A soft, almost stifled breath escaped Se-min’s lips. It sounded suspiciously like he was holding back tears. Caught off guard, Cha-hyeon froze in place.
Slumped shoulders. A hunched back. His hand trembling around the spoon.
…Is he crying?
Cha-hyeon’s throat moved in a heavy swallow. That wasn’t like him. He even stuttered as he asked,
“…A-Are you… crying…?”
“…Huh? No…?”
Thankfully, he wasn’t. Se-min looked completely on the verge of tears when he lifted his head, but there wasn’t a single trace of moisture in his eyes.
Cha-hyeon tried to calm the heart that had just dropped into his stomach. He’d nearly walked right into a soap-opera moment, the kind where someone tastes a dish and immediately bursts into tears because “it tastes just like Grandma used to make.”
“Then why…?”
The question trailed off—and suddenly another one crossed his mind.
Then who the hell made this?
If this had been Se-min’s usual cooking, he wouldn’t have had such a visceral reaction. But it couldn’t have been Cha-hyeon either—he had no interest in cooking, and truthfully, he didn’t even know how to make beef and radish soup.
He stared down at the mysterious bowl of soup for a moment, but before he could say anything else, Se-min spoke—and the lingering questions vanished.
“Because I was scared…”
Another response he hadn’t expected. Cha-hyeon almost furrowed his brows but caught himself. Scared? Of what? He looked at Se-min, confused, only for Se-min to glance back at him and ask as if seeking validation:
“Weren’t you scared too, hyung…? I mean, weren’t you…?”
Me? Of what?
Cha-hyeon couldn’t quite hide the confusion in his expression, so he lowered his gaze and quietly set his chopsticks down, as if to recover. Then he looked back up, his face more composed—somber, even.
“What’s scaring you, Se-min? What are you afraid of?”
The question was an evasion in itself, but Se-min, still looking like he might cry at any moment, hesitated. His lips parted, then closed again. Then he averted his gaze and stirred the soup with his spoon—perhaps as a distraction.
He stopped abruptly, as if realizing he was breaking some unspoken rule of etiquette, and gently set the spoon down. Then, cautiously, he began.
“It’s just…”
He fidgeted with his fingertips for a moment before finally finding a way to explain. With a sheepish expression and a look that begged for understanding, he asked,
“Have you ever heard that story? About how, if you say ‘This is a dream’ inside a dream… everyone turns to look at you?”
Cha-hyeon hadn’t heard that exact tale, but he remembered something similar. It reminded him of the time he’d entered Se-min’s Mindscape. That feeling… it was close enough to know what he meant.
With a quiet nod, he offered the understanding Se-min seemed to need. Encouraged, Se-min’s eyebrows scrunched up in a pained expression, and he began to murmur again.
“That’s exactly what this feels like. I haven’t changed at all, but… it’s like I suddenly got dropped into a parallel universe. And I keep thinking—what if I say, ‘This isn’t me’? What if everyone turns and stares at me when I do?”
He let out a deep sigh and shot a glance at Cha-hyeon before blurting out a string of jumbled thoughts, like he needed to justify himself.
“I-I’m not saying it’s a lie that I’m your boyfriend or anything. It’s just… I don’t have the memories, you know? But everything around me is perfectly set up—slippers that fit just right, a room decorated exactly the way I like, a family photo with Grandma… food that tastes exactly like what she used to make. It all feels staged, like props from The Truman Show or something….”
His voice grew quieter and more withdrawn. His face turned sullen again, and he stared blankly at the corner of the table for a long while before letting out another sigh and running a dry hand down his face.
“…I’m sorry. I didn’t know that not remembering anything could be this terrifying….”
And just like that, Cha-hyeon finally understood why Se-min had looked like he was going to pass out the moment they got home. Even though Se-min seemed a bit more at ease now, that teary, anxious expression hadn’t fully left his face.
“Are you really okay, hyung? You said you didn’t even want your memories back.”
Afraid of not remembering…?
Honestly, Cha-hyeon didn’t understand the sentiment at all.
When he first realized his memory was gone, the only things he’d felt were irritation and curiosity. The irritation came from people constantly hounding him: Are you sure you don’t remember anything? And the curiosity? That was thanks to the adorable Se-min, who had jokingly claimed to be his fiancé.
He’d been too focused on capturing this pair guide who was practically dripping affection to feel fear. The blank spaces in his memory? Irrelevant.
Forgetting his past with Se-min hadn’t been uncomfortable in the slightest. If anything, he was convinced that recovering those memories—triggered by a Conditional Reward—would mean the death of who he was now. For Cha-hyeon, recovering his memories felt akin to suicide.
But even so…
“…Yeah. I was scared, too.”
Instead of giving a drawn-out explanation, he chose to respond with gentle affirmation. He could understand it—especially when he recalled those blackouts that came every time the other Sung Cha-hyeon tried to resurface.
The fear that that bastard might come back at any moment. The unease of wondering what kind of hold the man Se-min once loved could still have over him.
Was that the kind of fear Se-min was feeling?
Cha-hyeon’s dark eyes lowered, his gaze falling to the table. That’s when the bouquet—resting like a centerpiece—caught his eye.
He heard Se-min quietly suck in a breath.
When Cha-hyeon turned to look, he found Se-min sneakily glancing around the room, trying not to look directly at him. His cheeks were tinged with a bright flush. Cha-hyeon followed his gaze to the empty air.
Ah…? He wasn’t sure what triggered it, but it seemed like his Favorability had just gone up. His eyes narrowed slightly, softening at the edges as he put on a melancholic face and asked in a carefully measured tone:
“I get it. Since we’re already talking about it, why don’t you tell me everything that’s been bothering you? I can help you figure it out.”
The first step to any seduction was gathering intel. The more, the better.
But of course, Se-min—completely unaware of Cha-hyeon’s inner thoughts—just turned redder. He coughed awkwardly and began speaking again, even more eager for understanding this time.
“When I went into my room, I saw that family photo. The one with you, me, and Grandma. And when I looked at it… I don’t know how to explain it, but it just made my mind go blank. Even Grandma treated you like her grandson, but I don’t remember any of it. It really felt like I’d been dropped into this massive parallel universe.”
Cha-hyeon tried to picture the elderly woman in question—but nothing came to mind. He had always thought of her as Se-min’s grandmother.
He knew she had taken Se-min in after his parents passed, but no clear memories surfaced. His scattered recollections—ten years of them, at least—had been reduced to vague assumptions like, I must’ve been raised by someone after my parents died.
“I didn’t even know it was there, but on the back of the photo, she wrote a note. It said, ‘To my beloved Cha-hyeon.’ And that just made me feel even worse. I kept thinking, what if I never get my memories back? That thought was… terrifying.”
For someone who had never given much thought to “Grandma,” that simple message hit Cha-hyeon like a brick wall. His mind went blank. And just when he thought he’d buried his conscience deep, the old Sung Cha-hyeon stirred within him, aching with guilt.
“…I see.”
The hoarseness in his voice wasn’t intentional. As he pressed down on the dull pain in his chest, Se-min—his chin wrinkled like a walnut—began to spill everything, like the dam had finally broken.
“And… and you kept looking at me like you missed the old me. I kept thinking… if I really can’t get those memories back, you’d be disappointed. And that scared me, too.”
Still gripping his chest, Cha-hyeon stayed frozen for a moment before he was able to meet Se-min’s eyes again. I looked at him like I missed the old him?
He had wanted the Se-min from before to return—he couldn’t deny that. But realizing that he’d looked at Se-min with the same expression he himself used to hate… it rattled him.
He’d cursed Se-min for gazing at him and seeing only the original Sung Cha-hyeon. And yet, he’d done the same thing. Still, that wasn’t his intention. He didn’t believe that the current Se-min and the full-memory Se-min were different people.
And at that moment, he finally understood what kind of heart Se-min had when he said, “I love you, no matter which Sung Cha-hyeon you are.”
“……”
A sharp pain twisted in his chest again—different from when he read that note from Grandma.
So this is what you were feeling all along…?
But now wasn’t the time to pick apart the contradictions in his emotions. It wasn’t about being right or wrong.
“…I know exactly how it feels to be looked at like you’re someone you used to be. It’s miserable.”
Cha-hyeon apologized without resistance.
Se-min, startled, waved his hands like a frightened bunny.
“Huh? No, no! I wasn’t upset or anything! I get it—of course you’d want your boyfriend to get his memories back. It’s only natural to miss how I used to be. It’s not like I’m petty or anything…”
“……”
