Chapter 1.4

Chris steadfastly kept making demands that bordered on sexual harassment. Dan muttered ‘if I had my way’ under his breath and boldly took his shirt off.

The striped button-down he had worn in place of a jacket was slightly thick. Under the shirt was a t-shirt with a slightly loose fit.

Having taken off his top, Dan looked up at the man.

“What are you doing?”

Chris said with a blank expression.

You’re the one who told me to. Dan answered only inside his head.

“I said take it off.”

“The bottom too…?”

“Yeah, go ahead and take it off.”

Chris demanded with confidence. Dan swore to himself that if anything funny happened he would beat him with the suitcase until it fell apart, and took off his jeans.

Dan’s height was slightly above average. He didn’t exercise separately but had a light frame and was fairly active, so his body fat was moderate and he gave an overall impression of being lean and smooth.

Chris silently looked Dan over as he stood in nothing but his underwear, then caught the sidelong look that clearly said ‘this too?’ and smiled faintly.

“Mm.”

Chris let out a meaningless sound and took the contents out of the shopping bag and handed them over. Dan looked bewildered as soft fabric unexpectedly made contact with his bare skin.

A colour difficult to name precisely as black or blue, a base like deep ocean blue mixed with black, a raincoat, jacket, t-shirt, trousers, and hat with delicate and elegant gold patterns were stacked in his arms one after another.

Dan stood there bare, holding an armful of clothes in the same colour scheme as Chris Paul’s race suit. After the deep dark base came a white base. Again a jacket, t-shirt, trousers, and hat were stacked in his arms in turn.

Dan slowly stiffened, standing there holding clothes that might as well have been a matching set with Chris Paul’s race suit.

“From now on you only wear these.”

Chris said with a bright smile.

“I beg your pardon?”

Dan was annoyed at himself for keep acting like an idiot. But faced with an unexpected situation he had no choice but to ask again to confirm.

“At home, when you sleep, when you go out, you only wear these. Experience with your whole body who employs you, what team they’re on, and what colours they represent. What should I do if you’re wearing something else? Tear it off, pull it off, or burn it?”

Chris spoke in a tone of feigned generosity, as if giving a choice.

“Burn it.”

Dan chose having his clothes burned over having them torn or pulled off. Chris laughed quietly. The soft sound of laughter was pleasant to hear and threatening at the same time.

“Tifosi.”

At the soft address he paused for a moment before answering.

“Yes.”

“Phone, laptop, camera, and all other communication devices and electronics, hand them over.”

“Yes.”

Muttering only inwardly that this person was a thug, a gangster, something like a mafioso, Dan took his personal electronic devices out of his suitcase and set them to one side. This he had anticipated.

Chris carefully gathered Dan’s things into the empty shopping bag. Not a trace of apology for taking someone else’s belongings. Dan’s expression went back and forth between a frown and neutral as he watched his things being packed into the bag.

“You’ll have to write your memoirs from memory.”

Chris said with a crooked smile. Dan responded to the petty provocation only inside his head.

‘Am I serving a sentence, writing memoirs?’

“If you provide interviews or photos you had better be prepared to get sued.”

‘Why would I be giving interviews.’

“Don’t even think about filming a documentary or anything like that.”

‘Do I look like a PD to you?’

“It’ll all fall apart before it starts and you’ll get sued.”

Dan felt a sense of foreboding at the threats grounded in excessive paranoia. More of a problem than that were the dark green eyes that kept glancing at his bare body between the clothes piled in his arms.

Every time those eyes with their striking deep-set gaze looked at him it felt oppressive enough to make it hard to breathe. Along with that came a strong conviction that the reason a cook and housekeeper hadn’t been hired was entirely that man’s fault.

“Tifosi.”

At Chris’s call he answered right away this time.

“Yes.”

His mood was not great though. Tifosi translated literally meant fan, and in Korean terms what Chris Paul was calling him right now amounted to nothing other than ‘hey, fanboy.’ The urge to say he wasn’t that much of a die-hard fan kept swelling inside Dan.

‘Stop calling me a fanboy.’

Regardless of his dissatisfaction, Chris said leisurely:

“While you’re here, forget Ferrari and accept reality. If there’s anything red in your suitcase, take it out now. It’s better to hand it over first than to get caught later and have it torn, taken, or burned.”

The red thing Chris was referring to was the flag with Ferrari’s emblem drawn in the center on a red background.

Ferrari’s red flag had outstanding visual impact with its vivid colour. In the grandstand each team’s fans unfurl their flags, but few were more eye-catching than Ferrari’s red flag.

Ferrari’s red flag was another symbol of the Tifosi. There was no way someone like Dan, who didn’t consider himself a proper Tifosi, would have one.

“I don’t have one.”

“If I search and find one, I’m tearing it.”

“I don’t have one.”

Dan held his arms full of team clothes in the same colour scheme as Chris Paul’s race suit and strongly denied the accusation.

“I’ll tear it and burn it.”

“I’m telling you I don’t have one!”

Chris shoved Dan aside and threw open the suitcase. Light t-shirts and jeans, high-activity tracksuits, and one single suit came out, and below them a line of underwear rolled up and folded neatly.

“See, I don’t have one.”

Dan grumbled watching his belongings get pulled out of the suitcase and roll around in every direction. Chris cast a look at him standing there with bare shoulders, arms and legs out, clutching a pile of team clothes.

“I prefer boxers over trunks.”

Dan asked, dumping the team clothes he had been holding onto the floor:

“Is there team underwear too?”

“Should I get some made while we’re at it.”

Dan picked a combination from the clothes rolling on the floor that would remind him of Chris Paul’s race suit the least. A white-based shirt with dark stripes and white shorts that came to the knee.

“That’s BMW’s colours.”

Chris expressed his displeasure.

“BMW disbanded their team.”

Dan shot back immediately. Though he couldn’t say there was nothing weighing on him. As the man had pointed out, white base with navy stripes and white trousers were the colour scheme representing BMW.

“…”

The face with its striking deep-set eyes looked steadily at Dan. His expression said: don’t you know the basics, if you’re wearing white on top go dark on the bottom, if you’re wearing dark on top go white on the bottom.

Unable to bear the persistent gaze, Dan eventually gave in and changed his shirt to a dark one.

“This is alright?”

Dan had no choice but to put on a shirt in the same colour scheme as Chris Paul’s race suit. Unfortunately there were no dark trousers. There were trousers, but only thick long ones reminiscent of a race suit.

Unlike the gloomy outside, the mansion managed its temperature, humidity, and air quality with exacting care, so living inside in thick long trousers was out of the question.

“Fine.”

Chris, his expression cleared of displeasure, pulled a large suitcase out from under the couch. A very large suitcase that looked like it could fit a person folded inside.

Dan felt uneasy again. An insolent foot kicked his clothes that were rolling around here and there, making space to put the suitcase down. The large suitcase opened, and then a pair of sneakers was passed into Dan’s arms.

“Take these.”

Running shoes, basketball shoes, summer ones, winter ones, the variety was considerable. The colours were extremely varied too. The designs were varied to a degree that was hard to keep up with.

After the sneakers came dress shoes. Oxfords, suede, loafers, moccasins, boat shoes, one of each type placed in his arms with rapid hands, and just keeping them from getting damaged was enough to exhaust Dan.

“Excuse me.”

Just as he was about to protest the untimely clothing regulations.

“Tifosi.”

“Yes.”

“Since you’ve become my manager, only wear, put on, hang, attach, and use brands that sponsor me.”

“…Is that what this is?”

“Yeah.”

Chris handed Dan, who was standing there holding an armful of new shoes, the watch he was currently modeling for. That watch cost more than all the clothes and shoes Dan had been holding put together.

Hoping the shoes wouldn’t get damaged, Dan quickly set down everything he had been holding and took the watch. His employer’s distribution continued.

At the end he was given a laptop, a tablet PC, and a mobile phone that could only receive incoming calls.

“Excuse me.”

Dan, who had suddenly been loaded with far too many things, called to Chris. The striking deep-set eyes answered with a look rather than words.

“You don’t have sportswear sponsorship?”

He had already received a lot but couldn’t help asking.

“I do.”

“You have suit sponsorship too, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“So whether I’m at home, going out, sleeping, sitting or standing, I have to wear only team-related clothing at all times? Will there ever be a situation where I wear team clothes with dress shoes? Could you explain why… if you don’t mind.”

Dan was expressing his dissatisfaction with the distribution clothes when he noticed Chris’s face slowly losing its generosity and let his words trail off into nothing.

The start had been ambitious but if he kept going with that ambition he would end up going out in a blaze the way he had when he got fired, or digging his own grave the way he had in front of the paparazzi.

“Tifosi.”

Chris came close to his tense face.

“Yes.”

He still couldn’t quite get used to the nickname that brought ‘die-hard fan’ to mind.

“You’re a Tifosi.”

“Yes…”

“Wash the red packed into every corner of your head clean out.”

“Yes.”

He didn’t like the way Chris spoke, as if telling him to purge the communists from his heart, but Dan chose to quietly close his mouth. Knowing that once his dissatisfaction came out it would end in an explosion of temper, he resolved to endure.

The world had been conquered by capitalism. Money was everything. At the end of this oppression, one million dollars was waiting for him.

As Dan steeled himself firmly, Chris coolly ordered him to clean up everything that had been scattered around, prepare dinner, and then run a bath. It was the man who had scattered things, not him, but Dan closed his mouth again.

“Tifosi.”

Chris, who had been about to go up the stairs, turned around.

“Yes?”

Dan answered reflexively and swallowed down into the pit of his stomach whatever sulkiness might have shown on his face.

Chris Paul, with arms too long to be necessary for an F1 driver and legs even more unnecessarily long than that, and a tall frame to match, leaned against the stair railing and said in a calm tone:

“No smoking. No alcohol. And only eat what’s on my meal plan.”

All the resolve and effort of a moment ago lost its meaning. Dan wanted to cry out.

‘Why do I have to eat only what’s on your meal plan! You’re the one on a diet, not me!’

The words felt like the sky was falling. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] But he stiffened and only his lips moved silently. The meal plan the nutritionist had drawn up for Chris Paul, which he had briefly looked over, filled his mind. That meal plan had not a gram of seasoned meat or carbohydrates. No alcohol, no cigarettes, and now even eating freely was impossible.

To Dan, frozen in place, Chris said without warning:

“Your nipples are a pretty colour.”

The man’s voice was as perfectly calm as when he had been talking about no smoking, no alcohol, and the meal plan.

Dan momentarily forgot to breathe. He thought that even if he had been struck in the head by the massive iron gate guarding Chris Paul’s mansion, he would have been less startled than this.

“Ugh!”

He choked on the sudden breathlessness and coughed. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] A suppressed sound leaked from his throat as the breath caught of its own accord. Thwack! A cartoonish sound rang out. From a distance, Chris offered a gentle word of caution.

“Don’t spit on the sofa.”

With those words, Chris Paul threw him a bright smile and went up the stairs.

“Ugh…!”

Dan glared at Chris’s long firm back as he went up the stairs and let out a ridiculous groan. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] Brian Paul’s mention of a relationship allowance drifted past his ears.

No, this wasn’t going to be a relationship allowance but a hazard allowance.

Dan shyly covered his chest with his hands for the first time and looked down. He directed his gaze to exactly where his nipples were and frowned with everything he had. He thought he should run away right now, but couldn’t bring himself to move at the thought that if he just endured this he too would be a millionaire.

Running away from here right now would make him happy in the moment, but he had been the one to put on a scene that had to be covered with beeps and bleeeps and bleep-bleeps on television, so finding a job for a while was out of the question. He would have to stretch and divide and split whatever little was left in his account to get by.

He had dreamed of turning over a new leaf and trying to live decently, and ended up advertising his whereabouts to the whole neighbourhood, so no small number of people he’d had run-ins with in the past would be hunting for him with murderous eyes, which made this as safe a place as any.

He stomped down over and over again on the temper that kept surging up in him. Coughing sporadically, dazed, he quietly picked up the scattered clothes.

Dan freshly recognized that while he lived in a democratic society, that society was also a heartless capitalist one where freedom was far and money was near. Considering the generous pay, his worries about making ends meet, and the safety of a person who could easily find himself in danger, he pressed down and pressed down again on the anger that kept surging up.

Kim Dan, in an environment where his freedom to wear, eat, put on, and use things was restricted, began the work Chris Paul had instructed him to do.