Dessert in the Room
Elegant classical music was playing. He didn't know the piece. Marcus was speaking with one of the restaurant staff. He didn't know about what. Hong Ji-hyeon simply drifted along at his side in a blank daze, going wherever Marcus went.
"Hah—!"
Shock had knocked his mind briefly out of order, and by the time it shuddered back into something like working condition, he was already seated with Marcus at a table by the window. He cranked his stiff neck around and looked outside. Through the glass lay the same bustling entertainment district the two of them had been wandering only moments before.
This place... what floor is this?!
The nineteenth. A fine-dining restaurant on the floor just beneath the very top.
W-wait, there was definitely a buffet on the first floor, wasn't there?! And we came all the way up here?! Was I really zoned out the entire way?!
"M-Marcusuuu... I-I would've been fine with the buffet..."
"Brother arranged it. Yesterday."
So it was already reserved...
Unable to settle into surroundings that refused to feel real, Ji-hyeon fidgeted without rest. Marcus, unlike him, drank his water with the ease of someone who belonged there, and even as he drank he never once took his eyes off Ji-hyeon, who sat staring a hole through the table.
I thought hotels like this only existed in Gangnam! I mean, sure, this neighborhood's expensive too, but—!
His instincts weren't far off. ONYX Palace Seoul occupied a rather peculiar spot: it was the kind of hotel that belonged in Gangnam, among the high-rises, the upscale clubs, and the luxury brand shops. There was, however, a particular reason it had been built in this district anyway—and that same reason was why Marcus had brought him here.
The wait that followed was very short. A server approached and poured wine into their glasses, and another came right behind him, bottle in hand, and began to explain it. The name went in one of Ji-hyeon's ears and straight out the other. All that remained in his head was that it was a sparkling wine, light and easy to drink.
Under an expert hand, a clear wine touched with the faintest gold slipped into the glasses set before them, alive with carbonation.
I-is this expensive...?
To Ji-hyeon's eyes, the wine falling into the glass was paper money, and the bubbles were coins. Marcus caught the look. Once the server had gone, he spoke.
"I... don't know wine well. So brother prepared it."
"It didn't cost much. Don't worry."
"Y-yes, yes..."
Marcus raised his glass, and Ji-hyeon lifted his own to meet it. They touched with a light ting. Steeling himself, Ji-hyeon brought the wine to his mouth.
I don't know what it cost, but I've had wine plenty of times, at weddings and buffets and places like that. Even if this bottle is several times more expensive, the taste has to be more or less the same.
"...!"
That thought reversed itself the instant the wine touched his tongue.
Th-this flavor—! Sweet and tart at once, and that faint, elegant aroma—! Carbonation that bursts in the nicest way—! If I scored it in numbers, eleven to twelve times any wine I've ever drunk! It's so damn good!
He couldn't hide his face. His eyes went round and he reacted with his whole expression, and Marcus, watching, let a faint smile cross his mouth before tasting the wine himself.
The first course arrived soon after. A server set down before each of them a plate of salmon shaped into a neat round, two sauces, and a wedge of lime.
"Fresh salmon gravlax, with mustard and lime sauce."
Salmon gravure did what on the planet Braxis?
As usual, the information made it only halfway into his head before giving up. Still, on the plate it looked like a salmon dish he was fairly sure he'd eaten once or twice before.
Kind of like what they serve in a wedding course...
He cut the salmon with care, and the moment it entered his mouth—
The bride and groom are coming down the aaaisle inside my mouth!
The salmon all but melted, texture and flavor both, and Ji-hyeon marveled at it. The tension that had locked his body rigid melted away right along with the food.
Soup followed, and with it the door between them finally opened.
"I had no idea you were this rich, Marcus."
"Not rich. Dad is rich."
"Haha~ That is exactly the kind of line a young master in a drama would come out with~"
Ji-hyeon was smiling brightly, and the sight of it put Marcus at ease.
"Are you going to work at the hotel someday, too?"
"Umm... I haven't decided yet. But I'm interested in programming."
"Why?"
"Game... I want to make games."
Games...
The word painted a picture: that enormous body hunched in on itself, utterly lost in a game. The lopsided nerdishness of it nearly startled a laugh out of Ji-hyeon, and he clamped down on it just in time.
Aah~ I keep imagining him like this, and like that! I know it's rude, but... is this what it feels like to stan an actual person? Is this what having a number one is?!
"What about you, Ji-hyeon?"
"Ah, me... I pretty much just ended up here because my scores matched~ Haha~"
He felt a little ashamed of himself, drifting through school without any particular thought in his head.
"If anyone still has no idea, it's me. I'll pick up some alba in the meantime, and eventually I'll end up at one company or another, won't I?"
"Al... ba?"
"Ah! A part-time job! I really ought to be looking even now~ It's been a little while since I quit the one I had. I should find a new one soon... haha."
At that, Marcus swallowed what little saliva he had. The plan sitting in his head and the words Ji-hyeon had just spoken had clicked together. He took a quiet sip of wine and turned over the sentence circling in his mouth, whether to let it out or keep it in. While he was still deciding, the main dish arrived: steak in a red-wine sauce.
Ji-hyeon marveled at the steak as well, lost in the pleasure of it, and Marcus watched him while driving his brain so hard it seemed smoke might rise off his head. At last he gathered his nerve and spoke.
"Is there a part-time job you want to do?"
"Mm... I haven't settled on one. I was thinking a restaurant, or a fast-food place."
"Then... want to try working here?"
"...Huh?"
Ji-hyeon's hand stopped halfway through the steak.
"I-I'm not even studying anything related~ How would someone like me work at a hotel~"
He had no confidence in it, and he said so while drawing a step back.
"Here. Underground. My other brother runs it..."
Marcus hesitated, then went on, figuring the story was already out of his mouth.
"A club."
"A-a club?"
Marcus's other brother would definitely be Black, and the basement of a hotel this upscale... no way. No way—!
A BBC club!
—which is a delusion, ha! As if something like that exists~
Having cracked the joke to no one but himself, Ji-hyeon opened his mouth.
"For working at a club, I'm... how do I put it... not really built for it..."
His confidence thinning by the second, he ducked his head and shyly twisted that narrow body of his. Marcus's gaze traveled from those shoulders down to his waist.
"I don't know the first thing about music, or about working around alcohol, either... haha..."
He looked up and offered an awkward smile. A faint pink had risen in his face—nerves from a proposal he hadn't seen coming, and the several glasses of wine already in him.
"Would there really be anything a total outsider like me could do?"
Ji-hyeon kept circling the point without ever quite landing, and Marcus weighed what he meant to say. The substance of it, and how on earth to put it in Korean—the words, the tone, all of it.
"I... that... No, I mean..."
In the end he decided to simply get his meaning across.
"I'll help you. Don't worry."
"Nnh—!"
Marcus's eyes, lowered while he thought, rolled up and met Ji-hyeon's dead on. That deep, characteristic gaze landed on him, and from that low voice came words that were tender and steady at once, and a corner of Ji-hyeon's chest went ticklish.
Again... again! Hold it in, Hong Ji-hyeon! If you keep fluttering like this, you're done for!
He barely, barely stilled the corners of his eyes and the mouth that wanted to twitch, smiled at Marcus, and rushed to keep the conversation moving.
"Th-then, for now, could I at least see what kind of work it is?"
"I'll contact my brother."
"Ah, yep!"
Before he knew it, tension had locked his body rigid all over again. He extended a creaking arm, caught up the wineglass, and wet his drying throat.
I don't know! Whatever happens, happens!
In the meantime dessert arrived—cheesecake—and Marcus took out his phone and got in touch with his second older brother.
"He said... ten. He said to come at ten."
"Ten..."
Ji-hyeon pulled out his own phone and checked the time. It wasn't even eight yet.
"Uh... then, once we finish this, want to go see a movie? That one's on me!"
Marcus thought for a moment. And in the instant before his answer came, a serious worry surfaced in Ji-hyeon's head.
W-wait! If I'm stuck right up against Marcus somewhere dark, like a movie theater... can I even survive that?! My heart's going to pound until I drop dead, isn't it?!
"Then we don't have to go to the theater."
"Huh?"
"We can watch in a room. I'll ask my brother for an open one."
"Eh...?"
A room? He means a room in this hotel?
I-if that happens, it won't just be my heart that's the problem... I... even the womb I don't have is going to start shaking!
A flutter he had no hope of enduring, and thoughts that had turned outright obscene, set some private narcotic streaming through his brain.
Today I did something like a date with Marcus... he even brought me to a meal this fancy... he's helping me find work, and now he's taking me to a room, too...? I...
I...
I think my head's going to break...! Things that should only happen in a fantasy are happening to me!
I want to be held...
I want Master Marcus, a real male, to hold me as his bitch♡
A cock that had taken it upon itself to get hard forced him to shift his legs into an awkward arrangement. Silently, he prayed the stiffened thing would soften again before they finished the dessert and had to stand.
Both of them.