Chapter I

“He wished he could be anywhere else

or anyone else but here and him”

James R. Silvestri

Itaewon Street, right to the roundabout with the sphere-shaped fountain at the middle, turn to the left, search for the grey house, number 218.

It was the phrase constantly reiterated inside Lee Seunghyun’s mind, while he drove through the messy and excessively populated streets of Seoul. Snow was falling that particular morning, the type of snow that melted once over the car’s windows and transformed into water drops when reaching the pavement, turning the streets into a chaotic scene of frustrated sounds, horns and annoyed drivers.

“It’s late, it’s late. Come on!” grumbled Seunghyun, his eyes flickering from the analogical watch on his car dashboard displaying 8:25 a.m. to the bunch of stopped cars in front of him. There he was again, stuck in every single morning’s traffic. He sighed, it seemed he would have to wait right there, without moving a single meter for probably an hour or so. Defeated and without anything else to do, he reached out for his thermos full of dark coffee and took a sip of it, feeling the hot liquid run though his throat. It was his own particular, unwillingly habit to drink one cup of coffee every morning, and not because he liked the taste of it -in fact, he mostly disliked it- but to have something to do while driving for two long hours amongst the boring traffic.

A buzzing sound broke the silence, a silence that would not be there if only his CD reproducer decided to start functioning again and return him his Snow Patrol record that had gotten stuck inside, and… Seungri merely snorted, annoyed. Adding to his bad luck, the sound came from the car’s glove compartment exactly at the same time the cars in front of him moved for the first time in thirty minutes.

“!, Great!” he cursed, trying to reach the phone and step on the gas pedal, all at once. With an enormous effort and a violent jerking of the car, he grasped the phone with his right hand and steadied with his other one the steering wheel.

“What?!” he shouted, voice filled with anger or panic or both, and straightened over his seat catching his breath.

“Seunghyun? Where are you? The family is almost here and I don’t want them to wait for you,” a high-pitched, overly exaggerated voice said at the other side of the phone. And Seungri rolled his eyes, stopping himself of cursing out loud again.

“I’m on my way. Same traffic as always.  Give me ten minutes, deal?” he muttered whilst inside his head he actually prayed to be able to arrive there in ten minutes.

“You better, Seunghyun. Hurry up!” barked the voice with his exaggerated anguish before hanging up. Leaving him to stare silently at the phone, blaspheming to the now darkened screen and to finally threw his phone to the co-pilot seat frustrated.

This was his life: busy streets and annoying calls.

“You better have something good for me this time, Daesung”, he mumbled. Those last two cases he had to work on where anything but fun. The first one had been a really tragic case: one forty-something commercial pilot. His plane was declared lost and had been found one week later crashed near Pohang, though his body was never recovered.

He had left one wife without kids destroyed in pain, one that tried two times to commit suicide before asking for help from his company. Daesung gave him the case three weeks later. And being honest, he didn’t need to do much: he dressed like him once in a while and let the woman talk with him endlessly. Sometimes he even allowed the woman to gave him a goodbye kiss once it was time for him to leave. Probably, the only difficult or disgusting thing of that case was the horrible body lotion the guy used to wear and he, as expected, had to wear too as complimentary of his whole "attire". One month ago the woman had told him she didn’t need him anymore; she seemed happier and even had started to date another guy, commercial pilot too.

When Seunghyun knew about that last "detail" he did nothing but shake his head in disappointment and mutter something like “Some people never learn.” Because it was real, some people he had worked for never learned, never actually “outgrow” their depressive state. But that was something he preferred to ignore, it wasn’t his problem or so he wanted to convince himself.  

He focused his eyes on the house’s numbers at each side of the street but couldn’t sight the number 218 amongst the fancy numbers and walls of those houses. This was a rich people's neighborhood for sure, thought Seunghyun, when the wideness of the gardens and the elegance of the cars parked in front of them reminded him for a moment about the inequality of life and all those injustices some liked to focus on, but not him. 

His eyes scanned the house’s fronts. “123, 125, 127… Not there yet,” he murmured frowning, stepping over the accelerator and leaning his head over the back of the seat, quite tired even though he just had waken up. Tired of every single thing.

The second case had been much more problematic for him. He had to work for a couple of parents that had lost their addicted son at the age of 23. They had asked for him in particular because “he seemed to be as young and as joyful as their son,” or at least that was what the mother said while pointing at his photo on the company catalogue that was over her lap with a proud smile, as if she was already convincing herself that he, Lee Seunghyun, was actually their reincarnated son or something between those lines.

Those were the most tiring three months of his life. He moved to the house, he lived with them, he ate with them, he watched them cry and plead, smile and laugh like crazy, lost old souls. Seunghyun touched his temples in exhaustion at the mere memory of those months.

“Three months, I wasted three ing months of my life,” he growled. At the end, after three months of working with them, the father had told him one night to leave, telling him it was enough, that his work was done with tears in his eyes. Though Seunghyun knew it wasn’t true. He was conscious, as same as any other supplanter, that there will be those cases where people could not overcome their loss, at least not in that way. And that had been one of those “special cases”.

He slowed the speed of the car when he finally sighted Daesung’s black Hyundai parked in front of a house that stood out from the rest of the ones around it, not for its fanciness but for its weirdness among the rest of the houses.

The façade was modern but the materials, which it was built, were too traditional: wooden beams, quarry and hard rock. It had a gabled roof and an enormous window that stretched from the floor to the ceiling that allowed the light of the sun to penetrate inside the house during day, and the freezing cold of winter at night. The garden was decorated only by little pine trees, pebbles and freshly pruned grass. It seemed as a too modern cottage or an elegant wooden house inserted between contemporary constructions and stunning mansions, and Seunghyun immediately liked the house. It seemed as if taken out of his strangest millionaire fantasies.

He took a last sip of his coffee and opened the door of his car, allowing the cold rush of wind to hit his face and penetrate its wau inside his car. He tangled his brown scarf around his neck and closed his coat, placing his hand inside the pockets. The cold weather during winter was something he liked seeing, as odd as it might sound, but completely hated feeling, which meant he loved going out wandering around during a snow storm if only he could be buried inside three layers of clothes or more. He had to remind himself to grab one folder from behind his seat before walking out towards Daesung’s car.

The neighborhood stood out for its creepy silence: no kids running or playing, not one soul outside on the street. It was so silent and static that it gave him and probably any other normal human being scary chills.

“You sleeping?” asked Seunghyun with a twisted smile, knocking on the pilot's window where, behind, a blond guy was sat with his eyes calmly closed. The guy jumped up scared and focused his wide eyes at Seunghyun, confused for an instant.

“Freak,” the blond guy grumbled. “Shut up and come in, it’s freezing outside,” he beckoned him and Seunghyun smiled not because he was somehow happy to see Daesung’s annoyed face, but because he was always entertained by the way Daesung moved and acted, always overreacting to any minuscule happening. Always with those exaggerated contortions over his face features.

“So, where’s the family Dae?” asked Seunghyun, staring at the empty street not even bothering to search for any kind of client, because if he knew Daesung there was no one out there but him and the blond guy in front of him. He sight defeated once Daesung smiled, affirming his assumption as right.

“They called just few minutes ago, they are a bit late,” answered Daesung shrugging with indifference, closing his eyes again and turning up the volume of the radio.

“You...,” murmured Seunghyun over the music, eyes as daggers, slaying Daesung “metaphorically” though Seunghyun would very much like to stab the man in front of him one of those days. “Is always the same with you. I don’t even know why I always… believe your words.”

Daesung was his best friend beside the strange relationship they could have; then years together made of any relationship something stable, strong enough to overcome the "peculiarities" of their personalities. He was his so-called “manager” and despite always unnerving him to the core, he always tried his best to give him the easiest cases, those that weren’t tiring or complicated. And even though he could not always accomplish it, Seunghyun respected him, respected the strange appreciation Daesung showed for him in his particular way.

Daesung at his side, stretched his hand, changed the radio station and closed his eyes again. And Seunghyun looked at him expectantly, but ended up exhaling frustrated after some seconds and opened the blue folder between his hands trying to find something to do.

Name: Choi Seunghyun

Occupation: Professional model

                       Choi-Kwon Clothing CEO

                     Vice President KJ Entertainment.

Death: Multiple Hemorrhages

            Three shots on the stomach

Assault attempt: 2.June.2014

“But, why am I supplanting this guy 6 months after his death?” asked Seunghyun lifting his eyes from the folder and gazed at Daesung questioningly, but the blonde guy merely opened one of his eyes and answered undisturbed, as if the answer was pretty obvious.

“Because his relatives contacted us just one week ago?”

Seunghyun nodded unconvinced, staring with curiosity at Choi Seunghyun’s photo over the white sheet. For some reason the strong stare of that pair of black eyes made him shiver displeased… and the fact they both shared the same name made everything worse. He averted his gaze, intimidated.

“Come on, it’s just a photo Seunghyun!” he scolded himself, while he focused his eyes again on the house. Everything seemed so clean and tidy, even the "perfecteness" of the garden looked false, unnatural. There were no signs of life or of someone living there. And yes, he appreciated how clean it was, but it had that museum-like cleanliness, like an inhabited place.

“Did this guy have a family? For whom am I going to work for?” asked Seunghyun again, staining the cold window in front of him with the warm steam coming out from his lips. He frowned, intrigued. He hated not knowing who his clients were but it was always a crucial part of his work: the uncertainty.

“I don’t know. I didn’t take this case for you. It was Lee Young. I only know the relatives asked in particular for you,” said Daesung finally opening his eyes and pointing at the folder between Seunghyun’s hands.

Seunghyun rolled his eyes annoyed and let his back fall onto the seat. "They always ask for me for the dumbest reasons,” he groaned. It was the same: "he is as young as him, he is as tall as him, and he is as happy as him", Seunghyun thought. “I’m sure this time is because I have the same name as him,” he exclaimed, closing violently the folder and leaning his chin over one of his hands upset.

“They are here,” Daesung said suddenly, eyes focused at the back of the car by the roar-view mirror. “And they are pretty rich, for sure.” He exclaimed with a twisted smile.

A white luxurious car parked behind them. Contrary with how excited Daesung was, Seunghyun stared at the car unimpressed and still upset. He was more interested to know the ones he was going to work for rather for the much or less money they could possibly had. Why until now? Was the rising question, why?

A guy in his thirties stepped out from the car with ridiculous grace, wearing blended jeans, dark-brown booties, turtleneck black polo, a black sweater and a leather brown coat placed without care over his shoulders. He had dark black hair that contrasted with his paled skin and his eyes were covered by expensive shades. In summary the guy was so formal and elegant, almost to the point of intimidation. Yet something in the way he walked appeared to Seunghyun as an overwhelming sadness.

And he wasn’t quite sure but it could be the way his shoulders were curved in exhaustion, the way he tried to cover his eyes with that pair of unnecessary shades or the thinner of his frame. He couldn’t decide what it was but he knew there it was, the sadness.

Daesung wasted no time and approached to the guy, stretching a friendly hand to him but the guy, to Daesung surprise, only stared at the hand undisturbed and made no attempt to return the gesture. He, if only, made a small acknowledging bow and stayed there standing still and looking at Daesung awkwardly. Seunghyun gave a glance at the white car expecting someone else to step out of it, but no one else came out of there.

“He is Lee Seunghyun, the supplanter you asked for,” Daesung said with a nervous smile, still trying to recover from that unusual, shameful moment. Seunghyun bowed at the guy in front of him not even trying to shake hands with him; already annoyed by the coldness that guy seemed to exhale from every pore of his perfect, silky face.

The black haired guy finally focused his hidden eyes on Seunghyun, scanning his clothes, Seunghyun’s hair, shoes, eyes, nose. At the end he averted his eyes and nodded looking at Daesung in agreement.

“May I ask you, what was Choi Seunghyun of you?” blurted out Seunghyun already sickened and tired of the cold atmosphere this person seemed to create around them. Though he did hide his hands under his pockets quite scared of his sudden rudeness and the possible consequences of it.

The guy stared at him in silence while a scared Daesung beckoned him to shut up from the back of the guy with a desperate look on his face. But Seunghyun kept looking straight at the guy waiting for an answer. At the end the man opened his mouth with a crooked, hateful smile.

“My boyfriend,” he answered but with a voice that did not match with the rest of him. It was sweet, a too melancholic voice, filled with innocence and something close to pain. “He was my boyfriend.”

Ok. First Chapter, though I really don't know when I'll be posting the next one (I'm having problems with my beta and all... ) Hope you can wait, I'll try to solve this problem the fast as possible. =) Thank you! And see you soon!