Actually, It’s a Messy Melodrama Chapter 41

“What a mess, really.”

Sitting on the sofa, his face gaunt after just one night, Taejun muttered as he gulped down a coffee he’d brewed stronger than usual. Taejun had barely slept last night.

When he finally did fall asleep, he had such a terrible nightmare that it was worse than not sleeping at all. It was, in a word, a mess. There was no way he could be in good condition. His body and his mood were both shot. And yet, none of the agonizing thoughts that had given Taejun a sleepless night had been resolved.

Downing more coffee, Taejun glanced towards Haeshin’s room, from which no sound had yet come. He knew it was still early, but he was worried that Haeshin hadn’t woken up.

“This is driving me crazy, seriously.”

In the end, Taejun threw back the rest of his coffee in one go, shot up from the sofa, and headed for Haeshin’s room. He absolutely wasn’t trying to make a fuss. It was just that a rather big incident had occurred, and he wanted to check on him, just in case. Who knew if Haeshin was sick from the aftereffects of yesterday?

Though no one was watching, Taejun kept coming up with excuses for himself as he approached Haeshin’s door. He pressed his ear against it slightly, but there was no particular sound from inside.

I really don’t have any other intentions. It’s just that it would be a problem if he got sick on the first day after I went to the trouble of bringing him home. And things could get worse if I didn’t know and just left him alone. So I’m just going to check on him for a second. With that mindset, Taejun carefully opened the door and went inside.

Haeshin was lying on the large bed as if he were dead. He was in the exact same position Taejun had laid him in yesterday. His heart plummeted. Taejun had seen Cha Haeshin’s death too many times. He didn’t want to see that sight anymore.

As if possessed, Taejun walked right up to the bed. He could hear faint breathing, but Haeshin’s pale face, buried limply in the pillow, looked as if it had stopped breathing altogether.

“Cha Haeshin.”

So Taejun called his name. He wanted to see Cha Haeshin open his eyes and move. He was aware that he wasn’t in a rational state of mind right now, but that was all. Taejun had to see the ‘living’ Cha Haeshin right this instant.

“Hey, wake up.”

The voice that roughly woke Haeshin was clumsy and desperate. Perhaps deeply asleep, Haeshin didn’t open his eyes. Taejun sat down on the bed with a thump and, grabbing Haeshin’s shoulders, shook him.

“Cha Haeshin, open your eyes.”

Just as the nightmare from the previous night was beginning to creep back into his mind at the sight of the still unmoving Haeshin, Haeshin’s eyelids trembled with a small groan. Taejun let out a sigh of relief.

“Are you awake?”

Finally feeling a little sorry for waking a sleeping person, Taejun asked in a much softer voice. Haeshin, as if his eyelids wouldn’t open properly, managed to lift them and darted his eyes around.

“……Are you okay?”

Taejun asked once more. It was good that Haeshin had woken up, but he seemed particularly unable to get his bearings. Reacting to Taejun’s voice, Haeshin turned his gaze to look up at Taejun quietly and spoke.

“Did I die……?”

It was at that moment that Taejun’s movements froze. Haeshin’s excessively strange question created a silence. Taejun barely managed to open his mouth.

“What are you talking about.”

“Ah, I guess not. I’m not dead, not yet……. I’m not dead.”

Haeshin mumbled, blinking slowly. Taejun, who had been trying to continue the conversation somehow, was forced to shut his mouth even more tightly at that mumble. Not dead yet. They were words that were hard to understand with ordinary logic.

“What do you mean by that.”

Taejun’s voice dropped low. Haeshin didn’t say any more and closed his eyes again. It seemed he hadn’t been fully awake in the first place. Taejun was getting anxious. He wanted to know what those words meant. It was a situation where he could have dismissed it as nonsensical sleep talk, but strangely, he couldn’t just let it go.

“Cha Haeshin, wake up…… huh?”

The moment he grabbed Haeshin’s hand to wake him, as he seemed about to fall back asleep, a surprised gasp escaped Taejun’s lips. Haeshin’s skin felt like a ball of fire against his hand.

“What the hell……! Hey, if you’re sick, you should’ve said something!”

Taejun shot up from the bed. He was so flustered that he even pointed an accusatory finger at the lying Cha Haeshin.

“Ah, seriously!”

Taejun scratched his head furiously and hurried out of the room. In his head, he thought it was probably just body aches from a cold, but he couldn’t seem to calm down. Surprisingly, Taejun had never in his life personally taken care of a sick person. That’s just how life as a third-generation chaebol was.

“A phone call, right, a phone call.”

Wringing his hands, Taejun came out into the living room and hurriedly looked for his phone.

‘Did I die?’

Haeshin’s incomprehensible words kept ringing in his ears, but that wasn’t what was important right now.

☂️

It was already after dark when Haeshin properly came to his senses. The unfamiliar ceiling he saw as soon as he opened his eyes made Haeshin a bit flustered. Due to countless regressions, there was no place that didn’t feel familiar no matter where he woke up, but this scenery seemed like the first time he’d seen it.

“Ah…… right, I’m at Han Taejun’s house…….”

Then, once his memory returned, he felt a surprising sense of relief. Ever since he started regressing, he had never felt safe, not in Jin Youngmin’s house, and not even in the house he lived in with his mother, but the moment he realized he was in Taejun’s house, Haeshin felt a sense of security.

A home-like home where he could be protected from threats, a home that wasn’t painfully cold or hot, where he didn’t have to tremble in fear of being beaten. This place was the closest thing to the kind of space Haeshin had desperately wanted his whole life.

It was a half-measure of safety. This wasn’t fully Cha Haeshin’s home, after all. But Haeshin had been on a fierce battlefield for too long. He truly cherished this place, where he could lay down even a small fraction of his accumulated exhaustion.

When he slowly sat up, he felt dizzy even while seated. It seemed his body wasn’t well. Confirming that it was dark outside the window, Haeshin let out a sigh. It looked like he had been sick for the entire day.

Sure enough, when he found his phone and checked it, there was a message from the owner of his workplace. It was only natural that all hell would break loose since he’d missed work without any notice.

“Huh……?”

But the message he actually checked was different from what Haeshin had expected. The owner, who had somehow found out, expressed concern for Haeshin’s condition and encouraged him to not worry about anything else and get a full day’s rest.

“No way…….”

Haeshin’s gaze turned to the firmly closed door. He thought, ‘There’s no way a man who’s the CEO of a chaebol would clean up after me,’ but he couldn’t shake the ‘what if’ thought.

Because Han Taejun was a subtly kind person. Because he was the kind of person who would bring someone he didn’t even know properly into his own home just because he felt sorry for them.

Feeling an unidentifiable heartbeat, Haeshin slowly got up from the bed. Funnily enough, he wanted to see Taejun’s face right away.

☂️

“What are you doing, sneaking out like a stray cat?”

Taejun, who had been quietly drinking wine in the living room with a single soft light on, spotted Haeshin carefully emerging into the living room, even muffling his footsteps, and spoke bluntly.

It wasn’t that his feelings were actually blunt; it was just that there were many embarrassing incidents that only Han Taejun himself knew about.

For example, the incident where he made a huge fuss, calling his personal doctor over a simple cold with body aches that Cha Haeshin had, or the incident where he made a huge fuss by contacting Secretary Choi and asking what to do, or the incident where he couldn’t rest easy even after being told Haeshin just needed some rest, so he went to work only to make a huge fuss by rushing home not long after, and things like that.

Haeshin, unbothered by Taejun’s blunt reaction, smiled brightly and spoke to him.

“I was worried you might be sleeping.”

At the same time, Haeshin’s gaze went to the wine glass on the sofa table. There was no particular intention; he just looked at it because it was there.

But Taejun, noticing that gaze, felt a pang of guilt. For some reason, he felt awkward about being seen drinking in front of someone who grew up with an alcoholic father. He didn’t want to pull the trigger again for someone who had already had a seizure.

On the other hand, he wanted to make a small excuse. Taejun rarely drank. It was for the same reason he quit smoking. It was the thought that he should be careful, as he was bound to be vulnerable to addiction.

In fact, it had been quite a while since he had a drink alone at home. His mind was so complicated and confused that he had brought it out with the thought of having just one glass, but he just had to be caught in the act.

Surely he won’t think I’m a drunk because of this. Feeling self-conscious for no reason, Taejun slyly lowered the wine glass below the table. At that, Haeshin burst out laughing. It was because she could see clearly what Taejun was thinking.

“You don’t have to do that because of me.”

Haeshin’s voice echoed softly in the quiet night air. Taejun ran a hand through his hair, looking sheepish. Haeshin continued.

“Have you forgotten where I used to work?”

“Ah…….”

Only then did Taejun remember that Haeshin had worked at a bar. Taejun rolled his eyes and looked at the lone glass on the floor. It was just a glass, but for some reason, it looked shabby.

“Thanks to my experience dealing with my dad, I was actually better at my job at the bar. I knew better than anyone how to handle drunk people.”

Haeshin’s voice sounded incredibly light. Taejun couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of time Cha Haeshin must have endured to be able to call that experience a ‘thanks to’.

However, in a situation where the person himself was speaking about it lightly, it would be rude for Taejun to make the mood heavier. Taejun decided to ask a more important question.