Although Kyungsoo was born and raised in a sub-district of Seoul and could hence consider himself a city boy, his father’s family hailed from a rural area in the North Jeolla province.

Almost every summer holiday until middle school, Kyungsoo was sent to stay with his uncle and grandparents on the family’s farm in the province, which in turn developed Kyungsoo’s attachment to the place.

In high school, Kyungsoo’s grandparents passed away one year within each other. Due to the ongoing global financial crisis at the time, running the farm was proven expensive and unprofitable.

Seeing no reason to keep it running, Kyungsoo’s uncle then chose to close up the farm and move to Seoul in search of a proper white-collar job, leaving the farm and its surrounding land- abandoned.

After high school, Kyungsoo went to college and later completed his military service. Now at twenty-five years old, it had been exactly eight years since Kyungsoo had even last gone back to the farmland his family used to own in North Jeolla.

It was two months ago when Kyungsoo went to visit his parents and heard in passing about his uncle selling the farmland to none other than a Park Chanyeol on behalf of Sejun Corporations.

Refusing to believe that his uncle would just let go of their ancestral land like that, Kyungsoo began digging up on the dirt regarding Park Chanyeol, suspecting that maybe some foul play at hand. Kyungsoo didn’t think that it made sense that Chanyeol or the company would be interested in their measly farmland.

What Kyungsoo found out was that Chanyeol was thirty-three years old, unmarried, had a master's degree in business from a prestigious overseas university and that he had become CEO of Sejun Corporations about five years ago following the passing of his father.

Apart from that, Kyungsoo knew next to nothing about this mysterious so-called CEO, to understand the motives behind why his family farmland was bought out in the first place.

Even through stakeouts and following Chanyeol around, Kyungsoo didn’t find any valuable information to help him in his personal agenda.

That was until Kyungsoo followed Chanyeol to an exclusive private nightclub a few weeks ago. Although Kyungsoo did not manage to enter the nightclub, he did manage to capture a few pictures of Chanyeol talking to someone outside.

It was only later when Kyungsoo was in the office and going through the pictures he took of Chanyeol, when a co-worker, Lee Taemin, who did investigative journalism, passed by his desk and noted that the man in the picture, whom Chanyeol was talking to, was suspected to be a high ranking member within an organized crime syndicate.

From there, it wasn’t hard for Kyungsoo to put two and two together to figure out that indeed, Chanyeol had dealings with the crime underworld, especially with the additional information he got from Taemin, who also benefitted in the pictures he took of Chanyeol.

Although, Kyungsoo still did not have enough information and was barely even scratching the surface when it came to his investigation on Chanyeol. He still needed to dig deeper and spend more time doing in-depth research before he could finally report about it.

Now, sitting alone at his desk past midnight on a Friday, in a deserted office, Kyungsoo cursed at his computer screen displaying the pictures of Chanyeol he took in secret, “That trash. He has no business in real estate but he still bought my family land. I don’t understand why but I will find out and expose that man as the scam he is. A Financing company, my .”

Kyungsoo glanced over at his phone screen which lit up to show a text notification from Junmyeon, reminding him to give the money as promised for using his car during the stakeout yesterday afternoon.

Junmyeon was just a dispatcher at the company, whose job was mainly to drive around the bosses and executives. But yet, he often found himself roped into Kyungsoo’s risqué endeavors.

Ignoring the text and wondering why Junmyeon was not even asleep yet at this time of the night, Kyungsoo’s eyes darted back to the computer screen as he rested his cheek on his palm.

There was a picture of Chanyeol standing outside the company’s building, pushing his dark hair back before he entered the car.

The picture was high definition enough for Kyungsoo to zoom in and notice that Chanyeol was biting his lower lip when he did that, for what reasons he didn’t know.

For more reasons Kyungsoo couldn’t explain too, he actually felt his groin area twitch and even stir at the picture of Chanyeol, who had no business looking so attractive.

Kyungsoo had long known that he was gay and interested in men. It was already hard being gay, harder when he found his supposed “enemy” to be attractive and his hardest at the thought of it alone.

**

About a week after staking out Chanyeol outside his office building in Junmyeon’s car, Kyungsoo fulfilled his promise to pay Junmyeon for the assistance and also bring the father of two out for dinner after work.

Kyungsoo withdrew about 150,000 won from the ATM outside the restaurant before going back inside to hand the money to Junmyeon, who was slurping on his noodles.

“This is 50,000 more than I asked for though,” Junmyeon noted, counting the money and handing Kyungsoo back the extra bill.

“I know,” Kyungsoo answered, “-I did say I’d give some extra for you to give your kids too. Just consider it as a gift from me to them.”

“Oh wow, thanks. You shouldn’t have when all I did was drive you around and let you use my car to stalk that CEO,” Junmyeon smiled gleefully, folding the bills before tucking it into the pocket of his trousers.

“Sure, no problem,” Kyungsoo lazily said, sipping from his glass of water, “Just tell the twins I said hi. Speaking of which, how’s the wife too?”

“All is good,” Junmyeon gave a thumbs up, “The café she opened with her sister is doing very well and your suggestion to advertise it online through social media has been doing us good too. The twins will be starting elementary school next spring so we have to save up some money for that, so the business is really helping us out.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Kyungsoo nodded, checking his phone for a brief moment before putting it back down on the table.

“Well, if you need my help again with that case of yours, just let me know. For a price of course,” Junmyeon offered.

Kyungsoo chuckled a bit, “I’ll let you know but for now, I think I won’t. He’ll get suspicious if he sees the same car stalking and waiting outside his building over and over.”

“You’re really still trying to pursue that case, aren’t you? Even with all the information you have with Park Chanyeol being somehow related to the mafia?” Junmyeon pointed to Kyungsoo with the chopsticks in his right hand.

Kyungsoo sighed, “You know me. I’m an all or nothing person. I won’t ever be satisfied until I can find out why my family’s farmland was really sold for. I don’t believe my uncle was so pressed for money and after all the promises he made to my grandparents to take care of the land, he wouldn’t just so easily let it go like that.”

“Well, if that’s what you say, I can’t stop you,” Junmyeon shrugged, “I just don’t want you to get in trouble though. The mafia isn’t something you’d want to deal with. I mean, you’re not even into these crimes and investigative journalism thing. You can get a lot of money by just taking pictures of celebrities and writing minimal effort articles on things such as the clothes they wore to the airport or the last type of food they were seen eating in public.”

“I know, I know,” Kyungsoo sighed, “I appreciate the concern. I promise I’ll be done with this whole Park Chanyeol and Sejun Corporations thing once I get to the bottom of it.”

“You better be,” Junmyeon reminded, pointing a finger at Kyungsoo this time.

Kyungsoo later parted ways with Junmyeon after dinner and went back home to his apartment, only to find his door handle loose and instantly coming apart the moment he even tried lightly tugging on it.

This was most definitely the signs of someone breaking into his apartment by forcing their way through dismantling the lock.

Without even thinking twice, Kyungsoo dropped his backpack down near the door and pulled his phone out, ready to call the police if he still saw the intruders inside his place.

Slowly, Kyungsoo pushed the door open and quickly reached for the light switch on the wall just beside the entryway.

When the lights came on, Kyungsoo was able to see more clearly that his small one-bedroom apartment was utterly thrashed and in a complete mess.

Kyungsoo checked under his bed, under the kitchen sink, and in his closet, making sure that the intruders had left and it was just him alone there.

Then, once Kyungsoo was sure that they had left, he started to look for things that were missing. It wasn’t surprising that the only things the intruders had taken with them were his computer, cameras, hard drive and some files from his desk.

Kyungsoo could only shake his head when he realized that the intruders were very likely Chanyeol’s men, who were there to take back all the data and pictures Kyungsoo had obtained on him.

After all, if they were really robbers, they would have certainly taken more valuable items such as Kyungsoo’s stash of money, his television and pricey personal belongings. The intruders clearly knew to target the items that contained information or data that could implicate Chanyeol.

But what made Kyungsoo even surer that this was Chanyeol’s doing was the large poster-sized picture hung up on the wall above the desk where his now stolen computer once was.

It wasn’t there before and the picture was that of Kyungsoo, taken secretly without his knowledge when he was exiting a coffee shop he usually frequented. Based on the clothes he wore in the picture, Kyungsoo knew it was recent too.

Kyungsoo chuckled dryly, pressing a hand to his forehead, thinking about the mess he had put himself into and how he was going to possibly retrieve all his data back from Chanyeol.

In a condominium somewhere that overlooked the Han River, Chanyeol was sitting at the edge of his bed, with the view of the landmark district glistening outside his floor-to-ceiling bedroom windows.

Chanyeol was smiling to himself as he went through the stored images on Kyungsoo’s camera; which his men had obtained from Kyungsoo’s apartment and subsequently handed over to him.

On the camera, there were pictures of idol group members, famous actors, some random animals, food, places and even that of Chanyeol’s which were taken from a distance.

But what caught Chanyeol’s interest the most was the picture of Kyungsoo taken candidly one time when Junmyeon was playing around with the camera.

“Cute,” Chanyeol said to himself, with a smirk on his face.

**

While the break-in incident did not stop Kyungsoo from continuing to pursue Chanyeol and exposing his dealings with the criminal underworld, it certainly did scare him a bit and Kyungsoo wasn’t even brave to tell Junmyeon about it yet.

Knowing the kind of person Junmyeon was and how much he had been advising Kyungsoo against it, Kyungsoo could guess that Junmyeon would probably have an “I told you so” rant if he ever said anything.

For the time being and while waiting for the dust to settle, Kyungsoo temporarily moved in back with his parents who lived at least an hour away from his workplace.

While Kyungsoo’s apartment was much closer to the office, he would have to it up and deal with the daily long commute, especially when considering that someone like Chanyeol was after his .

Kyungsoo had lied to his parents that there was a gas leak in his apartment, being the excuse he used when he suddenly showed up at their front door in the middle of the night with a bag of his clothes.  

While he was there too, Kyungsoo took the opportunity to ask his father even more questions regarding their farmland and why his brother, Kyungsoo’s uncle, had sold it off.

In the evenings, Kyungsoo would try to hurry back as fast as he could, despite the long commute and the sometimes irregular working hours depending on what the company expected him to write and cover about.

Kyungsoo needed to be home after his father was done with work and before he went to sleep, just so he could sit his father down and talk.

T