“ Starting now, we will begin the 2026 Global Talent “
It had been an hour since the training started,
The kids who looked to be around the same age were all dressed neatly in suits, but
they wore tired expressions.
The adults, who outnumbered the kids by a wide margin,
didn’t sit down but stood in the back and watched.
To a kid visibly nodding off,
they would hand over a sweet candy, or
put a cool glass of ice water in their hands.
Hwang Hyunjin was also listening to the training, but
he stared at the PPT with a bored look, half listening.
Just because he was wearing a suit
didn’t make him look like an adult right away.
A tie left messy from constantly fiddling with it,
a nose turned red from yawning so wide his mouth hung open,
and above all, an expression totally blank from boredom,
made him look exactly like a high school student taking the training.
After the talent training ended, Hwang Hyunjin
only bowed to the several adults
before hurrying out of the main auditorium as if escaping.
With a worn-out face heavy with exhaustion, he entered the parking lot.
As soon as Hwang Hyunjin got into the Carnival,he collapsed
and slept like the dead until just before he got home,
then jolted awake and rubbed his eyes at the butler’s call.
“Young master, we’ve arrived.”
He let out an irritated sigh and frowned deeply.
After getting out, the butler, bowing to see Hwang Hyunjin off,
didn’t even make eye contactand, while yawning slowly and heavily,
returned with a polite bow despite the lazy wave of a hand.
It’d be understandable if he got annoyed that a high school kid
was acting however he wanted toward him, an adult,
but he did seem kind of cool, quietly getting his work done,
though at the same time, it was a little worrying.
Just as he was shoving a finger into the fingerprint scanner by the front door,
I tossed a remark at the back of Hwang Hyunjin’s head.
“Don’t you feel sorry for the butler?”
“We paid to have him attached for this, so what’s there to feel sorry for?”
He answered my question right away without hesitation.
His firm attitude made my own words feel pointless,
and the words I was about to say rose to the tip of my throat,
but soon I was completely at a loss for words, my lips freezing in place.
After Hwang Hyunjin came home,
as if too lazy to shower again,
he grumbled and muttered to himself
before going straight into his room.Not long after, dressed in a robe,
Hwang Hyunjin came down the stairs
and, noticing me fiddling with my phone alone on the sofa,
told me to hurry up and wash up, shaking the wet hair from his head.
I went back up the stairs without a word.
In the pitch-black room with the lights off,
I carefully groped around for the switch,but what I found was
not the light switch,but the wet doorknob.When I pulled the knob, the bathroom light came on automatically with a click, andthe floor of the moisture-filled bathroom, hit by the light,
sparkled for a moment.
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