Chapter VI

“Things come apart so easily

when they have been held together with lies.”

― Dorothy Allison

Hours later, the same stench of putrefaction continued to emanate from Seunghyun’s skin and veins, as he sat over one of those lounge-like, short-legged, padded chairs that made him sit in an uncomfortable position with his folded knees rising over his waist.

The Han Jan Café stood in the central part of Seoul, in an area reserved for tourism and pedestrian walkways, which made the voices of thousands of people, dim the soft, background music coming through the little loudspeakers hidden in the corners of the café walls. Its metal-like floor and woody walls, illuminated slightly by the orangey lights from the ceiling, gave the café an ambiguous atmosphere: welcoming but frozen, and the lack of proper lightning forced the costumers to restrict themselves into their own spaces rather than to look at the ones around them, as if fomenting privacy.

Seunghyun held a half-empty mug of espresso coffee between his hands and stared with affection at the menu chalkboard behind the cashier, which had not changed since he had first drank a cup of black tea in the same exact spot he was sitting on that moment, ten years ago. They still kept the traditional and austere type of menu without those strange and new inventions that made a mug of coffee everything but a mug of coffee, and that Seunghyun greatly appreciated. For him it was enough that his own life and identity had to mutate constantly to moreover withstand to see the things he had grown to like mutate too.

It was the day he had started to work as a supplanter the same day he had came to this café with Daesung, and since then he had return every Sunday morning; thus he felt this place was, rather than his own house, his office or the places of his own clients, his home or the closest place he had as home.

And whilst his eyes wandered around the café walls, a question aroused inside his mind: Why had he started working as the thing he was now? It could have been the fact he as a 16 years old boy, recently dismissed from his fifth adoptive family, had no clue of what to do or be; or that he actually did not knew how to do anything but that: how to lie.

He took another sip of coffee, breathing in its aroma in an attempt to erase the rotten odor that still felt coming from his own skin. The sound of the doorbell announced the entrance of a new customer to the café and Seunghyun raised his eyes to watch a blonde guy with a kind smile approaching to where he was with determination.

 “Seunghyun,” Daesung greeted him, placing his portfolio over the table and sitting in front of him. A waitress with tick-framed eyeglasses approached towards them, took Daesung’s order and turned away in a matter of seconds.

“So… What are we doing here?” asked Daesung smiling while settling his clothes in attempt to avoid them to get creased. The other man did not answer but looked at the annoying smile on Daesung’s face until he stopped moving and stared back at him.

“Do you remember when we started working in this?" Seunghyun asked finally with seriousness, skipping any greeting. Daesung frowned and finally stared at the unfriendly face of the supplanter.

“Some things, I do,” he answered cautiously for he knew those types of questions when coming from Seunghyun did not signal any good.

“I mean, do you remember who you were before this?” Seunghyun asked again ignoring the uneasy gestures of Daesung’s face and hands, with the need of an answer.

“I don’t get you. I’m the same person as then,”

At that precise moment the waitress interrupted them carrying Daesung’s cup of latte coffee and a basket of cinnamon biscuits, cutting their eye contact; a sudden appearance that prevented one of them to notice the desperate wince in Seunghyun’s face after hearing the answer.

“I don’t… I’m not even sure if I was someone back then,” murmured Seunghyun tightening his hands around his coffee, with the same gesture a scared kid does when facing something unknown, “I feel as if all my life I’ve been this, as if I was born as a supplanter.”

Daesung did not answer but did feel his normally joyful body twist in concern and worry as he looked at the confused man in front of his eyes. The smile he normally used to give when faced with problems did not seem to appear over his lips nor those witty jokes that usually tend to ease similar heavy atmospheres. And in that precise instant, he felt again as the six years old boy watching at his adoptive brother been taken away from him; and the same scared pupils asking him for help back then, were staring at him now with the same intensity. Seunghyun had managed to corner him again inside a place where he felt powerless.

Even if the younger one could not remember or did not want to, Daesung did. Both had shared a fleeting moment of their childhood together as brothers. Daesung did strongly remember Seunghyun’s five years old eyes crying in desperation when he had been taken away from his third home.

“You are Lee Seunghyun, a noble soul trapped in an unfair life,” affirmed Daesung getting closer to where Seunghyun was with the intention to grab his once brother’s hand, a desire stifled by his own internal demons and doubts.

The rest of the ones inside the café seemed to belong to another dimension whilst smiling with brightness and whispering rumors one to the other. They made the world appear as something free of suffering or unfairness, as if pain was not something human. And that distinction between the world of the others and his own increased the uneasiness inside Seunghyun’s mind, for he felt excluded; as always a petty stranger.

“What is Lee Seunghyun supposed to mean?” he asked, placing his mug of coffee back to the table with more force than he intended, making Daesung’s one to spill some coffee over the wood surface.  Daesung rushed to clean the mess before the waitress noticed something, in part in shame, in part in an attempt to avoid the need to answer that question.

“I can’t answer that,” Daesung confessed at last with sadness on his face and apologizes for he could not find a right answer yet he felt it was the supplanter’s responsibility to find the solution.

At the same time those same thoughts were consuming Seunghyun but accompanied by whys. He wanted answers and wanted to explain his sudden confusion, his sudden disturbance and all that came was the words he had heard that morning behind the door. He stubbornly tried to assure himself that he could survive living the kind of life he had had all those years, but something about that morning had crushed and beat with force the weak foundations of his sanity.

“Hyun,” Daesung called his name tenderly, forcing both to look at each other, “Don’t believe in your own lies,” he pleaded with a seriousness Seunghyun had never seen before. “Do you understand why I’m always asking you to not involve yourself? Because I don’t want you to get lost in those lies,” he said hiding his unspoken affection with a sternly look, “What’s really happening, Hyun?”

“Can I say it?” answered the supplanter, evidently addressing Daesung, but seen from distance it seemed as if he had thrown that question to the empty space, that emptiness built by mere blurred illusions.

“You know something, Hyun? Sometimes I wish you could renounce to this work,” confessed Daesung gaining an astonished look from the supplanter.

“I like my job.”

“Do you? You only know this job.”

“But I still like it.”

“What do you like? The job or its convenience?”

Seunghyun hid his face behind his mug of coffee.

“What can be convenient about my job?” he asked sarcastically, snorting in annoyance.

“The lack of imperfections. The ones you supplant, all of them, had flaws but those are never yours. You never show the dark side of the ones you act as. It most be convenient to be always a flawless being.”

To that the supplanter had no answers and Daesung saw for the first time his beloved partner and once brother burst into desperate tears. The tears of someone who had found answers but did not want to accept them.

Not far away, tears were falling from someone else’s eyes, but for completely different reasons. Jiyong kept staring at his own reflection in the car window and as much as he tried to avoid the distressing image, the black eyes of Choi Seunghyun kept appearing as a reflection, not lovingly but filled with accusations.

“Mr. Kwon?” a voice interrupted his mirage, vanishing instantly Choi Seunghyun’s face from the crystal and replacing it with his own confused one. “We are here sir,” said the driver with an educated smile.

Jiyong nodded with his head and went out of the car caring in one of his hands a little red portfolio. The building in front of him had the same curved lines with opaque crystals and metal walls as always. The aluminum letters arranged to form the CHOI surname welcomed him from the last floor. He entered the building, subtly bending his head at every astonished face he encountered in his way to the Management floor.

“Mr. Kwon,” he heard his name been called again, the moment the doors of the lift opened, but this time by a secretary he did not know. His eyes analyzed its surroundings, and a shiver ran trough his back caused by the grotesque similarity the Management floor reception had with his own house: wood floors and dark furniture; all of it exuding the name of Choi Seunghyun with an overwhelming strength.

“Do you want me to inform the vice-president Soo Hyuk of your arrival?” asked the secretary automatically placing his hand over the phone over her desk as if she was programmed to do so, thought Jiyong.

Jiyong shook his head and answered unwillingly, “It’s not necessary, I’ll be in my… the office,” incapable of naming that room as his for he had been there only four times before and all of them accompanied by the one who was no longer there.

He pushed the doors open and entered to that room he had wished before never to visit alone. Surprisingly enough the smell of clean furniture and pine detergent and not the woody aroma he expected received him, and relieved by it, Jiyong distressed his shoulders and inhaled with normality whilst looking around. At least the place had not Seunghyun’s aroma impregnated anymore.

The glass desk with curved pylons as legs stood in the exactly same position he remembered, in front of the picture windows. Over the walls were arranged shelves similar to those of their own library and its books were too arranged orderly by names, authors and themes.

Only the small nameplate over the desk with Choi Seunghyun’s name engraved in it and the tidiness of the room suggested the identity of the one who tended to spend long nights locked inside those walls.

“Do you need something else, Mr. Kwon?” asked the secretary behind his back, but after hearing Jiyong’s negation she turned back, leaving him alone inside the room, closing the doors and confining him in that concrete box of memories.

“You like it? It was designed by my father… he didn’t even ask me about it,” said Seunghyun with a sneer whilst showing with his hands at the newly decorated office.

Jiyong gave a mild smile as his only answer and walked around with sincere curiosity, as he already acquainted how imposing Seunghyun’s father was in every aspect of his son’s life.

“Not really, but my liking is not important. Do you like it?”

“I have to,” answered Seunghyun and looked at his boyfriend intently with thoughts no one could ever guess or knew for he had the ability to govern over his gestures; many had confused it with callousness but not Jiyong, not the person in front of his eyes.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” asked Jiyong after realizing the sharp gaze his boyfriend was giving to him.

“You will get accustomed to it. One day this office might become yours,” pointed out Seunghyun and Jiyong could have swear he saw sparkles of worrisome painted over the normally blank eyes of that man.

And that worrisome made him gulp disgusted. The mere idea of taking over the management of CHOI COMPANY without the guidance of Seunghyun appeared to him as a nightmare. Those strong arms he cherished surrounded him suddenly as those thoughts seemed to reach the older man with easiness.

“Don’t worry more than you should. I trust in you Jiyong,”

“Jiyong?”

The latter as always was taken aback away from his fantasies and reminiscences, this time by the smooth, gentle voice of the one who had been his best friend longer than he could actually remember. The young man with cut-short, spiked-up black hair was looking at him from the door of the office as someone who sees a specter: faint skin and quivering lips. He stepped inside the office and swiftly shorted the distance between them until their noses were touching each other. With a last look, his friend hugged him with a rudeness Jiyong was accustomed from him.

“Where have you been?”

“Youngbae,” murmured Jiyong, hesitant between hugging him back or crying over his shoulder, finally he decided for both when feeling the strength of Youngbae’s concern for him.

“Why did you run way?”

An answer faded away inside Jiyong’s throat before reaching escape: culpability.

“Why did you go?” Youngbae claimed for answers, now trapping Jiyong’s face between his hands and studying him with those father-like eyes.

“I needed time to think,” he answered stepping back, with humbug seriousness.

“To think about what?” challenged Youngbae with an unimpressed, almost incensed look. “Jiyong, I tried to contact you, I searched for you…” his voice cracked at those last words but as opposite as expected he did not burst in tears but burst in fury and shook Jiyong shoulders with strength, “ I thought you were dead!”

 Jiyong averted his eyes and whispered something he regretted seconds after.

“Sadly, not.”

Youngbae stepped back startled, repulsion evident in his eyes. But Jiyong knew his friend too well to misinterpret his gestures, if he was repulsed about something; it was not about him but the words he had spurted out.

“Is because of those stupid accusations, right? Is for all the trash Seunghyun’s parents said to you?” questioned Youngbae and Jiyong tried to hid the “yes” to be apparent in his eyes unsuccessfully; he should not be impressed for Youngbae could read him as easily as Seunghyun used to.

“Those are lies, and you know that, Jiyong! How can you believe in those words?”

Jiyong felt his restrain getting weaker by the seconds and without noticing, his mouth opened and confessed what he had tried never to say.

“He was killed because of me! He wasn’t supposed to go to that store that day! I sent him there!” shouted Jiyong falling over the gray rug of the office, hands shaking.

Youngbae crouched down in front of him and forced him to lift his eyes; his friend face was discomposed in frustration and fury and had that peculiar sparkle particular of the one who knows truths but does not know how to convey them nor convince others about them, trying to find a way to express them without success.

“It was a terrible coincidence, it wasn’t your fault, Jiyong. Did you shoot that gun? Did you want him to die?”

Jiyong stayed in silence and those statements, although real were weak and could not penetrate through those walls made of guilt and remorse that tormented him every night and day. For, How could he fight against the “ifs”? Those who even possible to formulate were never able to become real. Jiyong was buried inside the agony of the inexistent possibilities.

“How could you know, Jiyong? How could you?” asked Youngbae, but nothing he said could compete against the hatred inside Seunghyun’s mother eyes, against the accusations of murder they blamed him with, against the tags of “traitor” and “suspect”. They have accused him of wanting to steal Choi’s company and now he had the company as his, and he did not want, he felt dirt staining his soul and hands. The dirt of pure remorse.

“Ji, he trusted you. He trusted you would carry his company forward. This is what he left you, this is him, embrace this,” pleaded Youngbae.

“And I killed him, and now they blame me,”

“Their blames have no sustain; they are false, Jiyong!”

“You don’t get it,” Jiyong replied shaking his head and hiding his face between his hands, “ I loved them as my own parents… but they regarded me as murderer!”

“Jiyong, they were hurt; they said nonsensical things then,”

“I don’t want this company, I don’t want this guilt,” Youngbae reached his hand to Jiyong’s shoulder but was stopped by Jiyong’s violent movement, “… and I don’t want compassion!”

“Jiyong…”

“You answer me this! Why was he killed? Huh?” barked Jiyong lifting his body from the floor and pointing a finger at Youngbae with fury, his eyes lost in brute madness, “It wasn’t an accident, and me, you and all of them know it! You can’t pretend it was an accident! And till I don’t know why was he killed I will consider myself as a suspect, as a killer! Till I don’t know what happened that day it will be my fault!”

And that was a declaration; for Jiyong there was no other truth than that one. Consumed in his own lies, he condemned himself and with it he had came to hate what was left of him.

The eyes of his best friend observed him with sadness and fear to lose him. His jaw clenched by the reminiscence of the name he felt was responsible for Jiyong’s state of mind, the responsible to sow those ideas inside the vulnerability of Jiyong’s sanity.

But before he could even get up form the floor the so-called man entered the office.

Lee Soo Hyuk behold appalled at the vision in front of him the moment he opened Choi Seunghyun’s office door and felt an overwhelming hate coming from the man kneeling over the floor.

“Well, welcome there,” he said to Jiyong sarcastically. 

"Well, welcome there"... says Jess here. =) Thank you so much for keep reading my story. 

A special callout to thejitomyri, Nomochan, ahesan and neko-sieg for the upvote. And to awkwardphrase, xxkakaoxx, orenkiut, Lerik_San, runriri, KissgOnebad, Aliss6, painaepeul and  Minjunkay for subscribing. Hope you all enjoy this fic. ^.^

See you soon! JessRa