By Zephyria 
Once the negotiation for reconciliation was settled, the two sat facing each other at the dining table.
“…….”
“…….”
A cold silence flowed between them.
Jae-gyeom sat with his arms crossed, eyebrows twitching as he stared off into the distance.
They had established rules for reconciliation, but establishing rules was one thing; the lingering resentment of the past few days didn’t just vanish in an instant. The two were still awkward, and the atmosphere remained as chilly as a winter wind.
In particular, Jae-gyeom’s face was full of displeasure.
During the period of the cold war, Yoon Tae-hee’s negative emotions had diluted to some extent, but Jae-gyeom was the exact opposite—his feelings had fully fermented. The more he chewed over it, the more detestable Yoon Tae-hee’s behavior felt.
With a pouty expression, Jae-gyeom fiddled with his ear and spoke.
“I get the rules, but if you want to make up, you apologize first this time.”
At that, Yoon Tae-hee sighed and muttered.
“Does the order of who apologizes first really matter that much?”
“Yeah. It matters to me. Does it not matter to you? Then you can just apologize first.”
Yoon Tae-hee shut his mouth and narrowed his eyes.
“…….”
“…….”
Sparks seemed to fly from their gazes as they locked eyes in mid-air.
It was a tense battle of wills.
“Is that so? It’ll be like forcing someone to bow to receive a greeting, but if you’re okay with that, I’ll apologize first.”
“See? This is why you’re the problem. You’re always like this.”
“Like what?”
“I’m talking about the way you speak, you brat.”
Jae-gyeom glared at Yoon Tae-hee with fierce eyes.
“You were the one who suggested we set rules in the first place. The one who wants to reconcile more should be the one to apologize first.”
“I don’t think so. I think the one who messed up more should apologize.”
“Fine, let’s say I was more in the wrong for going to the PC cafe. But because of that, you completely ignored me for two days.”
Until now, whenever Yoon Tae-hee got sulky, Jae-gyeom was always the one to step up and fix things, indulging every single one of his whims and trying his best to be considerate. Since they started dating, he had never truly gotten angry once. He had even volunteered to be the bottom, considering the feelings of the other guy who was too scared of being pinned down.
And yet, he had been ignored for two whole days.
Although the trigger for the fight was trivial and childish, he felt that he couldn’t back down this time.
“…….”
As the argument was about to start again, Yoon Tae-hee finally decided to take a step back.
“Fine. Then should we write it down on paper starting now?”
“Write what?”
“Because if we keep staying like this, we’ll just keep hurting each other’s feelings.”
It was Yoon Tae-hee who first extended the olive branch.
“Things you don’t like, things you want me to fix, things you wish for… besides that, anything you’ve been holding back, things that upset you, or complaints—write them all down here. In exchange, no getting angry from this point on. And after we’ve written everything, we’ll swap and read them, and that’s how we reconcile today. I’ll apologize after reading.”
Rising from his chair, Yoon Tae-hee went into the room and reappeared shortly after with paper and a pen. He placed them firmly on the table for all to see and looked at Jae-gyeom with an expressionless face.
“Want to write here?”
Jae-gyeom twisted one eyebrow and looked down at the paper for a moment.
“Are you writing too?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright.”
The method Yoon Tae-hee proposed didn’t seem bad. He hated the idea of spending several more days blushing with anger in a cold war like before. It seemed better to resolve it this way.
Jae-gyeom moved closer to the table and took a seat.
“Hey. You go write somewhere else.”
Yoon Tae-hee looked at Jae-gyeom as if he were absurd, then spoke with a slight crinkle at the corner of his eye.
“Why?”
“If you write next to me, I’ll be unnecessarily curious about what you’re writing.”
“Fine. Let’s make it twenty minutes of writing.”
“Got it.”
Yoon Tae-hee obediently moved back into the room. Left alone in the living room, Jae-gyeom glared at the white paper. Things he was dissatisfied with regarding Yoon Tae-hee, things he didn’t like… Right, this was a good opportunity. Since they were going to live together for the rest of their lives, he had to use this chance as a stepping stone to clearly state what needed to be said.
Jae-gyeom took a deep breath and gripped the ballpoint pen. Then, he began to write the letters clearly.
And what else was there? Hmm…
Jae-gyeom immediately wrote the next complaint.
No matter how much you exercise or eat healthy food, it’s all for nothing if your posture is bad. If he’s already like that, he’s going to suffer greatly when he gets older. He had mentioned it a few times after seeing him lean back into the sofa as if snapping his waist or always walking with a slouch, but it never sank in.
At first, he hadn’t known what to write, but once he got this far, the complaints started pouring out like pulling a string of potato vines. Jae-gyeom’s hand moved without pause.
From this point on, Jae-gyeom was huffing and puffing as he wrote, though he didn’t realize it himself.
While he was in the middle of his furious writing session, the bedroom door clicked open and Yoon Tae-hee walked out. Only then did Jae-gyeom snap back to his senses, stop writing, and put down the pen. Because he had been trying to recall things he disliked, his emotions had flared up like a fire; at some point, he had just been scribbling wildly without knowing what he was writing, and in the blink of an eye, twenty minutes had passed.
“Are you done?”
He wasn’t exactly finished—he’d stopped halfway—but he felt he had written most of what he wanted to say.
However, now that he was done, he suddenly wondered if it was okay to show this. They had chosen this method to reconcile, but he worried it might actually be like pouring gasoline on a fire.
But they had promised not to get angry…
“What about you? Are you done?”
“Yeah.”
Regardless, after that bout of furious writing, he definitely felt somewhat more refreshed than before. It seemed the same for Yoon Tae-hee. Looking at his expression, the strange cloud that had been hanging over him was gone, and he had returned to his usual face. His tone was soft, just as it had been before they fought.
Jae-gyeom stood up and handed over the notebook while sitting on the sofa, and Yoon Tae-hee handed over his as well.
An awkward silence flowed between the two as they exchanged notebooks.
“Shall we read them then?”
Yoon Tae-hee was the first to speak. Jae-gyeom nodded and beat him to the punch.
“Even after reading everything, you’re not allowed to get angry. We agreed to reconcile.”
“Right.”
Having once again promised understanding, peace, and generous acceptance, the two opened the notebooks simultaneously. However, contrary to the promise, the moment Jae-gyeom checked the contents of the notebook, his face crumpled instantly like a piece of scrap paper.
“…….”
It was just as Jae-gyeom snapped his head up with a menacing expression to look at Yoon Tae-hee. As Yoon Tae-hee read through the long list of complaints, his expression was shifting strangely from moment to moment. It was a face that made it impossible to tell if he was smiling or not.
“You… you…!”
That was it.
The notebook Jae-gyeom had received was completely empty.
In other words, Yoon Tae-hee hadn’t written a single thing.
“This… this brat, really! I’ve had enough! Give it back!”
Realizing he had been played, Jae-gyeom leaped up in a rage. He tried to snatch the notebook from Yoon Tae-hee’s hand, but Yoon Tae-hee avoided his reach by swiftly lifting the notebook over his head by a hair’s breadth.
Jae-gyeom, hopping on his tiptoes to get the notebook back, ended up practically clinging to Yoon Tae-hee’s arm. Since Yoon Tae-hee was taller than Jae-gyeom and had arms longer than average, it wasn’t easy for Jae-gyeom to reclaim the notebook.
“Give it back! Give it back now!”
Completely provoked, Jae-gyeom bit Yoon Tae-hee’s arm with all his might.
“Ah! Ow, ah! It hurts…! Wait, it really hurts!”
Despite being bitten with full force, Yoon Tae-hee stomped his feet for a while and didn’t let go of the notebook. Eventually, finding it unbearable, he handed the notebook over to Jae-gyeom and collapsed onto the floor, clutching his forearm.
“Ah, it really hurts…….”
Having succeeded in taking the notebook, Jae-gyeom’s momentum softened slightly. “Who told you to hold out? If you hadn’t held out, I wouldn’t have had to bite you.” After saying this, Jae-gyeom hurried over to the groaning Yoon Tae-hee.
“Let me see. You’re not bleeding.”
“…….”
“Forget it. Don’t worry about it. I’m fine.”
“…….”
No, when the person who did the biting says that…
Because of how hard he had bitten, a clear set of teeth marks remained on Yoon Tae-hee’s forearm. Whether he was in pain or found it funny, Yoon Tae-hee was shaking his shoulders while clutching the bitten area, his face flushed bright red.