When Seo Suho wasn’t around, Lee Shin managed to pass the time surprisingly well on his own. He regularly stretched to loosen up his sluggish body, and would tinker with the machines Seo Suho had set up—meant to both ease his boredom and support his language development.
Switching between soothing and upbeat music depending on his mood, or getting lost in all sorts of fascinating videos, eventually drowsiness would wash over him. When it did, he’d crawl into bed and lie down.
But still, time always flew fastest when he was with Seo Suho. Lee Shin found those peaceful moments of conversation with him genuinely enjoyable.
Honestly, just seeing Seo Suho’s face made him feel good.
Tonight, though, sleep wouldn’t come. With wide, alert eyes, he stared up at the ceiling. Wrapped in his blanket, thinking about seeing Seo Suho tomorrow in the stillness of the room, something shifted.
He sensed someone on the other side of the room’s wall.
Lee Shin knew Seo Suho always went home after meeting him in the afternoons. Which meant he shouldn’t be anywhere in the lab at this hour. That thought sent a chill through him, and he abruptly sat up, his face tight with suspicion and wariness.
“……!”
With sharp eyes trained on the wall, Lee Shin’s gaze widened. Seo Suho was standing outside—but unlike usual, he wasn’t wearing his white lab coat.
The confusion lasted only a moment before his face lit up. He called out to Seo Suho, leapt off the bed, and ran toward him. As he got closer, Seo Suho’s figure became clearer. Lee Shin tapped the wall lightly in greeting, his expression bright—until he caught a clear look at Seo Suho’s face and froze.
“Suho?”
Seo Suho’s black eyes met his. But something felt off. His gaze was slightly misaligned, like he wasn’t fully present. Lee Shin’s smile faded.
His face was completely bloodless, ghostly pale. His eyes were unfocused, his body limp like he was barely standing upright.
He looked like he might crumble with the gentlest breeze.
For a long moment, Seo Suho just stared at Lee Shin in silence. His pupils trembled precariously, and his lips quivered slightly.
Lee Shin realized Seo Suho must have gone through something devastating outside the lab. He frowned, anxiety tightening in his chest. Then, in a voice barely audible, Seo Suho murmured something.
And that one line shot straight through Lee Shin’s ears, embedding itself in his mind.
‘He’s quitting?’
‘……Quitting what?’
His heart pounded with dread. He couldn’t breathe—his whole body locked in place.
Seo Suho, who was always calm and composed, looked like he was on the verge of collapsing. No—he looked like someone who had already been shattered and was just barely piecing himself together.
It felt like, any moment now, he would break apart in front of his eyes and vanish without a trace.
Lee Shin desperately pulled Seo Suho toward him. If Seo Suho had turned away and walked out, he might’ve hurled himself at the wall to smash through it, unable to bear the flood of nightmarish thoughts and anxiety.
Seo Suho, who worried even when Lee Shin had a small scrape on his hand—if he ended up covered in blood from head to toe, there was no way Seo Suho would walk away. He’d come back. He had to.
Lee Shin wrapped his arms around him and inhaled deeply, breathing in Seo Suho’s scent. Feeling the steady thrum of Seo Suho’s heart from within his embrace gradually helped calm him.
“Suho, cry.”
“……”
“Crying isn’t a bad thing. I cried too. When it hurts, you cry. When you’re sad, you cry.”
For the first time, Lee Shin was the one giving advice to Seo Suho, who had always been the one to teach him.
Lee Shin had always lived by instinct—blunt and sincere. In a world ravaged by ruin, there was no need for pretense to survive.
When the only family he had died in his place, when he first suffered a fatal wound from a monster—he cried for days. Because the pain was unbearable. And after crying it all out, he felt just a bit lighter.
Holding back tears born from pain was no different than clinging stubbornly to that suffering. At least, that’s what Lee Shin had learned in life.
And right now, Seo Suho looked like he was doing exactly that. More than simply resisting the urge to cry, he seemed to be forcibly cutting off his thoughts altogether, refusing to even acknowledge his own emotions.
His jet-black eyes had been shimmering with moisture for a while, yet not a single tear had fallen. That was proof enough. That supposedly calm, blank face—it was like a mask on the verge of cracking, so fractured it was about to split apart.
After a brief silence, Seo Suho began to tremble.
Lee Shin felt warmth spreading across his shoulder. He tightened his hold around Seo Suho’s waist.
“I know the way out of the ship. I remember everything.”
Lee Shin had made up his mind.
Seeing Seo Suho return after days of absence, his face bruised, the thought he had been harboring hardened into a decision.
Seo Suho was unhappy here.
“Let’s go together, Suho.”
Lee Shin wanted Seo Suho to be happy.
Onboard the ship, they would occasionally capture monsters from the surface and bring them to the lab for study—Seo Suho had once told Lee Shin that he was a researcher involved in that kind of work. At the time, Lee Shin had come up with a theory: that his friend from the surface might have been one of those monsters captured and brought aboard the ship, and that was how he’d ended up meeting Seo Suho here.
Whatever the reason for that disastrous fall to the ship in such a battered state… it didn’t matter now. What mattered was that, just as Seo Suho had meant something deeply important to the monster, perhaps the monster had been someone just as precious to Seo Suho.
If theirs was truly a bond of mutual longing, then maybe Seo Suho could be happy if he were reunited with the monster again.
Of course, life on the surface came with the risk of having to survive attacks from other monsters. But Lee Shin had spent his entire life among them—he was confident he could protect Seo Suho. And the monster, without a doubt, would protect him too.
Rather than staying here, constantly threatened and suffering…
As he continued searching for reasons to justify bringing Seo Suho back to the surface—
“You.”
Seo Suho’s voice cut through his thoughts. Gently pushing Lee Shin away, he wiped his tear-soaked eyes with the back of his hand. Under the light, his damp irises sparkled.
“Do you really want to go back?”
Despite the fresh tear tracks still marking his face, his voice was calm. Perhaps because Lee Shin had already once expressed his desire to return to the surface instead of living on the ship, he didn’t seem particularly surprised.
Lee Shin silently looked at Seo Suho and nodded. There were no proper meals on the surface, no candy, no music—but that was fine.
“With Suho.”
“……”
“Me, with Suho. Together.”
As long as Seo Suho was with him.
***
I stared at Lee Shin like a fool, dazed.
What kind of place was the outside world, that he would choose to abandon all the comfort and luxury of life here just to go back?
He was the kind of kid who couldn’t go a day without having candy in his mouth, someone who went crazy for sweets. He’d gradually gotten used to things like dressing himself properly, sleeping in a bed every night, and had even gotten quite skilled at handling instruments or reading books.
There was a time I’d started to think—maybe he could adjust better than I thought to civilization and life aboard the ship.
Sure, I’d already heard him say he wanted to go back to the surface. So hearing it again now wasn’t something I couldn’t accept.
But I never imagined he’d say we should go together.
“…Lee Shin.”
Just how pitiful must I look right now for him to make that kind of offer? Or had he been planning this from the start, hoping to take me hostage and escape the ship?
The thought flashed through my mind, but it didn’t stick. Lee Shin had always followed my lead so obediently—too much so for such suspicion to make sense.
More than anything, I was speechless because I’d almost nodded, as if in a trance, the moment he suggested it.
It made me realize just how desperately I wanted to run away from reality.
“…Sorry.”
Lifting my heavy arm, heavy like wet cotton, I slowly reached out and caressed Lee Shin’s cheek.
He blinked at me, watching, a faint glimmer of pure anticipation in his eyes—waiting for my answer. Was this what it would’ve felt like to have a younger sibling? Like with Rai and Cat… I realized I’d grown far too attached to him.
“I can’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t go.”
My voice came out low, weak even to my own ears. If it hadn’t been for Lee Shin—who helped me release everything I’d been holding in—I probably wouldn’t have been able to utter even that short answer.
Lee Shin stared at me silently, lips pressed tightly together. I felt bad I couldn’t give him the answer he wanted—but I had no choice. The ones I was responsible for weren’t just him.
There was Cat. There were my teammates. And… Min Yugeon.
The moment I thought of how I’d abandoned Min Yugeon, my stomach twisted.
After all that desperate clinging, after everything—it still haunted me how he’d frozen, unable to do anything, once I finally broke away from him.
I took a slow breath, clenched my numb hands into fists, then relaxed them again. Closed my eyes tight, then forced them open, trying to blur away Min Yugeon’s lingering image.
“But even so, Lee Shin, you…”
I raised my head and looked at him.
And then—on impulse—I made a decision.
