* * *
Dazzling sunlight filtered into the room.
At the sound of birds chirping, Suhyeon’s eyelids fluttered open.
—Hey, Chae Suhyeon.
The moment he woke, waves of unpleasant memories rushed in.
The memories of that terror, fear, rage, and resentment that had consumed his reason were vivid.
His entire body stiffened instantly.
He had definitely been confronting Do Yejun—when did he lose consciousness?
—Suhyeon, breath. Please breathe.
However, at the next fragment of memory that surfaced, Suhyeon felt a small sense of relief.
Right. Hajin had come. He had been panting while held in Hajin’s arms…… and then darkness.
Suhyeon, who had been tensed up, leaned his back against the bed and let out a long breath.
Suddenly feeling a stinging sensation, he looked down to see dark blue bruises on his pale wrist.
It was where Do Yejun had gripped and shaken him.
“Are you awake?”
Suhyeon’s shoulders flinched at the voice that came out of nowhere.
A familiar, firm arm wrapped gently around his waist.
It was Hajin.
Whether he had been drinking coffee or not, his unique refreshing scent was mixed with a bitter aroma.
He hadn’t even realized someone was in the room.
Suhyeon noticed a beat late that it wasn’t the only thing he had missed.
The place in his field of vision was unfamiliar.
He was sitting in a room he had never seen before, not a hospital ward.
It was a neatly decorated room in black, shimmering with Hajin’s scent.
As Suhyeon blinked, a low chuckle reached his ears.
“It’s my room.”
Hajin’s room. I see. It seemed they had returned home while he was out.
Perhaps it was because of the memories of last night swirling in his head despite having just woken up, but Suhyeon felt a wave of fatigue and toyed with the edge of the black blanket.
The stiff sheets made a rustling sound.
Even though Suhyeon was never the type to lose his reason easily, he had been truly terrified and truly enraged when Do Yejun started acting like a maniac.
He never wanted to see him again, but he felt as though Do Yejun might pop up out of nowhere while he was alone, just like he had broken into the hospital ward.
Suhyeon leaned quietly against Hajin and tried to push the thoughts away.
However, the thoughts that seemed to be pushed back to some extent suddenly stopped at a certain point, struggling not to leave the area where Suhyeon could ignore them.
“Suhyeon-si.”
Hajin, who had been staying quietly by his side as if piercing through what Suhyeon was doing, called him softly.
Suhyeon looked up at him while leaning against the firm chest.
The deep blue eyes looked down at Suhyeon tenderly, as they always did.
Just as Suhyeon wondered if he saw a sharp light flash momentarily within that soft gaze, Hajin spoke while tracing the bruises on Suhyeon’s wrist.
“He will never be able to show his face before you again.”
The sentence had neither a subject nor a target.
However, Suhyeon, quickly realizing who the words referred to, looked up at Hajin blankly for a moment.
“Never?”
“Never.”
As if to reassure him against his dazed question, Hajin drove the point home.
There was a strange reliability in Hajin’s words—a trust that he had truly done something.
“What did you do?”
Hajin, who was idling with Suhyeon’s cheek, curled one corner of his mouth upward.
“I didn’t kill him.”
Ridiculously, Suhyeon felt relieved at those chilling words. It was because he felt a premonition that he really wouldn’t have to face Do Yejun ever again.
His heart felt much lighter just from the fact that he wouldn’t face things like yesterday or encounter Do Yejun again.
‘Yes, let’s forget.’
It might be hard to treat it as if it never happened right this second, and it might be difficult to completely ignore it since it had already settled as a trauma, but if he tried to push it far away and forget, it would eventually be forgotten.
It was horrifying and a waste of emotion to hang onto that one memory, paralyzed by terror and soaked in fear.
Sudden emotional fluctuations were one of the things that exhausted Suhyeon the most.
Suhyeon let out another long breath.
‘Let’s forget.’
When he thought that once more, Suhyeon flinched.
The sound of breathing reached his ear. With a low chuckle, his body was turned.
Suhyeon blinked. He was now sitting face-to-face with Hajin.
“Since I don’t like it,”
And there was Hajin, wearing a crooked smile.
Just as Suhyeon flinched at the blue eyes that held the gaze of a sulking child,
“Shall I make you forget?”
A languid voice spilled from Hajin’s mouth as he tilted his head.
Again, another question that pierced his mind.
‘Is Hajin actually an Esper who can read minds?’
Suhyeon, harboring a reasonable doubt, could only stare at Hajin blankly the next moment.
It was because he had finally taken in Hajin’s attire and appearance.
Hajin was wearing a thin black shirt with loose buttons and trousers.
Bathed in the sunlight seeping through the curtains, Hajin looking at him languidly like a beast…… looked like a devil tempting him to give up his soul.
The serious thoughts he had been struggling to push away until moments ago seemed already half-forgotten.
It was perhaps inevitable that Suhyeon’s head nodded while staring blankly at that breathtaking appearance.
As if he had been waiting, Hajin leaned in—fast yet leisurely.
His heart began to thump loudly.
A refreshing scent flared up.
The scent filling the room and coming from the man in front of him was so intense, as if trying to fill even Suhyeon’s scent with his own.
Hajin’s fingers, which had been teasing here and there as if playing, familiarly found their place and interlaced with Suhyeon’s hand.
It was just locking fingers, but the sensation of their knuckles bumping and tangling felt strangely new.
When the warm, large hand completely ensnared Suhyeon’s hand, the other firm hand gently cupped the back of Suhyeon’s head.
Hajin’s sharp nose and Suhyeon’s nose brushed as if teasing each other, and before he could even properly feel that sensation, his lips were swallowed.
A warm sensation hit Suhyeon familiarly.
Their soft lips meshed as if they had become one body.
It was now a given that his tongue would push through.
Hajin’s tongue, which forced the lips apart and invaded Suhyeon’s mouth, moved so smoothly as if the space were his own.
Tongue tangled with tongue, making a wet sound.
Their breathing grew ragged. Hajin repeatedly ensnared Suhyeon’s tongue as if to pull it out before letting go stickily.
Hajin’s tongue, persistently sweeping against the delicate membranes, gave Suhyeon a spine-tingling sensation.
Suhyeon instinctively flinched and tried to move away, but the hand holding the back of his head didn’t move; instead, it bound him firmly so their lips couldn’t part.
A flush began to swirl on Suhyeon’s cheeks, and heat began to rise gradually.
“Ha, h-heu……”
As their lips stickily ensnared each other and the flesh inside tangled, the heat and the tingling, hot wind grew stronger.
Perhaps it was only natural that Suhyeon’s other hand, the one not held by Hajin, began to fumble over Hajin’s body.
Suhyeon’s hand, which had been flinching while barely holding onto Hajin’s back, dropped down before moving up onto Hajin’s chest, which was pressed tight against him.
Hajin’s tongue movements, sucking and licking as if to swallow Suhyeon’s mouth whole, became more intense.
At the fierce movements and the rising heat, tears pooled and hung at the corners of Suhyeon’s barely narrowed eyes.
The sound of their heated, ragged breathing echoed throughout the room.
Suhyeon’s hand gripped Hajin’s clothes before sweeping down from his firm chest to his stomach.
As if pleased that Suhyeon was tracing his body, Hajin poured out kisses with a force that seemed ready to swallow the lips, before pulling away at some point.
A long silver thread of saliva stretched in the air.
“Haa, ha……”
Suhyeon panted heavily. He could tell his cheeks were blooming with heat without even looking in a mirror.
The blue gaze and the light brown gaze tangled as if to devour each other.
Suhyeon flinched upon discovering that Hajin’s deep blue eyes held a gaze similar to that of a beast.
Of the two staring intensely at each other, Hajin was the first to move.
Like a predator that had found its prey, the hand that had been supporting the back of Suhyeon’s head moved slowly to his ear, his nape, and then further down.
At the touch tracing his body intensely, the hot temperature that had remained like the residual heat of the kiss surged up.
Wiggling his fingers that were locked with Hajin’s, Suhyeon blushed, roughly guessing what was to come.
Hajin pulled Suhyeon in as if trapping him in his embrace.
And just as the distance between them closed once more and his breath brushed against Suhyeon’s ear—
The door burst open.
“Shin Hajin, Suhyeon is awak……”
It was Yihan, who had likely come to see if Suhyeon was awake, and he froze stiff the moment he took in the scene inside the room.
“Hmm? Is something wrong?”
“Why are you doing that?”
To make matters worse, as Yihan froze, the Association President and Yihan, who were behind him, also poked their heads into the room.
It didn’t take long for them to freeze as well.
Suhyeon remained frozen exactly as he was—blushing deeply and held in Hajin’s arms.
* * *
