HRB 99

Eddie, who had been gesturing flippantly, sheepishly retracted his hand. Ketron sighed the biggest sigh Eddie had ever seen.

Ketron pulled Eddie into another tight embrace. Eddie awkwardly held his arms out before wrapping them around Ketron’s waist. For a while, both of their heartbeats were loud.

“Eddie, I want to hold you.”

“…”

Considering the thing rubbing against him down below, it wasn’t hard to deduce, but having it explicitly put into words and spoken into his ear felt different.

Eddie made a sulky face.

“You’ve been getting informal with me lately.”

Literally, Ketron had been speaking informally to Eddie every now and then recently. And only when they were about to kiss, or when Eddie wanted to run away or was out of his mind.

“Do you dislike it?”

The shameless face asking the question made Eddie wonder if he was really the clueless twenty-year-old he’d been at first. Come to think of it, soon it would be the new year, or maybe the age was counted differently here… Anyway, when the new year came, he wouldn’t be a twenty-year-old kid anymore.

As he was thinking that, Ketron pressed his body even closer. His lips touched Eddie’s neck before pulling away with a soft smack.

“Eddie, do you dislike it?”

“…You’re flirting.”

“You’re the only one I’m like this with.”

Another smacking sound came from his neck. Ah, that would definitely leave a mark. Ketron, who knew full well but didn’t stop, and Eddie, who didn’t stop him, were two of a kind.

“I’ve never done this before. And you’ll be the only one in the future, too.”

Even amidst all that, words like confessions, no, confessions kept pouring into his ear. Words so sweet it made him wonder if it was okay to be this sweet.

“So whatever your insecurities are, lean on me. I’ll be by your side anytime.”

“…”

Eddie didn’t answer right away to those words, instead, he paused. His hesitation was short.

“I see.”

Eddie lightly slipped out of Ketron’s arms. Eddie smiled faintly as he looked down at the face that was looking up at him with a puzzled expression, yet unable to hide his excitement.

“I’ll do it with my hand.”

With those words, Eddie fearlessly plunged his hand into Ketron’s pants. Watching Ketron’s face quickly become flushed with excitement, Eddie once again gave Ketron a deep kiss first.

It looked like the night would be long.

***

The next day, Eddie washed up as soon as he opened his eyes in the morning and stared intently at himself in the mirror.

Even though the Emperor had visited in a flurry, Eddie in the mirror remained unchanged.

Of course, it would be strange if something suddenly changed, but he had imagined that he might suddenly turn into Lee Jeong-hoon when he opened his eyes, but of course, that didn’t happen, and there was still a man with silver hair and violet eyes and an excessively flamboyant appearance standing in the mirror.

Even though he deliberately ruffled his softly falling hair, his handsome face didn’t easily crumble with just that.

Unlike usual, Eddie stared at that face for a long time before calling Gerold and Ebon to his room.

Gerold was one thing, but Ebon, who had been aloof ever since he came to the inn, rushed over as soon as Eddie finally called for him.

“Eddie, what is it? What is it? Is there something you want me to do?”

Only a strong sense of loyalty that anyone could read was visible on Ebon’s bright face, who was touched by the fact that Eddie had called for him.

“Just stay still, Ebon.”

Gerold, who was calming down such Ebon, was also a person with deep loyalty to Eddie, even though it wasn’t obvious due to his taciturn personality.

Eddie stared intently at the two people sitting in front of him.

Looking at the two people sitting side by side, it dawned on him that even though the detailed features were not determined by him, the basic characteristics were the same as the characters he had imagined in the past.

What was he thinking back then? He remembered that there were some external conditions that he had decided on for simple reasons.

First of all, the appearance must be strong! …Both were over 180cm tall and looked strong.

If possible, they should be handsome! …They were handsome.

Black hair is pretty! …Both were pitch black.

Of course, he couldn’t be sure that they were his characters just by this, but there were parts where the unique character traits felt from the two people, or the subtle characteristics that were visible even in the crude drawings of his childhood, were all realized.

Once he knew that they were those characters, the visible characteristics…

He already knew that the characters were created by him, and he had noticed to some extent after seeing the Emperor in Lee Jeong-han’s form, but this world was not unrelated to Eddie.

He was always sorry for taking over the original Eddie’s body, anxious that he would be found out that he wasn’t the original Eddie, and wondered why the people who knew the past Eddie didn’t question that Eddie had changed.

Eddie felt like he knew the answer now.

The original Eddie was him.

Just as beings that didn’t exist in this world were created when he possessed it, he became Eddie, a complete being, in this story as he possessed this world.

He wasn’t possessing the original Eddie, but he, as a being, became a complete being called Eddie in this story.

So it was no wonder that the Eddie in their memories wasn’t a different person.

Lee Jeong-hoon’s death and possession. He didn’t know exactly what happened in the process to cause such a magical thing to happen. But what was certain was that this was the world of <The Hero Doesn’t Hide His Power Too Well>, but it wasn’t the original in the novel he had read.

Many things had changed as he possessed this place.

He didn’t know how it was possible yet, but the memories with Lee Jeong-han, the music box containing his past memories that couldn’t exist in Eddie’s childhood, made him realize that the existence of Eddie was created through Lee Jeong-hoon.

In addition, the people around Eddie as well.

He was an outsider and an insider in this story. A strange being that was neither one nor the other, and could be either one or the other.

Ketron’s helper.

How far does this ‘story’ assume Eddie’s role to be? Is there a place for Eddie at the end of this story?

Such anxiety gnawed at Eddie day by day, but since he couldn’t gain the power to resist the force of the story by worrying, Eddie could only hope that this story wouldn’t resent his existence, and that he could be with Ketron and the people around him in the ending.

“When did I say I wanted to come here?”

When Eddie, who had been silent, asked, the two looked at each other and answered briefly.

“You said you wanted to be of help to His Majesty.”

“You suddenly said you had to do your job, and you didn’t want to do it in secret, so you asked us to choose a job that could be a public figure, right? One of them was an inn.”

That was the story behind the birth of ‘Eddie’s Inn’. To be exact, it was a setting that was inserted into a place that had appeared once in the original work.

Gerold sighed.

“You’re usually endlessly soft, but you’re firm and stubborn in those things.”

“Was I…?”

“You were.”

The two were unnecessarily firm. He was usually endlessly soft, he wanted to refute, but he couldn’t.

At the same time, one memory suddenly came to mind.

‘Hyung, if I go to a fantasy world, I want to be a very precious person, but I grew up in the back alleys, and only a very small number of people know that I’m a precious person. A back alley information merchant, but it turns out that he’s a half-dragon with about half of the dragon’s blood mixed in, or is that a half-half dragon? Or a hidden noble or Royal or something? But on the outside, he’s running a jewelry store or a bar!’

When he was creating the characters he wanted and drawing and playing, when he was immersed in fantasy, he thought about those so-called ‘cool’ characters and wished he could be such a being.

‘Or an inn is fine too.’

Haa, Eddie sighed briefly.

“I feel like I’ve only made you two suffer for nothing.”

“It doesn’t matter because what Eddie wants is what we want.”

“Becoming the hands and feet that move as Eddie-nim wants. That’s our role, so it’s not even suffering.”

The two answered as if it was natural. It seemed that Eddie’s will was absolute to the two people who were born from Eddie’s hands and became perfect hands and feet for Eddie in this world.

It wasn’t just because they were bound by status.

“We exist for you, so you can use us as you wish.”

So Eddie was uncomfortable with that word.

As if they were just tools, well, in the setting, the Emperor’s younger brother was secretly raised outside the Imperial Palace, and they were the people arranged for him, so it might be right that they existed for Eddie.

Well, even if he went to a massage or a luxury hotel, he would be embarrassed and not know what to do when people tried to treat him with the utmost respect, so wouldn’t it be ridiculous if he suddenly became the Emperor’s brother and acted haughtily?

Eddie didn’t want to do that. He wasn’t the type of person who could do that by nature.

If the Eddie in their heads was the same person as he was now, there would be no need to change.

He would live as he was, as he is now.

If he could exist after the ending.