Liu kept his mouth shut, letting out a low groan as he dropped his head. Unlike usual, his unkempt hair fell heavily, covering his forehead and eyes. Liu’s brow furrowed as he stared down at the fierce, bulging veins and knuckles on the back of the hand he had planted on the desk.
That he had been anything but pleased during Yeehyeon’s changing.
He wouldn’t deny that his Alpha blood had surged with joy whenever he was conscious of Yeehyeon reacting as he became an Omega… but for most of the time, the absolute majority of it, he had been tormented by a pain and terror like being trapped in a room with no exit, its walls studded with needles closing in from all sides.
As long as he was hoping for Yeehyeon to take that into consideration, he had no grounds to stop Shushu, who was trying to lighten the weight of his own past for similar reasons.
In the mirror, Shushu, who had moved back, walked over to the coffee maker on the opposite side and spoke as he poured coffee from the half-full glass pot.
“Back then, I was so consumed by my own pain that it was all I could see, and I thought it was the only way I could be at ease, so I tried to ignore Seonyu’s pain, telling myself it was the just price for a sin he’d brought upon himself… but that wasn’t it.”
Liu squinted as if blinded, his eyes lifting to stare at Shushu’s back in the mirror.
“Confronting the fact that while he was deceiving me, he must have been suffering as much as I was, maybe even longer than I did, and trying to imagine the depth of that pain… it helped me regain my composure and get back on my feet. In the end, isn’t it the thought that you’re the only fool, the only one who’s been damaged, the only one who’s struggling, that makes a person miserable?”
Turning to face him, Shushu smiled bitterly and offered Liu coffee as well, but Liu shook his head. What he needed right now was alcohol rather than caffeine, but Shushu’s studio wasn’t stocked with liquor.
“The things between the two of us that you and others don’t know… He had sex with someone else and deceived me, but that wasn’t all there was between us. For a time, because of that, I tried to hate him, dismissing everything else as a lie… but it didn’t last long. Because deep down… I knew it wasn’t true.”
Shushu, who had been speaking calmly while stroking the surface of his mug, wet his lips with coffee and continued.
“Because I know now… that while Hong Seonyu was doing those things, he must have been in constant agony from guilt and anxiety. That he chased a moment of pleasure, but because of that brief pleasure he couldn’t refuse, he had to suffer from guilt for all the rest of his time. As someone who once bared our deepest selves to each other and held each other… I just can’t pretend not to see his desperate struggle to overcome the situation somehow.”
Whether he accepts his position and comes to his senses after this incident, or completely breaks down into a more wretched depravity. The choice after that would be up to Hong Seonyu.
Adding that, Shushu took another sip of coffee and spoke to Liu with a placid gaze and voice.
“You, who can’t understand that, wouldn’t dare hope for Yeehyeon-ssi to forgive you, would you?”
“……”
There was so much he wanted to say.
Though he couldn’t think of a single plausible thing to say that could change Yeehyeon’s mind, the vicious words he could use to shift the blame to Shushu and vent his anger were too numerous to remember… Once he confirmed that Shushu had deliberately revealed it out of revenge for him interfering with Hong Seonyu’s activities in Seoul, he had planned to unleash all the sharp words he had been honing.
If he didn’t, he wouldn’t know how to support himself. There was still so much to do. It was too soon to collapse and let go of everything. He had to hold on, even with the strength of blaming others, and wring out a way to get Yeehyeon back.
But before he could even draw his weapon, his will to fight crumbled just from seeing the weapon his opponent held. Shushu’s words were, astonishingly, a clear reflection of his own current state. Because he desperately wished for Yeehyeon to show him tolerance, just as Shushu had lightened the weight of his past by fathoming Hong Seonyu’s pain.
But the worst part was that even Shushu hadn’t completely forgiven Hong Seonyu, nor did he have any intention of starting over with him. It was a magnanimity made possible only because it was now a distant past, unrelated to him.
Looking at Shushu’s calm face, which no longer held even a hint of accusation, Liu slowly shook his head like someone who had witnessed an unbelievable phenomenon. He took his hand off the desk and rubbed his rough jaw wide, as if crushing it.
“You said what I did was more terrible than what Hong Seonyu did, right? And even you, who’s forgiven Hong Seonyu, have no intention of starting over with that bastard.”
“……”
“So don’t you worry. Seo Yeehyeon won’t forgive me. You can rest assured.”
Saying that as if casting off a useless, stripped-away shell, Liu roughly swept his hair back and spat a short curse.
For the past few days, he had dragged out and blamed every possible target he could resent, but the one he hated most was, in the end, himself—the Ghost and the Alpha.
He had hated it from the beginning. Being an Alpha, being a Ghost—he had never once thought of it as a noble specialty. If it was such a precious privilege, he wished it had gone to some other bastard who wanted it. He had repeated the same useless complaints and self-denials countless times.
He never thought the time would come again to dig up and drag out that problem, long after his boyhood when he thought he had finally sorted out how to accept and manage his own existence. He had never, ever imagined it would be because of a craving for another person.
“My thought that what you did is more severe than what Hong Seonyu did hasn’t changed… but Yeehyeon-ssi isn’t me. You said I don’t know everything that happened between you two. Where did all that confidence go?”
Noticing Liu gnawing on his lip and fiddling with a cigarette pack in his jacket pocket, Shushu sighed and approached, silently placing an ashtray in front of him. Shushu was a non-smoker, but he didn’t demand strict non-smoking from his visitors who did.
Liu lit a cigarette and hastily took the first drag.
“He said he’s going to Paris.”
“Paris?”
And he told Shushu about the offer from ‘The Hands.’ He confessed his own rampage—how he had pretended not to know, even though he’d suspected the offer had gone to Yeehyeon, and had been hell-bent only on rushing the New York branch’s progress to keep him by his side.
Perhaps, knowing that only a destructive end awaited, he had no choice but to press forward once he had taken the first step. Just as Yeehyeon had cried out, asking what the difference was between 35% and 50%, the weight of the matter would not have been lightened no matter when he confessed, once it had already begun.
So maybe when Yeehyeon found him, already knowing the truth… maybe there had been a corner of him that felt a humble resignation, a sense of ‘what was bound to happen has happened,’ ‘I can finally end it all,’ ‘I will accept my punishment.’
Maybe he had been waiting for someone to stop him, since he didn’t have the courage to let Yeehyeon go himself. For someone to halt this rampage, even if it meant shattering him…
After hearing the story, Shushu bit and released his lips several times with a complicated expression. Then, slowly relaxing his shoulders, he set down his mug, came up behind Liu, and placed his hands on his shoulders.
“It’s… an undeniably good opportunity for Yeehyeon-ssi… but the opportunities you can open for him are no less than that.”
“Jung Sein.”
“……”
“Jung Sein.”
“Yes, I’m listening.”
Turning to face Shushu, Liu shook his head. His tightly sealed lips and watery eyes looked as if he had chosen resignation.
“It’s unfortunate for me, but Seo Yeehyeon isn’t the type to welcome help from a lover. Nor is he someone who thinks sacrificing their individual lives to be together is the best choice for a couple.”
“I know that too.”
“Just because I helped him start drawing again doesn’t mean he has an obligation to stay by my side, to stay at Phantom. In the first place… I was the one who had the base thought that I could bind him with debt, pretending to help him.”
With a bitter smirk, Liu took a deep drag from his cigarette and turned his body away from Shushu. He stubbed out the shortened cigarette, picked up the pack, and took out a new one, fiddling with it in his hand.
“Liu Weikun. You can’t fool me.”
Glancing at Shushu through the mirror, he placed the cigarette between his lips. A flake of dry skin from his lips stuck to the filter.
Shushu placed his hands on Liu’s shoulders once more. This time, there was strength in his grip.
“Yeehyeon-ssi is the love of your life. It was a mistake… too big to be called just a mistake, but if you keep trying to convey your true feelings, Yeehyeon-ssi, if it’s Yeehyeon-ssi… his heart will be moved. You, you can’t let Yeehyeon-ssi go to Paris.”
Liu, who was about to light his cigarette, turned around, swatting Shushu’s hands away as if annoyed.
“Why? Because I need him? Because he’s the love of my life, and without him I’m just a wandering ghost who can’t set down roots anywhere and isn’t accepted by anyone, so he should forgive me, give up the opportunity he earned on his own merit… and quietly accept the fate of becoming an Omega by my side. Is that what you’re telling me to say?”
“……”
“To the love of my life, as you put it?”
Staring down at Shushu’s face, who couldn’t react rashly, Liu put the cigarette to his lips again and muttered coldly.
“How would that be any different from the second changing?”
“Just because he’s going to Paris doesn’t mean you have to break up. You might not be able to see each other often, but if you go to Paris even once a month…”
“Jung Sein. Why are you doing this, all of a sudden?”
Liu turned toward Shushu and raised his voice. Heat flared in his eyes again.
“Weren’t you hoping a piece of trash like me would lose his love, become miserable, and pay for his sins? Huh?”
Shushu silently met Liu’s eyes. They knew each other well enough that there was no need to explain that these were words spat out from being cornered. He condemned the changing itself, but he didn’t wish for Liu to lose Yeehyeon.
“Before you went to America after being identified as a Ghost, you said you’d get it fixed. When I went to see you in Boston once, you said you were almost all better. Ah Wei, it’s not a disease. You being a Ghost, this situation happening… I know it’s a special circumstance that’s hard for both of you to accept, but Yeehyeon-ssi… you have to hold onto him.”
“It might be too late now.”
Liu, whose shoulders swayed as Shushu shook them, muttered as he lit his cigarette.
“He said… he feels like a monster. A monster that’s neither Omega nor Beta, a monster that’s nothing. How can he forgive the person who made him a monster?”
He added, staring with empty eyes at his miserable reflection in the mirror.
“I’m the one who knows better than anyone what it feels like to be a monster… so how can I, how can I ask him to love me again?”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“……”
Instead of an answer, Liu, who stubbed out the still-long cigarette he had only taken a few puffs of without any lingering attachment, raised his eyebrows as if shrugging and gave a smile that was worse than crying. That was all.
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