The next day, Wooyoung stabbed the coffee maker's buttons like he was trying to murder them. Black liquid sputtered into his mug—bitter as his mood.
"Shibal, piece of shit machine..." He burned his tongue and slammed the cup down. "Fuck Choi San and his stupid perfect face."
Seonghwa raised an eyebrow but disappeared into his bedroom, returning with an armload of clothes that screamed expensive fantasy.
"What did that coffee ever do to you?" Seonghwa appeared flawlessly magazine-perfect even at 10 AM. "Let me guess—tall, dark, and emotionally constipated is haunting your dreams?"
There is no haunting. Tonight we are hunting.
Seonghwa raised an eyebrow then vanished into his bedroom, back with an armload of garments screaming costly fantasy.
"Time to make some money, darling."
The leather mini skirt he held up was basically a belt with delusions. Wooyoung snorted. "I'm not wearing your BDSM costume to work."
"It's called fashion!" Seonghwa waggled a sailor outfit complete with thigh-highs. "This screams 'corrupt my innocence'..."
"And I scream 'absolutely fucking not.'" Wooyoung grabbed his usual black jeans. "Save the cosplay for your OnlyFans subscribers."
"Your loss. But I'm doing your face."
An hour later, Wooyoung looked like sin incarnate—smoky eyes that promised damnation, lips that could ruin marriages. Seonghwa had outdone himself.
"There. Now you look like you could destroy a man's entire bloodline."
"Perfect."
---
Midnight Hongdae was a battlefield dressed in neon. While working girls prowled their territories like lovely predators, the red light district pulsed with bass-heavy music and desperate energy.
"See what crawled out of the gutter." Mina stood outside Club Paradise with her customary pack of bleach-damaged hyenas. Tonight's theme seemed to be desperation meets disco ball; sequins grabbing neon light like a cheap dream.
Mina's voice dripped feigned sweetness, "Back for round two?" "Thought we made it clear—this corner's got a dress code. You know, human clothing?"
Wooyoung paused, her head angling with languid predatory curiosity. "A dress code? How cute. A homeowners group is what's next?"
"Don't get smart with us, you freak show reject," Hyejin snapped, her roots showing three weeks of disregard. "Just because you dress like Halloween clearance doesn't mean you can steal our regulars."
Seonghwa's laughter was sharp and cruel. "Darling, you cannot take something never yours. Market rivalry is what that is called."
Passersby were decelerating as vendors deserted corn dog stands and a crowd was gathering. Nothing grabbed Hongdae's attention like the prospect of public embarrassment.
"We've been working this street since before you circus freaks discovered hair dye," Mina's face approached the color of her cheap lipstick.
"And still," Wooyoung inspected his black nails with dramatic apathy, "here we are, earning more in one night than you see in a month. Funny how that works.
"At least we don't have to fake to be women..."
Seonghwa's voice fell to a whisper that miraculously carried, "Pretend?" Honey, we don't pretend to be anything; we just happen to be superior at it than the real women."
The spectators collectively "ooh" sounds like one would experience viewing a harsh variety show.
A slick black Genesis pulled up as though the cosmos had dramatic timing. The window opened to show a guy in his fifties sporting a Rolex worth more than most annual incomes.
"Excuse me," he called out, bypassing the girls who immediately swarmed his car. "Angel, right? From Club Eclipse?"
The street girls stopped mid-approach like mannequins.
Wooyoung's personality changed from cruel to endearing immediately. "Mr. Kim! What a delightful surprise."
"I've been searching for you." My business partner from Tokyo is in town; he's eager to meet you following what I informed him last week."
"How flattering. I am free tonight."
"Wonderful. Get in and over dinner we will go over details. I arranged reservations with Mingles." Turning back to the girls, whose faces had undergone interesting color changes, Wooyoung said, "Ladies, this has been... enlightening. But I have to get back to work."
Leaving Seonghwa to deliver the killing strike, he entered into the Genesis with graceful fluidity.
Seonghwa said softly as the car drove away, "Don't worry, girls. I'm sure someone will be along who's interested in budget choices."
Inside Club Eclipse the search started at once. Targeting his customer, Wooyoung moved smoothly like butter among the audience full of , expensive watches, designer shoes, wedding ring tan lines—all the typical suspects.
David showed up in minutes. Recently divorced mid-forties pharmaceutical executive, frantically looking for affirmation from somebody youthful enough to be his son.
"Can I get you a drink?"
Let's go on.
Wooyoung laughed at awful jokes about drug patents, let David purchase him whisky, then acted the perfect fantasy—risky but open. This was muscle memory honed over decades, autopilot.
Wooyoung's skin crawled, though, when David's hot palm met his thigh.
Wrong touch, Wrong hands.
Phantom sensations drifted over his skin—tender fingertips that had drawn around his jaw like he was formed of porcelain, not plastic.
"Ready to get out of here?" David's breath reeked of expensive scotch and desperation.
"Absolutely." The falsehood felt like ash.
Wooyoung shut his eyes and waited to feel something in the restroom against grubby tiles with David pawing at his clothing. Everything.
David kissed like a washing machine—all rough movement, no subtlety. Claimed instead of venerated; grabbed rather than caressed.
Wooyoung's chest shrank. Breathing was impossible for him.
Wait, I—" He pushed David away more forcefully than needed. "I need air."
Shouldering through the audience toward the bar, he ran before David could respond. Ordering yet another whiskey, his hands trembled.
"Shitty night?" Seonghwa materialized next to him, having given up his own mark. "What happened with pharmaceutical boy?"
Wooyoung's voice cracked. "Couldn't do it."
"Since when do you allow sentiments obstruct your rent money?
The question hit like a blade between ribs. Since when, indeed? He could not buy luxuries and feelings. His body was money, his delight unimportant as long as customers were pleased.
"What's wrong with me?" The words stumbled out cracked. "Have I lost my fucking touch?"
"Don't tell about yourself like... "
Wooyoung chuckled, but it sounded more like a sob. "I can't even fake it anymore. What kind of whore can't fake an orgasm?"
"The human race." Seonghwa's voice was utterly soft. You are having an off night... "
Wooyoung snapped away from comfort. "I don't get off nights!" "That's not how it operates."
With obsessive will, he plunged back into the throng; but, every possible customer seemed wrong. Not enough like someone else, too rough, too soft, too much like someone else. His flawlessly created exterior was splitting.
---
An hour later, pride in tatters and still unpaid bills, he staggered home alone.
Wooyoung appeared in the bathroom mirror like precisely what he was: a lovely tragedy spiraling toward bottom rock.
He stripped and descended into scorching water, yet no quantity of heat could erase the remembrance of loving hands and respectful caresses that had felt like promises instead of trades.
Jung Wooyoung finally let himself collapse against the shower wall.
San gazed at quarterly reports one week later while his treacherous brain went to hazardous ground—dark eyes and keen smiles—numbers swam together.
"Mr. Choi?" San shuddered as though electrocuted. Six executives stared at him with attitudes ranging from worry to hardly disguised dread. Choi San didn't get spaced out. Ever.
"I'm sorry, what—
Hongjoong muttered sluggishly, like talking to someone knocked out, "The Morrison restructuring plan."
San searched for background. Morrison, pharmaceutical, reform
"Approve it."
"Sir, you haven't truly reviewed..."
"I approved it." His tone might have frozen hell.
Uncomfortable silence then consumed the meeting. San observed Hongjoong's anxious gaze but dismissed it as executives escaped. His issues were far more serious than those of bruised egos.
Like the way his hands shook reaching for coffee.
His grandmother greeted him by saying, You look like death warmed over, not even looking up from whatever she was slicing.
"Such a warm welcome," San muttered, but he was already heading towards the familiar solace of her presence in the conventional hanok he had bought her.
"Don't sass me, boy." What was the last time you ate actual food? And I mean actual food, not the over expensive rubbish served at corporate lunches.
"I eat a lot..."
"Coffee doesn't count." She already was gathering ingredients from the refrigerator. "Sit. Talk. And don't lie to me about what's eating you alive."
San sank onto the scarred chair from their former flat—the sole piece of furniture she'd declined to change.
"Work has been difficult recently," he said.
"Work has always been difficult. She ladled soup into his boyhood dish. This is about someone, isn't it? You've never let it hollow you out like this."
From San's fingertips the spoon tumbled and sounded like a little confession.
"I might have... crossed some professional borders recently," he confessed softly.
"Ah." She crossed from him, her calloused hands lightly grasping her tea cup. And now you're trying to convince yourself it was just poor judgment?
"It was bad judgment."
"Was it? Or was it the first honest thing you've felt in years?"
San mumbled, "I don't know."
"Then maybe that's where we start."
He chewed methodically while they sat in peaceful silence and she looked intensely and unobtrusively.
"Your parents met in totally bad conditions," she finally said. "Your mother was selling paintings on street corners." Your father who was poor as hell because his family treated him like trash and didn't give him any inheritance, was scheduled to marry the daughter of his father's business partner for a vital merger.
San gazed upward. He had heard snippets before, never specifics.
"Everybody said it would never work. She was too poor, too artistic." He was too stiff, an hard worker like you . But the first time I saw them together, i was aware those people were morons.
"They passed when Grandma was seven. That's not exactly a fairytale.
---
Club Eclipse was a mistake wrapped in bass-heavy music and terrible decisions. San told himself he was there for Hongjoong's birthday, definitely not because of some misguided sense of... what? Guilt?
The crowd was too young, too loud. San felt like an impostor nursing whiskey while his eyes scanned faces he told himself he wasn't looking for.
Then he found him.
Laughing at something a man with an expensive watch murmured in Wooyoung's ear, he stood at the bar. He was terrible in black denim, which fit like a second skin. His smile, however, felt off—something frail and pleading that tightened San's chest.
Wooyoung leaned into the touch as the stranger's palm gripped his thigh, but even from across the room San could detect the strain in those shoulders and the white-knuckled hold on his glass.
San felt an unpleasant jolt of worry when they headed towards a corner and the man's hands grew bolder, when Wooyoung abruptly pushed him aside and darted toward the restroom like something was after him.
He remained paralyzed and unsure. What was he expected to do? Storm a bathroom playing white knight for someone who had clearly stated he wanted nothing to do with him?
San had retreated to shadows near the exit by the time Wooyoung appeared shell-shocked. He ought to go. He remained and observed Wooyoung return to the chase with great resolve rather than driving back home and claiming this had nothing to do with him.
Watched someone visibly struggling drink more and smile less progressively decay in real time.
Watching a car crash in slow motion was like seeing something terrible and unavoidable and somewhat his fault.
San left when the view became too much, but guilt followed him into the chilly alley.
His sensible side of mind argued he bore none of responsibility here. An adult choosing an adult like Wooyoung had nothing to do with their little meeting.
The rest of him couldn't help but wonder if he had damaged something he should have treated with more care.
His penthouse felt like a mausoleum when he at last arrived there, lovely, empty, and cold enough to keep the dead.
He sat in his living room till dawn, wondering when safeguarding someone had started to seem so much like leaving them alone, listening to the stillness.