The Things You Hear in Silence

I saw a boy with ash-gray hair.

Calling him a boy felt a little off.

He was a man of an ambiguous age, one who could easily pass for an adult.

Behind him stretched a world that looked as though it had reached its end.

Half-collapsed buildings.

Human bodies visible between the wreckage.

The buildings leaned at grotesque angles, rebar exposed, their shapes twisted beyond recognition.

There was no way to imagine what the landscape had once looked like.

So at the very least, his world had met its apocalypse.

The boy stood unharmed before the ruined buildings, doing nothing but staring up at the sky.

Rain clouds had stopped right in front of him.

Within a distance of just a few steps, rain fell in one place while another remained dry.

Where he stood, no rain fell.

It was a sight as strange as the tilted buildings themselves.

And as he looked up at that vividly clear blue sky, his face was drenched in tears.

Ah.

I knew whose face that was.

It was Jeong Iheon’s face.

[You have collected a ‘Memory Fragment’ of the target ‘Jeong Iheon’.]

…What was that?

I opened my eyes and stared blankly into the air, my mind not fully awake yet.

It felt like I had been dreaming, and yet it said I had collected a memory fragment.

It had happened in the brief moment I’d dozed off after entering the building to rest.

The man I had seen in my dream stood before my eyes as I leaned half-asleep against Hyeon Jaeyul, who was resting against the wall.

Jeong Iheon.

Now fully grown, unmistakably an adult.

He had been on watch, and perhaps sensing my gaze, he tilted his head slightly.

When our eyes met, he curved his eyes into a smile so that his blue irises disappeared from view.

It was a foxlike smile, no matter how many times I saw it.

There was no trace of the tears I had seen in my dream on Jeong Iheon’s face.

‘Was it just a meaningless dream?’

That thought didn’t sit right with me, because of the system message.

It said I had collected Jeong Iheon’s memory fragment.

I had the ability to slip into another person’s consciousness while sleeping.

Peeking briefly into someone else’s past felt well within the realm of possibility.

When I wriggled slightly in Hyeon Jaeyul’s arms, Jeong Iheon tilted his head, his expression asking what I was doing.

Without forcing my uncooperative body to move, I deliberately stretched out my still-functional right hand toward Jeong Iheon.

‘Pick me up.’

He narrowed his eyes at me, then rose and walked over.

With one hand, he lightly pulled me up, then slid an arm under my thighs and lifted me into his arms.

“…Where are you going.”

“Just for some air. Go back to sleep.”

Hyeon Jaeyul, who had opened his eyes because I was leaving his arms, asked in a low, drowsy voice.

When I whispered quietly from Jeong Iheon’s arms, he looked back and forth between the two of us once, then obediently nodded.

At his docile reaction, Jeong Iheon smiled like a fox again.

I gestured for him to go outside the building.

Now was our chance, with everyone else asleep.

There were a lot of things I needed to ask him.

Jeong Iheon walked soundlessly while holding me.

If even my ears couldn’t pick up the sound, then the people asleep nearby certainly wouldn’t hear anything.

He quietly exited the building with me in his arms and sat me down on the hood of an abandoned car.

When he plopped me down on a surface coated in dust, I scrunched my eyes shut in irritation.

Jeong Iheon tilted his head and chuckled lowly.

After letting out a short laugh, he spoke.

“Looks like you’ve got a lot you want to ask.”

“You’re an ability user too, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then what exactly is your ability. Why do you act like you can read my mind?”

For a moment, I suspected that Jeong Iheon’s ability might involve reading other people’s thoughts.

Otherwise, there was no way he could have noticed that my hearing was abnormally sharp.

But if that were the case, he should also have noticed that I was using the system, so the theory didn’t hold.

To begin with, I wasn’t even sure such an ability existed.

There was far too much I didn’t know about ability users.

“Is it because you realized I have good hearing?”

Jeong Iheon didn’t dodge the question.

He stepped closer to the hood I was sitting on and took a seat to my left.

Despite the layer of dust, he didn’t hesitate at all.

Tilting his head, Jeong Iheon looked at me from the side.

His blue eyes, vivid even at night, fixed steadily on me.

“It’s easy. You flinch a lot without realizing it, and you squint whenever there’s a loud noise.”

“That’s something other people do too.”

“True.”

He agreed lightly.

‘So what, was he just testing me?’

As I wondered if I’d pressed him for nothing, Jeong Iheon continued.

“But they don’t get startled by other people’s heartbeats.”

He said it while still looking straight at my face.

As always, a habitual smile rested on his lips.

Slowly, he raised his hand.

The prosthetic, incapable of subtle movement, came up near my face.

The hand reached me as I breathed slowly in tension, brushing my hair aside and touching near my ear.

“You can hear my heartbeat right now, can’t you?”

“…There’s no way I can hear that.”

I tried to smack his hand away, but of all places, he was touching my ear with the arm beside his broken left arm.

When I slapped his hand away a beat too late, I let out a small groan.

I had forgotten, for just a moment, how solid a prosthetic arm was.

Jeong Iheon put on an apologetic expression.

“I touched you from this side on purpose so you wouldn’t hurt yourself trying to hit me.”

It was disgustingly insincere.

Clenching my right hand, which was still ringing with pain, I spoke through gritted teeth.

“My hearing’s good, yeah, but not to the point where I can hear someone else’s heartbeat.”

“Really?”

Suddenly, Jeong Iheon stood up and, in an instant, trapped me between his legs.

Startled by how fast it happened, I nearly fell backward, but he caught me.

Then he raised both hands to my eye level.

Before I could react, he grabbed my hands and brought them up to my ears.

He was about to clap.

Right next to my ears.

‘You f*cking bastard…!’

Clapping next to your ears sends the vibration straight into your brain.

It can leave you disoriented, unable to think straight even for a moment.

I swallowed the curse that nearly spilled out.

Jeong Iheon was grinning in lazy circles, as though he might clap at any second.

“If I clapped right next to your ears, that’d be a problem, right?”

Yeah. A big problem, you insane bastard…!

“If you say it’s a problem, I won’t do it.”

As if determined to wring an answer out of me, he didn’t lower his hands from my ears.

I let out a deep sigh and pushed his arms away.

This time, I grabbed his hands and pressed them down properly, so there was no impact.

“It’s a problem. Happy now?”

“Not exactly.”

He replied casually as he stepped back under my push.

I stared at him, dumbfounded, and asked,

“If it’s not even for your satisfaction, why ask?”

“Because it’s fun watching you get uncomfortable, Doya.”

Digging into someone’s secrets just because it was “fun.”

I didn’t bother hiding my disgust at his warped mindset.

When I frowned, Jeong Iheon smiled even wider, clearly pleased.

“No, think about it. You’ve been acting from the moment we met. Isn’t it natural to want to see the real you?”

“So it’s my fault for acting?”

“Acting isn’t wrong. Getting caught is your fault, though.”

He answered as if it were obvious.

Still keeping me trapped between his legs, he leaned down closer without stepping back.

I wanted to retreat, but the only place to go was flat onto the hood.

I had no intention of rolling around on something that filthy, so I just glared up at him as he approached.

“A woman living alone in a bunker trembling when strange men break in makes sense. But it’s weird, isn’t it. If you lived alone that long, you’d naturally be cautious, yet you dropped your weapon right away.”

“That’s because you brought Jaeyul with you….”

“Even so, dropping your weapon is strange. You know what you look like better than anyone.”

This graceful appearance was screwing me over again.

In a world like this, being pretty was a weakness.

Jeong Iheon studied my thoroughly crumpled expression up close, then, without wiping the smile from his face, lightly kissed my cheek.

‘Where the hell does he think he’s putting his mouth?’

I raised my hand to slap him, but he easily blocked my right hand.

“If you’re going to act, you should immerse yourself in the role a little more.”

“So. When did you figure it out?”

“I was sure when you fell asleep leaning on my arm. You were way too comfortable. Not that scared of men, either.”

The one with good social skills was Jeong Iheon.

I had just been swept along by his natural behavior.

“And even now, after I kissed your cheek, you’re not scared. You’re trying to hit me.”

The hand gripping my right hand tightened.

Pressure bore down on me, like he was deliberately asserting dominance.

When I stared at him coldly, he spoke with the same smiling face.

“So I wondered. How someone with nothing but survival instincts could act like they’re not afraid of anything.”

“So did you find your answer?”

“No. I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking now.”

Jeong Iheon curved his lips as he asked,

“Why aren’t you afraid?”

“And you look like someone who’s afraid of a lot of things.”

I snapped back curtly.

I was thinking of the fragments of his childhood I’d seen.

“Me?”

He echoed, as if he’d heard something absurd.

Unlike me, who was having every secret peeled away, he looked relaxed, even amused.

A childish urge rose up in me.

I wanted to see that expression crack, to see his face change like mine had.

I swept my gaze over his flawless skin and clear blue eyes, then opened my mouth.

I had to dig up at least one weakness.

Otherwise, I wouldn’t even be able to sleep out of sheer resentment.