Seo Won approached the bed and took Han-gyeom’s outstretched hand, looking down at him. His gaze slowly swept over Han-gyeom’s face, as if calmly assessing his condition.
Han-gyeom didn’t know what to say to Seo Won, who was silently staring at him.
Why is the bedroom such a mess?
What the hell happened here?
And what’s up with your face?
Do you even realize your eyes are all puffy like a rabbit’s?
Are you seriously… hurt?
He figured that if he started asking questions, they’d eventually come out sounding like he was nagging about Seo Won’s well-being.
It wasn’t like before—when he’d try to provoke Seo Won with playful words or pretend to be concerned just to push his buttons. This time, it felt like every word that popped into his head would end up shaking his own emotions instead.
So without even realizing it, he blurted it out.
“I’m sick.”
At the childlike confession, Seo Won’s once-calm eyes instantly wavered. His hand reached out, gently caressing Han-gyeom’s face as he asked, clearly worried.
“Where does it hurt? How are you feeling?”
Seo Won’s voice was low, like it had been buried deep inside for a long time.
To be honest, Han-gyeom still had a pounding headache. It had started to ease little by little ever since he saw Seo Won, but it was far from gone.
Just as he was about to say it was his head, Seo Won casually pulled back the blanket near his legs and stared intently at Han-gyeom’s foot that had been hidden underneath.
Han-gyeom shifted slightly, wondering why the hell Seo Won was suddenly looking at his foot. Then came a sharp jolt of pain he hadn’t expected, and he let out a short hiss of discomfort.
“Agh—”
Reacting to the sound, Seo Won gently pulled Han-gyeom’s injured foot out from under the blanket with careful hands.
Han-gyeom looked at the bandage wrapped around his foot and blinked, puzzled.
“Why is there a bandage…?”
As the words left his mouth, realization dawned on him.
The pain wasn’t coming from his whole foot—it was the sole that hurt.
It was the same kind of pain he’d felt when he once ran barefoot down an unpaved road littered with sharp stones.
In other words, while unconscious and feverish for three straight days and nights, he must’ve been walking around stepping on things.
‘Was I the one who caused all this mess? No way…’
The shattered table and furniture were surrounded by sharp fragments that had been gathered into a pile.
Some of those pieces were stained with dark, dried blood. Small blood spots could be seen scattered here and there.
“If it hurts too much, do you want some painkillers?”
Seo Won asked, cradling Han-gyeom’s foot in one hand.
“No, I’m fine. But… was I the one who broke everything?”
Han-gyeom shook his head, his face showing clear confusion as he asked instead.
He had never wrecked things or gone on a rampage like this, not even during severe bouts of sleepwalking.
Of course he was shocked.
Seo Won stared intently at Han-gyeom and, realizing he didn’t remember, calmly told a lie.
“I did it. I lost it because you wouldn’t wake up.”
His expression barely changed, but Han-gyeom instantly knew he was lying.
‘As if you’d ever act like that around me.’
To destroy that much, someone would’ve had to shove and throw the furniture around—go completely berserk.
And that would’ve made a hell of a lot of noise.
Seo Won, who was hypersensitive to loud sounds, especially around Han-gyeom, would never do something like that.
But Han-gyeom didn’t bother calling him out.
His own mind was still far too scrambled to start picking apart someone else’s concern.
“Do you remember what happened that day?”
Han-gyeom flinched.
The words Seo Won had spoken that day came crashing back through his mind. The headache that had been subsiding suddenly surged again, and he let out a groan, clutching his head with one hand.
Seo Won immediately pulled him into a tight embrace, wrapping his arms protectively around Han-gyeom’s head—like he was trying to shield him from everything that was hurting him.
“You don’t have to force yourself to remember. It’s okay.”
But Han-gyeom had already remembered. Everything. Enough to know exactly what had happened that day. He even remembered why it had triggered such a violent reaction in him.
Still, he said nothing and instead buried his face into Seo Won’s shoulder.
He had no intention of asking Seo Won to confirm those words again.
No matter what Seo Won said, he wouldn’t believe him.
No—he couldn’t believe him.
So there was no point.
Han-gyeom bit down hard on his lip, swallowing the lingering questions from that day deep down into his throat.
‘He lied to me. Lied in the most absurd way possible… that’s all it is.’
There was no need to doubt.
Once he checked everything, down to the last detail, with Kang Woo-chan’s help, this suffocating sense of unease stuck in his throat like a thorn would finally disappear.
And when that moment came, there’d be nothing holding him back.
He would follow through with the plan from the beginning: guide Seo Won and destroy the Black Vein. Then he would make Seo Won give up the life he so desperately clung to—with his own hands.
Just like Han-gyeom had to give up Song Yeon-woo with his.
‘You’ll feel exactly what I felt.’
Han-gyeom’s slender arms, wrapped around Seo Won’s back covered in a black shirt, tightened with quiet resolve.
Several minutes passed.
Cradled in Seo Won’s warmth—an embrace perfectly attuned to him—Han-gyeom suddenly lifted his head, a thought striking him.
“You haven’t been guided in the meantime, have you?”
It was a rhetorical question. Seo Won was an Imprint—a person who could only receive Guiding from a single Guide.
Without waiting for Seo Won’s answer, Han-gyeom pulled away from him. Then he patted the wide, empty spot next to where he was sitting on the bed.
“Come lie down here. I’ll take care of the last three days’ worth now.”
“…”
Seo Won simply stared at him in silence again.
Feeling stifled, Han-gyeom furrowed his delicate brows.
‘Why is he acting so frustrating today?’
Usually, Seo Won would at least say something—even if it was short. But today, he was far too quiet.
So Han-gyeom deliberately spoke with a cold edge.
“It’s been more than three days since I guided you in the car. If we don’t do this soon, that whole session will be for nothing.”
Even if that deep guiding through sex had slightly reduced the Black Vein, more than three days had passed without even a single hand guiding. Just imagining how the Black Vein must’ve started creeping outward again made it obvious—he had to do at least some guiding, immediately.
Seo Won met Han-gyeom’s resolute gaze and finally moved his lips.
“The meaning of guiding…”
He repeated the words softly, and to Han-gyeom’s surprise, answered without resistance.
“…Alright. Let’s do it.”
“Huh?”
Han-gyeom was about to scold him, expecting him to back out again or insist on just hand guiding, but his words got caught in his throat.
Before he could say more, Seo Won calmly reached for his shirt and pulled it off in one smooth motion.
“But I won’t let you overdo it.”
Han-gyeom’s eyes, already narrowed in irritation, tightened even further.
He remembered how Seo Won had once restrained him just to get the bare minimum of guiding—teasing him just enough to trigger the reaction, then stopping cold.
If that kind of twisted guiding was what Seo Won had in mind again, he wanted no part of it.
“You’re not going to—”
He began, ready to protest and say he didn’t want a repeat of last time.
But before he could finish, Seo Won had already unfastened his belt and climbed onto the bed. He settled between Han-gyeom’s legs without hesitation and began undressing him with practiced, deliberate movements.
Han-gyeom looked up at him, visibly flustered, and saw Seo Won’s blue eyes darken—taking on a color as deep and murky as the abyss.
Before long, the room filled with heated breaths and soft moans.
“Hh… ngh…”
Seo Won looked down at Han-gyeom, who was moaning beneath him, his gaze flickering. His tightly pressed lips trembled too, but thankfully, Han-gyeom had his back turned, lying face-down, and didn’t notice anything unusual.
A vivid red marking had appeared on Han-gyeom’s back.
He had once described it himself.
He said the Imprint scar on his back looked like a pair of wings that had been violently torn apart.
And he was right.
A pair of pitiful, shredded wings—utterly ruined.
It was the perfect image of Cha Han-gyeom himself.
But those wings should have vanished the moment Song Yeon-woo died and the hell Han-gyeom had been trapped in disappeared. With the Imprint’s partner gone, there should have been no more resonance—no reason for the mark to reappear.
That jagged, battered wing—Han-gyeom’s suffering, which should have disappeared completely—was dragged back out into the light by this selfish man named Seo Won.
Seo Won’s shadowed face slowly lowered to Han-gyeom’s back, placing soft kisses along the outline of that blood-red wing. His lips pressed into every edge, tracing the lines gently with the tip of his tongue.
“Nngh…”
Han-gyeom’s body trembled, twitching uncontrollably. The mark, resonating in full, had become a hypersensitive erogenous zone. Every touch sent shivering waves of twisted pleasure rippling through him.
“How long… are you going to keep teasing me like this… ha…”
He clutched the pillow tightly, burying his face into it. The endless, meticulous caresses—leaving no spot untouched—were slowly driving him insane.
“You don’t like it?”
Seo Won’s low, husky voice brushed against his ear. That alone made Han-gyeom jolt, as if his ear had been caressed too.
“It’s not that I don’t like it, but…”
Han-gyeom turned his head slightly. Glancing sideways, he caught sight of Seo Won’s face—and for some reason, it looked… off.
‘Why’s he looking at me like that?’
He would’ve preferred a blank expression.
There was something cautious, wistful, and bitter in his eyes, as if he were struggling to swallow something painful. That was just how it felt—there was nothing concrete he could point to except for the serious, somber look in Seo Won’s eyes.
Realizing that Han-gyeom was looking at him, Seo Won forced a faint smile to his lips. It was barely a smile at all, but just enough for Han-gyeom to feel reassured.
Seo Won slid an arm under Han-gyeom’s belly and effortlessly flipped him over. Then, making sure not to startle him, he carefully eased him onto his back.
Only then did their eyes meet fully—Seo Won’s vivid blue gaze locking with Han-gyeom’s blood-red one, the two of them staring straight into each other.
