Chapter 13
He was red all over. His hair, which resembled moonlight, his shirt, which should have been white, and his slender fingers ran through his wet hair.
Most of all, I couldn’t take my eyes off his shirt, which was soaked through with blood that I couldn’t believe it had been red in the first place.
I swallowed hard and took a step back.
Is that blood? Is he hurt?
Why?
My head spun as if my reason had been paralyzed.
“He can’t be dead.
A thousand thoughts swelled and popped in my head, and the moment they reached that point, I knew.
It was fear that squeezed my heart tightly.
The emotion I felt when I read the novel jumped out of nowhere and engulfed me. I’m about to die, stupid me.
But the emotions that built up with each page weren’t something that could be erased at a moment’s notice.
Why doesn’t everyone have one?? Like a movie or a novel or a celebrity that’s so impressive that it changes your life.
This novel did it for me. Yugyeom did.
The last chapter, which ended with Yugyeom’s death, flashed before my eyes.
“Are you sick?”
A cold hand covered my forehead.
Yugyeom, who had been standing in the doorway in the distance, was suddenly up close and looking down at me.
“Yi Chan said it was because you were getting along so well.”
“…….”
“Oh, sorry. I forgot my hands are dirty.”
Yugyeom smirked and withdrew his hand. His fingers, white as the snow of a never-trodden dawn, were red.
Up close, they looked even more eerie, like they were covered in blood.
“Are you hurt?”
My voice cracked from the trembling. I reached out for him but didn’t touch him.
I grew impatient when I didn’t hear an answer right away.
His eyes flickered slightly, but only for a moment.
With a laugh that sounded like a sigh, Yugyeom slowly lowered his head to meet my forehead.
I could feel his hot breath in the cold air.
“I don’t have a fever.”
The soft, low rumble was clear through our skin.
I could see myself in the eyes that were so close.
The sight of them made me feel a little strange, and my shaky mind instantly calmed.
He wasn’t hurt.
It wasn’t Yugyeom’s blood that soaked my shirt red.
My heart felt tight in another way.
I pushed Yugyeom’s shoulder with my fisted hand, and he stepped back obediently.
The hand that had touched him was uncomfortably damp and red, and I felt a cold chill run down my spine as if it were my own blood.
Yugyeom, the one who killed Cha Yeonbyul.
You, the one who was destined to kill me.
“You can’t have gotten along.”
Reality, not fiction, was cruel. That cruelty pushed me to the edge of the cliff.
Yugyeom was here, and this was my chance. A chance to change my fate so he wouldn’t kill me.
“You’re not coming.”
Picking and choosing, I spoke words that made Yugyeom shake.
As a non-protagonist, I didn’t have a choice in the cliffhanger.
The mere fact that I was here was enough to keep me from deviating from the original plot, no matter how twisted it was.
I was scared that Yugyeom hadn’t come to see me.
I was afraid that if I woke up, it would be the last day of the erection festival. If that day came and I didn’t do anything, I’d really die.
“I’ve been waiting.”
I looked up at Yugyeom and smiled.
I didn’t want him to love me enough to jump in front of a gun.
Just enough not to kill. Just enough to think about it even if he had to.
I just want you to fall in love with me, too.
A soft, thin smile appeared on Yugyeom’s face as he listened to my words.
“……Why doesn’t that sound like a lie to me?”
The whispered words seemed to be misheard.
* * *
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
I chewed my nails whenever I felt anxious. It was the first time I realized that habits can be created without too much change in the environment.
Yugyeom said he needed to take a shower and disappeared from my sight, and it was already 20 minutes ago.
Listening to the sound of the soon-to-be-shut-off water, I burned up.
“What am I going to do? How am I going to…….”
I wanted to think of it as an opportunity, but when I saw Yugyeom, I was terrified.
He specializes in scheming, so what could I do? One wrong word and I’ll be dead before I know it?
I leaned my forehead against the glass window and felt a chill run down my spine. The chill brought back a memory from earlier.
A face pressed forehead to forehead, eyes sparkling up close, the corner of a mouth gently curved.
And when the sound of the water finally stopped, I slammed my fist into my head.
‘What if I can’t! I’ll cry and scream and hang myself.’
I was already at a dead end when I met Yugyeom. There was no other option.
Dahkak!
As soon as I ran to the couch and sat down, the door opened and Yugyeom slowly walked out through the fog.
Droplets of water dripped from the ends of his wet hair and ran down his white skin, adding to his languid, dangerous aura.
Yugyeom smiled at me through wet eyes.
“Were you waiting for me?”
The laugh was so cheating.
As Yugyeom bent down to sit on the couch in front of me, the barely open shower robe gaped slightly wider.
I quickly averted my gaze to the bare chest peeking through.
“You said you were waiting. Let me see.”
But the voice was soft but irresistible, and I finally met his gaze and eyes.
There was nothing I could read in those eyes, which were perfectly stripped of emotion and desire.
Sitting cross-legged, I smiled low, half-covering my mouth with the hand that rested on my chin.
“Yep. I’ve been waiting.”
Faking a smile was pretty easy, considering I was mimicking Yugyeom.
“I wonder why the princess waited for me.”
I became even more desperate when I remembered Yugyeom’s real face, like the one looking at me now, always smiling but dead inside.
“How can I sleep with my feet stretched out when I can’t see the person holding my lifeblood?”
“…….”
“I’ve been waiting with my tail between my legs like a puppy waiting for its master.”
I smiled lightly, the corners of my eyes twitching, and Yugyeom let out a small gasp.
It was only when he leaned back into the couch like he was about to collapse that the mischievousness in his laugh returned.
“You’re a pretty good sleeper for a puppy, aren’t you?”
I snapped. The arm cupping his chin slipped off his leg.
“I guess throwing pillows out of bed is a sleeping habit.”
My 25-year-old sleeping habits were in Yugyeom’s mouth. The unexpected answer left me speechless.
“You were so comfortable in my bed, I slept there.”
Yugyeom pointed to the exact wall I’d been wandering around. The back of my head tingled like I’d been hit with a hammer.
“Ichan, you son of a bitch……!
There’s no way he didn’t know, having been next to me for almost 24 hours. How could he be so blind and irritated?
The urge to find him and grab him by the throat was overwhelming, but I could feel Yugyeom’s gaze still locked on me. Apprenticeship came first.
“Don’t you know there’s more to life than meets the eye? Look at those dark circles from your nightmares.”
I pointed to my under-eyes and laughed.
Like a snake hunting its prey, Yugyeom rose from his seat and walked in front of me in a series of eerily quick, smooth movements.
I didn’t recognize him until a drop of water trickled through his silken hair and landed on my cheek.
“Where?”
Yugyeom brushed his thumb across the corner of my eye.
It was a careful touch, like touching a glass ball, but it sent a tingle up the nape of my neck.
“It’s a little awkward when they break.”
For a moment, I think I felt life-threatened. The eyes staring down at me glowed like knives ready to stab me.
I’ve always had a certain amount of trust in human intuition, but right now I desperately hoped I was wrong.
Otherwise, everything I say and do from now on will be digging my own grave with my own hands.
“So from now on, you’ll have to come when I’m awake.”
I smiled sweetly from the corners of my eyes, holding onto Yugyeom’s wrist that was wrapped around my face.
For the briefest of moments, Yugyeom’s brow narrowed slightly.
Sure, only a crazy person would say this to a kidnapper.
But I needed to.
A chance to use what I knew to whisper sweet nothings to Yugyeom. Time to trap him so he couldn’t kill me.
“Every day. Like I said, I can’t sleep without seeing the man who holds my life in his hands.”
“…….”
“It would be a shame if I were to die of a disease of the heart.”
The languid eyes that held the flickering light grew darker and darker. I felt as if I were somehow being sucked into them.
There was a moment of silence, broken by a low, scattered chuckle.
“Trouble.”
Yugyeom’s body leaned a little further toward me, and a large shadow engulfed me completely.
I backed away as he approached, my back eventually touching the backrest of the couch.
Yugyeom gripped the back of the couch I was leaning against with one hand. The cold fingers that cupped my chin brushed lightly across my lips.
“But do you even know what you’re saying?”
His face was shrouded in darkness, his back to the light, but I could see his eyes flashing in it.
But instead of looking up at him with fear in my eyes, I laughed.
“You and me, we’re going to get the hell out of here.”
“Come with me. To my hell.
Just as Yugyeom whispered that to me and laughed.
