# Chapter 19
Having slept in his own officetel rather than the base for the first time in a long while, he had rushed out urgently after receiving a call from Baek Seonwoo saying that Yeo Dowoon, who had gone to perform the unremarkable task of nest searching, had collapsed like a corpse.
He shouldn’t have taken that delusional patient’s words at face value.
“Did you come straight from bed?”
Yeo Dowoon grinned as he cleared away the table, tired of the puzzle game that wasn’t going as planned.
Yet his gaze remained fixed on the puzzle, looking just like seventeen-year-old Dowoon. That energetic and combative boy.
“How boring must your life be to stake it all on a puzzle?”
Kwon Jeonghoo, sitting on the edge of the bed, pressed down on his head while changing the subject. Dowoon brushed away his rough hand as if annoyed. It might have been embarrassing, but Jeonghoo calmly asked:
“Were you told to engage only in non-violent activities?”
Looking at the Jenga and cube alongside the puzzle, he could guess what kind of requirements had been imposed. Dowoon had also been scribbling low-quality doodles in a sketchbook out of sheer boredom.
“They said to do that until the examination. They took my phone, so I couldn’t even check messages.”
“It’s not like you have many places getting messages from anyway.”
That was true.
The contacts saved in his phone were mostly just people from the base, and since his life wasn’t leisurely enough for separate social activities, there weren’t any acquaintances who could be called relationships.
All that surrounded Dowoon were monsters and Espers, then more monsters and Espers. He laughed awkwardly, as if acknowledging this, and rolled the puzzle pieces.
He was about to argue that until five years ago, before he had harbored feelings for Cha Haseong, he’d at least dated women frequently, but decided against it. It seemed undignified to bring up relationships from five years ago.
“…”
For some reason today, conversation with Kwon Jeonghoo wasn’t flowing smoothly. As muted intervals kept occurring, Dowoon felt cold sweat running down his back.
While each pretended to have indifferent expressions, they were timing when to bring up their conversation, just like a teacher and student pair who spoke little.
Dowoon asked first:
“Has retirement approval come through?”
As his student showed anticipation after asking this long-awaited question, Jeonghoo leisurely denied it:
“No.”
S-class. On top of that, he had delivered the rare physical-type unregistered Esper without a scratch, so the conditions should have been met, but it seemed the base had issued another rejection.
Dowoon asked back with displeasure:
“…What’s the problem this time?”
Kwon Jeonghoo, who was awkwardly squeezing into the narrow bed, explained in a bored tone:
“That unregistered Esper you brought in is demanding pair activities as a contract condition.”
“What, that son of a bitch…!”
Even without hearing it directly, he naturally understood who the pair would be.
Dowoon, who was about to unleash every harsh curse he had learned in his life, lost his words when fingers were inserted into his mouth. Jeonghoo whispered as if coaxing him:
“Salary negotiation is possible. They say they’ll match whatever you want.”
But there was no way such persuasion would work. Dowoon refuted even more forcefully:
“I want to retire, Captain.”
“The base doesn’t seem to want your retirement.”
“I heard clearly with my own ears that it would be over if they threw in another S-class.”
He couldn’t let retirement slip away when it was right in front of him. Dowoon grabbed and shook the clothing of Jeonghoo, who was pretending to fall asleep.
“Captain, take responsibility. It was you who promised they’d let me retire if I brought in an S-class.”
“Well, that was when that S-class was supposed to sign to join the rookies’ unit in your place.”
As the brazenly shameless Jeonghoo glibly changed his words, Dowoon laughed “Haha” and then kept his mouth shut for a moment. His previously rough hands also seemed to go limp with exhaustion.
“Where is that bastard now?”
The base knew very well that this was a no-loss business for them.
Dowoon was an Esper with a long 20 years remaining out of his total 30-year contract period, so it wasn’t a complicated process to pair him with the newly appeared face for a few years.
“Still in salary negotiations, and by now probably in the wavelength examination room…”
“I’ll meet with him directly and settle it.”
“…Yeo Dowoon?”
Jeonghoo was considerably flustered watching Dowoon throw himself into his arms and focus on unfastening his black shirt that he had put on hastily.
“Hey, Yeo Dowoon.”
“If I barge in wearing hospital clothes, I’ll look like a mental patient.”
“And what you’re doing now looks normal?”
He meant that unbuttoning someone else’s clothes without permission wasn’t particularly normal behavior either, but Dowoon just shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal.
Jeonghoo, who reluctantly exposed his chest while expressing annoyance, urged him quietly:
“You seem experienced at unbuttoning shirts.”
At those words, Dowoon momentarily froze his hands.
Come to think of it, that shirt Cha Haseong had lent him would have been sent to the incinerator by now, having been reduced to rags. Wow, that’s a problem. …What should I do? Should I buy him a new one?
But all the white shirts he saw looked identical in design, which was troubling.
He hesitated to buy just anything because of what that unregistered Esper bastard had blurted out when facing him:
‘Wow, crazy. You wear such fucking expensive clothes…!’
It was certainly a valuable shirt, so he wondered if he should stop by the department store brand section and grab all similar shirts.
As Dowoon wasted time on unproductive worries, Jeonghoo instead unbuttoned his shirt one by one. Looking down at the last remaining button, he brazenly urged Dowoon:
“You undo this one.”
“What?”
At that, Dowoon raised his face, feeling a sense of déjà vu.
“The person who rushed to undress should finish the job.”
“Ah, Captain, you can undress yourself.”
“Undo it.”
Kwon Jeonghoo’s state was strange.
Dowoon, who had been overwhelmed by him with his eyes spinning at the preposterous demand of pair activities, opened his mouth with slight awkwardness:
“Captain.”
“What.”
As Jeonghoo now quietly waited for him to undress, anxiety and impatience rushed in simultaneously.
“You’re not going to do anything stupid, right?”
When he asked his greatest concern directly, Jeonghoo responded indifferently:
“Didn’t you say you were going to settle things?”
Of course, he might be wrongly suspecting an innocent person, but the old saying about tapping even a stone bridge before crossing it didn’t exist for nothing. Only then did Dowoon sigh with relief and undo his last button.
That’s when it happened. Just as Dowoon was about to get up quietly, thinking he just needed to receive the shirt, Jeonghoo pulled him back down and asked in a plain, unadorned voice:
“What about the pants?”
“…”
“If you don’t want to look like a mental patient, you should change your pants too.”
Despite the reasonable advice, Dowoon couldn’t bring himself to agree.
Although there was no sign of mental manipulation, his stomach kept burning as if a matchstick had been lit inside. It was a very messy and bloated sensation, as if an eel was angrily swimming around.
As Dowoon froze like a stone, Jeonghoo personally moved his hand onto his buckle.
The atmosphere, fuck, got even weirder.
Feeling like he was sinking deeper into a quagmire, Dowoon urgently lowered his eyes. It was just as he was about to push Jeonghoo down again, saying “Move aside.”
“…Ah.”
Along with the sound of the sliding door being flung open, someone’s short exclamation burst out.
Dowoon fell into panic without even having a chance to check who the visitor was. His thoughts were cut off like being snipped with scissors, and words got stuck in his throat.
Only indistinguishable curses lingered around his mouth.
“Um…”
This voice, exuding a sweet scent, definitely belonged to someone who shouldn’t be by his side.
“Please continue what you were doing. Sorry for interrupting.”
Although he had emphasized so strongly to please restrict guide visits, it seemed like those idiot researchers had rushed to unlock the sensor in the meantime.
Anyway, those damn bastards!
When the sound of the door closing was heard, Dowoon raised his eyes to look at the space where Cha Haseong had disappeared. As blue veins rose on his tightly clenched fist, Jeonghoo pulled him into his chest and said:
“Stop looking and stay here with hyung.”
“…”
“If you follow that bastard, you’ll really become a cripple.”
***
A person should look like a person to be called one; in this state, it seemed quite difficult to even attach the name “human” to him.
Dowoon, who had been losing his mind for quite some time in Jeonghoo’s embrace, finally separated his upper body, staggering after a long while.
He spoke as if all his energy had been drained, wobbling like a zombie:
“…I’ll go to the wavelength examination room before it’s too late.”
“What about clothes?”
“Forget it.”
Who cares whether he looks like a mental patient or a normal person.
As if the fluttering hospital gown wasn’t uncomfortable at all, Dowoon strode forward just fine.
