A Dangerous Distance

I felt slightly offended by his laughter.

What a jerk.

Even though I knew he couldn’t hear me, as I cursed inwardly, Do Jiwan looked at me, and I felt a little guilty.

“I can’t call you hyung because I rank higher than Lee Jeongho….”

“…….”

“Then just add ‘nim.’”

“Excuse me?”

“If you add ‘nim’ and address me respectfully, that solves it.”

Watching Do Jiwan tilt his chin as if telling me to hurry up and try it, I was left speechless.

I couldn’t understand why he was so obsessed and anxious over something as trivial as a title.

As I only stared at him blankly in disbelief, his expression gradually twisted the longer time passed.

Before he could shoot laser beams from his eyes again, I hurriedly opened my mouth.

“Hyung…nim.”

“Hmm….”

From the slightly raised corner of his lips, I could tell Do Jiwan was pleased.

Unlike him, all I could think was that I’d really met a complete lunatic.

In the end, I was discharged from the hospital.

Perhaps Do Jiwan truly was crazy, because after telling me not to mess up the title again, he had me discharged the very next day just as I wanted.

‘Well… is that a good thing?’

To complete the mission, I had to get closer to Do Jiwan, so the change in title was practically a good sign.

Anyway, after being discharged, I called the company first.

When I informed the boss about my discharge, he simply said “I see,” and asked when I could return to work.

He didn’t ask about my physical condition, but I wasn’t upset.

Both he and I knew I’d basically been a fake patient anyway.

Four days after being discharged, I returned to work.

Except for Jeongho hyung who lived next door, it had been almost a month since I’d seen everyone else.

“Jiho, you’re here?”

“Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Are you okay now?”

My coworkers lightly poked and prodded me as if to confirm I was real.

After all, the last image they had of me was being carried away unconscious.

I told them I was fine and chatted with them before heading to the dungeon.

“What? Really? So all this time you were assigned to other teams?”

“Right. We’re the guild leader’s raid assist team. If he doesn’t go into a dungeon, we’ve got nothing to do. So it worked out.”

“Hmm….”

Something felt off.

The Do Jiwan I’d heard about repeatedly wasn’t this kind of person.

He wasn’t the type to be so meticulous and considerate that he’d look after subcontracted teams.

‘Could it be… was he always like this?’

Or had he changed after the Demon King’s seed sprouted?

The Do Jiwan I’d heard about when I was an angel and the Do Jiwan I experienced after becoming human were as different as heaven and earth.

Unable to understand the reason, I boarded the company car with lingering unease and headed toward the dungeon.

When we arrived, I saw familiar faces.

They were Do Jiwan’s guild members.

Usually, they would arrive leisurely right before dungeon entry, but today they had come unusually early.

“Oh? You’re here early?”

Our team leader looked at them in surprise and spoke up.

Just as Do Jiwan was straightforward with the assist team, his guild members were also straightforward.

They weren’t the type to abuse authority or indulge in superiority.

So the guild member simply smiled and replied.

“Yes, it’s been a while since we entered a dungeon. I guess everyone was itching to go.”

“Ah, I see.”

“We ended up with a long vacation, but no one traveled. We were all just on standby, and as soon as the guild leader called, everyone rushed over. The assist team was dispatched to other raids, right?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

While watching the team leader and guild member chat quietly, I looked around.

The dungeon with the trap from last time had already been cleared while I was unconscious, so we were at a new dungeon.

I wandered around and picked up a dungeon report placed to one side.

The report contained information recorded by the advance team about the dungeon’s size, vegetation, and so on.

We’d received a briefing at the company before coming, but since I was bored, I flipped through it anyway.

“What are you looking at?”

Eek!

I was so startled I couldn’t even make a sound.

Hearing a voice near my right shoulder, I turned my head in surprise and my lips collided with something.

When I realized it was Do Jiwan’s cheek, I was even more shocked.

“Ah! S-sorry…!”

I jumped back instinctively, creating distance between us.

Do Jiwan, who had unexpectedly received my kiss, placed a hand over the cheek my lips had touched and looked at me.

Remembering the time we’d gotten tangled up and he’d stood at attention, my face immediately turned pale.

What if he got upset again?

I’d just managed to narrow the distance between us, and now it seemed ruined because our lips had brushed.

‘…Wait? It’s not like I leaned in. He’s the one who stuck his face toward me, right?’

Thinking that way made me irritated.

If he called me a pervert again over this, I was ready to assassinate him and return to the Heavenly Realm.

But as I glared at him with that resolve, I grew confused.

His expression didn’t look bad.

But it didn’t look particularly good either.

That ambiguous expression—neither liking nor disliking—was far too difficult for someone like me, only a few months into human life, to decipher.

After a long silence of staring at each other, it was Do Jiwan who finally broke it.

“You’re acting cute.”

“Excuse me?”

Me?

Had I done aegyo without realizing it?

I stared at him in bewilderment, but he didn’t explain what about me was cute.

Seeing my flustered state, Do Jiwan smiled deeply.

The kind of smile where one corner of his lips tilted upward, almost like a sneer.

It was a smile I had seen a few times before—one he wore when he was genuinely enjoying himself.

But he had no reason to be enjoying himself, which made me wonder what exactly he found amusing.

‘Is he enjoying the fact that I’m flustered?’

He wasn’t that rotten of a person… was he?

Either way, seeing that he wasn’t in a bad mood made me feel a little relieved.

If the relationship we’d built collapsed like a sandcastle, the only end left would be assassination.

And since I had descended to give him a chance, I wanted to avoid that as much as possible.

While I was still choosing my words, unsure what to say, Do Jiwan, who had been standing at a distance, approached me.

“Have you been well?”

“Huh? Ah… yes. I’ve been well.”

Was there any reason I wouldn’t be?

Was he still bothered by my discharge?

As if confirming my suspicion, his face hardened at my answer.

“You’ve been well….”

‘Oh, what now….’

Just as I felt uneasy at his sudden change in mood, I heard him mutter.

“You were discharged and didn’t see me even once, yet you say you’ve been well.”

His eyes sharpened as he muttered.

They looked like they were about to shoot beams.

After glaring at my flustered self, he turned on his heel with a cold expression.

At the way his mood swung so wildly, I could only stand there in disbelief long after he disappeared.

Jiwan couldn’t understand Jiho.

‘Why does he dislike being hospitalized?’

On the surface, Jiwan had admitted him out of concern for his health, but what he’d truly intended was to let Jiho experience a life of luxury.

The VIP hospital room at the Domun Group’s affiliated hospital where Jiho stayed was a hospital room in name only—it was practically a hotel.

Every meal was prepared by a chef, and the room was filled with entertainment like paid cable channels and game consoles.

Since most VIP room users were elderly chairmen, the game consoles and other entertainment devices had mostly been purchased by Jiwan himself.

He had filled the room based on recommendations of what a man in his early twenties would love.

Yet strangely, Jiho hadn’t spared them a single glance.

Of course, that was because Shin Jiho, as an angel, had never encountered the concept of games before, so the console was simply “what is this object for?” to him—but Jiwan didn’t know that.

If Jiwan had at least demonstrated how to use it, Jiho might have shown interest, but since Jiwan himself wasn’t someone who enjoyed games, the console remained nothing more than Machine No. 1 of Unknown Purpose.

Jiwan felt frustrated.

Jiho kept wanting to be discharged, but honestly, Jiwan felt too anxious to let him go.

‘It’s not like I can bring him to my house.’

Sighing in frustration, Jiwan pondered what to do.

In the dream the dungeon had shown him, Jiho had always been by his side.

Back then, it had felt natural.

But when he woke from the dream, he realized he had no idea how to keep Jiho close.

At least it was fortunate that Jiho wanted money.

So Jiwan had planned to let him taste luxury starting from the hospital room, gradually drawing him deeper into a more extravagant life.

‘Because that’s the simplest and easiest way.’