A long unrequited love is a pretty grueling thing.
All the more when the person in question is the former next-door Hyung and, now, your pair partner who’s basically your only family left.
Of course, plenty of people have nursed a childhood crush on the kid next door. Not all of those end as puppy love—quite a few grow into genuine romantic interest.
Among them, some screw up their courage, confess, and actually start dating. Others find their secret feelings drifting away on their own and later remember it fondly as a first love from back then.
But what are the odds that your long-time crush, now suffering from amnesia, goes on a live broadcast and says he’s dating you?
His phone blew up.
The internet blew up.
Ji Se-min’s head blew up.
After Sung Cha-hyeon’s out-of-the-blue public confession, South Korea practically flipped. In a society where Espers/Guides have taken on a kind of celebrity status, interest in Sung Cha-hyeon was intense even on a normal day.
Despite his reputation for having a bad personality, maybe because he’s gentle with his younger Dongsaeng, rumors that the two were dating had followed them like an established fact for ages.
Yet the same Sung Cha-hyeon who always drew a hard line—saying they were just Hyung and Dongsaeng—suddenly acknowledged his relationship with Se-min today.
Thanks to this romance he himself didn’t know about, Se-min was almost out of his mind. He spat out the juice he’d been drinking, wondered if he’d misheard, stared blankly as flashes kept exploding across the screen, briefly came to when he saw Deputy Chief Jeong’s appalled face, then zoned out again under the reporters’ barrage of questions.
—When did the relationship start to develop?
—Were you hiding it all this time, as the public suspected?
—Who confessed first?
—Where do you usually go on dates?
—Why did you suddenly decide to acknowledge the relationship?
The very man who lobbed the grenade, Cha-hyeon, simply stepped back with a sly smile and, “No comment in this setting.”
Staring blankly at the whole spectacle, Se-min clutched his head and sank soundlessly to the floor.
What on earth did that Hyung just say? Is he out of his mind? Is he in his right mind? Why say something you can’t take back? He tried calling Cha-hyeon, but calls and messages were pouring in so fast that using his phone was nearly impossible.
On top of that, Se-min was at a hospital specializing in Espers/Guides. Which meant the hallway outside his room was crawling with exactly the kind of people most desperate to know the truth.
Unable to do this or that, Se-min could only switch off his phone and wait for Cha-hyeon. From the start, every attempt to do anything came with the same thought—this is ruined—and there was nothing he could actually do.
Even if he tried to explain to a South Korea now in festival mode over Sung Cha-hyeon’s acknowledgment—that Cha-hyeon hyung had amnesia and had believed his prank—it wouldn’t land at all.
He’d wanted to grow closer to Cha-hyeon, sure, but he never imagined it would happen like this.
What is this… what’s happening to me? Half-slumped on the sofa in a daze, Se-min jerked upright at the sound of the door opening.
“…Hyung!”
Exactly as he looked on TV—hair slicked back with pomade, clad in a black combat uniform—Cha-hyeon stepped into the room. His gaze fell to the puddle of orange juice on the floor. Seeing the mess Se-min hadn’t thought to wipe up in the chaos, he lifted one eyebrow.
“Did Se-min go pee-pee?”
“…No! Seriously! Ugh!”
Coming back after detonating a massive bomb on live TV and that’s what he says—isn’t that rude? It was so absurd that Se-min snapped, sounding like he was scolding a child.
Balling his fists and forcing himself to calm down, Se-min let out a long breath. Just getting mad wouldn’t make a conversation happen. Eyes narrowed with focus, he pointed toward the dark TV.
“Why’d you do that? During the clear interview, y-you said we’re dating…!”
Cha-hyeon tilted his head slightly. The calm was a stark contrast to Se-min’s agitation—almost chilly in its indifference.
“You said it, didn’t you? That we’re lovers engaged to be married and pair partners.”
“…What?”
He’d braced for all kinds of evasive answers, but not that. For a second, it felt like he was talking to a wall. Breath catching, he could only stare at Cha-hyeon, speechless.
Like a broken teddy bear repeating the same line, Cha-hyeon sat on the sofa where Se-min had just been. Se-min’s eyes followed in hollow disbelief. He still hoped for an explanation, but Cha-hyeon stayed quiet.
Watching in utter disbelief as he started unlacing his combat boots like a machine, Se-min blurted what he was really thinking.
“Hyung… don’t tell me you’ve got dementia?”
The hands on the laces paused. Looking up at Se-min, he seemed floored, like someone blindsided by a remark he never saw coming.
But Se-min was just as dumbfounded. He’d said more than once it had been a joke, and yet the words hadn’t even grazed the man’s ears—as if he had no intention of accepting anything except “lovers engaged to be married.”
That can’t be. Rejecting that premise on instinct, another hypothesis flared in Se-min’s head—a desperate attempt to defend Cha-hyeon somehow.
What if he’d hurt his head when he lost his memories in the dungeon? Some special effect was at work, making him forget every time Se-min explained it had been a joke.
Thinking back to the dungeon Gate incident whose secrets still hadn’t been fully unraveled, it felt possible.
If he really wasn’t ignoring me but actually forgetting every single time…?
“Or some unknown Gate side effect…? Did you injure your head…?”
“…What are you even saying?”
Cha-hyeon muttered, baffled. But because he so badly wanted to defend his hyung’s strange behavior, Se-min had no choice but to press on seriously.
“Hyung. I told you the ‘we’re lovers’ thing was a joke, but the way you keep forgetting it, this could be Gate-related. We shouldn’t be doing this—let’s go see the doctor….”
“Se-min.”
Having finished with one boot, Cha-hyeon cut him off. Still crouched, he only lifted his head to look at him. Against those black irises, the bloodshot whites stood out starkly.
“Is that so important?”
“…Huh?”
“I can’t live without you.”
For a moment, it felt to Se-min like he’d just heard aliens were invading Earth. That’s how unreal—and how much like a lie—it sounded.
Maybe because of that, the question of why he’d said something so absurd on live TV when they weren’t even dating went blank in his head and vanished.
“…Huh?”
“I can’t live without you, Ji Se-min.”
Enunciating each syllable, Cha-hyeon delivered the clean kill. Se-min’s mouth slowly fell open.
What on earth… what is hyung even saying? Is it real that those words—so romantic they almost hurt—are coming out of his mouth?
With a shrug, Cha-hyeon dropped his hands again and finished unlacing the other boot. With his shoes finally loosened, he lounged back against the sofa.
Looking at Se-min—whose pupils now trembled beyond mere panic—he let out a brief snort and let both brows sink.
It was the expression the original Cha-hyeon wore when something made him sad. Because he’d been oddly sardonic after losing his memories, the change in his face stood out even more. In the chaos, Se-min didn’t even realize he was once again separating the amnesiac Cha-hyeon from the original as if they were different people.
“No matter how I think about it, Se-min, I don’t think I can live the rest of my life without you.”
As if to blow away Se-min’s doubts, Cha-hyeon spoke again, steady and clear. Even in a situation that didn’t feel real, Se-min’s heart thudded on, oblivious to its owner.
“So it wouldn’t be bad at all if we really dated with marriage in mind.”
Whispering words far too sweet, one corner of Cha-hyeon’s mouth tipped up. Se-min learned firsthand that when you’re too shocked, your head feels like it’s about to burst.
“…What? No…!”
Even if it isn’t just me—wouldn’t anyone faint from shock if their long-time crush blindsided them with a confession to date on the premise of marriage?
“No…! Hyung…!”
“You don’t want to?”
To the thoroughly flustered Se-min, who could only repeat “no,” Cha-hyeon’s brows drooped further into a 八 of dejection. Even more flustered, Se-min waved his hands.
“No, it’s just…! No…!”
Forgetting to act gloomy, Cha-hyeon let out a short huff of laughter. It sounded a little like a scoff, but Se-min wasn’t in any state to parse nuances that fine.
His startled heart hammered. Mixed into his daze was a thread of anxiety—a feeling he couldn’t quite name.
So sweet it was, it felt like his vision was being veiled instead.
Ji Se-min’s long unrequited love had flowed quietly until now, because there was a boundary between him and Cha-hyeon that could never be crossed.
A younger Dongsaeng he treated like blood. The last family they had in each other. Ji Se-min’s only guardian. Precisely because of that, Cha-hyeon had even refused guiding beyond a certain threshold.
And yet now, such a sudden turn. It was only day two since he’d lost his memories. Not only had they done close-contact guiding, but despite not even being a couple, he’d gone live and declared they were lovers.
On top of that—I can’t live without you, so let’s seriously think about marriage?
