When Ben wriggled in his arms, trying to get down, Haimar didn’t answer but tightened his grip around Ben’s waist, indicating that wasn’t going to happen.
Not wanting to waste energy, Ben quickly gave up, but sitting still made him restless.
Furthermore, it was too awkward for the man who never lost a verbal argument to remain silent.
He wasn’t talking, didn’t seem to want to let go, and Ben couldn’t figure out what he was thinking at all.
To break the awkwardness even slightly, Ben decided he should voice the complaints he hadn’t been able to say earlier.
“…I told you to just leave… but you didn’t listen at all…”
He was confident that even if he wasn’t stronger than Haimar, his skill in running his mouth had grown quite a bit.
It didn’t matter to Ben now that his voice was muffled, almost a murmur, as he rested his face against Haimar’s chest, leaning forward and relaxing his posture.
It was more important for the current Ben to continue the grumbling that he normally only kept inside, showing his drunken state without reserve and ignoring Haimar’s reaction.
“Ellyn makes me wear strange things… and the twins, too…”
“Just one question.”
“…Yes?”
Ben reflexively tilted his head at Haimar’s voice, which abruptly cut him off.
“Who were you trying to look good for, doing this?”
‘…Does it look like I’m doing this for anyone? Is he using a highly complex way of saying I look hideous? Honestly, why does he have to speak so cryptically.’
Ben couldn’t find an answer to the completely incomprehensible question and floundered.
“Thanks to you, I feel like I’m going crazy right now. What should I do?”
“Crazy…? Why crazy? No, you’re not. You’re fine.”
To make matters worse, now he was saying he was going crazy.
Puzzled by the inexplicable turn of events, Ben quickly raised his head and felt the spreading aura as he slowly embraced Haimar’s back.
The sensation flowing through his body couldn’t be described as the best, but it was stable, as always.
However, it carried a restless, fast, and unpleasant energy, leaving Ben bewildered by the unknown feeling.
Moreover, Haimar’s demeanor was too casual for someone who claimed to be going crazy.
The ambiguity in Haimar’s eyes made him more confused.
Unable to tell if he was being teased or if Haimar was genuinely uncomfortable, Ben habitually placed his palm on Haimar’s cheek.
“Wearing someone else’s clothes.”
Haimar then slowly whispered, burying his lips into Ben’s soft palm.
His lips, which held the faint warmth on his otherwise cool body, traced his palm, and his nose touched his skin.
“Getting someone else’s scent on you.”
Ben slightly pulled back his body at the escalating growl, but Haimar didn’t budge.
He felt completely trapped in the lion’s den before his eyes.
“You’re crying and you’re happily clinging to someone else. How am I supposed to not go crazy?”
A deep light momentarily flickered in his seemingly clear eyes, and his deeply suppressed smile changed in temperature.
Haimar slowly stroked Ben’s palm and then gently nipped Ben’s cheek, which was faintly colored peach-pink by the alcohol flush.
“Huh? You think I won’t go crazy?”
A very low, languid voice clung to Ben’s earlobe.
Simultaneously, it became the ignition point, and a spark instantly ignited and spread across Ben’s face and body.
His slightly hazy mind felt as though it had been doused with cold water, instantly sobering him up.
The hand around his waist tightened further, pulling their bodies flush together without a gap, and the hand moving up his neck felt bland yet somehow sticky.
Ben struggled to organize his confused thoughts.
He carefully dissected each word he had heard to understand the true intention behind them.
First of all, when Haimar said he was “annoyed” earlier, he hadn’t meant that Ben was bothersome because he was high-maintenance, but…
“D-do you mean you were annoyed by this appearance…?”
“What if I were?”
When Ben pointed at his own figure, which he deemed utterly ridiculous, Haimar didn’t give a specific answer; instead, he lightly kissed the underside of Ben’s ear and neck, which were now burning hot.
He didn’t know how to calm his heart, which had started pounding without fail at the gently falling butterfly kisses.
The only question that arose was, “Why? Why Haimar?”
Doesn’t this sound like… jealousy?
The only conclusion Ben could draw from the fact that Haimar didn’t want to see him in someone else’s clothes, with someone else’s scent, and with someone else, was that it was jealousy.
And at the same time, he couldn’t understand it.
Why would Haimar be jealous of something that he would normally be jealous of?
This kind of jealousy only happened with someone you liked…
The wings of his thoughts, having sped off without restraint, drove his face, which was merely peach-pink, into an overripe scarlet ruby, on the verge of dropping off.
His heart pounded fiercely right beneath his flushed skin.
No. Don’t misunderstand.
Maybe because he had been drinking, he was going too far.
Maybe Haimar was just being nice because Ben was the Guide whose relationship with him needed to be maintained.
Ben shook his head back and forth, trying to clear his mind of random thoughts.
“Stay still.”
Perhaps Haimar perceived his movements to dispel the thoughts as attempts to evade the kiss, so he grabbed Ben’s chin and fixed his face onto his.
Haimar’s thick gaze wove around Ben like a dense net, trapping him.
As Haimar lowered his lips to Ben’s eyes and gently nipped his earlobe with sweetness, Ben’s random thoughts couldn’t easily detach and surged back in.
The feeling of a tingling sensation in his chest, following the sensation of lips pressing down on his skin, made him feel as though he were something precious to Haimar.
Ben wanted to dive headfirst into this sweet delusion.
He wished it weren’t a delusion.
He hoped that the source of this tenderness was, even slightly, for a reason similar to his own feelings.
It was difficult to hold back and suppress his soaring heart.
No. He couldn’t take it anymore.
He could no longer maintain the “appropriate distance” that Hoaphilen Legius had spoken of.
Whether they grew apart or closer, if things continued like this, his heart would first pound itself to death or burn completely black.
The definition of the relationship he wanted to create kept whispering for an answer from deep within.
“Wait—”
“Hoaphilen Legius—”
Huh?
“Did she tell you to keep your distance from me?”
However, before Ben could seek an answer from Haimar, an unexpected topic popped up.
As a result, Ben forgot his original question and simply blinked with wide, round eyes.
Did Haimar know he had met Hoaphilen?
Well, if he used his ability, it wasn’t impossible to know.
Moreover, the question that followed the acknowledgment of the meeting was even more startling.
The nuance was that Haimar knew roughly what kind of conversation they had, and yet asking Ben meant that Haimar needed some kind of confirmation.
It meant he understood the general context but not the minute details of what was exchanged.
It was a slight relief that his mind was somewhat functional, despite the influence of the alcohol.
Ben, who discerned Haimar’s intention from the question that was similar but subtly wrong, couldn’t readily answer and bit his lip.
Recalling her words choked him up, even though he hadn’t committed any crime.
Anyone who wasn’t a dense little kid would know that now was the perfect time to talk about what he had wanted to say all along.
Ben, who was quite quick-witted, had a strong intuition that if he didn’t speak now, he would miss the opportunity forever.
Although the words he was originally going to say weren’t much different from the current topic, having been triggered by the meeting with Hoaphilen Legius, there was a big difference between being questioned by Haimar and initiating the conversation himself.
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
Haimar, who had been waiting persistently, clearly intending to hear the answer, stroked Ben’s cheek soothingly.
Gaining a little courage from that touch, Ben squeezed his eyes shut and parted his lips.
“…She said it was important to maintain an appropriate distance from you.”
The voice that released the words he had been chewing on since hearing them came out more calmly than he expected.
Once he uttered one sentence, adding two more was easy.
“I was just a Guide who happened to be a good match for you… and that if it were the right place, anyone else would have been fine besides me. Now that I’ve heard it, it’s not wrong, but…”
“—So.”
He didn’t want to admit it.
He wanted to argue that it was okay because he was Ben Plaskun, not just ‘the Guide’.
But Ben couldn’t bring himself to finish his sentence and swallowed, watching Haimar’s expression.
It was just his own thought, and he couldn’t assume Haimar felt the same way.
His heart ached, as if someone had clutched it, at the judgment so detached from his true feelings. After saying it, he was extremely nervous about Haimar’s reaction.
What should he do if Haimar simply smiled calmly and agreed that it was the right thing to do?
Should he pretend to be unfazed, babbling something clueless like, ‘I knew it would be like that?’
The anxiety made his fingertips cold, and the heat that had flushed his face subsided.
Ben lowered his gaze, not daring to read Haimar’s expression.
He was afraid of Haimar’s lips, which he could vaguely see at the edge of his vision.
He was both curious and not curious about how Haimar would react to his words.
“Ben.”
“W-wait, I’m not ready to hear—”
The moment Haimar’s lips finally parted, Ben quickly pressed his hand over Haimar’s mouth.
He couldn’t look at Haimar directly and instead stared at the faintly pale tips of his own fingernails.
His stomach churned, and his heart, racing with anxiety, seemed poised to leap out of his throat.
He felt the shape of Haimar’s mouth pressed against his palm.
Haimar silently complied with his wish, even though he could have easily pulled his hand away.
Ben swallowed a gulp of his tension and slowly, very slowly, raised his gaze.
Then, a blue, deep as the sea and sparkling with the reflection of light, permeated him like a wave.
Haimar’s unwavering, utterly direct eyes swept away his ceaseless anxiety and illuminated the deep shadow that had hung over him.
“……”
His thoughts stopped.
The heart-wrenching anxiety melted and vanished, as if it had passed its melting point.
To Ben, who felt suspended in that moment as if time itself had stopped, only Haimar filled his existence.
Something must have completely taken him over.
Otherwise, he couldn’t be this utterly blank, as if his mind had been cleanly wiped.
