Chapter 1.7

A grand melody spread through the quiet room as darkness had settled in. Dan, who had been deep asleep, opened his eyes muttering curses. He blinked at the brightly lit phone screen.

3 a.m.

The first day at Christopher Paul’s mansion was not yet over. His face, not yet fully awake, slowly registered reality and the corners of his lips twitched.

[Chris]

He couldn’t help a hollow laugh at the name on the screen. The reason he was laughing was the ringtone. The melody coming from the work phone that supposedly only received calls was ‘The Imperial March,’ the theme of Darth Vader.

Dan stared at the flashing screen and murmured.

“What a pair of brothers.”

The person who had contacted him in the early hours the previous morning had been Brian Paul. Back then the phone had rung with ‘Waltz of the Flowers.’

Waltz of the Flowers was the music that played when the Sugar Plum Fairy’s handmaidens danced a splendid dance holding bouquets of roses made from the candy of a Christmas cake. It was a song choice that gave him chills in more ways than one.

The older brother gets Waltz of the Flowers, the younger gets the Imperial March.

Even if you didn’t know Star Wars, even if you didn’t know Darth Vader, the Imperial March with its grand and charismatic melody that made you feel the presence of darkness from the very first bars suited Chris Paul perfectly.

Whenever Dan heard the Imperial March he thought of those words. He has arrived!

It was exactly right for the current situation too. Right, when the master calls, you answer promptly. His master, no, his employer, was persistent and had great endurance.

Darth Vader’s theme played on without pause in his hand. Even without being a particular Star Wars fan, just hearing the Imperial March as a ringtone was enough to bring to mind Darth Vader’s voice mixed with the sound of his oxygen mask breathing.

It suits him perfectly.

Dan answered the phone with admiration.

“Yes.”

He didn’t forget to make his voice presentable, as befitted an ordinary member of society who didn’t cause trouble. While impressed by the brilliantly chosen ringtone, he was also worried about what might have happened for a call to come in the middle of the night.

He tensed up belatedly. He was afraid that if it was something urgent enough to call suddenly, maybe something had gone wrong.

His head was already ringing before he had even thought of the specifics.

Chris Paul had a remarkable track record. Unrelated to rape or crime, but articles, photos, and videos of group sex, of him walking into hotels with women on both arms or from every direction, popped up constantly.

He was allergic to alcohol so there wouldn’t be any drinking incidents, but he might have assaulted a drunk. Like he had done once before, there was a possibility he had stomped and smashed a paparazzi’s camera.

For that he’d have to go out to Duke Street or Temple Street where pubs and bars and clubs were everywhere, but could he really have the energy for that on nothing but greens?

Dan frowned, his head heavy from just waking, running through ominous possibilities. In contrast to his worries, the other end of the call was quiet.

“Come to my room.”

Chris said in his smooth voice.

“I beg your pardon?”

Dan, not yet fully awake, asked back at Chris’s short and simple demand. Unlike Dan, who couldn’t hide that he had been woken from sleep, Chris’s voice was clear. The man said what he had to say in his smooth voice and hung up.

All that came back to Dan’s groggy query was silence.

Call duration: 1 second.

“Hey.”

He threw a casual address at the disconnected phone without thinking, but there was no answer.

Remarking to himself that the Imperial March followed by Chris Paul’s voice was a perfect match, but also thinking that if he was being called urgently in the middle of the night there must be a reason, Dan shook off his sleep and headed to Chris’s room.

He walked down the corridor, went up the stairs, crossed the corridor again, arrived at Chris’s room, and knocked.

“Come in.”

A leisurely response came back that gave no suggestion of urgency, danger, or a problematic situation.

Dan was about to ask what was wrong as he opened the door.

“Water.”

Chris was lying sideways on the bed with the lights off. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] The only light in the room was the faint glow coming through the window reflecting the dim early morning sky. Dan, still not fully awake, blinked and asked again.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Water.”

A firm voice rang out.

“Water…”

At Dan’s cracked mumbling Chris answered readily.

“Yeah, water.”

No matter how generously he tried to interpret it, it sounded like teasing.

Chris Paul’s bedroom had an enormous bed with one side table on each side. To keep the room from looking bare, a small tea table had been placed to one side. The distance from the bed to the tea table was three or four steps, and with a man’s stride probably one large step would be enough.

Rather than protesting rationally, Dan told himself ‘I am the nanny’ and headed toward the tea table. He filled a water glass to the brim and went to the bedside. He knew that splashing this water all over the bed would feel satisfying but would make life miserable for him, so he obediently handed the water glass to Chris.

Am I really being punished?

Dan looked at the handsome face that was just staring at the glass and went through belated regrets and self-reproach again and again.

He reflected over and over on the ugly trouble-making of his past days, the foolish things he had done without knowing better, the actions carried out with no sense of fear.

‘I’ll live properly from now on.’

Dan reached under the sheets to pull out Chris’s hand and put the glass in it. Chris caught the hand as it withdrew. The hand holding the glass full of water grabbed the retreating Dan and pulled him toward the bed.

“I’m very sleepy right now.”

Dan felt the water in the glass sloshing. He murmured, drunk with sleep. He was so sleepy and tired that irritation seeped into his words.

Dan’s wrist and the base of the glass were held together in Chris’s grip as Dan floundered.

Chris whispered gently to him as he failed to collect himself.

“If you’re sleepy, sleep.”

Dan, wedged between Chris Paul’s bed and Chris Paul, registered his own situation and scrunched up his eyes.

He knew Chris Paul was doing this on purpose to mess with him.

It was all playing around. He fully understood the other person’s intention of wanting him to be flustered by this, to be thrown off by these petty moves.

Damned employer.

He wanted to act like a flawless manager, but he didn’t even have the energy to roll himself out of the room. Having been woken up so dramatically only to find almost no follow-up shock, now that he was lying on the bed the only thing he wanted was to fall asleep just like this.

So Dan decided to do exactly that.

It was his first day as Chris Paul’s manager. He had gotten up before dawn, listened to a long list of instructions, and cleaned and wiped down the enormous mansion while on edge. The fatigue he hadn’t felt while tense doing unfamiliar work as he handled an employer acting like a child had come crashing in once night fell.

“Then I’ll sleep.”

Dan said, his lower half overlapping with Chris’s. He tilted his body slightly to the side, not caring that he was pinned under a man of six-something feet, and wriggled around looking for a comfortable sleeping position.

Dan, his face half buried in the pillow while half leaning against Chris, opened his eyes. He reached for the glass in Chris’s hand, and moistened his lips slightly with the water.

As Dan tilted his body sideways, stretched his legs this way and that, pulled the glass to drink, and took off his glasses and placed them on the side table, Chris moved his bare shoulder out of the way each time.

Dan’s stomach turned slightly at having the excellent bare body of an employer challenging three percent body fat so close up, but he let it go as if he hadn’t noticed.

The man’s body was too unreal. Jealousy, envy, admiration lasted only a moment. Looking at the body hovering in his field of vision brought shock, irritation, and admiration surging up in turns.

Chris Paul might have expected Dan to be horrified at a naked man and struggle with the idea of sleeping in the same bed as another man, but Dan was indifferent to such things. Koreans with their bold sensibility didn’t worry about that kind of thing.

Dan, who had had his face buried in the pillow, opened his eyes. He scrunched up his eyes in displeasure at having been woken from sleep at 3 a.m. just to pour water, and muttered:

“I forgot.”

“What.”

“Good night.”

Dan said goodnight to a pair of shoulders too wide to be necessary for an F1 driver. A truly unnecessary body. Legs too long, shoulders too well developed making his head look unusually small, long lean muscles. The damned protruding parts making contact with his thigh no matter which way he shifted.

A body with all these things attached like optional extras, things that looked good on the outside but weren’t much use for an F1 driver, was a nuisance.

Dan, whose mind had been starting to wander, buried his face back in the pillow. Chris was braced on his elbow and thigh so his body wasn’t completely overlapping Dan’s.

Chris looked quietly down at the employee who had his face pressed to his pillow with his eyes closed. He moved the thigh he had been bracing with and lightly knocked Dan’s thigh. The face that had seemed to fall asleep the moment his ear touched the pillow opened its eyes.

Dan blinked with eyes that weren’t quite in focus.

“What? Did you forget something else?”

Chris asked Dan, who seemed more than half asleep.

“Mm.”

Dan let out a vague sound. He had been managing to soothe the wandering thoughts and was going to sleep just like that, but the other person wasn’t helping.

He looked up at Chris, who was staring down at him with eyes that could only make out the outline of his face without his glasses. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] Then he raised his upper body and brought his face close to Chris’s cheek.

Smack.

He kissed the man’s cheek with a loud sound. The moment Dan’s lips made contact with his cheek Chris’s shoulder jumped. He kissed him once on the right, once on the left, then Dan murmured in the tone of someone soothing a child:

“Now let’s really sleep.”

According to the documents Chris had read, Kim Dan was an only child. He had no younger sister to dote on, let alone a younger brother. His own older brother Brian was someone people called brother-complex, but he was a strict believer in gender distinctions and had never kissed his younger brother’s cheek before bed.

He had wondered whether Koreans had such a uniquely distinctive sensibility that they just doted on anyone younger, but Kim Dan was only three years older than him. That said, he hadn’t heard that Dan was gay.

Even when he himself had suggested it, Dan had worn a face that said he expected to hear all manner of nonsense. And yet being pinned under a naked man and sleeping calmly was something he couldn’t make sense of.

“Hey.”

Dan answered Chris’s call dutifully. He was a diligent and steady employee, he had decided to become an ordinary member of society who didn’t cause trouble.

“Got to sleep.”

His pronunciation was so slurred Chris could barely make it out.

“Manager.”

“Sleeping.”

It was very much the attitude of shooing away an annoying bug.

“Tifosi.”

He called once more but there was no response at all. He didn’t like Dan sleeping without so much as a twitch.

The plan to see him cling in horror and get annoyed at a naked body pressing against him had collapsed without ceremony.

The other person, not being some naive innocent, had done little more than dart a few glances at the naked male body. The bold manager’s reaction put him in a foul mood.

Chris stripped the team clothes off the sleeping employee’s body, the clothes he had instructed him to always wear whether at home, going out, sleeping, eating, or working. He dismantled every last thread and threw it under the bed. Even then Dan didn’t wake.

Between the legs of his employee, who appeared smooth and lean without seeming to have taken any particular care of himself, he tucked something that would make the other person recoil in shock.

The slight friction caused what had been inserted between Dan’s legs to increase in volume, but the bold manager slept on without waking. Chris shifted around a few times to find a satisfying position and then, holding the slender back in his arms, settled in to sleep.

He was very much looking forward to tomorrow.