# Chapter 93
Could there be such a direct question? Usually, he’d beat around the bush when he needed something, making people irritated, but it seemed he couldn’t contain his own curiosity.
Lee Hwan found this quite vexing and deliberately stalled for time, tasting his drink and licking his lips.
“There’s no way I would have gone looking for him and said something weird. Kang Taesung, was it? Did you harass him like some pervert?”
The laughter that punctuated every sentence was quite annoying. Still, it was convenient that he was misunderstanding on his own without Lee Hwan having to say much.
While Lee Hwan glared once and chewed on a piece of cheese from the table, Kang Dongha was boldly speculating without being asked, letting his imagination run wild.
“Well, I doubt you’d flirt with him again after getting beaten up like that last time… Ah, put down that glass. Fine, let’s say that was my fault. Anyway, so you’re saying you somehow pissed him off for some other reason.”
It was quite a talent to stretch the simple question “Did you do something without telling me?” into such a long-winded statement. Lee Hwan dropped the cheese piece he’d picked up and glared at him.
A belated explanation followed, as if trying to appease Lee Hwan.
“I’m just curious. That thing doesn’t usually explode like that.”
It wasn’t his imagination that the way he spoke sounded more like he was referring to an object rather than a person. He had always called Jade that way before: “that thing,” “that object.”
Even if you downgrade terms of address step by step from “sir,” “that person,” “him,” “that guy,” to “that bastard,” the lowest form would still be a term addressing a human. In comparison, Kang Dongha’s attitude toward Jade had consistently been worse than that.
Somehow, his snobbish demeanor and cold attitude seemed to reconfirm Jade’s position among the researchers and the Kang family.
It made Lee Hwan feel bad for no reason. Moreover, he didn’t have much to say in response. He melted the cheese in his mouth, swallowing it, and subtly changed the subject.
“Do I really have to tell you that? It’s irritating.”
“Do you have anger management issues? Always ready to throw punches.”
“Anyway, there’s something else I want to ask.”
“What is it?”
“The chances of success for that experiment.”
Kang Dongha wore a puzzled expression for a moment. It was the face of someone hearing something out of the blue, making Lee Hwan wonder if he’d said something wrong.
“Suddenly? If you’ve been eavesdropping well, you should have a rough idea by now.”
“Well, I heard it’s quite ambiguous.”
The sharp-featured face stared at Lee Hwan for a moment. It wasn’t so much a surprised expression at hearing unexpected words, but rather a face wondering what intention lay behind such probing.
“Hmm… of all people, talking about the possibility of the experiment after meeting Jade. Doesn’t that seem inconsistent?”
“What?”
He took a sip of his dark-colored liquor, stalling for time before continuing.
“How can a lab rat predict the chances of the experiment’s success?”
“If that rat has proper human intelligence, it would know well what’s happening to its own body.”
“That rat isn’t a semi-Awakening test subject, but a test subject for a test subject.”
Lee Hwan had expected him to react as if burned when mentioning semi-Awakening, but surprisingly, Kang Dongha remained unusually calm and confident. He even seemed to have completely dispelled any potential unease about the information coming from Jade.
“You wouldn’t have rushed over just being fooled by that. Why did you call me? Going as far as insisting on having drinks.”
Lee Hwan slightly furrowed his brow at the sharp question.
Damn. He hadn’t thought of another excuse. Since the guy always reacted sensitively to semi-Awakening, he thought mentioning the experiment would again lead to a misunderstanding that would let him off the hook.
It seemed he had forgotten how intense their first meeting was and had underestimated him.
“Come to think of it, you’ve even joined social apps lately, poking around meeting people here and there. Are you lonely?”
“Didn’t we agree not to dig into my background?”
“It pops up on your SNS by itself, why would I waste time investigating?”
“I don’t use social media though.”
“But you have an account. I saw it pop up, connected somehow. Said you signed up and completed the tutorial.”
Lee Hwan was about to argue heatedly but then quietly closed his eyes. Was he cursed with embarrassment? It was mortifying to hear such things from this guy.
During that brief moment, the ice in Kang Dongha’s glass rattled several times. He seemed to be shaking it deliberately for Lee Hwan to hear. When Lee Hwan opened his eyes again, he saw a smug face in his view.
“Just be honest. After getting hit, you needed someone to drink with.”
Kang Dongha slightly twisted the corner of his mouth. It was truly infuriating.
‘Ah, this guy.’
But thinking about it, rather than getting provoked and leaving without the ID card, it might be better to play along with him. Lee Hwan ran some calculations in his head.
He needed to thoroughly search this office today to go straight to the underground this weekend. What to do? Should he pretend that his true intentions had been discovered?
‘That would be the more profitable approach.’
He wasn’t sure how convincing his act would be. Kang Dongha knew his shortcomings too well and was always suspicious and tense. That hadn’t changed much even now that the great secret of semi-Awakening had been casually revealed.
So he would need to make it look as real as possible. The way he couldn’t openly lick his lips despite his dry throat and just pressed the inside with his tongue, and how his face was hot with embarrassment and he tried to calm it down.
Lee Hwan, like someone whose true feelings had been discovered, kept his mouth tightly shut and swallowed hard. All the while, he tried to make his face flush by thinking of all sorts of things in that short moment.
What should he recall to appear properly flustered? The fact of regression? He’d ruminated on it so much that he was sick of it. The social club story that the other had just mentioned? He’d only signed up but never participated, so there was nothing to be embarrassed about.
The fact that it was posted on the SNS account made him more annoyed than embarrassed. If anything, he only felt relief that it wasn’t a dating app.
Something that would make his face hot just thinking about it.
‘…Hmm.’
Why? Lee Hwan recalled Taesung all too naturally. Specifically, his appearance in the dream when he first appeared.
With his shirt buttoned up to the neck, wearing a blue suit that accentuated his firm, broad shoulders—he suddenly appeared in Lee Hwan’s mind.
Only now did he realize, but Taesung’s profile, with his neatly styled swept-back hair, was particularly eye-catching. Was it his well-defined nose bridge that was pleasing to the eye? Or his chin at that exquisite angle?
Perhaps that’s why he maintained that precise angle of his face even in that strange courtroom dream. When he had woken from that dream, he’d only found it absurd that he was tied up with ropes, but why was he still repeatedly thinking about Taesung’s appearance from months ago…
Moreover, their incident of being stranded in the gate also frequently tugged at his heart. Recently, whenever Lee Hwan thought of Taesung, strangely, he first recalled the hot air that had filled his lungs.
In that moment, the two images gently overlapped in his mind. Taesung, who had come close to share his breath, was now in a formal suit, leaning his waist toward him.
‘…Fuck.’
He didn’t know what this imagination was. But suddenly his face grew hot and his mouth went dry. Lee Hwan was more surprised by his own reaction than the imagination itself and clenched his teeth reflexively.
As he raised his head, feeling his heart beat so fast that his fingertips trembled, the smile was gradually disappearing from Kang Dongha’s face across from him.
“Huh.”
Kang Dongha uttered a strange exclamation in a small, low voice. And why were his eyes narrowing? His current face, tinged with a bizarre emotion, was more unpleasant to look at than his usual smirking expression.
Lee Hwan, partly to cool himself down, drained all the alcohol in front of him with gulps, then put the glass down with a loud thud.
“Stop talking nonsense and just drink quietly. You’re ruining the taste, seriously.”
Despite his obvious irritation, Kang Dongha surprisingly didn’t look particularly upset. Rather, with the corners of his lips slightly raised, he refilled his emptying glass with dark-colored whiskey.
“Fine, whatever. This is amusing.”
Fortunately, it seemed he had been successfully deceived, but a subtle atmosphere had set in for the drinking session.
It didn’t seem like even an hour had passed. Every time Lee Hwan emptied his glass, the other man would quickly give him a look, urging him to drink faster.
As a result, Kang Dongha, whose eyes had been growing unfocused until a while ago, had now lost his words and become quiet, looking like he would soon fall asleep.
Perhaps because he had backed down a bit in their endless argument, strangely, today Kang Dongha drank better without any particular complaints.
In fact, when Lee Hwan pretended to get drunk to lower his guard, toward the end, it was actually Kang Dongha who rushed more. He had heard that such strong drinks should be sipped slowly while letting the ice melt gradually, but the large ice cube he had put in earlier still hadn’t fully melted.
And then, clank. Just now, his head had wobbled before falling forward with a thud.
For a person with more vigilance than a meerkat to lose consciousness in front of him—he didn’t know what was going on, but things seemed to be getting more convenient. Lee Hwan stopped pretending to be drunk, fixed his facial expression, and stood up from his seat.
‘Now, where should I search?’
First, he approached the large desk. After smashing it to pieces once before, it had been replaced with dark hardwood, which made the papers and white objects on top of it stand out more.
However, there was nothing that looked like an ID card near the documents, around the edges, or near the file holders. Lee Hwan suddenly remembered that most office workers wear their employee IDs around their necks.
‘That guy doesn’t seem like the type to dangle that around his neck.’
Still, if he wanted to check, now that Dongha was asleep was the perfect time. Lee Hwan slowly approached him and looked at his exposed nape.
‘There’s nothing like a string.’
Could it be inside his shirt? He slightly flipped the collar and ran his hand over the front, but it was just smooth with nothing to catch on.
This time, he slid his finger inside the shirt. Then, as he was slowly feeling underneath to try to find something like a string—
“…What are you touching?”
Lee Hwan was grabbed by the collar and ended up sitting down on the sofa as if lying down.
