By Zephyria 
This sensation was definitely a firm tooth. Jeil Heon bit his skin very lightly, leaving no mark, before pulling away.
“……?!”
“Didn’t you ask for a taste test? You’re delicious.”
“Agh! How long are you going to keep bringing that up!”
“I’ll be waiting at the cafe nearby, so call me when you’re finished.”
Jeil Heon smiled as he opened the car door for him, and Yoo Jiha walked away huffing. He vowed to himself that he would definitely get a kiss on the way home.
Watching the retreating figure, Jeil Heon buried his face in the steering wheel. A hot breath, which he had barely managed to suppress in front of Yoo Jiha, escaped him. To offer his cheek there—what was he thinking, not even knowing how scary it is? Even after everything he had done to him at the Hanseong Opera House.
A deep sense of self-loathing welled up at his own shameless and worn-out nature, which felt too wretched to stand beside such an innocent, young lover. He couldn’t even remember how he had managed to meet someone like this at twenty.
Yoo Jiha likely couldn’t even imagine what kind of impulse was being ignited within him whenever he thought of the boy. He had to suppress it as much as possible so that Jiha wouldn’t be shocked by his true nature and run away.
Exhaling a heavy sigh, Jeil Heon slowly backed the sedan away.
* * *
There are always people like that. People who go to the valleys when a heavy rain warning is issued, or go hiking when a heavy snow warning is in effect. People who, even if they end up stranded, think it’s only natural for the government to rescue them since they paid their taxes.
The man was of this sort. He ventured deep into the mountains, ignoring the warning signs stating that entry was forbidden due to the appearance of wild boars. On the contrary, he thought it would be a huge hit if he actually encountered a boar and filmed it.
He walked for a long time along a beast trail, pushing through the overgrown grass. Instead of a boar, he saw an old geumjul—a sacred straw rope. In a normal situation, seeing a rope strung in the middle of a desolate, dark mountain would have sparked a chilling fear. However, the man’s pupils were already dilated, as if he were possessed.
Having stopped recording his video at some point, the man stepped over the rope and went further and further inside, as if someone were guiding him. Eventually, even the beast trail vanished, and not a single sound of an insect could be heard. Despite it being midday in early autumn, a chilly frost settled over the place, where there stood a hermitage and a prayer site that were little more than ruins.
Inside a cave hidden as a prayer site, a massive rock sat as if blocking a crack in the cliff. Despite having been neglected for a long time, the Divine Blade, which pierced through a talisman and was driven into the rock, shone as if it were brand new. The image of the rock, with someone’s name and birth date and time written in cinnabar as red as blood, was eerie, as if issuing a warning, but the man’s reason and instinct had long since ceased to function.
The man picked up a stone and struck the Divine Blade. The talisman, which was already frayed and tattered, began to crumble from the edges. Even as the palm of the hand holding the stone became a mess and blood streamed down, the man ignored it and continued to strike the Divine Blade at a steady pace.
Finally, at the moment the cracked rock split wide open, the now-rusted Divine Blade fell to the floor in an instant. Sssss. An utterly ominous energy flowed out from beyond the rock. Amidst that evil energy—which an official of the Otherworld would have called the Corruption Level—a brightly smiling face appeared.
「Thank you for letting me out.」
The man, who had broken the Divine Blade until his palm tore, died as payment, his entire body ripped to shreds. The blood splattered over the pieces of the corpse looked like a smiley face.
The face of the Smiling Man, who had emerged from beyond the rock, twisted with a creaking sound. With the sound of joints being crushed, the twisted face stopped at a grotesque angle. It was facing the direction of the Water Abnormality Worship Management Bureau’s headquarters.
The Smiling Man’s face snapped backward.
「Strange… Why can I only feel the energy of a Bearer belonging to Sunbae? Was I wrong last time? Yeojin. Yeojin. Yeojin! Where is Yeojin! Sunbae! Yeojin is! Why!」
The expression, which had been a bright smile revealing the gums, distorted grotesquely, and a wail—indistinguishable from laughter—echoed eerily through the narrow cave.
「If you took Yeojin too, Sunbae, I’m going to rip your limbs apart and kill you…」
With the final echo, it vanished beyond the Otherworld as if searching. Beyond the rope, everything returned to a quiet, sunken stillness, as if nothing had happened.
* * *
He finally found a moment to breathe amidst the chaos of assignments. Liberation. That meant midterms were approaching, but Yoo Jiha decided to ignore the future and enjoy the present happiness.
“Still, I think my stamina has improved thanks to being dragged around and exercising by that ahjussi. In the past, I would’ve just been groaning in bed.”
“Then shall we have our dates at the gym?”
“No.”
At the blunt answer, Jeil Heon laughed and drove the sedan. Because they had been so busy, their dates had mostly been limited to the area near the house or the garden. Of course, there were many places to go in Bukchon, and the garden Jeil Heon had been tending lately was wide and beautiful, but going far away made him feel more excited than usual. Meeting him outside of familiar places felt special.
Jeil Heon seemed to think similarly, as he was wearing a semi-formal suit today. Since it was his first time in a suit, Jiha couldn’t stop glancing at him.
“Ahjussi! Let’s take a photo over there before we go eat!”
“Oh, sticker photos? Those still exist?”
Jiha led Jeil Heon to an instant photo studio he spotted while passing by. He even put a cute rabbit-ear headband on him and took photos in couple poses. At the end, without warning, Jeil Heon suddenly pulled Yoo Jiha into a hug and pressed his lips against his forehead. Though he was so surprised that he made a strange face, it was his favorite photo.
Although he fumbled a bit when making a heart, his posing was quite proficient compared to when taking regular photos. It was thanks to his younger sister’s rote education.
“Eunjung loves sticker photos so much that she even bought a machine for the house. She says her face shines the most when she takes them with me.”
Jiha felt so grateful to the sister who had successfully educated this ahjussi—who usually had no interest in anything in the world—that he wanted to gift her a Spam set for the holidays. By the way, if she had bought a sticker photo machine, just how rich was she?
Suddenly remembering Je Seong-jae, the Chairman of JL Group, he secretly searched for Je Eunjung. She was there. The third and only daughter of the former Chairman and the President of a JL Group subsidiary. He wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but she looked similar to the woman he had glimpsed at the raw fish restaurant.
“…….”
Since he had been eating chicken to commemorate being dumped at the time, he had tuned out the conversation with his Noona, but it came back to him now.
〈You asked about the Chairman’s eldest brother before, right? Honestly, until now, he was treated as a non-existent person even within the company, maybe because they were estranged? But I heard he returned from the US recently. It’s a pain because even the protocol rankings have changed.〉
〈What kind of person is he?〉
〈I don’t know because he doesn’t appear in public. Rumors are spreading quietly that he’s so youthful it’s like he was frozen and then thawed out. And for a chaebol, he’s f-f-f-fucking handsome.〉
Wondering if it could be, he asked.
“You said the high school you went to was a boarding school, right?”
“Yeah. Though I dropped out in the first year.”
“Is that school by any chance in Iksan?”
“How did you know? My father was the only one he kicked out to a boarding school.”
There was a JL Group private high school in Iksan. Yoo Jiha now asked openly.
“If you had gone to college, would you have been my Sunbae?”
“If my grades weren’t good enough to enter Seoul National University, then probably?”
“…….”
The foundation of his alma mater, Sungyoung University, was established by the JL Group. He felt momentarily flustered, but seeing Jeil Heon looking down at him with a puzzled expression made him feel better. What did it matter if he was a chaebol or a beggar? It’s not like he was a descendant of a pro-Japanese collaborator.
Yoo Jiha decided to give the eldest son of a chaebol—whose life was probably boring—a taste of the commoner’s experience.
“Since you were a rich young master, you’ve probably never even tried tteok-twi-sun, right?”
“What is tteok-twi-sun?”
“Tteokbokki, fried snacks, and sundae. It tastes best when you eat it at a snack shop.”
“I had friends to go to snack shops with too.”
“Didn’t a chauffeur pick you up in front of the school in a long, pitch-black car?”
“They waited for me.”
He didn’t say they didn’t come. After finishing the commoner experience at the snack shop, they headed to an escape room cafe, the next stop on their date. Jeil Heon’s expression as he looked up at the store was somewhat subtle, which made Jiha concerned.
“Like I said yesterday, these things are very hit-or-miss. If you’re not feeling it, we can go somewhere else.”
“Mm, it’s not that. I just feel like I’ve heard of this place somewhere.”
“Was it here in the past too?”
“No, it wasn’t…”
Rubbing the back of his neck, Jeil Heon soon regained his composure.
“I believe that the person, rather than the place, is what brings joy. So you don’t need to worry about my mood every time.”
“Huh?”
Bending his waist deeply, Jeil Heon gently pressed his forehead against Jiha’s.
“It means that just breathing while I’m with you is a joy.”
Heat rushed to his face. For a moment, his ears went numb from the sound of his heart thumping against the inside of his chest.
“Let’s go, Jiha.”
Whether he knew or not that Jeil Heon was exercising patience to avoid pouncing on him in the middle of the street, he took his hand. He loved the feeling of being enclosed in that large, softly enveloping hand.
Yoo Jiha quickly erased the memory of Jeil Heon’s unusual expression when he saw the escape room cafe. Surely, there was no way they would encounter an anomaly while out on a date!