TTOA Chapter 51
by VolareWith bloodshot eyes, Kwon Jae-jin bared his teeth and sneered.
“I clearly stated that I wouldn’t Guide you until you recovered your memories. Seeing you try to touch me so casually, I guess you’ve already made up your mind?”
“No, I…”
“If not, then remove those fingers immediately.”
Having said all he wanted to say, Kwon Jae-jin pulled the blanket over himself. He instinctively knew that getting entangled with Seo Eui-woo right now would do him no good. In the same room, even worse, on the same bed, if he looked at his face and exchanged words, he might lose the chance to recover his memories forever.
Seeing Kwon Jae-jin burrowed in the blanket like a silkworm cocoon, Seo Eui-woo swallowed an unpleasant sigh. He had barely managed to calm his abilities, but Jae-jin’s behavior was making his stomach churn and the darkness below him become unstable again.
“…Do you think I’m doing this just to get Guiding?”
Seo Eui-woo loosely placed his hand on the rumpled blanket.
“Do you think that’s all I want?”
With the fabric between their skin, there was no way for Guiding to occur. They both knew that fact. Seo Eui-woo ran his arm along the ridge of the Kwon Jae-jin cocoon.
“If you’re going to be like this, don’t ever say you know Seo Eui-woo that well again.”
He traced the crumpled shoulder and carefully stroked the round back. Just as Jae-jin was about to growl again, telling him to remove his hand, a heavy weight settled on the Kwon Jae-jin mass.
Seo Eui-woo hugged Jae-jin, blanket and all, and lay down on the bed.
“…What are you doing? I told you to get off.”
“I won’t Guide you.”
Seo Eui-woo searched for Jae-jin’s waist under the blanket, groping over the white fabric. As if he knew the spot intimately even without seeing it, he wrapped his thick arm around his waist. He used his strength to trap him in his embrace.
“I won’t do anything. I won’t talk to you, and I won’t bother you. We’re going to sleep from now on.”
“What…?”
Kwon Jae-jin retorted as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and Seo Eui-woo replied calmly in a bleak, subdued voice.
“Let’s sleep. It’s time to sleep.”
Being close, he could tell.
That Seo Eui-woo’s stomach was bubbling just as much as Kwon Jae-jin’s, and his head was filled with all sorts of nasty thoughts.
It was obvious that he wasn’t in his right mind either, and yet he wanted them to sleep in this situation. He couldn’t even begin to guess what he was thinking.
“Don’t talk anymore, just close your eyes.”
“Seo Eui-woo, are you trying to mess with me right now?”
“Ah, I told you not to talk… Let’s sleep. I won’t touch you. As you can see, you’re wrapped in a blanket. We’re not touching at all. No Guiding effect. I won’t even touch you with a finger, so just sleep, okay?”
“What kind of bullshit…”
“I’ll put you to sleep.”
He started patting his back.
He coaxed and soothed him diligently, as if putting a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes to sleep. Kwon Jae-jin struggled to get out of his arms, but he couldn’t escape, as he had made a fatal mistake by wrapping himself in the blanket.
Originally, even if Seo Eui-woo was determined to hold Jae-jin, it wasn’t easy to escape.
“Let go. I’m not in the mood for jokes. Let go.”
“Hey, don’t struggle too much. The blanket will come off. You said you didn’t want Guiding, right?”
“Seo Eui-woo.”
“I really don’t mean anything else. I just want to sleep with Jae-jin. That’s all. I’ll just hold you like this.”
“……”
“Can’t you just let this slide? Was I asking for something big? Just let’s sleep… together.”
“……”
“What, you can’t even do that? Do you hate even this much now?”
“Ha, who would fall for such an obvious trick…”
Jae-jin opened his mouth to retort fiercely. He tilted his head up sharply, but the blanket covering his face was pulled down, and his cheek brushed against Seo Eui-woo’s.
“Ugh!”
Startled like someone who had been burned, Jae-jin hunched over.
“See? I told you not to struggle.”
“…Get off. Seo Eui-woo. Let go and get off.”
“Sleep well, Jae-jin.”
Seo Eui-woo patted Jae-jin as before. The already slow touch gradually slowed down and finally became still.
Seo Eui-woo… seemed to have fallen asleep.
He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like he had fallen asleep first, hugging Kwon Jae-jin tightly as he pleased. Or maybe he was pretending to be asleep.
‘Ha. This bastard.’
Kwon Jae-jin opened his mouth, determined to kick Seo Eui-woo out this time. He was planning to shout at him since pushing him away might cause their skin to touch.
But, at that moment, a strange thing happened.
For some reason, his tongue wouldn’t move as he wanted.
The words he was about to spit out were stuck in his throat, unable to come out.
He should be shouting at Seo Eui-woo to let go and get out, but for some reason, he couldn’t. Was it because his exhausted mind had reached its limit, or was it because the position he was being held in felt unconsciously welcome?
Seo Eui-woo was extremely hateful, and he didn’t want to look at his face for a while, but the current situation of lying in bed with him felt comfortable. This was Kwon Jae-jin’s everyday life.
He had spent countless nights entangled with Seo Eui-woo until now, and he had no doubt that he would continue to do so in the future.
Just what. How contradictory and shallow is the human mind?
“……”
Kwon Jae-jin reluctantly closed his lips, which he had opened in anger.
Just a moment ago, he was sure that he wouldn’t be able to sleep today, but just the fact that Seo Eui-woo was next to him made sleep come over him as if it were natural.
This couldn’t be happening.
This shouldn’t be happening…
‘It’s not because of Seo Eui-woo. It’s because I’m so tired that I’m losing my mind… Yes, it’s just because I’m so exhausted that I’m like this.’
And if he thought about it, simply kicking Seo Eui-woo out of the bedroom wouldn’t solve the situation. He couldn’t just keep avoiding him forever while living under the same roof.
He could stay holed up in the bedroom for a day or two, but there would come a time when he would have to come out of the room. He would have to eat. He would have to shower. And as Seo Eui-woo said, he would have to… sleep.
That didn’t necessarily mean they had to stick together in the same bed, though…
‘I don’t know…’
I don’t fucking know…
This time too, the period at the end of his thought was marked with a “fuck.”
Kwon Jae-jin, who had lost his will to fight, closed his eyes in despair. Before long, his complex thoughts subsided, and he fell into a deep sleep, as if sinking into a sticky swamp.
*
Of course, it was the middle of the universe.
It seemed that his subconscious had once again escaped into this black and vast space, far removed from reality.
Saturn and its 82 moons lined up to greet Kwon Jae-jin. Titan, Enceladus, Mimas, Dione, Iapetus, Tethys, Hyperion, Epimetheus…
Jae-jin watched the stars with a dazed expression. This space, which had nothing to do with Kwon Jae-jin’s twisted and distorted life, was truly useful.
Compared to this transcendent upper world, Kwon Jae-jin’s existence would be nothing more than dust.
The worries he held, the troubled mind he had, would become nothing.
Just as he was losing himself in the universe, an unwanted voice intervened.
‘Jae-jin-ssi likes this kind of thing…’
Seo Eui-woo’s voice, coming from somewhere, pierced his ear as if stabbing it. Startled, Jae-jin quickly looked around.
Far away, hidden behind the barely visible sun, Seo Eui-woo peeked out.
‘I wonder if I can come to the universe with coordinate teleportation. I’ve never tried it before.’
This is a dream.
It was just an illusion created by his subconscious, and that wasn’t the real Seo Eui-woo.
He knew it, but Kwon Jae-jin couldn’t resist the urge.
‘Seo Eui-woo! What do you think you’re doing, following me here?’
‘Huh?’
‘Why did you follow me all the way here, you son of a bitch… You could at least leave me alone in my dream!’
‘No, even if you say that… this is Jae-jin-ssi’s dream.’
‘Seo Eui-woo, you’re an Esper, so you don’t know, but in general society, family is… family, no one should touch them. A publicly known taboo, you broke it and shamelessly…’
Seo Eui-woo approached Kwon Jae-jin, who was ranting wildly in anger. Even though he was behind that distant sun, he ignored the distance and appeared in an instant.
‘Haha. What are you talking about? I don’t understand.’
Seo Eui-woo took Kwon Jae-jin’s hand and spun him around.
Like the moment when the two of them were together on the blue sea.
Like ornaments on a music box, they danced in a circle in the universe.
‘I appeared because it’s a dream.’
Seo Eui-woo smiled brightly. His long eyes curved beautifully, and his white cheeks were flushed with a peach-like color.
Showing his young and innocent twenty-year-old face, Seo Eui-woo lightly kissed Jae-jin’s lips, like stamping a seal.
‘Jae-jin-ssi wants to escape from reality right now, right? You want to get away from fighting with me, getting angry, hurting each other, right?’
The sensation of his lips pressing against his felt strangely vivid.
Not only that. Even the sensation of his thin and delicate eyelashes brushing against his cheek felt vivid.
‘You want to do this with me here…’