Actually, It’s a Messy Melodrama Chapter 95

Taejun, who had been sleeping fitfully due to the narrow bed, woke up feeling a strange chill for some unknown reason. In the darkness, he could see Haeshin’s silhouette sitting on the bed.

“Cha Haeshin…?”

Taejun slowly sat up and called out to him in a voice thick with sleep. However, Haeshin remained sitting perfectly still, without a single movement. Taejun slid closer to Haeshin, sitting right beside him, and asked while gently stroking his shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

“Huh?”

Haeshin flinched like someone who had only just woken up at that moment, then turned to look at Taejun.

Taejun reflexively held his breath. It was because Haeshin’s eyes, faintly visible in the dark, felt momentarily unfamiliar. It was clearly Cha Haeshin, yet he felt a bizarre sensation as if it somehow wasn’t Cha Haeshin.

“Did you have another nightmare?”

Taejun asked, trying to shake off the strange feeling. He tried to tell himself that it was just because he wasn’t fully awake and the room was dark. And at that very moment,

“Uh…?”

Taejun’s eyes widened in surprise at Haeshin’s sudden action of lunging into his arms. Having reflexively wrapped his arms around Haeshin’s waist, Taejun could only gape, unable to say a word.

But Haeshin, like someone to whom this act was incredibly familiar, began to nuzzle his cheek against Taejun’s neck and whine.

“Yeah. I had a really scary dream.”

Goosebumps erupted along Taejun’s spine. It was for the exact same reason as when he had met Haeshin’s eyes moments ago. He felt an indefinable sense of foreignness in Haeshin’s voice.

It was so subtle that he might not have noticed it if not for the silence of the dawn. Taejun quietly patted Haeshin’s back as if nothing were wrong, while internally struggling to identify the source of that foreignness.

“What kind of dream was it…?”

“Just… just… I don’t even want to think about it.”

Haeshin, mumbles despondently, hugged Taejun with even more strength and continued.

“I’m scared I’ll have a dream like that again, so I want to sleep like this. Please put me to sleep.”

Taejun swallowed hard. It was true that before falling asleep, the relationship between Haeshin and himself had deepened to a stage different from before. But was it to the point where Haeshin would show such natural and deep intimacy? Taejun couldn’t be certain.

But a complicated mind was one thing, and reality was another.

Taejun relaxed and lay back down on the bed, holding Haeshin as he leaned against him. Haeshin’s movements as he pressed his body close to Taejun and burrowed into his embrace were natural, without a hint of awkwardness.

It wasn’t just Haeshin’s attitude that was strange. It was the same for Taejun. Initially, the subtly changed atmosphere surrounding Haeshin had felt unfamiliar, but the moment he felt Haeshin’s heartbeat against his chest, his mind began to calm down like a lie.

The sense of foreignness he felt from Cha Haeshin vanished in an instant. Rather, this intimate attitude felt entirely appropriate. As if he had been in this kind of relationship with Cha Haeshin for a long time, as if it were only natural for them to fall asleep holding each other, Taejun soon accepted Cha Haeshin’s presence in his arms as a given.

“I’ll be right here beside you, so don’t worry and sleep well.”

Taejun’s voice, flowing out quietly, was infinitely soft and comfortable. No trace of awkwardness or discomfort could be found anywhere.

“Yes. Goodnight to you too, Taejun-ssi.”

Had Cha Haeshin ever called him Taejun-ssi? Taejun, swept away by a sudden wave of sleep as if intoxicated, thought as he blinked in a daze.

Except for when he was acting in front of Jin Youngmin, Haeshin had always called Taejun only Mr. President, yet for some reason, this sudden form of address didn’t feel strange; it felt natural. As if he had been calling him that all along.

The part of Taejun’s reason that remained desperately raised a question. This was clearly something strange. It was a matter that needed looking into.

But the night was deep and Taejun was too sleepy. It didn’t seem like a matter urgent enough to wake Haeshin—who was already falling into a deep sleep in his arms, breathing steadily—to have a conversation.

“Goodnight, Haeshin-ah.”

In the end, instead of getting up to shower Haeshin with questions, Taejun chose to lightly kiss his forehead and leave a goodnight greeting. It wouldn’t be too late to have a detailed talk after they woke up from a good sleep.

However, as a result, Taejun was unable to have a proper conversation with Haeshin about this matter in the morning. Because a much bigger problem, one that had to be solved first, had befallen him.

☂️

“Oh, what… what is this…?”

Yu Seonghui, Haeshin’s mother, thought that even if a bolt of lightning fell from a clear sky, she wouldn’t be more surprised than this. She reflexively gripped her thigh tight.

It hurt. Which meant this wasn’t a dream, but she simply couldn’t believe the fact that it wasn’t a dream. Anyone who suddenly encountered Han Taejun, the heir of the Myungjin Group, in the middle of their living room one day would have no choice but to doubt their own sanity.

“Um, Mom. Say hello. Uh… I told you yesterday, right? This is Han Taejun Mr. President, who got us this house and is helping me a lot.”

Seonghui stared with a dazed expression at her son’s face as he introduced “CEO Han Taejun” to her. Her son looked somewhat embarrassed, but he didn’t look like someone who was shocked or flustered.

It was strange. Naturally, CEO Han Taejun should have felt as sudden as a lightning bolt to Haeshin as well, yet for some reason, Haeshin didn’t seem particularly aghast at the fact that Taejun was here.

“No way, really…?”

Seonghui murmured like someone who had lost her soul. Only then did the words her son said yesterday come back to her vividly. At the time, she thought Haeshin was just spouting nonsense to reassure her, but it seemed it hadn’t been nonsense.

“Hello, I am Han Taejun. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

The lightning bolt—no, CEO Han Taejun—spoke. His attitude was unbelievably polite and courteous. Seonghui reflexively took a step back. It was as if her throat were blocked; she couldn’t force out any words.

She even reached the point of doubting if the person before her was just someone who looked like Han Taejun. It was more realistic to think that Haeshin had hired an actor to ease his mother’s guilt than to believe the person before her was the real Han Taejun.

“I apologize for the sudden visit. You must be very surprised.”

However, the Han Taejun who spoke politely again was the exact same person she had seen on the news. Seonghui finally snapped out of it like someone released from a spell and opened her mouth.

“Ah, n-no! Not at all. Um, u-uh, hello. Oh, I’m sorry. My goodness, I’ve lost my head. How did you come here…?”

“Mom, it’s okay. You don’t have to be that nervous.”

Haeshin gently took hold of the arm of Seonghui, who was fidgeting and didn’t know what to do, and comforted her. He hadn’t expected his mother to be this surprised, but on the other hand, it hit home once again just how unrealistic it was for Han Taejun to be helping him like this. It was literally nothing short of a miracle.

Just then, Taejun, who was looking at the two of them with a pleased expression, spoke.

“More than anything, I came because I have something I must tell you.”

Haeshin looked at Taejun with a questioning gaze. He thought he would just give a greeting and leave at most, but Taejun’s voice that followed had a strangely solemn edge to it.

And before Haeshin could even fathom the reason, Taejun bowed deeply toward Haeshin’s mother, Yu Seonghui.

“Thank you.”

“Mr. P-President! What—why are you doing this…!”

The one even more surprised by that action than Seonghui was Cha Haeshin. Haeshin hurriedly grabbed Taejun’s arm and pulled him upright. However, Taejun paid it no mind and continued in a relaxed manner.

“I don’t know how much of the story you’ve heard… but Cha Haeshin saved me when I was suffering from a pain greater than death. If it weren’t for Haeshin, I wouldn’t be alive and in my right mind today.”

“Mr. President…!”

“In short, Cha Haeshin is like a benefactor to me. From now on, I’m going to repay that debt a little.”

Seonghui quietly repeated the word “debt” that came out of Han Taejun’s mouth with a blank face. It was a very strange word. To say he would repay a debt to them. Debt was the entity that had shackled Yu Seonghui’s entire life, dragging her into a swamp of pain.

An entity that never disappeared no matter how much she paid it back, an entity that pursued Yu Seonghui’s name as doggedly as a curse, an entity she couldn’t escape even in death—a monster that didn’t stop at consuming her, but was devouring her son’s life as well.

Therefore, Seonghui couldn’t properly understand the situation unfolding before her eyes. The moment when someone wasn’t standing before her screaming to pay back a debt, but was saying he would repay a debt, was far too unrealistic.

And that was also the feeling Cha Haeshin was experiencing. Haeshin’s trembling eyes captured the image of Han Taejun, who didn’t show the slightest hint of wavering.

“So, I hope you won’t worry about anything in the future and will comfortably accept the things I do for you. I am, after all, the representative of a corporation; I can’t give a stingy reward to the person who saved my life.”

Having finished his final words, Taejun turned his head to meet Haeshin’s eyes and smiled. Only then could Haeshin understand why Taejun was going to such lengths.