PUCKD Ch 55
by soapa“Shin Hojae!”
“You didn’t die inside, did you!? Hey!”
At the noisy voice coming from outside the room, Shin Hojae flinched, moving his eyelids. A sound of knocking, as if the door would break, followed immediately.
Only then did his eyelids slowly lift. Shin Hojae blinked his eyes sluggishly, staring blankly at the image reflected in his pupils.
A small room, and a crumpled blanket.
“……?”
He clearly remembered tightly hugging something warm and elastic, but there was nothing grasped in his arms. Shin Hojae swept his hand over what he could touch, feeling a sense of emptiness. Only the rough and cold texture of the blanket was felt.
Bang!
“Hey, Shin Hojae! Get up!”
“We’re leaving in 30 minutes!”
At those words, Hojae abruptly sat up his upper body. His head rang with a ‘ding,’ and he grabbed his head, staggering as he walked toward the door. Click, when he opened the door, Yook Doomin and Ji Minchul were standing outside the room as expected.
“Whoa, seriously. You’ve been sleeping all this time?”
“Woah. Couldn’t you have covered up a little below?”
“……”
At that, he lowered his head and saw that he was completely naked, not even wearing underwear. It was Yook Doomin who slapped Shin Hojae’s arm, which was still full of sleepiness, with a loud smack.
“Hey, hey, no time to zone out. Hurry up and wash. We’ll pack your stuff in the meantime. The bus is down below right now!”
And then he forcefully pushed Shin Hojae’s back into the bathroom. Ji Minchul, who followed behind, screamed, “Ack!” He had almost tripped over a T-shirt.
“Ah, I seriously almost died just now. Why are you taking off your clothes and leaving them everywhere? Did you have a strip show or something?”
Shin Hojae stopped his steps toward the bathroom and turned around. As he said, his T-shirt and pants were scattered one by one from the entrance.
It seemed he had taken off his clothes due to the alcohol and jumped into bed. Although he had no memory of it….
Shin Hojae’s brows furrowed in the middle. Another vague memory, as if trapped in a blurry fog, seemed to be within reach but remained elusive.
“What’s this? A button?”
Yook Doomin, who was picking up the clothes, picked up something the size of a fingernail rolling on the floor and held it out. Shin Hojae reflexively snatched the button from his hand.
Yook Doomin looked at Shin Hojae’s face with a puzzled expression.
“Didn’t it fall off your shirt? Take it and don’t forget to sew it on at home.”
“……”
“I knew it. Hojae-shin’s phone battery is dead too. I’ll charge this for a bit, okay? Don’t forget to take the charger later.”
“Ah, why are you spacing out there? I told you to hurry up and wash up!”
“……Did I go out with someone yesterday, by any chance?”
“Huh? You don’t know? You disappeared at some point.”
“……”
Shin Hojae wrinkled his brows and held his forehead with his hand. Clothes, a button. Something was on the tip of his memory but still wouldn’t come into grasp.
The hint was provided by Ji Minchul, who was roughly stuffing clothes and luggage into a bag.
“Hyonghoon said you left with the club owner.”
“Ah! That’s right, that’s right. That’s why we stopped looking for you. We definitely didn’t give up halfway, okay?”
“…The club owner?”
“Yeah.”
Kwon Junghyun.
Only then did the cloudy fog lift a layer, and the vaguely seen memory began to take shape.
The memory of arguing outside, then kissing, rushing back to the hotel in a frenzy, aggressively pushing his excited self, burying his nose in his neck stubbornly, finally thrusting himself between his thighs and reaching climax, and the memory of pulling him back when he tried to pull away and forcing him onto the bed, shaking each other’s genitals until he begged him to stop, and hugging the man exhausted from continuous orgasms from behind and not letting go…
“Fuck.”
“Oh my. Did Hojae-Hojae just swear?”
Bang.
Hojae closed the bathroom door right there and pulled the shower lever.
Cold water immediately poured down onto the crown of his head. It was a coldness that seemed to chase away the remaining intoxication all at once.
However, unlike his head, which was starting to cool, blood quickly rushed to the lower area. Even without opening his eyes to check, he knew his ‘other self’ stood erect, almost touching his belly button.
Shin Hojae closed his eyes, scowling, and muttered curses. It was such a heat that it showed no sign of subsiding on its own without him putting a hand to it and relieving the pressure.
His father’s condition suddenly worsened. Without any prior warning signs.
The caregiver who was with him urgently called 911, and his father was rushed into emergency surgery. They said the bleeding in his brain wouldn’t stop.
Hojae rushed to the hospital from practice. His mother was sitting alone in front of the operating room.
After a long surgery, it was decided that his father would be admitted to the intensive care unit in an unconscious state. His mother went in for a consultation with the doctor.
It was only when Hojae was waiting for his mother alone that Shin Yeonjae arrived at the hospital. Since they couldn’t just enter the room in the intensive care unit, Yeonjae sat down heavily next to Hojae with a disheartened face.
Shin Hojae asked stiffly without even looking at his sister.
“Where were you that you’re only arriving now?”
The time his father was taken to the hospital in the ambulance was originally Shin Yeonjae’s time to care for him.
However, for some reason, the caregiver was by his father’s side instead of Shin Yeonjae.
No matter how good the caregiver, it’s hard for them to be as attentive as family. That’s why the three family members were splitting their time to care for their father.
Even knowing that what happened couldn’t be undone, a person’s heart is like that.
The caregiver had been working double the usual hours, so maybe she was tired and noticed his father’s condition a little late? If Shin Yeonjae, or one of the family members, had been there, could they have called the ambulance even 5 minutes earlier?
That thought hadn’t left his head since earlier.
Shin Yeonjae couldn’t answer his question immediately. Shin Hojae’s face became even harder.
“Where were you?”
“I’ve recently… started going to an academy, so I was coming back from there…”
“Academy? What academy?”
“Acting academy…”
“What?”
It was an absurd thing to hear. Shin Hojae’s salary and the income from his mother working at the convenience store were going entirely toward his father’s care expenses.
There was no way they could afford an academy when they were even taking out loans for Shin Yeonjae’s school tuition.
“Since when?”
“…About 3 months ago…”
A self-mocking laugh escaped him.
That meant the caregiver’s working hours had doubled starting 3 months ago. And the care expenses would have doubled too, then. His words naturally became sharp.
“Where does the family have money for that?”
“It’s not costing money.”
“Why wouldn’t it cost money? It’s an academy.”
When he asked, Shin Yeonjae pursed her lips and rolled her eyes. The commotion Shin Yeonjae had caused last time suddenly came to mind.
“Are you doing some strange things like a sponsor or something again?”
“No.”
“Shin Yeonjae. Are you seriously not going to get your act together?”
“I said no! The CEO is lending it to me! I promised to pay him back when I succeed!”
Hojae’s eyes shone sharply.
“……CEO?”
Shin Yeonjae clamped her mouth shut, as if she realized she had made a slip of the tongue.
“Are you talking about CEO Kwon Junghyun now?”
“I’ll go out for a bit. Mom asked me to buy something earlier…”
Shin Hojae pulled Shin Yeonjae’s arm, who had jumped up, and made her sit back down. Blood rushed to his head.
“What did you think of what I said that day? I told you not to even mention his name or think about that person again.”
“I told you it’s not like that.”
“How is it not like that?”
“CEO Junghyun is not a bad person, I told you. The CEO was incredibly careful and told me not to tell you that he helped me with the academy…”
His head started to ache more and more from the story taking an unexpected turn. Shin Hojae held his head and sighed heavily.
“Start over and tell me properly from the beginning.”
“…I contacted him first to apologize because I got his business card that day. Honestly, you were incredibly rude to the CEO, you admit that, right?”
“……”
“Then the topic came up. He said if I wanted, he could introduce me to a place he knew. Just so you don’t misunderstand, I haven’t met the CEO even once since that day. Seriously, introducing the academy is all he did.”
“…When exactly was that?”
“When was it…? Around July? Ah, I think it was the day you went to Gangneung for a practice game. That’s right. Because the CEO said he was in Gangneung too.”
“……”
Hojae’s brow furrowed with effort.
If it was that day, it was the day the article about his father was published in Daily One. It was also the day he angrily hurled abusive words at Kwon Junghyun.
…He listened to such things from him, and was helping Shin Yeonjae behind his back?