“Mm.”
A tall beauty with a cool, austere look glanced around. Every time that fine-boned face turned slightly, small ripples stirred here and there.
His arms and legs were slender and long, his jawline slim, but rather than “delicate,” the word that suited this man was strong and steadfast.
The impassive, cold face gave off the air of an unapproachable noble. People whispered yet couldn’t bring themselves to step up.
Even without a mask, people failed to recognize him as East’s Cheonghyeon. The Cheonghyeon in their memories had a faint face but always a smiling impression.
On top of that, Cheonghyeon hadn’t appeared often in the media. They simply looked, assuming he must be a rookie model or actor.
“Are you sure it’s really okay not to wear a mask?”
The manager fidgeted, not knowing where paparazzi might pop up, but Cheonghyeon lightly ignored him. If no one recognizes you anyway, why stifle yourself with a mask?
“If you go to Window 9, Technician Lee Sun-young will help you.”
When the staffer directed him, Cheonghyeon dipped his head lightly and turned. Leaving the manager behind, he headed for the counter, and a campaign PSA was playing on the big TV hanging in the middle of the service center.
“‘The Emotional Laborer Protection Act’ is an amendment to the Industrial Safety and Health Act enacted to protect emotional laborers from verbal abuse, violence, and the like that can occur during customer service interactions, and it has been in effect since October 18, 2018. How about offering a warm word first to the emotional laborers around us?”
He paused at those words. Here, he was no longer a prince. Especially in a job that drew the public eye, he had to be all the more careful so as to give no cause for fault-finding.
He would have to quickly discard old habits and adjust to this world’s culture. He’d been too lax until now, perhaps. Clicking his tongue lightly, he headed for Window 9.
“Welcome, sir. How can I help you today?”
When the repair technician beamed and asked, Cheonghyeon almost unconsciously said, “See to it that this is repaired.”
He caught himself. With emotional laborers, I should smile first and speak—kindly and gently.
Folding up the coolness in his eyes, he met the tech’s gaze with a soft smile. Just that slight smile dispelled the chill and gave off a heart-fluttering aura at a glance.
To a stranger, it might have looked like a confession scene on a campus with cherry blossoms swirling with a sweetness of smiling eyes. It was unbelievable that this was the same man from a moment ago with the wintry face.
Now, Cheonghyeon was smiling so gently.
“I’m here about my passwords. I, uh, forgot them.”
With a faintly sheepish smile, he held out his phone, and at that moment, lines from a song that had been popular back when Lee Sun-young was a student popped into her head:
Say “I love you” four times a day,
laugh eight times, give six kisses.
it’s the one and only password that opens me.
After the repair, Cheonghyeon took a photo with every staff member. It started when the technician, upon hearing his name, made a fuss asking if he was a member of East.
He’d just been amused to be recognized by name and readily agreed to a picture when asked. Then as other employees sidled up, he magnanimously obliged them all.
When it looked like even waiting customers might swarm over, the manager hurriedly wrapped Cheonghyeon up and shielded him. Saying he’d go fetch the phone himself, he sent Cheonghyeon ahead to the car.
The manager was overwhelmed with emotion anew. To think there were now situations where he had to fend off people crowding toward Cheonghyeon!
“Please step back a little, if you would.”
Sweating bullets as he held people back, the corners of the manager’s mouth twitched with joy.
At that hour, Sun-young’s cheeks had been rosy throughout the repair. She wanted to be professional, but the way Cheonghyeon kept smiling so brightly left an imprint in her mind. She kept glancing at the photo they’d taken together.
When he’d leaned in close to her for the picture, he’d smelled incredibly good, too. Beautiful people even smell lovely…. It was nothing like guys who douse themselves recklessly in “Cool Water” types of cologne to look suave.
From Cheonghyeon came the scent of a baby sitting in a flower field with a candy in its mouth.
Ha. I’m signing up for East’s fan club the moment I get home.
“What am I going to do from here?”
Meanwhile, having escaped the crowd and reached the car, Cheonghyeon sat in the back seat, chewing on his lips. Even just disabling phone passwords involved a fairly complicated process.
Thankfully, the staffer, dazed by his smile attack, said that these days lots of people forget their passwords since everything opens with fingerprints, and processed everything while skipping the verifications. Whether that would fly at a bank was another matter.
In fact, unlocking the phone of a well-known face wasn’t that difficult. It might be different for a private citizen, but would a celebrity really come to a service center with someone else’s stolen phone to get it unlocked? Besides, they’d confirmed it opened with his fingerprint.
But banking, where money was involved, was different. He’d been using everything fine just days before he collapsed, and then, overnight, he’d forgotten every password and the password for the digital certificate? It was the perfect setup for talk to start.
He’d said he’d only gone to the hospital because he was under the weather, so he couldn’t even use the excuse of amnesia.
If I’d known, I should’ve said a falling flower vase hit my head and I forgot everything.
He recalled how, just now at the service center, people had whispered, “Is he a celebrity?”, “Why’s he here?”, “What happened?”
For them it was just curiosity-based attention, but if they dug deeper, it would do him no good.
And that wasn’t the only problem. He had no sense of how much wealth Cheonghyeon had accumulated, nor how to use it. If there were some hidden real estate or gold bars and he overlooked them, how aggrieved would he be?
He hadn’t even identified the regular outflows yet. If, say, Gi Cheonghyeon had been making steady donations and he suddenly cut them off, a character controversy could flare up.
On top of that, when the thought that he still hadn’t heard any explanation about the parents dawned on him, irritation surged up to the roots of his hair.
He was in no way prepared to live as Gi Cheonghyeon, and that bastard dies and just swaps souls and bolts?
Should I just kill the reapers and everyone?
Click.
“Here you go, Cheonghyeon. Your phone! …So, um, there were a lot of people… today must have been tiring, right? Should we go to the dorm? It’s ten minutes away. There’s no traffic, so we can get there quick.”
The moment he opened the door and saw Cheonghyeon’s face frozen stiff, the manager wilted.
When they were taking pictures just now, he’d been all smiles, so the manager had assumed he was in a good mood; but now that he’d brought back the unlocked phone, Cheonghyeon was staring into space with a look like he might cut someone down at any second.
He’d craved attention so much before, but had he come to hate people now? When Cheonghyeon exhaled as if pressing down his irritation, the manager fidgeted even more.
“Let’s go to the company, hyung. There’s way too much I don’t know right now. And no one will actually explain anything in detail.”
At the words that sounded somehow like a shot at him, Changsik flinched in his shoulders and started the engine.
Please let us get there late… late… hit every red light….
But the daytime roads were empty, and in less than ten minutes, Changsik and Cheonghyeon arrived at the company. As soon as they reached the building, before the manager could even stick by his side, Cheonghyeon strode straight for the president’s office.
A little later, after hearing everything and coming out of the office, Cheonghyeon looked drained, unlike when he’d gone in.
He trudged down to an empty emergency stairwell, leaned against the wall, and let out a long sigh. The chill of the cold wall cooled a body overheated with rising temper. But the mess of thoughts in his head still boiled. He’d been given an explanation, but he understood less than before.
The president had phrased it kindly, but in conclusion, Cheonghyeon was for all intents and purposes without family. He’d already suspected it when his parents hadn’t so much as shown their faces even when he was in an accident.
But to hear, from someone else’s mouth, that his parents had no interest in him left a corner of his heart hollow, as if emptied out. For some reason, he felt ashamed. The story he’d heard in that office was bitter news to someone desperately looking for a place to attach his heart.
In the empire, treating one’s child as a tool for one’s own honor and status was very common. It was an everyday thing to have to fulfill the duties of a great noble before being a father or mother to a child.
But having it happen to him, he felt thrown alone into a vast, empty sea. Recalling the memories given by the reaper, he knew this country’s family bonds were very tight.
Adults living with parents was common, and caring for parents in their later years after the children married was the norm. Images of family gathering to cook at holidays rose naturally to mind.
So why, of all people, are the parents of the body I entered like this?
This wasn’t the barren imperial palace, where his father was a lecher and his brother a cold-blooded killer. Here you couldn’t have dozens of wives, and leaders who killed their own siblings weren’t exactly common.
That was why he’d most looked forward to a parents’ love. The thought of meeting his birth parents after twenty-five years apart had, in truth, excited him. Wouldn’t a suddenly more “present” son feel like a surprise gift?
But after hearing it all, it seemed they’d treat him like a surprise sack of baggage. Or like a cursed doll they’d tossed and now come back to.
What good is making him get U.S. citizenship and depositing a monthly allowance larger than his peers’ when you don’t even know your child’s been switched.
“I’ll be going to the U.S. next week for a conference, so I’ll deliver the message myself.”
“Would you at least stop by the hospital to take a quick look at Cheonghyeon’s condition before you go? We’ll escort you to Korea University. We’re terribly sorry to have caused you concern…”
“He’ll just be lying there, so what for? Convey all subsequent changes to my assistant.”
Aren’t those people my parents now?
Isaac wanted to seize Gi Cheonghyeon by the collar that very instant and shout, Switch back!
Leave a Reply