Chapter 46
I nervously clutched my phone, scanning my surroundings.
“It looks like you were quite surprised. Your hiccups stopped.”
The memory of that night replayed vividly in my mind.
Unconsciously, I raised my hand and wrapped it around my throat. Underneath my palm, the skin that had been pressed with intense heat rose again.
The heartbeat that filled the narrow closet. The firm embrace that held me captive. The dizzying scent that scrambled my thoughts.
My heart remembered all of those things and my mind replayed them.
Yugyeom.
It’s not particularly surprising that he knows my phone number.
How much does he remember? I thought I wouldn’t remember due to being drunk. My heart raced at the thought that he might remember everything I said.
“Wanna meet?”
This time, I really slipped up.
I stared at the phone flipped over on the floor, frozen. Then I noticed Inyoung walking down the opposite end of the corridor.
I quickly picked up the phone and sighed softly. The screen’s corner was densely cracked.
Ah. It hasn’t been long since I changed it.
I turned off the phone and casually changed my pace.
Baek Hawon was leaning against the wall of the corridor, waiting for me. His angle seemed oddly crooked today.
“Have you been waiting for me?”
Without waiting for an answer, Baek Hawon reached out his hand.
His long fingers touched the wrist with faint red marks and slid up. The sensation of his touch brushing against the skin was delicate.
The blouse sleeve, roughly folded up, fell back down.
Tock.
And the weight pressing on my shoulders disappeared.
I only glanced down to confirm the jacket on the floor.
“I got confused.”
The hand that took off Yugyeom’s jacket still hovered at my shoulder height. There were still traces of Kang Taejun’s blood on the palm.
I recalled the moment when that hand clenched Kang Taejun’s wound in my mind.
As his fingertips slowly cut through the air, grazing my neck horizontally.
“Love at the risk of life.”
“……”
“Is it still valid?”
As if tearing open a wound that had already healed.
It was a faint sensation as if my breath had subsided, but it was even more eerie. It felt like blood would flow down the place where it had passed.
His face, tilted crookedly, was half-buried in shadows. I raised my head pretending everything was fine.
“Surely you don’t think I’ve switched over to Yugyeom?”
Baek Hawon gave a strange smile that couldn’t be understood. Then, as if to say “Go on,” he nodded his head.
I took two steps forward. The body covered by the jacket grew colder.
As the distance between Baek Hawon and me narrowed, I had to raise my head a little more to meet his gaze.
“You know everything already.”
At this very moment, I smiled as I met the penetrating gaze that was scrutinizing me.
How much does he know?
The reason Yugyeom held onto me. The emotions when he pulled the trigger. The look in his eyes as I collapsed with a bullet in my chest.
And now, this situation.
“Why ask when you already know?”
How far can you see into me, and what do you hold in your hand?
“Boring.”
There’s a clear realization from today’s dreadful face-to-face encounter.
Baek Hawon, who had feelings beyond mere liking for Yugyeom on their first meeting, doesn’t exist in this world.
Even from behind, it was unmistakably clear in Baek Hawon’s gaze towards Yugyeom. He looked at Yugyeom with a temperature vastly different from that in the original work.
With this, my stocks are completely ruined.
But there was no time for despair.
“Well……”
His arm, clad only in a black shirt, brushed past the edge of my cheek and reached back, before a black jacket fell onto my shoulders.
I stood frozen, unable to blink, still trapped between the arms that hadn’t let go of my collar.
The realization that there was nowhere to retreat made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Baek Hawon tugged at the jacket.
As the jacket tightly wrapped around me, pulling me forward, I went along with it.
“I find it interesting.”
The deep-colored eyes slowly descended right in front of me. His characteristic heavy and chilling scent engulfed me.
It was a realization as unjust as a sentence of death.
Baek Hawon no longer hates me enough to kill me.
* * *
The biggest reason Baek Hawon didn’t kick out Cha Yeonbyeol from Baekcheon was because of his father, Baek Hyunwoo’s will.
When he brought his deceased wife’s look-alike and her daughter to Baekcheon, Baek Hyunwoo was already half out of his mind.
Only two years had passed since they had last seen each other.
Two years later, in the year Cha Yeonbyeol turned seventeen, Baek Hyunwoo died in a car accident with Cha Yeonbyeol’s birth mother.
Whether he genuinely thought she was his daughter due to his unbalanced state of mind or out of residual affection, it was unclear.
In the will written by Baek Hyunwoo a month before his death, it stated that Cha Yeonbyeol should be protected within Baekcheon until her 26th birthday.
“Ugh.”
Sitting at the edge of the bed, I looked at Baek Hawon’s jacket draped over the chair’s backrest. The luxurious sheen of the fabric shone in the moonlight streaming through the window.
Was there even a hint of interest sparked by the sudden 180-degree change from whispering love like a lunatic?
The current Baek Hawon seems to be… “raising a pet?”
No, that’s weird. This doesn’t make sense.
I lay down on the bed with a sigh, shaking my head.
Once again, the black jacket caught my eye in my tilted field of view.
A pet. It’s a nauseating term, but I can’t think of a better one. It’s like playing with something you hold in the palm of your hand.
And it was the same today. When Baek Hawon wouldn’t let go of the jacket… he was truly annoying and unlucky. He’s never won once, so it’s even more frustrating.
Rolling onto my side, I turned on the phone I had gripped in my hand.
“Wanna meet?”
Even though I’ve read it several times already, my heart thumped loudly.
“I have something to give you.”
…I won’t be able to accept that.
Yugyeom’s jacket would have rolled around the corridor floor and likely ended up in the trash by now. Baek Hawon’s intention to take off his jacket for me was so obvious that I couldn’t bring myself to pick it up.
The last message contained a time and place.
I can’t even guess what he wants to talk about when we meet. Surely, it must involve taking risks.
But if not now, will there be another chance for us to talk privately?
I stand out too much while sneaking around Baekcheon. It wouldn’t look normal for Yugyeom, who was rescued from Utopia, to meet alone with Cha Yeonbyeol.
Even if an opportunity comes by chance, it might already be too late.
I didn’t want to die.
But it was also true that I couldn’t ignore Yugyeom.
If things continued as they were, Yugyeom’s ending wouldn’t change significantly. No, it might even get worse.
I didn’t want to see that kind of end, even more so if I was the reason.
So, while nothing can be undone, shouldn’t I at least try to amend the words I’ve said before it’s too late?
After reading the meeting place and time once again, I pressed one of the four contacts I had.
There was no guarantee of another opportunity.
* * *
The morning sky was dark.
Smiling, the man looked up at the thick clouds as if thunder and lightning could strike at any moment. The scar on the corner of his mouth twisted with his smile.
“The weather’s nice.”
In his hand, clad in black leather gloves, was a bouquet of red flowers with low saturation, like his hair.
“I couldn’t come last time. I was too busy.”
The man took out a flower from the bouquet and placed it in front of the urn.
“Think of me while you look at it.”
A smile brighter than the flowers bloomed on the man’s face as he gazed at a name he no longer needed to call.
He remembered the last moments of his deceased younger brother.
It was an unusually clear day then. A blue sky without a single cloud, a gentle breeze even in the dead of winter.
And his brother loved such days.
He readily accepted the sudden contact from his estranged brother and agreed to meet.
“Click…! Hyung… What’s this, why…?”
If he could see that sight again, he could even happily go back to those days.
It was a bit regrettable that he didn’t kill him with his own hands. It would have been troublesome if there were fingerprints on his brother’s neck, even though he died by suicide.
Still, his last struggling moments were quite satisfying.
As the movement ceased and he laughed aloud in the silence, he almost forgot to leave his will behind.
Thankfully, he remembered just before leaving the room, so the suicide note was beyond doubt up until now.
Laughing gleefully as he stared at the urn for a long time, the man wiped the corners of his mouth and turned around.
“Choose a place.”
At that moment, someone emerged from the shadows and approached the man.
The suit with a sprite pattern fluttered in the wind. His long legs stretched out coolly, making his already tall stature stand out even more.
The scar wriggling above his lips was like the sight the man saw every time he looked in the mirror.
“Shall I give it to you?”
Taehoon smiled as he handed the bouquet to Yuhwa.
Yuhwa reached out silently. Instead of accepting the bouquet, she twisted the hand holding the bouquet behind her back.
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Translator Note:
Hello there! This is Sid. I hope you liked it<3
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