# Chapter 53
Doha was certain of Hong Duyoung’s defeat. However, he couldn’t deny that his upright and solid heart had crumbled after learning the depths of his abyss. Ryu Doha was inherently born as a person with multiple sturdy pillars standing firmly in his heart. It felt as if one of those pillars had broken.
A child whose life can be taken without any consequences.
Boy Ryu Doha was defined by this one sentence. Doha slowly blinked his reddened eyes. Though he wasn’t deliberately pretending to be strong, tears didn’t flow at all. It felt like being struck hard on the back of the head. Due to his simple nature, he only realized the miserable reality he hadn’t been aware of after dying once.
Upon hearing it, Hong Duyoung’s words weren’t wrong. Ryu Doha was a lovable boy who did his best for those he loved and was loved abundantly in return, but at the same time, from just five steps away, he was “a child with very low value of life.” Indeed, nothing happened to Hong Duyoung who took Doha’s life as material.
There are levels to guilt. Humans feel guilt when killing other humans, but they don’t tend to feel guilt when killing livestock or insects. So I think that secretly, there are detailed rankings for human lives too. Perhaps from the beginning, I was valued by Hong Duyoung as just slightly higher than an insect. And in this world, surely Hong Duyoung isn’t the only person with such thoughts.
It seems the value of my life has increased greatly since being reborn, having a different guardian, and living as Lee Doha. This was by no means a refreshing feeling. Somehow, I felt strangely offended and my mood twisted. It was a feeling that Ryu Doha, who had grown uprightly without any complications, had never experienced before.
To explain specifically, it was like developing a somewhat antisocial perspective, viewing the world and people askew. Of course, if this teaches me new emotions that will help me become an actor rivaling Lee Jaei in popularity, I would be grateful.
Ryu Doha, who was uncomplicated to a fault, became complex after a long time. Doha, who had been digging a tunnel and going underground, stopped his helplessly falling elevator the moment he heard Jaei’s voice.
“But how did our Doha…”
Jaei, who had been crying a river on the floor just moments ago, detected Doha’s emotional change with his sensitive intuition, successfully stopped his tears, and began speaking in a solemn voice. After wiping away his tears with the back of his hand, adjusting his posture, and even rolling up his sleeves.
“Is your name also a peach born in summer?”
Doha tightly closed his eyes for a moment. As Doha concentrated his strength between his eyebrows, trying to hold back laughter, Jaei continued speaking seriously with a truly shameless expression.
“No, I’m just really curious.”
Recalling the method he used to overcome pain during moments of self-abuse, Jaei got hold of Doha’s phone. Then he arbitrarily accessed Doha’s SNS and began reading the DMs that had arrived for him in a loud voice.
“Doha! Actually, I was planning to live only until today, but while watching Doha’s vlog at lunch, I thought I should at least see our Doha’s movie release! So after work, I came straight home without going anywhere else! I love you, Doha!”
Doha’s eyes, which had been surrounded by an aura of frustration and darkness, widened. Instantly returning to his original kind self, he tightly closed his mouth and jutted out his lower lip. His pupils began to moisten, and a round walnut appeared on his short chin. Doha peeked out his head to confirm that Jaei wasn’t making up the DM’s content in real-time. After confirming it was actually received content, he blinked his reddened eyes and stammered a request.
“Would you reply for me? Tell them to watch my next work too. And the one after that.”
“Yes, yes, Doha. I’ll write it for you. I’ve done it a lot.”
“Please also write that I’ll work really hard, Jaei.”
“Just trust me.”
Jaei, who had completed a very long reply, extended the screen to Doha with crescent-eyed smile. Doha stretched out his sturdy arms and grabbed Jaei in a hug. Jaei’s slender body floated up as if fluttering and nestled snugly in his embrace.
Doha, who had been pretending to be cool in front of Jaei for a while, silently shedding tears, now hugged Jaei tightly enough to burst him and cried bitterly like a child after a long time. However, since Ryu Doha as a person originally valued “coolness” the most, he soon calmed down and closed his mouth.
He has his own standards for male protagonists in dramas. Among them, a principle that must be kept was “You can be twisted occasionally, but don’t embarrass Jaei with pathetic behavior.”
No matter how he thought about it, using the excuse of being deeply hurt by someone to express his low self-esteem as aggression toward an unspecified number of people was pathetic and not cool.
Though it was only about 40 seconds, Doha, who had briefly harbored feelings that fell short of the protagonist’s standard, changed his mind and soon wore a desolate and handsome expression. While massaging Jaei’s slim waist and relatively more substantial buttocks, he honestly confessed that he had momentarily harbored petty thoughts just before.
“Jaei, actually, I hated the world a moment ago. Just for a moment.”
“I see. It must have been a new experience for you.”
Jaei answered while kneading Doha’s white cheeks. As he gently licked the tears on Doha’s cheeks, which had red handprints on them, Doha continued as if to prevent misunderstanding.
“Not anymore. I’m confessing what I did wrong. I’d like it if you told me it’s okay.”
Jaei embraced Doha’s head fully against his chest. While letting him hear his heartbeat as he lay quietly in his arms, patting his back, he suddenly felt an overwhelming emotion.
“Doha. I think I’m really lucky. How did you end up rolling to me? You could have rolled to someone else. Just thinking about it makes me dizzy. If you weren’t mine, I really couldn’t have lived with the unfairness.”
Doha is the person who quickly built sturdy pillars in Jaei’s heart, which often got hurt and collapsed. Thanks to those pillars, Jaei grew into a relatively solid person without collapsing despite hardships and adversities. Now, if any of Doha’s pillars were to collapse, he was confident he could fix them quickly. Of course, a person like Ryu Doha would probably already have completed self-repairs and be standing coolly in front of him before that.
* * *
Now that Hong Duyoung knows about Ryu Doha’s desire for revenge against Lee Jaei, what future is he envisioning? To find out how that madman plans to interfere with Lee Jaei and Ryu Doha’s lives again, they needed the script of Kim Ilhun, who was playing the role of “adult Yuha.”
Yuha, who appears as an adult in the play, was the twin brother of Yuha who died because of Haeyoung. He approached Heejai pretending to be Yuha who had returned to life to avenge his brother’s death. Jaei was already aware of this setting.
Jaei sent a message to Kim Ilhun to attempt a conversation.
[I’ll send you mine as soon as I get my script too, okay? You’ll need it too]
[The director told me not to leak the script I received under any circumstances]
[What can I do for you to grant this favor?]
[I need 10 billion won]
[Tell me your account number and I’ll deposit it]
[Just put it directly into my mother’s account]
[I’ll take responsibility for your mother’s retirement]
After more than an hour of coaxing and cajoling him as he kept escaping with jokes in various ways, Jaei was finally able to obtain what couldn’t have come into his hands on the condition of exchanging each other’s scripts.
[Jaei, can I capture our conversation and post it on SNS? Please let me ride on the Lee Jaei bus too]
[From where to where? Get my exact permission]
Kim Ilhun requested permission by capturing the part with insignificant jokes that Jaei thought wouldn’t be problematic at all. Jaei had no intention of stopping him from experiencing an influx of articles by showing off his acquaintance with Lee Jaei. After confirming that he had only posted the part he had been given permission for on SNS, Jaei ended the conversation and opened the script file.
He had become quite friendly with Kim Ilhun after filming began. It had nothing to do with Hong Duyoung’s instruction to build actual emotions. Throughout his acting career, Jaei had deliberately made efforts to maintain good relationships with fellow actors.
Partly because of his not-round but sensitive impression, he was misunderstood as discriminating against people according to their rank if he behaved even slightly incorrectly. To avoid creating such situations, he did his best to maintain good relationships with everyone. Therefore, he thought Doha wouldn’t misunderstand his relationship with Kim Ilhun.
He checked the last part of the script first. He could confirm the final scene of “Yuha and Haeyoung” that couldn’t be checked in the script Park Suhwan had sent a few days ago. The ending of Ryu Doha that Hong Duyoung is planning at this moment.
Today, Doha went to his new workplace for a script reading of his next project. Although his film shooting had ended before Jaei’s, he rowed without rest, becoming a great boatman. The drama he chose as his next project was a golden-time romantic comedy miniseries featuring top actors, and Doha’s role was that of a second male lead who blindly loves the female lead who is 12 years older than him.
Jaei, who was personally managing Doha’s filmography, advised that if he raised his recognition through this drama, he could take on the lead role in a miniseries in his next work. And with a lonely smile, he left the words, “I support you, but I have no intention of watching with my eyes open, so you do well on your own,” before coolly turning away and then collapsing on the floor.
That day, Doha had a hard time breathing life into Jaei, who was stuck to the floor in a state where his entire body had flattened like a deflated balloon doll. He covered every hole in Jaei’s body with his mouth and transferred his breath. Only after an hour did Jaei finally become a fully inflated balloon.
He was thinking of taking time before this filming started to meet his birth mother. He hadn’t specifically thought about what to say to her. Even if he decided what to say in advance, he felt he wouldn’t be able to bring it up as planned when they actually met.
Today, Doha, who was working hard not to disgrace the company CEO, checked his phone during a break. Several messages had arrived from Jaei. He calmly checked the contents he had sent.
He smiled comfortably while reading the script containing the final fate of adult Yuha. Then he sent a cute emoticon overflowing with composure and confidence to Jaei.
[It’s all as I expected desert cat are you very surprised? rub your hands and meditate when I get home I’ll need to touch stupid fox’s ears and tail]
[I’ll never let you get hurt won’t let it get to that situation now that we know in advance it’s fine we can change it]
[But if this is the sure way to make Hong Duyoung confess his crimes with his own mouth, there’s no need to change it]
[Doha I understand how you feel I understand but that doesn’t mean I accept your opinion]
