By Zephyria 
CEO Kim’s stride, who put his arm around my shoulder and walked away, was still big. When he took three or four steps with a relaxed pace, I had to walk almost at a jogging pace, and I had thought about it before, but he was really tall and well-built……. I don’t feel like he’s as overwhelmingly huge as Carlisle, but I feel like he’s easily as big as Adrian.
“Huh? Why are you looking up at me like that. Do I have something on my face?”
“…No. Just.”
“Just what.”
“…Just, really just.”
Just because it feels like it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you. Just because I’m glad. Just…, I had completely forgotten, but when I saw your face, I remembered that I used to want to see you quite a bit……. I was upset that I seemed to be the only one unilaterally caring and the only one getting excited…….
I couldn’t say all those things. So I decided to gloss over it with just two words, just.
CEO Kim, who clearly wouldn’t know my inner thoughts, smiled again and pressed the elevator button. The dimples on his angular cheeks were wonderful. The fact that he, who was clearly quite old, gave off the impression of a dreaming young man was definitely due to those wonderful dimples.
“Okay, I’m in a good mood. Order everything Assistant Manager Lee wants to eat today. How can I not buy you anything when you look up at me so cutely.”
“C, cutely….”
I’m getting tired of it. I’m tired of that guilty way of speaking that throws stones as a joke and messes with people’s hearts without knowing that frogs are dying from it.
Hearing my voice, which was almost a sigh, CEO Kim poked my shoulder with his chin. Why do you look like you don’t believe people? He said.
I got angry for no reason and answered sullenly that I would order the most expensive course.
“Oh my, please do. Eat the most expensive one, our Assistant Manager Lee.”
“Get ready. I’m going to empty your bank account today, CEO Kim.”
“Pfft. Empty it? Okay. Go ahead and try hard. I don’t know if my bank account will be emptied just because Lee Young-won catches a few cows.”
It’s a relaxed voice. That’s like him. What I was first attracted to was this kind of relaxation, as if I had never been disappointed in my life. A person who is almost the opposite of me…. Before I knew it, he jumped into my life and messed up all my thoughts without giving me a chance to think about anything else. I fell helplessly. But I didn’t have the courage to admit it or the courage to confess.
I never realized in this life that I could have labeled the slight rebellion and fluttering in my heart that I felt whenever I saw CEO Kim as first love. After being reincarnated and reborn as ‘Noah’, I realized that the only thing I missed in the memories of my past life that occasionally came to mind was this person.
If……. If I had realized this feeling in this life and made even an awkward confession, then what would have changed?
Thinking about it, it was funny. Nothing would have changed anyway. There was no way Allen would have stood by and watched me, who couldn’t remember anything, fall in love with another human being and live a peaceful life. Even thinking about Adrian, Carlisle, and Andrew, who were trapped in the same swamp because of me, it was the same.
It was the greatest luck for CEO Kim that I died without ever realizing my puppy love for him.
Perhaps because he had made a reservation in advance, the employee immediately guided us to our seats when we entered the restaurant. One side of the room, which was separated from the hall, was made of a large window, so I could see the Gyeongbokgung Palace, where autumn was deepening, at a glance.
…Hmm, did I die in the fall? I don’t remember well, but I don’t think it was fall. Well, what does it matter. It’s not real anyway. If it’s a dream, I can just wake up. I felt lighthearted, as if I had just come out for a walk, not trapped. I didn’t feel any sense of crisis at all.
The employee who brought out the meat one by one explained the cuts and put the meat on the grill one by one. CEO Kim ordered him to leave, saying that he would grill it himself. Even during that time, I was just looking at the window on the opposite side. The sun, which was half hidden by the clouds, shone into the room just enough to make me feel good without being too hot or cloudy, and the man with the sunlight on his back was backlit, but strangely, it wasn’t dark. I was sure that the face eaten by the shadows would be smiling.
“Assistant Manager Lee. Why are you spacing out like that. Now, eat quickly.”
“Ah, I have to grill it.”
CEO Kim doesn’t know, but I’ve worked part-time at barbecue restaurants for several years, so I knew how to grill meat amazingly well. I’ve been helped by that experience several times when there were company dinners or other part-time jobs. I desperately participated in all the company dinners that others didn’t want to attend. It was a valuable opportunity to solve a meal without spending a penny of my own money.
“Give me the tongs. I’m also amazing at grilling meat.”
“No. Just eat. Didn’t I tell you. Today, I came to give our Assistant Manager Lee a body boost.”
I burst out laughing at the middle-aged man’s tone, which really didn’t suit his appearance. I pretended to hate it, but in fact…, I quite liked that old-fashioned tone.
Maybe it’s because I’ve never been taken care of by anyone since I was young. I liked the feeling that someone much older than me was caring for me and taking care of me. It was like they were my parents.
No, I didn’t even need to have parents, just an uncle or a relative who was much older than me would have been fine. An adult who would take care of me and care for me……. I just wanted to have at least one person.
“So next time, I became your grandfather too, right.”
“Yes? CEO Kim, what did you just say…?”
“Ugh, just muttering to myself. Now, eat quickly. You don’t eat beef well-done. You know that, right?”
He even dips the meat in salt and puts it to my mouth. They say dreams are a reflection of desire. I was so embarrassed that my face was flushed because my long-hidden subconscious desire was so childish and blatant, but I obediently accepted the meat for now. Yeah, it’s a dream anyway. That’s what I thought.
“Assistant Manager Lee.”
“Yes.”
“Lee Young-won.”
“…Yes?”
“Young-won.”
“……”
CEO Kim suddenly called me while he was diligently piling meat on my plate.
I was used to the titles Assistant Manager Lee or Lee Young-won, but the three letters Young-won felt strange for some reason.
I wanted to cry and scream not to call me that. My heart was fluttering too much.
It’s just a dream anyway. You’re someone I can never meet again, and you’re just a fantasy that will disappear when I wake up, so what are you going to do by messing with people like this? I wanted to ask.
“I thought it would be nice to come to a good place like this and grill it with my own hands at least once, since I think it’s the last time…….”
See. The you in the fantasy is just something my subconscious created. The last time means…, it’s proof that you won’t even come out in my dreams anymore.
CEO Kim was unusually friendly and affectionate than usual, he dragged me to the hotel without warning, and he even grilled the meat himself. Geez. It was so childish that I felt like yawning. Something that wouldn’t even show if I shed a single tear.
Instead of yawning, I gulped down water and barely managed to ask why. CEO Kim smiled again. The same smile that Lee Young-won in the last life remembered from time to time and couldn’t sleep all night.
“Because you’re admirable.”
“……”
It felt like a red-hot iron ball suddenly soared up from below my Adam’s apple. It’s strange. Do I get indigestion even in my dreams? No, the meat that CEO Kim grilled was so tender. It was strange that I was so overwhelmed.
“You have a burn mark on your arm. It happened when you were working part-time at a barbecue restaurant in high school.”
“Oh…, did I tell you that, CEO Kim?”
“No. You didn’t say it. But I know everything. Even if you didn’t say it, everything.”
It’s nonsense, but I understood. I just thought, that’s right.
“I had to go to the emergency room right away, but I thought it would be expensive to go to the emergency room. I didn’t have the money, so I looked up first aid on the internet and barely managed to survive, and the scar only got bigger.”
That’s how it was back then. It got a little better after I became a college student and could legally work part-time, but when I was a high school student, places with high pay or decent positions didn’t want to hire minors, so I barely managed to get a job at a barbecue restaurant by pleading. I had quite a few minor and major injuries while changing the grill and moving charcoal, but back then, it hurt like I was going to faint. I was trying to stop customers who were drunk and getting into a fight, and I was pushed and fell, grabbing onto a table, but my arm happened to touch the grill.
Since I was hired informally without employment insurance or anything, I couldn’t dare to mention workplace accidents. In fact, the manager told me to rest for about two weeks and then come back. Back then, I was just grateful that I wasn’t fired and could go back to work, so I kept bowing my head and thanking him.
After that, a burn scar the size of an adult’s palm remained on one of my arms. I never wore short sleeves even once until I died.
“I wanted to make things harder for you.”
“……Pardon?”
“So hard, so hard that you couldn’t bear it anymore and would break. Then I thought you would fall into my arms forever.”
“CEO Kim, what are you saying…”
Even though it was CEO Kim created by the manifestation of my subconscious, it was a strange thing to say. It was something the CEO Kim in my memories wouldn’t say.
It’s a dream… right? It must be a dream, right? I pinched the back of my hand hard. It stung painfully.
“Don’t worry. It’s a dream. It will disappear when you wake up.”
The picturesque smile on CEO Kim’s face slowly fades. The bright sky turned dark as if it were a lie. Outside the window, where the autumn colors were vibrant, it rained, then snowed, and the background changed as it pleased.
“Actually, appearing in this form was also a foul. But gradually, after experiencing it once, then twice… it became insufficient to just watch. I wanted to intervene in your life that I had pushed into the abyss, no matter what.”
I know only one being who would say these things to me.
“Young-won.”
He calls me.
His black hair turns into a brilliant galaxy color in the blink of an eye. His mysterious eyes appear golden and purple. His thin lips twitch once more. His weary voice flows through them. It’s a reverent and shabby voice, like reciting a long-forgotten scripture.
“My… Young-won.”
It was Allen.