# Chapter 38
Rumpled clothes, disheveled hair, and lips still slick with saliva—glistening, untouched.
Even if he didn’t want to understand the situation, the evidence was overwhelming. But Cha Haseong didn’t budge, despite Yoon Minoh’s outburst. He narrowed his eyes as if deep in thought before replying in a tired voice:
“I’d love to oblige, but it’s almost time for your guiding session.”
“Wasn’t it scheduled for 5?”
“Not for you, Yoon Minoh-ssi. For him.”
(referring to Yeo Dowoon)
“……”
“Get up. Your feet are showing.”
Dowoon hesitated—would it look stupider to jump up obediently or to keep playing dumb? He gave up the mental tug-of-war and sluggishly lifted the blanket. As his face emerged, Cha Haseong’s sharp gaze stabbed into his chest like needles.
“Hyung?”
Minoh grabbed his arm, but there was no real force behind it. Dowoon easily shook him off and stepped forward, unable to meet Cha Haseong’s eyes.
Just as Cha Haseong turned away, placing the round doorknob back on the sink, Minoh—cheeks flushed pink like a lovestruck boy—shouted after him:
“Hyung!”
“……”
“This was my first time.”
A confession Dowoon couldn’t ignore.
“Everything you did to me today… it was all new.”
But what truly crushed him was Cha Haseong’s muttered remark, sharp as a slap to the ear. Minoh had blatantly groped him—there was no way Cha Haseong hadn’t noticed.
“……I told you to carry condoms.”
Cha Haseong’s gentle smile never wavered as he pressed on:
“Dowoon-ssi, you’re full of surprises. Drinks like a fish, reckless, and… promiscuous.”
“……”
“Seems like you’d sleep with anyone—teammates, strangers, doesn’t matter…”
The accusation snapped something inside Dowoon. His patience frayed, then snapped.
“Did I follow you around like a fool just to roll around with anyone?”
“……”
“Like today?”
He couldn’t deny it. Looking back, Cha Haseong’s words weren’t entirely baseless. Dowoon was weak to temptation, indulgent. If something caught his interest, he dove in headfirst. And in the thrill of dungeon raids, he’d often courted death just to chase that high.
‘One more reckless stunt, and you’ll be running laps around the training ground seven times. Understood, Yeo Dowoon?’
If not for Kwon Jeonghoo’s ironclad oversight, he might’ve ended up in some desolate rehab center by now, forced to “relearn” how to live properly. Drawing life graphs, repenting his reckless past, planning a wholesome future—what a joke.
Drunk. Promiscuous. Reckless.
The words fit. Dowoon could practically see how Cha Haseong pictured him: human waste.
And that realization sent his frustration soaring.
Five years of devotion. Five years of loyalty—all dismissed.
For half a decade, Dowoon had worshipped Cha Haseong like the universe itself, pouring every ounce of affection into him. He’d never once pitied his own love, no matter how foolish it seemed. He’d believed in the old saying: Even the hardest tree falls after ten strikes.
But he was wrong. Dead wrong.
Cha Haseong wasn’t a tree. He was a flower.
Dowoon had struck and struck, only for the petals to fall, revealing hidden thorns—poison dripping onto the very hands that had cradled its leaves.
This time, his words weren’t polite.
“We agreed not to meddle in each other’s private lives.”
Cha Haseong’s eyes hardened, as if Dowoon were some thug. His reply was icy:
“The agreement was to avoid hurting each other.”
Hurt? Dowoon’s temper flared. What hurt?
“I don’t recall causing you any harm.”
Cha Haseong’s gaze dropped deliberately to Dowoon’s waist.
“You did. How am I supposed to trust you for contact guiding after this?”
The implication was clear. Dowoon’s chest burned—his five years of self-restraint reduced to ash. The hypocrisy made his blood boil.
“You never trusted me to begin with. You only tolerated me because you were ordered to.”
He hadn’t meant to say it. But the words hung between them, raw and accusatory.
“I did trust you.”
“……”
“I trusted the desperate kid who clung to me like his life depended on it.”
Cha Haseong’s cold dismissal twisted the knife.
“If I’d known you’d mount just anyone, I wouldn’t have bothered playing nice.”
Fuck. If he’d actually been as wild as they claimed, he wouldn’t feel this betrayed. But Dowoon swore on everything—he’d lived clean. No scandals, no slip-ups. All so that if Cha Haseong ever opened his heart, even a crack, Dowoon could confess without hesitation.
Now, his voice was razor-edged:
“How do you even know if I’m on top or bottom?”
He didn’t expect comfort. Just a flicker of old assumptions—what ifs flashing through his mind.
What if my berserk risk hadn’t spiked to 43%? What if I’d gotten that retirement approval, started a quiet life in the Gangwon mountains…
Would this agonizing crush have finally ended?
“If I were truly promiscuous…”
Dowoon stared at the hospital floor’s geometric patterns, voice flat:
“I’d have had you in my bed first.”
Patience? Restraint? Those words had never applied to him. He burned fast, crashed hard, boiled over.
“Lock your door from now on.”
“……”
“Wouldn’t want you stuck beneath someone you don’t trust.”
“Go ahead.”
Cha Haseong’s false smile crumbled.
“I’m curious how well you’d pin me down.”
Before the words faded, Dowoon’s hand was on the knit collar of Cha Haseong’s sweater—the same hands that had torn through dungeons, that had clawed free even with snapped tendons. Hands Cha Haseong had once cradled, whispering:
‘You’ll be okay now.’
‘I’m right here.’
Those words had washed over Dowoon like moonlight on untouched wilderness, melting his pain away.
Now, his calloused fingers traced Cha Haseong’s collarbone. The Esper who wielded fire and ice bore hands marked by burns—frostbite and blisters alike. As Dowoon’s palm pressed to his chest, Cha Haseong felt an unfamiliar fear.
Beyond those hands, which had slaughtered endless monsters to seal gates, came the erratic thud of a heart. Cha Haseong stiffened. Dowoon jerked his hand back.
“Don’t worry.”
“……”
“I won’t touch anyone who doesn’t want me.”
***
“Hyung… do I look promiscuous?”
Dowoon plopped down beside Ko Ijae, who was half-sprawled on a bench. Startled, Ijae fumbled for an answer.
“Uh…?”
“Be honest.”
Even at his best, Dowoon’s face wasn’t exactly wholesome. Ijae sensed this wouldn’t be enough. He scrambled:
“You don’t look… uh… refined…?”
Dowoon’s eyebrow twitched—just as Ijae feared.
Right. That face.
The one that got him banned from official events. The one that screamed trouble.
