| Poison | 🔞 |

Chapter 2

The next morning, the warm feel of the sun peeking through the curtains upon Hongjoong's face slowly awoke him. He opened his eyes, immediately squinting from the intensely bright light. Grabbing his phone from the nightstand, he pressed the power button to turn on his screen, seeing his phone had flooded with notifications. Confused, the red-haired male slowly sat up in bed, resting his back against his headboard.

Most of the notifications he had gotten were local news updates from Twitter, so of course, that was the first thing he decided to investigate. It probably wasn't anything too important, a robbery went wrong, housefire, it could've been anything, but being an investigative reporter, he was compelled to keep up with any kind of news.

Opening the app, he began scrolling through his newsfeed, immediately freezing when he came across a certain article. The thumbnail that was displayed was a picture that must've been snapped that one night at The Alley because it captured the exact moment Seonghwa Park had Hongjoong against his chest after he fell off of the barstool. The article was titled, "Seonghwa Park, Notorious Businessman, Reportedly Involved With A New Male Partner?"

"Oh no... No, no, no, no..." He said in a panicked tone, pressing on the article to see what it said. "You've gotta be fucking joking."

As he read through it, he saw that there was a video that someone had taken of Seonghwa as he was leaving Hongjoong's apartment building just the day before. Hongjoong rubbed his face, then stumbled out of bed quickly.

"This cannot be happening right now," Hongjoong said to himself, quickly throwing on a change of clothes, not even bothering to fix his messy hair.

Hongjoong needed to confront Seonghwa as quickly as possible, he couldn't allow these articles to keep circulating the internet like a viral plague, and Seonghwa was the only person he knew that would possibly be able to fix that. Once he'd gotten ready, he grabbed his car keys from the bowl on his coffee table and grabbed his jacket as he threw it on. He left his apartment quickly, darting down the hallway to the elevator.

Once the elevator reached the bottom floor, the soft ding rang and the doors opened. A flood of reporters was waiting down in the lobby area, and once they caught sight of Hongjoong, he could feel his heart sink.

"Fuck..." Hongjoong muttered under his breath.

They came rushing at him, flashing their cameras in his face and asking a million questions at once. He didn't have time for all of this, he just shoved through the thick crowd of reporters to get past them. Once he had gotten through the crowd, he broke into a sprint towards the doors of the lobby and burst through the doors onto the sidewalk. Hongjoong had to dodge around a fellow pedestrian on the sidewalk to avoid colliding into them, then continued running down the street towards the parking garage just a block down from the apartment.

Once he got to the parking garage, he didn't have time to take the elevator, he just bolted up 5 flights of stairs before ever getting to the floor that his car was parked on. He made way to his car, quickly getting inside, turning on the engine, and typing Seonghwa's address into his navigation system. He pulled out of the parking space, making his way down each level to get to the ground floor. After he pulled out of the parking garage, the tires of his car made ear bursting squeals as he sped off down the street.

About an hour of weaving in and out of traffic, he finally made it onto the private road that leads deeper into the mountains, and to Seonghwa Park's estate. Another thirty minutes went by, and Hongjoong came to a halt in front of a large golden gate. He was shocked to see how elegant and massive the estate was. It was a modern looking home, with large windows that seemed to replace all of the walls, white rose bushes planted all over the place.