GB 105

But Yoon Moo-hwa was faster. He called out first, preventing Haero from leaving.

Standing rigidly, Haero’s back revealed both stubbornness and bewilderment. 

Yoon Moo-hwa rested his forehead in his hand. With clenched teeth, he muttered lowly, “Seems you know you’ve done something wrong.” 

“……” 

“Fine. Let me hear it from you. Did you have the surgery?” From behind his hand, Yoon Moo-hwa raised his gaze and stared intently.

Haero slowly turned around. Seeing him biting his lip, it was clear he hadn’t expected to be discovered this way. No, he probably never intended to be discovered. And he wouldn’t have planned to tell. Yet now that Yoon Moo-hwa had figured it out, he only had a vague sense that something was wrong.

“You know the side effects of that surgery as well as I do. Do you know why people rarely get that surgery? It involves removing part of your body. And you knew this and still…!” 

“It was my choice!” Haero shouted, clenching his fists.

His tightened fists were trembling. Even so, he couldn’t look Yoon Moo-hwa in the eye and kept avoiding his gaze. 

Yoon Moo-hwa, who had risen to his feet without notice, asked through gritted teeth, “You can’t even look at me properly. Why did you do it, knowing I would be angry?” 

“……” 

“Did you know, and hope I would be hurt? If you wanted me to be upset, well, congratulations. I’m so upset I’m on the verge of fury.”

“I thought you might be upset,” Haero mumbled. “…You’re right. Deep down, I think I wanted you to be upset. But it wasn’t with certainty or intention. My only reason was wanting to stand by your side. We weren’t together back then anyway, and you didn’t even like me!”

“You knew I cared for you, Haero!” 

The two confronted each other intensely. Taut tension filled the cabin.

“But what if I got seasick?” Haero lifted his head and asked Yoon Moo-hwa. His face was hardened, but his eyes were wet. “If I had even one element making me unsuitable for long-term operations? Then you would have told me to get off the ship. That I wasn’t right for the ship. That I wasn’t right for the military!”

The words Yoon Moo-hwa had used to push Haero away had driven him to consider even extreme choices, which now returned as a dagger into his own heart. Haero would forever be his weakness, and Yoon Moo-hwa had become the fool who stabbed his own weakness.

“I… I… wanted to be without even the slightest flaw.” Haero’s face contorted. “My very existence was already a flaw to Yoon Moo-hwa, so I couldn’t become a burden on top of that…!”

“……!” 

Wanting to shout something but not knowing what, Yoon Moo-hwa opened his mouth wide, then closed it and covered his face. 

As he ran his hands over his face in distress, Haero glared at him with tear-filled eyes, “It’s my body anyway. I can manage it. The surgical outcome was excellent, and I’m monitoring my condition more meticulously than anyone. As a medical officer, I’ll make sure I don’t collapse from mere surgical side effects, so don’t worry…”

“Do you think that’s what I’m worried about?!” Yoon Moo-hwa slammed his fist on the desk. 

The cabin seemed to vibrate with the loud bang. Surprised, Haero’s eyes widened, and his body flinched. He was so startled that his tears retreated. Even when Haero had recklessly ambushed Yoon Moo-hwa, he hadn’t been this angry. Not even when Haero entered the naval academy.

“How do you think I feel right now? Huh? You’re telling me that just because of me, just to be on the same ship as me, you hurt your own body. How do you think I feel hearing that!”

His head felt like it was about to explode. Yoon Moo-hwa was losing his composure. With the small amount of rationality he was desperately clinging to, he gripped the desk.

“Am I that important to you? Haero, then you should have known you’re equally important to me. How did I raise you? Every day, EVERY DAY! How do you think I felt watching you grow up!”

Haero couldn’t say a single word.

“Do you think your body belongs only to you?” Moving from his spot, Yoon Moo-hwa strode over and gripped Haero’s shoulders. 

He wanted to crush and break them. A base desire for destruction arose—if others, even you yourself, would treat you carelessly, then I’d rather destroy you myself. But to prevent injury to Haero’s body, Yoon Moo-hwa used all his strength in his arms and forearms rather than his hands.

“You even had ear surgery to get on my ship. Did you think I would be happy to hear that?” Yoon Moo-hwa asked with a distorted face. His voice was painful. 

Haero’s heart felt like it was being torn to shreds. “…I didn’t plan to tell you. It’s my body, and I don’t regret this decision.” 

“If you don’t regret it,” Yoon Moo-hwa’s voice cracked deeply. “You should at least be sorry.”

As soon as he heard those words, a tear dropped from Haero’s eye. It grazed his cheek and fell to the floor, sliding off Yoon Moo-hwa’s shoe.

“How could I have considered your feelings back then?” Haero’s lips moved with a choked voice. “I wasn’t composed enough to consider your feelings. I grew more frightened with each passing year. I couldn’t even bear to watch the news, but I had to. Afraid I might hear that the only son of former Admiral Yoon Sang-won had gotten married.”

Haero clenched his fists. They were trembling. His arms shook so much that Yoon Moo-hwa, who was holding him, could feel it.

“When your heart wasn’t with me, why, how could I worry about your feelings? I only had myself, and it took all my strength just to protect my own heart.” Haero finally pressed his clenched fist against his eyes, trying to stop the tears from flowing. His lips contorted in the same way they did when he cried as a child. “Why are you angry with me…? As if your heart belonged to me? As if we had been something to each other…”

Yoon Moo-hwa was stunned. Suddenly his entire body felt cold. In this moment, he felt powerless—more so than all the accolades of being a naval hero or the envious glances he’d received throughout his life.

“So don’t lecture me. As an adult, I made a decision I felt was necessary, and because of it, I’m able to maintain the medical bay without collapsing from seasickness.”

Haero’s face was flushed as he lowered his hand. Though he glared at Yoon Moo-hwa with wet eyes, he no longer cried.

After quietly studying that face, Yoon Moo-hwa asked, “Do you resent me?” 

“I won’t say I’ve never resented you. That would be a lie.” His voice was completely drained. 

Yoon Moo-hwa didn’t like that Haero was avoiding his gaze. He suppressed the urge to grab Haero’s face and turn it toward him.

There seemed to be no room for their views to converge. After staring at each other in opposition, Yoon Moo-hwa spoke first. But his voice overlapped with Haero’s emotional outburst.

“It’s fine if you resent me. If you were going to treat your body so carelessly, from the beginning I shouldn’t have bothered to—” 

“You still want to control me as you please?!”

Both of them stopped, panting. Again, they spoke simultaneously. 

“Is that so wrong?!” 

“You call what you did a consideration?!”

Silence again. 

“…You really are young, Haero.”

In the end, Yoon Moo-hwa pressed his forehead and muttered derisively. He regretted it the moment the words left his mouth. It was something he shouldn’t have said. It was Haero’s sore spot.

Those words were like striking a match on Haero’s heart, already doused in gasoline. 

“Young?! You wish I were young! Then you could do whatever you wanted with me!” Whether from anger or sorrow, Haero burst into tears again. “How long…! sob… The truth is, you still see me as Number 8. I’m not that tantrum-throwing, immature person anymore. If you were in my position, you wouldn’t have done this? You wouldn’t have, like me…!”

The long-contained sorrow finally burst forth. Those four years had been anything but easy for Haero.

“How hard I tried to look good in your eyes. How hard I worked to stand proudly beside you! But you didn’t need to… you can’t understand my position. Because… because you don’t like me that much. You don’t like me in that sense… ugh, sob… This relationship too… you only accepted it because I begged and pleaded…”

Haero began to cry like a child. He wailed loudly and sorrowfully. Like that day when a surprised Yoon Moo-hwa took him to a hamburger restaurant to comfort him.

But this wasn’t a hamburger restaurant, and Haero was no longer at an age where such methods would work. Above all, Yoon Moo-hwa had changed.

If Haero had suffered while struggling for four years, Yoon Moo-hwa had suffered by ignoring himself, exercising restraint, and starving his feelings to death for those same four years.

“Is that what you’ve thought all this time? That I accepted you because I had no choice?” Yoon Moo-hwa muttered in a gloomy voice.

Haero couldn’t answer and dropped his head.

It was miserable. Haero knew he was being reckless. But that was the only way he knew. What could he do when the only approach that came to mind was this direct one? One of those approaches was the ear surgery, and Haero had no regrets about that decision. Rather, he was proud of it. This was a mark of his love.

“If I sob… hadn’t begged… would you… have accepted me? Even those words, ‘let’s date,’ sob… I had to beg to hear…”