* * *
“That’s rather amusing.”
Even if he couldn’t read minds, Haimar assumed Ben Plaskun would be no exception.
Everyone around him had always been that way—relationships built on unilateral calculations, reading thoughts and accumulating connections, nothing more, nothing less.
Ben wasn’t oblivious to it either.
He had expected that building trust or a bond with Haimar would be as futile as building a sandcastle, but experiencing it firsthand brought an indescribable discomfort welling up from his chest.
“Speaking like that is… extremely unpleasant.”
After everything I did to get here, and he says something like that?
The flush on his face faded as his mood turned cold, and the warmth in his restrained hand dissipated.
Just moments ago, the man had been playing the part of someone kind, only to freeze the atmosphere with his cynical words.
It was irritating enough that Ben wanted to kick him, but instead, he spoke in an unusually calm tone.
“You may not realize it, but relationships aren’t something you get for free. They require effort from both sides. So, to you, it might seem like I was trying to win your favor. Maybe you think that’s the only reason I went through all this trouble to reach you.”
His steadfast green eyes met Haimar’s directly.
For the first time, anger flickered in them—but Ben neither raised his voice nor lost his composure.
He simply enunciated every word with a precision meant to drive them deep into Haimar’s ears.
“You, who have never once made an effort for a relationship, would never understand.”
So there’s no way you could understand how I feel right now.
The only kind of people he had known were those who expected compensation for their actions.
Someone like Haimar Aelec, who had likely never felt the pain of having his sincerity dismissed, could never grasp the frustration of having genuine effort denied.
“Even if your intentions were pure, weren’t you just afraid I might lose control?”
As he watched Ben’s lips press into a tight line, Haimar voiced his thoughts without hesitation.
Was Ben one of those people, the kind who hovered anxiously, terrified he might go mad at any moment—like a dog desperate to relieve itself?
The fourth suppressor sent from Main Central.
It was buried deep in a drawer now, but who knew when he might take it out and put it on himself?
At Haimar’s words, Ben’s previously expressionless face tensed.
A trace of red flickered through the icy blue air between them.
“Do you want to lose yourself like that?”
It was Haimar who lost his composed expression this time.
Everyone had always spoken about what would happen to those around him if he lost control.
No one had ever spoken about it for his own sake.
A restrained Haimar Aelec was a professional assassin.
An unrestrained Haimar Aelec was nothing more than an unbridled nuclear warhead.
No one understood that better than he did.
That was how he had survived until now.
“More than fear, if I’m the only one who can help you, then that’s what I should do.”
From beginning to end, he had always been alone.
It was the first time someone had spoken for him rather than about him.
For once, Haimar was at a loss for words.
As he stared at Ben’s hand in his grasp, he realized something was off—the familiar clarity that had seeped into his skin earlier was no longer the same.
The natural way his presence lifted his condition had noticeably dulled, leaving behind an unpleasant sensation.
It felt as if a door that once let in fresh air had suddenly shut, cutting off the flow.
“If you have nothing more to say, I’ll sleep first.”
Ben’s firm stance settled under Haimar’s downward gaze.
And what Haimar felt in that moment wasn’t the fear or reverence he usually detected in others—it was something entirely different.
Not a person processed through his mind by reading thoughts, but one who existed solely through his senses.
A human, standing before him as they were.
His grip loosened unconsciously, and Ben’s hand slipped from his grasp, falling onto the bed.
Ben pushed him away lightly before settling into a corner of the bed.
Though the force was barely significant, Haimar moved aside without resistance.
Yet, strangely, he found himself irritated by the distance between them.
The way Ben burrowed himself into the corner of the bed, completely wrapped in blankets, was—
Far more annoying than he expected.
“Good night.”
Ben, regardless of what Haimar thought, felt relieved.
It was an unpleasant conversation, but at least he had said everything he needed to say.
He would have preferred to sleep separately, but it seemed unfair to be exiled to the uncomfortable sofa when he had done nothing wrong.
So, he pulled the blanket tighter around himself, pressing his body firmly against the corner to avoid any accidents while sleeping.
He had done his best to contain his emotions, but suppressing them had drained him.
The exhaustion weighed heavier on his body, as if iron bars had been added to his limbs.
Sleep is the best remedy.
Ben closed his eyes, forcing himself to rest.
∗ ∗ ∗
So, did he get a good night’s sleep?
Not at all. He hadn’t slept a wink.
His already unwell body had only worsened overnight, sliding into the early stages of a fever.
His back was cold with chills, yet heat crept up his forehead.
And to make matters worse, the occasional weight of Haimar’s gaze on his back kept him from drifting off.
Haimar said nothing.
He simply sat there, lost in thought, or read a book in the darkness, or occasionally turned his gaze toward Ben.
Ben thought it might have been easier if Haimar had just spoken to him instead.
But time passed, morning arrived, and the alarm on his smartphone blared at the set time.
Beep—
Click.
Normally, the alarm would ring a few more times before he bothered to turn it off, but today, he silenced it in an instant.
He barely had the energy to move, let alone withstand the noise.
Ugh, my head…
Even though he had managed to sit up, he couldn’t move right away.
The floor seemed to sway beneath him, and each step sent throbbing pain through the wounds he had received the day before.
It was utterly miserable.
Still, when his eyes landed on Haimar, Ben forced himself to greet him as naturally as possible.
“…Good morning.”
Damn it.
His voice was hoarse and scratchy.
He still felt a bit of lingering frustration from yesterday, but Ben wasn’t the type to hold grudges for long.
Yesterday was yesterday, and today was today.
If they were to talk again, he would do so with a calmer mind.
However, Haimar set his book aside and swept a hand through his platinum blonde hair, saying something completely unexpected.
“You didn’t sleep properly, did you?”
Though framed as a question, his tone carried certainty.
Ben blinked, caught off guard by the accuracy of the remark.
While Ben was surprised, Haimar had seen it clearly—the irregular breaths, the restless shifting.
It was obvious that Ben had barely gotten any rest.
“I just had a little trouble sleeping. It’s nothing.”
But if there was one thing even the ever-perfect Haimar had failed to notice, it was that Ben would fall sick just from what had happened yesterday.
That was because Haimar had never been sick before, and in his view, the concept of being “sick” only applied to people on the brink of death from severe injuries.
As a result, the most he could deduce was that Ben had a restless night and was in poor condition.
The very fact that someone as naturally indifferent to others as Haimar had observed Ben throughout the night was already unusual, so he didn’t argue further with Ben’s response.
‘I really… don’t want to wash up.’
Slumped over the bathroom sink, Ben sluggishly chewed on the toothbrush in his mouth, the toothpaste foaming lazily.
When he finally lifted his head and took a look at his reflection, he saw that things had gotten even worse than yesterday.
Even with the gauze covering it, the bruise that had taken over one side of his cheek had darkened from a bluish hue to an ominous black.
On top of that, the lack of sleep had given him dark circles that threatened to descend all the way down to his nose.
To be perfectly honest, he didn’t even want to think about the word “work,” let alone “going to work.”
But he was pathetically diligent—so much so that he wasn’t the kind of person who could fake some excuse and take a day off like others did.
If it rained, he worked in the rain.
If it snowed, he worked in the snow.
If he was sick, he worked while sick.
Unless the sky literally came crashing down, he was the type to just keep going, like an ox pulling a cart. It was better than burdening someone else with his work.
But when he did fall ill, it tended to hit him hard.
In the past, he’d once pushed through a workday while barely clinging to life, only to collapse the moment he got home.
Luckily, that had happened on a Friday.
This time, he wasn’t so fortunate—it was the middle of the workweek.
Still, if he just picked up some medicine on his way home and got a good night’s sleep, he’d probably be fine.
With that thought in mind, Ben forced himself out the door and onto his morning commute.
* * *
