Chapter 2 Part 15

Jeong Tae-ui confirmed it was his uncle’s room by recognizing a few familiar personal items casually left on the desk, then stepped inside. He sat in the large chair in front of the desk and slowly looked around the room.

The private room his uncle used was quite different from Jeong Tae-ui’s Male Dormitory Room.

While the furniture and electronics were different, more than anything, there were many books here. Bookshelves filled the walls from top to bottom, overflowing with books in no particular order.

Jeong Tae-ui ran his hand over a bookshelf within reach. His uncle possessed many rare books. His uncle’s house, belonging to a considerable bibliophile—though his uncle spent most of the year at the branch and returned home for less than ten days a year—was filled with books so rare that old book collectors would drool with envy. The fact that it had even been robbed of books spoke volumes.

So, Jeong Jae-ui would often go to his uncle’s house and stay for days without coming out. He stopped going once he ran out of books to read, but before that, Jeong Tae-ui would often go to his uncle’s house to call for his brother.

Jeong Tae-ui didn’t like books as much as his brother or uncle, but he enjoyed them enough to distinguish which ones were rare. Among the books his hand now touched, there was one he had wanted to read but ultimately couldn’t acquire.

Jeong Tae-ui raised an eyebrow slightly and pulled out the book. It was a book he had tried every possible way to find, only to give up because even the original edition was out of print.

“I don’t know how this person manages to find these things so easily. Well, it’s convenient for me.”

Jeong Tae-ui admired his uncle as he slowly flipped through the book. However, he couldn’t concentrate on it.

It was because the young man he had just met was shimmering before his eyes.

“…Good heavens. What am I doing, acting like a teenager… Snap out of it, Jeong Tae-ui.”

Jeong Tae-ui clicked his tongue, rubbing his face which was starting to feel flushed again. He even slapped his own cheeks a couple of times.

“Seriously, what kind of branch is this? To throw such a young and delicate kid into the middle of this harsh island. Still, if they were on this floor, they couldn’t be a regular member…”

Jeong Tae-ui flinched, having thought that far.

“This is B1. It’s not a floor where regular members stay. The people who stay on this floor… Could that kid, by any chance, be a Director-General, a Vice Director-General, or an Instructor…?”

Jeong Tae-ui’s expression stiffened slightly. He merely flipped through the book in his hand distractedly, his mind a blank.

Just then.

What pulled Jeong Tae-ui back from his momentarily distant consciousness was a very faint mechanical sound, one that could be easily heard in the quiet room.

Jeong Tae-ui turned his head towards the sound. It was coming from the telephone on the desk. It was a quiet, gentle mechanical sound. A notebook-sized monitor attached above the red blinking light, as if inviting a press, cast a dim and faint glow.

Jeong Tae-ui turned his head. He no longer heard water sounds from the bathroom. He thought his uncle might come out soon, but then heard splashing sounds, like water being agitated, accompanied by a low hum. It seemed he was still soaking in the tub.

The phone didn’t stop ringing, so Jeong Tae-ui put the book down on the desk and stood up. He walked to the bathroom and tapped on the glass door.

“Uncle—, you have a call.”

“A call? At this hour? —Ah, I know who it is. You answer it for me and just write down the message. I’ll be a while before I come out.”

There was no hint of surprise in his uncle’s voice as he responded to Jeong Tae-ui. He must have known from the moment Jeong Tae-ui entered the room. Although Jeong Tae-ui had entered quietly, his uncle wasn’t someone who wouldn’t notice another’s presence, so Jeong Tae-ui sighed, thinking, ‘Just as I expected.’

“Uncle, if you knew someone was coming, shouldn’t you have thought about coming out sooner instead of leisurely bathing?”

As Jeong Tae-ui muttered, a low chuckle echoed from inside the bathroom.

“Why would I come out quickly when I knew it was you?”

Right, he was always like this.

Jeong Tae-ui clicked his tongue and returned to the desk, but in that time, the call had ended. “The call ended, Uncle,” Jeong Tae-ui called out towards the bathroom, then picked up the book and sat down again.

“A bath, huh. By now, that young man must have also gone into the bathroom.…”

Jeong Tae-ui needlessly blushed again. Even his earlobes felt hot.

“That fair, gentle body, almost peach-colored, would be flushed and lovely in the warm water. His skin seemed to have a subtle, soft, and very pleasant scent. It made one instinctively want to embrace him.”

“…This is serious, truly serious… It was just a brief encounter. What’s wrong with you, Jeong Tae-ui.”

Jeong Tae-ui fanned his burning face with his hand, muttering with a sigh. It was a little different from liking the young man or having feelings for him. He didn’t know him well enough to have such emotions. But the young man kept shimmering and reappearing in his mind.

As Jeong Tae-ui sighed for what felt like the nth time that day, fanning himself with the thick book in his hand, the quiet mechanical sound rang out again. The lamp blinked once more.

Jeong Tae-ui, about to call “Uncle,” remembered his uncle wouldn’t come out even if called, so he hesitated for a moment before pressing the lamp. He was told to write down the message, but there was no paper or pen in sight. He hoped it would be a message he could remember in his head.

“Yes, hello.”

As he answered the phone, the LCD monitor above the lamp turned on. An image, presumably of the caller, appeared.

The angle of the display wasn’t very wide, so it was hard to tell precisely, but it seemed to be indoors. Probably a private room, with a built-in wardrobe faintly visible next to a white wall.

And then, a person’s body, filling about a third of the screen.

Because the angle was narrow, only a part of the body was visible; about half of a light blue shirt around the chest area. And from that shirt’s sleeve, at its end, was a hand holding a mug.