How about killing him?
In the mirror, Cha-hyeon stared at himself. For all that the conclusion was violent and causality a blur, the face in the glass was nothing but calm. A droplet gathered at the damp tips of his hair and fell with a soft tap.
He swept back his pitch-black hair. The wet strands half-bared his forehead.
His eyes, fixed on nothing, gleamed with the lower whites showing. With all light gone from them, he pictured Se-min holed up in the room farthest from his own—the one who’d just driven him to such brutal thoughts.
When something went wrong, his way of fixing it was simple: remove it from in front of him, or make it remove itself. A method so plain it saved him needless thinking. They say if your head’s dull, your body pays; when your strength is overwhelming, you don’t need to tangle your head up in the first place.
But after briefly imagining his lover and pair partner dying, he admitted the losses would outweigh the gains.
If that kid died, his own ending would be one of two things: either spend the rest of his life living like shit, chewing over the sex they called Guiding with Se-min, or rampage and drop dead.
He could still remember with painful clarity how godawful his body was back when he went without Guiding—no way in hell was he living like that again.
In that case, what about him dying instead?
If he died right in front of Se-min, it’d be a sight Ji Se-min would never forget. He’d probably think of me right up until the day he closed his eyes.
Not bad. No—pretty good. It had the feel of those lines from zombie flicks or virus-outbreak disaster movies: “Let me die as myself, while I’m still human, before I lose who I am.”
“No. That’s not it….”
Cutting off the thought that had been surging ahead without rhyme or reason, Cha-hyeon let out a slow breath. Staring at the familiar face he’d seen all his life, he muttered,
“Why die? We could just be lovey-dovey and happy.”
His clenched jaw tightened—and then, teeth gritted, he hitched up one corner of his mouth.
He’d admit it: he was in a foul mood. He knew he was twice as sensitive as most, but the kind of fury that made his head burn was rare even for him.
What he’d done today was entirely his mistake. The status window activating outside a Dungeon and the honeyed curiosity of “Unclaimed Rewards” had baited him into acting first.
Without even realizing he was playing moth to a flame.
He regretted the reckless move. At the very least, he should’ve committed the perfect crime without Se-min ever knowing. Irritated, he rubbed at the corner of his mouth.
“Hyung, wait… go back to how you were. Just a minute ago.”
“Hyung was talking about quest rewards and then suddenly…. So I thought you’d claimed the Unclaimed Reward and your memories had come back. Then they… disappeared again, and I felt sad, and disappointed, and scared. I just… felt sorry to you….”
Silently shaping a curse with his lips, Cha-hyeon fixed another pointless glare on empty air—his way of ignoring a rage that wouldn’t fade.
Sung Cha-hyeon had come back. Even if only for a moment, he’d returned with the deleted memories. What made it even more fucked was that he himself couldn’t remember it.
After that damned cut-to-black-and-back, there’d been Se-min on the verge of tears. And Cha-hyeon, stuck watching right beside him as he failed to calm down, knew the truth.
That look wasn’t from anything hurtful he’d said—it was the residue of disappointment and longing.
“This is fucking bullshit.”
In the end he couldn’t hold it back and let the curse slip out. Yeah, he was hurt.
Ji Se-min was treating him as someone who’d disappear someday. Looking at him and pining for the Sung Cha-hyeon who still hadn’t returned.
He was over the moon at the idea that we’d found a clue to recover the memories—as if now, whenever, I could just vanish and it’d be fine….
He kept saying the current Hyung and the original Hyung were the same person, but to him it only sounded like a contradiction.
If we’re the same person, then it wouldn’t have to be Sung Cha-hyeon—he could spend his whole life with me.
“……”
He’d promised to cooperate until the memories came back, but at the time he’d figured there wouldn’t be a concrete method. Maybe he hadn’t taken it that seriously. Maybe he even carried a not-quite-conviction that the deleted memories would never return. There was also the calculation that he’d pretend to grant Se-min’s request and, in the meantime, get even more fervent Guiding.
But this… that the intact Sung Cha-hyeon could return without warning?
A chill of crisis slid down his back. The number “(1/3),” which he’d thought was a basically useless reward he didn’t know when he’d fill, now felt like a countdown squeezing him.
If, like Se-min suggested, clearing a specific Dungeon triggered the reward—did that mean every time he cleared one, he’d have to keep fretting over whether he’d get that shitty reward?
His eyes, which had been aiming at empty air, slowly turned the other way.
“No….”
If rewards came at random upon clearing a Dungeon, then he just needed to avoid entering Dungeons at all.
He’d been told he wouldn’t be assigned to Dungeon Gates for a while. After that, he could tweak assignment priority. If he suddenly quit being an Esper, Se-min might notice.
He’d liked, by pure temperament, to go after already-triggered Special-Type or small-team high-grade Dungeons, but Rift management wasn’t bad either. Maybe handling already-flooded Gates would be fine.
Even today’s reactions showed how to fit the pieces. Ji Se-min was terrified of him going into a Dungeon Gate. If he spun it right—“Se-min’s scared, so my hands are tied”….
The stiffness at his mouth tugged upward. The faint smile soon faded, but as he lazily cracked his neck side to side, his face had loosened a lot.
He came out after drying his hair. A faint skin-lotion scent lingered at the tip of his nose. Toying with the soft fringe over his brow, he glanced at the door.
He felt someone there. With his heightened senses he could even read the hesitation of the person standing outside. He paused a beat, and his lips stretched long, snake-like.
“What is it, Se-min?”
The voice that followed was fairly gentle. He felt Se-min flinch on the other side of the door. His smile warmed, amused.
The knob turned, and the door creaked open, timid. Se-min poked his face in and mumbled, abashed,
“…Can I come in?”
Half his body was already inside, yet he was asking permission—downright adorable. Plain as day, deep down, he never imagined he’d be refused.
Of course, Cha-hyeon had no intention of refusing. When he let a soft laugh slip through his nose, Se-min edged in, shy and hesitant. He had a huge pillow tucked under one arm.
Cha-hyeon split his mouth wider, then bit back the grin. Maybe embarrassed himself, Se-min, cheeks flushed, grumbled for no real reason,
“I’m only doing this today. Don’t tease me like I’m a baby. It’s kind of your fault too. And….”
About to say more, he trailed off and, before Cha-hyeon could answer, hurried to the bed. He shoved Cha-hyeon’s pillow aside and set his own next to it.
Pressing his lips with a clenched fist, Cha-hyeon watched him. The mood that had felt so fucking rotten just moments ago was, oddly enough, floating up light and buoyant.
“Here to keep watch so Hyung doesn’t start doing whatever he wants?”
As he straightened the pillows and blanket, Se-min seemed to parse the meaning, then shot him a not-so-spiteful side-eye. The rims of his ears went red.
“…Should I just go? I came because I was worried—why say it like that….”
That reaction made it impossible to stop with the silly teasing. Cha-hyeon snickered. Before he knew it, his mood had lifted a lot.
“I’m kidding. Not just today—keep sleeping with me from now on, too.”
He said it low, sincere. Se-min’s eyes softened again as he murmured,
“…Mm, that’s a bit—my heart probably couldn’t take it…. I’ll think about it, anyway.”
He’d blurted out whatever popped into his head and then tried to fix it after the fact. Embarrassed, his Guide cleared his throat and squirmed under the covers.
Cha-hyeon’s gaze slid to the thin, striped pajamas folding with Se-min’s movements. As that kind of fabric does, the silhouette beneath showed cleanly.
Once he’d lain down first, shyness seemed to catch up with him. He couldn’t keep his eyes in one place, fidgeting, curling his back like a shrimp.
Staring fixedly at one particular spot on his body, Cha-hyeon belatedly shaped a mild, gentle smile, as if he hadn’t been looking at anything at all.
