The Way of Life for a Terminal S-Class Hunter - C104
A warm energy spread through my body. I felt more vitality entering than before. It was a comfort that was hard to believe came from Seo-heon, who had a cold energy.
It was comfortable, as if my previous aversion had been a lie. I realized how tense I had been without noticing. As I relaxed my body and kept my eyes closed, the energy that had been pouring in like a waterfall gradually decreased and then stopped.
It must be over now.
Though the treatment had clearly ended and the skill had turned off, Seo-heon didn’t let go of my hand. Instead, his soft hand gently caressed between my fingers as if exploring. A subtle tension rolled over the familiar sensation.
Having spent many nights together, I couldn’t mistake it. My body, which had been completely relaxed, instantly tensed up. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, but it felt somewhat awkward and made me want to avoid it. I slowly opened my eyes.
Due to his posture blocking the light, Seo-heon’s face was shadowed. Nevertheless, his emotions of craving and desiring me weren’t hidden. Our touching hands felt like they were burning with frostbite.
I knew I needed to do something to break this atmosphere, but my body wouldn’t move as if tied down somewhere. And that was just from holding hands.
“Good job.”
Making my worries seem foolish, Seo-heon easily let go of my hand. As if the tension that had built up until now was a lie, calmness settled in. It was like cold water had been poured over me.
“Uh, um…”
I felt relieved and puzzled at the same time. It was because Seo-heon, who had turned his body halfway and covered his mouth with his hand, still seemed to be suppressing something.
Is he being careful?
It seemed different from that. It wasn’t that he was restraining himself because he “shouldn’t do it,” but rather the attitude of someone feeling strong aversion. It contradicted his intense eyes from before.
“Are you feeling unwell somewhere?”
I asked, wondering if there were some side effects from sharing his life force with me. Seo-heon, who had turned his back, took a deep breath that lifted his shoulders slightly, then moved his body towards me.
“No. It’s not that, so don’t worry.”
The words “don’t worry” that I usually said came from Seo-heon’s mouth.
He’s clearly hiding something.
But even if we agreed not to keep secrets, it didn’t mean we had to bare our entire hearts.
It probably won’t do any good to dig deeper.
I decided to trust my intuition and didn’t ask any more questions.
“Then I’ll be going now. You might as well sleep since you’re already in bed.”
“You’re leaving?”
It was unexpected, I thought he would linger longer. At the guild earlier he had been extremely reluctant to be apart, but now he readily said he would return to his own house, perhaps judging this house to be safe.
“Yes. I’ll sleep at my house and come back with a guard before going to work, so let me know if you’re going out anywhere.”
Seo-heon got up hurriedly, as if being chased. When he first entered my house, he had seemed relieved to see me.
“I’ll only use the guard until the situation is settled. You know that, right?”
“Yes. I’ll try to handle it as quickly as possible.”
Seo-heon habitually reached out and stroked my face. When my body stiffened, Seo-heon felt it and pulled his hand away as if burned, then shoved it in his coat pocket.
“Don’t come out. Get some rest.”
Seo-heon turned off the light, closed my bedroom door, and left. I lay down on the bed. I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but strangely my eyes closed again.
Why do I seem to be sleeping so much lately?
They say sleep is also a habit, so I wondered if it was the effect of being in a half-asleep state for too long.
I shouldn’t live so lazily.
I was resolving that I needed to decide quickly what work to do, but I fell asleep without even covering myself with a blanket.
How much time had passed? Even while sleeping with my eyes closed, I felt someone watching me. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it felt persistent enough to be noticeable. I had been a hunter for a long time, which meant it was enough to feel like a threat. Deciding I needed to check, my heavy eyelids suddenly opened.
“There’s no one here.”
Whether it was a false alarm or I had misperceived due to being overly sensitive, there was no one in the room. The room was just completely dark. Soft moonlight filtering through the window decorated the room.
“How long did I sleep?”
I sat up, brushing my messy hair. My body was stiff from sleeping all curled up. Though it was a bit bothersome, I got up from the bed to stretch since I was already awake.
But for some reason, the window caught my attention. The presence had disappeared from the moment I opened my eyes, but it still bothered me. I carefully approached the window. Beyond it, in the study on the second floor of Seo-heon’s house, the curtain swayed slightly. As if someone had just been standing there.
The sense of someone watching me wasn’t an illusion. It wasn’t difficult to figure out who that gaze belonged to.
Kang Seo-heon.
His room was somewhat far from the study. Yet the reason he had remained in the study was obvious. It was the place with the best view of my room.
“You left in such a hurry earlier, why were you watching again?”
A Seo-heon who couldn’t bear to be apart from me, and a Seo-heon who feared something coexisted. And I couldn’t decide which rhythm to dance to, or how. Because when the emotional distance seemed to be closing again, I felt a subtle aversion.
“Let’s think about it slowly.”
It hadn’t been a week since I made my decision, barely two days had passed.
Instead of closing the curtain, I opened the window slightly. A cool breeze whooshed into the room.
It was a signal to the person watching me that there was no need to hide secretly. We were both so clumsy that we couldn’t get our bearings.
Kang Seo-heon pulled back the curtain, certain that Woo-hyun had lain back down in bed. Seeing the window half open, he tapped on it lightly with his finger.
‘He probably doesn’t even know what the problem is.’
Seo-heon recalled how Woo-hyun tensed up and even became frightened at his mere touch.
‘But that’s not the only issue.’
He assessed his own condition as if evaluating a piece of meat. It had started on “that day.” The day when Woo-hyun, who had been looking for any chance to escape, actively suggested they have sex. Seo-heon noticed that Woo-hyun was somehow different from usual.
‘Did he have a change of heart?’
He knew Woo-hyun wouldn’t easily accept the truth. It might have been different if it only involved himself, but his beloved parents were entangled in it. Nevertheless, Kang Seo-heon was confident he could wait for a very long time. He had persistently endured for over ten years, putting on a ridiculous act. With Woo-hyun by his side, he thought enduring wouldn’t be too difficult.
‘It can’t be this easy.’
Maybe that’s why.
[Let’s try this in our right minds. How do you know you won’t realize your feelings weren’t actually love but obsession?]
He was disappointed by Woo-hyun’s words but also relieved. He felt Woo-hyun was within his realm of understanding and control.
That day was a succession of endurance and ecstasy. Seo-heon remembered how Woo-hyun had enjoyed yet struggled the first time they had sex. Now, without the seal, it would surely be more difficult.
‘Slowly, don’t frighten him.’
Seo-heon knew that he became overly excited when he mixed bodies with Woo-hyun. He first learned that losing control of himself could become pleasure. Still, he vowed to himself that reason must take priority this time.
And to some extent, he seemed to have succeeded. Although Woo-hyun struggled, he showed no signs of mental or physical distress. He knew he couldn’t prove his feelings with such acts, but he wanted to show that his feelings couldn’t be expressed by words like obsession.
[Woo-hyun?]
But that wish didn’t reach. Seo-heon, exhausted, felt a chill run down his spine the moment he woke up after sleeping deeply for the first time in years.
[Baek Woo-hyun!]
The person who should have been beside the bed was gone. There was no need to check the barrier.
‘Baek Woo-hyun has left.’
He couldn’t judge where things had gone wrong.
‘Was I wrong this time too?’
Kang Seo-heon thought he just needed to keep Baek Woo-hyun alive. He believed time would take care of the rest. But as always, Woo-hyun didn’t move according to Seo-heon’s wishes. He was like sand slipping through tightly clenched fingers.
The headache that had stopped briefly started again.
[There’s no time.]
The more it was delayed, the closer Woo-hyun’s death approached. Woo-hyun, forcibly pulled from death, rushed towards it again like a moth to a flame. Kang Seo-heon finally realized.
Death itself wasn’t the problem, and that he was wrong this time too. His breath caught. The death that had been attached to Baek Woo-hyun’s shadow transferred to Seo-heon.
His head alternated between feeling hot and cold. When it heated up, he wanted to cling to Woo-hyun and spend a lifetime together; when it cooled, he just wanted to escape this pain.