Chapter 30

His white breath billowed against the deep navy expanse of the sky. It felt as though midwinter had returned.

“I wondered what you were getting at.”

Drawing a hand from his pocket to scratch at the corner of his mouth, Shin let out a dry, deflated scoff.

With cool detachment, Shin added, “Woong-ah, Ri Chul-joo’s autopsy findings sound considerably more intriguing than this.”

Is that so? Perhaps it is.

Perhaps the duty requiring immediate resolution was vastly more important than messily dredging up a relationship that was already over. It could well be an uninteresting conversation.

Yet if that were the case, he shouldn’t have interfered with me being with my second brother. If he’s going to meddle in everything just like old times, why tell me to deal with it on my own when I ask for time to sort out my feelings?

Knowing full well that Shin was never generous toward others, Se-woong had rarely been on the receiving end of that coldness over the years, and a sudden rush of sorrow welled within him. The resolution he had made that afternoon—never to be swayed by such familiar habits—rendered itself entirely meaningless.

“Lee Shin, when someone is trying to speak to you…” Se-woong protested, his voice wavering.

Shin challenged, “Give you some time?”

His tone was utterly unenthusiastic.

“Se-woong-ah, if I give you time,” Shin murmured.

Shin took hold of Se-woong’s coat lapels, overlapping them snugly across his chest. The shoulder seams hung loose over Se-woong’s slender arms. Feeling his own frame look so pitiful at a moment like this, Se-woong felt a sting of embarrassment even over something so trivial.

Looking straight at him, Shin asked, “What exactly will you do then?”

A wave of indignant emotion contorted Se-woong’s face, and he glared up at Shin.

“Will giving you time solve everything?” Shin asked evenly.

The voice dropping sentence by deliberate sentence remained flat. Lacking inflection and largely void of emotion, anyone else listening might have mistaken it for tender.

Yet having spent so many years by his side, Se-woong could not fail to recognize the truth: behind that calm facade, Shin’s Adam’s apple was trembling violently.

“So if I just grant you some time, you’ll be fine with me seeing someone else, and fine with me getting married?” Shin pressed, stepping closer. “Just how much time do you need? Since you haven’t been fine until now, should I give you another four months? And after that, you and I suddenly become friends?”

“…”

With chilling finality, Shin warned, “You can’t do it, Se-woong-ah.”

At that unyielding verdict, Se-woong roughly slapped away the hands resting against his chest. The fingers brushing his skin felt ice-cold.

“Why can’t I?” Se-woong yelled back, his composure fracturing. “You manage it just fine, so why can’t I? I’ll watch you get married! I’ll play video games with you, eat meals with you, and be your damn friend!”

“Cut that fucking ‘friend’ bullshit—” Shin snarled.

“You were the one who brought it up first!” Se-woong retorted fiercely. “When did I ever say I wanted to be friends? You’re the one who insisted on it—that fucking friendship!”

The surroundings were eerily desolate. Not only were there no passersby, but not even the sound of a passing car could be heard. It felt as though only the two of them existed in the dead of night.

Biting hard on his lip, Se-woong squeezed his swollen thumb with his other fingers as if wringing it out. He felt not a shred of pain. Just as stillness settled around them, the familiar ringing in his ears pierced through without fail.

Shin ordered sharply, “Take your hands out where I can see them. Stop fiddling with that infected wound.”

“That’s why I said I’d go along with it!” Se-woong shouted, his voice cracking. “I agreed to be friends with you—because that’s what you wanted!”

Shin rasped, “If we don’t even do that…”

Seeing that Se-woong had no intention of drawing his hands out—whether because he could not hear or chose to ignore him—Shin pulled Se-woong’s hand from the coat pocket and laid it across his palm. Unbefitting such neat hands, the flesh beside the thumbnail was swollen red from a minor wound. Unable to bring himself to press the tender injury, Shin merely grazed his fingertips around the perimeter.

“Someone might see. Let go of this…” Se-woong whispered, trying to pull away.

Shin looked up, his gaze dark. “You were never going to see me again.”

The temperatures of their locked gazes clashed in the darkness. One burned with explosive heat, while the other sank into frigid chill. Yet whether scorched by fire or frostbitten by ice, the burn was identical.

For nearly a decade, they had taken pains never to let their fingertips brush unless sequestered in an enclosed space, straining every nerve at the faintest sign of human presence no matter how deserted the area seemed. Even without that caution, Shin was exceptionally attuned to presence, to the point of joking that he could discern whether another soul was nearby simply by the density of the air. Yet right now, worrying about being seen was the last thing on his mind.

Shin demanded, “After my brother-in-law’s formal family meeting, what did you think every time you looked at me?”

“What do you mean, what did I think—” Se-woong stammered.

“You thought only of ending things,” Shin insisted, his voice relentless. “You figured it had to end someday anyway, and that the time had simply arrived. After meeting my parents face-to-face, and hearing that the second brother you adore so dearly was marrying my sister, what was your very first thought? You immediately planned how to cut ties with me. Am I wrong?”

Even in the midst of this turmoil, Shin could see only Se-woong’s chapped lips, eliciting a hollow laugh at the sensation of pouring everything into a battle he could never win.

That day, once the formal family gathering concluded, Se-woong had turned pale and announced he would head home for the night. And Shin had known instantly: ‘For the night’ would never mean just that single night.

With quiet intensity, Shin challenged, “If I’m mistaken, explain yourself. I’ll believe you.”

Throughout their entire relationship, Se-woong had chanted ‘just a little longer, just a little longer’ like a mantra. During their time at the Military Academy, it was ‘just until graduation’; when their first postings after commissioning landed them in the same unit, it was ‘just for this assignment’; and when duty separated them, he continually extended the deadline—‘just through this season,’ ‘just until the end of this year.’ In the end, it was always an expiration date: imposing a strict temporal limit.

Considering how they had begun, it was hardly incomprehensible. Had they not pushed each other away relentlessly simply for sharing the same gender? If even they had endured a period of such violent denial, how could anyone else view them with kind eyes? In an already conservative military, being discovered would be nothing short of social and professional burial.

Shin knew why Se-woong had refrained from making close friends during their academy years. Though never outwardly sociable, people naturally gravitated toward him, and in an environment where cadets shared room and board, keeping people at arm’s length was no easy feat. Yet once their relationship began, Se-woong deliberately distanced himself even from his few close classmates—guarding himself in advance lest an unguarded moment among friends expose their secret.

For someone as cautious as Se-woong, who avoided even casual friendships, the oppressive weight of Shin’s father was beyond dispute. That father expected his only son to tread the exact ladder he had climbed, and whether by choice or duty, Shin was walking that very path.

An unforgiving military, a four-star general for a father, and a lover faithfully following in those footsteps. Se-woong was simply not shameless enough to pretend none of it existed.

The surest way to avoid discovery was never to create a vulnerability in the first place. And Cha Se-woong had always remained prepared to retreat into that fortified isolation at any moment. Which brought them to right now.

The marriage between Cha Se-gyeom and Lee Young was merely the catalyst, an overdue excuse.

“Lee Shin,” Se-woong called out in warning.

“You bastard,” Shin spat, his restraint shattering. “Were you planning to marry me? Or what, were you ever going to come clean to your family? If neither was ever on the table, why does it matter so damn much that your brother married my sister? No matter how many stars my father wears, what does that have to do with you and me fucking? If my father has four stars, can’t you ejaculate? Can’t you get hard?”

Shin understood it all. Knowing exactly what Se-woong feared and why he sought to end things, Shin had been willing to wait.

Yet now, what? You want time? Are you asking me for time so you can drift away forever?

“You…” Shin rasped.

Barely suppressing the urge to grind his teeth as tension locked his jaw, Shin exhaled a long breath. His sharply expanded chest settled back only after a lingering pause.

His voice ragged with raw grievance, Shin continued, “You ache over a torn fin on the goldfish in my apartment, you worry yourself sick over a bastard who might be a spy or a defector fretting about his comrade’s funeral, and you even stress over how your dim-witted subordinate handled a dining receipt.”

Watching Shin, Se-woong’s expression gradually fractured. The grip holding his hand was tightening with ferocious pressure.

“Why can’t you look at me?” Shin pleaded, his voice breaking. “Why don’t you ever worry about me, Se-woong-ah?”

The moment those words left his lips, Shin hung his head low. Just then, a car entered through the main gate, sweeping white headlights across the path. With few streetlamps and most of those extinguished, it was doubtful anyone would deliberately search for them in the shadows, yet Se-woong grabbed Shin by the forearm and pulled him toward a darker corridor.

Their destination was a narrow auxiliary doorway beside the Joint Chiefs building. Used primarily as a shortcut by personnel parking in the exterior lot, this doorway was the sole passage in the intensely fortified headquarters that required neither access cards nor security guards.

Prepared to turn back if it proved locked, Se-woong found the latch yielding to his touch. Shoving Shin inside first, Se-woong pulled the heavy door shut behind them. As the thick iron door slammed shut with a heavy thud, pitch-black darkness enveloped the two men. In the stairwell landing connecting the basement to the ground floor, not even a tiny emergency light was lit.

In darkness so absolute that even deep-sea creatures would be blind, Shin pulled the raggedly breathing Se-woong into his embrace. Amid the stillness, where only familiar breathing and the rustle of soft wool could be heard, Shin buried his face deep into the crook of Se-woong’s neck.

“Cha Se-woong,” Shin murmured against his skin.

His low voice held a chilling resonance.

Whispering into the dark, Shin warned, “I’m giving you more than enough time right now. Think it over, and come back to me.”

Feeling the fierce strength clamped around his waist and the thigh wedging between his legs, Se-woong simply closed his eyes. Found purely by instinct, Shin’s lips pressed against his—parched, cracked, and intensely rough.

[END of VOLUME 1]