“Do you really not like me?”
“What?”
“I’m serious. Not joking. Have you really never thought about dating me?”
Hae-hyun closed his mouth at that. His eyes searched Jae-ha’s face, as if trying to figure out what he really meant. Jae-ha didn’t look away. Their gazes met head-on, sharp and unyielding like a staring contest. Silence stretched out between them.
Finally, Hae-hyun spoke.
“…No.”
He was trying desperately to stay composed, but his heart was pounding like it was about to burst. He had to force his breath down his throat, like he was trying to swallow his half-spilled heart back into his chest.
“I see…”
Jae-ha gave a faint smile. He’d kind of expected that answer, but hearing it out loud still hurt more than he thought it would.
“That’s too bad.”
As if he hadn’t just said something heavy, Jae-ha easily shifted the conversation to lighter topics. The sudden change in mood made Hae-hyun feel almost sheepish.
They chatted for a while about school, their friends, and random everyday things before eventually dozing off. Hae-hyun lay on the left side of the bed, Jae-ha on the right.
Hae-hyun’s bed was wide enough for someone to stretch out and roll around, unlike Jae-ha’s, but the distance between them was still close enough that if either of them reached out, they could easily touch. Close enough to hear each other’s gentle, sleeping breaths.
But even so, the two of them didn’t touch once that entire night.
***
6) Face Down
“Hey, hyung.”
Jae-ha blinked in surprise as he walked through the aisle between desks. The classroom was especially chaotic today thanks to the campus festival, and Im Su-min was already sitting next to Jae-ha’s usual seat.
“You… still coming to class?”
He hadn’t seen Su-min since purifying the second candle and had assumed he’d gone back to wherever he came from. Maybe he still had something left to do? Su-min seemed to catch on to the thought and answered with a shrug.
“Well, I figured… if you weren’t gonna come to me, I could just come to you.”
There wasn’t only one way to stay by Jae-ha’s side. Of course, it’d be great if Jae-ha stayed in the Imoogi’s nest—but if not, then Su-min could just stick to him instead.
Ever since realizing that just being near Jae-ha made his cultivation a lot more efficient, Su-min had no plans of parting ways. The amount of training required for him was immense—roughly the kind that would take a thousand years to complete. If there was any way to shorten that, why wouldn’t he take it?
And, honestly, he just liked being near Jae-ha.
“Might as well learn more about the human world while I’m at it. So yeah, I plan on staying in school for now.”
As he spoke casually, Su-min scooted his chair a bit to let Jae-ha pass by and sit down.
Well, it’s not like he was dragging Jae-ha away by force or anything… Jae-ha slipped into his seat and asked,
“So what were you doing last week? You didn’t show up to class.”
“Oh, I went up to the Celestial Realm for a bit. Lord Hwang-ryong (Yellow Dragon) summoned me.”
At this point, Jae-ha was starting to feel weirdly numb to how ridiculous these conversations were getting. So there really is a Hwang-ryong up in the Celestial Realm, huh… He filed it away like just another random trivia fact. Su-min ground his teeth with a deadpan look.
“Guess the Guardian Agency really went and tattled on me to Lord Hwang-ryong. Once he found out what I did to you, he was pissed. So I had to serve punishment for a few days.”
After being summoned, Su-min was subjected to three straight hours of scolding and was ordered to go into seclusion. He had to kneel day and night in front of the palace at Hwang-ryong Castle and had only just been released early this morning.
“That extreme?”
It sounded like something out of the Joseon era—borderline abusive. Jae-ha frowned, but Su-min just tilted his head, unbothered.
“Honestly, I got off easy. I mean, they didn’t confiscate my Yeouiju (dragon orb/pearl). That’s a win.”
“…Really? Your knees okay?”
“My knees? Why?”
Apparently, kneeling for days didn’t affect an Imoogi’s joints. Makes sense—if you live for over a thousand years, your body can’t be built like tofu. Jae-ha couldn’t help but envy that kind of physical resilience.
Su-min started pulling out a notebook and pencil from his bag. The old-school vibe kind of made sense now, given his true identity. Not knowing how to eat cup noodles, not knowing how to use a computer—it all added up. He clearly hadn’t spent time with humans in at least a couple of decades.
Watching Su-min quietly prepare for class, Jae-ha teased,
“Hey… is it really okay for you to keep calling me ‘hyung’? Shouldn’t you be the hyung here?”
Who even knows—maybe he should be calling him sir or elder. If Su-min really was an Imoogi, he had to be ancient. But Su-min shook his head confidently.
“Nope. You’re my hyung. I’m twenty.”
…Come again? Su-min must’ve seen the skepticism on Jae-ha’s face because he added,
“Well, technically, I’m about two hundred, but if you convert that to human years, I’m around twenty.”
…Still sounds like two hundred to me. It’s not like time flows differently just for Imoogis. Skipping a whole hundred and eighty years and calling it twenty seemed… questionable. But if that’s what he claimed, Jae-ha figured he’d respect it and nodded along.
“So… hyung doesn’t hate me?”
The question came out of nowhere, and Jae-ha blinked.
“Huh?”
“I mean… since I kind of forced everything back then.”
Su-min, surprisingly, looked like he was carefully watching for Jae-ha’s reaction. Jae-ha stared at the not-yet-dragon with a flat look before shaking his head.
“It’s fine.”
“Why?”
“Well, for one thing, you didn’t even realize it was wrong. And it’s not like you really dragged me there. Even if you did, I feel like if I’d pushed hard enough, you would’ve let me go.”
As Jae-ha listed out the reasons, Su-min nodded along like a guilty kid in front of a teacher trying to show he was properly remorseful. Jae-ha stifled a laugh and passed his final verdict.
“Besides, I’m not the type to hate people anyway.”
Hating someone required a kind of emotional energy that Jae-ha just didn’t have. If anything, he’d forget and move on—he wasn’t one to dwell or hold grudges.
“…I’m sorry. I didn’t know you weren’t even able to sleep properly.”
Su-min lowered his head, looking genuinely regretful. He actually did look a bit like a twenty-year-old in that moment.
“I won’t do it again.”
“Alright. I’ll trust you.”
Then Su-min, determined to prove his sincerity, offered to swear a blood oath. Okay, that’s a little extreme… Only after Jae-ha firmly refused did Su-min agree to just prove himself through his actions instead—which was a much more reasonable choice.
“Alright, that’s it for today’s lecture. Since it’s festival week, go out and enjoy your youth! Just… drink responsibly!”
The professor’s light-hearted comment was met with loud cheers. Class had ended a whole fifteen minutes early. As the instructor packed up with a satisfied smile, the students hurried to do the same. Jae-ha gathered up his tablet and asked Su-min,
“So, what’s your department doing for the festival? Wait—actually, what is your department?”
Now that he thought about it, Jae-ha realized he’d never actually asked. No way Su-min had taken the college entrance exam, but he was still officially enrolled—his name got called during roll, after all. He had to have a major.
“Computer Engineering.”
“…….”
A computer engineering Imoogi who lives in a lake. Even for Jae-ha, who’d seen a lot, that was… something.
“Why?”
“Huh? Oh—Computer Engineering has a ton of students. It’s easier to blend in.”
Honestly, that was a pretty reasonable answer. Jae-ha had half expected something ridiculous like “I wanted to become a hacker.” He quietly let go of that far-fetched idea.
“You should’ve gone with Business. We’ve got a ton of people too.”
“If I’d known you were in Business, I would’ve picked that.”
Su-min let out a playful little sigh. Apparently, he’d even taken an intro class for his major, but it had been nothing but incomprehensible alien language. He vowed never to return. It was kind of cute. Jae-ha asked,
“Do you at least know how to use a computer?”
“Just the basics. I kind of learned by watching people use them. But there’s this thing called Studio? I had no idea what that was.”
“Ah, that’s a coding program. Want me to teach you?”
The Business department curriculum included basic programming classes. Figuring it might help the analog, notebook-carrying Imoogi, Jae-ha offered to teach him. But Su-min instantly shook his head in horror. He’d already had more than enough of his major.
