#109
With a calm expression on his face, the words he spoke were anything but calm. Do-hyeok naturally took out blankets and a mat from the wardrobe and spread them in the center.
“Really? There’s no spare?”
“No.”
“Wait. Let me go ask again.”
“Grandmother went to bed.”
Do-hyeok lightly grasped Ha-seong’s wrist to stop him. From what he heard, grandmother had cleaned up the restaurant and gone into the room with Min-woo early.
“The two of us sleeping under one blanket?”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?”
There was even only one pillow. It was a wide pillow so there seemed to be no big problem with both of them lying down together, but that wasn’t the issue. Lying on the same pillow and sleeping under one blanket. But whether Cha Do-hyeok had no reservations or really wasn’t thinking about it at all, he suddenly spread out the blanket and lay down first.
“Hey, it’s fine. You just sleep on the blanket. I’ll cover myself with my outer clothes and sleep somehow.”
“Hyung.”
“What.”
“Why are you being conscious of it?”
“…What?”
Just as Ha-seong was trying to make some kind of sleeping arrangement with the outer clothes he’d roughly worn, he heard those words.
“What’s the big deal about men sleeping under one blanket because of circumstances? Or are you having strange thoughts?”
Cha Do-hyeok lay very comfortably on the blanket, propping his chin up with his hand as he looked at Ha-seong. The leisure and somehow mischievous look in those eyes. Ha-seong could easily tell that he was trying to tease him now.
“If hyung really doesn’t like it, sleep like that.”
The finishing touch that followed. Do-hyeok threw out that one line and lay down properly. It was just a pointless provocation and teasing from someone five years younger than him. In other words, if he, being older and more mature, just ignored it and let it pass, everything would be comfortable.
“Hey, who says that? That I’m having strange thoughts. Not at all.”
But Ha-seong apparently couldn’t become such a mature person. He tossed his outer clothes to one side and raised the corner of his mouth crookedly. Making stomping sounds with his feet, he pulled back the blanket and lay down boldly next to him.
Indeed, it was quite difficult for two people to fit under one blanket. Even trying to move away a little would cause legs to stick out from under the blanket, so he had no choice but to stick close to Do-hyeok.
Had he ever fallen asleep feeling the warmth of someone next to him? Ha-seong closed his eyes, feeling a somewhat unfamiliar sensation. Right, once he fell asleep, that would be it. After all, hadn’t his body been heavy as lead from moving early this morning to come to this distant island and walking around diligently? Moreover, he’d gotten completely soaked in the rain, so surely he’d fall asleep quickly.
Ha-seong believed this without doubt and closed his eyes tightly.
“…”
Darkness settled deeper and only the regular sound of the wall clock’s second hand moving could be heard in the room. And Ha-seong was currently experiencing an unexpected hardship.
‘Shit. Why can’t I fall asleep?’
He should definitely be tired. Hadn’t he gotten rained on and walked around non-stop?
Ah, Ha-seong finally realized. Today’s journey would naturally be a tiring schedule from a civilian’s perspective, but who was Do Ha-seong? Wasn’t he a man with steel stamina who could go into dungeons consecutively to beat up monsters, or face off against monsters all night without being fazed?
Ha-seong, who finally realized the reason, was dismayed. Moreover, it was just past 10 PM now. Usually, this would be the time he’d be playing while watching TV with the pig. For Do Ha-seong to fall into deep sleep now, even going around dungeons five times wouldn’t be enough.
Then he suddenly became curious about the guy lying next to him. Was Cha Do-hyeok sleeping? It was too quiet beside him to say he wasn’t sleeping. Ha-seong drowsily opened his eyes and slightly turned his head. Do-hyeok was lying straight facing the ceiling with his eyes tightly closed. It seemed like he had fallen asleep, unlike himself.
Lucky bastard, he thought, when Do-hyeok’s eyes slowly opened.
“Hyung, are you sleeping?”
A low voice that echoed through the quiet room. Ha-seong, who had been secretly watching, jumped in surprise and quickly turned his head the other way.
“I’m not sleeping. Don’t pretend to be asleep.”
“…What a ghostly bastard. Then why aren’t you sleeping?”
Do-hyeok slightly turned his head to stare at Ha-seong.
“Just. I can’t fall asleep.”
Without a single light seeping in from outside, the room was pure darkness itself. Being an island village, the depth of that darkness was even deeper, and through that darkness, the two men’s gazes slowly crossed. The eyes that met were so deep they seemed endless, and also completely empty. At first, he thought it was emptiness born from the leisure of being overwhelmingly ranked #1, because everything in the world was just boring.
“…I was ten years old.”
Do-hyeok’s voice gently echoed again.
“When I got caught up in the artificially opened gate incident.”
Do-hyeok stared intently at the ceiling with just one light fixture.
“Until then, I’d been living moving around local orphanages, but somehow I ended up coming to Seoul. That day was when everyone from the orphanage was going on a field trip together, but I lied about being sick and stayed alone.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to go. The teachers there at the time didn’t seem welcoming to me who had come from elsewhere, and they didn’t take special care of me either. I just made the first move.”
In Do-hyeok’s mind, it was still vivid. The teacher’s face who had brightened up and asked again when he said he was sick and wanted to skip.
“I was reading a book alone like that when there was a loud noise outside, then the ground shook as if there was an earthquake.”
Do-hyeok was vividly conveying that day’s events to Ha-seong as if recalling yesterday’s events.
“When I went outside, there was an incredibly huge hole, and I got sucked right in.”
The child who had remained alone at the orphanage amidst everyone’s indifference was helplessly drawn into the dungeon like that. Ha-seong’s heart ached at the naturally imagined scene.
“So you met your benefactor in that dungeon?”
“Yes. At first, I struggled to survive somehow on my own. Then suddenly I wondered what meaning there was in living like this and tried to die, but that person saved me.”
Light brown hair. Now a faded memory, a face he couldn’t remember well. A gentle voice. Warm warmth given to Do-hyeok who was placed in a barren and cold environment.
“I don’t know their name, age, nothing. Just that they were a hunter. That person probably felt the same. We didn’t tell each other. But I just liked it. That person was curious about me, listened to my stories, and patted my head for the first time. They didn’t think of me as a burden. I learned from that person for the first time. What human warmth was.”
Ha-seong looked at Do-hyeok staring blankly at the ceiling. Clouded eyes. He had seen those eyes before. They were the same eyes Do-hyeok had shown before completely losing consciousness when he went berserk because of Baek Sa-jin last time, along with saying he wanted to see them.
“So how did that person die?”
“Trying to save me. It was all because of me. They told me to hide, but I couldn’t.”
With that person’s words to run away being the last, Do-hyeok had run aimlessly and somehow hidden. He didn’t know how much time had passed, but he remembered that suddenly there was a great rumbling as if space-time would collapse, the ground vibrated, and then he heard adults’ voices.
After that, he was safely rescued by hunters and returned to the real world, where Do-hyeok somehow met Dal-pyeong and was taken in by him. Do-hyeok, who had been in tremendous shock from that incident, frantically searched for information about that hunter after recovering his body, but what he heard from Dal-pyeong a few days later was tragic.
‘It seems none of the advance team hunters who went out to conquer the gate returned alive. Give up now.’
That was probably when it happened. When the ten-year-old boy manifested as Korea’s only S-rank. When he gained blue eyes.
“That’s all. It’s nothing special.”
How could he call it nothing special? Something that changed a person’s entire life. How much pain had Do-hyeok endured until he could recall that event with such a calm expression?
“…I should be grateful to that benefactor.”
“Why?”
“Because they saved you.”
Once again, the two men’s gazes collided in mid-air. Without that person, the current Cha Do-hyeok wouldn’t exist. Even if he had miraculously survived the dungeon, Do-hyeok without meeting his benefactor might have sunk into an even deeper abyss and been destroyed.
“I’m curious too.”
Do-hyeok moved closer to Ha-seong.
“About hyung’s story.”
“Why are you curious about that?”
“Then why were you curious about my story?”
Ha-seong, who had nothing to say, shut his mouth tight. The reason for being curious. Well. He just wanted to know. He wanted to hear the story of the person called Cha Do-hyeok.
“I guess I was the same.”
Ha-seong chuckled and raised his hand to gently stroke Do-hyeok’s hair. Do-hyeok’s eyes widened slightly at the unfamiliar yet familiar warmth. He couldn’t take his eyes off that face looking at him and smiling gently.
“…I said earlier, didn’t I? Whether you were being conscious about sleeping together, whether you were having strange thoughts.”
The gap had grown even closer. Do-hyeok slightly raised his upper body to look down at Ha-seong from above. Ha-seong didn’t avoid it this time. Not his gaze, not his voice, and not his breath.
“I was conscious of it.”
“…”
“Strange thoughts too.”
Do-hyeok lowered his upper body and captured Ha-seong’s face in his straightforward pupils. The two men’s noses lightly touched and they were close enough to feel each other’s breath. It didn’t take long for their lips to overlap.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
