Projection Novel (Completed) - Chapter 59

It was Jinyoung who brought Haewoong, who was wandering aimlessly, thinking “whatever happens, happens,” into the organization. Jinyoung, who had become acquainted with Haewoong at a club he frequented, hesitated after hearing about his expulsion, then suggested he join the organization. Haewoong, intrigued, lingered around Jinyoung and eventually accepted his offer.

The Cleanup Team was not a place just anyone could enter, so Haewoong had to go through the life of a regular gang member. But the work regular members did, such as managing establishments, debt collection, and demolition services, made Haewoong feel like he had become a villain, and he had considered quitting the organization.

At that time, Haewoong once again beat up a gang member who was using violence against civilians, and the incident was reported to his superiors. Shin Gyoyeon became interested in Haewoong, who had been expelled from the police academy and joined the organization, and instructed Seonhyuk, who was then running the Cleanup Team, to observe Haewoong. That’s how Haewoong met Seonhyuk, and after a long conversation with him, he ended up joining the Cleanup Team.

“The Cleanup Team, we’re different from the kids outside, you know.”

“…That’s right.”

“The guys who manage establishments or work in loans, they push around ordinary people and do terrible things, but we catch the ones who do wrong among them.”

He was right. The Cleanup Team rarely touched civilians. Their work was usually for the well-being of the organization, to balance power, and those who were sacrificed in that process were mostly people society didn’t need. Those who were already part of the organization, and among them, those who were bad quality and even harmed the organization.

“There’s that saying, ‘necessary evil,’ right? So, I guess you could say we’re like an incinerator for trash? We can’t say we’re clean, but we’re definitely necessary, aren’t we? I really like that. The hyungs are good too, and every time I catch and stomp on those ass*holes, it feels like I’m doing something moral. Well, that’s how it is.”

Haewoong finished speaking, then giggled foolishly. Then he picked up the bag of snacks and poured them into his mouth. Cheon Sejoo watched him with a thin line etched between his brows.

Now that he thought about it, Cheon Sejoo seemed to have had similar thoughts around his second year. Around the time he became accustomed to killing and felt disillusioned with himself, he justified his actions with such thoughts… and that’s how he got used to the work.

After that, he only felt the responsibility for not living the life Hye-in had wished for. That single sense of responsibility had weighed so heavily on his life. More heavily than killing people.

“Team Leader…? Can I ask you something?”

Haewoong’s voice woke him from his reverie. Haewoong, who was folding an empty snack bag into a square, glanced at Cheon Sejoo and asked, “Team Leader, why do you do this work?”

“…”

“Why do I do this work?” Cheon Sejoo had promised to work under Shin Gyoyeon in exchange for being released from the detention center and completing Hye-in’s revenge. It was a deal made, blinded by immediate vengeance, without even considering the value of what he was giving up, and as a result, Cheon Sejoo’s life became a ruin.

If he could go back in time, Cheon Sejoo would have refused Chae Beomjun’s offer and stood trial. After serving his sentence, he would have found the perpetrators, brutally murdered them, and chosen to end his own life.

However, he couldn’t tell such a pathetic story to anyone. Cheon Sejoo merely shrugged.

“It just happened.”

“I see.”

Haewoong didn’t seem to expect an answer, simply rolling his eyes and nodding. Leaving Haewoong, Cheon Sejoo mulled over his own answer as he left the office.

It just happened. How wonderful it would be if his life could be explained by those three words. Cheon Sejoo wore a bitter smile.

Kwon Sejin’s precarious tightrope walk continued.

Sejin’s already thin patience had long worn out, so these days, he wasn’t waiting for Cheon Sejoo but was acting as if he would find the answers one way or another. Of course, the effect wasn’t very good.

“Cheon Sejoo.”

At the quiet call, Cheon Sejoo, who had been looking out the window, turned his head. His calm, lowered eyes were steeped in fatigue. Cheon Sejoo, who had returned after several days, saying he was busy with work, had a small scratch on his forearm. Sejin, who had been staring at the wound, couldn’t overcome his curiosity and opened his mouth.

“Who did that to your arm?”

“…”

At the question, Cheon Sejoo lowered his gaze. He looked at the exposed wound, then rubbed it with his fingertips as if it was nothing, replying, “It just happened, by mistake.”

After saying that, it felt strange. Cheon Sejoo, feeling something unsettling, soon realized that Sejin had asked “who” did it, not “how” it happened, and frowned. Frustration surged instantly.

All he could tell Sejin, just like he told Haewoong, was “it just happened.” Even though that was all he could tell him, Sejin kept trying to peer into Cheon Sejoo. There’s nothing good to know, and if you knew what kind of person I am, you’d run away anyway.

It was hard to breathe, as if a stone had fallen into his stomach. Cheon Sejoo rested his chin on the sofa armrest, looking at Sejin with annoyed eyes, and said, “Just do your own work. Why are you so interested in your employer?”

“…”

At his words drawing a line, Sejin raised his sulky eyes. Sejin was sitting at the living room table, trimming fiddleheads. The scissors in his hand snip, snip, cutting the tough stems. Sejin, without stopping his hands, watched Cheon Sejoo with dissatisfaction and replied, “I can be a little curious about what you’re doing. The landlord where I used to live even knew how many times a week I cooked ramen. There’s a saying about being like neighbors, so is it wrong to be that curious when we live in the same house?”

“Yes. It is.”

“…”

At the firm reply, Sejin’s red lips pouted. Sejin, who had been staring at Cheon Sejoo with eyes narrowed like a cat, soon scoffed, hmph, and lowered his gaze again. He seemed to be quietly cleaning the fiddleheads, then suddenly cried out “Ouch!” and clutched his hand.

“Did you get hurt?”

At the sight, Cheon Sejoo, who had been looking out the window, immediately got up and approached. Sejin hung his head, touching his fingertips, then finally raised his face when Cheon Sejoo was close enough.

His gaze, looking up at the handsome face, was full of impudence. Sejin, as if it was nothing, held up a finger with a tiny bit of his fingernail clipped and asked Cheon Sejoo, “Then why are you so interested in your housekeeper?”

“…”

Seeing Sejin throw his own words back at him, Cheon Sejoo closed his mouth. Heat instantly rose. This guy, really… Sejin was so annoying that he felt like making that brazen face tear up.

In that situation, Sejin poured oil on the fire.

“Don’t you honestly think it’s funny too?”

Cheon Sejoo, who didn’t immediately understand Sejin’s words, raised his eyebrows and looked down at Sejin. Then, suddenly, he understood and rolled his tongue inside his mouth.

Sejin was saying that it was honestly a ridiculous situation to pretend not to know his feelings. He was asking what was the point of feigning ignorance like this.

Cheon Sejoo bit down on his molars and recoiled from Sejin.

Kwon Sejin didn’t know. He truly had no idea how immense and heavy Cheon Sejoo’s desire not to lose him was. Because he didn’t know, he was spouting such nonsense.

It wasn’t easy for Cheon Sejoo to ignore Sejin’s feelings. It wasn’t comfortable. Yet, the only reason he could do this was ultimately because he didn’t want to let Sejin go…

Every time Kwon Sejin acted this way, a defiant urge to confess everything to him surged. He wanted to see Sejin finally hate him and turn his back, then shout, “I told you so, it would have been better to pretend not to know!” But he couldn’t do it in the end.

Cheon Sejoo stared silently at Sejin, then headed to his room. He quickly changed his clothes and left the house immediately. He needed to re-lock the gates that so easily came undone next to Kwon Sejin.

“Cheon Sejoo!”

Sejin belatedly tried to stop Cheon Sejoo, but he disappeared without looking back. Left alone in the house, Sejin slapped his own hasty mouth with his palm.

When he provoked Cheon Sejoo to find out his true feelings, the best reaction he could get was anger, and the worst was him leaving the house. If he got angry, there was a possibility that a Cheon Sejoo who had lost his composure would inadvertently reveal something. But if he kept his mouth shut and left the house, Sejin had nothing more to do. All he could do was quietly wait for Cheon Sejoo to return home.

While doing so, time passed, and Sejin was, if not neglected, left to his own devices in the house. He had no motivation to start studying again, something he had long given up, and Cheon Sejoo also didn’t seem to care about that. He seemed busy these days, doing who knows what. Sometimes he would suddenly leave late at night and return in the early hours of the morning, and sometimes he wouldn’t come home for several days at all.

On days he stayed out, Sejin would stay on edge, constantly checking his phone. It was to spy on Cheon Sejoo, just in case he had gone to see Kang Doyoon.

Last year, after Doyoon arbitrarily saved his number, the messenger profile picture that appeared had the address of his SNS written on it. Sejin had previously visited Doyoon’s publicly accessible SNS and found a pattern in the photos posted there.

Kang Doyoon would sometimes post photos of cityscapes taken from hotels. Sejin found the regularly appearing locations a bit unsettling, then suddenly looked up the weather information for the days hotel photos were uploaded. And it all fits together. Every time it rained, Kang Doyoon went to a hotel, and it was obvious whom he met there. It was probably Cheon Sejoo, who had left the house every time it rained.

After realizing that fact, Sejin had been constantly spying on Doyoon’s SNS. Of course, it had been over six months since he had posted any hotel photos, but he couldn’t stop trying to infer Cheon Sejoo’s whereabouts, even if he couldn’t see them himself.

Sometimes, when he found himself desperately checking his phone screen after a Doyoon SNS notification popped up, he felt incredibly dark and pathetic. At such times, Sejin would dejectedly throw his phone away and jump into Cheon Sejoo’s bed. He thought it was better to be a person who smelled the pillow of the man he liked than to be a person who spied on the sex partner of the man he liked.

Spending his days like that, Sejin sometimes thought of his mother. The things she liked when she was alive, the conversations they shared, her voice preserved in videos on his phone. Every time he encountered these things, Sejin would shed tears he hadn’t yet shed, letting his sorrow flow with time.

And most of the time he wasn’t thinking of Kim Hyunkyung, he was thinking of Cheon Sejoo. After strenuous effort, Sejin found out that the tattoo on his back symbolized a member of the Daegam faction. He remembered when he came to school and introduced himself as being affiliated with a strategic planning office of DG, and found it while searching for DG.

In the internet’s “Namubackgua” (a wiki anyone can edit), the history of DG, or the Daegam faction, was grandly described. There were photos of Daegam faction members’ backs from the 90s news, and long accounts of battles involving the legendary swordsman Seok Yoon-hyung, known as the power behind the Daegam faction.

Among them, what caught his eye was a photo of Seok Yoon-hyung, shirtless and being led away by the police at the time of his arrest for murder. His upper body, with fiercely glaring eyes, was covered in numerous knife marks, and on his back was a tattoo almost identical to the one on Cheon Sejoo’s back.

A ferocious black tiger stepped forward, and behind it, a neatly placed gat (traditional Korean hat) and a gombangdae (traditional Korean pipe). The only difference in the almost identical drawing was that the Chinese character “Daegam” tattooed on Seok Yunhyung’s back was missing from Cheon Sejoo’s. It seemed to have been removed when the company name was changed from Daegam Construction to DG.

The important thing was that other photos of gang members didn’t have such tattoos on their backs. He looked through dozens of photos on Namubackgua, even scanned old newspapers, but only a very few had that tattoo on their backs, and they were always referred to as “Daegam faction executive” or “Daegam faction leader” whenever they were mentioned in news and newspapers. That meant Cheon Sejoo was also an executive of DG.

Only then did Sejin understand the attitude Kim Donggil and others showed towards Cheon Sejoo. Cheon Sejoo had been of a different rank from them from the start.

But then, when did Cheon Sejoo become an executive of the organization? He had a doctor’s license, and he said he had residency experience. From Sejin’s diligent research, even if he was in his first year of residency, he had to be at least 26 years old. This was possible because Cheon Sejoo was born on January 1st and entered university at 19 due to an early birthday or something similar.

Sejin’s questions started from there. Why would someone who had been doing well at the hospital until the age of 26 suddenly quit a perfectly good hospital and become an executive of a corporate-style organization, and what kind of change of heart caused it? Was it perhaps related to the reason he knew funeral procedures too well? And by the time he thought that far, it no longer mattered in Sejin’s mind what kind of person Cheon Sejoo was.

The resentment he felt at the fact that Cheon Sejoo was in the same league as people like Kim Donggil lasted only for that brief moment when he was engrossed in the grief of losing Kim Hyunkyung. Originally, Kwon Sejin was a person whose own thoughts and judgments were the most important in the world. Sejin was stubborn as much as he had high self-reliance, and that tendency manifested when he liked someone.

Cheon Sejoo saved Sejin. He rescued him from difficulty and fulfilled what he desperately desired. He was the only one who understood Sejin’s distress signal and came to save him, yet he didn’t expect anything in return.

When Sejin was suffering, it was Cheon Sejoo’s warmth that pulled him out of his sorrow. The body heat and kindness he shared kept Sejin from freezing. What Cheon Sejoo gave made Sejin blindly love him.

No, he couldn’t help but love him. Therefore, Cheon Sejoo had to take responsibility for these feelings that stemmed from his actions.

Now, Sejin didn’t try to judge him. He simply wanted to know about Cheon Sejoo, and he wanted to be someone who could give him deep stability, just as he had given it to him.

As Sejin was thus itching to become a part of Cheon Sejoo, time steadily passed. Cheon Sejoo was often away from home, and Sejin quietly waited for him. However, in late January, on a day when the chill had subsided, the sky became murky, and raindrops began to fall, Sejin simply couldn’t sit still on the sofa anymore.

1ovemyself_dy1207 Doyoon, who was all dolled up, was waiting in the lobby for an appointment he had made after a long time. Along with that caption, a selfie of Kang Doyoon taken in a hotel lobby was uploaded on SNS. Sejin, who had anxiously opened the app at the new feed notification, froze in shock.

f1rst_K_jangnyeo Our youngest is so pretty>0< 

crzdohye he baby can get married 😀 Have fun❤ 

prinKDYcess Going to meet the cute princess?

Underneath the photo were comments from Doyoon’s three older sisters, making a fuss. Sejin held his phone with trembling hands, then let out an exasperated sigh and threw it onto the sofa. Pretty, who’s pretty? Have fun doing what? Cute baby, what cute baby? Jealous whispers busily swirled in his mouth.

Sejin chewed on his lips and hugged his knees, upset by the certainty that Kang Doyoon was meeting Cheon Sejoo. Gray clouds were scattered beyond the large window. Raindrops falling from the sky dampened the world, and the sound of rain, blocked by the window, echoed in his mind instead. Sejin thought the stream of water falling from the sky was like his tears. His heart stung with jealousy, and he couldn’t bear it.

“So annoying…”

It had been a long time since Cheon Sejoo consistently contacted him, saying he was late or couldn’t come home. After his feelings for him were revealed, Cheon Sejoo’s frequency of contacting Sejin significantly decreased. With the amount of replies to his messages reduced to a tenth, there was no way he would report his whereabouts first. In the end, instead of fruitlessly waiting for a message that wouldn’t arrive, Sejin chose to act a little underhandedly.

17:21 When are you coming home?

Naturally, no reply arrived. Sejin couldn’t wait and sent Cheon Sejoo another message with a small lie.

17:22 I’m sick..

Yet, less than a minute after he sent that message, a call came from Cheon Sejoo. Sejin stared down in surprise at his phone, vibrating on the table with a whirring sound.

Was he looking at his phone? Or… did he call immediately because I said I was sick? Was he worried? His heart pounded, a mix of happiness and excitement. He was afraid that if he answered, his lie would be exposed.

What should I do? He couldn’t bring himself to press the answer button, only biting his lips. I should answer, but what if he realizes my voice is perfectly fine? While he agonized, the call ended, and then another call came. When he didn’t answer that one either, a message soon arrived from Cheon Sejoo.

Cheon Sejoo Where does it hurt? Are you very sick? Just wait a little. I’ll be right there. 17:25

The moment he saw that message, Sejin sprang to his feet. His heart felt like it would burst. The thought that Cheon Sejoo was abandoning Kang Doyoon and coming to him made the world seem to sparkle with rainbow colors.

However, at the same time, he realized he was in big trouble. What if he came and found out it was a lie? What if he was disappointed in him and went back to Kang Doyoon? Sejin paced anxiously before heading abruptly to the kitchen.

Sejin put water on the kettle, then brought a mug and placed it in front, waiting for the water to boil. When Cheon Sejoo’s arrival notification popped up, he planned to press the hot cup to his forehead, pretending he had a fever. He could have just used the water purifier, but in his distracted state, Sejin didn’t even think of it. It was then, as he hovered in front of the induction cooktop.

“Kwon Sejin.”

A sudden voice and a presence began to be felt from down the hallway. Sejin, flustered by Cheon Sejoo’s overly quick appearance, poured half-boiled water into the cup. Faster, faster. But Cheon Sejoo reached the kitchen faster than Sejin could heat his forehead.

“What are you doing here? Where does it hurt?”

Cheon Sejoo was dressed entirely in black. His face, hidden beneath a cap and a pulled-down hood, was filled with worry, yet Cheon Sejoo probably didn’t even realize the expression he was making.

He suddenly felt his forgotten tenderness. Sejin stared blankly at the man who had rushed to him the moment he said he was sick. At his dazed gaze, Cheon Sejoo frowned and reached out. A cold hand covered his forehead.

“Do you have a fever?”

But Sejin’s forehead was only lukewarm. Cheon Sejoo, wondering if his own hand was hot, placed it on his own forehead, then back on Sejin’s. But no matter how he checked, it didn’t seem like he had a fever. Thinking that something else must be hurting him, he looked around with a displeased expression.

“What are you doing here? If you’re sick, go lie down. Do you have an upset stomach?”