“I don’t need it. But, but…… you already know I won’t throw it away. You know everything, and you do this on purpose. You enjoy making things difficult for me.”
You sadist.
When you touched me, you were so gentle you almost felt fragile yourself, and yet inside you were pitch-black, weren’t you? It’s infuriating that I failed to see your true nature.
“If you have even a shred of conscience, at least recognize what an irresponsible person you are. The despair you gave me…… no, I wasn’t in despair. You’re not worth that much. Did you think I’d actually care just because you vanished one day and suddenly came back to hover around me?”
“From the looks of it, you care too much, if anything.”
“I do not! Shut up, says the guy who wiretaps people. The guy who listens in because he’s curious what I do at home! Fuck. My thoughts are all tangled up. I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore……. Anyway, you’re a bad person. That’s why I can’t let this continue. Today, I’m absolutely getting answers about you.”
What came back to my shouting was still that calm gaze.
Eyes that didn’t waver.
The Eden who used to tread carefully because he worried I’d get swept away was gone. The man who used to warn me that I needed to think now skillfully wielded the power to shake me apart.
“Somerset.”
He probably thought if he suddenly said my name in that gentle voice, I’d fall for it again. He definitely thought I was enough of an idiot to freeze up whenever he looked at me like that.
“Maybe your thinking was wrong, just like you said. Fine, maybe I was stupid. But the gift—”
“Shut up. That’s not an answer. Don’t try to persuade me.”
I bit down and swallowed the sigh trying to escape between my teeth. My thoughts still weren’t organized, while my mouth kept running wild. I was pouring everything out without a filter, but none of it was wrong.
“You think you’re someone special to me, don’t you? That’s honestly a ridiculous misunderstanding. What exactly are you trying to do by showing up in front of me now? Did you think something amazing would happen just because you came back?”
I shoved a sneer straight into Eden’s line of sight and continued.
“Separate from whatever happened between us in the past, you’re just a disgusting stalker. Looking back, even the past itself wasn’t that important. So what if you were my first man? That fact has no effect on my present. You’re nothing to me.”
I was saying it to provoke Eden, but somehow the words seemed to rebound into my own chest instead. They stabbed sharply like awls, leaving me aching.
“The reason I don’t want your gift is because I don’t like you. Not because I’m worried I’ll attach unnecessary meaning to something you gave me. The reason I’m angry at you right now? It’s because of your stalker behavior, not because I expect anything from you.”
Was that really true?
Maybe when I unexpectedly reunited with Eden, I’d deliberately ignored something trying to bloom inside me.
Running to him and confessing how much I’d missed him, seeking comfort from him.
Confirming with my own body whether Eden’s embrace was still warm.
Maybe I’d even believed that only you could heal me.
How stupid.
“Did you ever think about how suffocating it was for the person left behind?”
The question slipped out impulsively, and I immediately regretted it. There was nothing good about saying things like that.
Let’s talk about something else.
“You’ve made more mistakes than I can count. Even that horrifying situation where I almost became crippled was all your fault.”
“Crippled?”
Eden repeated the word, his eyes widening. Apparently his background investigation hadn’t uncovered that much.
At last, the shallow pleasure of finally shaking him welled up inside me. Eden’s gaze quickly swept over my body. He looked visibly uneasy, and I found it satisfying.
“Are you okay now? Are you sure? What part of you almost became crippl—”
“Sexually crippled.”
I pointed between my legs as I continued.
“After you suddenly disappeared, my dick wouldn’t get hard for a while. All I could think about was you, so I couldn’t do anything.”
Back then, in the peak of my youth, I went through something horrific. It would’ve been better if I’d remained inexperienced like before, never knowing what pleasure felt like. But after learning the heat and tingling sensation that made me feel like I was flying, losing it was unbearably hard.
The days of writhing in despair felt eternal.
“How long did I live like that? About half a year? Eventually my body started listening to me again. It was the result of repeatedly training myself to control thoughts of you and push you away.”
I’d been speaking with a hint of pride when I suddenly faltered. I’d loudly declared that today I’d finally make Eden talk, and yet once again I was the only one rambling.
Worse, Eden had been deeply shaken by the word crippled, but after hearing sexually crippled, he’d instead calmed down, which completely drained my momentum.
“Being sexually crippled still counts as crippled.”
Rather than thanking me for correcting his flawed understanding, he looked away awkwardly.
“You probably can’t grasp how serious it is because you’re apparently fine not using your dick for years, but it was a huge deal.”
Normally, it would’ve been a heartbreaking true story about overcoming despair and hardship through effort. Being dismissed after recounting a tale worthy of heroic legend made emotion surge up inside me.
“If you became sexually crippled too and that’s why you haven’t had sex, then I’ll acknowledge it. Otherwise, your attitude right now is wrong. You’re adding more sins in real time—”
“Somerset, stop.”
“Stop what?”
Honestly, it probably was right to stop. I’d set out intending to corner Eden and had wandered completely off course. But stubborn resistance came first.
Like I’d rather listen to a dog barking than hear your advice.
“I’ll explain again for someone with poor comprehension skills, so listen carefully. Thinking about you made things difficult for me. My head was so full of you that I couldn’t get hard. It’s a good thing I recovered, because otherwise I might’ve gone my whole life without sex.”
Now it was time to elaborate on my tragic, tearjerking backstory and my battle against hardship.
Eden met my eyes and cut me off.
“The things you’re saying right now aren’t helping. Telling me this is no different from stripping naked in front of me.”
I knew stripping naked was a metaphor, but instinctively I lowered my head to check myself anyway. I’d unbuttoned the top two buttons of my shirt, but not enough to really expose my chest. I tugged at my collar to hide the contours of my pecs and shrugged.
“I’m not naked.”
“You are. You still are. What you’re saying is that you couldn’t forget me and were impotent for half a year, then finally recovered after barely managing to push me away.”
After reinterpreting my words, Eden pushed up his glasses with a cool expression.
He really was a smart idiot.
“What kind of bullshit is that? My dick not working had nothing to do with you. It was just because of stress…….”
“And I’m the one who caused that stress. You said it yourself. You couldn’t do anything because all you could think about was me. Thoughts about me affected your body.”
That’s not what it was.
My body just—just somehow ended up like that.
I shook my head repeatedly. A hollow laugh slipped out. I barely restrained myself from kicking the car door open and storming out when Eden looked straight at me. Emerald light swayed beyond his lenses.
Beautiful to a ridiculous degree.
Looking troubled, he said,
“Somerset Quinn. Don’t tell me that you loved me.”
Love.
The word coming from Eden’s mouth felt incredibly unfamiliar.
Like I was hearing it for the first time in my life.
Maybe that was half true. I’d never heard it from him before. Not when he looked at me with gentle eyes, not when he held me in his arms or leaned against my chest, not even when he smiled as though he only ever did that in front of me.
Of course, I’d never said love either.
Because I didn’t know love.
If I had loved you, then I would’ve known what love was.
The fact that I still don’t know means there’s only one answer.
I didn’t love you either.
“It’s so absurd that…… ha, fuck.”
I slammed my fist against the dashboard with a bang. It was a far more violent expression of anger than flipping him off.
Watching me, Eden raised his hands in surrender.
“I misspoke. Let’s call it that, so calm down.”
The gesture also carried the feeling of someone soothing an angry beast. The way he acted like an experienced trainer only made me angrier.
“I decide my own feelings! I don’t need your interpretation. Don’t act like you know everything about me. That’s seriously presumptuous.”
I opened and closed my throbbing hand while glaring at Eden again.
Enough with all this endless rambling. Let’s skip ahead and get to the point. And then get out of this space.
That felt like the only way I could stay sane.
Don’t tell me that you loved me.
Eden’s voice echoed like an auditory hallucination that wouldn’t leave.
That you loved me…….
My head was starting to pound.
That you loved…….
I was getting exhausted.
Love.
Love.
Love.
Since when did my ears gain a rewind function?
Fuck.
I vented my frustration by roughly raking through my hair before opening my mouth calmly.
Though the moment the words left me, my composure vanished again.
“Stop talking about me. It’s your turn to be dissected now. Try shutting your mouth again. Go ahead and run away. If you do, I’ll never see you again. No matter how much you follow me around, wiretap me, and harass me, I won’t deal with you anymore. You think I can’t do it? Don’t make me laugh! How long am I supposed to stay some idiot who knows nothing?!”
It looked like I was the only one worked up and shouting, but even though he hid it, Eden seemed pretty heated too. He slid his fingers beneath the frame of his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
He must’ve been trying to organize his thoughts.
Too bad for him, he failed, and Eden muttered in a tone close to resignation,
“You’re better off not knowing.”
“I’ll decide what’s better for me. If I regret it after finding out, then that’s my burden.”
Even his attempt to intimidate me didn’t shake me. Escaping the suffocating maze of uncertainty mattered more than anything.
Maybe I really would regret it. But I’d leave that problem to my future self.
“If I tell you why I left, will that satisfy you?”
Eden asked as though giving me one final chance.
My answer didn’t change.
“Don’t make something up. Tell me the truth. No vague excuses.”
The question mark engraved into one corner of my brain during that summer of loss stirred restlessly. It sensed that the time had finally come to become either a period or an exclamation point.
Before speaking, Eden avoided my gaze. When I leaned closer to follow it, he reluctantly met my eyes and gestured for me to move back.
It wasn’t even that close.
I resisted for a moment before retreating. I couldn’t deny that I looked like a trained animal in that moment.
Fine. Let’s admit it. Eden really was an experienced trainer. Without even holding a whip, he could make me obedient.
“You don’t have to understand me. I’m just… telling you.”
“I never said I’d understand.”
Even my weak rebellion quickly crumbled.
“Stop dragging it out and just tell me. At this rate my insides are going to melt away.”
I set aside my hatred and irritation toward him for the moment and listened.
“Have you ever heard of WITSEC?”
“WITSEC?”
“The Witness Protection Program.”
“Oh, that thing. It shows up in dramas all the time. The system where the police protect key witnesses from bad guys threatening them during trials.”
At least that much common knowledge was basic. I puffed up proudly like a kid finally getting the chance to show off what he knew, then froze.
“Don’t tell me you were in that…….”
“I got caught up in an incident.”
Eden said that his family had been under the protection of the Witness Protection Program because of some incident. Not only that, they’d supposedly been protected by both the FBI and an intelligence agency.
It sounded more dramatic than an actual drama.
What kind of absurd story was this?
The odds of an ordinary family living in a wealthy New York neighborhood experiencing something like that were incredibly slim.
“And you expect me to believe that?”
“Whether you believe it or not doesn’t make it false.”
“Hey, at least pretend to persuade me. You think insisting makes it true?”
Eden simply stared at me.
Just as he always had, expressionlessness rested over his face, and there didn’t seem to be much emotion in his eyes either, yet somehow looking at him still made my heart ache.
I lightly rubbed my chest while aiming my suspicions at him.
“In dramas, they usually fake their deaths too.”
“I did.”
“Liar. I didn’t know. I never heard anything about you dying.”
“That’s because no one told you.”
Thud.
That wasn’t the sound of an arrow piercing Eden.
It was the sound of it turning back and stabbing through me instead.
Enduring the throbbing pain, I listened to the rest of Eden’s explanation. Combining what he revealed with my own thoughts, the story went something like this:
His family hadn’t been settled in New York very long, and they were so introverted and detached from their neighbors that they could disappear like a mirage. A few people remembered Eden for a while because of his striking appearance, but no one was particularly curious about where the Reed family had gone.
At the time, the economy was bad, businesses were failing, and people frequently moved away for personal reasons. So when the Reeds vanished like a mirage, everyone naturally assumed they were simply another family that had moved elsewhere.
The timing had aligned perfectly, allowing them to disappear quietly and smoothly without attracting attention.
The only person who became obsessed over their disappearance was Somerset Quinn. And the only person thrown into confusion by the sudden separation was Somerset Quinn.
Eden said the fake funeral meant to deceive others had been held elsewhere with acquaintances gathered there. If I’d attended back then believing he was truly dead, I probably would’ve cried my eyes out.
Even draining every drop of moisture from my body might not have been enough.
Still, that didn’t make me grateful to Eden for leaving silently instead of giving me grief.
There were plenty of feelings more despairing than sadness.
Everything I’d nurtured inside myself while thinking about him had been exactly that.
At this point, it was no longer about whether I believed him or not.
I bit the inside of my cheek, then asked,
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“There was no need to.”
“You never thought I’d look for you?”
“……”
“Was I not worth that much to someone who’d only been your neighbor for one season? To you… was I nothing?”
I barely swallowed down the surge rising beneath my throat and shook my head.
Questioning him like this wasn’t helping. Because half of me didn’t want to hear the answer.
The possibility that Eden might calmly say, You were nothing, made me cowardly.
“If you disappeared like that, then you should’ve stayed gone. Why did you come back?”
I asked a different question, and Eden answered while removing his glasses and wiping them with his tie, sounding detached.
“There’s no longer any need to protect me.”
He said he couldn’t explain the details because it was confidential, but his family had finally become safe too. It probably hadn’t been easy living in a new place under new identities with the assistance of government agencies, so I truly wanted to congratulate them on finally reclaiming a peaceful life.
Still, whether because the whole situation felt unreal or because I was just an incredibly selfish bastard, my resentment refused to fade.
I was still glaring at Eden with tension in my jaw and dissatisfaction written all over my face.
“So what’s that supposed to mean? You became free, so you came looking for me?”
“How did the conversation end up there?”
“Then what else does it mean?”
“Someone needs protection.”
“You literally just said there’s no need to protect anyone anymore!”
The moment I reflexively raised my voice, something distant flickered across Eden’s gaze. For a second, I almost mistook the ripples in his emerald eyes for tenderness.
A huge misunderstanding.
With a frown, he pointed at me.
“The one who needs protection is you, Somerset Quinn.”
