Chapter 13

The words escaped before he could think, startling Myeong-joo more than anyone. The shop owner had already ordered the chickens, and all Myeong-joo could think about was getting them home to the girls before they cooled.

Yi-tan studied him for a moment before answering. “I will give you a ride, Instructor.”

Myeong-joo waved his hands frantically. “No, there’s no need to go to such lengths…”

For reasons he could never articulate, whenever he stood before this man, his normally sharp speech turned clumsy and muddled. Perhaps because his refusal lacked conviction, Yi-tan did not seem to register it as a rejection. Had he understood, a man of his refined gentlemanly manners would never have pressed twice to avoid causing discomfort. Instead, Yi-tan rounded the hood and opened the passenger door wide, making his intention to chauffeur him abundantly clear. In the end, Myeong-joo had no choice but to climb inside.

He glanced up at Lee Yi-tan, who remained holding the passenger door, looking down at him with an unreadable gaze. Having spent the entire day hauling cylinders through grimy streets, Myeong-joo hesitated, painfully self-conscious of the dust and oil stains clinging to his clothes.

“Look, I really… my clothes are filthy today,” Myeong-joo began hesitantly. “Couldn’t we just step aside somewhere nearby to speak for a moment?”

“There is nowhere suitable around here. Does my car make you uncomfortable?”

“No, not at all,” Myeong-joo replied.

With the question posed so directly, Myeong-joo could hesitate no longer and climbed into the sedan.

Settling into a state-of-the-art sedan equipped with a car phone filled him with an uncomfortable sense of privilege. During the years he had lived under Major Lee Yi-tan’s roof as an impoverished brother-in-law, Myeong-joo had driven cars of this class himself. Now, even a battered delivery bicycle felt like a luxury. Yet Yi-tan rounded the hood and took the driver’s seat without the slightest sign that Myeong-joo’s dusty clothes bothered him, leaving Myeong-joo to realize the discomfort belonged entirely to himself.

As Yi-tan slid into the seat beside him, the sudden physical proximity made it difficult to draw a full breath. An unbearable awkwardness weighed down on him above all else. Since he could easily guess the topic of discussion, he wanted to finish it swiftly and get out.

The moment Yi-tan shut the driver’s door, Myeong-joo spoke up. “Look, this came as a shock to me too. I’ll make sure to turn it down on my end, so…”

Yi-tan looked at him evenly. “What exactly are you turning down?”

Smoothing the hem of his overcoat with deliberate precision, Yi-tan turned his head to gaze steadily at Myeong-joo. Outside, the orange twilight of the setting sun was blocked by the sun visor, casting sharp, deep shadows across Yi-tan’s sculpted face. His dark irises were cloaked in shadow, rendering the thoughts beneath impossible to read.

Unable to tell whether Yi-tan was offended or simply inquiring with complete neutrality, Myeong-joo fell silent. He had assumed as a matter of course that Yi-tan came hoping he would decline. Now that the man’s purpose had become an impenetrable mystery, bewilderment seized him. Raking fingers through hair that was undoubtedly coated in delivery dust, he cleared his throat with an awkward hum.

“Then what brought you all the way here?” Myeong-joo asked bluntly.

It would have been better to speak more circumspectly, but Myeong-joo’s patience was wearing thin. Had they met anywhere other than his workplace, he might not have felt so flustered. His stained leather bomber jacket, bought secondhand near an American military base, was sturdy and tear-resistant, yet for meeting an old unrequited love, it was wretchedly shabby. Had he at least been decently dressed, he might not have felt this desperate urge to flee. Regret gnawed at him; he should have at least washed his face before stepping out.

“It troubled me that you heard the news from Major Lee first,” Yi-tan replied, his tone low and deliberate. “That is why I came.”

Major Lee undoubtedly meant Lee Yi-ho. It struck Myeong-joo as oddly cold that Yi-tan referred to his elder half-brother by rank rather than any familial form of address, but what truly stopped him was Yi-tan calling the contents of that telephone call “news.” To Myeong-joo, “misunderstanding” seemed far more accurate.

While Myeong-joo hesitated, Yi-tan continued speaking, his voice holding a heavy resonance that caught his listener completely off guard.

“I understand a marriage proposal was made.”

Myeong-joo hesitated for several agonizing moments before finally giving a slow, reluctant nod. “Yes. I received such a call.”

“…”

At Myeong-joo’s confirmation, Yi-tan fixed him with an unwavering stare. Myeong-joo desperately wished to avert his eyes, but the sedan’s interior, which had seemed spacious moments ago, now felt suffocatingly cramped, offering nowhere to hide. Regardless of the past, Yi-tan was both his former cadet and a grown man; the mere fact that marriage talks had been broached might have felt humiliating to him. Myeong-joo wondered if Yi-tan’s intense stare in the Defense Research Institute waiting room had been because he foresaw what was coming.

Yi-tan had likely expected Cha Myeong-joo to flatly reject Lee Yi-ho’s proposal the second he heard it. Finding his former instructor swept along without giving an outright refusal, he must have found it so bizarre that he had come in person to investigate. Ashamed to meet Yi-tan’s eyes, Myeong-joo lowered his head.

It was then.

“I would like you to accept,” Yi-tan said quietly.

Myeong-joo choked on his breath. “…What did you say, Lieutenant?”

He had fully expected a plea to decline first, intending to conceal his own bitter ache and agree without fuss. Even granted a second chance at life, he had never dared covet the husband of his deceased sister. Yet the gaze Yi-tan turned upon him was unyielding as stone.

“I need you, Instructor.”

Those words hit him like a thunderclap. At the same time, he came dangerously close to answering that he would do so immediately. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined hearing such words from Yi-tan’s lips. It had always been Myeong-joo who needed Yi-tan; the thought that the reverse could ever occur had never once crossed his mind.

Realizing he had been on the verge of nodding fervently, Myeong-joo clamped both hands over his own mouth in horror. As if forcibly sealing the lips of a reckless fool about to betray a fatal secret, he pressed his palms hard against his mouth. Yi-tan watched him in silence for several moments before slowly reaching out a hand.

Myeong-joo remained struck utterly dumb.

“…”

A suffocating silence filled the interior of the car. Like someone smothered beneath invisible, sodden cotton, Myeong-joo could not move a muscle, merely watching unguardedly as Yi-tan’s hand drew closer. A moment later, Yi-tan gently grasped Myeong-joo’s wrists and drew his hands away from his mouth.

“You know well how vital harmonization is to an Aberrant,” Yi-tan explained, his gaze steady. “I have an idiosyncratic constitution where the rate of harmonization absorption fluctuates dramatically according to wavelength. With the vast majority of Harmonizers, my compatibility is critically poor.”

The explanation was intimately familiar. For that exact reason, Yi-tan had taken Myeong-in as his wife in the past timeline. Every Harmonizer possessed an innate wavelength of harmonization; while ordinary Aberrants were rarely sensitive to subtle variations, Lee Yi-tan was so exquisitely attuned that only Myeong-in’s wavelength had aligned like a custom key. That was why the Lee clan had dispatched marriage divination cards before Myeong-in even received her enlistment notice. Knowing all of this, Myeong-joo waited quietly for what followed.

“The wavelength of my supernatural power aligns best with yours, Instructor.”

Strangely, he looked desperate. As the sun sank beneath the horizon, the angle of twilight shifted, slipping beneath the sun visor. The dying red glow invaded his eyes. An unsettling fervor and an unidentifiable luminescence swirled together like chaos, boring straight into Cha Myeong-joo.

“Th-that’s impossible, Lieutenant,” Myeong-joo stammered, denying it before his brain could even process the words.

It could not be true. The harmonization that fit Lee Yi-tan’s wavelength like a matched pair belonged to Myeong-in, not to him. Yet the young officer seemed to believe Myeong-joo was rejecting him out of hand; a faint furrow deepened between his brows, betraying his displeasure.

“As far as I know, you do not have an active partner,” Yi-tan said.

A partner—what was he talking about? As Myeong-joo parted his lips in utter stupor at the unexpected phrase, Yi-tan clicked his tongue softly before speaking in a calmer, more subdued cadence.

“If you lack an Aberrant partner, I am saying you could consider me.”

“But that’s…” Myeong-joo trailed off.

Talk of official partnerships belonged to the days when Cha Myeong-joo was still a soldier. Had he not been discharged from the military years ago due to his dismal harmonization ability? While a far more decisive cause had triggered his dismissal, had he truly possessed extraordinary talent, he would never have been cast aside so ruthlessly.

“I am still an inferior cadet who has not fully completed your training, Instructor.”

While Myeong-joo floundered for a reply, Yi-tan’s next words struck his ears like an outrageous insult.

“Who on earth dares call you inferior? Who would dare say that!” Myeong-joo demanded, his eyes blazing.

Who dared speak ill of a national savior, a peerless Aberrant whose every advance drove the demonic fiends lurking on this soil one step closer to the southern sea? The brief time Yi-tan had served alongside him in uniform, and even the years he had stood as his brother-in-law, had been Myeong-joo’s greatest source of pride.

Watching Myeong-joo’s eyes blaze with protective fury, Yi-tan lowered his head slightly. The corners of his lips seemed to lift in a fleeting smile, though Myeong-joo could not see it clearly in the dimming light.

“I say it of myself,” Yi-tan murmured, bowing his head slightly. “Major Lee has the Chief of Staff, and my sister has my brother-in-law, but I have no one, Instructor.”

Myeong-joo immediately understood that Yi-tan was speaking of his precarious place within Chief of Staff Lee Hui-eum’s household. However heroic he was outside it, Lee Yi-ho had once made his footing at home dangerously uncertain. In Myeong-joo’s memory, Yi-tan would soon win battle after battle against the demonic fiends and establish himself so firmly that his reputation as the Chief of Staff’s heir would become unquestioned. But the young officer sitting before him knew nothing of that brilliant future. The thought made Myeong-joo ache for him, yet he could hardly promise him a destiny no one else had lived through.

“…I heard you intended to participate in the Defense Research Institute’s drug trials,” Yi-tan noted after a pause.

“That’s…”

Since Lee Yi-ho had mentioned it, Myeong-joo knew the information had inevitably reached Yi-tan, yet hearing him bring it up so directly caught him off guard. Observing Myeong-joo’s troubled expression, Yi-tan took note of the hesitation in his eyes.

“I will pay you double the amount the institute offered,” Yi-tan proposed firmly. “I will employ you as my Harmonizer.”

Myeong-joo stared at him in stunned silence.

A strange tension lay between the businesslike word employ and the intimacy of my Harmonizer. Myeong-joo could neither challenge the phrasing nor pretend not to hear it. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and sat there looking hopelessly undecided.

Yi-tan watched him for a long moment before letting out a quiet sigh. “I was too impatient today. Allow me to drive you home, Instructor.”

“Ah…”

Faced with that, Myeong-joo could hardly insist on parting ways on the spot. Determined to keep his word, Yi-tan drove him to the market in complete silence. Upon arrival, he unilaterally declared that he would wait by the curb until Myeong-joo finished his errand.

Intent on thanking him and bidding farewell, Myeong-joo was left without a chance to speak, practically sprinting toward the fried chicken eatery the boss had recommended. The thought of Lee Yi-tan’s luxury sedan idling at the roadside weighed heavily on his conscience.

Myeong-joo bought five whole chickens fried in a great iron cauldron, along with a crate of tangerines from the neighboring fruit stall. The rich smell of fried chicken flooded Yi-tan’s immaculate sedan at once. The car had already felt too fine for Myeong-joo; now the leather seat seemed to sprout thorns beneath him.

When the gas shop owner had offered the reward, Myeong-joo had felt immensely proud and joyful, but right now, he felt an absurd urge to hurl the greasy paper bags straight out the window. At the same time, he despised himself for such thoughts. To let this pathetic unrequited love momentarily demote the sisters he had sworn to put above all else made him sick with guilt.

“I apologize for this… the smell is quite strong,” Myeong-joo murmured sheepishly.

“It is quite all right,” Yi-tan replied gently. “We ought to arrive before it cools. Your youngest sister will be delighted.”

Unlike during their intense exchange earlier, Yi-tan spoke in a calm, courteous manner. Touched that he had actually remembered little Myeong-hui, Myeong-joo found himself strangely intimidated by such tenderness, unable to offer another word. He parted his lips several times before pressing them firmly shut.

Soon, the sedan pulled up before the hillside shantytown where Myeong-joo lived. Seeing Yi-tan turn the steering wheel toward an alleyway too narrow for a handcart to pass, Myeong-joo adamantly intervened. “The neighborhood is too rough, and I’d be embarrassed, so let’s part ways here. It was good to see you today…”

Yi-tan said nothing, his gaze darkening slightly. Displeased by the parting words, Yi-tan remained quiet for several beats before speaking just as Myeong-joo moved to gather the fruit crate and paper bags.

“Please consider it,” Yi-tan said softly. “You are the only one I have, Instructor.”

Myeong-joo could not find the voice to reply.

That this wretched, low-tier Harmonizer could be the young hero’s only hope felt surreal. Unable to bring himself to refute those words, Myeong-joo stepped out into the night, letting the soft click of the closing car door serve as his answer. Whether his inability to say My sister is the true, perfect match for you stemmed from a desire to safeguard Myeong-in’s hard-won freedom or from some foolish, lingering attachment of his own, he truly could not tell.

The sedan remained stationary, compelling Myeong-joo to turn away first. Climbing the steep path toward their shack perched atop the hillside shantytown, each step felt heavier than a thousand years. Perhaps because no sound of the departing engine reached him, he found himself unable to look back, which only deepened the weight.

***