Naturally, once there were no more eyes on them, Se-min protested to Cha-hyeon about what he’d just pulled. Having once suffered the mortification of a blowout fight in public, he at least had the wisdom to wait until they were in the car to scold him.
“Hyung! Are you out of your mind? How could you say we should hold hands and then hug me in front of the Deputy Chief!”
“What’s wrong with holding hands?”
He agreed there was nothing wrong with that between lovers, but there’s a time and a place. That wasn’t the kind of behavior you showed in front of people from work.
It’s not like he wouldn’t know that. Se-min knew Cha-hyeon didn’t care much about other people’s eyes, but the one who’d taught him social norms and manners when he was little had also been Cha-hyeon. Staring at him in disbelief, Se-min tried again to explain, calmly.
“No, you can’t make it obvious like that in front of someone like the Deputy Chief. Why’d you do that—so unlike you….”
“And what’s ‘like me,’ exactly?”
But Cha-hyeon pushed back with a line straight out of a delinquent teenager. Se-min stared at his needless stubbornness, dumbfounded. Had he lost his sense of face along with his memory?
Se-min thought back to when, exactly, the peculiarly sulky Cha-hyeon had started needling Deputy Chief Jeong—when he began openly radiating bad vibes. Come to think of it….
“Please, keep talking?”
The image of Cha-hyeon, looking like he wanted to burn down a whole building rather than a sheet of paper, sprang to mind. He’d seemed polite at first, but after that he’d been curt the whole time. Se-min asked, carefully.
“Are you in a bad mood because of that talk about how it’d be fine to go in with several Espers?”
Ha! Cha-hyeon gave a scoff that said nothing about whether it was yes or no. He slouched crookedly against the seat and turned his body toward Se-min.
“How am I supposed to interpret the idea that if my Pair Guide goes into a dungeon with me plus five other Espers, it’ll be fine? That Deputy Chief Jeong’s some kind of sexual deviant?”
At the sudden move to brand Deputy Chief Jeong a pervert, Se-min was struck dumb. But the scathing tirade didn’t stop.
“You know that when there are multiple Espers, protecting one non-combatant is easy. But who knows what’ll happen inside a Gate? If there are Espers on the verge of dying, do you really think you can absolutely refuse to do Guiding? Just imagining it pisses me off—and I’m supposed to sit there and watch you guide some dying bastard, some injured bastard?”
Cha-hyeon snorted again. Under the parking-lot lights, the glossy gleam in his eyes brimmed with murderous intent toward Espers who didn’t even exist.
Before he knew it, a gap had opened between Se-min’s lips. It felt like jealousy as a boyfriend, but weirdly, it also made him think of a child stubbornly refusing to lend out his cherished toy, not even to his parents. On the other hand, it also felt like a misanthrope who just wanted to kill everyone….
They said an Esper’s obsession with their Guide was beyond imagining; it felt like he’d just glimpsed the reality of it. And though he shouldn’t, Se-min was a little thrilled by Cha-hyeon’s jealousy.
“Good thing I tied you down as my Pair Guide early….”
But the soft, melty feeling inside Se-min slowly hardened at the mutter Cha-hyeon added. He couldn’t put it into words, but something in him tightened on instinct.
The realization arrived a step late. He’s lost all memories of me—so why is Hyung talking like he remembers why he designated me as his Pair Partner?
Se-min’s gaze swept over Cha-hyeon, searching for traces of the familiar Hyung. The car went quiet in an instant.
“Why that face?”
With a vaguely dazed look, Cha-hyeon asked the staring Se-min. His eyebrows dipped slightly as he asked what was wrong, a look so familiar it felt like the original Cha-hyeon.
No. Of course the same person would make the same expressions. And thinking it over again, saying it was good we’d been bound as Pair Partners early was something the current, jealousy-soaked Cha-hyeon could very well say.
He’d heard only what he wanted to hear. Maybe it was a vain hope—that a memory that surfaced and vanished had left some trace inside him.
“It’s nothing,” Se-min said, shaking his head with a hollow little sigh.
The atmosphere, ablaze with jealousy, suddenly cooled. Cha-hyeon stared at the newly chilled Se-min, but he didn’t press.
An awkward silence hovered in the car. The hand that had been fidgeting with the seat material drifted, a bit stiffly, toward the belt. Buckling up, Se-min cheerfully wrapped things up as if that uncomfortable quiet had never existed.
“Anyway… the Deputy Chief won’t bring that up again, so stop sulking. Should we go home now?”
“No?”
Cha-hyeon straightened from the slanted posture he’d been using to face Se-min. At his firm answer, Se-min’s eyes rounded. For a moment the whites showed under his suddenly serious gaze, but when he turned back to Se-min, his mouth had curled up playfully.
“We said we were going on a date. Did you forget?”
***
A date. Can a word made of just three syllables cause this much flutter in your heart?
What’s so nerve-racking about going on a date with the person you like? He tried to act like a seasoned pro at love, to play it off as no big deal, but Se-min’s heart kept thudding, and his esophagus and the pit of his stomach were in a flutter.
Thanks to that, the thoughts that had been quietly weighing him down vanished completely. Sitting neatly with his hands folded on his knees and his cheeks tinged pink, Se-min started when Cha-hyeon suddenly spoke up.
“Aren’t you curious where we’re going?”
“H-huh? Ah… I am. Where are we going?”
“Yeouido. I was thinking the department store.”
Se-min nodded. It was a quick decision, but he liked it—partly because he had fond memories of going there with Cha-hyeon before.
Maybe it would be like that this time, too: browsing, shopping, eating something tasty. Since it was indoors, it wouldn’t be hot or cold. The important thing was doing it with Hyung.
People’s eyes would be on them a lot… but to Se-min, who’d spent his whole life with S-rank Esper Sung Cha-hyeon, public attention was already familiar.
Come to think of it, isn’t this our first date?
When we first decided to go out… things were hectic. Later, too… things were hectic. And whenever we had pockets of time in between….
“…….”
No matter how he searched his memories, all that surfaced were flesh-toned scenes. With some exaggeration, it felt like the moment their eyes met, the clothes came off.
The fact that, after deciding to date, all he and Hyung did was have sex was fairly shocking. Sure, it doubled as Guiding, but still—shocking was shocking.
They’d kept living in the same house, gone grocery shopping together, eaten at nearby restaurants—plenty of things you could call dates—but those were things they’d already done before they started going out.
It doesn’t feel all that different from before. Pressing his tongue to the inside of his cheek, Se-min finally asked, pretending it was nothing.
“By the way, Hyung… is this our first date?”
Cha-hyeon’s eyebrows rounded, and then he let out a small laugh.
“Is it? If it’s our first, I should’ve taken you somewhere fancier.”
“No! I like this. Last time, ah…”
Answering in a fluster, Se-min suddenly cut himself off with an oh, right look. As his words abruptly died, he checked Cha-hyeon’s face. He let out a short, derisive snort.
“Why’d you stop mid-sentence?”
Se-min’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He’d just been saying he’d gone there with Hyung last time, so why did he suddenly feel like mentioning things from before was a mistake?
“Ah, so the reason Se-min was sad was because I came back?”
“Too bad?”
Turning his head, Se-min stared out the window. After gazing at the blurred reflections of himself and Hyung in the glass, he looked forward again. His voice, still a bit hesitant, trickled out.
“…I came here before, and I liked it.”
“Ah, before?”
The tone sounded matter-of-fact, but there was a faint chill in it. The tips of Se-min’s fingers curled minutely. As a slight discomfort settled over them, Cha-hyeon asked, almost probing.
“Before? With who?”
“…With you. …It probably won’t be in your memory, though….”
“Uh-huh?”
Cha-hyeon made a noncommittal sound that felt like jealousy. No—jealousy fit. Otherwise there was no explaining how the air had gone cold so fast.
He was the same Sung Cha-hyeon both before and after the memory loss. He’d gotten angry at imaginary Espers, and now he was jealous of himself? To reassure him, Se-min added, mumbling but sincere.
“Who else would I go with but you? I remember it better because it was something I did with the person I like. Why are you talking like you’re jealous?”
“Ha-ha.”
With a sudden laugh, Cha-hyeon tilted his head toward the window and brushed back the hair tickling his forehead.
“Right? I didn’t know I was this jealous.”
The car hit a red light. With his bangs still tousled and his head tipped at an angle, Cha-hyeon stared fixedly at Se-min—as if raking through his insides, not even blinking.
But what he said next was bland, belying that fierce gaze.
“I’m looking forward to it too—our ‘first’ date, just you and me.”
