“Choi Taehyun, you really…”
“Haha, haha, ah, did you really think I was upset?”
Gwan-young held the slender body that naturally slipped into his arms while smiling at him with eyes curved like crescent moons, and he put strength into his furrowed brow. But both Ji Gwan-young himself and Choi Taehyun, who kept letting out laughter, knew it was pointless.
“Is it fun to toy with me?”
“Mm, it’d be a lie to say it wasn’t fun… so, well, a little.”
The breath brushing against lips that kept spreading into a pretty curve was hot. When he mixed their tongues deeply, as if giving a slight punishment, Choi Taehyun smiled with beautifully curved eyes.
When their lips parted for a moment, the way he even deliberately asked, “Are you angry even though you know perfectly well it’s not true?” honestly made Gwan-young wonder if he’d been somewhat deceived all this time by that polite, clean-cut face.
Instead of answering, Ji Gwan-young lightly bit his lover’s lips.
***
Kim Kwonseok noisily called out when he saw the most famous Pair in The Center these days.
“Wow. Ji Gwan-young and his boyfriend!”
“…Kwonseok hyung!”
Taehyun gave a slightly sulky protest at the embarrassing word he still wasn’t used to. But the person who had the boyfriend decided to generously forgive the unfamiliar man’s somewhat rude attitude.
He rather liked that title, the one that made his Guide so embarrassed.
“Please give me an autograph.”
“Yes. Of course. Name?”
Ji Gwan-young skillfully signed the palm-sized notebook Kwonseok thrust out in a hurry.
“I’m Kim Kwonseok… Ah, but I’d appreciate it if you could make this out to Yoo Jinyoung.”
“Hyung, is it for your girlfriend?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Choi Taehyun let out a breathy laugh as he watched Kwonseok look as if he’d gained the whole world from a single autograph. Kim Kwonseok was a man rich in emotional expression. Though he was older, sometimes he reminded Taehyun of his second younger brother, Choi Woojin. As Kwonseok carefully tucked the autograph into the file folder he was holding, he rubbed the tip of his nose and spoke as though it wasn’t a big deal.
“By the way, do you get care from this counselor too?”
“We alternate weekly. There are about two others as well.”
“Oho.”
Kim Kwonseok scratched his chin as if thinking about something.
Right now, the Pair and Kim Kwonseok had luckily run into each other right in front of the counseling room. Seeing Kwonseok’s strangely odd expression, Taehyun asked,
“What is it?”
“No. It’s just… don’t you think this person is a little weird?”
In The Center, hundreds of counselors with different roles were always on standby. Taehyun had met quite a few of them. And among all those people, this middle-aged man was a counselor he liked quite a lot.
Choi Taehyun tilted his head and answered.
“I get along with him well enough. Did something happen?”
“…Well, if that’s the case, then I have nothing to say. It’s nothing. Ah. Right! Take a quick look at this for me.”
Kim Kwonseok took a small square box out of his hoodie pocket.
“Ta-da. What do you think!”
“Wow,” Taehyun exclaimed softly, his eyes sparkling.
What Kim Kwonseok showed him was a ring. In the center of the neat platinum-colored band, a small diamond sparkled. The design was elegant without being excessive, and anyone could tell it was meant for a proposal.
“She’ll really like it. It’s so pretty.”
“Ehehe, right?”
Ji Gwan-young, who stood a few steps away from the two Guides, tilted his head as he watched Choi Taehyun, who couldn’t easily tear his eyes away from the small sparkling ring. It was because he remembered how, even during their previous fight, Taehyun had immediately brought up marriage. Choi Taehyun, who had walked a proper and conventional path, must surely have dreamed of building a picturesque family that suited him.
“All right. Then I’ll see you next time! Wish me success, hey!”
Taehyun smiled at Kwonseok as he walked away cheerfully. It made him think that this must be what it meant for happiness to be visible even from someone’s back.
“Ji Gwan-young-ssi. I’ll go in now. You’ll be bored, so please go somewhere else.”
“…Okay.”
Gwan-young, sitting on the sofa right in front of the counseling room door, answered a little slowly, as though thinking about something. But unlike his voice, which briefly sounded careless, he would undoubtedly stay right here and wait only for him. Taehyun could picture his Esper doing exactly that, so he smiled faintly.
Today, Choi Taehyun had barely managed to schedule counseling to match Ji Gwan-young’s free time.
“Your expression is bright this time.”
At the counselor’s words, Taehyun, who had been lost in various thoughts for a moment, opened his eyes wide in surprise, then smiled somewhat sheepishly. Since he had been scheduled with other counselors lately, it had been almost a month since he’d last met this middle-aged man, the one to whom he had complained so much about Ji Gwan-young.
“I’ve heard the rumors. They say you’ve monopolized everyone’s idol?”
“…Well, um. It just sort of happened.”
The Guide’s appearance as he answered in a voice that seemed ready to crawl away, unable to even meet the man’s eyes properly, was clearly that of a young man completely immersed in a newly begun love.
As if he found Choi Taehyun quite adorable, the counselor laughed aloud and held out a mug. It carried the coffee scent that had been pleasant enough to make Taehyun’s eyes widen from the moment he entered the counseling room.
“Now then. What shall we talk about today, Taehyun-ssi?”
At the counselor’s leisurely words, Taehyun rubbed his palms together for a moment and glanced around before speaking quite calmly. Of course, answering that way didn’t hide the slight excitement contained within.
“Things have been pretty good lately.”
“Good. Good, you say. Haha, as expected, is it thanks to Ji Gwan-young-ssi?”
It wasn’t that he hadn’t expected that name to come up, but embarrassment was still embarrassment. It felt like dating someone the whole world knew. Still, he no longer intended to deny or push it away. From Taehyun, whose cheeks had flushed slightly, came a small but clear answer.
“…Yes.”
“Oh. You’ve gained quite a bit of confidence. Last time, weren’t you terribly anxious? Because of the matching rate.”
At the counselor’s words, Choi Taehyun chose his words for a moment as if pondering.
In truth, a little unease still remained in Taehyun’s heart. It was inevitable. From the age of five until now, at twenty-eight, Choi Taehyun had never once received proof that he was a Guide. Only one person called and spoke of Choi Taehyun as a Guide: the man who had now become his lover.
“I still can’t say I’m completely at ease, but still, I really have started to think this, just a little.”
“What kind of thought?”
“That even if I’m not a Guide, that person would look at me the same way he does now… Ah. Is that too reckless?”
At Choi Taehyun’s question back to him, the counselor smiled faintly and shrugged. It meant that only the person involved knew the answer to that question.
Taehyun sat in the quite comfortable counseling room chair with his head tilted back slightly, gazing up at the pure white ceiling. As a client, his posture was definitely much more relaxed than before. After narrowing his eyes for a long while as if intoxicated by the scent of coffee, Taehyun spoke in a low voice, as though something had suddenly come to mind.
“When you look closely, there are things that are extremely naturally ingrained in him.”
What is he doing right now? Is he sitting on the sofa looking at his phone? Or is he staring at the door without blinking? Thinking about this and that, Choi Taehyun continued.
“Ji Gwan-young-ssi—did you know that if someone drops something, he absolutely won’t bend down to pick it up for them?”
“Pardon?”
“He bows perfectly well at stage greetings and things like that, but he absolutely won’t carry someone’s bag or place a spoon down when we go out to eat. At first I thought he was doing it on purpose, but lately I realized that option simply doesn’t exist in his head. It’s funny, isn’t it?”
Somehow, strangely enough, it was a development similar to their previous counseling session. But the sentence wasn’t a complaint like last time. Rather, it even carried a faint smile, as though he were sharing a somewhat amusing story.
“Not long ago, I went with Ji Gwan-young-ssi to the filming set for his drama.”
“Yes, I heard you decided to move around together for the time being.”
The counselor skillfully cut out any mention of Oh Jinwoo, the Esper who had caused that decision, and simply received Taehyun’s words. Taehyun, somewhat immersed in a pleasant recollection, didn’t notice.
“Actually, Ji Gwan-young-ssi is really… how should I put it? He seems like someone who doesn’t care at all about other people’s eyes, but in some ways, he’s very much someone who lives within them.”
“From what I’ve heard, that doesn’t seem to be the case at all?”
At the counselor’s puzzled question, Taehyun burst into a slight laugh and curved his eyes, saying, “Well, that’s true.”
“Honestly, at first, I really hated following him around all day. Going all the way to the drama set and sitting among all those people made me feel like I’d be disturbing everyone there.”
“Haha.”
“Anyway, I was extremely nervous. Something… happened there too. Everyone was staring silently. But even in the middle of that, I could feel how careful the people around him were with Ji Gwan-young-ssi, and I thought, ah, this person really is incredible even here, so at first I couldn’t even breathe loudly.”
Choi Taehyun swallowed a slightly helpless sigh as he recalled the “incident” that had happened on set. Even now, when he remembered the moment Ji Gwan-young had playfully pressed his lips to his with a peck in a place full of people, the hairs on his body stood on end.
But aside from that moment, Ji Gwan-young’s drama filming set had been quite fascinating to Taehyun, who had lived completely removed from that kind of world until now. The expressions Ji Gwan-young only showed there were interesting too, and more than anything, there was something else that had filled Choi Taehyun’s heart to the brim.
“But I spent the whole day in that place playing king.”
“Playing king?”
“A king game where Ji Gwan-young-ssi served me, and I was the king.”
It really had been like that.
Later on, even Ji Gwan-young’s manager became so restless that he waved his hands and said he would do it instead, but his lover had been beside himself with the need to take care of him. If Taehyun stood up and stretched because his back felt a little stiff, the gaze that had been focused on filming would follow him exactly, causing several NGs.
Thinking back to that time, Taehyun accidentally burst into a somewhat loud laugh. At the time, he had been so shocked that he felt cold from head to toe, but looking back, every single thing had been proof that his Esper had kept him in his eyes.
“He was so excessive that after the whole day of filming ended and I came to my senses, there was this round little circle formed around me.”
Here were books, here was a tablet, over there was a pile of food. Here was a cushion. A portable phone charger. Choi Taehyun lightly pointed at the empty air as though drawing that moment and spoke softly. Strangely, none of the time he spent with Ji Gwan-young was blurry; every bit of it was vivid.
“He even followed me right up to the bathroom door and stood there waiting, that impressive man, so honestly, I got a bit worried and asked him. If it was really okay for him to act like this here. Since he’s still a successful lead actor.”
“And then?”
“…I just got scolded.”
It was a short statement, but one containing many untold details.
In truth, Choi Taehyun never told the other researchers these kinds of things that happened with his Pair. Revealing fragments of his relationship with his lover was a fairly awkward and embarrassing process.
But starting was the hard part. Once he began speaking, the things he had silently pressed down flowed out smoothly instead. If anything, he was grateful there was even one person like this.
After talking with the counselor, even the complicated thoughts inside his heart seemed to settle into order.
Taehyun took a sip of the coffee that had cooled to the perfect drinking temperature.
