Light Mr. XX

“Then, now that you’ve been discharged, shall we finally have a proper talk?”

Choi Sang-hyuk clasped his hands together over his thighs and spoke as if making a declaration. His low voice carried a weight that pierced through the ears of those who heard it.

“…Talk? About what?”

Kim Min-seok asked while chewing on a sweet slice of apple in his mouth. Seeing this, one corner of Choi Sang-hyuk’s lips curled up ever so slightly in a crooked smirk. He stared at Kim Min-seok and spoke very slowly.

“About the fact that you were two-timing between me and him, and you got caught.”

“……? …Keh!”

Kim Min-seok took a beat to process Choi Sang-hyuk’s words before choking on the apple he was chewing. He started coughing violently as Ha Jun-seo patted his back in concern. In the end, Kim Min-seok had to spit out all the chewed apple onto the plate before his coughing fit subsided.

“Are you okay, Ha-yoon?”

Ha Jun-seo asked, this time rubbing his chest soothingly. Kim Min-seok pushed his hand away and shouted.

“No! I’m not okay at all!”

Kim Min-seok, who had raised his voice slightly, looked back and forth between the two men on either side of him with eyes filled with shock.

“Wait… So neither of you knew that Seo Ha-yoon was two-timing?!”

Silence fell. A very heavy silence.

Ha Jun-seo, who would always respond with a gentle and relaxed demeanor no matter what Kim Min-seok said or did, was different this time. His usual kindness—whether genuine or not—seemed absent.

Ha Jun-seo stared at him with an oddly enigmatic smile. That expression alone was enough of an answer.

“…No way… So, Seo Ha-yoon was taken to the hospital, and both of you were called as guardians, which led to you running into each other by chance? And while both claiming to be his boyfriend and guardian, you realized he’d been two-timing all along? You found out that you’d been completely fooled this whole time, but you couldn’t even get mad at him because he was lying there unconscious with a head injury? And then, when he finally woke up, he didn’t even remember either of you?”

The more Kim Min-seok spoke, the louder and more forceful his voice became. The more he laid it all out, the more it felt like a plot straight out of a ridiculous soap opera. Since he didn’t consider himself to be Seo Ha-yoon, he spoke as if he were narrating from a third-person perspective, bluntly throwing out the words. But as soon as he finished speaking, the waves of anger and resentment from both sides crashed down on him.

Choi Sang-hyuk’s jaw clenched, his muscles twitching, while Ha Jun-seo looked at him with a bitter, wounded gaze. Trapped between them, Kim Min-seok suddenly felt the crushing weight of guilt—as if he had committed a crime he hadn’t even been aware of.

“Well, uh….”

Kim Min-seok barely managed to open his mouth but had no idea what to say. He licked his dry lips and mumbled whatever came to mind.

“…I-I’m sorry?”

“Sorry?”

Choi Sang-hyuk’s eyebrow twitched upward, his tone dripping with sarcasm. His reaction made it clear that the half-assed apology didn’t sit well with him. Kim Min-seok gulped, suddenly feeling the urgent need to hide behind Ha Jun-seo in case Choi Sang-hyuk decided to lunge at him.

“The thing is… If that’s really what happened, then of course, I’d feel extremely sorry and ashamed… But as you both know, I don’t remember anything, right? Even if I want to apologize properly, I can’t even make it sincere, because I have no memory of it…”

Kim Min-seok deliberately left out the part about switching bodies this time. As he had thought earlier, he saw no real need to return to his original body. If anything, he felt like he should be praying to the gods to let him keep this one forever. So instead of dissociative identity disorder, he decided to just stick with the excuse of memory loss.

Either way, now that he had claimed this body, he was Seo Ha-yoon. Even if he had lost his memories, what was wrong was still wrong. Kim Min-seok resolved to fully act as Seo Ha-yoon from now on.

“Um… So, Choi Sang-hyuk. Ha Jun-seo.”

Calling their names while glancing back and forth between them, Kim Min-seok lowered his head deeply toward both men in turn.

“I’m sorry. I truly am.”

As he squeezed out the most genuine apology he could muster, Choi Sang-hyuk and Ha Jun-seo’s expressions took on an odd look—like they had just witnessed something utterly bizarre.

“I don’t remember anything, but still… Two incredibly handsome and respectable men, and I secretly two-timed them? That was a real garbage move. And yet, despite knowing that, you two held back out of consideration for my condition… Thank you.”

Kim Min-seok spoke with the utmost politeness, but the two men continued to look at him like he was some kind of spectacle.

“So, here’s the thing. Normally, when someone gets caught two-timing, they get cursed at and dumped, right? If you two want to hurl insults at me, or even—slap me…”

His words trailed off as he glanced at the large, solid-looking hands of Choi Sang-hyuk and Ha Jun-seo, swallowing hard.

“…I’ll accept it humbly and walk away cleanly.”

Having barely managed to get the words out, Kim Min-seok then tightly shut his eyes, as if bracing for whatever was coming—be it a verbal lashing or a physical beating.

Then—pik. A quiet chuckle came from his right. On his left, he heard the faint sound of a scoff.

Peeking one eye open, he saw Choi Sang-hyuk smirking in ridicule and Ha Jun-seo wearing a strange, unreadable smile.

Neither of them looked like they had any intention of cursing him out, hitting him, or even letting him go.

“I’m pretty sure I already said this at the hospital… but I have absolutely no intention of breaking up with you, Ha-yoon.”

Ha Jun-seo spoke first, reaching out to clasp his fingers around Kim Min-seok’s hand. He didn’t squeeze hard, but there was an undeniable sense of pressure—subtle yet firm.

When Kim Min-seok turned his head toward Choi Sang-hyuk, he saw the man smirking crookedly.

“If you break up with me, I’ll have to kill you. Guess you must have a death wish.”

Choi Sang-hyuk lazily crossed one leg over the other and added,

“Not that it really matters. The moment you got caught sneaking around behind my back with that bastard, you were already a dead man walking.”

“…Why do you always have to phrase things in such an extreme way, Choi Sang-hyuk?”

Kim Min-seok immediately protested at all the talk about him being “already dead.” His voice came out weak, lacking much force, but he still said what he wanted to say.

“Isn’t spreading your legs for someone else while being with me already an extreme choice?”

Choi Sang-hyuk’s voice was quiet, heavy with restrained emotion.

“‘Spreading my legs’—why would you say something so vulgar? That’s way too much. And besides, how do you even know if I spread my legs for Ha Jun-seo or not? You’re just assuming things.”

Even though his voice was still timid, Kim Min-seok managed to argue back. Choi Sang-hyuk let out a hollow chuckle.

Just then, Ha Jun-seo leaned in, bringing his lips close to Kim Min-seok’s ear. In a whisper just loud enough for Choi Sang-hyuk to hear, he murmured,

“…He did. He spread them.”

“…”

Kim Min-seok froze, completely speechless at the vulgarity that had just come out of Ha Jun-seo’s mouth.

Choi Sang-hyuk, who had heard every word loud and clear, clenched his jaw. His eyes darkened with something dangerous.

Kim Min-seok swallowed hard and quickly averted his gaze, avoiding Choi Sang-hyuk’s piercing stare. Instead, he turned to Ha Jun-seo with a look of disbelief and scolded him.

“…Did you really have to say that right now?”

When Kim Min-seok looked at him with eyes full of resentment, Ha Jun-seo gave him a faint, unreadable smile and said,

“I’m just as angry as you are, Ha-yoon. Leaving me behind to go fool around with another man? That was such an adorable and charming thing to do, wasn’t it?”

Ha Jun-seo’s smile bloomed brilliantly—so much so that it sent a chill down Kim Min-seok’s spine. Until that moment, he hadn’t known that a person’s smile could be terrifying. The icy sensation crawling up his back made him want to get up and run away immediately.

“…Anyway, I don’t remember anything right now.”

Kim Min-seok quickly pulled out his most convenient weapon—amnesia. It wasn’t even a lie, so he didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty about using it. Encouraged by that, he decided to push his luck a little further.

“I don’t remember either of you, or even myself, so there’s nothing I can do about this. If I got caught two-timing, the natural course of action is to have a big fight and break up, right? So let’s just end things cleanly.”

“You must have given up on living, huh?”

“That’s not happening.”

Both men spoke at the exact same time.

Kim Min-seok sighed and acted as if he were making a generous compromise.

“Then at least one of you should break up with me. I have some sense of conscience, you know? I can’t two-time both of you. Since I don’t remember anything anyway, you two figure it out among yourselves.”

Leaning back into the sofa, Kim Min-seok pulled himself away from the two men, as if distancing himself from the whole ordeal. His plan was simple: step out of the equation and let them either fight it out or come to some sort of agreement.

Once one of them gave up and left, he’d figure out a way to shake off the remaining one, too.

After all, dealing with one person was far easier than handling two.

It was a sneaky plan—but a good one.