However much he wanted to collapse flat onto the floor, he barely managed to stay standing and face him. Wearing a poker face over a look that wanted to laugh awkwardly to ease the tension was already exhausting.
Suddenly, the hand gripping his chin stroked his lips. The thumb, slowly painting over his lower lip, seemed to dip into his mouth before pulling away.
“I see… I was thinking of going straight to Korea after this and digging up the truth from somewhere.”
So faintly, like a breeze brushing past.
If Jeong Tae-ui hadn’t been so tense, he wouldn’t have caught the barely audible whisper brushing past his ear.
But before the meaning even fully reached his mind, the man stepped back. Jeong Tae-ui looked up at him with his eyes only.
A crooked tilt of the head, a cool gaze looking down on Jeong Tae-ui, faintly laced with a smile — like a cat that caught a mouse.
“Well… fine. I’ll be introduced properly later.”
The man turned toward Richard and spoke, gesturing for him to hurry along.
“What’s this, showing interest in someone else?”
Richard joked as if seeing all kinds of things, and moved on.
Though it seemed like he had more to say, he left it for another time, gave Jeong Tae-ui a glance, and followed Richard, while the man left a subtle eye-smile before turning and heading back up the stairs.
Jeong Tae-ui just stared blankly at their backs until they disappeared around the landing.
Back in his room, after showering, changing clothes, and stepping out again, Jeong Tae-ui moved mechanically with a dazed mind, like a puppet.
Is this how it feels to open your eyes and still be dreaming?
To suddenly face someone unexpected in a place absurdly out of place, with no warning at all, to have spoken and even felt their body heat, but then, when you think back a moment later, to feel as if you were dreaming wide awake.
“…Could it be I really was dreaming awake? Maybe I was so overworked today that I briefly fell asleep while standing.”
Jeong Tae-ui mumbled, absentmindedly running his fingers through his still damp hair.
Then suddenly, standing in the middle of the room, he stopped talking and stared blankly, fingers tangled in his hair. At some point, he gave a heavy shake of his head and sat in a chair.
He formed a hypothesis.
I dreamed.
That means that wasn’t Ileigh.
“...Then where is that guy now?”
Before he could reach a proper conclusion, a question slipped out between his lips. His own voice reached his ears. At that moment, he went blank again.
Then, as if an auditory hallucination, a trustworthy voice that comforted him brushed his ear.
—Don’t worry too much, Tae-ui. He’ll never think you ran away from him.
“...”
He thought it was comfort. He thought Kyle was pitying his distracted self and trying to console him. But now, reconsidering, was that really comfort?
—He’ll never think you ran away from him...
“...He won’t.”
As he added “Why would he think that?” Jeong Tae-ui suddenly realized.
Those words were neither comfort nor consolation. They were just signs, omens revealing the current harsh reality.
“Wow… I really have no one on my side in this world.”
Jeong Tae-ui collapsed onto the table. Alongside the bitter betrayal, resentment toward Kyle bubbled up again.
Of course, Kyle probably didn’t deceive him intentionally. Maybe he didn’t even think he was deceiving him.
Whatever the reason Ileigh was here, if it was something that was better kept secret from the outside world, he might have been reluctant to speak it out loud. Perhaps thinking it would come out anyway when they inevitably met.
Maybe Kyle meant to warn him in advance so that he wouldn’t surprise Ileigh by accident. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
“No… still, this is something I’m justified in resenting.”
For once, he wanted to cry, sobbing bitterly. With his face buried in his arm on the table, he let out quiet sobs. Tears seemed close to coming.
Sobbing, sobbing, muttering, then after a while, Jeong Tae-ui fell silent.
“…Am I not supposed to acknowledge him?”
Suddenly struck by the thought, he lifted his head and murmured to himself. After staring blankly out the window for some time, he got up.
His head still throbbed fiercely as if punched hard in the back, and he was still dazed, but even so, he was hungry. The memory of his hard work in the study all afternoon briefly crossed his mind. And that work was still unfinished.
“Anyway, I’ll eat first and then keep working while thinking about it…”
Rubbing his temples that had started to throb faintly, Jeong Tae-ui left his room.
As he stepped forward, all his strength drained away. Suddenly fatigue overwhelmed him several times over, and he sighed, massaging his neck and shoulders.
Staggering down the stairs, he was about to go down another floor to the dining room but noticed the study door was open, so he dragged his feet toward it. Through the open door crack, he saw a familiar and annoying face.
Christophe was there.
Standing among the bookshelves with arms crossed, inspecting the shelves, Christophe pointed at a shelf with his chin as Jeong Tae-ui entered.
“What, you haven’t finished organizing yet? Why is this side—”
“Why didn’t you tell me he was here?”
Ignoring Christophe’s words, Jeong Tae-ui glared fiercely. Christophe looked at him as if wondering if he suddenly ate something wrong.
“Who is he?”
Christophe frowned and snapped back.
At that moment, Jeong Tae-ui’s brain suddenly snapped awake from its daze, and he shouted.
“Ile—! Ileigh Regrow! I saw him! Just now! In this house! On those stairs!”
Jeong Tae-ui’s face, shouting as if claiming to have seen a ghost, was pale blue, as if he really had.
Recalling that thought drained the color from his face again.
Christophe looked at the suddenly raving Jeong Tae-ui with wide eyes. It was as if thinking, “I don’t know what he ate, but this guy’s really losing it.”
“…You didn’t know?”
After a moment of silence, Christophe asked again. Jeong Tae-ui collapsed right there.
Though the reality had hit him hard and his mind had constructed plausible causes and effects, he still wished it wasn’t true.
He wished he’d been daydreaming. He wished someone would say there was occasionally a ghost of Rick in this house. He still held onto some hope.
As Jeong Tae-ui sat on the bare floor, staring blankly, Christophe pulled a chair over with his usual indifferent expression and sat down.
“You’ve been in this house for two months already.”
“...”
“I thought you came to follow him to get your books back. Didn’t you know?”
“If I had known, would I have come!!”
Even beaten to death, he wouldn’t have come. Especially after boldly declaring he would leave. Even if he had known, after hearing Rita told Ileigh about his outing, he would have fled a hundred miles from this mansion immediately.
Jeong Tae-ui gasped for air, his shoulders rising and falling with heavy breaths. Christophe asked, “Are you crying?” and Jeong Tae-ui yelled back, “I’m not crying!”
Two months already.
That meant he had been here the whole time since leaving home.
From the moment he saw Richard here, he should have checked what kind of request he made to Ileigh.
“…Why is he here?”
Jeong Tae-ui lifted his head, glaring sullenly at Christophe, who was an innocent—though not entirely innocent—target of blame.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Soon the elder will step down, and it’s time to choose the next great successor of the Tartens. Among candidates competing for over twenty years, it’s customary to hear opinions from old allies like the Regrows. Though it’s mostly ceremonial, custom is custom.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. That troublesome, annoying stuff, that guy would seriously take on, saying he wants to help with family affairs?!”
“Right? I thought Kyle or Helena would come from America if needed, but it was him. Quite surprising…”
Christophe stopped talking and stared into the void for a moment, biting his finger as if deep in thought, then glanced at Jeong Tae-ui.
“?”
“...”
Jeong Tae-ui met that gaze, puzzled by the silence. Christophe quietly turned his eyes away.
Suspicious.
Jeong Tae-ui narrowed his eyes and leaned forward toward Christophe, silently urging him to speak up if he had something to say.
After a moment’s thought, Christophe spoke.
“But.”
“Yeah?”
“Did you do something to him? Why such a fuss? If you didn’t know he was here and ran into him, so be it—why such a stunned reaction?”
This time Jeong Tae-ui was silent. Christophe leaned forward deeply in his chair, stared closely at Jeong Tae-ui’s face, and continued.
“Did you steal a book he cherished?”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Or... hmm.”
Suddenly Christophe muttered as if he remembered something. Jeong Tae-ui watched his lips nervously, which curved into an unfamiliar smile and stopped.
“That’s right. Now that you mention it, he did say something like that. Karma from a past life… Trying to run from karma only to have his ankle grabbed…”
“I didn’t run away.”
Jeong Tae-ui answered sullenly. Christophe muttered an “Ah, I see” and his lips curved again with his eyes.
Seeing that subtle expression, Jeong Tae-ui thought suddenly:
This man really can’t smile. Even a sneer seems hard for him.
“…You…”
Jeong Tae-ui stared at Christophe’s lips. He wanted to poke his index finger at the corner of his mouth and push it up, but the moment he stretched out his finger, Christophe frowned and straightened his back.
Jeong Tae-ui withdrew his finger and clicked his tongue.
Christophe wiped the smile from his face and stood up. He pulled a book from the horizontal shelf beside him, glanced at the title, and walked over to the opposite bookshelf to put it away, shrugging his shoulders slightly.
“No need to worry so much. Well, maybe once he goes back to Berlin, but at least while he’s here, he won’t do you any harm.”
Christophe then pulled out another book beside the one he’d just shelved and frowned.
“This is misplaced, it’s philosophy.” He muttered coldly and put it in the correct shelf.
Jeong Tae-ui faltered for a moment. Whether to say you’re better off organizing yourself, or that ‘if he goes back to Berlin, who knows’ means ‘you should worry,’ or ask why he can’t harm him while here—his tongue got tied.
Looking at Jeong Tae-ui stammering “th-the-w-hy,” Christophe made a serious face, as if looking at a fool.
Jeong Tae-ui closed his mouth, took a deep breath, and slowly opened it again, wanting to clear the biggest doubt first.
“Why can’t he harm me while he’s here? Is there some kind of watchful eye on him?”