Chapter 167

“Are we lovers, you ask?”

“Yes.”

I thought I’d misheard him, but Han Geon-joo’s gaze was dead serious. He wasn’t joking.

Seriously, what part of this looks like that?

Sa-yoon scrunched up his nose, making no effort to hide his wrinkled expression of disgust. He had no hobby of dating lunatics. If Lee Jaehee had heard that, he probably would have nagged at him, asking if he was one to talk, but that was beside the point.

Besides.

“He already has a lover.”

Didn’t Lee Jaehee already have someone he loved so passionately?

I had no idea what Han Geon-joo had seen to make such a wild assumption. He said he’d been trapped in the Tower for a year; maybe the lack of human contact had degraded his ability to distinguish between different types of relationships.

As I was speculating, Geon-joo’s eyes darted back and forth. He flicked his gaze toward the door before looking back at me, his face scrunching up even more than before. It seemed he was finally realizing what a ridiculous mistake he’d made.

“Then are you the one with the unrequited love?”

“What the fuck?”

I was the one who had been mistaken. Han Geon-joo hadn’t grasped the truth at all.

An unrequited love?

A… one-sided… crush?

I, Sa-yoon, could swear that in my twenty-seven years of life, I had never had a one-sided crush on anyone. Others might have liked me, sure, but I was never the one pining. The ones Sa-yoon had loved were, for the most part, family.

Like my parents, for example.

Or, perhaps, the next-door ahjussi from that day.

The only love Sa-yoon had ever harbored was familial love. Even that was something from a younger, more innocent time; after becoming an adult, I didn’t particularly try to embrace anyone in that way.

And now he was talking about a crush?

It was so ridiculous it wasn’t even funny.

Letting out a series of bitter laughs, I looked at Geon-joo, whose ability to read the room seemed to have plummeted into the negatives. He wasn’t originally this stupid and oblivious. A sudden suspicion colored my gaze.

Is this some other kind of trick?

I wondered if this inscrutable bastard was trying a new method to screw me over. My eyes narrowed as a cynical sneer formed on my lips.

I’m not falling for it.

Getting stabbed in the back by the man in front of me was an experience I only needed once.

“I’ve never done anything like that, and I never will, so stop trying to buy time with this nonsense and talk about yourself. How can you misunderstand when I’ve never even had a lover in the first place?”

As I spoke with a click of my tongue, Geon-joo watched me with suspicious eyes. It seemed that even after all this, he still thought I was the one with the crush or whatever. The sincerity in his gaze was so genuine that it was my turn to be flustered.

Wait, so this isn’t a trick? He really believed that?

I was just about to ask him what on earth made him think that.

“You’ve never had a lover?”

“Hm?”

“Not once in your entire life?”

You don’t look like the type.

His muttered addition was strangely irritating. I needed a moment to figure out if he was looking down on me or just teasing. I touched my lips, then decided to answer.

There was no reason to hide it.

A colorful past full of lovers wasn’t something to be proud of, just as a past without any wasn’t anything to be ashamed of.

In the end, you have to live your life alone anyway. What’s the big deal about a lover?

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“…?”

The question came back without a moment’s delay, making me tilt my head.

Is he asking why I don’t date, or something like that?

I’d never had this kind of conversation before, and it was bewildering. What was his motive for asking such a thing? Was he trying to seduce me with his good looks to scam me later?

I did think when I first saw him that once he grew up a bit more, lost the baby fat, and gained a sharper look, he could probably charm quite a few people. I just never imagined he’d try to use it on me. I held my breath in disbelief as Geon-joo called out to me again.

“What are you thinking about?”

That you’re trying to pull a fast one on me.

I couldn’t say that out loud, so I pushed the useless thought aside and mulled over his question.

Why have I never had a lover?

Well…

“Did I ever have the luxury for something like a lover?”

Sa-yoon let out a short laugh. This time, it wasn’t a bitter laugh or a sneer. As a self-deprecating smile hung on my lips, Geon-joo asked why I didn’t have the luxury. It seemed that being trapped in the Tower had turned him into some kind of question-mark-serial-killer.

Feeling exasperated, I watched him press me to continue, and I felt the right of interrogation shifting from me to him.

So you’re saying you have the right to ask questions, too. Is that it?

Judging by Lee Jaehee’s lack of reaction to the story about being trapped in the Tower for a year by a system quest, it seemed the story was true.

Though my past experience of being betrayed by him still made me suspicious, I couldn’t deny the outcome. No matter what I thought, if he had suffered for a year trying to understand me, then I had to pay the price for that year.

That was something the System couldn’t provide, nor should it.

It was my life, after all.

The choice to speak or not had to be mine.

Thinking about it that way, the fact that he had tried to dig up my secrets through the System was infuriating, but I knew it wasn’t entirely his fault. I hadn’t wanted to talk, and Han Geon-joo had simply wanted to know the truth I kept hidden.

Curiosity is a human instinct. Han Geon-joo had merely been faithful to that instinct, which was natural given his situation.

Accepting the fact I had been trying to ignore, I stared intently at Geon-joo, who was waiting for my words without rushing me.

…Is this the second time I’m telling someone myself?

With Jongsik, he had figured it out because of my slip of the tongue, and Lee Jaehee had read the heavens and uncovered my secret on his own without being asked. This was the second time I was making a conscious decision to reveal my secret, so I opened my mouth slowly.

“Han Geon-joo.”

“Go on.”

“Do you know what happened to the person I told my secret to before you?”

“You’ve told someone else?”

“…?”

The conversation was going off on a strange tangent. Usually, when I set a heavy tone like this, people would either tremble in fear or desperately try to avoid hearing it, insisting they weren’t curious. But Han Geon-joo was missing the point entirely.

Because of him, my plan went slightly off-track. I gave him a strange look. I had no idea what he was thinking.

“Of course I have. I’m human, too.”

I make that kind of mistake at least once.

I added with a short breath, and Geon-joo’s eyebrow twitched upward.

“…Doesn’t sound like it was just one mistake.”

“Geon-joo.”

That brat was slowly reverting to his old, insolent habits from our time in the field.

Not forgetting that his nerve was water-soluble, I flicked my eyes toward the bathroom.

“I’ll listen quietly, so just tell me.”

A satisfactory answer came back immediately.

Should have just been like this from the start.

He must have two or three lives to spare. Anyone else would be trembling in fear of death by now, but not him.

…He knows, doesn’t he?

He knows that no matter what violence I inflict on him, whether I break his legs, choke him, or crush his wrists, I won’t actually kill him.

He could act so fearlessly because he knew that fact.

I’ve really become a pushover.

Muttering to myself at the thought of being seen as a joke, I tried to recall where our conversation had left off. I dug through my memories, briefly pulling out and examining a deeply buried event before shoving it back down.

“The person I told my secret to before you, Geon-joo, died by my hand.”

“…”

“That bastard learned my secret and stabbed me in the back. He dared to betray me, so I killed him and every single bastard who took part in the betrayal. It was right when the Night Rat guild was growing, and Jongsik whined that all our hard-earned results had turned to ash because of it.”

I spoke with a smile as if telling a very amusing story, but Geon-joo did not smile with me. After abruptly ending the tale I had just as abruptly begun, I met his dark, unreadable eyes and took a breath.

“So don’t you do that, Geon-joo.”

“…”

“Don’t make me kill you with my own hands. If you can’t do that, then don’t listen.”

If you’re going to listen, at least sign a contract promising not to betray me.

I took a contract out of my inventory. If one was to hear another’s secret, they had to be prepared to bear its weight. I lowered my voice, doubtful that the young snake before me was ready. Geon-joo looked at the contract I offered, then took it without a shred of hesitation and signed. It was a contract that stipulated he would forfeit his life if he ever revealed my secret to others or used it maliciously, yet he showed no reluctance.

My eyes widened slightly. The sight of Geon-joo handing the contract back to me reminded me of when I first met him.

The way he had signed the guild recruitment contract without a moment’s pause.

“I’ve signed it.”

His calm voice reached me. His gaze seemed to press me, as if to say, I did what you wanted, now give me what I want. A dry laugh escaped my lips.

Look at this bastard.

It was a small thrill I hadn’t felt in a long time. The corners of my eyes crinkled as I took the contract he handed me. His name was written in a neat script. It was the same signature I had seen before.

Right, when have you ever acted as I expected?

This was Han Geon-joo, who always defied my expectations at the most crucial moments. I let out a chuckle and stored the contract in my inventory. Now that I had received a life, it was time to repay it with my own.

“The true evil of humanity.”

At the mention of a familiar topic, Geon-joo’s shoulders flinched. The look in his eyes, urging me to say more, intensified. Sensing an almost desperate craving from him, I let out a small laugh and, wondering why he was so eager to know, began to speak at a leisurely pace.

“I don’t know what you were expecting, but that’s a name I’m familiar with too, Geon-joo.”

“…”

“How could I not be, when the disposition the System forced upon me bears that exact name?”

Letting out a cold sneer that seemed aimed at no one in particular, I closed my eyes. An old story surfaced from beneath the water.