Chapter 16

The hallway stretched out endlessly. Long fluorescent tubes suspended by cords hung from the ceiling; given the woman’s extraordinary height, it seemed as though the crown of her head might brush the fixtures at any moment. She appeared taller even than Lee Yi-tan, who was already more than a handspan taller than Myeong-joo. Remembering her stature triggered a sudden recollection.

“Just before meeting you, I saw a demonic fiend in the alley,” Myeong-joo said, his voice echoing down the chilled corridor.

The metallic clatter of her combat boots and the soft scuff of his cheap canvas shoes were the only sounds following his words. When she gave no reply, Myeong-joo glanced back over his shoulder.

“Shouldn’t we report it to the Capital Defense Special Forces?” he pressed.

“I’m getting off work soon,” she replied in a dry monotone.

She resumed walking as though bored by the entire matter. Dumbfounded, Myeong-joo decided there was no point pressing her. Then who was he supposed to tell? And why had Lee Yi-ho summoned him only to vanish? Being pulled back and forth between the two brothers only deepened his confusion.

At last the corridor ended. At the corner, the woman pivoted a precise ninety degrees. The movement was unquestionably disciplined, yet there was something faintly unnerving about its exactness. Myeong-joo followed her a few steps farther before she stopped abruptly.

“You will go inside,” she commanded crisply.

“In here?”

Opening the first door along the passage, she jerked her chin toward the interior. Darkness blanketed the room within. When Myeong-joo hesitated on the threshold, she let out an audible, exasperated sigh.

“And I was just about to leave,” she grumbled under her breath, voicing her complaint without bothering to lower her volume.

Stepping inside out of necessity, Myeong-joo felt an inward prick of irritation that he was being hurried along merely for her shift change, though he swallowed his feelings in silence.

The interior was pitch-black, making it difficult to take even a couple of paces forward. What on earth is this… Just as he was murmuring inwardly in bewilderment, the overhead lights flooded the room with sudden brilliance.

Stepping from complete darkness into intense glare made his vision swim with sudden shock. As Myeong-joo furrowed his brow and shielded his eyes with a raised palm, a quiet presence stirred within the chamber.

“Instructor.”

It was Lee Yi-tan.

Startled, Myeong-joo lifted his head to look at him. Though they had met only yesterday outside the shop, in the span of a single night, the young officer’s features had grown remarkably sharp. Across the finely sculpted contours of his handsome face lay an aura of high-strung tension, like a man tormented by chronic sleeplessness. A sudden surge of worry tightened Myeong-joo’s chest, yet unable to show it, he remained frozen where he stood; it was then that he noticed the thick gauze wrapped around Yi-tan’s hand, stained with what looked like dried reddish-brown blood.

“Lieutenant, are you hurt?” Myeong-joo asked in alarm, taking a step forward.

The moment he spoke, a harsh screech of feedback tore from an intercom speaker mounted on the wall, followed by a disembodied voice.

[Compatibility Test, Test Number 216, commencing. Are you prepared?]

“What on earth…”

Turning his head in confusion, Myeong-joo noticed an expansive pane of glass lining one wall of the room. It resembled a mirror far more than a window, reflecting his own image with crystal clarity. Through the glass reflection, he could also see Lee Yi-tan’s profile. Facing the two-way mirror directly, the officer gave a firm nod of readiness.

“What is the meaning of this, Lieutenant?” Myeong-joo demanded.

“We are going to conduct a compatibility test,” Yi-tan said. “Between you and me, Instructor.”

With his uninjured hand, Yi-tan slowly swept his dark hair back from his forehead. The pale, taut expression he had worn until then suddenly eased into a faint smile, and he crooked a finger at Myeong-joo.

“Over here,” Yi-tan said softly.

“A compatibility test?” Questioning the absurdity even as he spoke, Myeong-joo reflexively stepped toward him. Unnerved by the absence of Yi-tan’s usual leisurely composure, anxiety gnawed at him. He wanted to ask how the hand had been injured, but the shocking instructions crackling from the speaker drove every other thought from his mind.

[Compatibility testing is conducted via mucosal contact. For convenience, oral mucosal contact is substituted. The Harmonizer and Aberrant shall maintain oral mucosal contact for one minute. Begin when ready.]

“What kind of nonsense is that?” Myeong-joo asked the empty air in disbelief.

With only the two of them inside the chamber, Harmonizer clearly meant him and Aberrant meant Yi-tan. But oral mucosal contact—that was nothing less than an order to kiss each other on the mouth.

“Instructor.”

Standing in utter shock, Myeong-joo turned his head to look at Yi-tan, his face asking how such a bizarre situation could possibly be unfolding. Yet Lee Yi-tan was gazing back with an impassive expression. His eyes were calm, but held an unsettling, unyielding intensity. Blinking in a daze, Myeong-joo unconsciously took a step backward.

“Th-this makes no sense. Why would I, why would you…” Myeong-joo stammered, backing away.

Faced with the directive to press their lips together, Yi-tan seemed to harbor no objection whatsoever. He appeared so nonchalant, as though he had known all along, leaving Myeong-joo’s face burning with mortification.

Observing Myeong-joo’s panic, Yi-tan spoke in a gentle, coaxing tone. “Instructor, it is only a kiss. We are simply testing our compatibility.”

Myeong-joo stared at him in stunned silence.

At those words, all thought ground to a halt. Merely a kiss? The vivid memory of how agonizingly difficult even the slightest touch had once been flooded his senses. To kiss a man whom he had felt sinful merely gazing upon was an absolute impossibility.

Murmuring like someone who had lost his wits, he shook his head. “No, this cannot happen. I cannot…”

“Instructor.” Yi-tan caught Myeong-joo’s wrist in a gentle grasp. The pleading cadence in his voice made Myeong-joo’s eyes flutter. Something hot surged up from the pit of his stomach.

“Are you truly all right with this?” Myeong-joo asked, his voice trembling. “With kissing me?”

Yi-tan offered no answer, merely holding Myeong-joo’s gaze without wavering.

It struck Myeong-joo belatedly that what felt monumental to him might be trivial to Yi-tan. Seeing that steady look, a painful ache bloomed in his chest, as though Yi-tan was asking why he was making such a fuss over a routine procedure. It felt as if he alone was overreacting to a sterile, standard medical check, chilling him to the bone.

Yet thinking cold and rationally, compatibility testing was an indispensable milestone. Although Yi-tan had proposed marriage first, Myeong-joo still could not believe their compatibility was truly superior; he wanted to see concrete numbers with his own eyes.

Whether he wished to refute Yi-tan’s claim or secretly longed for reassurance, he harbored a desire to verify the truth. Furthermore, the marriage was ultimately necessary to secure financial stability for his sisters. Stepping back, every part of this served a purpose, making him wonder why his heart was rebelling so violently.

Myeong-joo pulled his wrist free. Embarrassment washed over him at the thought that he must look like some awkward, unsophisticated bachelor who knew nothing of the world. Yi-tan might have been Myeong-joo’s brother-in-law in another life, but to Yi-tan, Cha Myeong-joo was merely a former instructor who had once taught him the basics. Physical contact between Aberrants and Harmonizers was routine in the Special Forces. His violent reaction must have looked absurd.

“This is entirely improper,” Myeong-joo insisted, pulling his wrist back.

Yet Myeong-joo possessed his own sense of pride. Though uneducated and raised in poverty, he strove to live by personal codes of honor, and kissing another man before spectators was utterly unacceptable. No matter how frequent physical contact might be in the ranks, they had their customs and Cha Myeong-joo had his proprieties. Pointing toward the mirrored wall, he stood his ground.

“That is no ordinary mirror, is it?” Myeong-joo said, gesturing toward the glass. “I will not engage in such shameless behavior before spectators, and neither should you. Uphold your dignity as an officer of Great Han!”

Myeong-joo fixed Yi-tan with a stern, authoritative stare. Though his voice trembled and his pupils shook with unrest, he struggled to complete his reprimand properly. It was an admonition directed not at a national hero, but at the young cadet he had once trained. Even if his cheeks burned as if ready to explode, he could not yield.

Yi-tan gave a low, quiet laugh. “…Haha.”

The sudden sound shattered the silence. Startled, Myeong-joo looked up, fearing the young man was mocking him. But Yi-tan slowly nodded in agreement.

“You are quite right, Instructor. We cannot have others watching our tongues intertwine, especially not inside your mouth,” Yi-tan said, stepping closer.

At the raw mention of tongues intertwining, Myeong-joo gasped in shock.

Before he could react, Yi-tan slipped an arm around his waist and guided him back against the wall. Myeong-joo gave a startled sound as the cold surface met his back. In the next breath he was enclosed completely within the officer’s space, a dark shadow falling over him—Yi-tan’s.

“…Instructor,” Yi-tan murmured in a low, thick voice, “you are always so rigid…”

Myeong-joo could not find a single breath to reply. The slow rise and fall of Yi-tan’s throat was painfully clear at this distance. Myeong-joo stood trapped between the cold wall and the man he had failed to let go of even after dying once. What kind of intoxicating, dizzying, impossible prison was this? His face tightened despite himself.

“You’re…” Myeong-joo remained completely frozen in place, unable to pull his gaze away from the intense scrutiny.

“…frowning,” Yi-tan whispered. A bandaged thumb reached out, lightly tracing the crease between the other man’s brows before Myeong-joo could even speak. “The compatibility test will observe the stabilization of my supernatural wavelength following the kiss.”

“…Does it truly have to be a kiss?”

Having held his breath, the question barely slipped past his lips. Terrified that his warm breath might brush against Yi-tan’s skin, he could not even inhale deeply, fearing their chests might collide. Tingling numbness spread through his limbs, forcing him to knit his brows once more just as Yi-tan smoothed them away. Something deep inside hummed with a resonant ache.

“What else could it be?” Yi-tan asked softly.

Myeong-joo fell into a stunned, breathless silence, his heart hammering violently against his ribs.

“I can hardly sleep with you in front of an audience, can I?”

“That is not what I meant—!”

The instant he parted his lips to deny it, something warm and soft invaded his mouth. Myeong-joo froze solid. Yi-tan’s lips pressed down with yielding firmness, delivering a familiar scent through his nostrils—a fragrance he had missed with every fiber of his being. The aftershave and cologne from Yi-tan’s bathroom in another life… Myeong-joo crumbled with a muffled groan.

“Mmh…”

Yi-tan’s grip tightened around his waist, thick arms encircling him with unyielding support. Unaware that he was leaning entirely into that embrace, Myeong-joo found all strength draining from his lower body. The tongue breaching his lips pushed his own aside before tangling against it with demanding hunger.

His heart hammered as though it might rupture his ribs. A kiss. Kissing Lee Yi-tan—his brother-in-law, his former student. It was something he had never dared imagine even in dreams. In all his nocturnal fantasies, they had merely held hands or shared warmth in a quiet embrace; even at thirty-five, he had restricted himself to innocent reveries for the sole reason that dreaming of anything more felt too utterly depraved.

“Ngh…”

He did not even realize the whimper was his own. Parting their lips by a fraction, he felt Yi-tan smile against his skin, the curved lips damp with saliva.

“You need to breathe, Instructor,” Yi-tan whispered.

His voice had dropped low and rough, yet it carried a force that made every nerve in Myeong-joo stand on end like chalk dragged across a blackboard. Myeong-joo obeyed without thinking, sucking in air as Yi-tan’s familiar scent flooded him again. Beneath the cologne lay another faint note, something warmer and more animal—a distinctly masculine scent. It was a startling glimpse of the wilder nature Yi-tan kept buried under his cold reason. Myeong-joo had known him since he was shorter than himself and had spent years thinking of him as his dependable brother-in-law; this side of him felt almost unreal.

“Where did you learn to part your legs like that?” Yi-tan growled.

“…What?”

“You shouldn’t be so naturally accommodating,” Yi-tan muttered darkly.

With that harsh murmur, Yi-tan sealed their lips once more.