Chapter 64

The rhythmic click of the turn signal echoed inside the car. Stroking his jaw lightly, Hae-gun exhaled a faint sigh as he navigated the turn.

“I have no idea why the conversation took this turn, but for the record, I’ve never dated anyone either.”

“You haven’t, Hae-gun-ssi?” Eui-rim blurted in shock.

“I’m an uncanny monster who can’t even walk the streets without a mask. Who would want to date someone like me?”

“But you said fellow high-rankers were unaffected,” Eui-rim countered.

Hadn’t Shim Woo-joo spoken with him without an ounce of revulsion? In fact, most individuals linked in scandals with Seo Hae-gun were fellow high-rankers or psychic New Humans. Among them, the rumor concerning Vice Guild Master Lee Seonha was treated as open truth, and the gossip Eui-rim recalled could easily fill two hands.

The disgust dredged up by Kim Si-hoon had subsided, but Eui-rim had no room to care. The unexpected confession hung heavy in the air.

“Well,” Hae-gun murmured.

Despite Eui-rim’s skepticism, Hae-gun merely shrugged, gazing quietly through the rain-streaked windshield. A beat later, he tossed out an unexpected question.

“If you ever dated someone, Eui-rim-ssi, what do you think you’d do first with your partner?”

Suppressing a sudden flush of fluster, Eui-rim replied, “I’ve never thought about it.”

“Then shall we rephrase it? What do ordinary people do when they date?”

Is he teasing me? I said I don’t know because I’ve never experienced it.

“I don’t know,” Eui-rim muttered, looking away.

“Usually, they start with a meal. Sharing food is the most natural way to spend time with someone you like.”

“I suppose so.”

“Except I despise eating meals with other people. Watching them eat turns my stomach.”

Eui-rim knew that well; Ahn Moonhyuk had attested to Hae-gun’s severe dining aversion firsthand.

“Could someone like that date, let alone kiss someone?” Hae-gun mused, his voice quiet.

“You eat perfectly fine with me, though,” Eui-rim blurted.

At the unvarnished words, Hae-gun turned his head. In the dark navy depths fixed upon Eui-rim, an indescribable emotion rippled like quiet waves before dissipating into stillness.

Pitter-patter, tap…<

The relentless drum of rain swallowed the sudden silence. Trapped at a red light, the drone of traffic and distant horns faded into white noise.

“Now that you mention it, you’re right.”

Surprisingly, Hae-gun was the first to break eye contact. The moment the light flashed green, he shifted gears and pressed the accelerator, surging forward through the spray.

“Could it be that I have feelings for you, Eui-rim-ssi?”

“What?”

Eui-rim snapped back against his seat in sheer shock. His mind went entirely white at the impossible question. The tension in his chest flared anew, but this time it wasn’t nausea—a wild, frantic pulse hammered violently beneath his earlobes, deafening in its intensity.

What is happening to me? Has the indigestion really not subsided?

The incomprehensible sensation left him utterly defenseless. A strange, heavy weight settled in the pit of his stomach, his body flushing as if struck by a sudden fever, heat searing the back of his neck.

“Just a joke,” Hae-gun murmured.

As Eui-rim sat frozen, rubbing at the fiery heat on his nape, Hae-gun added in an easy, casual drawl, “Even if I do harbor affection for you, it isn’t in that sense, so don’t misunderstand.”

“…I didn’t misunderstand,” Eui-rim muttered.

Eui-rim couldn’t fathom why a sharp spark of irritation flared in his chest. He had only been flustered because Hae-gun dropped such an absurd line out of nowhere. Yet hearing him append ‘don’t misunderstand’ left Eui-rim feeling inexplicably, stubbornly aggrieved.

Unclenching his fists, blood rushed back into his throbbing fingertips. He had gripped his hands so hard that deep crescent marks were gouged into his palms.

Striving to sound entirely unfazed, Eui-rim forced his voice to remain steady. Even for a fleeting second, he refused to let Hae-gun see how thoroughly he had been unmoored.

“Then have you always eaten meals alone?”

“Hm?”

“Meals, I mean. Given what Ahn Moonhyuk told me, and seeing that you never eat with the guild members either.”

“Ah, that. Well, not strictly every time, but generally, I’ve always preferred to eat alone.”

Now that’s fascinating in its own way.

When discussing their contract, Hae-gun had naturally taken him to a restaurant, leading Eui-rim to assume there were others the man shared meals with. Hearing this now, Eui-rim was astonished to realize that not even his own guild members had ever crossed that line.

“Since when did you start doing that?”

At the casual question, Hae-gun glanced over at him. His brow furrowed slightly deeper than before, as though he were assessing the intent behind the inquiry.

Rubbing the fingernail impressions on his palm with his thumb, Eui-rim added, “Back when you were on the national archery team, you lived in the athletes’ village. I wondered if you ate alone back then, too.”

Fortunately, Hae-gun entertained the question without any trace of irritation. Searching his memories of the previous timeline, Eui-rim began cross-referencing what he knew.

“Did it worsen after you awakened as a New Human?” Eui-rim asked.

“Probably? Though I don’t remember the exact point in time.”

A strange sense of déjà vu crept down Eui-rim’s spine.

A point in time lost to memory.

At that vague yet familiar phrasing, the abnormal status condition afflicting Hae-gun flashed through Eui-rim’s mind.

“There wasn’t a specific trigger?” Eui-rim asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.”

Tap, tap

Hae-gun tapped the steering wheel out of habit. “It probably wasn’t right after awakening. Even though my senses became unusually sharp, back then I didn’t have any trouble eating.”

The more casually Hae-gun explained it, the heavier Eui-rim’s heart sank. If this wasn’t hypersensitivity developed upon awakening, it was likely another side effect incurred from crossing the timeline.

Opening Hae-gun’s status window, the familiar details materialized before him. Eui-rim bit his lower lip, fixing his gaze on the secondary window at the bottom—the warning signaling his abnormal status condition.

Was that aversion the culprit behind Hae-gun’s visceral rejection of dining with others?

If the world felt an uncanny discomfort in Hae-gun’s presence, did he likewise perceive a jarring dissonance and aversion whenever he looked at others?

It was difficult to say with certainty. The aversion Hae-gun experienced was deeply internal, lacking an overt physical anchor like the mask to demarcate past and present.

If Eui-rim could speak with the 〈Seo Hae-gun〉 of his previous life, the answer would come quickly. But with no way to bridge that gap, he could only piece together the truth from what few clues he had.

“What are you pondering so deeply?” Hae-gun asked.

Feeling a tickle near his ear, Eui-rim turned to find Hae-gun reaching out, lightly tugging a lock of his hair. It was a casual, habitual gesture.

“It tickles.”

“Then why did you suddenly clamp your mouth shut? Making a person curious.”

“It wasn’t anything interesting enough to be curious about.”

“Tell me anyway. It’s bothering me.”

“Mm…” Eui-rim read the text in the warning window once more before dismissing the interface. Looking over, he said softly, “I was just thinking… that you must have been very lonely.”

Even if he still couldn’t lay bare his deepest thoughts.

“Aside from sharing meals, you’ve lived without being able to blend in anywhere. For a very long time,” Eui-rim murmured.

To be severed from everyone one day, drifting without ever being able to truly belong. Had Eui-rim been in Hae-gun’s shoes, far from brushing it off, he might not have even been able to endure it. He likely would have crumbled under the weight of such profound alienation.

“So… I thought it was a relief that I, at least, could be an exception,” Eui-rim said softly.

“…”

“Eating alone once in a while is one thing, but doing it every single day must be terribly dreary.” Eui-rim remembered feeling that way when he returned to school after his family’s funeral, lingering silently on the periphery of his classmates. “So, um… what I’m trying to say is—” He rubbed the back of his neck with a sheepish smile, struggling for the right words. “On days when you don’t want to eat alone, I’ll keep you company. Aside from supporting you, Hae-gun-ssi, I don’t have much else to do anyway.”

Eui-rim knew all too well how uncharacteristic the offer sounded. Having never properly confronted his own loneliness, voicing such sentiment felt completely foreign.

Yet despite that, he couldn’t hold back the words. Because all the discomfort Hae-gun was enduring was, in the end, rooted in Eui-rim.

Because Eui-rim had chosen to return to the past.

Hae-gun had become that much lonelier.

Entering another congested stretch of road, the car ground to a halt. Though the rain had beaten down fiercely moments ago, the shower had begun to taper off into a light mist.

Eui-rim deliberately avoided Hae-gun’s gaze, stubbornly fixing his eyes on the fine drizzle outside the window.

And to soothe the stirring warmth in his chest, he pressed his thumb repeatedly into the web of his hand, until the crawling car began to cruise forward once more. Perhaps even long after that.

[END of VOLUME 2]