DI Ch 204

However, that wasn’t the only reason I was upset. There was another reason. I discreetly wiped the sweat and rubbed my thigh as if stretching. It had been a week since I started exercising for rehabilitation and strength training. Although I’d lost quite a bit of muscle from being bedridden, I wasn’t worried since I was young and expected to recover quickly. Rather, the anxious one was him.

I quietly grabbed the bag that had been lying on the floor and hugged it tightly to my chest. I tried to suppress my sigh and desires, but I had reached my limit. Even starting exercise hadn’t helped. No, if he said to do it, I wouldn’t refuse… but is he really planning to baby me like this? Maybe I should fully assert my independence now that I’ve grown up. As frustration and desire boiled within me, a strong finger began to gently scratch under my chin.

The soft, tickling sensation was so pleasant that my eyelids grew heavy, and the desire that had been rising to the surface faded away. As I melted into the moment, I caught the faint scent of carnations. The scent must have gotten on his hands – his fingers smelled like flowers. As I tried to catch the scent, an amused voice tickled my ear from above.

“Why are you out here? Go inside.”

“Just because.”

“Isn’t it chaotic?”

He had said people would be coming and going today and tomorrow for work. Sure enough, the once-quiet house had become noisy. It was more bustling than usual. Indeed, it was noisy enough that I could hear voices drifting over the walls, and he had a point in asking if I was feeling overwhelmed.

In fact, far from being chaotic, it gave a nice feeling that this was a place where people lived after all. This level of noise couldn’t even compare to city noise – it might be laughable to call it noisy when it could be used as a lullaby to fall asleep to.

There was no reason to be uncomfortable. He said they wouldn’t come this way anyway, so there was no chance of running into anyone. So I lifted my chin to indicate it was fine, telling him to continue. Ah, it felt so good. The weather was perfect. At 23 degrees, with a cool breeze and no humidity, I just wanted to walk around. It would soon get unbearably hot, though—enough for people to complain that summer had come too early. As I shuddered at the thought, a strong gust of wind blew.

The wind was so fierce that you might believe a typhoon was coming. The rustling leaves and voices were unusually loud. I was already keeping my eyes shut, so I didn’t have to worry about dust getting in them, and I patiently waited for it to calm down.

When I opened my eyes, I saw a large hand blocking the wind beside my head. Following the arm with my gaze, I saw him looking at me silently with an unreadable expression, making my heart flutter. The atmosphere had changed greatly compared to this time last year.

“Hyung, how’s the drowsiness?”

“It’s better.”

He stared at me intently before calmly answering in a slow tone. Then he gently gripped the nape of my neck, pulled me close, and pressed his lips to my hair. I’m glad we changed the medication. Even if I was terribly drowsy, I endured it without saying anything, but I hoped he wouldn’t do the same. Worried he might stay silent in front of the doctor as I did, I explained how he had been like this yesterday and like that today, suggesting that the medicine wasn’t working properly. In the end, they changed it.

“Tell me if you’re in pain.”

“I’m not.”

“Then, if you’re feeling down.”

“I’m not down either.”

“Okay. But if you ever feel even a little off, you have to tell me.”

I wished his internal state was as clear as his words, but there was a problem. He started having a sleep habit, or rather, abnormal behavior. It stopped after taking the medication, but that wasn’t a resolution – it was very concerning. His strange behavior started three days after that night when the light drizzle changed course and poured down heavily in the middle of the night. That day too, I had planned to put him to sleep first before going to bed myself, so I stayed up late. But sleep wouldn’t come easily that night, so I just lay there with my eyes closed.

That’s when he, who I thought was asleep, got up and laid his head on my chest. Seeing him check my heartbeat and breathe again, I suddenly sat up. I realized Tae Seong-je had been pretending to sleep all along. When I got angry, asking if he had deceived me and why he wasn’t sleeping when he’d been so tired, he finally confessed. He said he couldn’t sleep.

Even though he looked fine like this, signs that he was actually falling apart started appearing in daily life. In the end, I had to wake up the attending physician in the middle of the night to get sleeping pills prescribed. After finally putting him to sleep, I was able to sleep too. However, at 4:49 AM, I was rudely awakened by someone roughly rubbing a towel against my head. It wasn’t hard to figure out who. Who else could it be in the room besides him?

I was dumbfounded and wanted to ask what on earth he was doing, but I couldn’t. My eyes were clearly open, but it didn’t feel like I had woken up… Though I had opened my eyes, it didn’t feel like I had fully woken up. After thoroughly wiping me down, he seemed satisfied and went back to bed. That’s when I thought this might be sleepwalking. But why would he do that?

Anyway, I decided to observe for just one more day just in case. But when he repeated the same behavior, I had to demand that the attending physician be called right away that morning. With the doctor present, I explained that he seemed to be sleepwalking, Tae Seong-je, not realizing I was talking about him, was surprised and immediately worried about me. I had to seriously tell him that it was his behavior I was concerned about.

When he finally understood it was about him, his interest faded a little. He brushed it off, saying, “It’ll probably only happen a couple of times,” and then apologized, asking if I had lost sleep because of him. I felt deflated. Isn’t his health more important than mine right now? Anyway, after the doctor prescribed new medication, he was able to sleep properly, and the sleepwalking, along with the tired look around his eyes, completely disappeared. All I could hope was that it wasn’t just a temporary fix.

Just then, someone called for him. I playfully spoke to him as he turned his head toward the voice.

“Looks like it’s time for you to work.”

He turned his head back, smiled at my words, and lightly flicked my cheek with his fingertip.

“I’ll go talk for a bit. Stay inside. Don’t wander around unnecessarily.”

“I won’t.”

Why did he always talk to me like I had a habit of causing trouble? Even though he had been nagging me to tolerate the noise for just a couple of days, the moment I blinked, something soft touched my lips and quickly pulled away. He acted as if nothing had happened, his face completely innocent. Whether the atmosphere had changed or we’d simply gotten older, he still played tricks like this. It was both adorable and frustrating, so I waved until he disappeared from sight.

“…Should I just pounce on him?”

Damn it. The words slipped out before I even realized it. Instead of clamping my mouth shut, I sighed. I was frustrated. Even though I could walk just fine now, he still insisted on acting like my personal mode of transport and coddling me.

Seeing this, people who didn’t know any better probably thought he’d brought me here to raise me as his son. It seemed like they had even started calling me “young master.” Even when I asked them to just call me by my name, everyone just tried to placate me with various words like giving candy to a child, not actually listening to my request before leaving to do their own work.

“I’ll escort you inside.”

A man approached and offered his hand. He wanted to carry my bag. Did this guy also think I’d been brought here to be my brother’s son? I stifled another sigh and told him I was fine before standing up. Then I took out my phone and searched for ‘my hyung’ in the contacts to call him. At the same time, I activated the location tracking app.

“Hyung.”

There was no answer, not even common background noise. It was natural since only this side could speak and the other side could only listen.

“Hyung, did you meet with people? Are you talking? I’m walking… now. Um, I’m going with the person you assigned to me, uh, what’s your name again?”

“…Min Jeong-oh.”

“Ah, I’m going with someone called Min Jeong-oh, but I’m planning to exercise a bit and just rest in my room today.”

Min Jeong-oh? The name felt familiar. Have I met him here a few times before? I’ve met more than just a few people, and most of them leave a similar impression, so this vague sense of familiarity was strange. It was awkward because he seemed to have a certain fondness for me.

I occasionally ran into hyung’s people and maintained appropriate manners with an appropriate distance. While I might not know about the people working in the kitchen or garden, they might know everything among themselves. So they could look down on me for being a male lover, or for being young, but I hadn’t seen a single person like that so far.

Actually, I thought at least a few would visibly dislike me, but they seemed not to care much about me. This person too. I glanced at his expressionless face once and focused hard on the live commentary. It was one of the methods we came up with because we both felt anxious about being apart.

He would now be dealing with people while listening to my voice through an earpiece that wouldn’t be noticeable unless one looked closely. I didn’t know who they were, but I knew that most of today’s guests probably had goodwill towards hyung.

It was something I had picked up after realizing that he was having a harder time waking up in the mornings, whether he took his medication or not. He wasn’t fully awake even when he opened his eyes, so I had some time before he’d really come to his senses. His habit of responding clearly in his half-awake state gave me the perfect opportunity.

I used those moments to satisfy my curiosity, asking about all the sensitive topics I wouldn’t dare to touch otherwise, one by one. How he grew up, the current state of his organization… Of course, I also got scolded by hyung when he fully awake, telling me not to ask such things first thing in the morning.

Even though he scolded me, he never seemed to realize why he had answered me. I just chalked it up to him being vulnerable in the mornings, easily giving me answers. I took advantage of it by slyly offering him foods that were good for his immune system, or for his stamina, under the pretense that he needed them. I wasn’t someone who missed opportunities anymore.