“Ah… looks like I dozed off for a second.”
Seon-woo pressed his fingers against the corners of his eyes and turned away from Seung-hyeon. Though the fog of sleep still clung to him, making his mind sluggish, he somehow felt like he wouldn’t be able to meet Seung-hyeon’s gaze properly in that state. To shake off the drowsiness, Seon-woo gave himself a quick dry wash and then asked, feigning nonchalance,
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
Seung-hyeon set a drink down on the desk and responded,
“It wasn’t that long. You looked pretty tired.”
Glancing over, Seon-woo noticed that what Seung-hyeon had brought wasn’t canned coffee or a bottled drink, but a freshly made iced Americano—clearly from a café. Instinctively checking the clock, he saw it was nearly midnight. The surprise slipped into his voice before he could stop it.
“It’s so late… I figured you’d just hit up a convenience store.”
Sure, there were probably 24-hour cafés if you looked hard enough, but he hadn’t expected Seung-hyeon to go through the trouble. Yet Seung-hyeon just gave a casual shrug, like it was nothing.
“There’s exactly one café near the office that stays open this late. I’ve relied on it plenty during late-night shifts.”
Seon-woo silently stared at the desk. Beads of condensation had formed on the surface of the plastic cup. After a long moment of silently staring down the iced Americano, he gave in and picked it up.
“Thanks. I’ll enjoy it.”
When he added the brief expression of gratitude, Seung-hyeon looked at him with a sly, unreadable smile. Maybe it was because of that unsettling dream, but that subtle grin was bothering him more than usual. On edge, Seon-woo asked,
“What is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you looking at me like that…?”
Seung-hyeon, still wearing that calm expression, waved it off like it was nothing. But that only made Seon-woo even more suspicious. He felt a little ridiculous for getting worked up over something so minor, but it wasn’t like he could help it. Watching Seon-woo narrow his eyes into thin slits, Seung-hyeon gave a sheepish chuckle.
“It’s really nothing. I just thought it was kind of funny.”
“Funny how?”
“This moment—where the Executive Director is thanking me for a cup of coffee?”
Seon-woo shut his mouth, speechless. Catching onto the look on his face, Seung-hyeon added smoothly,
“And the fact that I’m standing here watching said Executive Director pulling a late-night shift?”
Letting out a sigh of irritation, Seon-woo heard Seung-hyeon laugh out loud. It was the kind of light, refreshing laugh that could disarm a person so completely you might forget you were ever annoyed. Seon-woo glanced in Seung-hyeon’s direction, then took a sip of the coffee. The dream he’d momentarily forgotten in the midst of their conversation came rushing back.
Was what he saw in the dream really part of the original storyline? If so, then who was that person talking to Gwak Sang-cheol? There were parts of it that aligned with what he knew about Gwak Seung-hyeon, but it was still too early to say anything for certain.
Most likely, having such a vivid dream out of nowhere was the system’s doing—and Seon-woo already knew full well that the system was overtly hostile toward Seung-hyeon. So, it was entirely plausible that the system had intentionally sent him that dream. Even if the dream had delivered only fragmented, biased information, it wouldn’t have been surprising.
Still…
As Seon-woo wrestled with the thought, lost in deep contemplation, Seung-hyeon casually posed a question.
“Are you going to keep working?”
Nothing was certain right now, so he couldn’t just let his guard down, but neither could he comfortably ignore it like before. A part of him hoped that the person in the dream wasn’t Seung-hyeon. The very fact that he kept trying to justify excluding him from suspicion—insisting that maybe the system had twisted the dream content maliciously—was proof of that.
Maybe Seon-woo wasn’t being objective at all. Maybe he just wanted to believe. That the industrial spy in the dream—who had seemed to harbor something close to malice toward Gwak Seon-woo—wasn’t Gwak Seung-hyeon. And even if it was, maybe the present was no longer the same as that moment in the original storyline…
Which was exactly why he had to keep his response as rational as possible. Seon-woo replied with an intentionally indifferent tone,
“…What if I am?”
There was still a mountain of things he wanted to dig into, but if Seung-hyeon wasn’t going to leave, it was better to wrap things up for tonight. There was no point in letting him see that he was poking around behind Gwak Sang-cheol. Nothing good would come of that. To Seon-woo’s casual question, Seung-hyeon responded just as evenly.
“I was thinking of grabbing one of the blankets from our office.”
Of course. It wouldn’t be Gwak Seung-hyeon if he just obediently went home. Seon-woo accepted that quickly and waved him off with a flat gesture.
“Don’t bother. I don’t need it.”
Seung-hyeon answered without the slightest change in expression.
“I never said it was for you. I figured I’d catch a quick nap myself since there’s nothing left to do.”
This time, it was Seon-woo who was left speechless. He felt a little embarrassed for assuming the blanket was for him, and at the same time, annoyed that Seung-hyeon had gone out of his way to correct him so bluntly. The same guy who had run off to a café at midnight just to bring him coffee—now he was pretending none of that meant anything?
Even as Seon-woo silently grumbled about Seung-hyeon’s shamelessness, he didn’t realize how absurd his own logic sounded. Naturally, that frustration slipped out of his mouth.
“If all you’re going to do is sleep while I work, then why don’t you just go home?”
Only then did Seung-hyeon give a small, amused smile. His gentle voice followed.
“Relax, I was kidding. It’s pretty cool out tonight, so I was worried you might catch a cold.”
“It’s already too late for that.”
Still irritated, Seon-woo couldn’t help but see Seung-hyeon’s sweet tone as just another mask—an act of duplicity from someone who could flip on a dime. Seung-hyeon spoke like a radio DJ reading out a listener’s letter.
“Oh dear… You’re upset, aren’t you?”
Seon-woo let out a laugh, more from disbelief than anything else. The way Seung-hyeon spoke—pretending to sound regretful while clearly teasing—struck him as ridiculous. The tension drained out of him all at once, and a wave of futility washed over him. What was even the point of this childish bickering?
He gave a slight shake of his head.
“Forget it. That’s enough for today.”
Seung-hyeon smoothly switched the topic.
“Good call. Are you heading home then?”
As if the tension from moments ago had been a lie, Seung-hyeon’s question came out calm and composed. Seon-woo’s voice, too, was steady—like it was no big deal.
“Yeah, I should.”
Then, in the same composed and businesslike tone, Seung-hyeon said something utterly unexpected.
“Would you like to go to the sea with me?”
“Wait… What?”
In that moment, Seon-woo had been expecting a question like, ‘Should I walk you home?’ He already knew that refusing wouldn’t work on Seung-hyeon, so he’d made up his mind to just go along with it and say, ‘Sure.’
But what came out of Seung-hyeon’s mouth was something far, far removed from anything Seon-woo had anticipated. No—no matter who was standing here in Seon-woo’s place, no one could’ve seen that coming. There’s a limit to how smoothly someone can shift the subject—this was beyond absurd, to the point of being bewildering. Seon-woo blinked in disbelief and asked again,
“What the hell… Where did that come from? Why the sea, all of a sudden?”
“You don’t want to?”
The question came shamelessly, as if he’d said something completely normal. Seon-woo furrowed his brow and hesitated.
“It’s not that I don’t want to. I’m asking why you’re suddenly bringing this up out of nowhere.”
He could’ve just said “no” outright—why was he dancing around the point? Even he didn’t know. Then, Seung-hyeon abruptly dropped the composed, smug attitude he’d held moments earlier and lowered his eyes. His sudden shift in expression caught Seon-woo off guard, and he instinctively searched the other’s face.
“It’s just… I suddenly had the urge to go to the beach. With you, Director.”
No way. He says something that absurd with that melancholy look on his face? Stuck between options, Seon-woo could do nothing but clamp his mouth shut. Then Seung-hyeon pointed at the newspaper he’d been reading and continued,
“Take a look there. There’s an ad for a beach resort.”
Glancing over, Seon-woo saw the page exactly as Seung-hyeon had described—an ad for a resort by the sea. But still, even with an ad in front of him, who just randomly says they want to go to the beach like that? How does that thought process even work? This wasn’t a spontaneous family trip caused by an impulsive dad, or a passionate couple jumping in a car for a seaside drive…
And then it hit Seon-woo, a sudden realization that stopped him cold. Something he hadn’t consciously acknowledged until now.
They might not be related by blood, but the two of them were cousins. Strictly speaking, that still counted as family. And sure, their defined relationship meant nothing on paper, but the fact remained—they’d already had sex. Which meant…
“You don’t want to? I mean, I’m not sure how this’ll come off, but… I had a dream last night.”
A spontaneous family trip… an impulsive couple’s beach drive…
“It was a dream about going to the beach. With you, Director.”
Seon-woo, lost in his own thoughts and just repeating them in his head, snapped back to attention.
“Wait—what did you just say? You had a dream?”
“Yes? Yeah.”
In an instant, Seon-woo’s expression turned grave. Up until now, Seung-hyeon had shown no signs of being connected to the system in any way. Even now, he looked clearly confused, watching Seon-woo take the mention of a dream so seriously.
Sure, it could’ve just been nonsense—a meaningless dream. Or it could be a cheap lie to back up his random beach trip suggestion. But with Seon-woo having his own string of meaningful, suspicious dreams, he couldn’t brush it off so easily.
Trying to think things through, Seon-woo suddenly let go of it all and muttered with a resigned sigh,
“Fine. Let’s go. The sea.”
