Yoon Kihyun whipped his head around without realizing it. It was to see the expression of the young guy who had been quite openly anticipating sex with him just moments ago.
‘Why is that bastard here? Don’t tell me this guy called him out?’
He knew that couldn’t be, but it was such an unexpected encounter that such thoughts crossed his mind for a moment. But the guy seemed just as flustered, glancing at Yoon Kihyun and moving his lips.
“Do you know him?”
That’s clearly what his lips read.
Did he know him? He did know him. Was that all? He’d even run into him by chance on the street today. The problem was that Yoon Kihyun had sneered at him thoroughly and gotten on his nerves.
‘Anyway, you’re working hard. Team Leader Jung Sijun, fighting with running around like a little bitch.’
At the time, he’d sneered with all his might thinking he’d never see him again, but who knew he’d run into him again in less than a day?
If he’d known this would happen, instead of sneering, he would have said he’d mistaken him for someone else and left. Yoon Kihyun, who was mulling over regrets that came far too late, felt his heart sink again at the smell of disinfectant lingering at the tip of his nose.
‘But is this bastard even allowed to come to a bar? He was vomiting blood like that. What I’m seeing… it’s not a ghost, is it?’
His tipsy mind led Yoon Kihyun to an absurd conclusion. It was largely because he had a personality that couldn’t openly show dislike to others, and he’d been ruminating all day on the words he’d spouted in anger inside that flimsy partition.
‘Don’t you know you’ll die if you don’t receive guiding?’
He’d definitely asked Jung Sijun that.
But they say words become seeds—what if the guy who ultimately didn’t receive guiding and died from rampage became a ghost to appear before him for revenge?
As Yoon Kihyun’s expression began to grow increasingly serious, Jung Sijun’s eyebrow twitched.
‘Just how much did he drink?’
Feeling like shit, after leaving the recovery room, he’d been thinking of drinking heavily and found a random bar, and from the entrance, Yoon Kihyun’s face was the first thing that caught his eye.
‘He’s built so fucking hot.’
It was something he’d felt since working at the Center, but he was a beauty with distinctly clear features that caught the eye.
Yoon Kihyun had a unique atmosphere that couldn’t be hidden even by the dim bar lighting. His refreshingly elongated eyes and perpetually indifferent face stimulated people’s interest to the point of madness.
His personality wasn’t particularly sociable either, so should I say it stirred up the desire to draw out even small reactions?
‘But who’s this bastard sitting next to him?’
Jung Sijun, who had been staring intently at Yoon Kihyun’s face, turned his gaze to the guy occupying the seat next to him.
The guy whose eyes met his shrank his shoulders slightly, then tilted his head as if asking what the matter was.
“Are you two acquainted?”
“Ah, I just met Kihyun-hyung here today for the first time…”
“Kihyun-hyung,” what bullshit. Seems like he was in the middle of ordinary bar pickup. Jung Sijun chuckled.
“Could you move for a moment? I have something to talk about briefly with Yoon Kihyun-ssi here.”
“Yes, yes. Go ahead. Have a good conversation!”
Where did the tenacity from clinging on just moments ago disappear to? Crushed by Jung Sijun’s murderous presence, the guy swiftly grabbed his phone and left the table.
Yoon Kihyun, who had been staring blankly at that sight, let out an empty laugh.
‘What’s with telling him to have a good conversation?’
Yoon Kihyun was so dumbfounded that he tilted his head crookedly and looked up at Jung Sijun.
When their eyes met, the bastard whose exterior at least was splendid smiled again and tilted his chin. It was a face as if asking what the problem was.
‘This bastard, really.’
Yoon Kihyun ended up getting riled up at that cocky gesture.
He had no intention of rolling around with that Jaeseo or Jaemin guy. He was grateful for getting rid of the annoying guy, but if the reason was to pick a fight with him, that was a different story.
“What are you doing right now? You don’t have anything to talk about with me.”
At Yoon Kihyun’s retort, Jung Sijun smiled, revealing his white teeth.
For a moment, goosebumps rose. Because to anyone watching, he looked like a mad dog before raising hell. So that’s why his nickname is Mad Dog, he understood, but irritation surged.
‘Damn it, fuck. His nickname is Mad Dog, he’s a public resource, what a fucking mess.’
No matter how he thought about it, the Awakened Center was definitely a shitty workplace that would never exist again in the world.
“Did you forget all about declaring yourself a guide? When someone’s vomiting blood asking for help, I didn’t know you’d ignore it and completely blow them off. Now I see your personality is really something, Yoon Kihyun-ssi.”
The gap was funny—just moments ago calling him Team Leader Yoon, then as soon as they were alone, calling him Yoon Kihyun-ssi.
But he was strictly speaking a former employee. Common sense dictated that the one shamelessly requesting guiding from an unrelated person and then raising hell because he was rejected was the problem.
“You look fine. The Center runs well even without me, so why would I do guiding?”
“I came back from the dead.”
“Ah, these days even people who’ve come back from the dead go to bars?”
When Yoon Kihyun sneered as if saying whatever happens happens, Jung Sijun’s jaw muscles bulged intensely. Seeing his lips flinch without being able to sneer back right away, it seemed he’d landed a proper hit.
‘You should pick a fight over something worth picking a fight over. What is this, you’re not even a kid, what are you trying to do?’
Yoon Kihyun pulled up the corners of his mouth as if feeling refreshed.
Then Jung Sijun laughed as if dumbfounded and casually sat down on the chair. His slightly softened tone surprisingly sounded almost like whining.
“Someone was running around like a little bitch inside a Gate, and I thought I was going to die from not receiving guiding. Does that make you laugh?”
Jung Sijun, who had been babbling about things no one asked, called over a staff member and ordered an empty glass and ice. At the way he acted like they’d come together from the start, Yoon Kihyun propped his chin with a bewildered face.
“You’re alive and well right here. So that’s fine. And is there some law saying I absolutely have to do guiding there?”
“That’s…”
Jung Sijun couldn’t babble anymore and poured alcohol into the glass with ice that the staff brought. The way he poured the expensive liquor in gushes was exasperating.
“I didn’t tell you to drink that, Team Leader Jung.”
“I can just buy it. How much is this anyway? Glenfiddich? Team Leader Yoon, your taste is cheaper than I thought.”
“Then why don’t you try buying something else?”
When Yoon Kihyun chuckled and sneered, Jung Sijun scanned the menu as if there was nothing he couldn’t do and ordered new alcohol.
He wanted to jump up from his seat even now, but having met like this while he’d been bothered all day by the ridiculous childish sneers he’d hurled at Jung Sijun, he wanted to somehow tie things up through conversation. Though he didn’t know if it would work out.
“…Can I ask why you quit?”
“No.”
At the short answer to Jung Sijun’s question, Jung Sijun’s eyebrow twitched again.
That eyebrow wriggles constantly. Yoon Kihyun ended up chuckling at the neat and straight eyebrow.
Though it wasn’t new, Jung Sijun was an incredible bastard. Not just his shitty personality or the way he blurted things out, but the most incredible thing was that he didn’t even think to hide his expressions.
Yoon Kihyun had always considered showing emotions plainly on one’s face to be a deduction in social life. He actually thought so too.
But Jung Sijun was different. When he was in a bad mood, it showed directly on his face. He didn’t care about the setting.
Whether it was meetings with team members or meetings with superiors, Jung Sijun didn’t discriminate—when he was dissatisfied, it showed in his expression, so everyone noticed his mood.
‘Seeing him up close, I get it. Even more annoying. Someone has to set a death date to live however they want, but this bastard has just lived like that from the start.’
To Yoon Kihyun’s thinking, that was a kind of power.
Right now, without Jung Sijun, there would be a huge gap in the esper forces deployed to Gates, so the atmosphere was such that even the Center Director, including the Esper Headquarters Director, catered to Jung Sijun’s whims.
From what he heard through the grapevine, his family was also wealthy with considerable influence, so he must have lived even more arrogantly without watching others’ reactions. He was a guy living in a completely different world from Yoon Kihyun.
“Your personality is really no joke, but how did you endure attending the Center?”
Jung Sijun muttered something that might have been talking to himself or informal speech and took a sip of alcohol. At that moment, Yoon Kihyun’s reason wavered precariously.
‘That’s because I had to live desperately to earn dog-like money, you bastard.’
It was when Yoon Kihyun, who had barely suppressed the curse that surged up from inside for a moment, was gulping down alcohol.
“Since we’re on the topic, can I ask—do you have any thoughts of rejoining the Center?”
Jung Sijun’s eyes, which had asked the question casually, were somewhat gloomy.
Though it was partly due to the dim bar lighting, he just hadn’t admitted it to himself, but Jung Sijun was conscious of Yoon Kihyun enough to recall from time to time when they’d had sex.
“When I think about it, the only guide at the Center whose wavelength matches mine… seems to be Team Leader Yoon.”
The added words were in a tone uncharacteristically cautious for Jung Sijun, but Yoon Kihyun’s expression was only cold. Because facing those eyes reminded him of what the young guy who’d been hitting on him earlier had said.
‘Are you an esper?’
‘No. It’s not that, but someone said it’s good to do it with a guide.’
It was one of the many prejudices about guides that espers spread.
Because they went around bragging about how amazing it felt to have sex with a guide, at some point guides were treated as a kind of fantasy sex partner in this field.
Thinking carefully, it seemed that Yoon Kihyun’s gaze toward him had started to change a bit after that day when they did mucous membrane guiding and even had sex.
This bastard, really, after I let it slide. Finally unable to endure it, Yoon Kihyun muttered as if chewing his words.
“Hey. Would you do it if you were me?”
“…What?”
“Would you want to go back and work at a shitty Center full of bastards who call someone working their ass off a public resource if you were me?”
“…”
“I already don’t want to live, and it’s hard enough without you raising hell too, so if you understand, just fuck off. Let’s not see each other again, please.”
Yoon Kihyun, who had spat out his words refreshingly as if vomiting up the blood clot he hadn’t managed to cough up today, stood up abruptly from his seat.
Escaping through the opposite side from where Jung Sijun sat, he staggered and grabbed his head.
In the end, he’d snapped again, but this time his insides felt relieved.
