“Why don’t you like it?”
“No, whew, I mean…… it’s not that I dislike it. It’s just. You know. It’s a bit much, isn’t it?”
Sorry to say, but honestly, making Choi Tae-hoon flustered was pretty fun.
His usually neat eyes would curve slightly downward, and his normally straight, unruffled expression would turn helpless. Because he was such a textbook-perfect man, he couldn’t hide his emotions in unexpected situations like this.
Gwan-young pulled Tae-hoon’s hand toward him and pressed his lips to the tips of his fingers, speaking in a low voice.
“So, to put it another way, you don’t want a press conference because it might make things hard for your family.”
“……”
“And telling only your younger siblings is embarrassing. Is that it?”
Warmth spread over the nails, cut as prettily and neatly as his meticulous personality. It was only his lips touching them, but the sound of Tae-hoon’s heartbeat growing fast enough to ring in his ears made Gwan-young rather amused.
“No? I was going to let it slide, but if that’s not it, give me another reason.”
“……That’s right.”
A low laugh slipped from Ji Gwan-young, who had finally forced an admission out of him. Choi Tae-hoon let out a heated sigh, intuitively realizing that dating this man with such a perverse temperament would never be easy.
***
“I think I’m going to live in Lab 1 for a while.”
One Esper researcher declared with a serious face. Thanks to that, Lee Mihyun’s face rapidly twisted as she had been drinking orange juice in a pretty good mood. Right now, there was only one reason countless researchers at The Center kept coming in and out of Lab 1, where Mihyun and Oh Yeon’s departments collaborated, like sparrows hovering around a mill.
“Oh my god. How could they keep something that good to themselves?”
“Exactly. I heard Ji Gwan-young proposed to Tae-hoon.”
“Huh?! Really? No, no. From what I heard, Tae-hoon confessed to Ji Gwan-young while crying, and Ji Gwan-young……”
To distance herself from that conversation full of fiction, Mihyun sucked noisily through the straw in her empty container. The miniseries starring Esper Ji Gwan-young and Guide Choi Tae-hoon had long since been altered to suit everyone’s tastes.
It hadn’t even taken a single day for the news that a new name had been given to the relationship of the Pair always followed by incidents and accidents to spread throughout The Center.
For the people of The Center, who had been soaked in idleness and boredom while doing nothing but research, program development, and cooperative processes, this pleasant dating story was, no joke, something they could milk for ten years. No—at the very least, it would undoubtedly be the hottest topic for three years.
The reactions of The Center’s people to the birth of this fresh couple generally fell into three categories.
The first was like Lee Mihyun’s: “Couples, get lost. Ji Gwan-young, get even more lost.” This faction was mostly made up of people from the PR team and the external cooperation team, who shuddered at all the incidents Ji Gwan-young had caused. Mihyun began ruthlessly pushing the Esper from the next lab—who had even bought snacks from the store—out of her space.
“Ah, work. Work. Seriously, you people. This is why people say civil servants just laze around and eat. What’s wrong with Lab 3’s attendance management?”
“Our side decided to take it easy today. The cooperative process with Japan ended yesterday. Mihyun-ssi, don’t be like that and tell us a little more.”
“About what?”
“Ji Gwan-young and Tae-hoon! Are they coming today? Ah, are they really dating? What was it like that day?”
The second was the hardcore support faction, whose eyes sparkled as they cheered on Ji Gwan-young and Choi Tae-hoon’s relationship. Whether the person from Lab 3 pressed her or not, Mihyun just roughly shook her head, going, “Ahh, I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Then one Esper who had been quietly listening to their conversation from over there subtly joined in. He was the drama-obsessed Esper who had made barking sounds in joy during that historic moment. He could relay the moment he’d heard hundreds of times without getting a single word wrong.
“So, you see, what happened was……”
The Esper cleared his throat and tried to show off his ability. That was when—
“Have you finished entering the data I mentioned yesterday?”
“Ah, no! There’s a little left.”
“Finish it by this morning and report back, please.”
At the intervention of the man with the most blunt face and voice in this place, the Esper from Lab 3 looked ready to cry. But Oh Yeon wasn’t soft enough to be swayed by an expression like that.
“And I passed one project over to Lab 3. Please check it.”
“Reaaally~?! Ah, seriously. Yeon-ssi, you’re too much.”
At the appearance of a reliable ally, Lee Mihyun even hummed softly and made a circle with her fingers at Oh Yeon. The blunt Esper, who merely disliked the lab’s atmosphere becoming distracted, gave a rough nod at the reaction. Honestly, up to this point, it was fine. What the lead actor Ji Gwan-young found most irritating was this third case.
“Hehe.”
“……”
“What a nice time in life. A nice time.”
Even while looking at the man sitting arrogantly cross-legged in front of her, the Director of The Center smiled brightly, as light as a feather, as if she found something so delightful. Neither the faction uncomfortable with the dating news nor the hardcore support faction, but the third group who looked at them with a pleased gaze like, “Oh my, young people are so adorable,” and simply found them cute.
That was precisely the reaction of the middle-aged and older staff of The Center, led by the Director.
Director Kwon Dahee folded her eyes prettily as she looked at Ji Gwan-young, who appeared as though he had stepped straight out of a drama. From the looks of it, Ji Gwan-young seemed to have come straight to The Center as soon as filming ended, still wearing his costume.
She had thought of him as an arrogant Esper who only ever picked out hateful things to do and gave her headaches, but a lovers’ quarrel at The Center—he had a cuter side than expected. Ji Gwan-young furrowed his brow at that smile.
He had obediently come up when the Director called him, intending to kill time until his Guide’s training ended, only to find those lukewarm faces aimed at him from all directions the higher he went.
If he’d known it would be like this, he might as well have answered those noisy researchers’ ridiculous survey instead.
“What is that expression?”
“Because a man who seemed like he only cared about himself in the whole world had a lovers’ quarrel in a place full of listening ears. It’s just too adorable.”
At the answer, which exceeded his imagination, a rare sigh escaped Ji Gwan-young’s mouth.
He had to admit what needed to be admitted.
Honestly, back then, he hadn’t known that Espers from all over had been listening to his conversation with Choi Tae-hoon. If he had been as sensitive to presences as usual, he would have noticed immediately, but at the time, Ji Gwan-young had been unable to pay attention to anything else because Choi Tae-hoon had been in front of him saying things like he would date someone else and that Gwan-young was selfish.
When he came out of the reception room and opened the lab door with Choi Tae-hoon, who said he had left his phone behind, the gazes that poured onto them were…… hard to explain in words.
When Lee Mihyun, with extremely uncomfortable eyes and a guilty voice, said, “Uh, um, have a beautiful love. Both of you,” Ji Gwan-young realized that perhaps the conversation between him and his Guide had been heard a little. And two days later, when Choi Tae-hoon, with a face like he was about to collapse, asked, “What’s the water temperature of the Han River these days?” he became certain that their story had spread all across this damn Center.
For Gwan-young, whose job was to receive people’s attention in the first place, the researchers gossiping about him and his Guide—no, his lover—didn’t bother him at all. If that had bothered him, he wouldn’t have openly kissed him in the hallway with their tongues tangled.
But Ji Gwan-young found it hard to tolerate feeling as though he were being raised in a zoo enclosure like this.
In the end, Gwan-young left the untouched tea behind and sprang up from the sofa.
At this point, there was no need to wait; he could simply take Choi Tae-hoon out of Guide training. The thought also suddenly occurred to him that he had finished an overnight shoot and squeezed out time to come here, only to waste it on something pointless.
“I’ll be leaving first.”
“Oh my. If you leave like that!”
The Director belatedly reached out toward Ji Gwan-young, who strode straight out of her office without even looking back. But the one who had already left said nothing. The Director swept her gaze once around her empty office for no particular reason, then let out a small smile.
“…..That won’t be good for Tae-hoon-ssi, though?”
The form of the words was like concern, but her voice was full of laughter.
Director Kwon Dahee hummed softly and took a sip of warm tea.
Director Kwon Dahee was rather enjoying herself right now.
Clearly, today, a sequel to the miniseries set in The Center would come out. It was a good thing in many ways. For researchers who had too much ability for their own good and found life boring, there was no better stimulant than this.
Young people’s romance was always adorable, and as long as the people watching enjoyed it together, that was enough. Curious whether her prediction would come true, she spent an unusually exciting stretch of time.
And exactly one hour later—
The Director burst into a small laugh as she looked at the new episode beginning to sweep through the researchers’ free board on the internal network. As expected, the incident began when Esper Ji Gwan-young went straight to his Pair Guide.
***
He should have at least lied and said he was sick.
Choi Tae-hoon fixed his gaze on the ground, blaming himself for failing to overcome his conscience this morning. Right now, he was at the group training for all Guides affiliated with The Center, held once every two or three months. This was training he had previously been exempted from due to treatment for aftereffects from the terror attack and other reasons.
This place, one of the few occasions where the Center Guides, who tended strongly to move individually, could gather together, was both a venue for many people to socialize and share materials and also the source of all kinds of rumors.
Tae-hoon barely managed to suppress the sigh he had been about to let out deeply.
He absolutely refused to draw any more attention from people for no reason. The overflowing interest from this morning had already been enough. The moment he opened the auditorium doors and entered, all these people had slowly stopped talking and fallen silent—that silence!
Right now, the only thought in Choi Tae-hoon’s head was how he could run away from here. But as someone who had spent his whole life as a model for his five younger siblings and had always walked the straight and proper path, he could not easily think of a word like skipping.
How could I at least sprain my ankle?
The flight of imagination that began instead of cleverness had taken on a rather masochistic shape. Just as Tae-hoon’s complexion gradually darkened while he imagined all sorts of scenarios—
“Excuse me.”
“Yes?”
Choi Tae-hoon thought that the first sound of his own voice since coming here today sounded a little foolish. The man with an easygoing impression looked at Tae-hoon and broke into a broad smile.
“Is someone sitting next to you?”
“No. It’s empty.”
“Hahaha! I overslept, you know! Is attendance important for this?”
“They only said they’d check with the fingerprint scan from when we came in.”
The man’s appearance, which finally caught his eye belatedly, was quite a sight. The back of his hair was flattened, and the messy strands sticking out here and there made him look, to anyone’s eyes, like he had been sleeping sprawled out in the official residence before rushing out.
Only then did a faint smile appear at the corners of Tae-hoon’s mouth, which had been stiff for hours. The man fanned himself with his hand and sprawled as much as he could in the chair. Faint beads of sweat had formed on his forehead, making it obvious he had come in a hurry.
Tae-hoon gathered his courage, handed him a few tissues he had, and spoke first.
“I’m Choi Tae-hoon.”
“I know, I know. There probably isn’t anyone who doesn’t.”
“……”
“I’m Kim Kwonseok. Haha. You’re famous, Tae-hoon-ssi. None other than Ji Gwan-young’s boyfriend!”
Tae-hoon, whose ears had gone slightly red as he was opening a bottle of water, nearly dropped it by mistake.
