TIN 33

The faint voice that flowed out sounded fragile to my ears. The downcast eyelashes also looked sorrowful, unlike how they usually looked.

“You…”

I stammered, feeling flustered. I couldn’t understand how the person who had nearly strangled me could now look so pitiful right then. For a moment, compassion overtook fear to the point where I couldn’t say a word.

“…?”

After a long silence of merely blinking, I belatedly realized that he was different from usual. His face, which always looked fresh and relaxed, was now covered in cold sweat.

“…What’s wrong with you?”

His messy hair was damp with sweat, sticking to his forehead in strands. His already pale face had long since turned ashen, and his bright red lips were chapped as if he had been biting them. To top it off, he was shaking like a leaf.

“Are you sick?”

So that was why he looked so pitiful.

Even when we were young, he was never the one who got sick. Whether it was catching colds, having stomach troubles, or struggling with insomnia, it was always me, not Joo Do-hwa. Why had he now become like this, when he used to look at me with incomprehension every time I fell ill?

“Are you okay…?”

Perhaps because I was so shocked to see him like this, my voice came out sounding concerned without intending to. Even to my own ears, the trailing end of my voice sounded detestable. In reality, I was just perplexed, wondering if he might be in rut.

Joo Do-hwa didn’t answer and simply stared at me silently. His slowly blinking eyes were unfocused and hazy. He never used to keep his eyes wide open, but now he looked as if he were under the influence of something. Whether it was sleep, drugs, or pain, it was clear that he didn’t look normal.

“If you’re sick…”

I was about to say I’d call Henry. But before that, the hand that had been on my neck started moving upward. The fingers slowly crawled up and gently grasped my chin.

“…”

His tilted head gradually came closer. It was at an angle where our lips could touch, but Joo Do-hwa stopped just a mere span away. As if he wasn’t trying to kiss me, but just wanted to take a closer look.

As our breaths mingled, the touch on my chin traced along my jawline. The fingers brushed past my earlobe and moved to my cheek, caressing the cheekbone below my eye and stroking down to my eyelashes and the bridge of my nose.

I flinched at the ticklish sensation for a moment. Then his long fingers firmly pressed down on my lower lip.

“…Ah.”

Suddenly, Joo Do-hwa let out a gasp. It was just as his fingertip was about to slip between my lips. As soon as his fingertip touched my lower teeth, he furrowed his brow with a sour expression.

“What the…”

“…I think that’s my line.”

Pinning me down out of nowhere, and now this reaction? Judging by his expression alone, he acted as if I was the aggressor and not him.

“Let go of this.”

I turned my head to the side and forcibly pulled my trapped hand free. I had stayed still only to avoid provoking him, not because I intended to remain docile. Fortunately, freeing my wrist wasn’t too hard, but unfortunately, I failed to sit up.

“Are you going to stay like this?”

“…”

He was still leaning on the bed with his hands, silently staring at me. Judging by the deep wrinkle between his brows, he still didn’t seem to understand the situation. The good thing was that he had somewhat contained the pheromones he had loosely released earlier.

Taking advantage of that moment, I secretly managed to catch my breath. It was fortunate that Joo Do-hwa’s pheromones weren’t as pungent as others’.

Just as I was able to catch my breath a little and then decided to push him away by force if necessary, he asked in a whisper, “Why are you here?”

“Your aide told me to come.”

“Ah, Henry…”

Joo Do-hwa clicked his tongue, trailing off. He seemed to have already guessed the general situation as soon as he heard the word ‘aide.’ Judging by his reaction, this probably wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.

“Henry sometimes does unnecessary things.”

Thought he didn’t seem upset, he added with a smirk, “He’s a bit of a busybody.”

At times like this, I wonder if Henry was actually closer to being a friend. Both in his concern for Joo Do-hwa and in how he managed to stay by this difficult person’s side.

“I told him I’d kill him if he bothered me one more time, so he sent you instead.”

“…”

That person was quite nasty too, it seemed. Like master, like aide—they even seemed to share the same mean streak.

“Anyway, move aside. You’re heavy.”

“Am I?”

Joo Do-hwa widened his eyes. Actually, he wasn’t heavy since our bodies weren’t touching, but I said it because I felt stifled. The problem was that Joo Do-hwa, who had tilted his head, curled his lips mischievously.

“I wasn’t even really putting my weight on you.”

He immediately lay down on top of me and slowly applied his weight. His languidly stretched body pressed down heavily all over me. With our considerable size difference, it felt like being crushed under an enormously heavy down comforter.

“Ugh…”

“Haha.”

Finding it amusing for some reason, Joo Do-hwa laughed cheerfully even as he watched me groan. That laughter was so refreshing that I couldn’t find it in me to think of it as annoying. The problem was that as he adjusted his position, I felt an unbelievable bulk pressed against my lower body.

“Why are you so weak? Even though you’re a man.”

Is this really…what I think it is?

Before I could think deeply about it, Joo Do-hwa quickly straightened his posture. As I managed to catch my breath that had been blocked, he looked down at me as if finding everything utterly amusing.

“Is it that heavy?”

“It’s heavy.”

He didn’t seem to have much fat, in fact he looked quite slim from the outside. Nevertheless, his weight was no joke. He must have either thick bones or was all muscle. Being a dominant alpha, it was likely both.

“I see…”

Joo Do-hwa meekly acknowledged and lowered his head, resting his forehead on my shoulder. We were already in full body contact earlier, but this time I found myself tensing up without even realizing it. It felt, well, ticklish I supposed.

“What’s this?”

“You’re saying the same thing as me.”

When I blurted that out gruffly, Joo Do-hwa retorted nonchalantly. I wanted to ask him to move again, but he let out a long breath and muttered softly.

“I can’t sleep.”

“…”

“So I couldn’t get a wink of sleep.”

It was just as Henry had told me. For some reason, this sturdy dominant alpha seemed to be suffering from unexplained insomnia. I was about to ask how long he hadn’t slept but decided to suggest a solution instead.

“Why don’t you take some sleeping pills?”

“Sleeping pills?”

Although I hadn’t suggested anything unreasonable, Joo Do-hwa reacted as if he’d heard something absurd. It wasn’t like he lacked money or ability, he should be able to get his hands on sleeping pills easily enough.

“I don’t take those things.”

Joo Do-hwa chuckled softly and adjusted himself into a more comfortable position. He came into my arms as if embracing me, but I remained awkwardly frozen with my hands raised, unable to do anything.

A slight feeling of weight and a soft touch. Hmm, so this is what that feels like. An unintended realization came along with it.

“Are you going to stay like this?”

“Yes, is that not okay?”

Of course, it’s not okay. We’re not close enough for this. Today, the distance between us felt unusually close.

“No, that’s not it.”

Of course, that didn’t mean I had any excuse to push him away either. If this was part of playing the ‘hyung’ role, it was better to stay absolutely still.

Joo Do-hwa laughed quietly for a moment, then spoke in a voice as soft as a breath.

“Hyung.”

“What?”

I thought he was doing this because he saw me as his older brother. I answered thinking that, but no further words came. The same term of address entered my ears once more.

“Hyung…”

“…”

This time I couldn’t answer. I realized it wasn’t a call to me, but a soliloquy. Joo Do-hwa, chuckling and saying “hyung, hyung,” curled up his body tightly and rubbed his forehead against my shoulder.

“I told you I saw the corpse with my own eyes, right?”

‘That’s right, I saw the corpse with my own eyes.’

It was a sudden topic, but it wasn’t difficult to grasp what he meant by saying that. They were the words he had spoken when we were talking in my room. That one sentence he had admitted with a self-deprecating face along with a shallow sigh.

“Father fished hyung’s corpse out of the sea.”

I had heard this from Lee Yuna too, but hearing it directly from Joo Do-hwa’s own mouth was more horrific than I thought. Setting aside the obsession of Chairman Joo who even fished out the corpse, the indifference of showing it to his son was the most cruel act of all.

“Do you know what happens to people who die by drowning?”

Why wouldn’t I know? If you sit quietly by the seaside, occasionally what washes up were corpses. I didn’t see them often, but I know enough to remember.

“Enough time had passed that the face was unrecognizable.”

A decomposed corpse was nothing more than fish food. Even if that wasn’t the case, once swollen with water, it would be hard to recognize its original form.

“But as soon as I saw it, I had this thought.”

“…What thought?”

I hadn’t intended to ask him this, but my lips moved on their own accord. How did that young and delicate child accept the death of the brother he had lived with? Was he very shocked, or was he surprisingly okay? Or did he at first think it was disgusting?

To my question, half asked out of worry, Joo Do-hwa gave an unexpected answer.

“This isn’t hyung.”