Actually, It’s a Messy Melodrama Chapter 70

“And what’s wrong with your body?”

“My body? What about my body?”

“That state of…”

Taejun, who almost snapped at him, barely managed to control his emotions. After all, it was ridiculous to comment on a grown man’s thinness.

But quick-witted Cha Haeshin didn’t miss the chance to tease Han Taejun.

“Am I too skinny and pitiful?”

“What?”

“Do I look like I’ll be blown away by the wind? Does it trigger your protective instinct?”

“…Get inside. Whether you get heatstroke or not.”

In the end, Taejun, unable to retort, simply pouted and turned away.

“Wait, CEO. Let’s go together.”

The funny thing was, at Haeshin’s suggestion to go together, Taejun stood there idly, waiting until Haeshin got up and put on his worn-out slippers.

Taejun’s gaze briefly lingered on Haeshin’s slippers, whose soles looked like they could fall off any moment.

It occurred to him that the clothes he had bought for Haeshin in the last timeline, which he hadn’t managed to give him while looking for the right timing, would all have disappeared.

“You’ll fall. Take it slow.”

Taejun said to the hastily moving Haeshin. Haeshin, standing straight in his slippers, looked at Taejun and smiled brightly. The face Taejun had most wanted to see when he was weeping and knocking on Jin Youngmin’s door was right before his eyes.

“Have you eaten dinner?”

“No. You said you’d be home early, so I waited. I’m not that impolite, you know.”

A smile slowly spread across Taejun’s mouth as he listened to Haeshin’s chattering voice.

It was okay that the new clothes had disappeared. Since the only person Taejun wanted to protect was right next to him, everything else could be rebuilt.

☂️

“Are you done?”

“Yes.”

Taejun looked at Haeshin, who was walking into the living room with a refreshed face, very discontentedly.

The amicable atmosphere was short-lived. After dinner, Taejun and Haeshin engaged in another small but fierce argument. Haeshin insisted on doing the dishes, arguing that he was practically employed by the CEO again, and Han Taejun raised his voice, arguing against doing any dishes at all.

Naturally, the victor was Cha Haeshin. Haeshin’s argument was far more logical, but a large part of it was due to Taejun’s utter collapse when Haeshin said he would obey if his employer gave him an order.

In fact, Han Taejun was in a position to command Cha Haeshin as much as he wanted.

He had become a creditor by paying off Haeshin’s private loans, was an employer who had agreed to pay Haeshin a salary far above average, and above all, even without such an employer-employee relationship, his position as CEO of Myungjin Group allowed him to ‘command’ Cha Haeshin as he pleased.

But in the end, Taejun couldn’t give Haeshin any ‘commands.’ This was because a clearer power dynamic, capable of overturning all the preceding hierarchical relationships, was established between Han Taejun and Cha Haeshin.

Regardless of status, the person in unrequited love must always be the thorough subordinate. Han Taejun was truly experiencing the feeling of being the subordinate for the first time in his life.

“You insisted on doing the dishes…”

“It’s fine. This is nothing to me.”

Han Taejun was bothered to death by the moisture still clinging to Cha Haeshin’s hands, but Cha Haeshin, completely unaware of his feelings, answered cheerfully. He probably had no idea that Cha Haeshin’s life, where doing the dishes was nothing, made Taejun even more upset.

Adding ‘hand cream’ to the ‘list of things to buy for Cha Haeshin’ in his mind, Taejun got up from the sofa. Then he took a short breath to bring up the words he had been preparing for a while.

His heart was pounding as if it would burst just to say those few words.

“Is there anything you need me to do?”

Taejun opened his mouth towards Cha Haeshin, who was still saying annoyingly witty things like a staff member.

“The walking trail behind this house is quite well maintained.”

“Yes?”

“And there aren’t too many people.”

“Are you going for a walk?”

Taejun’s expression was full of dissatisfaction as he looked at the blankly questioning Haeshin.

If he wanted to go alone, why would he hold on to Cha Haeshin and say such things? It was baffling why he would say something so irrelevant at a time like this when he wasn’t generally slow-witted.

But Taejun couldn’t get angry, nor could he stay silent. Because in the end, the one who would be disappointed was Han Taejun. Eventually, Han Taejun, who had been awkwardly touching his own neck, spoke.

“No, I mean, I am going, I am going for a walk.”

“Yes.”

“If you want to come with me, then come along.”

Although it was far from the gentle and kind tone he had continuously practiced in his mind, he couldn’t help it. This was Han Taejun’s best effort right now.

☂️

“Still, it’s not that hot after the sun sets.”

Fortunately, despite Taejun’s ‘unpleasant’ invitation, Haeshin willingly joined him for a walk.

“It’s nice…”

Haeshin’s voice flowed on the summer path filled with the clamor of night insects. The moment he heard that, Taejun felt a kind of ecstasy filling his chest.

This was exactly why he had gone for a walk with Haeshin, even thinking about what to say in his head the whole time. Taejun wanted to give Haeshin a good time, a moment of leisure free from anxiety or hardship.

“Thank you, CEO.”

Then, Cha Haeshin, who had been walking a step ahead like an excited puppy, suddenly turned back and said. Taejun, who had been looking at Haeshin with a pleased expression, was startled and replied defensively.

“For what.”

“You purposely brought me out, didn’t you?”

Taejun avoided eye contact. He was quick-witted at times like this. He wondered if he was being played by Cha Haeshin.

“Why would I.”

Knowing he was already too late, Taejun tried to feign indifference. It wasn’t really that he wanted to deny it, but he did it out of sheer embarrassment and awkwardness.

Since they learned each other’s secret, the fluttering sensation in his chest whenever he saw Cha Haeshin had worsened. He was worried that he might start blushing just from meeting his eyes.

“Well, maybe because you wanted to comfort me?”

“…”

“Because you wanted to be nice to me?”

“Honestly.”

“Because the CEO is a kind person?”

“Fine. Think what you want.”

Taejun finally threw in the towel to Haeshin, who clearly seemed to be teasing him the more he talked. In fact, it was true that he had brought him out because he wanted to comfort Haeshin and be nice to him, so he couldn’t really refute it.

The only thing wrong was that he wasn’t inherently kind, but only wanted to be kind to Haeshin, and that was difficult to explain.

The summer night was much noisier than winter. The footsteps of the two walking side by side slowly matched each other’s pace amidst the music-like sounds of insects.

“CEO.”

Haeshin’s voice was added to the pleasant silence.

“Yes.”

“I have a question.”

“Yes.”

“Why the two of us, of all people?”

Haeshin stopped walking simultaneously with the question. Naturally, Taejun also stopped and looked at Haeshin in front of him. Under the streetlight, which was not dim even at night, Haeshin’s eyes shone like stars. They were eyes that had not been extinguished through any of life’s trials and had managed to come this far.

“If someone I didn’t know in a world I didn’t know was going through the same thing, I would understand that. But why is it exactly me and the CEO?”

Taejun agreed with Haeshin’s question. It would be understandable if there were random, scattered people around the world experiencing the same error. That would purely be luck.

But this regression was not a random cosmic error. It was strange enough that Haeshin was entirely at the center of it, but it was also strange that only Han Taejun in his vicinity was caught up in it.

“Another strange thing is… I hadn’t asked anyone around me for help all this time.”

“Yes.”

“But I can’t understand why I never asked the CEO for help before. Even though the CEO has the strongest power among the people around Jin Youngmin.”

“That’s what I felt was strange when you first knelt down and asked me to save you. You repeated the same time so many times, but that was the first time you asked me for help.”

“Hmm…”

Haeshin’s expression was serious, his brows furrowed. Taejun almost laughed because his face was so cute, despite the situation, and quickly controlled his expression.

“It was blurry, as if someone had erased the memory of the CEO with an eraser. The memory of the first life is not clear in the first place, and the memory of the CEO among them is the blurriest.”

“Do you think there’s some special reason for that?”

“Couldn’t there be?”

Their gazes met in the air. Surprisingly, Taejun felt his heart skip a beat at that moment.

Just the assumption that he might have been connected to Cha Haeshin from the beginning made him feel like an absolute madman, finding this unpleasant and terrible grand fate suddenly special.

Taejun frantically controlled his expression, worried that if Haeshin caught on to his feelings, he might become repulsed. Whether he knew about Taejun’s feelings or not, Haeshin continued speaking with a serious expression.

“On the day I first died… was I consumed by a desire for revenge much more than I remember? Did this whole thing start because I begged for just one more chance?”

No matter how much he thought about it, Haeshin couldn’t know. The already murky first memory became increasingly ragged with each regression, and now there was almost nothing left. Especially the moment of death. He couldn’t recall what emotions he felt then, or how desperately he had wished for something.