Baek Sahyun, who had driven off alone, didn’t return to the villa even after a long time had passed.
I wondered if he’d abandoned me here and run off to Seoul by himself, but I believed he wasn’t irresponsible enough to do something like that.
“It’s quiet.”
Of course it would be, since I was the only person here, but the villa was eerily silent.
This stillness felt both welcome and quite lonely. The atmosphere was so chillingly cold that it felt like, how should I put it, a haunted villa straight out of a ghost story.
“Baek Sahyun and Nam Heejae…, were they actually on bad terms? Not friends but enemies?”
I lay on the bed in my room, pondering. Baek Sahyun’s attitude that I’d witnessed earlier was bothering me.
Baek Sahyun had shouted with a tone that seemed aggrieved, with a manner of speech that sounded like he was going crazy from frustration. I could guarantee that today was the first time I’d seen him get that worked up since my possession.
“Nam Heejae wanted to become an alpha.”
I wanted to formulate a concrete hypothesis based on the situations I’d experienced so far.
Nam Heejae, who was born a beta and always felt anxiety and inferiority about his manifestation. Then what kind of feelings did he have toward Baek Sahyun, who unlike himself was a ‘real alpha’? Wouldn’t there have been envy and jealousy?
Next, how exactly did Baek Sahyun view Nam Heejae? According to *Excessively Brilliant*, Nam Heejae and Baek Sahyun were childhood friends who met at a social party when they were young and maintained their friendship all the way to the current point in time.
Other than that, there were almost no passages explaining the relationship they’d built up. So filling in that blank was the task given to me.
“Should I ask Seo Jeongmin? Tell him to lay it all out and talk frankly.”
I pondered while recalling the face of that sexual harasser I didn’t want to think about. Just with the information I’d obtained earlier by going to Seo Jeongmin’s mansion, there was a limit to making accurate guesses. Plus, everyone except Lee Yunjae had been drunk, so it was very questionable whether that was even proper information.
“It does seem right that Baek Sahyun was helping Nam Heejae though.”
But whenever Baek Sahyun brought up Nam Heejae, he would throw tantrums as if…, mocking a bastard who was the most pathetic and weak creature that could ever exist in the world.
“Right. He’d gotten very sensitive.”
That’s why I’d thought those two might not actually be friends.
“At times like this, I need Haesu!”
Unfortunately, my younger sister Jang Haesu wasn’t here, so I had to find the answer entirely on my own strength.
I lay there covered with the cotton blanket, then abruptly sat up.
My head was too complicated to fall asleep at all. I felt the urge to go downstairs and wait for Baek Sahyun. Since I couldn’t reach a conclusion with my shallow deductive abilities, it seemed more efficient to have a showdown with the person in question.
Baek Sahyun, what exactly was your relationship with Nam Heejae?
If it’s true that you were helping him…, what exactly was that help? Please explain it so that stupid me can understand.
“Pheromone shower.”
I deliberately rolled the term I’d heard from Seo Jeongmin around in my mouth.
The alpha pheromones that the superior alpha Baek Sahyun had covered the beta Nam Heejae with. Even the premise didn’t feel very wholesome, so I worried whether the two of them might have been in an affair.
Well, although Baek Sahyun did seem extremely irritated by Nam Heejae for that to be true.
The first thing I did upon coming down to the first floor was to flop down on the rocking chair.
“So this is how rich bastards spend their vacations at these huge villas.”
The swimming pool was visible beyond the living room’s floor-to-ceiling glass window. Because the night had deepened pitch-black, it felt like a ghost might suddenly pop out from inside the pool.
“Ah, this is slightly scary.”
To assert that ghosts don’t exist anywhere in the world, that such things are all just human delusions, I myself was in the form of possessing Nam Heejae’s body. Unlike when I was living as Korea’s healthy son Jang Woohyun, an eerie feeling crept up my spine.
“This won’t do. I should at least draw the curtains.”
I got up from the cushioned, plush chair and ambled toward the window.
If the butler had been here with me at a time like this, it would have been less scary, but I couldn’t understand why that bastard Baek Sahyun had sent the servants home.
“No wait. That bastard probably isn’t even scared of ghosts, is he?”
Come to think of it, ghosts would probably be more scared of Baek Sahyun. Thinking this way, the creepiness seemed to fade a bit.
Well, this was Baek Sahyun’s villa after all, so even evil ghosts would try not to approach unless they had a death wish. Who was Baek Sahyun? The guy who grabbed his friend by the hair and dragged him to the toilet because he said a ghost had possessed him…
“Ahhhhh! Fuck, what the hell!”
Having arrived at the window and grabbed the curtain, I let out a scream in shock nearly enough to faint. It was because a certain silhouette sitting on the edge of the pool, splashing in the water, came into my view.
As I trembled while holding the curtain, I felt a sense of déjà vu and blinked my eyes.
“…Baek Sahyun?”
I’d almost had a heart attack, but as I kept looking, it seemed like the silhouette of someone I knew. To be precise, it appeared that Baek Sahyun, who had left the house, had returned after finishing his late-night drive and was feeling sorry for himself.
“Did he eat something wrong? Why is he like that?”
Thanks to that, I felt relieved but also dumbfounded. Should I go out or not? It wasn’t even a child throwing a tantrum, but seeing a grown young man like that made me feel embarrassed for him.
Come to think of it, was Baek Sahyun an only child? Reasonable suspicion arose that he’d been raised too indulgently and turned out like this. *Slide.* In the end, I opened the window and took a step forward.
“Ah, fuck. It’s cold.”
Perhaps because I came out barefoot, the soles of my feet felt chilly. A crisp night breeze swept over my entire body. I thought about going back in to put on fuzzy slippers, but then I’d have to go around looking for where the slippers were, so I gave up.
“Hey, Sahyun-ah!”
Instead, I quickly ran toward Baek Sahyun. I wanted to minimize the time my bare feet touched the ground. Just then, the dreary sound of a bird crying echoed through the air.
Having run to Baek Sahyun’s side in one breath, I rubbed my palm over my arm where goosebumps had formed. When I glanced down at him, Baek Sahyun’s face was excessively expressionless.
“Baek Sahyun?”
That appearance was so bizarre that I wondered if I was seeing an apparition and ended up calling out to him again. Fortunately, it seemed to really be Baek Sahyun, as his eyebrows twitched irritably.
His tightly closed lips also clenched shut even more firmly like a clam. Having gotten scared in advance by his bulging jaw muscles, I cleared my throat.
Recalling Baek Sahyun from just a few hours ago, I tried to appease him with a gentle voice.
“Why are you out here in the cold? You can’t even swim, so why are you dipping your feet in?”
Hadn’t he gotten incredibly angry when I brought up the pheromone shower topic? He probably still seemed quite pissed off even now. Baek Sahyun didn’t answer and just splashed his feet around loudly.
I wanted to smack him on the back of the head and say, fine, I’m leaving so you keep staying here, but I gave up. If I did that, I’d be grabbed by the collar in reverse and slammed into the water.
It’s not like I’ve only experienced this damn bastard Baek Sahyun’s temper once or twice. I endured and let out a sigh.
“Phew.”
At the same time, I lowered my butt next to him. When I dipped my feet in the same way, his expensive gaze finally glanced at me. With a frustrated heart, I tousled my hair here and there and spat out while staring straight ahead.
“Living as Nam Heejae is fuck-ing difficult.”
As soon as I finished that line, Baek Sahyun snorted.
“…If you were going to whine over just this much, you shouldn’t have stolen Nam Heejae’s body.”
It would be a lie if I said I didn’t feel choked up at those words. Hey man. Who would have entered because they wanted to? Before I could protest, Baek Sahyun asked in a tightly locked voice.
“Why did you choose that body of all things?”
I paused for a moment. How should I answer this…
Of course, I’d been feeling all along that I needed to answer honestly. I’d kept thinking about it, and it seemed like the reason I kept going through the same repertoire of ordeals was because I was being unnecessarily stubborn.
The delusion that I could easily handle someone like Baek Sahyun, who was just a novel character, because I knew the contents of the book. Additionally, the ridiculous delusion that I could correct the original Nam Heejae’s fate.
Perhaps this delusion was the wrong approach from the start? I should have been honest from the beginning instead. That I’m not the Nam Heejae you know, and that I just happened to end up entering this body. It absolutely wasn’t intentional, so please help me out.
With a different mindset than before, I started speaking.
“Some ghost latched onto your friend’s body…, and kept doing stupid things and acting frustratingly, so you got irritated, right?”
“……”
“I know everything. You must have had some kind of relationship you’d built up with Nam Heejae, but that became useless, so you were pissed. Besides, I’m…, also the type you don’t want to associate with.”
If it was Baek Sahyun with his obsessive tendencies, he definitely would have felt displeased. In fact, the type of human that the character Baek Sahyun despised most was me, Jang Woohyun. He hated people who carried around blockheads as heads more than anything in the world. And I’m…, the top-grade blockhead acknowledged by Jang Haesu.
“I do know that, but I need to be moderately stupid, you know. The feeling that the more you use your brain, the more fucked you get—you don’t know that feeling, do you?”
It’s probably a feeling that someone quick-witted and smart like Baek Sahyun wouldn’t understand even if a lifetime passed.
“I’ll confess honestly from my side about what this situation is, so stand by. After I finish talking, it’s your turn. No beating around the bush, just briefly explaining only the parts we each want to know. How about it?”
When I cautiously suggested this, Baek Sahyun shot back with a curt tone.
“You’re going to explain the process of stealing someone else’s body in excruciating detail? Sorry. Not interested.”
“…Right. That’s the point I’m trying to clarify. That I didn’t steal it because I wanted to.”
It was the moment I murmured in a calm tone. Baek Sahyun’s eyes sparkled as if showing interest. Caressing the forearm exposed below my short-sleeved t-shirt, I chose my opening words. Perhaps because it was night, my body felt quite chilly.
First, I should let him know what kind of person Jang Woohyun was, right? I was gauging the rough order when it happened. Baek Sahyun, who had taken off the cardigan he was wearing, draped it over me.
“Let’s talk inside.”
The guy who had been stubbornly insisting as if he’d never come home, whispered bleakly toward me.
“It’ll piss me off if you catch a cold.”
