“Congratulation on your new highscore!” was written in a yellow neon colored with eccentric background on the screen in front of him.  The overplayed background music, which supposed to be a happy chirpy tune, was echoing in the whole room.  But somehow, listening to it made him want to punch the 60 inch LED screen. Not because he was mad about his new highscore, but he was just mad for no reason.

Annoyed at the sound of the bgm, he threw the silver colored game controller mindlessly across the table in front of him. The controller was already worn out and clearly it wasn't its first time--the innocent little electronic device--to be thrown out across the room. Then he sighed at himself while taking another bite of cheese flavored corn snacks in a glass bowl that had been refilled a while ago by his male assistant or his maid? He didn’t and wouldn't care. All he did was yelling on how much he needed a snack to accompany him during the night.

Time had passed and he realized that the bowl was already half empty. He checked the clock on his phone and shrugged it off when it showed that it’s only 10 minutes past midnight. The night’s too early for him, and he didn't know what to do to spend the rest of it.  But everyone’s know, the best way to spend your night is by sleeping.

He was awaken by a loud noise that was coming from a vacuum cleaner, blinking his eyes a few times trying to straighten up his back because definitely even though his sofa is one of the most expensive out there, the best place to sleep is your own bed. He ruffled his already messy light golden brown hair, trying to compose his own mind as he looked behind the sofa to see one of his seems-to-be- a maid cleaning up his gaming room.

“Who told you to clean this room? How many times do I have to tell you that you are not allowed to enter my room if I’m still sleeping?” he raised his voice at the young woman, probably in her mid 20s.

The woman went quiet for a second before she opened her tiny mouth, “I’m sorry. I...I didn’t know.” The shoulder-length haired woman quickly turned off the cleaning machine, putting it beside the wooden cabinet and bowed at him nonstop.

“You must be new here, I suppose?” he got up to approach the woman, hands shoved into the depth of his black pajama pants’ pocket, clearly to show who’s the boss there. The woman had her head down, but he knew that the woman was scared as he could see that her body started trembling lightly from the distance between the two of them. She slowly took a step backwards until she gasped when she realized there’s nowhere to run since he had blocked her way.

“Answer me,” he hissed. His eyes were still droopy from the lack of sleep, but that didn’t mean that he’s being soft at his words. His stare pierced right into her eyes, and there’s undoubtedly no way for the woman to avoid that sharp gaze of his.

“Yes. I’m new here, M...Master. Today is my first day. I’m sorry, please don’t kick me out. Searching for a new job for a people like me is really difficult.” She showed her best puppy eyes and not to forget adding some natural looking pout. Most people say that aegyo from a woman would work on guys. Who could stand an innocent cuteness from a young woman, especially from someone like her? For a maid, her face was not that bad either so she was confident on pulling that kind of stunt to her own master.

He didn’t say a thing but instead, letting out a loud scoff but his gaze was still fixed at hers. And that was a clear sign that her magic didn’t work on him. Many thoughts already running through her head and one of it was her mom’s face back at her hometown. At that time her heart was pounding crazily, like she was facing a wild beast that had failed to be tamed.

“So, a clueless rat entered the lion’s lair without any precautions? How daring.” He took a step closer to her and the ends of her brown short hair. The hair might not be the softest he had ever touched. Once a smirk appeared from the man in front of her, she just wanted to run and scream. But then again she needed money to live, so she chose to stay quiet and pray to God that everything would be fine even though she’s not much of a believer.

“What do you mean?” Her whole body froze, but thankfully was still able to produce some words even with an extra effort. And with that, he released his grasp from the tip of her short hair, letting the now free-hair down slowly and moved his hand to her shoulder. To her surprise, the smirk then disappeared and replaced with a sinister smile. She smiled back nervously, while eyeing her master hand on her left shoulder.

“Ah really? Nobody’s telling you anything about me? That’s… really mean.” His tone of voice was really light, and somehow happy? She was trying to guess by herself since she was really surprised at his extreme change of mood, but she couldn’t take off her guard yet since his hand was still in the same place.

He moved his head closer to her left ear until the maid could smell the faint scent of his mint scented shampoo. Her left ear felt warm and sent a tingle along to her spine as soon as he whispered something to her;

“I am crazy.”

***

“You’re up early today.” A middle aged woman who was busy preparing food in the kitchen said when she saw a familiar stood person beside her. He hopped onto the nearest empty kitchen counter, hands on the tip of the corner as his barefoot moved slightly back and forth.

“What’s for breakfast today?” he tilted his head to get a better view on what’s inside the cooking pot, ignoring the older’s sayings. He quickly hopped off the counter because he couldn’t see what’s on the menu clearly from his previous position.

“Just the usual since you don’t like new things. Right, Master?” The older woman smiled at him, but the latter didn’t seem too satisfied at the answer.

“Whatever. I’m hungry please make it fast.” With hands on the back of his head, he walked lazily to the dining table that was located not too far from the kitchen.

The dining table was really big and long for such a small family like him. God only knew the reason why his parents decided to buy 8 seater dining table when clearly he was the one and only child in the family. And beside, that was just an apartment, not a family restaurant. Even 4 seater dining table was still too much since he barely saw his own parents.

After he took a seat at his favorite seat, he rested his head on his hand while the other hand was busy tapping on the maple wood table as his mind had gone nowhere. And the reason why he chose the furthest seat as his favorite was because the seat was placed near the huge window which facing right to the famous river in Seoul and living in an expensive apartment in the middle of big city of course comes with a nice scenery.

“Whoa, Sungjae you’re up early today! What’s the reason? Had a nightmare or something?” A new voice had echoed through the room. Sungjae was lost in his own thoughts, staring blankly at the view from the window, the cars, the bridge, the water in the river. Those things had caught his attention and made him too busy to care about the other soul, not even caring that the other person had taken a seat across him.

“Oh well. I guess that’s not the answer.” The person across him started to pull out his white laptop from his laptop bag and set it on the table. “Ah your father is giving me hard times lately. Seriously, 3 reports in 2 weeks. That’s insane! I’m not a robot!” he muttered angrily as he typed something at his worn out laptop. He moved his gaze from the laptop monitor to Sungjae to see his reaction, who was then staring back at him.

“It’s your job, Ilhoon. At least the pay is good,” Sungjae answered lazily while playing with the chopsticks beside him. Ilhoon quickly shook his head. “No, I’m here not because of the money.” Ilhoon soon closed the laptop and put it back to its bag as the maid came with their breakfasts.

“Liar,” Sungjae snapped, but quickly distracted by the sight of the food that his maid served them.

Ilhoon didn’t have that much of a patience or a good temper, but since he’d been working with Sungjae’s family for years, he had learned a lot of things, like to ignore 60% of everything that came out from Sungjae’s mouth.

“Thank you for the food!” Ilhoon clapped his hands before nomming the delicious food in front of him.

Their breakfast was usually really quiet most of the time, but there were rough times when Ilhoon had to deal with Sungjae’s random eruption of anger first thing in the morning. Luckily this time, only the clinging sounds which came from the eating utensils and faint chewing sounds could be heard in the room.

“Who told this new maid to clean up my room so early in the morning?” Sungjae chewed his favorite chicken and swallowing it slowly while waiting for the older’s answer. Ilhoon was really surprised the time when Sungjae opened his mouth not to yell at him but to say something to him in peace.

“Oh? You mean the cute one?”  His pronunciations were really unclear due the amount of the food inside his mouth. Of course there’s no such thing as an uneventful day for Yook Sungjae. “Wait, what did you do to her?” he continued his words after he emptied his mouth, eyes widened in fear when the realization hit him. Quickly Ilhoon put down the chopsticks and suddenly got up.

“Sit down.” Sungjae made a gesture with his point finger him telling him to go back to his seat. Ilhoon, without an ease, followed the order. “I told her to find a new job.  See, for once I didn’t do that much!” Sungjae’s huge smile appeared from his face for the first time of the day.

Ilhoon had his sweaty palm glued on his forehead; he should’ve seen this one coming. Of course what Sungjae said was right, this one was not that much compares to his other tantrums. His precaution by removing any fragile things, such as Sungjae’s mother’s expensive flower vase from his room was definitely one of his greatest innovations ever made. But still, that was the 4^th maid for this month alone. Searching for a new one was always easy, but having them lasted for more than a week was almost a miracle. The luxurious apartment might not be as big as a mansion rich people usually live in, but still it definitely needed more than one maid to take care of it.

The people who lived at the three bedroom apartment were his family and one maid who’d been there since Sungjae was still a toddler. Sungjae’s father, which was Ilhoon’s boss, had told Ilhoon to move in so many times but he always declined the offer, saying things like he couldn’t leave his mom and noona alone. But the consequence was that he needed to look after Sungjae even though he had to take a 30 minutes bus ride from his house to Sungjae’s. Sometimes he wondered if his real job was one of Yook’s company ace employee or a babysitter.

“Hey.” Sungjae suddenly moved forward to poke the shorter haired man on the shoulder. Ilhoon lazily removed his palm from his forehead to blink his eyes repeatedly at Sungjae, mouthing “What” with his mouth.

“Can I have your chicken?” Sungjae let out his best smile which made his gums showed really clearly, pleading for the sake of one of his favorite food. “Chicken is the best when it’s still warm and crispy.”

***

Yook Sungjae, known as Sungjae by his relatives, which the amount itself could be counted by his own fingers. He was quite lucky because he was born under a wealthy family, though sadly his parents didn’t even think to give Sungjae a sibling to play with or to accompany him. Nevertheless, Sungjae grew up as a normal kid, playing with the others at the playground, running around with his close friends catching weird bugs in the middle of summer, crying when his kite flown away on a windy day, the bottom line was; he was a happy kid.

Everyone was happy and everything went in order, not before an incindent during his middle school days, his 8^th year to be exact, in which his parents got a call from his teacher telling them to come to the school as soon as possible. The parents were quite confused at the sudden call so her mother decided to go.

The male teacher with his black hair slicked to the side had his arms folded above the table “So, this is a long story, Mrs. Yook. Do you want a short version or a long version?” he said while trying to keep his tone stable, which didn’t turn out really well since his voice clearly came out really shaky, but Mrs. Yook really appreciated the effort.

Having her nose scrunched a little at the teacher’s tangy choice of perfume, she answered, “Anything you want, but I prefer the short one since I don’t have that much time.” Mrs. Yook on the opposite, had her mind on his grasp, not letting out any unwanted feelings to came out.

The teacher had decided to tell story as detail as he could. Turned out the reason why they called Sungjae’s parents when the parents were clearly in the middle of their busy works was because that their only son was caught red handed pushing his friend off the stairs.

“What? My son is a good son!” was the mother's first respond. Her previous calm expression suddenly changed into a furious one. Her son might be a witty type of boy, but pushing other’s son off the stairs was just way over the top.

“Well, I’m sorry Mrs., but we have a lot of witnesses. He pushed his close friend all of the sudden, even his other friend didn’t seem to know the reason why. They were just talking and suddenly bam! Your son pushed the other boy. The worse thing is that, the boy is currently at hospital right now. Apparently our health teacher said that the boy sadly broke his left arm from the fall. To keep it short, the boy’s parents are on their way here. We shall finish this problem in peace,” the teacher declared, putting a full stop into this short meeting, which means there’s no way the woman could talk back to him. Mrs. Yook just nodded slowly before picking up her phone to call her assistant to take care of her place since she had to stay at the school longer than she thought she would be.

Mrs. Yook had her head ce she heard a knock from the door behind her, which then revealed to be her son. His face was still the same as the last time she saw him when he got off to school just a few hours before. She quickly got up from the old office chair and ran to her own son. With her shaky hand, she cupped her son’s cheek while the other hand patted his black hair.

“You didn’t do this, right? Please tell me so.” She tried to held back her own tears, still in disbelief at the teacher’s story. Her glazy eyes darted into her son’s black empty eyes.

“I did,” he quickly answered, short and simple. The mother closed her eyes for a moment to take a deep breath to swallow everything that had just happened. Her family reputation had always been really good to the public. She couldn’t imagine what would the aftermath be once the incident spread, but maybe she was just too paranoid. 

“Why, my son?” she wanted to be mad at him, but she just couldn’t. She was not that kind of evil parents who beat their children until they beg for mercy. Instead, she classified herself as an affectionate type of parent.

“I don’t know, I guess i just did?” was his answer. His eyes were empty, but creepily the corners of his mouth suddenly curved into a tiny smile, a smile full of satisfaction.

And that was the first time his mother discovered that there was definitely something wrong with him.

A/N

Hi there, blablablablablast here~ truthfully I don't know what to say again /sweats. but if you have anything to say just throw it on us :)