MIM 27

The chest muscles he could grasp in his hands were surprisingly soft. He had thought they would be rough due to scars, but if he didn’t think of it as belonging to the guy, it wasn’t bad. He gently rubbed the soft areola in circles and then tugged on the nipple. It was a place he had never consciously thought about during sex, so the sensation felt strange.

“Good, Hye-jeong, go for it.”

He encouraged him, intending to trample on the guy’s pride. Shin-woo seemed to be under the illusion that he could do this whore thing elegantly if he silently endured it, but he had no intention of letting him off that easily.

Only by retaliating in some form could he bear the harsh reality. Jae-seung moaned softly and slammed his lower body against him. As he neared climax, his mind strangely quieted. The silence felt lonelier than peaceful, so he listened to the sounds Shin-woo was making.

The guy was panting. Occasionally, moans mixed in with his breath. The body panting in his arms was hot and slick with sweat. With his nose buried in the broad shoulders, Jae-seung released himself.

His semen gushed inside the hole. Jae-seung closed his eyes and emptied himself into Shin-woo. The tension in his muscles melted away, and he waited for the orgasm to wash over him.

Then, perhaps thinking it was over, he suddenly lifted the limp body.

“Ugh….”

“You should have done it on the bed.”

After laying Shin-woo down on the bed, Jae-seung pressed down on both his knees, spreading his legs wide. As he plunged his fingers into the sticky folds, the semen that had pooled slowly oozed out. The cum of an Alpha in rut was quite voluminous, and the semen that leaked from his hole soon soaked the sheets.

“Good, Hye-jeong… I told you to try it.”

“…”

“You’re selling your body, but you don’t want to act like a whore?”

Jae-seung pouted his lips and raised an eyebrow. Even seeing the hole spitting out cloudy fluids with his own eyes, the guy remained unfazed. On his face, which was flushed with embarrassment, a calm yet brazen expression appeared.

When they first slept together, Shin-woo pretended to enjoy it, wrapping his legs around Jae-seung’s waist and writhing in all sorts of ways. Jae-seung grumbled as he released the handcuffs.

“I’m giving you ten million as compensation, and you’re trying to get it for free?”

“It’s not compensation.”

The cracked voice sharply interrupted his words. Shin-woo, who was roughly wiping his thighs with the sheet, was staring straight at Jae-seung.

“It’s a fee. I’m not a dog.”

The moment their eyes met, a thrill surged through him. Those were beast-like eyes. Ironically, witnessing the guy’s face, closest to his true self, eased his anxiety. Was this what it felt like to finally find a thread in a tangled mess? He felt confident that he could peel away all of the guy’s layers. As the pain of the rut gradually faded, his consciousness became clearer.

Jae-seung smiled. Only after his heart had completely crumbled did his vision clear. He was entirely alone. Even beyond the quiet window and the high walls.

“Ah! Madam!”

With a scream, a thud sounded from beyond the door. It seemed someone had fallen backward, as the sound of something heavy hitting the floor echoed. Ignoring the noise of the bustling people outside, Jae-seung slipped his legs into his pants.

“Let’s go home.”

Shaking off the dust, Jae-seung swung the door open. He passed through the startled employees, who stepped back in shock, and disappeared from view with a light step.

Home. Left alone, Shin-woo mulled over the last words before he soon followed behind.

***

“…Hye-jeong?”

The gardener asked again. Jae-seung pressed his throbbing temples and sighed. After sifting through the list of those who had stayed in the annex, he was met with the excuse that all related documents had been lost in a fire in this day and age. So, he had searched for someone to replace Butler Hwang and finally found the man before him, the gardener.

The only remaining employees who hadn’t been replaced by Shin-woo, including the gardener and Butler Hwang, were just three. They differed in age, background, and duties, and had no connection to Shin-woo. The only commonality among them was their long experience of over ten years working in the mansion. While he couldn’t pinpoint the exact criteria, it was clear that Shin-woo had not intentionally left these people behind to conspire.

That money ghost wouldn’t partner with someone who couldn’t understand a word.

Jae-seung suppressed his irritation and nodded. If the gardener asked one more time, he planned to find someone else.

“I heard the name Hye-jeong and that she was close to my mother. Being close could just be something my mother said, but anyway, what’s her last name?”

“Park Hye-jeong… I think.”

Having answered with certainty, the gardener hesitated, perhaps worried afterward. Unaware that he was watching for the gardener’s reaction, Jae-seung was shaking one leg nervously.

After a moment of contemplation, he finally spoke.

“I heard she liked Shin-woo.”

“Ah… she did seem that way. But nothing happened. Hye-jeong wasn’t the type to approach that kind of man…”

The additional words seemed to represent Hye-jeong. The gardener, who couldn’t understand much but had a keen sense, seemed to have caught on that Jae-seung was suspicious of Hye-jeong in a negative light.

To have someone who would defend her even in her absence, she must not have been an ordinary attractive woman. Jae-seung asked bluntly.

“…Is she pretty?”

“Yes? Yes, well. She’s pretty and sociable… with a lovely personality, so everyone liked her. When I was working in the garden, she would come by and bring me refreshing drinks, and she was a girl who was not only beautiful in appearance but also had a beautiful heart.”

“Just answer the questions I ask.”

“…Yes, she’s pretty.”

A pretty girl. Jae-seung chuckled at the memory of Shin-woo calling her ‘girl.’ It was ridiculous to refer to a woman of similar age as a girl.

“When exactly did she suddenly disappear? Right after my father died? Or a few days later?”

“It wasn’t immediately, but she vanished shortly after. There were a few employees who died in the fire at that time, so it was chaotic, but I remember clearly. Hye-jeong had a presence.”

“Just answer the questions I ask.”

“Ah… yes. Because of the fire, the employees living in the mansion stayed at the villa in the south. I remember Hye-jeong followed my mother, and not long after, my mother started searching for Hye-jeong. Was it a week? Two weeks? Anyway, it wasn’t a month.”

What could have happened in that time? Jae-seung recalled Shin-woo’s indifferent face.

“Shin-woo and Hye-jeong, they had no connection at all?”

“They probably just saw each other occasionally. As you know, Shin-woo worked under the chairman, so there wasn’t much chance for them to meet.”

“Then why did Shin-woo replace all the people working in the mansion?”

As he listened, a question that had been nagging at him came to mind, and he asked directly. Contrary to his mother’s expectations, there were no employees from the Mangwol district among those newly hired by Shin-woo. Rather, they all had good experience, and if anything, their identities were more certain than dubious. This meant that his actions were not to bring in his own people but to fire the existing ones.

While he stared intently, the gardener scratched at his faded jeans, hesitating. If he didn’t know, he would have said so right away, but his hesitation suggested he had something on his mind. The gardener finally spoke when Jae-seung, unable to hold back, yawned widely.

“I think… he didn’t trust them.”

“The people working?”

“Yes. It’s just my intuition. Your mother was very sensitive while proceeding with the lawsuit regarding the young master’s guardianship. So, I think she might have organized things right after leaving the mansion.”

“Did he send everyone away because he was afraid there might be people on her side?”

“Well, that might be part of it, but more than that, on that day….”

The gardener swallowed hard before continuing.

“On the day the chairman passed away, all the CCTV in the mansion was turned off, so… I think he might have thought there was an enemy inside…”

“The CCTV was off?”

This was news to Jae-seung. He had seen countless articles and news reports, but he had never heard anything like this before. When Jae-seung pressed for more details, the gardener, flustered, pulled his chair back and tried to escape.

“Didn’t, didn’t you know? I thought you knew, I’m sorry!”

“Ha!”

“What do I know? Just think of it as nonsense from an uneducated person.”

If the CCTV was conveniently off, it meant there was a perpetrator or at least an accomplice inside the mansion. Jae-seung recalled the men he had seen at the ice cream shop. If there was an external intruder and someone inside helped them, it was highly likely to be Shin-woo. Why did he replace people, and why did Hye-jeong disappear?

There were surely stories that hadn’t been made public, things Shin-woo hadn’t told him. Jae-seung scrutinized the gardener with sharp eyes. He looked like an ordinary man in his forties, but there must be a reason why Shin-woo left him in the mansion.