PEN Vol 2 Ch. 3

“Let’s go.”

Cheon Sejoo motioned toward the front door with a nod, and Sejin silently followed behind him. They headed down to the underground parking lot and got into the car together, heading toward Gangdong-gu.

Raindrops splattered against the windshield. With the sound of rain mingled with the hum of the engine, Cheon Sejoo’s eyes turned colder with every patter.

With him remaining silent, Sejin didn’t say a word either, and the two of them sat in quiet contemplation, each lost in their own thoughts.

It took about 40 minutes to reach the front gate of East Seoul Boys High School. It was nearly 9 o’clock when Sejin got out of the car. As he did, Sejoo gave him a warning.

“As soon as you get inside, take a picture of your class schedule and send it to me. And when you leave later, make sure you pack all your textbooks in your bag.”

“…Fine.”

Even though Sejin’s face was full of annoyance, he didn’t argue. It seemed like he had finally realized that no matter what he said, Cheon Sejoo would do whatever he wanted anyway.

Sejin stepped out of the car with an umbrella in hand, disappearing through the school gate. Once he was out of sight, Sejoo picked up his phone. A message from Doyoon had come in.

Kang Doyoon

-My exams ended yesterday! But I have an end-of-semester dinner tonight, so I have to go to that. Is it okay if we meet for a bit before that?

8:26 AM

Instead of replying by message, Cheon Sejoo immediately pressed the call button. After just a short ring, Doyoon answered the phone in a bright voice.

“Doyoon-ah^[1], I’ll come over to your place.”

With that affectionate whisper, he drove towards Kang Doyoon’s apartment.

He had met Doyoon about three years ago. It all started when Doyoon confidently handed him a note. At that time, Cheon Sejoo had been mindlessly shopping at the department store, trying to burn through some of the money he had accumulated.

He noticed a man in the same store glancing at him repeatedly, and before long, that man approached with a neatly written note and gave it to him. It wasn’t unusual for people to ask for his number or hand him a business card, but it was the first time a man had done it so openly in a public place. Cheon Sejoo, slightly caught off guard, looked at Doyoon.

But Doyoon, completely unfazed by the gaze, simply smiled sweetly and said, “Call me,” before walking away. Cheon Sejoo hesitated but eventually called him two days later.

When they met at a café, Doyoon turned out to be lively and overflowing with confidence. He was undeniably an attractive guy, but Cheon Sejoo had no interest in pursuing a romantic relationship. Instead, he made his intentions clear and suggested they become s3x partners. Doyoon agreed without hesitation, and for the past three years, they had maintained a mutual arrangement as casual sex partners.

Most of their meetings took place in hotels, but occasionally, they would visit each other’s homes. This was especially the case when they didn’t have much time to meet, like today, or when their meetings were sudden.

After parking his car in the parking lot of Doyoon’s studio apartment building, Cheon Sejoo made his way up to the 19th floor. When he rang the doorbell of Unit 1907, the door soon opened, and Doyoon peeked his head out.

“Hyung^[2]!”

“Hey.”

Cheon Sejoo greeted him with his perfectly drawn smile, which made Doyoon grin cheekily as he stretched out his arms to hug him. He buried his face in Sejoo’s chest, rubbing it briefly, and then wrapped his arms tightly around Sejoo’s waist before letting go.

As the youngest in a family with three older sisters, Doyoon was naturally affectionate, having grown up surrounded by love. At the same time, he was neither immature nor overly sensitive. Instead, he was cheerful and easygoing without any signs of being spoiled.

Cheon Sejoo adored Doyoon because of that, and Doyoon, in turn, liked how much Sejoo adored him. Thanks to that, this allowed them to maintain their relationship without a single argument.

Doyoon was dressed in nothing but a plain white t-shirt and boxers. Fresh from a shower, he smelled sweet, like shampoo, and he slung his arms around Cheon Sejoo’s neck, clinging to him playfully. When Sejoo instinctively lifted him up, Doyoon’s slender legs wrapped around his waist. In that intimate embrace, they moved together toward Doyoon’s bedroom, almost as if their bodies were one.

⊹˚. ♡.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⊹˚. ♡.𖥔 ݁ ˖

The day Cheon Hye-in died was September 15th, during the height of the autumn monsoon season. At the time, Cheon Sejoo had been working as a resident in the thoracic surgery department at Korea University Hospital.

That day, he had planned to visit home during a rare short break after a week of exhausting work. However, just before he would leave as his shift ended, a patient with severe damage to their pulmonary aorta due to a traffic accident was rushed into the hospital.

As one of the thoracic surgery residents, rare and highly valued, Cheon Sejoo naturally had to enter the operating room and assist Professor Kim Cheonggeun, and his plans to return home were inevitably delayed.

Eight hours later.

After nearly twenty packs of blood transfusion due to massive hemorrhaging and finally managing to stop the bleeding, they were met with the news of yet another incoming emergency patient.

This new patient had suffered extreme chest trauma due to a fall and had gone into cardiac arrest because they were discovered late, resulting in critical blood loss. Their condition was so severe that even the paramedics couldn’t even attempt CPR in the ambulance.

Upon hearing the news first, before relaying it to Professor Kim Cheonggeun, Cheon Sejoo had a fleeting thought.

The patient currently undergoing surgery had a higher chance of survival, whereas the other patient had already gone into cardiac arrest. Perhaps it would be better for the professor to finish the current surgery as it is.

Ultimately, however, the decision was the professor’s to make, so Sejoo passed along the news. Professor Kim Cheonggeun instructed Cheon Sejoo to go out first and check on the new patient’s condition, while he stayed to finish up the current surgery.

Cheon Sejoo quickly took off his surgical scrubs, washed his hands thoroughly, and rushed out of the operating room.

While running toward the emergency medical center where the ambulance was expected to arrive, he pulled out to check his phone. He noticed a missed call from Cheon Hye-in about five hours earlier.

He didn’t have time to return the call, so Sejoo quickly sent Hye-in a message, telling her that he likely wouldn’t make it home today and to make sure she ate well, even without him. Then, he turned off his phone.

When he and the nurses stepped outside to receive the incoming patient, they were met with a torrential downpour so heavy that it seemed to deafen their ears.

Whoooosh—

The rain was pouring down in such heavy sheets that the world appeared white before their eyes. Having been cooped up in the cramped operating room for hours, Cheon Sejoo felt a fleeting sense of liberation at that moment.

He liked rainy days.

After all, it had been on a rainy day that the one person, his only family, who mattered most to him had come into his life. A sense of relief washed over him, and with it, the motivation that had disappeared returned, lifting his mood slightly.

That would be the last moment Cheon Sejoo would ever enjoy the sound of rain.

Soon after, the blare of sirens began to pierce through the sound of rain. The now-familiar shape of an ambulance grew closer, and Cheon Sejoo, along with the nurses, waited for the patient to be unloaded from the ambulance.

The white ambulance screeched to a halt in front of the emergency medical center. As the sirens died down, the back doors flew open.

At that moment, Cheon Sejoo stood no more than two meters away from the patient, but their condition was immediately clear at first glance.

Covered in blood, the patient’s hands and feet were ghostly pale as a corpse’s, and their shattered ribs jutted grotesquely through their flesh as if they had been pierced by something.

In a brief moment, Cheon Sejoo assessed the patient’s condition, his gut told him it didn’t look good. And, as if to confirm his judgment was right, the paramedics urgently unloaded the patient and informed him that the patient had been in cardiac arrest for five minutes.

It was around then that he began to feel that something was terribly wrong.

With a clack, the stretcher was lowered to the ground, and the wheels clicked into place, bringing the patient right in front of him.

The overwhelming stench of blood hit him.

And yet, there was something strangely familiar about the school uniform the patient was wearing.

In that instant, Cheon Sejoo forgot about everything, the need to assess the patient’s condition, the urgency of the situation—and he found himself turning his gaze blankly to look at the face of the patient who lay peacefully with their eyes closed.

Time seemed to stop.

The pungent smell of blood that filled his nose and the frantic voices shouting around him all seemed to fade into insignificance. Only the sound of the rain, relentlessly pounding in his ears, remained clear.

The nurses shook his shoulders, trying to snap him out of his daze, but he couldn’t feel anything. He simply stood there, rooted to the spot, staring at the face of the patient he had just judged to be beyond saving.

The face of Cheon Hye-in, who lay there peacefully with her eyes closed, as if she had no more regrets in life…

From that day on, rainy days became nothing short of a nightmare for Cheon Sejoo.

No matter what he did, no matter how much time passed, whenever it rained, he could never rid himself of the last image of Cheon Hye-in. The memories, stained with regret, would resurface with the sound of rain, choking his breath and dragging him down into the darkness as deep as the ocean.

Whenever Cheon Sejoo felt suffocated by this feeling, he was tempted by an overwhelming urge to simply let himself go. But he couldn’t. He had already given his life to Shin Gyoyeon in return for avenging Hye-in’s death.

It was a choice made for Hye-in, thus, Cheon Sejoo had to cling to life persistently until the man decided to discard him.

And so, he sought ways to escape the suffocating weight that pressed down on him. He tried various methods to shake off the memories filled with despair. First, it was alcohol. Then, punishingly intense workouts that were much closer to self-abuse. Now, it was sex.

The way Cheon Sejoo handled men was relentless.

He was the type of person who would drive his partner to their limits, pushing until they lost consciousness. He had no choice. If he didn’t, there was no way to drown out the deafening sound of the rain that filled his mind.

By two in the afternoon, after nearly five hours of suffering under Cheon Sejoo, Kang Doyoon lay asleep, exhausted, and face streaked with tears.

On the other hand, Cheon Sejoo, having drained not just his bodily fluids but emotions as well, felt a calm clarity in his mind. It was a sense of inner peace, achieved at the expense of Doyoon’s sacrifice.

Feeling a pang of guilt as he looked at the groaning Doyoon, Sejoo gently washed him up while he was half asleep, wiped him down, and laid him on a freshly made bed.

As Doyoon mumbled unintelligible words, he was soothed back to sleep by Cheon Sejoo’s soft pats.

For a while, Cheon Sejoo stood quietly, gazing down at Doyoon who was still asleep before carefully applying ointment to the swollen, reddened areas on his lower body that were bruised to the point of resembling chaffed skin.

Even though Doyoon was someone who truly enjoyed sex, seeing the marks he had left behind always made Cheon Sejoo feel uneasy.

When he was done, it was already past 3 PM. As much as he wanted to rest next to Doyoon, he couldn’t go back to sleep—he had to pick up the rebellious puppy.