# Chapter 155
Lee Hwan quietly closed his mouth. An unpleasant feeling washed over him like a flood.
“I’ll explain it separately. It’s okay.”
Taesung tried to reassure him with a faint smile, but Lee Hwan’s stomach began to churn. He took a deep breath and reflected on what he had just blurted out.
Causality? He didn’t even know exactly what that meant. Even if he’d spent a long time in an environment where he could barely maintain his sanity, was it normal for words to slip out of his mouth so loosely?
Moreover, every time something like this happened, Taesung consistently seemed to know something. From Lee Hwan’s perspective as someone who had managed in social situations and faced others’ jealousy, Taesung was clearly hiding things and not telling him everything.
The words he had intended to say disappeared. Just a few days after the regression. In that brief period, he felt as if he was experiencing a lifetime’s worth of peculiar sensations.
“…Sorry. I want to go home.”
His mood had soured. He had already used a lot of power and was completely drained, and now with increasingly incomprehensible things happening, it was becoming too much to handle.
“Alright, go to sleep. I’ll wake you when we get to my house.”
Taesung didn’t miss the opportunity to subtly change the destination to his own home.
‘Not your house, my house, you jerk.’
A reproach rose to the tip of his tongue, but Lee Hwan was too tired to retort and simply closed his eyes.
Co-regressing and meeting Taesung. Eating his fill of Taesung’s steak. Registering as an awakened person four years earlier than in the past.
Everything had gone according to plan, yet this unsettled feeling must be his subconscious sending a warning. Knowing this but unable to figure out what was wrong made him inevitably on edge.
Thinking about it repeatedly yielded no answers. He just wanted to escape into sleep because of the confusion.
Realizing this was a luxury he couldn’t have hoped for while wandering, the deeply cushioned seat felt particularly comfortable.
“Sleep well.”
A low voice wrapped around his ears. Despite everything they’d been through, Taesung’s voice still soothed his frayed nerves.
Thankfully, the nosebleed that had started again seemed to be stopping. Lee Hwan fell into a short nap, breathing evenly until Taesung would wake him.
* * *
After waking from his nap, they were in front of Taesung’s house. Jade was nowhere to be seen, having disappeared at some point.
He didn’t ask where Jade had gone. Taesung must have released him when the time was right.
“Awake? Shall we go up?”
Taesung reached out and brushed back the hair that had fallen limply over Lee Hwan’s forehead. That touch was so tender that Lee Hwan, still half-asleep, entrusted his face to him.
Normally, he would constantly censor such behaviors, wondering if they were appropriate, but strangely, when drowsy with sleep, he let it slide. As Taesung caressed his cheek, Lee Hwan leaned against him, feeling his warmth.
Taesung leaned his upper body over to the passenger seat and slowly inhaled as if trying to catch his scent. Lee Hwan breathed along with him and faintly caught what seemed like a fruity smell, glancing at the dashboard.
“The air freshener smells nice…”
Taesung made a chuckling sound and withdrew back to his seat. Click, the sound of the seatbelt being unfastened.
“Let’s go. You must be hungry.”
Rather than hunger, he felt exhausted. Taesung had never once mentioned being hungry first, but now he kept bringing up food, making Lee Hwan wonder amusingly if he was actually the hungry one.
As they rode the elevator up, Taesung kept examining Lee Hwan. He could feel the gaze through the mirror, but deliberately pretended not to notice. What was he going to say now? Lee Hwan was curious but didn’t bother asking first.
After arriving and sitting on the sofa, Taesung finally spoke after some hesitation. Judging by how long he deliberated, Lee Hwan could sense it wasn’t good news.
“Could you do me one favor?”
“What is it?”
“It’s nothing major… I was wondering if you could refrain from applying to Naru for a while, even after you’re registered as an awakened person.”
So that’s what he’d been stalling for. Lee Hwan raised one eyebrow, looking at Taesung as if to ask what he meant.
All gates were under the management of corporations, associations, and the state. Unless using underhanded methods to enter illegally, even going through the lowest-grade gates required verification each time.
Even free gates managed by the Hunter Association required applying with matched personnel numbers and a long wait, so essentially, being affiliated somewhere was the most desirable path to becoming a Hunter.
Without being registered as a Naru Hunter, he couldn’t confidently go through gates with Taesung as before. Taesung must know this.
If so, he’d said it knowingly. He said such things because he knew. Lee Hwan felt slightly hurt.
“I start at Naru on the 15th.”
“But in the Support Team. I’ll handle that.”
“Haven’t you already handled it?”
When Lee Hwan bluntly questioned him, Taesung closed his mouth. Was he hurt by the suspicion, or was he silent because it was true?
Either way, it didn’t matter. They had returned together, but Lee Hwan felt constantly excluded from his plans. Moreover, Taesung’s words sounded like a declaration that he wouldn’t be with Lee Hwan, which suddenly made him feel upset.
As Lee Hwan’s eyes sharpened, Taesung put an arm around his shoulder and faced him. Lee Hwan was about to tell him to let go and get lost, but seeing the seriousness in Taesung’s eyes, he left it alone.
“I promise you one thing. I will never do anything that would harm you.”
Such an obvious statement wasn’t comforting. Despite all the strange behavior and situations, Lee Hwan never once thought Taesung would do something bad to him.
He was just confused and hurt. How could Taesung make such judgments so matter-of-factly when he too had only been back for three days? Without consulting Lee Hwan, completely unilaterally.
“How would you know that?”
Lee Hwan asked as he removed Taesung’s hand from his shoulder and pushed it away.
“How can you be sure whether something will harm me or not?”
He had let it go the first day because everything was so overwhelming. On the second day, he thought perhaps Taesung was confused due to the aftermath of the regression. But by now, he couldn’t help thinking that Taesung was planning something without his knowledge.
Why did he want a different direction from the past, and what role was Lee Hwan supposed to play in his plan while waiting? Complaints he couldn’t fully express bubbled up.
But that small anger subsided into anxiety at Taesung’s low voice that followed.
“Because I’ll make it so. Even if I have to end everything…”
The last words faded internally, barely audible. Lee Hwan couldn’t understand what it meant, but it didn’t sound good no matter how he interpreted it.
Rather than speaking to someone else, it was more like a whisper affirming something to himself. Lee Hwan felt that the black eyes staring at him were actually looking somewhere beyond.
In the end, Lee Hwan stopped pressing the issue. Even though Taesung pretended to be fine with a faint smile, his condition didn’t seem good at all.
He wanted to address the hurtful matters, not corner Taesung. Despite his suspicious behavior, he still put Lee Hwan first.
But whether his notably tired eyes were due to not sleeping properly after the regression, or for some other reason he hadn’t revealed…
Another day passed aimlessly. Taesung repeatedly held his phone, talking to someone, and returned to Lee Hwan whenever he had a break.
Only after hearing Taesung’s assurance that he wouldn’t do unnecessary things without Lee Hwan could he somewhat relax. Whether he believed it or not, at least he felt that Taesung still cared deeply about him.
The sun set and night deepened. When Taesung went to his room, Lee Hwan, lying well in bed, suddenly opened his eyes wide.
He kept recalling the previous night. The image of Taesung wandering around the house while asleep was vivid in his mind. What should he do if Taesung did the same tonight?
Eventually, Lee Hwan quietly got up and, unprompted, went to the living room. He sat down deeply on the sofa and let out a long sigh. If Taesung left his room again, he planned to catch him and send him back.
It was unlikely Taesung would come out, but that thought gave him peace of mind. With his tired mind, he drifted in and out of light sleep two or three times.
Lee Hwan was fully awakened by the sound of movement from afar. Shortly after, Taesung’s door opened. Just as expected. Even in the darkness without a single light on, Lee Hwan could easily tell that he was asleep.
“What’s so pretty about you that I’m here doing this…”
Well, his face with only its contours visible in the darkness was pretty… But no matter how he thought about it, he tended to weaken in front of Taesung. Lee Hwan sighed and walked over, grabbing Taesung’s arm before he reached the living room.
Even as he held him, the warm temperature brought a sense of stability. When Lee Hwan gently pushed his back to guide him, Taesung obediently turned around and returned to his room.
Click. As the door opened, the bed was once again spotless without a single wrinkle. It was so meticulously tidy that Lee Hwan couldn’t understand where Taesung had been sleeping before crawling out like this.
As he quickly looked around, Lee Hwan spotted the armchair he had pulled up the night before.
‘No way…’
This guy couldn’t have been sitting there unable to lie down properly, could he? As much as Lee Hwan wanted to think otherwise, there was no other place in this room where Taesung could have fallen asleep besides the bed.
This made it impossible to blame him wholeheartedly. Lee Hwan swallowed his concern and carefully guided Taesung to the bed. Now he just needed to watch him fall asleep and leave.
“Lie down. It’s okay now.”
But perhaps his voice had reached Taesung? Just as Lee Hwan was about to lay him down, Taesung, still not fully awake, suddenly grabbed Lee Hwan’s arm. As his arm was pulled, Lee Hwan awkwardly put his knee on the bed and climbed up.
“Hey, let go of this.”
The guy who had ghostly understood his voice when told to lie down now gripped Lee Hwan’s arm like a lifeline and wouldn’t let go.
Unfortunately, since Taesung had grabbed the upper part of his arm, when he collapsed completely onto the bed, Lee Hwan also tumbled on top of him.
“This…”
Honestly, he could have resisted if he wanted to, but he didn’t want to wake Taesung. Lee Hwan, whose head had bumped into Taesung’s body, raised it in surprise.
Should he shake his arm free? He could probably escape if he forcibly opened Taesung’s hand, but he didn’t want to hurt him. He was also concerned that Taesung might wake up clumsily and something could go wrong.
And at this point in time, Lee Hwan’s strength and stamina were far inferior to Taesung’s. He couldn’t be certain that Taesung’s hand would release just by shaking his arm. It would probably be difficult to escape without unfairly attacking a sleeping person.
In the end, after some deliberation, Lee Hwan stopped resisting and lay diagonally beside him, face to face. From there, he blankly stared at the ceiling, waiting for Taesung to fall into deep sleep.
“…Sigh.”
Was it because Taesung had a higher body temperature? The parts where their bodies touched felt particularly hot. Lee Hwan felt a tingling sensation in the arm that Taesung was holding.
