Lee Hyun’s hand was covering the back of mine. Feeling the subtle tickling sensation in the warmth being transmitted, I pulled my hand away, and a gaze that seemed like it would devour me down to my bones reached me.
I had no intention of meeting his gaze like Lee Hyun had done moments ago. If anything, I’d rather just ignore it.
How long had it been like that? I heard a voice with good vocal projection calling me. The owner of that voice was Park Sichan, who had been pushed to the front row.
“Baek Shun!”
“What.”
“No, it’s just that you were being so cozy with the transfer student, I was wondering what you two were talking about?”
Cozy, my ass. What nonsense. What would one have to do to make Lee Hyun and me look affectionate? I doubted Park Sichan’s eyesight.
If I voiced this thought out loud, he’d obviously make a fuss about how both his eyes were 20/20, so I didn’t bother bringing it up.
“Does it look that way?”
Just when I was about to answer late, lost in thought, a gentle voice interjected into the conversation. When I turned my head, eyes curved softly with affection and red lips raised high came into view. Lee Hyun revealed his joy with his whole body, his cheeks dyed peach-colored.
Ruvlian overlapped with Lee Hyun’s appearance. He had been like that too when he pushed his face close to me, saying he’d use his honey trap on me. He’d smiled just like that—so clear and purely white.
The more I looked, the only thought that came to mind was how identical they were. The water-colored eyes that seemed to shine transparently in the bright sunlight, the brilliant blonde hair that was radiant even without light—they were exactly the same. Also…
“Cozyyyy~? What do you mean! Baek Shun! This is betrayal!”
I was unknowingly searching for traces of Ruvlian in Lee Hyun when Lee Rihyung’s loud voice snapped me out of it. He clung to me as I sat there, as if he thought he was a koala or something. Thanks to that, the distance between Lee Hyun and me increased a little.
“What betrayal.”
“You’re incredibly shy with people you don’t know, but you just accept touches from a guy you just met, and this cute and adorable—”
“You mean terrible, you blockhead!”
“Ah! Baek Shun, Kim Minsik hit me! This is totally school violence, I’m reporting this to 117!”
“Ugh! Go ahead! Try it, you bastard!”
Lee Rihyung, noisily venting his hurt feelings, got hit on the head by Kim Minsik and they started bickering loudly. Taking advantage of the gap, I tried to remove the arm wrapped around my shoulder, when a pale hand suddenly entered my field of vision.
Not satisfied with just removing Lee Rihyung’s arm, Lee Hyun turned his body completely toward me and occupied that spot. After glancing once at the arm wrapped around my shoulder, I noticed the silent battle between the prettily smiling Lee Hyun and the grinning Lee Rihyung.
Kim Minsik, who had been bickering with Lee Rihyung just moments ago, had entered spectator mode. On top of that, he even pulled out popcorn from Park Sichan’s snack bag—he was no different from a regular viewer watching a morning drama.
“Why is the transfer student clinging like this when he’s seeing our Baek Shun for the ‘first time’?”
“Does the duration matter when becoming friends? It seems like you’re worse off than the transfer student he met for the ‘first time.'”
It was a very provocative statement, unlike his meekly smiling face. It was extremely similar to how Ruvlian acted when someone picked a fight with him.
Was it because his face and nasty temperament were the same? Until before the transfer student came, it felt like reality, but now it felt unreal.
The idea that I’d attend high school with Ruvlian and take the college entrance exam together—it was hard to even imagine. Still, he’d look good in a school uniform. Yeah, exactly like Lee Hyun next to me right now.
As I vaguely imagined this, my shoulder and neck area felt ticklish. Lee Hyun was rubbing his head against my shoulder at some point.
“Sihyeon-ah… did I say something wrong? I haven’t been learning Korean for long, so it’s difficult.”
Then a sullen voice settled near my neck along with his breath.
“Wow. Wow…!”
Watching Lee Hyun like this, Lee Rihyung seemed dumbfounded, his words completely blocked as he only let out exclamations. It seemed he’d been thoroughly beaten while I was briefly lost in other thoughts.
Kim Minsik and Park Sichan were no different from Lee Rihyung. Their faces looked like they were witnessing the ultimate master of fake innocence.
“Well.”
“I bet ten thousand won he totally didn’t hear the conversation at all.”
With that brief remark, Kim Minsik, who realized I hadn’t paid any attention to their silent battle, shook his head. I didn’t add words to that to explain myself. There was no reason to, and it was also true.
“Sit down.”
The teacher for first period who opened the door and entered struck the desk with a book. At the banging sound, the three of them headed to their seats. Until the very end, Lee Rihyung’s gaze remained on Lee Hyun.
I already knew he was a guy who was obsessed with his friends, but today the degree was severe. The fact that Lee Hyun resembled Ruvlian and that I unknowingly accepted his skinship seemed to have played a part.
Come to think of it, Lee Hyun’s arm still existed on my shoulder. That’s why it felt heavy. Perhaps because he looked exactly like Ruvlian, I’d unknowingly been lending my shoulder this whole time.
I quickly removed Lee Hyun’s arm that was wrapped around my shoulder. As long as he had a personality similar to Ruvlian’s, he wouldn’t listen if I tried to resolve it with words.
“Sihyeon-ah.”
A slow voice wrapped around my ear. Thanks to Ruvlian, I was used to breath touching my ear so I didn’t show much of a reaction.
“What.”
“Do you hate me?”
Lee Hyun’s voice asking that contained confidence. As if there was absolutely no way I could hate him.
A helpless sigh flowed out between my lips. This was why I kept seeing them overlap. How does it make sense that there isn’t a single difference? I moved my lips several times before pressing them tightly shut.
At this rate, it seemed like every time I looked at Lee Hyun, I’d think of Ruvlian. Because of that, I wouldn’t be able to bury Ruvlian in my memories either. Really, his skill at manipulating people as he pleased was no joke.
Just like Ruvlian.
I slowly closed and opened my eyes. If I continued the conversation, it seemed like he’d take everything—my liver, my gallbladder—even without me offering them.
Without giving Lee Hyun an answer, I started taking notes in my textbook. However, separately from that, I couldn’t concentrate. The problem was Lee Hyun, who wasn’t looking at the textbook he said he’d look at together, but was staring intently at me.
“…Stop looking.”
“Mmm. That’s not something I can control.”
His pronunciation was a bit more unclear than before. When I glanced to the side, Lee Hyun had his face buried with his arms stretched out on the desk. His soft cheeks were squished.
Since Lee Hyun kept looking at me, our eyes met. I tried to untangle our locked gazes when Lee Hyun spoke.
“Stop listening to class and play with me. Play with me.”
It was a statement that could have sounded like whining at first glance, but Lee Hyun’s leisurely and gentle voice didn’t feel that way at all. Rather, he was like an adult gently coaxing a sulking child.
“Just listen to class.”
I returned my turned head to its original position and filled in the notes I’d missed because of Lee Hyun without omission. The highlighter I picked up was blue. I considered changing it since it was a color that reminded me of someone’s eyes, but decided to just use it.
It was funny to care about something like this.
_oOo_
In the sunlight coming in from the window right next to him, the black hair covering his forehead sparkled. His long, black eyelashes settled densely, creating shadows, and within those shadows, light brown eyes clearly gazed forward.
He told me not to look, but there’s no way I couldn’t look. Even when Baek Sihyeon existed as ‘Rian,’ my gaze consistently faced him. Knowing that full well, telling me to look moderately—how coldhearted. Ruvlian swallowed the sigh that almost escaped his lips.
Ruvlian contemplated whether to show Sihyeon more signs that he was Ruvlian. This was because he knew the reason why Sihyeon couldn’t be certain despite him acting so identically.
If he had to pick the first reason, it would be because of what happens when one exists in a world other than their own native world.
When moving from one’s native world to another dimension, two changes occur in total.
One is that the magnitude of power one possesses doubles, and the other is that the desires in one’s heart gradually grow.
Just hearing it might make one think it’s not bad, but when the magnitude of power increases, the world’s balance collapses, and that’s when the God appears. Just like how God summoned the ‘Hero’ Baek Sihyeon to deal with the Demon King. Furthermore, if one can’t control the growing desires, they lose their reason and become dominated by desire.
The Demon King he’d dealt with was the same case.
The person who crossed over to another world had great potential, and because of that, their power doubled, but having suffered from poverty, she couldn’t control her desires. In the end, she was swallowed by them as is.
‘How foolish.’
Ruvlian, who ridiculed someone who couldn’t control that one desire, smiled at Baek Sihyeon who glanced at him. He then didn’t take his eyes off him as he turned his head away and fell into thought again.
Normally, people can’t control their desires. That was the norm. According to what was known, all those who crossed worlds were swallowed by their desires.
‘So he must think that if I crossed over too, I’d die, so there’s no way I could come.’
Their endings were all directly connected to death. Since they’d lost their reason, there was no way to negotiate, and God wasn’t the type to interfere in the human world to begin with. Looking at how, when a Demon King appeared in his native world, God simply brought Sihyeon over calling him a Hero, the answer was clear.
The second reason would be that he considers it impossible to cross worlds without God’s help.
When Baek Sihyeon existed as ‘Rian,’ the conclusion had been reached that time magic and dimension travel magic were close to impossible.
‘Our Sihyeon probably had no interest though…’
Every time the end of the Demon King subjugation came into view, Baek Sihyeon consciously distanced himself from magic like dimension travel. He didn’t know the reason, but Ruvlian speculated it might be because he didn’t want to return to his native world.
Anyway, even when Baek Sihyeon existed as a ‘Hero,’ that was the atmosphere. Time could absolutely not be reversed, and dimensions also could not be traveled—it was taboo.
So he must think that without borrowing God’s power, there’s no way he could set foot in this world.
That was something close to nearly impossible. Getting God’s help wasn’t an easy matter either.
‘But I did it with magic.’
Ruvlian’s eyes rounded. In his confident blue eyes filled with assurance, Baek Sihyeon was still contained. In particular, his gaze remained long on the ears that had heated up red, making it hard to tell their original color.
Sihyeon, though he himself didn’t know it, had skin that turned red when it came to Ruvlian’s skinship. Ruvlian really loved that fact. Enough to be able to watch for several hours. Like that, Ruvlian’s gaze stayed on Sihyeon until the class ended.
After the class bell rang, Ruvlian’s gaze naturally moved to the neat white hands organizing books. Those hands didn’t look rough. As if the years spent as a Hero were a lie, all traces of his efforts had disappeared.
“Let’s talk for a bit. Follow me.”
What kind of change of heart was this? Until just moments ago, he’d been showing signs of wanting to keep distance, yet wasn’t he unknowingly accepting me? Or was he trying to gain certainty? Various questions bubbled up. However, Ruvlian didn’t ask anything. He just nodded his head meekly.
‘Since it’s come to this, it would be better to reveal it.’
Because he never wanted to feel like he was being pushed outside the line again. Ruvlian smiled deeply. Just imagining Baek Sihyeon being surprised and worried when he confessed the truth was sweet.
