Dirty Sweet Baby Chapter 90

Heeheon, with nothing in particular to say in response, just blinked his eyes slowly. Just how severe had his sleep-talking been? He felt a bit embarrassed and also worried.

Cha Moogyul, spreading his shoulders wide, pulled the curtains all the way back and turned around with his back to the window. Behind him, as he watched Heeheon, the sunlight shone down intensely. The noon sun was dazzlingly bright, but Cha Moogyul’s gaze seemed even more intense. More than intense, it was somehow a strange sight.

His eyes looked cold and composed, yet at the same time, they seemed completely overturned and desolate. They were barren and bleak, like an abandoned land. Heeheon couldn’t even begin to guess why he was being looked at with such unstable and confusing eyes.

It must have been different last night.

“Hey, you… are you mad?”

Heeheon carefully broached the subject. He wanted to know why Cha Moogyul was so withdrawn. If something was wrong, he wanted to fix it.

“Talk to me. With me.”

In any case, there were more than one or two misunderstandings between them that needed to be resolved. He had just woken up, his head was foggy and he was tired, but he felt he had to hold onto Cha Moogyul. He wanted to do that now. If not now, he didn’t know when he might get another chance to open up.

“What is there to talk about.”

Cha Moogyul replied curtly, touching his temple with his fingertips. The brief glimpse of his expression still looked self-deprecating and desolate.

“I don’t think I need to hear any more.”

“No, why.”

Before Heeheon could speak, he drew a line.

“Should I guess? What you’re about to say, hyung.”

And as Cha Moogyul drew that line, he looked a little—paradoxically, just a little—like he was hurt.

“It’s obvious. You’re going to say you like me. You’ll say let’s get along from now on.”

“What…?”

“You’ll give me a few kisses, call me Gyeol-ah, Gyeol-ah, and then say you like me… Hah, tsk.”

Cha Moogyul clicked his tongue and narrowed his eyelids. He was too calm to be angry, and too precarious to be cool-headed. The sentiment of that complexly tangled confusion was very close to what the past Heeheon had possessed, and it was a kind Heeheon had already etched deep into his bones.

“You’re good at it.”

Heeheon’s lips parted in a daze. Cha Moogyul was quite firm.

“It was so romantic, it made me want to keep being fooled.”

The moment he heard those words, Heeheon felt as if his head was cracking open. Crack. Cha Moogyul was dismissing everything that had happened last night, and everything Heeheon had said, as nothing more than a cheap trick. A means to coax him.

Of course, he had expected to be doubted. It would have been difficult to believe him right away. Yes, he could understand Cha Moogyul’s reaction. So, that’s why, he was just about to start talking…

“Wait a minute… That’s not it. First, listen to what I have to say.”

Heeheon moved his stiff body and got off the bed. He limped, walking step by step toward Cha Moogyul. But he remained firm.

“Later.”

“What do you mean later, listen now.”

“Hoo, and if I listen, then what.”

He wondered if this was what it would feel like to be hit by a fierce, raging blizzard while naked.

“What are you proposing? For me to pretend I don’t know?”

The blood drained from his fingertips, followed by a chilling shock that spread through his chest. Cha Moogyul, the words he spat out, and the baffling situation hit Heeheon in succession, leaving him unable to react in any way. It felt like being beaten with a giant hammer. Crushing his bones, bruising them and drawing blood.

“Who’s the idiot who would actually believe it just because you say, ‘I like you, I like you’? All you do is toss and turn and groan in your sleep.”

Heeheon, who had been frozen for a moment, clenched his fists, shuddering with a sense of futility.

“…What do you know.”

He knew it was a misunderstanding.

He also knew he had to explain himself.

He had just been about to try and be honest with him, to crash and break, but nothing was going as he intended.

“How do you know if it’s a nightmare or not. People can toss and turn a bit in their sleep. It’s my dream. I…”

Heeheon gritted his teeth, trembling, and raised his voice. The blood vessels in his bloodshot eyes stood out redly.

“I said, I, like, you.”

Bile rose in his throat, making him feel nauseous. He felt like he was going to throw up at any moment. But even in such agony, he wanted to cling to Cha Moogyul.

“I said I like you… Even though I say I like you.”

“Stop it.”

“Is it really that hard to believe…?”

“I said stop.”

Cha Moogyul lifted his chin and growled. The sunlight, shining mercilessly bright, clearly illuminated his agitated expression.

“Why are you in such a hurry. I said I’ll listen later.”

He cast his hardened eyes down and chided him with a sarcastic tone.

“I don’t care if it’s a ploy to coax me or a scheme to make me let my guard down, and you can mess me up as much as you please, but do it later. It’ll be counterproductive now.”

“Hey, Cha Moogyul.”

Heeheon gritted his teeth and took a step forward. He took shaky steps toward Cha Moogyul, who stood by the window, and barely managed to reach him.

“Right. That’s why I’m talking about it now.”

He reached out to grab Cha Moogyul, but his arm missed, swiping futilely through the empty air. Frustration and anger surged. He wanted to strangle Cha Moogyul’s neck for not letting himself be caught.

Is putting a ring on my finger all there is to it? He thought he could finally get a hold of him, but was a single ring the only thing Heeheon could grasp? He was bursting with indignation.

“Because there is no other scheme. I can’t be as calculating as you, and I have no intention of it being counterproductive or anything else.”

“So stubborn… You won’t even listen to advice.”

“Shut up, you listen to me. What more do you want me to do.”

When I tried to die, you told me not to. When I tried to throw you away, you said you couldn’t let go. And when I say I like you, you doubt me. It’s true that I want to get along, I’m telling you I do. Do I now have to, what, create some kind of proof and shove it in your face?

Heeheon had always been anxious about his feelings being discovered. So he thought that only hiding and concealing them was difficult, but for the first time, he felt that the other person not recognizing your true feelings was just as agonizing. It was gut-wrenching to not only have to speak his true feelings in front of him but also have to prove them point by point. It was as if Heeheon had become a bald-faced liar.

“Tsk, fine, whatever.”

Cha Moogyul grabbed the panting Heeheon for him. As he wrapped an arm around his waist, Heeheon was instantly trapped tightly in his embrace.

“I’m fucking crazy about you too, hyung. You think I can resist when you cling to me like that? I’m sure you’re thinking, ‘Look at this.'”

While he was relieved by that touch, he was also dumbfounded to think that their bodies were still the only thing they could connect with. He could only let out a hollow laugh at how far he could extend the heart that had sunk into the deep, deep abyss beneath his chest.

“I’m warning you, save those pretty little tricks for me. If you pull this kind of shit with any other guy, I don’t care who it is, I’ll crush them. There won’t even be bone dust left.”

“What other bastard? There’s no one. I told you it’s only you.”

“How would I know. Sung Ahwon?”

“Hey!”

“If I, who knows the whole story, get this flustered, how much worse would it be for the others. They’d probably die for you, huh? Of all the talents to be born with, you had to be born with an annoying one, shit…”

His breathing became ragged. His body felt strange, as if he was about to hyperventilate.

Whether it was because he was agitated by the situation, or because the condition of his body, which had been overworked without rest right after a battle, had worsened, his pulse was racing at a dangerous rate and his blood pressure was rising sharply.

The throbbing pain also grew stronger. What had been a tingling sensation rising from below his waist was now spreading from his chest. He had a feeling something was going wrong, but he couldn’t stop now. Heeheon shook his head, panting heavily.

“You said there’s no idiot who would actually believe it just because you say, ‘I like you, I like you’… I guess that’s true. Not once, have I ever just simply liked you.”

Even to the naked eye, Heeheon’s complexion was so pale it was alarming.

“Thanks to you, I’ve become all twisted, and I’m afraid to even look inside to see how far the rot has gone.”

“Now your true feelings are coming out. Between us, who are in such a wretched state that neither can be okay.”

“Yeah, I’m wretched. But I’m still saying I like you.”

“…Hah, to the very end.”

“You’re the one who, to the very end, ugh, why do you make things so hard for me.”

Heeheon’s jaw trembled as he moaned. He recognized that this moment was a crisis, and that he had to overcome it, but only a broken sound escaped through his gritted teeth.

“Can’t we… just stop this whole act?”

“…”

“Can’t we just, do that, huh?”

Heeheon let out a ragged breath and collapsed heavily into his arms. He almost buckled at the knees and sank to the floor right there.

“Keuk…”

Heeheon clutched his left chest, gasping as he endured the pain. It felt like his heart was about to have a seizure at any moment. No, not his heart, but the core. The core inside it ached as if it had been depleted.

Did he overdo it? Or, was Heeheon’s emotional state just that agonizing?

“Hyung?”