Chapter 19: The Question He Shouldn’t Have Asked

Even in the middle of all this, seeing that he still had the energy to complain made me stare at him with a dumbfounded expression.

At the same time, I could feel the violently raging brainwaves gradually beginning to stabilize.

Kwon Yiyul looked straight at me with his dazzling golden eyes and pressed his body even closer.

“Ah…!”

The posture made a sound escape my lips without me realizing it.

I had never been this physically close to another person before, and the shame instantly made my face burn red.

A hot hand suddenly slipped over the oversized shirt hanging on my body, slowly brushing down my lower abdomen before patting my back as if trying to calm me down.

“T-This… please remove this. Right now…”

“…Looks like our Yoonie got flustered.”

His languid golden eyes carried a far more dangerous and sinister look than usual.

Unable to endure the suffocating tension, I pleaded with him, but Kwon Yiyul only smiled as though my reaction fascinated him.

It was an incredibly seductive, deeply intoxicating smile.

“Mr. Kwon Yiyul, now that you’ve regained your senses, would you please let go of me? Your waves are still unstable, so it’d be better if you rested while receiving guiding…”

“…You know, there was actually something I wanted to ask you this morning, Yoonie. But then the director suddenly called for me, so I just left.”

“…Whatever it is, could you please ask after you finish guiding?”

“Mm, no. Can’t do that.”

Crazy bastard.

The moment I cursed him inwardly, Kwon Yiyul immediately noticed my state and moved the hand wandering beneath my shirt.

I couldn’t even scream before grabbing his hand at a distance close enough for our breaths to mingle.

Kwon Yiyul stared at me with wide innocent eyes and asked,

“Hey, Yoon-ah.”

“…Yes.”

My heart nearly stopped.

“Do you still like me?”

When I first graduated from the training camp and entered the center, everything around me felt unfamiliar.

The environment I faced and even the facilities themselves were completely different from anything I had experienced before, and the sense of alienation made me shrink into myself.

What I remember most clearly was the sight of the researchers waiting inside the research facility whispering among themselves with shocked expressions when I first took the matching rate test.

Back then, I knew nothing.

I simply laughed it off, thinking they were uncomfortable because I was a refugee.

But that wasn’t the truth.

The day the number 93% appeared on the matching-rate screen, I met the director of the center—the ruler of the entire place—for the first and last time alone.

He offered me an unimaginable signing bonus and asked if I would work as the guide for a certain team for as long as my abilities allowed.

I no longer wanted to spend nights inside a crumbling shack.

I no longer wanted to quench my thirst with filthy muddy water or fill my stomach with dry corn bread.

If the people at the shelter could live in even a slightly safer environment, I thought I could ask for nothing more.

So I accepted.

It was definitely my fault for signing the contract without properly reading the terms.

But even if I could return to the past again and again, I probably would have made the exact same choice.

That was how stupid I was.

How foolish.

A pathetic idiot who couldn’t even think about his future properly.

“Hey, who’s that?”

“The new guide. But the situation got pretty messy.”

“What do you mean?”

“They said he’s a refugee. And instead of going through official procedures to join our team, the director abused his authority and shoved him in here.”

After signing the contract, I was being shown around the center facilities by an employee who said he would guide me to the dormitory I’d be staying in.

That was when I encountered Kim Seokhwan, Kwon Yiyul, and Park Suchang, who glared at me with obvious displeasure.

The moment the employee recognized the three of them, he hurriedly fled the scene like someone who had witnessed something horrifying.

“Nice to meet you, refugee?”

The first person to show interest in me was, unsurprisingly, Park Suchang.

As if he had stumbled upon something bizarre, he slowly scanned my shabby appearance from head to toe.

It didn’t feel good at all.

“Suchang-ah, even if the situation isn’t ideal, you shouldn’t keep scaring him like that. He’s a precious guide who’ll be working with our team from now on, so we should try to get along.”

“…Hyung, why are you acting so obedient today? Normally you’d be the first one throwing a fit.”

“My goodness, ‘throwing a fit’? Looks like our Suchangie needs another lesson from me before he learns how to properly treat his team leader. Hmm?”

I had never seen a creature so radiant in my life.

Kwon Yiyul.

The leader of Attack Team 3 and the strongest Esper in the world.

I had already memorized basic information about the team members beforehand, so instinctively I realized that the man standing beside me was the direct superior of the team I would now work for.

With a gentle smile, Kwon Yiyul stepped in front of Park Suchang, who looked ready to grab me by the throat at any moment, and spoke on my behalf.

His movements were so clean and elegant, completely free of unnecessary gestures.

I found myself wondering if everyone from the First District Relief Special Zone was this refined and graceful.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Kwon Yiyul. I’m the leader of Attack Team 3, where Jaeyoon-ssi will be working from now on.”

“Ah, yes. I-I’m Han Jaeyoon. I’m twenty-one this year. You seem older than me, so please speak comfortably.”

“Mm, then shall I?”

My first impression of Kwon Yiyul wasn’t bad.

No, honestly speaking, it was good.

His platinum-blond hair looked as though all color had been drained from it, and his golden eyes shone thickly like melted honey.

Even his tall frame, draped in expensive clothing from head to toe, was attractive enough to catch anyone’s attention.

“Ah, it’s lunchtime right now. If you haven’t eaten yet, want to come with us? Is there any food you like, or anything you can’t eat?”

“…Ah, no. I eat almost anything. There’s nothing I can’t eat except eggplant.”

“Eggplant?”

“Yes.”

“Ahaha, you still have picky eating habits at your age? That’s pretty cute.”

Maybe that was why I ended up captivated by him for a while too.

While escorting me as I stood there blankly with a foolish expression, Kwon Yiyul naturally started asking me all sorts of things as though the conversation were flowing like water.

Where I came from.

What foods I liked.

Whether I still needed daily necessities and if we should go buy them together.

To my young and naive eyes, unfamiliar with the world, Kwon Yiyul seemed like a kind superior with a heart as vast as the sea—and the first older friend I made after arriving in the upper districts.

“Yoon-ah.”

“Yes.”

“Would you try calling me hyung once?”

“…Pfft, yes. Huh?”

It must have been about a month after I entered the center.

Out of nowhere, Kwon Yiyul stopped me and asked me to call him hyung.

No matter how close we had become, I believed maintaining an appropriate distance was necessary for smooth communication between us, so I stubbornly refused his request.

But Kwon Yiyul didn’t give up there and eventually got exactly what he wanted.

Like an idiot, I stuttered over my words, unable to even look directly at him while my hands trembled.

“H-Hyung. Kwon Yiyul hyung.”

“Yoon-ah. We’re only changing the title you call me by, so why are you so embarrassed?”

“…Still, calling the team leader hyung so casually feels disrespectful somehow, and kind of…”

“Kind of what?”

“It just feels weird, honestly.”

“Even if the person involved is giving you permission? You still don’t like it?”

When Kwon Yiyul curved his eyes into crescent moons, I finally lowered my guard and reluctantly nodded.

Saying I looked exactly like a five-year-old child who had been scolded by his parents and didn’t know what to do, Kwon Yiyul suddenly pulled me into his arms and burst into delighted laughter.

Quietly held in his embrace, I buried my face against his chest, feeling the faint vibrations from his laughter.

My heart beat pleasantly.

“You’ve been sticking close to Yiyul hyung a lot lately.”

“…Mr. Park Suchang.”

“Damn, what’s with the ‘Mr. Park Suchang’? Just call me comfortably. Like you do with Yiyul hyung. I’m only two years older than you, right?”

“Are you making fun of me right now?”

“No? I’m genuinely curious.”

How much time had passed like that?

When Kwon Yiyul temporarily left after being called back to his family home, Park Suchang—who normally barely spoke to me—approached and started a conversation.

I twisted my lips crookedly and deliberately widened the distance between us as much as possible, annoyed by the way he constantly got on people’s nerves.

But then, apparently dissatisfied by even that, Park Suchang blocked my path with his left leg and muttered in a gruff voice,

“Are you innocent, or just stupid? People probably tell you all the time that you’re clueless, don’t they?”

The person who woke me from the haze of Kwon Yiyul’s fake kindness was, unexpectedly, Park Suchang—the very person in the team who showed me the greatest hostility.

“What exactly do you mean by that?”

“Hey, do you seriously think Kwon Yiyul treats you well because he genuinely sees you as special and precious?”

“…If you’re trying to start trouble, then say whatever you want to me alone. Don’t drag Yiyul hyung—no, Mr. Kwon Yiyul—into this for no reason.”

“Crazy. ‘Hyung,’ he says. Hyung. That bastard Kwon Yiyul must’ve worked really hard for this.”

I was greatly shocked by the way Park Suchang casually called Kwon Yiyul—a man four years older than him—a bastard.

And little by little, I felt like I was finally beginning to understand the identity of the strange sense of unease that had been bothering me all this time.