Projection Novel (Completed) - Chapter 71

It felt strange to take the subway to school after a long time. He remembered the times when Kim Hyunkyung was alive, and Cheon Sejoo was often away from home, so he would go to school alone. Back then, Sejin would study even on his way to school. There was a moment when he felt proud of himself, diligently memorizing English words as if he were an honor student.

Should I start studying again? Sejin suddenly thought about it while in the train car crossing the Han River bridge. He had lost all motivation after losing his mother and had given up, but he couldn’t just keep living like this, could he? No matter how beautiful and perfectly suited to his taste an unemployed person living off others might be, Cheon Sejoo would surely dislike it. More than anything, Sejin didn’t want to become a useless human being in the world like Kwon Yong-beom.

But when he actually thought about starting to study again, it felt daunting. It was because he had forgotten everything he had barely memorized, and the college entrance exam had long since passed, meaning his study period would be considerably long.

Sejin thought about his daunting future for the first time in a long time, then got off the subway. He familiarly tapped his card at the turnstile and headed towards the school he would never return to after today.

The school was deserted during vacation. Perhaps because it was winter, the undried playground remained damp, and the gloomy-looking building seemed old enough to collapse at any moment. It was a place with no good memories, so Sejin passed through the playground without much emotion, but suddenly, upon reaching the school lobby, he thought of Cheon Sejoo.

The day he came to school and claimed to be Sejin’s guardian, the day he came out into the world on his back. Even with the biting wind, Cheon Sejoo’s back was warm and comfortable. It was probably from then on. That Sejin began to harbor different feelings for Cheon Sejoo…

The face that had smiled brightly at him was vivid. Sejin bit his lip, trying to suppress a smile, then picked up his phone and sent a message to Cheon Sejoo.

14:21 Are you busy? I came to school to get my stuff. Shall we go home together later?

Perhaps he wasn’t too busy, because a red receipt immediately appeared, and Cheon Sejoo called him. Sejin talked to him as he walked towards his classroom.

“Yeah.”

– You went to school?

“Yeah, the homeroom teacher told me to get my stuff.”

– Oh, when will you be done? Have you packed everything? Is it heavy? Should I pick you up?

The third-year classroom was on the first floor. Sejin opened the closed door and approached his locker. The locker, which didn’t even have a lock on it, was almost empty. All that was there were gym clothes that had been shoved in for months, a notebook, an umbrella, and a scattered report card. Sejin took only the umbrella from inside and replied to Cheon Sejoo.

“No, there’s not much. When do you finish work? I’ll go there.”

– Me? About 20 minutes? I’ll be leaving soon.

“Then wait there. I’ll go.”

While he was attending school, Cheon Sejoo had always come to pick him up. Sejin replied that way, wanting to pick him up for once. After graduating, he wouldn’t have any reason to come near this area, and then there wouldn’t be an opportunity to pick up Cheon Sejoo at his workplace unless he intentionally came to meet him. Fortunately, Cheon Sejoo didn’t question it.

– Alright. You know where it is, right? Call me when you get here.

“See you later.”

– Ah, Sejin-ah.

“Huh?”

His lips curved into a smile at the voice calling him “Sejin-ah.” Perhaps because he had mostly been called “Hey” or “Kwon Sejin” in January, that affectionate endearment felt like a sign that they didn’t have far to go.

– Did you prepare dinner?

“No, I didn’t. Why? Is there something you want to eat?”

– No, then let’s stop somewhere before we go home.

“Where?”

– I’ll tell you later.

Sejin tilted his head but obediently replied. It wasn’t the first or second time Cheon Sejoo had abruptly dragged Sejin to a department store, so he thought he might be going to buy spring clothes.

“Alright.”

– Call me when you get here.

“Yeah.”

Was it his imagination if the voice treating him felt excessively gentle? Sejin stared blankly at his phone after hanging up, then rubbed his flushed cheeks and looked back into the locker. He took out all the items, including the gym clothes, from inside and threw them into the trash can. Then, Sejin left the classroom. In his hand, as he headed towards the faculty office, was only the umbrella Kim Hyunkyung had used.

“Oh, Sejin-ah!”

“Hello.”

When Sejin opened the faculty office door, Lee Jinkyung waved at him. She seemed to have nothing to do and was watching a drama; she pressed the spacebar to pause playback and immediately got up. The faculty office was chilly, and she was the only one there. Lee Jinkyung led Sejin towards the heater, fussing over him constantly.

“Oh my, you’ve grown so tall! My goodness, I wouldn’t recognize you if I saw you outside!”

Lee Jinkyung had also been Sejin’s homeroom teacher in his first year of high school. She had returned to work in the second semester of last year after maternity leave and still found the much taller Sejin unfamiliar.

“Are you really going to become a celebrity? Don’t forget your teacher!”

Lee Jinkyung was one of the few people who cared about Sejin. She praised the remarkably grown Sejin with astonishment, then began rambling about Sejin’s first year. Kwon Sejin listened to the story with an empty expression, only getting up after Lee Jinkyung brought his diploma.

“Goodbye.”

“Yes, yes. Take care! Always be healthy! Give my regards to your mother too. She’ll get better soon, Sejin, you will be strong too.”

“……”

Sejin bowed his head silently and turned around. He couldn’t bring himself to correct Lee Jinkyung’s words. Hearing her speak made it feel as if Kim Hyunkyung was still alive somewhere in this world, so Sejin just listened to it silently.

14:49 Leaving school now.

Sejin left the school and walked towards Cheon Sejoo’s workplace, facing the cold wind. The building, which he had visited twice before, was located in an alley near a hill behind a residential area. Around it were many commercial buildings with offices on the first floor, but a little further on was a dead end, making it a sparsely populated area.

In the distance, a concrete building with no windows was visible. How suffocating would it be to work there? Why did the architect build a building with such a design? Sejin thought uselessly and stepped towards the parking lot. However, contrary to his expectation of finding Cheon Sejoo’s car, only an old van and a black sedan were parked in the building’s parking lot.

Did he park somewhere else? Sejin tilted his head and naturally turned his gaze to the building’s entrance. He thought Cheon Sejoo would come out soon since he had sent a message. But a moment later, the person who emerged from the building’s entrance was not Cheon Sejoo.

“……”

Moon Seonhyuk looked down at Sejin with cold eyes. Dozens of CCTVs were installed around the workshop, so an alarm would sound if an unregistered person stayed in the vicinity for a certain amount of time.

An alarm suddenly went off, and when he checked, Sejin was there. Moon Seonhyuk immediately left the office as soon as he confirmed his face.

“What are you doing here?”

A heavy voice was directed at Sejin.

Sejin turned his head towards the sound with an expressionless face. He also immediately recognized Moon Seonhyuk and frowned.

He had encountered Moon Seonhyuk several times, and all those encounters had been unpleasant. There hadn’t been much conversation, but Sejin wasn’t so dull as not to know that they found each other’s presence awkward. Expecting another unpleasant encounter today, he replied in a curt voice.

“Waiting for Cheon Sejoo.”

Seonhyuk’s eyebrow twitched at Sejin’s short reply. This was a workshop. A place where exposure to outsiders was minimized, and unauthorized people couldn’t even enter.

Seonhyuk didn’t like that Sejin was loitering around here for the second time. Furthermore, Cheon Sejoo wasn’t here right now. The director should be at Sinsa Capital, so why here… Moon Seonhyuk, thinking, suddenly narrowed his brows and asked Sejin,

“Why are you waiting for the director here?”

“Cheon Sejoo told me to come here.”

“……”

An unbelievable answer came to a question he asked, expecting otherwise. That Cheon Sejoo, that Cheon Sejoo, broke the rules and called Sejin here, was utterly unbelievable. Moon Seonhyuk distorted his face fiercely and glared at Sejin.

The man who had always shown a perfect demeanor since he first appeared, had been constantly unraveling after meeting this young boy. Seonhyuk recalled Cheon Sejoo, who had been continuously violating the organization’s rules for Sejin over the past few months. At first, he thought it was because he was soft-hearted. Later, he thought it was because he had grown fond of him. When it became truly unbearable, he consoled himself by thinking that the child would leave once he became an adult, so as not to worry about him.

However, it had been over a month since the sun had set, and the child was still clinging to Cheon Sejoo, who didn’t hesitate to break rules for him.

Bringing an outsider into his studio – it was unthinkable. The fact that none other than Cheon Sejoo had done so deeply incensed Moon Seonhyuk.

Yet, Seonhyuk still admired Cheon Sejoo. From the moment he first set foot in the studio after leaving Seok Yunhyung, encountering Cheon Sejoo, Seonhyuk had admired him.

Cheon Sejoo embodied the perfect man Seonhyuk had always envisioned. He possessed a beauty so profound it could transform any space he occupied into a scene from a movie, and his resolute initiative, his willingness to risk everything for the organization, captivated Seonhyuk.

With him, it felt like anything was possible. Truly, it was admiration. Moon Seonhyuk wanted to become someone like Cheon Sejoo, and he was proud that Cheon Sejoo was his superior.

But that perfect image was constantly being shattered. All because of that insignificant child…

“How long are you going to cling to the team leader like a parasite?”

At Seonhyuk’s snarled words, Sejin doubted his ears and looked up. Head tilted, eyes narrowed, he looked up at Moon Seonhyuk and retorted, “What’s it to you?”

“You disrespectful brat…”

Moon Seonhyuk muttered quietly and strode down the stairs. His insides were seething. The fact that this uneducated, penniless wretch was defiling Cheon Sejoo’s perfection truly grated on his nerves.

Seonhyuk wanted to eliminate Sejin, the cause of Cheon Sejoo’s change. He believed that if only that child were gone, everything would return to normal. To the perfect Cheon Sejoo: cold, caring for his team members more than anyone, and self-sacrificing for the organization.

“This isn’t a place for a child like you. You don’t even know what kind of person the team leader is… Do you even know how hard it is for him to deal with someone like you?”

Despite Seonhyuk’s dismissive attitude, as if Sejin were utterly worthless, Sejin wasn’t intimidated. He scoffed, staring intently at Moon Seonhyuk standing before him. Yes, now he understood. The reason why this man had always bothered him.

Moon Seonhyuk treated Cheon Sejoo as if he were an extraordinary being. He treated the man, who was capable of ordinary smiles, as if he were a perfect mafia boss.

It had been the same last year when he took the sleeping Cheon Sejoo home and laid him on his bed. Moon Seonhyuk’s gestures were almost reverent, as if handling an adult saint, and despite their small age difference, he used excessively formal language with Cheon Sejoo. By any measure, it was an abnormal attitude.

What form did Cheon Sejoo take in that man’s imagination? Sejin didn’t believe that was the real Cheon Sejoo. Cheon Sejoo’s true nature was probably closer to what he had shown Sejin. If so, wasn’t that discrepancy the very thing that was making Cheon Sejoo suffer?

Sejin suddenly grew curious. The Cheon Sejoo that Moon Seonhyuk knew. What was this side of him that Cheon Sejoo didn’t want to show? Sejin tried to ask casually, “What’s so hard? You don’t know how comfortable Cheon Sejoo is when he’s with me. So why are you saying such things?”

“You bastard…”

“You seem to think Cheon Sejoo is some incredibly grand person. He’s not, he really isn’t.”

At Sejin’s calm voice, Moon Seonhyuk heard his patience snap. Though he’d been reprimanded by Cheon Sejoo several times, he was naturally hot-headed. In a way, his fuse was even shorter than Haewoong’s, especially when it came to his ideal, Cheon Sejoo.

“Cheon Sejoo is an ordinary person. He’s more human than you think, someone who suffers from his own work. But what do you know, treating Cheon Sejoo like a god?”

“Shut up!”

Cheon Sejoo was someone who fit this world better than anyone else. Moon Seonhyuk is remembered distinctly. Cheon Sejoo seemed like someone born and raised in the back alleys. His past, and the wounds that came with it, only served to make Cheon Sejoo a perfect man.

In Moon Seonhyuk’s mind, Cheon Sejoo was a complete member of the underworld. Cheon Sejoo was the older brother Seonhyuk had dreamed of, the kind of person he would readily sacrifice his life for. Sometimes Cheon Sejoo deviated from that image, but Seonhyuk painstakingly tried to force him back into that mold.

Because there would never be another person like him. If Cheon Sejoo disappeared, he wouldn’t reappear. Such obsessive admiration led Seonhyuk to deify Cheon Sejoo, and Seonhyuk’s blind loyalty stemmed from those feelings.

To him, Sejin’s words were akin to something that should never be uttered. The statement that Cheon Sejoo, that perfect man, was ordinary shattered Seonhyuk’s ideals. Boiling with rage, Seonhyuk grabbed Sejin’s arm.

“You’re the one who doesn’t know a damn thing about the team leader…”

This brat could only speak such nonsense because he didn’t know what Cheon Sejoo did. If he knew Cheon Sejoo’s brutal reality, he would never say he was ordinary.

Moon Seonhyuk, eyes red, dragged the unresisting Sejin into the studio. Thus, after passing through the double iron door, he pulled Sejin down into the basement. There, the true nature of the man named Cheon Sejoo existed. This child had to know Cheon Sejoo’s true form, perfected in the basement.

“Huh? Seonhyuk hyung?”

Just as Moon Seonhyuk was dragging Sejin into the basement, Haewoong, who was coming down the stairs, recognized them and raised his voice. “Who is that? What? Isn’t he, that, him?”

He had been about to go out because Seonhyuk, who had gone to check an alarm, hadn’t returned. What was going on? Haewoong called out to Seonhyuk with a surprised expression. But Moon Seonhyuk was already beyond seeing anything. There was no hesitation in his steps as he dragged the unwelcome guest down the stairs.

As he and Sejin got closer and closer to the basement, Haewoong’s voice, full of bewilderment, poured out.

“What?! Where are you going?! You can’t go there! Seonhyuk hyung!”

Ignoring the shouting of Goo Haewoong, Seonhyuk, who had brought Sejin to the basement, immediately opened the studio door. Click, as the lock disengaged with iris recognition, lights began to illuminate the dark space.

Dragged inside, Sejin frowned at the damp, fishy smell emanating from within, then his face hardened into a blank expression as he took in the sight before his eyes.

The basement was desolate. A large faucet installed on an undecorated wall. A large window, like one found in an interrogation room, was installed on one wall, and on either side of it were rows of seemingly useless objects. Hammers, axes, saws, pliers. Things that were clearly weapons, and various forms of knives and scalpels neatly arranged in a cabinet. And in transparent glass bottles, lined up, was an unknown liquid.

In the center of the room was an iron bed with restraints, and around the perimeter of the bed was a slanted surface, like a gutter, to collect flowing liquids in one place. The lowest part of this incline led to a drain in the center of the floor. And piled in one corner were iceboxes, an ice machine, and large travel bags.

A ceiling without a single vent. A completely sealed space where no one could see. A place that could only be entered after double and triple security procedures.

“…”

Kwon Sejin wasn’t stupid. From what he saw, he instinctively knew what kind of work was done here. As soon as he realized that fact, his stomach churned. Not out of disgust, but because the weight of the secret Cheon Sejoo had been hiding was too immense.

“What the team leader does here, you…”

Sejin cut off Seonhyuk’s furious snarl. “I know without you saying it.”

He surveyed the entire room with cold, sunken eyes. What kind of expression would Cheon Sejoo wear in this place? Was he cold? Was he chilling? Or was he suffering? Thinking this, Sejin vaguely understood how Cheon Sejoo must have felt here… His chest ached deep inside. Sejin turned back to Moon Seonhyuk with eyes full of fire.

“…So, you’re saying Cheon Sejoo is the person who suits this place best?”

There was scorn in Sejin’s voice as he asked. Moon Seonhyuk didn’t know Cheon Sejoo. That man, however much he admired Cheon Sejoo, had no idea what kind of person he truly was.

Sejin felt both satisfaction and displeasure at this fact. Moon Seonhyuk’s existence, trying to force Cheon Sejoo into an image he had created, was unbearably ridiculous and pathetic. Sejin scoffed and opened his mouth.

“If you bring me to a place like this, what? Did you think I’d get scared and run away from Cheon Sejoo?”

“You bastard…”

“It’s not me who doesn’t know Cheon Sejoo, it’s you.”

At the mocking words, Seonhyuk strode forward and grabbed Sejin’s collar. He heard the sound of his jumper tearing and felt a suffocating tightness in his breath, but Sejin did not back down.

Sejin had once challenged Cheon Sejoo to his face. Someone like Moon Seonhyuk was no threat to Sejin. He placed his hand on the back of Seonhyuk’s hand, which was as big as a pot lid resting on his face, and with force, he pushed it away, scoffing at Seonhyuk.

“You know nothing about that man. Cheon Sejoo fit this place? Don’t spout such bullshit in front of him. It’ll just piss Cheon Sejoo off.”

It was a complete denial of Seonhyuk’s entire worldview. Instantly, a flush of anger surged through him, and he pushed Sejin’s shoulders with both hands.

“Shut up! If only you weren’t here…!”

Thud, Sejin was instantly pushed back, hitting his back against the wall and wincing. Seonhyuk, with glaring eyes, approached Sejin, who was clenching his teeth and staring back. He clenched his large fist, about to raise his arm to strike Sejin, when click, the lock disengaged and the studio door burst open.

“No!”

Haewoong, who appeared opening the door, shrieked and ran to hug Seonhyuk’s waist. “Goo Haewoong!” Seonhyuk yelled, pushing Haewoong away with both arms, but Haewoong clung to him like a leech, gesturing to Sejin.

“Hey, hey. Get out fast! Hyung! No! Are you crazy? What’s wrong with you! You, get out fast!”