Passion (BL Novel)

Jeong Tae-ui didn’t even know when he had lost consciousness. The faint, distant beeping of a machine irritated his nerves so much that he opened his eyes. His vision, which had been doubled and overlapped, righted itself after blinking once, then twice.

Even after his eyes opened and his sight returned to normal, his head felt hazy for a while, and he stared blankly at the clock. The annoying sound in his ears was an alarm.
“…….”
He hated waking up to machines, so normally he didn’t use an alarm clock. Only on rare occasions when he absolutely had to wake up at a certain time would he set it—though even then, due to his instinctive aversion to the alarm sound, he usually woke up a minute or two before it rang.

Reflexively, he turned off the alarm and wondered why the damn clock had rung. He only came up with the answer after staring blankly at the second hand, which had almost made a full rotation.
“……Ah.”
Jeong Tae-ui muttered briefly. It was between 4:30 and 4:40 a.m. on the 27th—exactly ten minutes.

It had to be this time.
A firm voice echoed in his ears. Tae-ui, still half-dazed from sleep, checked the clock again after a few minutes had passed. The clock was set for 4:15 and was ticking away steadily.
Good thing I set the alarm. I almost would’ve slept through everything.

Tae-ui put down the clock and got up. After turning on the computer, he hurried to the bathroom to wash his face and clear his head. His mind was still foggy.
“……Ugh.”
But the moment he stepped off the bed, Tae-ui collapsed onto the empty floor. His legs wouldn’t hold him, and his groin throbbed painfully, forcing him to swallow an involuntary groan.

No need to wash my face then. My senses snapped awake.
Lying face down on the floor, fists clenched and trembling, Tae-ui opened his eyes. He felt like swearing uncontrollably. He glanced at the bed. The empty sheets were stained with a sticky, dried residue. Tae-ui glared fiercely at the stain as if it were Ilay himself.
Damn it. It hurts like hell. At least this time, Ilay didn’t shove all the way in like before, so it was somewhat bearable. Compared to that time when it felt like he was torn apart deep inside, now only the entrance felt tight and raw, which was somehow survivable. Tae-ui rested his forehead on the bed and sighed heavily, mixed with a moan. It would be unreasonable to resent Ilay now. Even though he’d been dragged into it unwillingly, he wasn’t tied down, nor had he properly resisted. Later, he even tried cooperating in his own way, so it was awkward to complain that he’d been violently forced like before.

Still, his body ached, so feelings of resentment were inevitable.
“Am I really an idiot……”
He wondered if he had no capacity to learn. After going through all that suffering before, why had he done it with that guy again? And in such a barren relationship that only left hollow regret afterward. Tae-ui grabbed his head and sighed.

It was futile and bitter. Even if it were just a one-night stand at a bar, no partner would leave him feeling as empty as that man did. To accept a guy who completely lacked basic human decency and yet convince himself he didn’t ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) hate the person entirely—that made Tae-ui feel foolish. But that was close to a personality flaw, so even if he recognized it and tried to change, it didn’t work.
Puffing out a heavy breath once again, Tae-ui suddenly snapped to attention and looked at the clock. A few more minutes had passed while his body had been slack. He hurriedly crawled over to the computer and turned it on. After all, this was a favor he’d been asked for—though “asked” was more like an unspoken duty. If he messed it up, it would be a disaster. And whatever it was, it was definitely important to either his uncle or Mackin.
Turning on the computer, he clumsily climbed onto the chair and frowned again. His butt hurt the moment he sat down. Even worse, he felt that awful dripping sensation again from before. He quickly reached out and grabbed his shirt to sit on. That shirt was going to have to be thrown away.
Thinking it over, he felt pissed off. That bastard had taken everything he wanted and then left Tae-ui lying there in a daze, wandering back to his own room feeling refreshed. Of course, if they had slept side by side, that would have been awkward too, but just satisfying his desires and then walking away like Tae-ui was some kind of sex toy felt even worse.

…But it was a relief he was gone for now.
Tae-ui unfolded the note he’d received from Mackin. It would have been a problem if Ilay had still been lingering around.
Looking at the clock, there wasn’t much time left until the designated moment. Tae-ui skimmed the note he’d barely glanced at when he received it. At the top was a long string that looked like a web address—so long he doubted it was a proper URL. Next to it was a brief caution: if you mistype the address even slightly, the connection would automatically be cut off.

Bothersome from here on out, he thought, frowning.
Below that were two passwords and a filename. Then a few lines of unfamiliar formulas.
“……. ……?”

Tae-ui tilted his head curiously.
The formulas weren’t quite formulas. They were a mix of numbers, letters, and symbols—closer to chemical formulas, if anything. The long string looked too complicated to be familiar, especially since he had completely forgotten all those things from high school chemistry study sessions. Maybe it just looked familiar because the format resembled something else he’d seen.
While tapping the note’s edge lightly with his nail and tilting his head, the time came.

He carefully typed the address exactly as it was on the note, then hit connect. The screen changed to a protocol interface. Entering the password, a long list appeared endlessly scrolling. Glancing at the clock, he realized there was no time to check each file one by one. To be precise, there were simply too many files.
Damn… he clicked his tongue and muttered, but then relaxed. Although the list was enormous, it was neatly sorted. There was no rush. He only needed to find and download one file. Unless the computer suddenly crashed, he could finish calmly.
He quickly found the file named on the note. Selecting it, he entered the second password on the prompt that appeared. The file transfer began.

Though he had thought ten minutes would be tight, it took only half that long to finish the download. Before time ran out, he closed the program and checked the note again. If this was the correct file, all that was left was to send it elsewhere.
Tae-ui tapped the desk slowly, considering whether to have a drink of water before checking the file. A cigarette or beer would have been better, but he had neither.
He had almost finished the task, but his mood wasn’t good. He roughly guessed the structure of this situation. Tae-ui had helped with similar jobs before—not exactly like this, but the framework was comparable. Not that he helped willingly; it was more like he’d accidentally witnessed it and looked the other way. In a way, that was still aiding.

That’s still complicity…
Muttering this with distant eyes, he thought about how this time, there was no denying complicity. He had actively helped with his own hands, so there was no excuse.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it was a confidential leak and sale.

It was hard to believe his uncle and Mackin were merely thieves conspiring to enrich themselves. Most likely, they were securing funds. Everywhere was like that. When people fight over positions, it costs a lot more than expected. Sometimes it was an unimaginable amount. If a high-level post at UNHRDO was involved, that sum probably wasn’t small. They wouldn’t do such risky business often, so this file must be worth the price. The value of one file downloaded in a few minutes was probably a number Tae-ui could only understand as a concept, not an actual amount.
“Uncle… isn’t this too much?”
Tae-ui grumbled in a half-whine, though his uncle wasn’t listening. If he were, he’d probably say he knew from the start and approved. Tae-ui wouldn’t have done this if it weren’t his uncle’s request. Not just for moral reasons but because the risk was too great. Since the time was specified separately, the security was probably arranged. At least, since it was at his uncle’s instruction, it wouldn’t endanger Tae-ui. If not, it was a dangerous bridge he definitely didn’t want to cross.

He sighed and stood up, wanting to drink water to wash out the heaviness inside.
As he moved, the pain he’d forgotten flared back, making him moan as he supported himself on the desk. Still, he managed to move awkwardly. Muttering curses with no specific target—mostly directed at Ilay—he fetched water.
“…….”

Drinking slowly from the bottle, he stared blankly at the ceiling. Maybe someone had drugged the water. It tasted bitter. Tae-ui clicked his tongue bitterly and put the bottle down. His appetite was indeed bitter. He didn’t want to be involved in this kind of mess. Even aside from his involvement, his mind was uneasy.
Did his uncle really do these things at UNHRDO?
Tae-ui sighed, resting his head against the chair’s backrest. He didn’t expect moral integrity from his uncle. He wasn’t naive enough to hope his uncle would stay clean and innocent away from the many internal corruptions—and he himself wasn’t such a morally upright person.

Still, he wished it hadn’t been shoved in his face so blatantly.
“Well… it can’t be helped.”
Tae-ui muttered shortly. His bitterness hadn’t faded, but he convinced himself it was out of his control.

“It’s easier to get unpleasant things done quickly and forget them. Let’s see…”
He sat back down at the computer. He only had to compare a few lines from the note with the file and then send the file to the address below. That would be it.
‘If I got the wrong file, it’d be over… and the time’s almost up,’ he muttered, opening the file.

Rows of letters streamed endlessly, making him grimace. They’d been arranged with line breaks for readability, but Tae-ui couldn’t understand the contents. Well, anyone would have trouble reading it. Still, it was familiar.
He remembered the sheets of paper covered with scribbles scattered around the living room when he lived with his brother and chuckled. His brother never organized them properly. His uncle had scolded him, saying, “There are plenty of people who’d treasure these if they got them, so why leave them spread around?” But his brother just shrugged indifferently.
Whenever Tae-ui cleaned the living room, he gathered those countless scraps, but he never understood what was written on them—until he came here.

…Again, he felt gloomy.
Sighing, Tae-ui picked up the note and began matching it with the characters on the screen. The first few lines and the last few lines written on the note matched the file. Thankfully, he hadn’t downloaded the wrong file. Now all that was left was to resend this file.
He rested his chin on his hand and stared at the screen.

It was familiar. Not just because the letters looked like his brother’s messy scribbles.
Tae-ui tilted his head. No matter how much he stared, he couldn’t understand the content. It felt like looking at a puzzle book. Someone like Morro might enjoy this a lot. Of course, unlike puzzles, this had no solution; for those who knew it, this was probably no different from an explanation.
“3…7…7…0…2…. ……. Huh……”

Tae-ui ran his finger down the regularly arranged formulas on the screen, then suddenly stopped.
 
It was familiar. No, not just familiar—perhaps it was a formula Jeong Tae-ui had seen before. His older brother, who usually scribbled formulas on the spot but soon lost interest and threw them aside, sometimes spent several days absorbed in the same sheet of paper. Once, when his brother had held the same sheet for five days straight, Tae-ui thought it strange and sat opposite him, looking at the paper upside down. No matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t understand it, but when he read only the first letter of each vertical line backwards, it turned out to be their home phone number. Tae-ui teased his brother about this coincidence.

At that time, his brother patiently explained the content to Tae-ui, who wouldn’t have understood even if he’d listened. When Tae-ui stared blankly at him, his brother paused for a moment, then summarized it in words Tae-ui could grasp.
“If I just fill in the few empty lines in the middle, it should work—but it’s not solving well. But… honestly, maybe it’s better that it doesn’t solve. If you base your design on this, it might turn out pretty dangerous.”
His brother frowned slightly as he said it, and though he thought it might be better that the formula didn’t resolve, he still disliked not completing it and held on to the sheet for a few more days.

Back then, Tae-ui didn’t know what his brother meant by designing something based on it or what dangers he referred to. But now, Tae-ui could feel his own face stiffen.
His eyes were fixed on the file open on the monitor. Was it coincidence? Or a delusion? But as he traced those still unreadable strings of characters with his eyes, Tae-ui was certain. He had definitely seen this content before.
“……Hah.”

He raised his hand to cover his mouth. His gaze trembled in embarrassment.
If his suspicion, his certainty was correct, then his uncle, Mackin, and others involved in this were out of their minds. There are degrees of confidential leaks. This was not something that could be leaked outside lightly. Though he didn’t know the destination, any place seeking such material was predictable. A place that could make good—meaning excellently exploit—use of this data.
Tae-ui glanced at the clock. It was close to 5 a.m.—too early to call anyone. But now, he had to talk.

He grabbed the handset blindly but remembered that his uncle was in Canberra. It would be around 8 a.m. there, so he decided not to wake him, and rifled through a notebook where he had previously written down numbers.
But no matter how many times he called, the line wouldn’t connect. Either his uncle couldn’t answer, or had stepped away from the phone. After several attempts, the call never went through.
Tae-ui clicked his tongue. His uncle hardly ever missed calls outside of normal work hours. He even suspected the calls were deliberately ignored.

He grew anxious. But on reflection, there was no real reason to be. The appointed time was just to connect securely and download the file safely—not to finish everything in that time. That time had already passed. There was no instruction to immediately send the file, so he could leave it for now and figure things out after making contact. He could delete it if needed.
The anxiety that made him want to contact immediately faded a little. But in its place, a sinister unease grew. His uncle couldn’t have been unaware. If they were conspiring in this, Mackin surely knew too. And in the worst case—though such a thing was highly possible—if that formula was applied to chemical weapons or something similarly terrible…
Tae-ui didn’t know what substance the file described. Maybe it was precisely because he didn’t know that his imagination ran to the worst. But it was easy enough to guess that something traded like this was neither safe nor trivial.

He clicked his tongue. But just sitting at the computer staring at the screen and pulling his hair wouldn’t change anything. He sighed and closed the window. Rubbing his dry eyes with his thumb, he cursed. Damn it. He had planned to finish this quickly and get some more sleep, but now he was wide awake.
He had gotten out of bed far earlier than usual, partly because he hadn’t fallen asleep for a while, but also because he thought Mackin might be the first to show up in the instructor room. After staring at his toes sitting on the bed for a while, he abruptly got up and prepared to leave. Just before stepping out, he called his uncle again, but there was no answer. A bad feeling came over him.
Putting on his shoes, Tae-ui looked at himself in the mirror hanging near the door. His complexion looked awful—like a sick person. Well, he hadn’t slept properly, had been tormented by a madman day after day, his body and mind were worn out, and headaches never stopped. Anyone in his place would look the same.

He sighed and left the room. It was still early dawn. Others would soon be waking.
He climbed the stairs to the first floor. When your mind is exhausted, you shouldn’t relax your body. If you do, your thoughts spiral, usually into unpleasant ones.
He actually regretted it a little when he reached about the second basement floor. He should have just taken the elevator, but he’d held onto the railing, barely enduring the pain below his waist, and had to climb again step by step. By the time he reached the ground floor, cold sweat dripped down his spine.

Damn it. I’ll never do that with that bastard again…
No, I’ll probably end up getting dragged into it again. Let me rephrase: I won’t let him shove it in again.
For a moment, Tae-ui forgot his tangled thoughts and steeled his grudge against Ilay. But that only lasted until he reached the ground floor.

Standing at the end of the hallway where the instructor room was visible in the distance, Tae-ui paused. On mornings with early instructor meetings, not just instructors but also assistant instructors and supporting staff came early. During joint training, there were usually meetings twice daily, mornings and evenings, and today was no exception. Tae-ui checked the clock.
But it was too early for anyone to be around. It felt awkward to be already in uniform at this hour. He stood quietly in the hallway, staring forward. No sign of anyone. It seemed no one had come out yet. Even if others besides instructors were mobilized for the meeting, it would be at least an hour before anyone trickled out.
Though he knew it was unlikely, he still faintly hoped Mackin might be in the instructor room. But he wasn’t. Tae-ui’s tension only extended further.

His chest ached with the prolonged anxious unease.
What should he do? If his guess was correct, what would he do?
He had never thought about it. There was no clue to an answer.

Slowly, he took a step forward. The faint creak of the wooden floor beneath his feet echoed in the empty space. The sound of wood creaked alone, like entering an abandoned house deep in a forest. The feeling was eerie.
Suddenly, his mood sank. Standing alone in the dim hallway with no one around.
When he reached the instructor room, Tae-ui hesitated for a moment. Slowly opening the door, he found a bluish darkness inside. How long had it been since he saw such light? It felt strange. The basement floors had no natural light. The lights were either on bright or it was complete darkness. A small lamp would dimly illuminate the room, but it was not like this bluish dim dawn light.

He longed for the dawn outside. Sometimes he felt this way when living underground all the time. Perhaps it was because the time to leave was drawing near.
Tae-ui entered the instructor room. No one was there. Without turning on the lights, he sat at the small table set for visitors and looked out the window next to it. Of course, there were no windows on the lower floors.
The spacious layout and perfect air conditioning left nothing to be desired, but the place suddenly felt suffocating and stifling. Tae-ui exhaled quietly and closed his eyes. In such quiet, bluish dawn, he thought he could hear sounds.

Suddenly, he remembered his brother. There had been such a dawn once. His brother sat silently in a rocking chair on the veranda, eyes closed. The veranda was filled with the flowerpots their mother had kept. None had bloomed flowers. All were lush green leaves.
Before dawn broke, Tae-ui had gotten up to go to the bathroom and stopped when he saw his brother. His brother sat as if buried among the green, thick leaves.
“Hyung. Didn’t you sleep?”

Tae-ui rubbed his arms in the cool early autumn air, his sleepy eyes glancing at the clock before approaching his brother. His brother opened his eyes and shook his head.
“No, I just woke up.”
“Hmm… aren’t you cold?”

Just awake, Tae-ui rubbed his arms against the chilly dawn air.
“A little.”
His brother answered briefly, pulling his body inward. It was too dark to notice at first, but his lips were blue.

Tae-ui clicked his tongue and went back into the room to get a coat, which he draped over his brother’s shoulders.
“Put some clothes on… Still stuck on a problem?”
Tae-ui squatted at the veranda threshold, looking up at his brother. Sometimes when his brother spent time thinking over something, he’d sit there like a doll.

“No. When I sit here, I feel like I can hear something.”
Wearing the coat, his brother leaned back into the chair. The rocking chair swayed once or twice, then stopped. His brother tilted his head as if listening to something, closing his eyes again. Tae-ui watched him a moment, then, feeling sleepy and needing the bathroom, got up. Now used to his brother’s sometimes unintelligible words, he turned away.
Perhaps his brother felt like this then, wanting to hear sounds unheard in the quiet, blue dawn darkness.

Suddenly, Tae-ui missed his brother. Though not particularly close or thoughtful, and barely thinking of each other, at this moment Tae-ui wanted to see him. Even just one word from him would be good.
He quietly opened his eyes. The dark dawn was still there, though somewhat brighter. The blue light was fading, and objects were regaining their true colors. His uncle’s desk came into view, neatly arranged and signaling the owner’s absence, but revealing nothing about his personality. One couldn’t tell from that desk what kind of books he liked or whether he was sloppy or meticulous.
Sitting alone quietly and lost in thought, thinking of his uncle naturally brought his brother to mind as well. Before coming here, Tae-ui’s uncle used to mostly talk with their father, and after his father’s death, mostly with his brother.

Perhaps the two resembled each other in some ways. But at the same time, they were very different.
For example:
His brother would never betray Tae-ui—not out of love, family loyalty, or morality, but simply because it was so natural to him. In any situation, the thought of betrayal wouldn’t even cross his mind. This was different from Tae-ui’s certainty that he wouldn’t betray his brother. Given difficult choices, Tae-ui would hesitate but ultimately choose not to betray him; his brother would not.

If one had to compare, his uncle was more like Tae-ui. But in the end, his uncle differed from Tae-ui.
His uncle could turn his back on those he cared about if they were sad or struggling. His uncle was a person who could do what others didn’t want to do to get what he wanted.