34
The careful kisses continued. The hand reflexively gripping Samin’s clothes gradually began to tighten with more force. Samin murmured while still kissing Doun’s cheeks, who kept his eyes tightly shut.
“I really like this so much I could die.”
Though he wanted to do more, based on the emotions he was feeling now, he would have no regrets even if he died right away. His idol, whom he had only seen in videos, was sitting in front of him, and was even quietly closing his eyes to his kisses. If someone had told him this fact a few months ago, he would have snorted and told them to stop talking nonsense.
“How can a person be like this?”
It was a voice that sounded like wandering in a dream, almost in a state of ecstasy. Though he was curious about what “being like this” meant, Doun couldn’t bring himself to ask back and just trembled his eyelashes.
It had been too long since he had received kisses filled with affection. Moreover, Doun’s heart began beating rapidly at the feelings clearly revealed in each of Samin’s actions toward him.
‘He really seems to like me…’
The lips that had been gently settling like leaving traces on both cheeks and eyelids gradually began moving downward. Just as he was tensely wondering if they might touch his lips too.
The warmth that had been softly settling on his face completely disappeared.
“……”
“……”
It was a short yet long kiss.
‘Something feels lacking… No, am I crazy? What’s lacking?’
Doun was horrified at the frank impression he felt without realizing it. And he slowly opened his eyes that had been closed. Samin’s face was still close by.
However, the guy whose face had turned bright red and looked like it might explode any moment couldn’t even blink his moistly wet eyes. He just stared at his face as if enchanted.
‘I thought he would smile smugly…’
There seemed to be only one reason why Samin was acting like this. Doun carefully asked while calming his heart.
“Do you… want to kiss men and stuff like that?”
Doun had never seen a single man around him who wanted to kiss men. He had never even thought that he himself would become such a target.
Because of this, Samin’s feelings of wanting to date him didn’t quite resonate. Though he had heard that men dated each other too, he couldn’t easily see it around him.
“I want to kiss you because you’re hyung. Where in the world is there someone who wants to kiss just any man they see?”
A somewhat blunt answer popped out of Samin’s mouth due to his resentment that Doun didn’t understand his feelings. Though he may have grumbled with words, his gaze was still fixed on Doun’s lips.
‘I really want to suck on them just once…’
While having such lewd thoughts inside.
However, Samin endured while maintaining a precarious distance from Doun. Since he had already done it, he could have pretended to be crazy and devoured his lips too.
The problem was that his intuition sent a danger signal that lips weren’t okay yet. In other words, to Kyung Samin, childish kisses were currently Lee Doun’s acceptance limit.
“You said before that crying people were your type, right? Do you… also like hitting people for pleasure and stuff like that?”
Doun let go of the hand that had been gripping Samin’s clothes. Samin, who belatedly realized that Doun had been holding onto his clothes, began explaining in horror.
“No. Wait. That time I said random things because I was shocked, no, so what I’m saying is that my confession to hyung wasn’t random… It’s that I like seeing hyung cry, not that I like seeing everyone cry, you know?”
“So you only want to hit and make me cry, not other people?”
“Agh! This is driving me crazy! No! Why would I hit hyung!”
“I heard you’re also good at digging…”
“No, that’s…”
Samin’s mouth, which had been claiming innocence, snapped shut. Who would have thought that his past remarks made while wanting to bury Timer Choi Jeongwook in a secluded mountain would come back to bite him.
“That was just something I said because I wanted to beat up that crazy bastard… Not hyung. Really. Why would I enjoy hitting hyung? Have I ever done anything weird to hyung?”
Samin grabbed both of Doun’s arms and asked with a serious expression. He thought he was really different from a bastard like Timer. So Doun should deny it here, but for some reason, his head nodded up and down as soon as the words ended.
“Yeah. You found out my number and sent texts, suddenly hugged me in the guild lobby… In the park you said crying men were your type and that you liked me, and today you even kissed me.”
“Ah… That’s…”
“Looking at just the results, I’m grateful that you contacted me and helped me return to being a hunter, but it was generally a strange situation…”
Samin, who was about to retort, had nothing to say. Even Yeoun’s sub-guild master Choi Jiyoon had pointed out several times that sending texts to Samin was stalking.
It was fortunate that Doun had generously overlooked it, but it was indeed behavior that could have led to the worst situation. Samin narrowed his eyes, clenched his fist, then let out an apology like a sigh.
“…I’m sorry.”
The hands that had been gripping Doun’s arms fell away powerlessly. With Samin becoming excessively dejected, Doun, who felt awkward for no reason, scratched his cheek.
“I didn’t say it to make you apologize… The process was a bit strange, but I’m really grateful that you helped me. Samin.”
Though the approach method was abnormal, his grateful feelings remained unchanged regardless. Samin was the only one who had consistently contacted him despite a month of no responses.
Samin was probably also the only person who, even after hearing that his skill power was only half, led him saying they should check it directly. Though he hadn’t had a chance to tell the former guild members who had contacted him, Doun was certain.
“If it weren’t for you, I’d still be holed up in my room taking medicine and sleeping.”
At the self-deprecating laugh and the past that quietly flowed out, Samin groaned while clutching his head.
“No… Ha… This is really driving me crazy.”
Could a person be this soft even when being this soft?
Eventually Samin squeezed his eyes shut. If he kept looking, he felt like he would suddenly pull Doun into his arms and do something crazy.
“Hey. What’s wrong?”
“Th-that, hyung… I’m really seriously reflecting right now, so please leave me alone for a moment.”
Doun quietly watched Samin repeating deep breaths. Why was he acting like this again all of a sudden?
In his eyes, Samin was no different from a time bomb that could explode anywhere at any time. Sometimes kissing his face because he liked him, sometimes suddenly self-reflecting.
‘He’s really a strange guy.’
The kind and strange idiot who had arbitrarily destroyed and invaded Doun’s only depressing daily life seemed to have finished reflecting as he opened his eyes wide with a restored expression.
“I’m done reflecting, but I still don’t regret sending texts to hyung.”
“What? Did you really reflect?”
Reflection should be about regretting past actions and trying to fix them, but he said he didn’t regret it. It was no different from saying he hadn’t reflected at all.
‘What is this guy doing?’
Looking at Samin, Doun suddenly recalled a question he had been curious about for a long time.
“But how did you find out my number? Did you hire someone from a detective agency or something?”
“Huh? Why do you think of illegal means first, hyung?”
“Then… did you… find out from former… guild members?”
Doun’s heart was complicated as he asked back with a reluctant voice. The Chronos Guild members were still beings he didn’t even want to mention.
What made Hunter Magnetic disappear was the indiscriminate verbal abuse and criticism poured out by anonymous fellow hunters whose names and faces he didn’t know. However, all that criticism and attacks wouldn’t have happened if not for the exploitation by Chronos Guild members, so they also held a large share of responsibility.
“No! What do you take me for! I didn’t ask those garbage bastards anything like that!”
Samin stuck out his lips and grumbled. At his genuinely aggrieved appearance, Doun’s questions only grew. If it wasn’t a detective agency and not leaked information from former guild members, then how exactly had he found out his phone number?
“Then how did you find out?”
At Doun’s serious expression, Samin exhaled briefly then said something unexpected.
“I did some synthesis gambling.”
“Synthesis gambling?”
It was a term he was hearing for the first time. The combination of synthesis and gambling gave off a dangerous atmosphere that seemed like something he shouldn’t get involved with. As Doun’s expression became increasingly strange, Samin belatedly began adding explanations.
“Ah, hyung hasn’t unlocked the 50th floor yet, right?”
‘Suddenly tower talk? Did a gambling house open in the tower during the year I was away?’
Doun just blinked like an idiot, lost in thought.
Towers often provided various functions in regular patterns whenever new floors were unlocked. Since he had only recently learned that training floors existed, it wouldn’t be strange if new functions were provided.
“When you unlock the 50th floor, you get one skill. Unlike training floors, this is limited to people who unlocked it.”
“Ah… Yeah.”
Doun immediately understood Samin’s explanation. The Veritas System’s function provision was largely divided into two types.
Functions provided for all hunters to use when first unlocked at the national level, and functions that could only be used by directly conquering the corresponding floor.
The former referred to items sold in hunter shops, and the latter referred to auction houses available when directly conquering the 20th floor. The ‘synthesis’ function Samin mentioned seemed to also be a skill that could only be used by directly conquering the 50th floor, like auction houses.
“This literally means you put in at least two artifacts, consumables, magic stones and such, synthesize them, and something random comes out.”
“…Yeah.”
“Usually trash comes out a lot, and sometimes it spits out exactly what you put in or something random that’s not sold in shops… I pulled something called ‘Constellation Nebula’s Coincidence.'”
Though he couldn’t tell if it was an item or skill, just the name alone definitely looked special. Doun’s eyes sparkled with curiosity toward something new he had never heard of.
‘Look how happy he gets just talking about towers. So cute I could die…’
Samin suppressed his laughter and continued explaining.
“It grants small wishes, so I asked it to tell me hyung’s number and got it that way.”
“…What? Usually wouldn’t you ask for lottery numbers or something?”
“Hmm. Now that you mention it, that’s true. Why didn’t I think of that? I tried asking for something similar to lottery, but it said it wasn’t within the allowable range. Since it said only small wishes, maybe that was judged to be a big wish…? Anyway, I got rejected several times before finally finding out hyung’s phone number.”
“…You got rejected several times?”
The more Doun heard the explanation, the more puzzled his face became. Samin, looking down at such Doun as if he found him lovely, recalled the past when he had obtained ‘Constellation Nebula’s Coincidence.’
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
