I couldn’t help but smile goofily as the corners of my lips tugged upward. It was because the first rule I’d set for myself popped into my mind.
Rule Number One for Dealing with Cha Jae-woo: Be honest about my feelings. Never try to hide anything.
This was the most crucial point, something I needed to keep repeating to myself so I wouldn’t forget. Maybe it was because I was so used to hiding my emotions, but it still felt a little difficult to show openly when I was happy. Embarrassing, even.
But so what if it was embarrassing? Cha Jae-woo was spilling his heart without holding back; compared to that, this was nothing.
“Cha Jae-woo, did you eat?”
I asked him, still unable to wipe the smile off my face.
Of course, it was probably about time he had eaten too, but still. Even if he said he had, I was planning to ask him to eat with me anyway—to just stay here in front of me—so it didn’t really matter what his answer was.
I should just say I hate eating alone. That could come in handy later, too. Like inviting him to come over and eat often… Would that sound too obvious? Hmm, I wasn’t sure.
“……”
As my pointless thoughts dragged on, Cha Jae-woo still hadn’t answered. It wasn’t a hard question, but he was hesitating, and his expression looked just perfect for misunderstanding—like he really didn’t want to eat with me.
Surely he didn’t seriously hate the idea, right? Wasn’t it about time he dropped that routine of just guiding me and rushing home like a bat out of hell? We should eat together, talk a little. Right? How long were we planning to keep doing this?
Well… I couldn’t exactly say I had no part in how things ended up like this.
When I’d been out of my mind, I’d said whatever I wanted—that I’d use Cha Jae-woo, that I’d get mad if I wanted, that I’d speak my mind whenever I felt like it. But now that peace had somehow settled between us, I had no idea what to say or how to even start.
It’s not like I could just talk about his work. Was I supposed to just throw a bunch of compliments at him? Tell him how amazing it was that he was acting like he was rooting out all his past wrongdoings?
That was a little… too embarrassing. I wasn’t ready to be that shameless yet.
“Not yet.”
While I was lost in these useless thoughts, Cha Jae-woo finally spoke, after much deliberation.
I narrowed my eyes at him. This… kind of felt like a lie.
When I raised my eyebrows suspiciously, Cha Jae-woo turned his head away. His evasive behavior was so obvious that my gaze naturally dropped to his arm. If I grabbed that arm once, I could tell immediately whether he was lying or not, so my eyes just automatically drifted.
It was a rotten thought, but sometimes I couldn’t help but feel tempted. If I just touched him, I could hear his real thoughts. When we guided, he was always so careful that I barely caught any stray thoughts.
Conversation was ideal, of course, but his words only ever came after long, careful deliberation, polished over and over again before he let them out.
That made it so hard to tell whether he was speaking from his heart or just saying what he thought I wanted to hear.
Still, I decided to let go of the rotten thought. If the roles were reversed, I’d absolutely hate it. Wanting something for myself that I would hate if someone else did to me—that was just petty.
“Then… should we make something to eat?”
I really didn’t want to bother going outside to get food, but waiting around for delivery felt awkward too. Technically, we could do the guiding session first while waiting, but after guiding, I’d be left in an awkward, slightly embarrassed state, making it harder to keep facing him for long.
It wasn’t just the physical contact—no matter how hard he tried not to think of anything, sometimes Cha Jae-woo’s inner thoughts would still slip out, and they always caught me off guard. He knew it too, so for both our sakes, it felt better to do something before the guiding.
‘Something we could eat…’
But then… maybe I had made a terrible choice.
Unlike my earlier boldness, negative thoughts crept in fast. There was literally nothing to eat at home.
The best I could offer was two packs of instant ramen I’d left sitting around to snack on with some beer. I hadn’t even remembered they were there until just now.
Was it even right to offer that? Worse yet, two packs were barely enough for me alone. Way too little for two people.
Should I switch plans and order delivery instead? No… maybe we should just go out to eat. That’d probably be better than forcing something awkward at home.
“Um… I have ramen and kimchi…”
Despite all my wavering, I ended up sticking to the original plan.
Did it really matter how much food there was? I’d already eaten, and Cha Jae-woo… seemed like he had too.
What mattered now was simply sharing a meal together.
“Is that okay?”
Convincing myself wasn’t so hard.
“Is something wrong?”
The problem was Cha Jae-woo, who looked at me with a hint of confusion at my sudden behavior.
Facing Cha Jae-woo, whose brows were faintly furrowed, I gave a clumsy smile. He was sharp enough to pick up that I was fumbling around awkwardly.
“What’s wrong? Nothing’s wrong,” I said.
He seemed a bit worried, but that didn’t mean I could just lay all my thoughts bare. Besides, it really wasn’t anything serious. I was just making a bit of effort because if things kept going the way they were, we’d end up with a relationship that was neither this nor that.
At this rate, it wouldn’t be strange if we ended up like boss and subordinate… No, maybe even king and vassal. Considering Cha Jae-woo’s past behavior, I wasn’t exaggerating. It was a perfect vertical hierarchy.
“It’s just that… it’s been a while since we’ve eaten together, so it feels a bit strange. But it’s definitely not that I don’t want to!”
“…….”
“Ah, or do you not want to, Cha Jae-woo?”
“No.”
The speed of his response—less than 0.1 seconds—said it all.
He answered even before I finished speaking. Cha Jae-woo almost never rejected anything I said. It was as if he thought he wasn’t allowed to.
Everyone knows that human beings have likes and dislikes. No matter how much you love someone, that doesn’t mean everything they do is automatically fine.
…Yeah. Love.
The point I wanted to make was that the problem with Cha Jae-woo was how he acted as if he had no likes or dislikes in front of me.
There must be things he minded, things he didn’t like. Shouldn’t he at least express those?
At the very least… if we were going to rebuild a relationship as lovers.
“Then, I’ll start boiling it?”
Right now, we were just a Guide and an Esper. I couldn’t use the excuse that Cha Jae-woo hadn’t formally said we were dating yet. No matter how I looked at it, he wasn’t thinking about romance with me at all.
From what I could tell, if we were ever going to become lovers again, I would have to be the one to first confess that I still liked him, and directly give permission to move the relationship forward.
What a joke. I’m the one who confesses, I’m the one who grants permission? At the very least, shouldn’t the confession be Cha Jae-woo’s job?
At first, I thought I would wait. But thinking about it now, waiting seemed completely hopeless.
Cha Jae-woo, who carefully weighed every word from one to ten, had about a zero percent chance of suggesting anything himself. Even if I told him I wanted it, he might not even believe me.
At that point, it felt like Cha Jae-woo didn’t really want to move this relationship forward at all.
It was truly fortunate that his emotional waves leaked out so openly. If not, I might have ended up writing a whole novel in my head, misinterpreting his consistently unreadable expressions.
“Would ramen be okay?”
It was a relief that there were no misunderstandings this time, but how long could I keep relying on his emotional waves to check his feelings?
Cha Jae-woo had a perfectly working mouth, didn’t he?
When would he finally be able to express his feelings straightforwardly? How could we become a much deeper bond than before—not the hollow shell of a relationship we used to have?
Neither of us had any family left, so if we wanted to become the closest people in the world…
“Lim Haeyul?”
Apparently, I’d zoned out for too long. I snapped out of it and looked up to find Cha Jae-woo watching me with a deeply worried face.
He really was good at making that kind of expression. Realizing I was just standing there blankly, holding the ramen packs, it made sense he’d look concerned. To anyone else, I must have looked completely lost in thought.
I awkwardly waved my hand and chuckled.
“I was just thinking about something for a second…”
Strictly speaking, I had been thinking about Cha Jae-woo—and about our future together—so calling it just “thinking about something” felt a little too trivial, but still.
“Then… should I come back later?”
But why… why was it ending up like this?
