Chapter 3

Putting aside the fact that Rhys was a man, he honestly did not seem like the type of person who would go out with someone like Dante. To a practical guy like him, people with artistic professions seemed frighteningly delicate and overly sensitive. Moreover, Dante was a total outsider with no interest in art, while people working in New York’s high-end art world seemed to socialize exclusively with their own accomplished kind. To them, someone like Dante was the type of person one might enjoy briefly for a season and then leave behind.

Yet Rhys not only told Dante directly that he loved him, he showed a level of devotion incomparable to anyone Dante had ever dated before. In truth, comparing his toxic ex-girlfriends to Rhys was an insult in itself.

Rhys gave Dante everything he had ever desperately craved.

He called to greet him around the time Dante left for work or came home, and he came in person to pick him up after his shifts at least three times a week. Since his work as an artist gave him highly flexible hours, he claimed it was easy to adjust his schedule around Dante’s. When Dante had regular weekend duty, Rhys would arrive by car the morning his shift ended, take him back to his apartment, and cook him an early breakfast.

Whatever Dante wanted to do, Rhys went along with it without a hint of complaint. He led Dante into all kinds of cultural activities he had never tried and showed him beautiful, hidden pockets of New York he had never visited. He never borrowed money, either. In fact, despite being much younger, Rhys frequently footed the bill at expensive restaurants.

At first, Dante had tried to cover every single dating expense. A beauty deserved treatment worthy of a beauty, after all. The object of his affection had somehow become a man, but it was undeniable that Rhys was stunning. Besides, Rhys was the first younger lover Dante had ever had, and he wanted to maintain the image of a cool, reliable older partner.

After a few months, however, Dante reached the absolute limit of his finances. Every restaurant Rhys liked to visit was a Michelin-starred establishment. Rhys insisted he didn’t actually care what they ate, but Dante refused to feed anything random to his pretty Rhys, who looked like he should exclusively drink water gathered from morning dew. A guy like Dante could live well enough on cheap chicken breast salad, but Rhys somehow seemed like someone who had to be fed every beautiful, healthy thing the world had to offer.

But a single visit to a high-end restaurant in New York cost a staggering amount of money. Since Dante had started working right after high school, he did have some savings, but he could not afford to regularly visit places that cost seven hundred dollars per meal including the tip. At heart, he was an ordinary guy who internally complained every time about New York’s insane prices, where a single bagel sandwich could easily cost more than nine dollars.

He couldn’t bring himself to suggest somewhere cheaper and ruin his proud older-partner image, so while Dante agonizingly paced over how to preserve his dignity, Rhys smoothly handed him a credit card dedicated entirely to their dates. Dante resisted fiercely at first, but Rhys easily persuaded him with soft, lingering kisses.

…When your young, pretty boyfriend acts that cute, refusing him forever would just be unadult. So, Dante compromised in moderation.

Still, he made sure he could afford to bring Rhys flowers every single time they saw each other. That much was a matter of pride. Giving flowers to a beauty was, after all, the mark of a true man.

Gentle Rhys greeted Dante with a brilliant, breathless smile every time he knocked on the door holding a fresh bouquet. He would immediately place the flowers into a beautiful vase, tending to them meticulously. Since Dante brought flowers all three times if they met three times a week, the number of vases in Rhys’s apartment steadily grew into a veritable glass forest.

The better Rhys treated him, the more helplessly Dante fell in love with him—and at the same time, the more profoundly terrified he became. This man was nothing like the ghosts of his past. Rhys wanted nothing from Dante’s wallet, never made unreasonable demands, and accommodated his schedule so thoroughly it felt almost undeserved.

Because Rhys was too unreal to seem like reality, Dante found it incredibly hard to believe him when he said “I love you.” If he carelessly allowed himself to believe those words, Dante felt certain he would suffer a wound incomparable to anything he had experienced before. Unlike the past, where he had somehow been able to scrape himself together and stand back up, he was sure an injury from Rhys would drive him straight to the bottom beneath the bottom—so deep he could never climb back to the surface.

It would have been better not to like him so much. But by then, it was far too late to turn back.

When someone who usually lived without much deep thought suddenly sank into existential dread, they invariably made stupid choices. Dante was a magnificent example. One day, unable to bear the weight of this tremendous luck, he ended up saying they should break up—the first time he had ever uttered those words in his life.

It happened during their very first fight, a few months into their relationship. Dante was the one who had initiated the argument.

“Rhys, aren’t you curious about me? I’m curious about you. I want to introduce you to my close friends, and I want to know about the people around you, too. I think lovers need to meet each other’s people if they’re going to have something serious.”

Rhys had been a flawless lover in every respect, but there was one glaring thing Dante could not understand: he guarded his privacy far too thoroughly. Throughout their entire relationship, Dante had never once heard about Rhys’s friends or coworkers. That fiercely guarded boundary made it seem as though Rhys did not picture a long-term future with him. His previous traumatic relationships had been exactly like that.

“Of course I want to know more about you too, Dante,” Rhys had replied softly. “And that’s something the two of us can do well enough on our own. We barely have enough time seeing only each other every day. Do we really need to meet the people around us?”

Rhys was not exactly wrong. But separate from logically understanding his words, Dante kept remembering the bad experiences of his past. The cold, distant figure of his ex-girlfriend instantly overlapped with Rhys—the woman who, all throughout their relationship, had never let him see anyone around her, drawing a harsh line as if this was the only territory Dante was allowed to occupy.

Back then and now, Dante was the only one shaken. Rhys’s attitude seemed to lack any desperate desire to fully integrate into Dante’s life.

“Then are we supposed to live like this forever?” Dante pressed.

“…Forever?”

At the word that slipped out in the heat of the moment, Rhys flinched, repeating it back. His startled, slightly unnerved reaction touched Dante’s long-standing anxiety at its deepest, sorest point. A sudden sense of humiliation at having run ahead alone surged through him, along with the self-loathing certainty that, just as he had feared, Rhys did not see this relationship as something serious. Just like everyone else.

A faint panic rolled in. Unable to properly process what he was feeling, entirely flustered, Dante moved his lips in search of words. Then, in a mood of absolute surrender, he committed the ultimate act of self-sabotage.

“…Fine. If you don’t want it, I don’t want to force you. I think we should break up after all. You and I are just too different.”

He had not possessed even a speck of real intention to separate, but his mouth had caused a catastrophic accident of its own. Regret surged in immediately, but Dante at the time was utterly terrified. A man who remained perfectly calm when diving into a storm-tossed sea to perform a wildly dangerous rescue became a total coward in front of the man he loved.

Maybe it would be better to end things now, while we haven’t been dating that long. Every time I spend time with Rhys, I only like him more. It might be better to finish it now than be abandoned later, when my feelings have grown too deep to survive.

The words had tumbled out before he could stop them, but instead of admitting they were a mistake, Dante whipped around and acted as if he had no lingering attachment whatsoever. Perhaps this was the wise choice. Rhys was too good for him anyway. Dante sensed that if they broke up after he began wanting this perfect, lovable man even more than he already did, the wound would be one that would not heal even after a lifetime.

His cowardly desire to cut things off first so he wouldn’t be hurt made him fiercely defensive. The people who had abandoned Dante when he felt safest and most vulnerable had left behind ugly, phantom memories that paralyzed his reason. Sometimes fear made people choose paths no one else could understand. This was exactly such a time.

Having made an irrational judgment based entirely on past trauma, Dante turned his back decisively. He did not expect Rhys to stop him. Even Dante knew it was too sudden, a volatile reaction that would reasonably make anyone angry.

“Where are you going? Don’t leave. Come here and talk to me again.”

Contrary to his bleak expectations, the moment Dante turned away, Rhys caught him instantly. He grabbed his arm so hard that Dante thought for a split second his shoulder might be ripped out of its socket. That day was the first time Dante learned that Rhys was surprisingly, remarkably strong.

“I was wrong. Hm? I didn’t know interacting with the people around us mattered that much to you,” Rhys pleaded, his voice cracking. “I’m sorry… so please, calm down and let’s talk again. Please.”

Rhys pulled Dante forcibly into his arms the instant he caught him from behind. Burying his face against Dante’s broad shoulder, he sounded as if he might actually cry from sheer shock. Dante, who had never imagined Rhys would react with such desperation, stopped in place, entirely frozen.

Simultaneously, an entirely new sensation pierced through his bewilderment. An unknowable, thrilling shiver rose along his spine, and a satisfaction beyond words spread deep inside his chest. His heart pounded as if it might burst. He had not thought Rhys would want him this badly.

“I’ll do it if Dante wants me to. So please, don’t say we should break up. Please?”

In the end, Rhys actually started to cry. Though he was four years younger, he had always been calm and collected like someone much older, and this was the first time Dante had ever seen him completely collapse. To see Rhys shaken so deeply by a single action of his… Dante, swept away by an agony that felt maddening, by pure thrill, by a surging wave of passion, turned around. He caught Rhys’s wet, crying face in his hands and kissed him fiercely.

Rhys, who had reeled Dante back in after he tried to walk away, hugged him as if he meant to crush his ribs, pressing their lips together with an intense fervor. The second Dante felt the shy, tender contact of lips against his—so different from that rough, initial motion—he wrapped his arms securely around Rhys’s waist. The hurt from moments earlier evaporated entirely. Wanting desperately to touch the man who wanted him with his entire body, Dante tilted his head and kissed him deeply, consuming him in return.

Come to think of it… that had been their very first kiss.

Out of gentle consideration for Dante, who was dating a man for the first time, Rhys had only hugged him or held his hand until that moment. When he saw Dante rub their lips together first, his eyes had widened in sheer shock. Those wet, gray-blue eyes soon darkened with desire, and then he swallowed Dante’s mouth as if he would devour him whole.

Looking back, Dante’s words—“let’s break up”—had served as the exact catalyst that evolved their relationship. On the day he first said they should separate, they opened the door to kissing. The next time he said it, they went right up to the brink. And the third time he weaponized the phrase, they finally had sex.

It was like a magic word.

Whenever the words “let’s break up” left Dante’s mouth, Rhys shed his usual, frustrating calm and completely transformed. He tightened his grip around Dante and held on as if he could never let him go. Dante secretly craved Rhys in those volatile moments—the way he desperately clutched Dante’s arm instead of treating him with his usual careful, fragile courtesy. The way he stared at Dante with transparent, burning, possessive eyes. That was a side of Rhys Dante could only see when he threatened to leave.

Bind me a little tighter. Hold on to me firmly and make me yours. Plunder me, take me, and keep me from ever leaving your land. You can do that. That is the kind of fierce love I need.

Following the dark whisper of his unconscious mind, Dante brought out that word whenever he wanted to feel Rhys’s love confirmed with absolute force. Before he knew it, announcing a breakup had become a powerful, addictive drug to make Dante feel bound to Rhys.

And Rhys willingly moved in accordance with his toxic desire. During their fight two months ago, when Dante had said for the twentieth time that they should break up, Rhys had desperately told Dante to move into his apartment right after their intense makeup sex.

They had been on the absolute verge of living together. Dante had even secretly thought they might get engaged soon. To think such domestic thoughts while throwing around the word breakup so freely—he knew it was strange, yet in the moment, he did not care.

Not until that fateful day two months ago, when Rhys reacted in a completely different way than usual.

Why had they fought that time? It had been something truly trivial. It had seemed entirely serious then, but now, compared to the agonizing reality of losing Rhys, it was nothing at all.

Every two months, Rhys regularly went through a period when he became completely unreachable. When that time came, he would vaguely say he needed to focus entirely on his work and disappear off the grid for three or four days. It was not that contact was entirely impossible, but a brief, single message was usually the absolute most Dante could extract from him. For the past few years, Dante had somehow let it pass. But with them about to officially move in together, it began to bother him terribly.

…What if he is cheating on me?

Dante knew Rhys was not that kind of man, but the doubt that slipped in unannounced sank deep roots in his mind and grew with terrifying speed. Ahead of Rhys’s usual “submarine period,” Dante confronted him, asking whether he intended to keep doing this even after they shared an apartment. Rhys, looking deeply troubled, slowly nodded. It was not the answer Dante had wanted to hear.

Fine. Right. Just because they lived together did not mean Rhys would stop working. As Dante tried to understand his partner’s process, he offered a compromise of his own.

“All right, beautiful. Then how about this? Once we live together, take me to your studio at least once. I want to see you sculpting. I’m sure it would be incredibly cool, so just watching would be enough. And if I know exactly where you are while you’re working, wouldn’t I feel much more at ease?”

He did not think it was a difficult or unreasonable request. Yet Rhys’s face darkened further. Swallowing a heavy, troubled sigh, Rhys hesitated for several agonizing seconds before finally delivering a cold refusal.

“I’m sorry, Tay. I told you before… I’ve never let anyone into my studio.”

“Then at least tell me the address,” Dante pushed, his voice rising. “What if something happens to you? I won’t show up without your permission or anything like that.”

An unreadable, sharp discomfort surfaced in Rhys’s gray-blue eyes. He looked at Dante—who kept interrogating him without giving up—as if faced with an unwelcome guest who had put him in an incredibly difficult position. Then, he answered in a voice far more resolute than before.

“I’m sorry.”

That was the exact moment the button was pressed. Even though they were on the cusp of living together, it felt as if Rhys still refused to allow Dante into his actual life. Dante felt utterly rejected. The instant he felt that phantom pain, he craved the opposite emotion—the desperate reassurance. Though he knew full well this was a terrible, dangerous habit, the ugly impulse rose in him to weaponize that word again. If he did, Rhys would stop him somehow. Rhys would soothe this burning anxiety.

Just as he always had.

“I don’t understand,” Dante scoffed, crossing his arms. “We’re going to be together from now on, but you’re saying you’ll hide your work from me forever? Rhys, I hate secrets. I hate deception even more. Once you start hiding one thing, how much easier is it to hide another? If we’re going to keep living like this…”

Rhys looked at him, his gaze freezing over as if he knew exactly what words were coming next. The warmth in his gray-blue eyes slowly cooled, deepening toward a harsh, solid gray. It was a gray like thin ice over a dark lake.

Do not.

Rhys’s gaze explicitly warned him, but Dante stubbornly ignored the warning to the bitter end and delivered the fatal sentence.

“Don’t come back.”

Sometimes there were moments like that in life. Moments when, even knowing you would regret it with every fiber of your being, even knowing you would certainly wish to turn back time, you spat out something incredibly cruel as if stabbing yourself in the throat with it. The instant those words left his mouth, Dante knew. He knew he would regret this moment like mad.

Rhys said absolutely nothing for a while. He maintained a deep, suffocating silence, looking not at Dante but somewhere into empty space with eyes gone completely cold. After a long, agonizing stillness, Rhys answered in a frost-edged voice Dante had never once heard from him in all their years together.

“I see.”

For some reason, it sounded like a quiet murmur to himself.

“Come to think of it… perhaps it would be better to stop at this point. Otherwise…”

That murmur, which seemed to carry the weight of resignation and immense agony both, did not continue to the end.

“Let’s leave it here. Our relationship.”

And so, for the very first time in four years, Rhys was the one to speak of parting.

Instead of clinging to him, pulling him into his arms, and screaming that he loved him as Dante had implicitly expected, Rhys ended it in a dry, hollow voice—as if he had simply grown utterly, permanently exhausted by all of this. What Dante had desperately wanted was Rhys trapping him in his embrace with a feverish, burning voice. All he felt instead was cold, arid air.

Having placed the final, definitive period on their four years, Rhys turned and walked straight out of Dante’s home.

A moment later, the front door closed. Dante stood frozen, hoping against hope that the door which had shut with a hollow bang might open again after a few minutes.

But it never did.

The man Dante had always foolishly believed would someday return to him did not come back after that day.

***