Page 37 of Pursuing the Egoist
Yugo got up. Bones creaking with exhaustion, he shuffled out of the monitor room and ordered, “Find Kuon.”
THE WIND SNEAKING THROUGHthe window washed Yugo in the smell of heated dust. It’d been five days since Noah left. Five days full of silence. That wasn’t anything new, yet this time, Yugo couldn’t stop thinking about him. Noah had often disappeared for days, but never before had he left his phone behind. “Did Slut call?”
Glancing into the rearview mirror, Greg slowly answered, “No, but we found the Maserati.”
“Where?”
“He left it in front of one of Rudolph’s clubs. His apartment is empty. The housekeeper said his bed was untouched for days.” Greg’s gaze flickered between the road and the rearview mirror.
“Where is his car?”
“Home. In the garage. Do you want me to look him up?”
Yugo tsked, wondering why people were so difficult.College, huh?
Kids like Noah didn’t need college education to learn how to smuggle or launder money, but they still went there to build connections with kids of politicians and millionaires. The new generation of those in power. Austria had no universities like this. Even Mio had to go to Oxford.
Is this why he met with Patrice, to talk out the options? Where is he even going? Did he tell me?Yugo tried to remember, but shook his head failing to recall.Is it why he got that drunk? Because I didn’t listen? He is probably mad; he even left his phone behind. The location of the car says he doesn’t intend to go back. Does he want me to come and find him? What childish behavior…
Yugo blew a breath out.“No… If he wants to leave, he can leave. I’m not chasing anyone. He knows where to find me.”
“Does it mean you’re going to get Kuon back?”
The image of the gun pressed to the temple surfaced in front of his eyes, filling his mouth with bitterness. “No. What’s the appeal of breaking what’s already broken?”
YUGO HAD NEVER PLANNEDto approach Kuon again. He had never intended to touch his skin or hear his voice. He just wanted to take a look at him to quench the deep itch that had settled in his core before going back to his life.
He wasn’t interested in the life Kuon led now nor did he want to know what he’d been doing all this time nor who he’d been with. Kuon was a matter of past, or so he told himself. Yet days later, standing in the middle of the hospital, in front of the shadow of the man he once knew, he felt darkness crawling out of his marrow and poisoning his blood.
With white gauze wrapped around his eyes, Kuon looked unreal, elusive, as if he was about to dissolve into thin air. Or, maybe, Yugo just hallucinated him?
Has he always been this pale?
Yugo blinked, tried to remember, but instead his memory provided the image of the gun, pressed to Kuon’s temple. The determined, sad eyes and the bitter twist of dry, rough lips. If the gun had been loaded that day, the bullet would have entered Kuon’s temple and the same bandage would be wrapped around Kuon’s dead head. Just like now.
Before he managed to stop himself, Yugo reached forward and touched Kuon’s cheek, half-expecting dead flesh to chill his fingers.
Instead, electric warmth abraded his skin upon a touch. Painful, bitter, yet sweetly familiar. Acrid regret for letting Kuon go raged through his core and wiped clean the past two years, leaving him raw with vivid memories of every night they had spent together. At that moment, Yugo couldn’t understand why he’d let Kuon go. He should have locked him away for good. Kept him safe in his bed. Stripped him of choices and pride. Kuon would have been so much happier than the man in front of him.
Kuon flinched, shattering the illusion of proximity. This small gesture of rebellion thickened the darkness in Yugo’s heart, reviving the catatonic, sleeping desires. He stepped back, then again and again, until his shoulder blades collided with the opposite wall, as his blood stammered in the familiar, possessive rhythm:MINE-MINE-MINE-MINE.
His vision pulsed in time with his heart, blurring the room to the point when he missed the moment when a stranger approached Kuon and touched his shoulder. But as soon as his focus returned, a blazing fire ripped through Yugo’s body, washing everything in red, but it also brought back the realization that Kuon didn’t belong to him. Not anymore.
His chest burned from asphyxiation, yet he couldn’t force a breath into his solidified lungs. As if in slow-motion, Yugo watched the man lead Kuon away, then he dropped his gaze to the fingers that still throbbed with the heat of Kuon’s skin.
“What happened to his eyes?”
TO BE CONTINUED...