“Ah, when I woke up from my sleep, my priest robes were gone and this was here instead.”
Raha spoke, casting his gaze down to look at his own clothes. At the tiny, barely visible smile hanging on his lips, Hayden’s gaze became fixed on Raha’s mouth.
“I will help stabilize the rest of your waves.”
When Raha extended his hand toward him, Hayden looked down at Raha’s hand with a strange, unreadable expression.
After a brief hesitation, Hayden took the hand extended to him, his Adam’s apple bobbing conspicuously.
‘Is he nervous…?’
Feeling puzzled by Hayden’s behavior, which was somehow different from before, Raha channeled the light attribute into him while staring at him intently.
Hayden’s vivid green eyes seemed to shake anxiously for a moment before turning toward him.
The moment their eyes met, Hayden flinched like a startled rabbit, but immediately dropped his gaze down to their joined hands as if he had never done such a thing.
Looking at Hayden’s strangely restless attitude, Raha couldn’t help but wonder if he had run into Teore and been told something unpleasant.
Although all five of them were friends who didn’t let their titles dictate their relationships, the remaining Tops, excluding Blizan, found Teore quite difficult to handle.
It wasn’t because Teore was a noble second in rank only to the Crown Prince.
Rather, it was because his personality itself possessed an aura that made it impossible for anyone to carelessly approach him, to the point where one might think it would actually be more comfortable if the relationship were dictated by official titles.
Even Blizan, who would eventually become their lord, could not treat him carelessly.
At any rate, since Teore was that kind of person, Raha figured Hayden must have ended up with this sort of expression after meeting with him.
“High Priest.”
Hayden suddenly called out to Raha, who was lost in these thoughts.
As Raha lifted his head to look at him, Hayden’s clear eyes sparkled like gems.
At that, Raha thought to himself that the man truly possessed incredibly vivid green eyes.
“Blizan. No, do you no longer care to know about His Highness the Crown Prince?”
Hayden asked, barely managed to swap out the name Blizan, which had slipped out unconsciously, for his formal title.
Instead of answering, Raha stared at him blankly for a moment.
He couldn’t understand why a man who essentially had zero interest in other people—and who was indifferent to the point of absolute apathy when it came to Raha—had suddenly become so curious.
He couldn’t tell the exact reason whether Hayden’s attitude had changed along with the shift in Blizan and Teore’s behavior toward him.
Raha gave a slow nod of his head and answered him.
“Yes, I no longer do.”
“May I ask why?”
Because Hayden pressed further, Raha’s eyes widened slightly.
He had thought this level of an answer would be more than enough for a profoundly indifferent man like Hayden, whose head was filled with nothing but the safety of his territory and the border region, so he couldn’t help but feel flustered by his persistent questioning.
As if catching on to Raha’s flustered state, Hayden spoke to him.
“I have no intention of prying persistently, so if the answer makes you uncomfortable, you do not have to give it. It is merely a passing curiosity.”
“…I am curious as well, but why would Your Excellency be curious about something like that?”
Raha asked, tilting his head slightly.
As the hands they were holding together somehow felt like they were growing hot, a look of distinct fluster appeared plainly across Hayden’s face.
He rolled his eyes for a moment as if confused, then looked at Raha and said,
“I wonder. I haven’t thought that far into it.”
At his considerably honest answer, Raha couldn’t make any other gesture aside from nodding his head to show his understanding.
“Well, if I were to give you an answer as to why, I haven’t thought that far into it either.”
“I did admire His Highness the Crown Prince for quite a long time, but as Your Excellency well knows, His Highness has never held the slightest bit of interest in me, has he?”
“Therefore, for me, I simply ended up thinking that hanging onto a relationship that will never work out is nothing but a foolish endeavor.”
Although the true reason was that the feelings of the original Raha and his own transmigrated self were completely different, he couldn’t explain that entire situation to Hayden, so he spoke in vague terms.
At Raha’s answer, Hayden gave a slight nod of his head before continuing with yet another question.
“Then, out of the many, many people out there, can you tell me why it had to be Teore?”
“That is…”
That, too, had been a coincidental occasion.
No, it would be more fitting to say it was due to a mistake.
An occasion brought about by accidentally tripping, and then accidentally having their lips press together.
Raha recalled the memory of that moment for a brief second, then let out a laugh mixed with a sigh and said,
“Our lips happened to touch by chance, and after that, we ended up sharing a kiss before I could even process it, and as you saw, we engaged in a relationship… I think it just turned out that way through those events.”
At those words, Hayden’s eyes flew wide open as if he had received a massive shock.
“A ki…”
As if he found the word ‘kiss’ too difficult to bring himself to utter, he stopped mid-speech, shut his mouth tightly, and avoided Raha’s gaze.
Seeing the tips of his ears turn a bright, burning red, Raha realized that this man was a virgin as well.
No, in the first place, since Edrion was the first partner for all five of them, it was understandable for the current Hayden to be flustered by the mere word ‘kiss.’
Particularly among the five Tops, the scene where the bottom, Edrion, conversely took on a dominant, Top-like role, climbing on top of a clumsy, faltering Hayden to devour him, was so erotic that one could never tire of reading it no matter how many times it appeared.
It was through that very novel that he had first discovered he enjoyed watching a bottom completely swallow up an innocent Top.
Recalling those memories, heat naturally rushed to his lower half.
However, in a situation like this where they were holding hands for treatment, pitching a tent right in front of an innocent guy whose ears had turned red from just the word ‘kiss’ felt completely wrong.
He tried his best to wipe away these suggestive feelings by forcing his thoughts onto something else.
Yet, the moment his gaze unconsciously dropped down between Hayden’s legs, his efforts to banish the dirty thoughts instantly vanished to a far-off place.
It was because his center was protruding in a taut, rigid line.
“Don’t tell me, Your Excellency. Did you get aroused by the mere word ‘kiss’?”
Because it was swollen to such an excessive degree that anyone could clearly see the outline, it felt like it would actually be stranger to pretend not to notice, so he asked out loud directly.
At that, Hayden looked incredibly flustered as a bright red flush spread from his face all the way down to his neck, his eyes blinking wildly.
Perhaps it was precisely because of this vibe that Edrion, unable to handle a clumsy, fumbling Hayden, had pinned him down onto the bed and climbed on top of him.
Hayden, completely at a loss for what to do with his unhideable face and lower half, stammered over his words before looking at Raha with an expression that looked like he was about to cry, and said,
“Th-this is a physiological phenomenon. This is, you see…”
‘Wow, I’m about to get hard again too.’
As his clear green eyes grew wet and sparkled in the light, his already brilliant appearance radiated even more intensely.
It seemed that adding tears to a youthful, pretty boy’s face created an incredibly arousing atmosphere.
Perhaps it was because of that.
