It had been a desperate struggle to survive, but seeing Joo Seolhyeon take my punch and roll miserably on the floor snapped me back to my senses.
“Ah…”
Do Wonjin, who had been comfortably watching, stood up, apparently quite shocked by the sight of Joo Seolhyeon sprawled ungracefully. Having been hit quite hard, Joo Seolhyeon sat on the floor, dazedly looking up and clutching his face with an expression of disbelief.
“That’s what you get for touching my body without permission. Touching me.”
This wasn’t the kind of thing that would intimidate Joo Seolhyeon, but he must have been quite drunk as he seemed panicked and couldn’t get up from his spot.
“Hyung, try to get up.”
When Do Wonjin supported him, Joo Seolhyeon seemed to regain his senses. He pushed away Do Wonjin’s arm and turned toward me.
“So you’re serious.”
It wasn’t the cold gaze of someone who disliked me, but rather the face of someone who felt betrayed by someone they had trusted until the end.
‘You don’t even have the right to make that expression toward me.’
I wanted to let him know that his watery eyes, which looked like they might spill tears any moment, were actually provoking my anger, but I forced myself to calm down as I watched his cheek swelling up in real time.
“I think it’s best if we rest now, hyung.”
Do Wonjin wore an awkward expression as he mediated between me and Joo Seolhyeon. He probably thought I might hit him again.
I couldn’t help but sigh, but both Joo Seolhyeon and I were in no state for further conversation. We were also not the kind of people who would benefit from emotionally clashing with each other.
‘I didn’t even get to bring up terminating the contract.’
I had planned to have this drinking session to talk things through slowly, but seeing how things had turned out, I wondered if I should have just said it outright.
“Wait.”
My eyebrow raised crookedly as I watched Joo Seolhyeon grabbing my arm despite having just been hit for touching my body.
“How about you let go of my hand while you talk?”
“What do you mean by terminating the contract?”
Even Do Wonjin, who had been clearing the table, paused and looked this way with interested eyes.
Damn drinking habits. It seemed my thoughts had escaped my mouth again.
“Woo Jeongjae.”
Joo Seolhyeon urged me with a stiff face, and since I had no reason to hide it, I answered honestly.
“It’s exactly what it sounds like. I’m going to terminate the temporary Guide contract with you, Joo Seolhyeon. I’ve already requested the paperwork, so a civil servant will visit in four days.”
“Why are you suddenly doing this?”
“It’s not sudden. From the moment we met, I didn’t want to form a contract with you.”
It sounded as if I had ever wanted the contract. When I corrected his words with a serious expression, Joo Seolhyeon’s face twisted fiercely. Feeling my lips curling upward at the sight, I delivered the final blow.
“And did you know that our matching rate is 65%? Not 85%. That’s a truly pathetic figure. Does that answer your question?”
He couldn’t say anything and just silently listened to my sharp words. Judging by how his complexion rapidly deteriorated when I mentioned the matching rate, I could tell he perfectly understood the intention behind my words.
I twisted my arm free from his grip and gave Do Wonjin a signal with my eyes.
‘I’m leaving.’
After saying everything I needed to, I turned to leave, but I was forcefully pulled back by the arm I had just freed, forcing me to face Joo Seolhyeon again without taking a single step.
“What nonsense. There’s no way the matching rate is 65%.”
He was grinding his teeth and glaring with fierce eyes, but that appearance wasn’t threatening to me at all.
“Acting like this won’t change anything. The matching rate is accurate based on today’s reassessment test.”
Even though Joo Seolhyeon was drunk, his reaction was excessively strong. He had only known me for a month. Unlike me, who had been deceived for years, he was acting as if he had been lied to for a long time, which made me frown.
“Stop making a spectacle of yourself and let g—urgh!”
I had been holding back my anger out of slight remorse for hitting him earlier, but when Joo Seolhyeon’s energy flowed into me through my captured hand, my rationality snapped.
This wasn’t ordinary Guiding. Unstable, erratic waves were forcibly stirring through my insides. It was Guiding that tried to stamp down on me and dominate me by force, incomparable to what I had received from other Guides.
‘This crazy bastard.’
Partly due to the alcohol, my reaction was delayed, but the Guiding that constrained me more strongly than expected felt like someone was tightly binding my entire body. He was definitely an S-class Guide. His skill at detecting and neutralizing my energy whenever I tried to use my ability was on a completely different level from Yang Garam, who had just started working as a Guide.
“Tone it down a bit. Damn. You’re going to kill the kid.”
While I could only glare at Joo Seolhyeon without being able to find his pulse, there was a thud and Joo Seolhyeon’s body tilted. I wondered what had happened, but then Do Wonjin’s face appeared as he caught the falling Joo Seolhyeon.
“Are you okay?”
Do Wonjin approached after roughly tossing Joo Seolhyeon toward the bed and supported me.
“Do I look okay to you?”
My body had no strength due to the Guiding. Do Wonjin picked me up like a child as I went limp like a jellyfish.
“Jeongjae.”
Do Wonjin called my name as he entered my room and laid me on the bed. When I opened my half-closed eyes to look at him, he gently brushed my hair and asked.
“What’s really going on between you two?”
After seeing what happened earlier, he might be curious. But that didn’t mean I was obligated to answer. Do Wonjin’s eyes deepened as he looked at me with my lips sealed.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But Jeongjae.”
“It’s strange. The more I look at you two, it feels like long-time lovers who broke up.”
That statement snapped me to full alertness.
It had been a one-sided crush on my part; Joo Seolhyeon had never liked me even once. Even that had been cleanly resolved on my part, and this Joo Seolhyeon wasn’t the one from the past. It was absurd to suggest there was any romantic feeling between us.
“What nonsense—”
“So you’re saying there’s nothing between you?”
“Of course. And stop talking about Joo Seolhyeon. I really hate it.”
Once my mind cleared, lying down became uncomfortable, so I sat up in bed. Do Wonjin, who had been sitting on the edge of the bed quietly watching me, climbed up.
“Where do you think you’re crawling into?”
Although the bed was larger than a single size, it wasn’t spacious enough for two adult men to lie comfortably. But despite seeing my disgusted expression, Do Wonjin nonchalantly lay down next to me.
“If you don’t want to talk about Joo Seolhyeon, how about talking about me?”
I let out a hollow laugh in exasperation at his grinning expression while lying down, and Do Wonjin wrinkled his nose bridge and smiled.
“Am I still not acceptable?”
Though his face was smiling, his sad eyes were so clear even in the darkness that I tightly closed my lips when I was about to say something more.
“There’s a lot that’s not acceptable. Just talk.”
Thinking it would be too cramped if I lay down too, I leaned against the headboard and looked toward the window as I answered.
“The baijiu was just an excuse. Actually, I’ve wanted to drink with just the two of us for a while.”
“What if I didn’t like alcohol?”
“That’s okay. I needed the alcohol because I’m a coward. If you didn’t drink, I was planning to drink alone.”
Perhaps because he was lying down, Do Wonjin muttered in a voice more languid than usual.
“What were you planning to say that needed so much build-up?”
At my words, Do Wonjin evaded with a laugh and placed his head on my thigh. I was about to push him away for making another move, but he looked so happy that I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Somehow sensing my awkwardly raised hand hovering in the air, Do Wonjin grabbed it and rubbed it against his cheek.
“Can I tell you why I came to find you that night?”
His cheeks, slightly more flushed than usual, were hot. I left Do Wonjin to play with my hand as I shifted my gaze back to the window, half-lowering my eyes. Beyond the window, a large tree with lush foliage was swaying its leaves.
“Yes. Tell me.”
* * *
Do Wonjin’s father was a notorious hooligan in the neighborhood. He was not only an alcoholic but also gambled, and despite having a wife, he chased after young women—a garbage-like human who only looked decent on the outside.
And Do Wonjin was the illegitimate child of such a man. He didn’t even remember his birth mother. He was abandoned as a newborn baby who knew nothing.
“Oh my goodness. This poor thing. What should we do?”
His paternal grandfather discovered Do Wonjin when he went out to sweep the yard at dawn on a midwinter day when snow was falling heavily.
He seemed to be about a year old, but he didn’t have a name yet, as the box he was abandoned in only had his date of birth written on it. The name Do Wonjin was given to him by the grandfather who found him abandoned.
His incapable father was living off his parents, and his wife, Do Wonjin’s stepmother, was a frail woman who had already experienced several miscarriages. Despite their difficult financial situation where they could barely put food on the table, she, who had wanted a baby, took a great liking to Do Wonjin.
But that only lasted for a year. She became pregnant. And defying everyone’s expectations that she would have difficulty giving birth, a healthy baby was born ten months later.
That day, Do Wonjin gained a sibling and simultaneously lost a mother. Once the baby was born, all the attention that had been directed at Do Wonjin was monopolized by his sibling.
If he had been ignored from the beginning, it might have been different, but Do Wonjin, who had grown up receiving all kinds of love at home for a year, couldn’t accept this reality. He became jealous, acted spoiled, threw tantrums to get attention, but the more he did so, the more he became a nuisance at home. His grandfather, who had brought him home as a newborn, cherished him the most, but when his grandfather passed away the year Do Wonjin entered elementary school, he gradually stopped expecting affection from his family.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
