The Scent of Burning Roses

“You little—are you not opening the door?!”

“No!”

The doorknob rattled loudly as it twisted back and forth with a clatter.

The force behind it was so violent it felt like it might break at any moment, making the back of my neck prickle.

“Don’t break the door!”

“Does it look like I’m not about to?! What are you, a mole?

Digging holes anywhere and crawling into them?!”

“I’m just using a room that’s meant to be used!”

Gripping the doorknob on my side tightly, I shouted back at the top of my lungs.

“And whose fault do you think all of this is?!”

Out of the suite that occupied half the entire floor, this was the smallest room.

A tiny bathroom and a single bed—that was all it had.

And yet here I was, clinging to the doorknob and staging this ridiculous standoff for a reason.

Getting new clothes as a gift had been confusing, but nice.

The shoes were burdensome, sure, but thinking of them as part of my benefits made me happy.

Dinner with the night view was delicious, and the serious conversation I brought up actually worked.

The problem started after that.

‘Let’s stay at a hotel together tonight.’

Out of nowhere, Woo Jaeyoung changed the schedule and suggested staying overnight.

He made me wait for a moment, then went somewhere to make a call.

The expression on his face while giving instructions was so serious it almost looked cold, making it impossible to guess what kind of orders he was giving his subordinates.

‘Did he take my words and immediately get rid of Jang Hanseon?’

For a moment, a weak thought crossed my mind—what if Jang Hanseon, who hadn’t even betrayed them yet, ended up suffering because of something I said.

‘No, no. The best problems are the ones you can prevent in advance.’

Slap slap slap.

I smacked both cheeks to pull myself together and tightened my grip on the doorknob again.

“Be honest with me, hyung! Did you do something wrong or not?!”

After about three seconds of thinking, Woo Jaeyoung shouted back.

“What the hell—how is this wrong?!”

Ten minutes ago, the moment we entered the room, he naturally leaned in to kiss me—and I pushed him away.

Five minutes ago, he tried to wrap an arm around my waist with an annoyed look, and I smacked his hand away.

He kept coaxing me, even using his face to tempt me, asking why not—so I figured this wouldn’t work.

I ran straight into the nearest room and locked the door behind me.

And now it had turned into this mess.

“I told you, I’m not Yoo Sowon.”

“If you’re not Yoo Sowon, then who is?”

“See!
You’re showing that you don’t believe me again!”

“Is that what matters right now?!”

“Of course it matters! What else matters then?!

If you look at it strictly, this is cheating! What are you going to do if the real Yoo Sowon comes back later?!”

“…What the f*ck.”

Caught off guard, Woo Jaeyoung stopped shaking the doorknob.

“Maybe you forgot, but you already kissed me.

You stripped me and even bathed me, and we slept in the same bed.”

“Wow. Now that I think about it, that’s true.

You really have no conscience, hyung.”

“You little mutt, seriously…”

Grinding his teeth, he muttered a few curses before finally giving in.

“Fine. Fine, I get it, so come out. Let’s switch rooms.”

“Switch rooms?”

“You take the master bedroom.

There’s a big bathtub in that bathroom, so you can take a bubble bath.

Just don’t stay in too long.”

It seemed he remembered that when he asked what I wanted to do after recovering, I had said I wanted a bubble bath.

“…I’ll sleep somewhere else.”

The reluctance dripping from his tone made me want to laugh a little.

I pressed down the corners of my lips that were trying to curl up and answered seriously.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“No kissing whenever you want.”

“…Yeah.”

“No putting your hands inside my shirt without permission.”

“……”

“Huh? Why aren’t you answering?

You promised. Woo Jaeyoung doesn’t do things Yoo Sowon hates!”

“So you hated it?!”

The problem was, I actually liked it.

But I decided not to tell him that.

“Anyway, if I say I don’t like it, then you should take it as I don’t like it.”

“Got it.”

After a few more childish back-and-forths, I finally opened the door.

Even in this situation, it wasn’t possible to keep pushing back against Woo Jaeyoung when he was letting me take the bigger room.

‘This is a problem. A real problem.’

Being trapped in a body I’d eventually have to return was already bad enough.

But now, without any sense of moral boundaries, I was getting drawn to the man that originally belonged to this body’s owner.

Even if Woo Jaeyoung didn’t fully believe me and could be confused because I looked like someone he knew…

I shouldn’t be like this.

This was all because I didn’t have my memories from before the possession.

If you really think about it, this was basically amnesia too.

Before things got worse, I needed to recover my past memories properly.

Thinking that, I yanked the door open.

Still holding the handle, Woo Jaeyoung was pulled forward by the motion, closing the distance instantly.

A gray shadow fell over me, swallowing my entire body in darkness in an instant.

Reflexively, I raised my other hand and pressed it against his shoulder.

“…Hyung.”

I knew.

Even without being told, my instincts remembered.

“You… smell.”

I thought that if someone held a bouquet of roses and walked fearlessly into flames,

it might smell exactly like this.

Whenever he looked at Yoo Sowon, his feelings became complicated.

The man who claimed he was just someone wearing ‘Yoo Sowon’s’ skin felt familiar—and just as much, unfamiliar.

Yoo Sowon had definitely changed.

He was far brighter, more honest, and took better care of himself than before.

He was nothing like the timid boy who used to watch others carefully and say things like, “If hyung likes it, then I’m fine with anything.”

Sometimes, Yoo Sowon looked like he had gone back to the day they first met.

Like the reckless, desperate kid who barged into a loan shark’s office asking to borrow money to buy art supplies.

“Isn’t it fine as long as it’s fine? The kid was sick, right?

Harry… what was it?

Anyway, we’ve had our heads bashed in too, so we know—when you take a hit like that, your memories get all messed up, you feel like you’re not yourself.

That kind of shit happens sometimes.

As long as he’s doing better, that’s enough.”

“Right.

Back when the little mouse first started coming to the office, he used to run around asking ‘hyung, what’s this, what’s that,’ chattering nonstop.

But he kept getting quieter, so I was actually worried.

He was soft and kind… but kids are supposed to grow up by being disobedient.

That guy listened too well—that was the problem.”

Hearing things like that, Woo Jaeyoung found himself thinking that if this change could be endured, maybe it was fine.

He still believed Yoo Sowon was simply in denial about himself, and hoped things would gradually improve with treatment.

Maybe this was what Yoo Sowon had originally been like.

Maybe he had simply regained the raw brilliance that had been worn down by neglect and indifference.

If that were true, then even if his lost memories never came back for the rest of his life, Woo Jaeyoung felt like he could cherish him forever.

But.

‘I remember some of the original story.’

Those words he occasionally said lingered like a thorn.

‘Who is Hwang Seowung?’

That strange chill he felt when Yoo Sowon casually mentioned things he had never told him—things he normally wouldn’t even care about—refused to fade.

Whenever he faced a version of Yoo Sowon that stepped beyond the one he knew,

his mind returned to that day by the seaside, when he brought Yoo Sowon back.

Like being dragged back into a nightmare, he relived that miserable moment again and again, picking at wounds that hadn’t yet healed.

‘The drug concentration in his blood is far too high.

It’ll take a long time to detox. There are too many unknown substances…

His body was already very weak to begin with.

Even after discharge, you’ll need to keep a close eye on him for a while, since we don’t know what symptoms might appear.’

‘You also need to be extremely careful mentally. It means he could go off the rails at any moment.

Absolutely, absolutely no stress. Whatever it is, adjust everything to Yoo Sowon.’

When Jang Hanseon—who rarely spoke strongly—kept emphasizing those words,

Woo Jaeyoung couldn’t hold back and asked.

‘Is he that fucked up? Why are you talking like he’s terminal?’

On the doctor’s cold, sculpted face, instead of an answer, a bitter smile appeared.

At that moment, Woo Jaeyoung realized something had gone terribly wrong.

‘It wouldn’t have been strange if he had died at any time. The fact that he came back alive is what’s strange.’

Someone who should have died, yet returned.

And yet, someone who says they are not the person you were looking for.

Every time he looked into those clear brown eyes,

Woo Jaeyoung swallowed down a question that surged up impulsively.

Sowon. What if everything you’re saying is true?

What if you’re really not Yoo Sowon?

What if you’re truly a stranger from outside this world, and to you, our lives are nothing more than a broken romance novel?

Then where did that Yoo Sowon go the one who could have died at any moment?

Will he ever come back?

Questions he couldn’t ask because he was afraid of the answers piled up and choked him.

His chest tightened unpleasantly, his breath rising to his throat and stabbing at his lungs.

“What does my scent… smell like?”

What kind of scent is it?

That brief moment before the answer came felt unbearably tense.

Even staking his wrist on a gamble and playing cards wouldn’t feel this nerve-wracking.

“At first it was so faint I thought it wasn’t it. Ah, it’s still not that strong now.

So I thought it was that Ragyu custom perfume or something… but. Your scent is similar to that, but also a bit different.”

Yoo Sowon, standing in front of him, had already forgotten about barricading the door and was explaining earnestly.

“Rose… but there’s a slight burnt smell.

Like dried petals that have been burned.

But it’s not light—it’s kind of… heavy?

The lingering scent at the end is like incense you’d smell at a temple.

It’s more comforting than I expected.”

“Like burned roses?”

“Yes. Like if someone walked into flames holding a bouquet of roses.”

At those words, a distant memory surfaced in Woo Jaeyoung’s mind.

“My pheromones are…”

The boy who used to look up at him with clear eyes, just like now, had whispered it once.

“They’re like the hottest roses in the world.”

A thoughtless compliment he had once been happy about now returned, painfully, after all this time.

“The promise from earlier.”

“Hm?”

Woo Jaeyoung spoke low as he reached out his arm.

“…I never said I wouldn’t hug you.”

And then like a bouquet of roses burning at their hottest before being consumed entirely by flames, he pulled the young man tightly into his arms.