“Ah… You must’ve had a lot on your mind.”
“I feel like I’m overreacting for no reason, and even to me, it sounds a little weird, but I don’t know why I feel this way.”
Rion hung his head after confessing most of the story to Hee-joo, though he’d kept a few details to himself. He’d hoped that saying it out loud might help sort his thoughts, but it hadn’t made much of a difference.
“I’ve always known it, but the more time passes, the more it feels like I’m getting confirmation that he really doesn’t like me. But then sometimes, I wonder if I’m just being too sensitive.”
“You two definitely don’t have compatible personalities. Still… I don’t think Yu-won hates you, though.”
Hee-joo spoke with a serious expression. She’d been playful and teasing when Rion first brought it up, but as she listened, she couldn’t help but grow serious as well.
“But… there’s something Seo-ha told me yesterday. After hearing that, I started to wonder if I was just mistaken all along.”
“What did she say?”
“Um… back when I was in the hospital.”
In a calm voice, Rion relayed exactly what he’d heard. But the more he talked, the more a creeping certainty settled in—that Yu-won found him annoying. His voice grew quieter toward the end.
“I thought things were getting better between us, but now I wonder if he was just humoring a hard-to-handle matched Esper.”
“If this were the old you, you would’ve just said, ‘Whatever, who cares,’ but you’ve changed a lot.”
“I guess… yeah.”
It had been better when he didn’t care. Rion chuckled faintly at the thought. Hee-joo stared at him for a moment before something seemed to come to mind.
“But still… I don’t know if I agree.”
“Why not?”
“You remember that Gate we got called out to in an emergency? The one you and Yu-won went into together?”
There’d only been one Gate Hee-joo had entered with Yu-won, so it didn’t take Rion long to figure out which one she meant.
“From what I saw back then, it didn’t look like that at all.”
“Back then? We canceled our pair application right after getting out of that Gate and totally fell out afterward…”
Rion looked at Hee-joo with a face that said, Are you sure you’re not misremembering something? But Hee-joo shook her head firmly.
“No, it was definitely that time. That’s the only time I ever saw you and Yu-won together. There’s no way I’m mixing it up.”
“Oh, right…”
That made sense. Rion nodded, but he still couldn’t understand how Hee-joo had gotten the impression that Yu-won didn’t dislike him, based on that day.
“But what exactly did you see that made you think that? Things weren’t great between us even inside the Gate.”
“Ah, you probably don’t remember. You weren’t in your right mind then.”
Rion did remember being knocked out by the boss’s poison and carried out unconscious. But he’d never really thought about what had happened after he collapsed.
“I vaguely remember Yu-won yelling at me, saying I was out of my mind…”
He racked his brain, but all he could recall was being scolded—not exactly a tender moment. He made a sour face, and Hee-joo shook her head.
“No, no. I mean after that—after you passed out completely.”
“Something happened then?”
“I don’t know about anyone else, but I was the one helping each person out of the Gate, so I remember. Yu-won carried you out in his arms.”
“Oh… I do remember being carried.”
He vaguely recalled being picked up in a princess carry. It had been unavoidable, but even now, it wasn’t exactly a fond memory.
He’d gotten injured a few times before for throwing himself into danger, but that moment had stuck with him—for all the wrong reasons.
“After that… I woke up in the hospital and caused a scene about canceling the pair application. Things got worse between us from there.”
“I still remember the look on Yu-won’s face from back then.”
Hee-joo’s expression turned reflective. Rion had lost consciousness, but it wasn’t just after—Yu-won’s face had been twisted from the very start.
And because Yu-won wasn’t someone whose expressions changed often, that made it all the more memorable.
“Since you were hurt, we had to get you out first. But Yu-won was holding onto you so tightly, we had to carry you both out at once. As soon as we lifted you to the roof, he just bolted for the Gate without a word.”
“That… really happened?”
“It wasn’t something dramatic enough to bring up later… and you made such a big scene afterward that everyone forgot about it pretty quickly.”
Because Rion had canceled their pair application so suddenly, even Hee-joo had completely forgotten about it.
By the time she remembered, too much time had passed, and it felt awkward to bring it up.
“So, I just thought… maybe Yu-won’s bad at expressing himself. I figured you two might actually get close eventually.”
“You could’ve told me that earlier…”
“I forgot too. And I’m just a C-rank. It’s not like I’d be in the same Gate as you very often. Plus, it wasn’t really something important enough to go out of my way to say, right?”
She wasn’t wrong, but still, Rion couldn’t help but feel strange hearing about it so late.
He spent a while imagining the scene before finally speaking.
“But… even if that was true back then, it might not be the case now.”
He was a little unsure, but there had been a decent gap between that incident and the recent S-rank Gate. Even if Yu-won had cared back then, it might not mean anything now.
“If he was worried… he’d have at least visited me in the hospital. It’s not like he was far away—we were in the same hospital, on the same floor.”
Digging deeper, it was also around the time Yu-won still hadn’t fully shaken off his rookie status. Maybe he’d just been startled.
He always called Yu-won a psycho, but truthfully, Yu-won just didn’t like Rion’s behavior—it wasn’t like he had no empathy.
At least back then, he probably didn’t hate Rion enough to ignore someone who was seriously hurt.
I used to think he hated me, but it didn’t bother me like this.
Rion regretted trying to improve their relationship, even going so far as to suggest living together.
If he’d known it would eat away at him like this, maybe it would’ve been better to just leave things as they were.
“I mean, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, but… you don’t have to hate someone to not want to see them.”
Hee-joo gently offered the words to Rion, whose shoulders were slumped. After a pause, she continued.
“I’m sure there are plenty of people like that at the Center, but… I’ve got my own family stuff too. I don’t want to go into detail, but… my dad was sick. And since it was just me and my younger sibling, he’d secretly go out to work even with his bad health, saying he couldn’t just sit around at home.”
A job where your life could be on the line in the worst-case scenario.
Some like Rion had joined the Center out of a sense of duty, but others simply needed the money.
Hee-joo was one of the latter.
Her mother had passed, her father was ill, and her younger sibling desperately wanted to go to college.
She’d struggled to take care of her family, and when she eventually got her genetic testing done and found out she was an Esper, she joined the Center.
“Before I came to the Center, I was working part-time all the time. I didn’t even have time to check if Dad was home or out. At first, I felt bad about making him work when he was sick, so I didn’t scold him too much. But after I joined the Center and started making decent money, I told him to stop working and focus on getting treatment.”
She recalled the events from a few years ago. After joining the Center and receiving a payout that would’ve taken months to earn even with constant part-time jobs, she’d told her father to quit everything and just get treated.
But her father never felt at ease not working.
He said it felt unnatural, and would go out to help acquaintances whenever he could. Then he’d give her and her sibling some pocket money and spend days afterward bedridden.
“I got mad at him at first. I told him, I’m making enough now, so why are you doing this to yourself? I tried to stop him, but whether it’s a part-time job or Center work, I still can’t use my time however I want. And my sibling was busy with school too, so neither of us could watch him all day.”
At first, she’d been angry. She’d tried to talk her father out of it.
But as time passed, she stopped wasting energy on it.
One time, after hearing he’d gone out to work again and wasn’t feeling well, she didn’t even visit him at the hospital.
“It wasn’t because I hated him. I was just… so frustrated. No matter what I said, how much I begged or warned him it would make him sicker, he wouldn’t listen. I was just exhausted.”
“……”
“Maybe I’m overstepping here, but… that’s how it was for me. You don’t have to hate someone to not want to see them. Even if you love them. Even if they’re precious to you. If it feels like you’re the only one trying all the time…”
“So you assumed I don’t like you? I guess… I’m kind of happy to hear that.”
Why was Yu-won’s voice echoing in his mind now, just as he saw the bittersweet smile on Hee-joo’s face?
Rion stared at her blankly, caught in the strange illusion of two completely different people somehow overlapping.
