

The young man had his face buried between the legs of the man sitting on the bed. Looking at the man’s white hand—that smooth, beautiful hand, which Gable knew was incredibly strong and powerful—clutching and pressing down on the young man’s head, it seemed he was forcefully holding down the young man who was struggling to pull away.

Poor young man, he was utterly frozen, feeling Gable’s presence keenly, with only the tip of the man’s penis barely in his mouth.

Gable watched his profile, which turned blue, then red, then blue again, and remained silent. The man, facing Gable directly, spoke to Gable while pressing down on the young man’s head with one hand.

“Is it urgent?”

“Nothing urgent. I’ll be downstairs then, so please come down when you’re finished.”

Gable turned his back on the man, who gave a light dismissive gesture, and quietly closed the door behind him. He then went back down the stairs the same way he’d come up. It wasn’t urgent. It was just a rumor that the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. would soon be replaced. It was still a long way from being announced, and it wasn’t pressing news at the moment.

Descending to the ground floor, Gable sat on the couch in the hall and picked up one of several evening newspapers laid out on the table. As he unfolded the newspaper, Gable quietly clicked his tongue.

The man was undressed. Moreover, his subtly narrowed eyes held more heat than usual.

At this rate, it won’t end with just oral. He’ll likely ejaculate once or twice in his mouth, then proceed to full insertion. Hmm. Gable let out a long sigh, and the proprietress passing by tilted her head, asking if something was bothering him.

Gable shook his head.

“No, I was just wondering if I might have to dispose of a body today.”

“Oh my. Surely not here. Please avoid anything that would require calling the police.”

The proprietress, apparently thinking it was a joke, laughed and replied before disappearing toward the office.

However, Gable was half-joking and half-serious.

Gable had been in such situations countless times. Before going abroad, he had been cleaning up after Kyle with James at T&R headquarters. To be precise, James managed the company in place of his lazy boss, and Gable took care of almost all of the boss’s personal problems.

His boss, Kyle, was a man with so many problems that both hands wouldn’t be enough to count them all, but his biggest problem was his family. And among his family, especially his younger brother. Of his two younger siblings, it was his younger brother.

That younger brother—the man on the second floor, right now—was already a troublemaker before he even came of age. James had told him that when his brother was only three or four years old, Kyle had seriously said, “I wonder if I named my brother wrong. I think it would be right to rename him Damien.” Kyle, who was already an adult at the time due to a large age gap with his brother, was a promising prodigy, yet he genuinely pondered with his brilliant mind, What should I do if 666 is somewhere on his scalp?

Those who didn’t know him thought it was a joke, but Gable understood his feelings. Of course, most people who knew the brother understood him.

Originally, James handled most of the younger brother’s incidents. Then, a few years ago, when James exploded from being overwhelmed with work, started going to therapy, and threatened to quit, Gable took over some of James’s duties. And those duties included cleaning up after that man.

He still vividly remembers one incident.

He had to dispose of a body.

Gable silently disposed of the body, thinking he never imagined he’d be doing such a thing in his life. Thinking about how to resolve the situation that teetered precariously between self-defense and excessive force, Gable looked back at the man. The man was staring blankly at the blood on his hands, standing frozen as if rooted to the spot.

The man was still young enough to be called a boy. Not yet an adult, and his first murder—Gable didn’t think it would be his only one—he thought to himself, and then he asked gruffly:

“Were you surprised?”

As he asked that, Gable recalled the first time he had killed someone.

Of course, he hadn’t wanted to kill. While working briefly for the Ministry of Defense when he was young, he had inadvertently, out of necessity, killed someone in perfect self-defense. However, that first moment of killing, the memory of the hot scent of blood that overwhelmed him, he believed he would never forget until the day he died. If he hadn’t killed that person, 100% Gable would have died, and the entire cause was with the other person, so there was no room for guilt or remorse, but that was a separate issue. A first killing was like that.

Though he felt no desire to offer warm words to the man staring at the gruesome, bloody corpse, something compelled him to speak upon seeing the man stand there, frozen, staring at his blood-stained hands. He asked if he was surprised. Surprised by the smell of blood, the feel of blood, which he had only known intellectually, and by the vivid reality of a living being transforming into a dead object before his eyes.

However, at that moment, Gable realized anew a fact he had already vaguely suspected.

“Huh?”

Gable met the man’s gaze as he turned his head and immediately knew he had spoken unnecessarily.

“What’s so surprising? More importantly, do you have a wet towel or something? I should’ve wiped it off before the blood dried; now it’s stuck.”

Gable silently pointed to a nearby restroom. Then he dedicated himself once again to cleaning up the body.

It wasn’t the man’s first time. Gable, James, and others simply didn’t know it, but he was already so accustomed to murder that it was hardly worth mentioning. “Tsk, maybe I should start wearing gloves next time,” the man muttered, his voice devoid of any remorse.

Right. He’s always been like that. A person you can’t deal with using human emotions.

“……”

He snapped back to reality to find that he had finished reading the evening newspaper. While one part of his mind was preoccupied with other thoughts, another part had still managed to read the newspaper properly. The world was chaotic today, too.

Gable glanced toward the second floor. No sound came from up there.

He got up, went to the kitchen, wiped a fruit from the basket on the table on his pants, and took a bite. Crunch, crunch. He quickly devoured the fruit while looking down at the small plaza outside the window, then returned to the hall. On his way back, he noticed a fax had arrived for him. Slowly heading back to the hall, carefully selecting the faxes that could be answered quickly, Gable finally noticed the man who had, at some point, come down from the second floor and was now sitting on the couch.

The man, indifferently flipping through the newspaper on the table, was dressed loosely, wearing only pants, as if proudly displaying that he had just been tumbling in bed. Fresh marks, as if torn by hands, were still visible on his forearms.

Gable knew the man saw him, yet the man didn’t even glance up, just continued skimming the newspaper. Gable turned and headed towards the second floor.

It’s time to clean up the body now.

He came down faster than expected. Gable had thought he would be up there for much longer, and that was quite surprising. Could it be that his stamina had run out in the few years Gable hadn’t seen him? Or had his sexual preferences changed?

Or perhaps, like before, he simply satisfied his desires quickly, regardless of whether his partner’s body was torn or whether they passed out, then came down lightly.

It often happened.

A few years ago, not long after Gable started cleaning up after this man, the man came of age, and shedding his youthful recklessness, he became even more cunning, no longer needing others’ help to clean up his messes. At the same time, Gable was assigned to an overseas position and left Germany. Their relationship ended then, but until that point, Gable often dealt with “bodies.”

Of course, “bodies” weren’t always truly deceased corpses.

This was exactly one of those cases.

When the man brought a woman—or a man—and had a romp in bed.

It varied depending on the situation, but if there were no time or situational constraints, the man wouldn’t emerge from the bed for several hours. Once he was done, he’d go straight to the bathroom to wash up, and while he was doing that, Gable would “handle” the unfortunate victim of the day.

Mostly, it was a matter of quickly taking the person, usually bleeding profusely from the lower body, their face covered in tears, snot, or other bodily fluids, and unconscious, to the hospital. If the partner was male, nine times out of ten, they would have internal ruptures or severe prolapse, situations that absolutely required a hospital visit.

It was understandable. Gable had seen the man’s ‘thing’ a few times, and it was enough to make him frown at first sight. There were even people who, not knowing any better, followed him and then turned pale, screaming and begging to be sent back the moment the man took off his clothes.

Later, some of those who regained consciousness in the hospital threatened to sue, and their stories were almost identical:

Regardless of whether they refused, cried, pleaded, begged, or got angry, the man would just shove it in as if he couldn’t hear their reactions, and wouldn’t care until he was satisfied, even if their torn bodies bled all over the sheets. And after he was satisfied? That was it. He would cheerfully head to the bathroom alone.

Gable knew it well. Because he was the one who transported those unconscious, blood-soaked individuals to the hospital.

When he saw them unconscious and covered in blood—sometimes people passed out with their eyes wide open, and when Gable saw them, he felt like he would pass out himself—they truly were indistinguishable from corpses.

Gable sighed inwardly and headed for the second floor. Even after several years, the man hadn’t changed.

However, the young man this man had brought—the young man who was probably now a gruesome, bloody “corpse” on the second floor—was someone Kyle had specifically asked him to look after. He had been told, “He’ll probably go with Ilay, and he’s a very good young man, Jaei’s younger brother. Please take good care of him and help him.”

But before he could even take good care of him, he was already a “corpse” on the first day of his arrival.

He probably wasn’t literally dead, but Gable liked the young man because he seemed like a good person, so he couldn’t help but click his tongue in disapproval. How did he get caught by that inhuman man? Hoping that the medical facilities on the island would be sufficient to handle it, and that he wouldn’t be in such a terrible state that he’d need to be taken to a larger hospital on the mainland, Gable climbed the stairs to the second floor. However, before he had even gone up a few steps, a voice came from behind him.

“Where are you going, Gable?”

Gable turned around at the casual voice calling him. The man was still holding the newspaper, asking in a bored tone.

Gable raised an eyebrow.

“Why… to take care of things.”

Gable softened the phrase “cleaning up a corpse,” and the man clicked his tongue lowly, then curtly spat out, “Don’t go.”

Gable stared at the man. The man was still flipping through the newspaper, an expressionless look on his face as if nothing had happened.

Gable silently came back down the stairs. And sat on the couch across from him.

Oh. I almost did something stupid. Perhaps I’ve become鈍 due to the numerous breaks. I used to be able to tell immediately just from the flow of the air.

The man was in an extremely bad mood right now. Even with his indifferent face, calm tone, and nonchalant gestures as he flipped through the newspaper, he was in a rare state of severe displeasure. If he were to be provoked even slightly in this state, they would see a ‘real corpse.’

Gable stared at him, hiding his bewilderment. He couldn’t guess why the man was so fiercely displeased.

But thinking back, the man’s mood hadn’t seemed good since Gable went upstairs and encountered that unexpected scene on the second floor. Gable recalled that extremely cold voice asking if it was urgent. It could be inferred that there had been some unpleasant quarrel with that young man.

However, that raised another question.

As far as Gable knew, this man wasn’t the type to accompany someone he didn’t like. Far from accompanying them, at the point of disliking them, he would have already added one more corpse to this world. No, it was unlikely that he would have disliked that person from the beginning.

The name.

When Gable went to the airport to pick up the young man and saw him for the first time, Gable didn’t show it, but he was very surprised. The young man was casually calling this man by his name. And this man, too, answered casually. Until now, at least among those Gable had personally witnessed, no one outside of his family called this man by his name.

Gable, genuinely bewildered that this man could have such a friend, was surprised again when he encountered the scene of Jae-yi’s younger brother and this man entwined, especially since he hadn’t heard anything about it from Kyle—no hint at all.

And now, this situation was also utterly unexpected.

To think that he might be going easy on him because he was Jae-yi’s brother—this man wasn’t the type to go easy on anyone for such a reason.

“Gable.”

Suddenly, the man spoke without taking his eyes off the newspaper. Gable silently waited for him to continue. He glanced at Gable. His gaze was as chilling as an ice blade.

“Don’t ever again enter without waiting for an answer when I’m with him. And what you saw earlier, forget it.”

“…Understood.”

This, too, was an uncharacteristic order from this man. Perhaps this man had changed during the years Gable hadn’t known him.

“By the way, what was the matter? Wasn’t there something you needed to discuss?”

“Ah. I received a call from the CEO. Separately, it seems the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. will be replaced. I expect the news will also reach UNHRDO.”

“Really? By whom?”

“The Azar lineage is most likely, so it would be one of the two princes from that side.”

“Then Musta—”

The man, who had been continuing his sentence while folding the newspaper, suddenly fell silent. Gable tilted his head slightly, waiting for his thoughts to conclude. It seemed something related to work had occurred to him mid-conversation.

However, the words that came back to Gable, who had been waiting patiently, were something he hadn’t expected.

“This might take a while. Let’s continue in your room. …And.”

Gable also rose, following the man who stood up from the sofa and set down the newspaper. The man, who had paused before moving, closed his mouth again. Then, after thinking for a moment, he suddenly frowned harshly. Gable raised an eyebrow, feigning ignorance as he observed his expression.

“…Tell the owner here to get him some food first. He said he was very hungry.”

Gable was silent for a moment after the man’s rough, disgusted click of the tongue, then replied, “Understood.” He told the man to go to his room first and then went to the kitchen to convey the message to the proprietress. The proprietress, who had grown somewhat friendly with Gable during his fairly long stay there, smiled brightly and said, “Of course,” before immediately heading to the first floor.

Gable picked up a few cans of beer and tilted his head as he headed towards his room.

I’ve seen all sorts of things in my life, he thought to himself.

The meeting was over in less than five minutes.

In truth, there wasn’t much to it. It was simply a matter of relaying the various geopolitical situations from around the world, and then discussing Kyle’s established policies or predictable developments concerning them.

Conversations with this man always ended concisely.

If it wasn’t a matter requiring judgment, it ended with the delivery of facts; if judgment was needed, the man would make a decision immediately after checking a few points, without lengthy consideration.

In that regard, Kyle and this man were similar. At least when it came to work, Gable had never felt frustrated talking to them.

“…That is all.”

“Hmm.”

When Gable finished speaking, the man replied curtly.

Gable remained seated for a moment, having finished his report, waiting for the man to finally get up and leave the room. However, the man was sitting diagonally on the long sofa with one knee raised, deep in thought. His fingers, tapping lightly on his knee, showed no sign of breaking free from his contemplation.

It kept going like this. He was clearly listening to Gable’s words. He questioned and answered what Gable said. If there was a dubious part, he would inquire in detail. So, he wasn’t just nodding half-heartedly.

But clearly, the man was distracted. While one part of his mind listened to Gable, the other part was engrossed in other thoughts.

There was no way of knowing what those thoughts were, but Gable could only guess that they were the cause of the man’s extremely foul mood.

Gable sat in front of the man, who was deep in thought, and opened one of the beer cans he had brought from the kitchen earlier. He then drank his beer and opened the book he had been reading the night before and had left folded. He thought that if the man was going to ponder something, he should do it in his own room, but he didn’t want to speak rashly to a man in such a bad mood.

The man, not spaced out despite being lost in thought, also picked up a beer can and pulled the tab. Then he gulped it down, drinking it like water.

“Schultheiss, huh. He’ll like that.”

Suddenly, he muttered. Gable briefly lifted his gaze from his book to look at him. It seemed he was talking to himself, not expecting an answer from Gable. Gable returned his gaze to his book.

He’ll probably leave when he’s ready.

But the man didn’t leave. He continued to silently gulp down beer. Drinking beer like water, there was no way it would last. Gable had brought four 1000ml cans, and while he slowly drank one and read his book, the man emptied the other three.

When he finished the last can and set it down with a click on the table, Gable also turned the last page of his book. He scanned the empty cans with his eyes and said, “Shall I get you more?”

The man didn’t answer. Gable interpreted it as a yes, and wanting more himself, he got up and went to the kitchen. The proprietress was washing dishes. She saw Gable and said cheerfully, “Yuri. Time for dinner?”

“Hmm. Later. Everyone else has eaten, right?”

“The only other person is Tae-yi. He’s already finished dessert and gone upstairs. He must have been very tired; he was dozing even while eating. He’s probably asleep by now.”

“Alright. I’ll eat separately later, so don’t worry about me. I’m taking some beer.”

Gable kissed her cheek instead of saying goodbye and returned with three or four more cans of beer.

The man was sitting in the same posture as when Gable had left the room, still deep in thought. But his expression had become even fiercer. Gable sighed inwardly and placed the cans in front of him.

“Mr. Taei finished his meal and went upstairs. Anna said he’s probably asleep now.”

“Asleep?”

Suddenly, a deep furrow appeared between the man’s brows.

“Asleep? Sleeping?!”

“…Well, I can’t say for sure. But he was dozing off even while eating, so he probably is.”

When Gable spoke impassively, the man glared ferociously. But Gable calmly opened his beer.

“He cried over something so trivial, and now he’s sleeping, you say.”

Tap, tap, the fingers drumming on his knee pressed harder. His lowered voice also gained intensity.

Gable subtly raised one eyebrow and silently drank his beer. Cried, huh. Good heavens, nothing but incomprehensible words.

“Let me tell you, he doesn’t really dislike it. Even if he complains about being tired or annoyed at first, he eventually comes, too. He’s even passed out while coming. It’s only natural, considering how much I’ve done for him.”

Gable slightly grimaced. Good heavens, I’ve seen all sorts of things…

“So even if he cried, he wasn’t really crying. Don’t you think?”

“…Well, I’m not sure I understand the context.”

He truly didn’t understand. What the man was saying now was utterly unlike him. What exactly he was trying to say, if it were anyone else, there would be room for question, but coming from this man, it was utterly impossible to comprehend.

“The truth is, he doesn’t really dislike it. …I’m sure he doesn’t.”

The man muttered to himself. And then, drinking beer like water again, he fell back into his own thoughts.

Gable watched him for a moment, then slowly asked, “If he really disliked it, would that be a problem?”

Still unable to grasp the context, Gable asked casually, and Ilay fell silent. Suddenly, his expression seemed to become peculiar.

But soon, he frowned displeasedly, thought for a moment, and then tilted his head slightly.

“No.”

Gable nodded and then closed his mouth again.

There was no need for him to say more. The conclusion had been reached. The man, too, answered thusly, then nodded grimly. Gable counted the empty beer cans the man had consumed again. This was not a man who would get drunk on a few 1000ml beers.

Truly, he had seen all sorts of bizarre things in his life. Or perhaps, in fact, the one who was drunk was Gable himself. He might be utterly plastered and dreaming.

Yes, that seemed more plausible.

Just as Gable was thinking he should go out to the garden and get some fresh air, the man stood up. It seemed he was finally going to leave.

When dusk fell and darkness arrived, the proprietress would light the garden. It wasn’t necessarily a light that anyone needed, but still, for occasional midnight strolls in the yard or sudden late-night guests, she would keep several lights in the garden until dawn broke and the sky turned pale.

Thanks to this, Gable, who was naturally a bit night-blind, could comfortably stroll through the garden at midnight without having to worry about what was underfoot. Sometimes, when he felt like it, he would even jump into the pool.

But today, he wasn’t in the mood to swim, so he slowly walked among the fruit trees in the garden, taking deep breaths.

He would have to move a bit more busily starting tomorrow. Of course, he had already gone through immense trouble collecting even the tiniest scraps of information. From India to the Middle East, he traveled thousands of miles if there was even a faint sign, no matter how small. And so, he finally discovered that the person he was looking for was here.

Now, starting tomorrow, he needed to make an effort to actually find him. The person to be found was not himself. It was the young man, Jae-yi’s younger brother.

Kyle said, That young man will do. When Gable asked why, he smiled awkwardly and said there was no particular basis for it. But he insisted that young man would definitely do. Because that young man was his guardian angel.

Gable decided to trust Kyle’s words. He knew from long experience that it was the wiser course.

He walked through the garden in the cool night air and suddenly looked up at the second floor. Earlier, Bibi—a shy black girl who lived in a small house less than five minutes away from here and helped Anna with housework—had very shyly and hesitantly asked Gable, Who is the oppa in the room on the second floor? She said she had met eyes with him while picking fruit in the garden, and he had smiled very kindly.

Gable, considering the room at the end of the second floor, thought of both the man and the young man simultaneously and wondered for a moment who occupied that specific room. Then, at the mention of “kindly smiled,” he unhesitatingly identified the young man. When Gable told her the young man’s name, Bibi whispered “Taei, Taei” several times, pronouncing it awkwardly.

Gable recalled the young man and understood Bibi’s shy face. He certainly seemed like a young man who would unknowingly gain affection. Gable stood next to the fruit tree just inside the fence, where Bibi had picked mangoes, and looked up at the second floor. Indeed, from this position, the room at the end of the second floor was clearly visible.

Gable, who had been idly looking at the second-floor room, tilted his head. The light was on. Anna had said he was probably sound asleep, but it seemed he wasn’t.

However, he then tilted his head in the opposite direction. In the room at the end of the second floor, a human silhouette flickered by the window. The profile leaning against the window, silently looking down at the bed, was the man who had been gulping down beer like water in Gable’s room just moments ago.

“…”

Gable rubbed his eyes once. Then he looked again. The man was still standing there. This was not a man who would fail to notice his gaze, no matter the distance, if he were looking this intently, yet he was silently looking only at the bed.

What could possibly be so captivating there that he’s staring so blankly? The only thing there would be the sleeping young man.

Gable leaned against the fence. Then, crossing his arms, he slowly prepared to watch. He intended to see how long the man would continue this inexplicable behavior.

The man, like Gable, also had his arms crossed. He leaned his head lightly against the window and stayed put, steadfastly looking down at the bed without moving. Then, suddenly, the man moved slightly away from the window. What did he see? The man, who had been maintaining a heavy, expressionless face, suddenly chuckled. He seemed to reach out and touch the bed lightly, but after a short while, the man leaned back against the window and crossed his arms again.

Gable prided himself on his patience, but he was getting bored. He wasn’t doing anything special, and there was no particular reason to keep watching. He looked at his watch. It was already late. It was time to go inside and sleep.

Gable pushed himself off the fence and looked up at the second floor once more. The man was still there, unmoving. Surely he won’t fall asleep there, Gable thought humorously. But of course, in this man’s case, that was impossible. He wasn’t the type to sleep with other people.

Gable sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. Then he quietly looked down at his feet and fell into thought himself. However, his thoughts didn’t last long. Gable shook his head and shrugged.

There were countless things in the world that human perception couldn’t comprehend, and countless things that one couldn’t understand on a personal level, even if human perception couldn’t grasp them.

Gable tilted his head for a moment, then finally sighed, deciding that it was simply one of those things. He then added to his thoughts: What would be the problem if I don’t understand?

He slowly walked with his hands behind his back, falling into thought again. This time, the conclusion came a bit faster. Nothing.

I don’t know… but what does it matter?

He, who didn’t meddle in other people’s affairs and spoke little, muttered only that to himself and concluded his thoughts. In any case, not having to dispose of a “corpse” was a good outcome for him.

Fin.