Eden Reed chose superficial oblivion. He wanted laughter to bloom in Mommy and Daddy’s world, and on the other hand, it was self-defense so he wouldn’t wet himself in his sleep. He wanted to fall asleep listening to Daddy’s lullaby and wake up to Mommy’s morning greeting.
***
Officially retired, Serena Reed founded a defense company, and her husband Henry stayed by her side as a business partner while occasionally leaving home without a word. Whenever he returned after finishing his schedule, looking especially exhausted, Eden never once asked him where he had been, what he had done, or whether he had used a gun the way Mother had that day.
They were faithful to their role as parents. They were excessively affectionate and tried to give the child the abundance and stability he needed to grow. They believed in the effect of goodnight kisses, changed the size of his room as he grew, protected him, and at times became his guide.
The family they so carefully cultivated almost became exemplary.
By the time they moved to an affluent neighborhood in New York, it wasn’t hard for them to appear like an ordinary business couple and their smart college-student son. They had a fabricated past, and though they were wary of their neighbors rather than mingling with them, on the surface, they were nearly perfect.
Since what one grew up seeing became familiar, this way of life became a family trait. Eden blended easily into the mainstream, but an invisible barrier surrounded him. He had to stay tense so he wouldn’t accidentally reveal a secret he couldn’t open up about. The closer one became to someone, the looser the lock on one’s mouth tended to become, so distance was essential.
He considered himself a time bomb, and sometimes reality felt like a play to him. He believed the peace he enjoyed in everyday life could shatter at any moment. Just as it had in childhood, one gunshot would be enough to turn the world upside down. That was why the anxiety embedded in Eden’s mind did not lessen even when Henry’s secretive outings became less frequent.
False oblivion built a trench, and Eden thought no one would be able to pull him up from it.
Not until he met Somerset Quinn.
He was an excessively lively man. A man with a voice that grabbed everyone’s ears but didn’t feel like noise, a man who casually spoke to people passing by his house, a man in whom no trace of wariness could be found.
His amber eyes shone as intensely as the sun, and the smile hanging from his handsome lips made the hot air of early summer feel fresh. His bronze skin flaunted a healthy beauty. His curly hair held just the right sheen.
“Alex Howard!”
At their second meeting, he called out in a loud voice the name Eden had deliberately given him wrong. As if the first-floor window was his assigned seat, he was leaning only his upper body outside again, waving. There was a smiling emoji drawn on his palm. As though he had just scrawled it there, he flicked the pen backward and greeted him.
“Good morning!”
His extraordinary presence jutted up like a stone in the road, obstructing Eden’s steps.
“Hello!”
Even when Eden pretended not to hear and walked past, Somerset raised his voice tirelessly, so Eden had no choice but to stop. When he nodded with an indifferent face, Somerset stretched his mouth into a broad smile. It was a vivid smile more picture-perfect than the emoji he had drawn.
“Thanks for making me a superpowered person. Thanks to you, I felt like I’d become invisible.”
Eden responded to his smooth-talking with a shrug.
They had both gained superpowers because of the other. Eden had briefly fallen into the illusion that his hearing had become highly developed and sounds were amplified. Somerset’s voice wasn’t exactly quiet, but it also had the effect of sounding louder than it actually was. The sounds coming from his mouth struck the ear with almost mysterious clarity. Even his hahaha laughter.
“I’m satisfied being an ordinary—no, a good-looking man, you know. Having superpowers on top of that would be too much. So stop making me invisible and come here, will you? Or I can come to you.”
Wasn’t the fact that he could describe himself as a good-looking man without seeming ridiculous something close to a superpower? Eden swallowed the question and moved his feet. As if to make a point, he pretended to treat Somerset like an invisible man and walk past him.
“Uh, hey?”
Only after that urgently shouted lament pierced his ears did he turn and head toward him. The eyes that had widened in surprise quickly filled again with an emoji-like smile. While Somerset smiled almost too easily, Eden’s face remained blank and unmoved.
Restraining himself so his mood did not show was a long-standing habit. Though if he looked back and asked whether he had never once let his guard down in front of him, he wasn’t confident. At their first meeting, he had been slightly dazed.
“What do you want?”
He asked in an indifferent tone while thinking: could he really guarantee he wouldn’t be like that today?
Judging coldly, even talking to him was dangerous. Hadn’t he already gotten caught up in idle conversation and mentioned that he had once walked a dog? It was a dog entrusted to him by Leslie, his parents’ close friend and the person who had been attacked during the commotion that night.
Besides that, he had nearly discussed novels he had read before and his coffee preferences. The fact that he had burst into laughter in front of him, in particular, made him cautious. Based on those experiences, it was right to simply receive a greeting and move on. He should do that, yet for some reason, his feet would not move.
“Do I need to want something? Hold on. I’ll make something up.”
Somerset said it naturally, propping up his chin as he tilted his head. He gave Eden the choice of talking about the weather, though it was cliché, throwing out a silly joke, or discussing lunch menus.
Eden coldly refused all three and swept back his hair. Since the weather was hot, his body temperature had risen along with it. The pleasant breeze leaking out through the window felt teasingly insufficient. His purpose forgotten, he quietly took one step forward in pursuit of the cool air when Somerset found a new topic and asked,
“Alex. What’s today’s book? Are you still reading Humanity?”
The reason he didn’t feel any aversion even when his name was called familiarly was that it wasn’t his real name. For Eden, who regarded exchanging names with a stranger as a careless mistake, Somerset was incomprehensible. He seemed like he would recite not only his name but also his personal information in a stream.
Innocent.
It was an expression that didn’t suit a sensual man who had just enough buttons undone on his shirt to reveal his chest exquisitely, but that was the truth. Eden folded away the thoughts that might have led to sexual harassment and held out the paperback novel.
“Why Jamie Stole Roxanne’s Sneakers, Alex Howard.”
Somerset read the title and author’s name written on the cover aloud, then tilted his head.
“It has the same name as you. Are you a writer, by any chance? Is that a book you wrote?”
An expression that a child might wear after discovering an amusing toy naturally spread across his handsome face. Even though he had deep, long eyes like those of a fierce beast, lips carrying sensual beauty, and a strong jaw, he so openly revealed his emotions that he easily lost that weight.
That did not mean he felt flutteringly light. He seemed like he might float up if one blew on him, yet the moment one tried to hold him, he wouldn’t budge—a strange weight.
He smiled easily, yet willingly enjoyed the value his smile held, and though he was innocent, he did not seem soft or easy. Wasn’t it inevitable that the irony of such contradictions in harmony drew interest?
“So you were a writer.”
During the brief moment Eden fell into thought and kept his mouth shut, Somerset completely misunderstood. Instead of explaining at length, Eden flipped the book over and showed him the back. There was a list of books written by Alex Howard, including Humanity.
Since none of them were famous, the one familiar title would naturally stand out. As expected, Somerset Quinn pointed to that one first.
“This is the book you read last time, right? You wrote it?”
“No.”
“Ah, so it’s just an author with the same name.”
“No.”
“What do you mean? It’s not a book you wrote, and it’s not an author with the same name, then……”
“It means my name isn’t Alex Howard.”
His amber eyes could be seen trembling severely. For someone so poor at hiding his bewilderment, his voice alone was loud.
“Haha! I was pretending to be fooled!”
Eden hoped he would enter if there were ever a contest for the worst liar. He would surely defeat the obvious candidates who boasted honesty and proudly place high in the rankings.
Still, perhaps he was aware that his acting was terrible, because he shifted gears swiftly.
“Actually, I was fooled. Completely, too. If I were the kind of person who kept a diary, I would’ve written it in my diary. I made a new friend, and my friend’s name is Alex Howard.”
Using his finger like a pen, he pretended to scribble on his palm, full of playfulness. Though Eden could hardly take his eyes off him, he drew a line in an indifferent tone.
“I don’t remember us becoming friends.”
In a situation where he might have felt embarrassed, Somerset instead grinned. With his mouth curving in a soft arc, he tossed out a bland joke.
“Come on, I’m not falling for that. I know it’s a lie. Your diary must say you made a best friend.”
He was extremely positive.
“Oh, right. Can you correct it to ‘a best friend so handsome he comes to mind before bed’? That would be the accurate introduction.”
Eden thought again. Somerset Quinn already had superpowers. The fact that he could act smug and wink without looking embarrassing was difficult to explain with modern science.
Watching him wink again, Eden felt relieved that he did not have a habit of keeping a diary. He would avoid the disaster of being bewitched by his demonic charm and writing “a best friend so handsome he comes to mind before bed” in his diary.
However, he had the terrible premonition that before bed tonight, he really would think of him. He sincerely hoped that thought would not continue into a dream.
Without realizing it, Eden twitched his brow and placed a hand on his chest. Drawing on his experience of being baptized at a church his parents had taken him to when he was young, he made a small sign of the cross. Though he did not believe in God.
“What are you doing? Is that sign language? Mime?”
At the idiotic question, he felt the corner of his mouth loosen. He immediately controlled it and barely managed to keep a blank face.
“Who knows.”
“Or did your heart tingle? For reference, mine just did. It’s probably because you’re in front of me.”
“What does that even mean……”
“Exactly what you heard. Because you’re here, because I saw you, this spot of mine tingled.”
Somerset poked his own chest with his finger. He seemed endlessly thrilled by the mysterious phenomenon he had experienced. Eden glanced at the bronze skin visible through the inside of Somerset’s shirt, then brushed his fingers over the corners of his eyes.
“When a cause and effect aren’t convincing, it’s only right to be suspicious.”
Though Eden had kindly given him advice, Somerset not only failed to listen but instead fluttered his shirt collar and revealed more of his chest muscles.
“Your eyes being drawn to me, or this spot reacting to you, is completely natural.”
“Seeing as you’re talking nonsense, I guess you don’t have anything else to say.”
“I do. The most important thing is still left.”
Stretching his arm out the window, he clenched his hand in midair. Physically, he had not touched even a single hair on Eden, yet Eden paused, feeling as if he had been caught. Somerset did not miss that reaction, catching it at once as he winked with both his eyes and nose at the same time. His mischievous smile gave strength to his proposal.
“What’s your name? Tell me properly and I’ll buy a diary and write in it.”
A human being weak to visual stimuli was more than capable of falling for it. Filtering out the sultriness of the hot early-summer air and taking in only the pure sunlight, he looked lively and sparkling. A sheen flowed along the curves drawn by his curly hair, and his even teeth and vivid lip line came together perfectly. He was human, yet natural like a landscape untouched by human hands.
Eden, who had been slowly studying him, suddenly blinked several times in a row. As though dealing with something that had gotten into his eye. As though trying to remove it before it lodged in a place too deep to reach, even if he rubbed his eyes and washed them with water.
“I’ll pass on that.”
It would be nice if this conversation ended with that refusal. But Somerset pushed his handsome face back into Eden’s eyes, where Eden had just gone to the trouble of administering emergency treatment.
“Why? Is this a tactic to get my attention? Do you want me to ask you what your name is every day?”
It was a truly shameless and absurd assumption. Driven on the defensive by that outrageous suspicion, Eden negotiated with the self that was still putting up walls. It should be fine to reveal his name. He was a neighbor anyway, and they would run into each other again. Besides, if Eden didn’t give him an answer, the other man seemed unlikely to back down.
“Eden Reed.”
When Eden reluctantly gave his real name, Somerset immediately repeated it.
“Eden Reed. It’s real this time, right?”
Since Eden himself had provided room for distrust by deceiving him once, he obediently nodded.
“Yeah.”
“I can forgive a lie only the first time. From the second time on……”
Would there be punishment?
