Chapter 1.6

Though he might be suspected of being a slow learner who didn’t know how to wait for hot water, up to this point Chris Paul had been a reasonably decent employer. More than that, he was a person who faithfully kept to the nutritionist’s absurd meal plan.

He couldn’t help acknowledging that Chris was a far more disciplined driver than the one with a beer belly who had left Dan in despair.

Chris Paul, whose entire breakfast had been half a lemon and five almonds, drank a cup of white tea after eating, looked through the daily, weekly, and quarterly newspapers and magazines Shane had brought in early that morning, and left for training.

Dan cleaned rooms 1, 2, and 3 as Brian had instructed. He ran the vacuum over the living room, dining room, and the carpet spread throughout the mansion again and again so that mites and the like would have no foothold. After that he lined up more than ten cushions on the unnecessarily enormous sofas in each room in a single row as shown in the photos.

He dusted, wiped, swept, and tidied everything, then went around the mansion to make sure he had left nothing to be complained about. After that Dan sorted the returned laundry, redistributed the day’s groceries, and prepared Chris Paul’s lunch.

Chris Paul’s lunch was chicken breast with salad.

Dan frowned at the monotonous meal plan, which had changed little from the previous evening’s chicken breast salad other than splitting into chicken breast and salad as separate items.

“What kind of top-tier nutritionist comes up with something like this?”

He grumbled quietly as he set down on the table the plate of boiled unseasoned chicken breast cut into manageable pieces and the plate of salad made without salt.

“I think the same.”

A low voice with a faint trace of tiredness rang out right beside Dan’s ear. Dan turned around with an awkward smile at the voice that spread as smoothly as good quality cream. A striking face with deep skin that brought to mind sweet chocolate and green eyes that drew the gaze due to their deep-set look was staring down at him in silence.

“Please go ahead, it’s nothing much.”

Dan said, crab-walking out from between Chris Paul and the table. He tacked on the words his mother always said when serving a guest a meal and smiled awkwardly. Unlike his mother who put out food until the table was fit to collapse, he really had put out very little.

He couldn’t put out more. No matter how many times he looked at the meal plan supposedly drawn up by a top-tier nutritionist, it was nothing but chicken breast, salad, and at best salmon.

Chris watched Dan crab-walk out from between himself and the table and smiled without a sound.

Dan glanced back once at Chris who had come alone while getting the coffee ready. Mul and Shane were people too and had to eat something, but Chris Paul, the employer who pretended to be reasonably decent, made no mention of their meals.

“Why aren’t you eating?”

Chris asked as he took his seat.

Right, that’s what I was wondering too. Dan was puzzled as to why the two of them hadn’t come.

“Tifosi.”

Chris uttered that strangely unpleasant nickname.

No matter how many times he heard it, the man’s call of Tifosi sounded like nothing other than ‘hey, fanboy.’ It was a nickname that felt even stranger when he thought about how Chris Paul had once been a rising hope of the Tifosi.

Just as he was thinking he might as well seriously explain that he wasn’t that much of a Ferrari fan, Chris called to him again.

“Tifosi.”

“Yes.”

“Sit down.”

Chris pointed to the seat across from him.

“I have to make the coffee.”

Dan offered a belated excuse.

“Keep eating more than the right amount and you’ll turn into a pig.”

Chris said cheerfully, picking through his salad.

“Excuse me.”

Dan flinched at the word pig. A pig, really, he was someone who could eat an entire pizza and drink a 1.5 litre bottle of cola for breakfast, eat a whole tub of ice cream as a snack, have popcorn and a fizzy drink for lunch, grill and eat five portions of samgyeopsal by himself for an early dinner, and have a slice of fresh cream cake and a large cup of coffee loaded with sugar for a late night snack without putting on a single gram. Just as he was about to argue that the man had no idea what his metabolism was like, Chris suddenly brought his face close to Dan’s.

“Ugh.”

Dan reacted with excessive surprise.

“What’s that?”

Chris, who had come close enough for his lips to almost touch Dan’s cheek, asked with narrowed eyes. Without asking permission, the man took the glasses off Dan’s face.

Because he hadn’t been able to get new glasses made and was still wearing the thick black frames that didn’t match his prescription, Dan had been able to remain relatively unbothered by Chris Paul’s face, which was so strikingly handsome he could have become a rising star in show business if he hadn’t become an F1 driver.

Without the glasses, with bare eyes, Chris’s face came in close enough to see clearly. Dan smiled vaguely at Chris Paul’s eyes fixed on his right cheek.

“Were you hurt?”

Chris asked, narrowing his eyebrows which were the same colour as his good quality dark brown hair. He reached out toward the faint burn mark remaining on Dan’s right cheek.

Dan realized that he, not even a woman, was feeling threatened by another man, simply because the other person happened to be terrifyingly good-looking, and freshly understood why women fell for Chris Paul instantly without being able to do a thing about it.

“Just a moment.”

Dan raised his hand abruptly, the way one asks a dentist to stop mid-procedure. He removed the long, well-shaped fingers resting on his cheek and wiped away the awkward smile he had been wearing.

Chris sent him a look that said go ahead and say what you want to say.

“I hurt it riding a motorcycle a while back.”

“You ride motorcycles?”

“Not anymore.”

Dan answered quickly in a tone that shooed away hawkers.

Chris Paul had walked the official path an F1 driver had to take starting from go-karts, but was someone who had made it widely known that personally he was far more interested in motorbikes than cars.

Dan didn’t particularly want to talk with him. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] Chris Paul’s face seen through the out-of-focus glasses had been tremendously handsome, but Chris Paul in person coming into clear view was so handsome it was hard to even speak to him.

It was fortunate that F1 was a sport where a helmet had to be worn for most of the time it appeared on television.

“Why?”

The face that seemed to say why would you stop doing something so good kept following him around.

“Please eat.”

A large hand reached out toward him as he tried to turn and avoid answering. Dan instinctively tried to swing his elbow. But faster than that, Chris laid Dan down on the table.

Dan lay next to the chicken breast and salad he had made and said hazard allowance to himself three times.

“Why don’t you ride anymore?”

The man tended to speak gently, be kind, and be relatively polite to someone he intended to be with, but as an employer his manner of speaking was smooth while being neither kind nor polite.

The current Chris Paul was as persistent and disagreeable as when, after an interview following a race where he had forced a competitor out with a collision and then retired alongside them, he had said without a trace of remorse on his face that he was sorry about the minor accident during the race and wanted to apologize if his competitor had felt any displeasure.

The face that had come into view showed no sign of backing off.

“Because I got hurt.”

“You got hurt?”

The man’s lips came close enough to almost touch the face lying on the dining table and murmured.

“My knee.”

“Your knee?”

Chris repeated Dan’s answer as if asking again and moved his hand downward.

“Don’t touch it.”

Dan said firmly, lying on the eight-person table side by side with the boiled chicken breast and salad.

Chris, whose hand had been reaching toward Dan’s knee area, smiled and brought the hand he had lowered back up onto the table. Dan glanced at the hands propped on either side of his face and let out a hollow laugh at the thought that this person even had good-looking hands.

“Please eat.”

Chris was leaning over the table looking down at Dan. He straightened up and held out a hand. Dan left the extended hand where it was and got himself up.

A gentle voice asked him as he sat up on the table beside the chicken breast and salad.

“Won’t you have sex with me?”

The polite tone was as calm as when he had first met the man. Dan took the thick black frames back from the large hand and smiled.

“You must be pretty desperate.”

The handsome face gave no answer and just shrugged his chin.

“Why aren’t Mul and Shane coming?”

“You’re not eating because you’re wondering about that?”

Chris pointed at the chicken breast and salad sitting beside Dan. Dan had been planning to send the man away and then scrape together the remaining ingredients on his own and eat as much of the unseasoned chicken and salad as he could. Not wanting to go into the details of that petty plan, he looked away and muttered:

“I have to make the coffee.”

Chris pulled up one corner of his lips at the vague answer.

“Manager.”

Dan, who had been trying to slip away to the side, adjusted his glasses at Chris’s call. He didn’t particularly like Chris Paul’s manner of always calling him Tifosi and then using the title manager just when he’d almost forgotten, as if to remind him that his position was that of his manager.

Dan, who had found his composure back behind the out-of-focus glasses, tilted his chin toward the unseasoned chicken breast and salad and said:

“Please eat.”

Chris just lazed around. He was acting like a child who couldn’t eat on his own.

At his attitude of dithering in front of the table like a troublesome seven-year-old, Dan urged him once more.

“Please eat.”

And as if that weren’t enough, he picked up a piece of chicken breast with a fork and held it out. Grumbling internally that he was supposedly the man’s manager yet what kind of manager was this.

Chris, who had been dawdling in front of the table, accepted the chicken breast Dan held out as if he had no choice and ate it.

Dan suspected he had been hired not as Chris Paul’s personal manager but as a maid or nanny. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] It bothered him that this large house had no housekeeper, and no cook for an athlete who absolutely needed his diet managed.

“Is employing a maid legal in Ireland?”

Dan asked, stabbing at the salad with a fork.

“It’s illegal.”

Chris answered, dutifully accepting the salad. He tossed the salad plate that had been sitting on the table into Dan’s arms without care and sat down in the spot where the salad plate had been.

Dan balanced the salad plate on his left hand and used his wrist and inner arm to keep the chicken breast plate from falling.

‘So if not a maid, then a nanny.’

Dan gauged his actual position from the man’s answer and speared a piece of chicken breast with a bit of salad on a fork and held it out. Chris, showing no inclination whatsoever to take the fork, accepted the food in an undignified posture.

Just as Dan tried to spear a thinly sliced cherry tomato from the salad, the man who was being as uncooperative about eating as a troublesome seven-year-old said:

“Water.”

Dan, who had been holding two plates in one hand and a fork in the other, nearly shot him a look of disbelief.

‘Hey, you.’

His expression alone looked ready to let out that kind of cry.

Every working person in the world is in the emotional labor business.

Just 69 more days and he too would be a millionaire. If he got out of here safely he could stop worrying about his safety, given that the people he had picked fights with in the past might launch a counterattack. He went through in order the reality that his unwanted television debut meant he couldn’t dream of finding work for a while.

Dan quietly set down the plates he had been holding and picked up the water glass.

“…”

He held out the water glass but the face that was handsome enough to be even more annoying just stared at it.

“…”

At Chris’s attitude of waiting as if it were only natural, Dan repeated ‘this idiot’ internally and was careful not to let his feelings show on his face.

He brought the water glass close to Chris’s lips. Chris, who had been drinking the water from the glass by just opening his mouth, closed his mouth to indicate he was done drinking.

It was beyond him how someone who wouldn’t lift a finger could manage grueling training. He balanced the plates back cleverly on his hands and arms and resumed the forking. Chris accepted the salad and chicken breast with open compliance.

When the meal was over and he was clearing the plates, Dan suddenly had a suspicion.

‘Am I being played right now?’

There had been a race where Chris Paul had come up hard behind a competitor passing through a tunnel and caused them both to retire. After the race he had given an interview saying he sincerely apologized to his dear competitor who had had to unintentionally stop the race because of him.

Come to think of it, his competitor had been forced out of the race by Chris Paul. The more he thought about it, the more deliberate that accident seemed.

At the time Chris Paul had accumulated sufficient championship points. He was only a few points short of the points needed to end the season as champion.

After the race Chris Paul had apologized politely and the incident passed without any issue. The person who had been forced to stop the race by him had been a former Ferrari driver, and when Chris Paul had left Ferrari, that driver had politely said it was a foolish choice and there would surely come a day when he regretted it.

That driver had remained in a slump after moving to another team, and if he hadn’t been hit by Chris Paul in that tunnel and forced to retire, he would have been in a position to score points for the first time since leaving Ferrari.

Even back at that tunnel incident, he had thought the champion title holder from his debut year had a terrifying capacity for grudges. He had felt fed up at the thought that if you got on his bad side you’d keep suffering for it.

Looking at Chris, who had eaten every last bit of the flavorless chicken breast speared on the fork Dan had held out without expressing any complaint, he felt a chill. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] The man’s obsessive drive for achievement could be understood just from watching him eat this dreadfully tasteless low-sodium food.

He was suspicious that both the fact that he had been distracted into hand-feeding the man his meal and the fact of having become the man’s manager were forms of suffering inflicted because he had rubbed Chris Paul the wrong way. He was worried about his own situation being too precarious to laugh off with a ‘what a petty man.’

‘What did I even do?’

Chris hopped lightly off the table and said:

“Coffee.”

Dan nodded at his employer’s words with indifference and grumbled internally.

‘It’s definitely on purpose.’

Everything from the business about the hot water not coming out was suspicious. Being made to feed him with a fork all seemed deliberate too.

It didn’t make sense but the suspicion kept deepening.

A mountain of things to say piled up in his heart.

‘What did I do that was so wrong? Is eating the leftover ingredients something worth harassing me over?’

‘Do you know I ate a fistful of your almonds behind your back and this is why you’re doing this? If I have to eat sitting across from you, I can only eat an amount that wouldn’t fill an ant’s eye, why would I put myself through that?’

‘I ask about the comings and goings of the people in and out of the house and you can’t even answer.’

At the end of the anger he wanted to burst out and say what was so wrong about not having sex with him, but quickly came to understand his own situation.

‘In 69 days I’ll be a millionaire too.’

Becoming an ordinary member of society who didn’t cause trouble wasn’t easy. He steeled his resolve, stomped down on the surges of feeling that had sprouted in his heart, and Dan quietly cleared the empty plates and focused on making the coffee.