Magic on the Dead Chapter 43

When they stepped into the rectangular box, which was just over 9 pyeong, the stuffy smell of dust tickled their noses. Byeol, whose face was flushed red from the heat, lay down flat on her back on the floor, spread-eagled.

Next to her, the others collapsed one after another, letting out the sighs they had been holding back.

Eden leaned his body against the long steel table and observed the faces of the group members who were lying haphazardly on the floor. Perhaps because of the unplanned, strenuous march, they were complaining a great deal right from the start.

“We are just getting started, what will you do if you are already tired?”

Jeffrey shouted as if it was unfair.

【Hey, you bastard. No matter what, how can you not rest for even a second. You are so ridiculously fast that it was not walking, it was practically running! I thought my shoulder was going to fall off.】

“What did you say? Speak in Korean.”

【That detestable bastard, really.】

Eden smirked and checked his wristwatch. The time was just past 12:30 in the afternoon. It was the time of day when the sunlight made the ground sizzle.

It was only right to refrain from moving during the midday sun, which beat down relentlessly without any proper shade. This was also the reason why they had pushed themselves to walk from the morning until now.

“We will set off again around 3 o’clock. Everyone, get plenty of rest.”

At the more generous than expected break time, a look of relief crossed the faces of the group members who had been catching their breath. Those who had replenished their fluids just enough to wet their lips began their own respective rest times.

Miso turned on her phone that had been off and filmed a video with Byeol, while Jeffrey secretly popped an energy bar he had saved for himself from the morning into his mouth. Park Chunbeom, lacking in stamina, had already conked out.

Hajin, as expected, took out a deck of cards. The case was tattered despite being in a card guard, a testament to how much he had handled it.

After carefully stretching each of his finger joints, he began to shuffle the cards at a high speed. He did not forget to mutter to himself with his lips either.

Eden glanced outside the window, checking for any presence, then turned his gaze to Hajin. As it happened, Hajin was crouched right under the desk where Eden was sitting with his legs spread wide.

Sensing the gaze, Hajin shot his head up. After confirming a view of Eden’s wide-open crotch, he crumpled his brow.

“What is with that expression?”

“It is because Mr. Jung Taegeon’s thingy is too much in front of me.”

“…Thingy?”

At the unexpected answer, Eden was momentarily at a loss for words. It was a word so comical and unfamiliar, one he had heard for the first time in a very long while, no, one he could not recall at all in his entire life, that had come out of Hajin’s mouth. It was so fresh that it was almost dizzying.

Eden, raising the corners of his eyes slyly, asked.

“Are you suddenly feeling shy?”

When Hajin’s eyes glazed over at the incomprehensible sentence, he continued.

“It seems like just the other day you liked it so much you were deliberately rubbing against it. No, was it yesterday.”

“What?!”

Hajin, letting out a small shout, looked around. Fortunately, Miso and Byeol were busy chattering while filming a video, and Jeffrey and Park Chunbeom were fast asleep with their heads together.

It was a joke that anyone who overheard would surely misunderstand, so Hajin had to urgently get a grip on his reeling mind.

“When did I ever deliberately rub against you?”

“When I told you to stop rubbing, did you not answer that you were’doing it on purpose’?”

He was beyond flabbergasted; he felt wronged. To talk about the situation where he had squeezed under the car body to avoid zombies like that. As if he did not know it was a space far too small to accommodate two able-bodied adult men.

Besides, the one who had let his own member swell in volume under their unavoidably pressed bodies was none other than Eden himself. For him to then treat Hajin like a pervert, Eden’s words were quite contradictory.

“I was trying to write,’it was not on purpose,’but the car suddenly shook so I stopped, you know?”

“I understand. I will believe you then.”

“What kind of answer is that… Why are you speaking as if you are doing me a favor?”

Hajin had no idea how he was supposed to take these sexual jokes that were subtly provoking him. Especially since it was difficult to even distinguish whether anything that came out of Eden’s mouth was sincere or a joke.

He could not think of any way to react, whether he should get angry and say it was unpleasant, or brazenly retort and play along. In truth, he was so bewildered that he did not even have the chance to feel offended.

Come to think of it, it had been like that from the beginning. From their first meeting, Eden had thrown some rather racy and baffling remarks at him, like whether he had a chance to undo his pants or not, and had also brought up the color of his nipples in a random situation.

‘…Is it because he is American?’

It was a series of strange jokes that could not be explained unless it was a cultural difference.

Hajin looked at the smile hanging on the corners of Eden’s eyes with a wary gaze. Unlike his words, it was not so difficult to judge whether that smile was real or fake, whether what it contained was amusement or contempt.

Eden was genuinely smiling right now. This was because the orbicularis oculi muscle next to his eye was constantly moving, causing the corners of his eyes to rise high up.

“Do you find these kinds of jokes funny, Mr. Jung Taegeon?”

“I am not particularly one to enjoy trading jokes, but Mr. Do Hajin’s reactions are indeed amusing.”

“I do not find it amusing.”

“Is it unpleasant?”

Eden, who had been smiling with dimples creasing his cheeks the whole time, slightly hardened the corners of his eyes at the end of the question. For some reason, Hajin did not want to lose. It was because if he got worked up here, he would obviously be treated like a kid.

“No? What is such a joke to get worked up about. It is not to the point of being unpleasant. It is not that, but…”

“But?”

“It is just not funny.”

“I find it funny.”

“No, I mean,”

“If you are frustrated, Mr. Do Hajin, you can tease me back.”

Flabbergasted, Hajin let out a whoosh—a breath full of anger. Annoyingly, Eden just gave a shrug of his shoulders and said nothing more.

Having lost the motivation to practice, Hajin put the cards and magic pad he had been fiddling with neatly back into his bag. This time, he took out a hand sanitizer and a nail clipper and began to move his body sluggishly. With his head tucked in a corner, he found a crumpled magazine, placed it at his feet, and picked up the nail clippers.

Clip! Clip! Although his nails were already short and neat enough without needing any more trimming, Hajin mercilessly cut them away. Seeing him as if he were taking out his anger, Eden shook off his remaining laughter.

Even in a ruined world, Do Hajin was obsessively attached to practicing magic and tried to maintain the cleanliness of his hands with a similar obsession. It was a somewhat difficult part to understand, but Eden did not view Hajin’s consistency in a bad light. That too was likely one of his own survival instincts.

He watched Hajin, who had his back turned to him, as if watching television. Due to his crouched posture, the small of his back and the black band of his boxer briefs were carelessly exposed. The cheeks of his bottom visible below them were round and raised like a delicious-looking apple.

If it was a seduction, it was incredibly clumsy, and if there was no intention at all, it could be seen as natural. Eden, who had been slowly scanning Hajin’s body with an interested gaze, swept his lower lip with his wet tongue.

“Mr. Jung Taegeon, you really seem to be used to that sort of thing.”

Hajin, who had been vigorously clipping his nails, opened his mouth without even turning his head. It was not like he had eyes on the back of his head, yet he spoke as if he felt Eden’s gaze completely.

“That sort of thing?”

“Making jokes like that. If it is a man who looks like a pushover, you do not care about the consequences…”

Ah, could he think that was me outing him just now. Hajin stopped mid-sentence and pressed his lips together firmly.

“You seem to be beating around the bush since a while ago, what exactly does’that sort’of joke mean?”

Eden asked back instead. Hajin turned around with a questioning face. On Eden’s face, which he had expected to be smiling, there was an expression full of puzzlement, just like his own.

The man who had talked about nipples, about unfastening his pants, about rubbing down below, was now pretending not to understand. From his perspective, it was simply dumbfounding.

‘…Am I the only one hearing it strangely? As if I am overreacting and being sensitive for no reason….’

No matter how much he thought about it, it was not a cultural difference or anything of the sort. Jung Taegeon had been unabashedly making explicit jokes only to him, not to Park Chunbeom, not to Miso, and not to Jeffrey. Which means….

“Well, I thought you were looking at me, sexually, and making those kinds of jokes.”

“Are you asking if I like men?”

At Eden’s direct question, Hajin could only open and close his mouth, unable to answer. He had not intended to confirm his sexual orientation this seriously. While he was rapidly racking his brain in his bewilderment, a confession fell like a thunderbolt.

“I do like men. To be precise, as long as I like the person, I do not care about the gender.”

“…….”

“So, is there a reason why Mr. Do Hajin must confirm my sexual orientation?”

Hajin tried his best to ignore the sense of bewilderment that was grabbing the back of his neck and answered.

“We, well, it is not particularly that, but I am saying this out of an old woman’s concern because it seems like Mr. Jung Taegeon keeps making passes at me.”

“…An old woman’s concern?”

Eden mulled over Hajin’s words, his eyebrows twitching. Realizing the meaning, he suddenly burst out laughing.

At the hearty display he was seeing for the first time, Hajin was flustered in a different sense. Watching him laugh so wide that his upper teeth were coolly revealed, he could vividly feel that the comment he had just made was being treated as a slip of the tongue, or perhaps nonsense.

Was he really just mistaken? Was it he who had been overly conscious of a few light jokes and had been attaching meaning to them? It seemed he had been inwardly conceited, thinking that Eden might be feeling, if not affection, then at least some sexual attraction towards him.

The deeper Eden’s laughter grew, the hotter Hajin’s ears burned.