“I’m sorry. I like you.”
The hand clutching Yoon Taehee’s chest turned deathly pale. As if he didn’t know what to do with himself, Jaegyeom kept twisting the fabric in his fist, gripping and releasing it over and over as he murmured brokenly,
“I’m sorry I like you.”
“I’m sorry I like you.”
“I’m sorry I like you.”
Yoon Taehee stared up at him blankly, as though possessed.
The confession, sared with tears, was a complete ss. And yet Jaegyeom repeated the sa words again and again, like soone who knew no other way to speak, like soone finally exhaling after holding his breath for far too long. The emotions he had crushed down inside himself were spilling out all at once, like nausea rising uncontrollably to the surface.
I’m sorry. I like you.
To say that single sentence, Jaegyeom had traveled an unbearably long road.
When your sorrow beca harder to bear than my own.
He had wanted to protect him from the pain and despair of life. He had wanted to free him from the rusted chains of the past. If the world ever pointed a sword at him with malicious intent, Jaegyeom had wanted to seize it by the throat and clear the way ahead. He had wanted Yoon Taehee to be free enough to live as himself.
But he couldn’t.
This was the first ti Jaegyeom had ever told Yoon Taehee that he liked him. The first ti he had ever told him he was sorry.
“I’m sorry” and “I like you” had fused into a single thing. To say he was sorry, he had to admit he liked him. And to admit he liked him, he had to apologize for it.
At first, he had wanted to deny everything. He had wanted to bla Yoon Taehee for all of it. To accuse him of ruining him. To resent his selfish love for infecting him with this sickness and making a wreck of him.
Jaegyeom had run desperately for a very long ti.
But now he had reached the end of the road.
There was nowhere left to run.
And so, at last, he had no choice but to face the enormous emotion that had chased him all this ti.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Taehee.”
The very first thing he felt was sorrow.
“I ruined your ten years.”
Going to the Gongju branch. Distrusting him and doubting him. Hitting him and hurting him. Failing to recognize him on The Island and wounding him. Dragging him out of the lake and pulling him into this hell. Lying to him just to deceive his own heart. Worrying about him. Saving him.
Every regret Jaegyeom carried existed because he liked Yoon Taehee.
“I’m sorry. It was because I liked you.”
It had started the mont Yoon Taehee began existing in Jaegyeom’s tomorrow.
“It was because I liked you...”
To deny Yoon Taehee’s past actions was to deny Jaegyeom himself.
I hope it’s you. The one who’ll join the rebellion.
You should never have chosen .
I think I might have been born to et you.
You and I should never have t.
Every day with you feels like my birthday.
You should never have reached your hand out to .
“Suhyang wasn’t dead. She was alive. The Director called for . And Suhyang was there.”
Barely able to breathe through his sobbing, Jaegyeom began spilling out everything about the day he reunited with Suhyang.
That he had t her again. That Cho Youngwoo had been beside her. That Suhyang had been prolonging her life by sacrificing gifted. That she had already seen through his entire plan.
The words poured out together with his tears.
It was clumsy and disordered, like soone learning how to speak for the first ti. The sequence was tangled, the explanations incomplete, the thoughts spilling into one another without structure.
And yet sohow, Yoon Taehee understood all of it.
“......”
At so point, Yoon Taehee slowly raised himself from beneath him.
A mont ago Jaegyeom had been straddling him, but the instant Taehee sat up, their eye levels aligned. Tilting his head slightly, Yoon Taehee looked up at Jaegyeom sitting in his lap.
“Jaegyeom.”
He lifted a hand and cupped Jaegyeom’s tear-soaked face.
His skin was warm with feverish heat. His face was flushed red from crying, his eyelids swollen.
Yoon Taehee stared silently at him for a long ti.
It was the first ti he had ever seen Jaegyeom cry like this.
For the first ti, Yoon Taehee realized that when Jaegyeom cried, he looked unbearably sorrowful.
“Jaegyeom.”
His lips moved again.
“Look at .”
Tilting his head to catch Jaegyeom’s gaze, Yoon Taehee spoke softly while cradling the area beneath his ears.
But Jaegyeom kept trembling with sobs, shoulders shaking helplessly.
“Jaegyeom.”
He couldn’t calm down.
“Gyeom.”
Only then did Jaegyeom slowly raise his head.
“Do you like ?”
“......”
Jaegyeom said nothing. Tears simply continued falling one drop at a ti.
“Do you like ?”
Yoon Taehee asked again, as if he needed to hear it clearly.
Jaegyeom lowered his head once more.
“I tried not to.”
His voice was thick and slurred with tears.
“But I couldn’t.”
You, who always asked what I ate.
You, who would imdiately ask if it tasted good whenever I answered.
You, who rembered every tiny detail about without missing a single one.
You, who said the world had been kind to you even though your life had been filled with more malice than anyone else’s.
You, who were gentle with the elderly and kind to children.
You, whose very na glittered.
You, strange and fragrant you.
“I couldn’t...”
He couldn’t help liking him.
In barren, desolate ground, a sprout had blood unnoticed.
Jaegyeom had been too exhausted for too long to care for it. A person’s heart possesses a strange elasticity, and Jaegyeom had failed to realize that warmth and vitality had quietly rooted themselves inside his daily life.
And so, despite never tending it, the fragile sprout had eventually beco a vast forest so imnse one could walk forever without finding its end.
Even then, Jaegyeom had forced himself to pretend not to know.
Fear of loss had crippled his heart.
He kept deceiving himself. Telling himself it was only a delusion. No—that the forest had never existed at all. That it was rely a fleeting mirage.
But strangely enough, whenever he ca back to himself, he was still standing inside that forest.
The woods he had burned down returned again and again like an illusion.
And every ti, Jaegyeom lost his way inside them once more.
Because escaping those strange, fragrant woods was beyond his control.
“Do you like ?”
Unable to properly open his swollen eyes, Jaegyeom nodded weakly.
“Yes...”
The instant he heard the answer, Yoon Taehee closed his eyes without aning to.
“......”
Sothing violently trembled deep inside his chest.
As though suppressing whatever was surging upward inside him, his Adam’s apple bobbed once. He tried to maintain composure, but it clearly wasn’t working.
“I see.”
His voice shook faintly.
“So that’s what it was.”
A small breath of laughter escaped him.
At so point, his head lowered.
His entire body seed on the verge of trembling from sheer exhilaration.
After that, Yoon Taehee remained silent for a very long ti, as though he had temporarily lost the ability to speak.
“I like you too.”
When he finally spoke again, his voice was weak.
And the mont Jaegyeom heard those words, he realized Yoon Taehee was crying too.
Jaegyeom reached out and held his face.
Yoon Taehee had lowered his head like soone completely exhausted.
“I like you so much I keep wanting to die.”
Jaegyeom watched tears gather in his eyes.
“I like you...”
Yoon Taehee pressed his forehead against Jaegyeom’s shoulder and lowered his head further.
“......”
Jaegyeom wrapped both arms tightly around his neck and pulled him closer with all his strength.
Then Yoon Taehee wrapped his arms around Jaegyeom’s back and held him just as fiercely.
The embrace was so tight it almost hurt.
Like that, they clung to each other without the slightest gap between them, as though the world contained no one else.
Clarity arrived for Jaegyeom wearing the face of disaster.
Hot breath and damp tears shattered softly against the nape of his neck.
The two of them quietly struggled for breath together, like people sharing the sa fever.
At so point, both of them had beco visibly ill.
And it was sothing only they could recognize in each other.
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