Chapter 164

The thought that he needed to get up crossed his mind, but his eyelids were too heavy for him to open them easily.

As he strained, tightening the muscles around his eyes, a soft voice settled over him along with a quiet laugh.

“Sleepy?”

The hand stroking his hair covered his eyes. The light vanished, and an impenetrable darkness descended. Somehow, he felt more at ease.

“You can sleep a little longer like this if you’re tired.”

Yo Han Sung.

The moment Gyeol realized whose voice it was, he wanted to open his mouth and call his name.

But despite his will, sleep pressed down heavily on him. The scent drifting from the nearby hand kept making his mind and body sink, again and again, into complete defenselessness.

How much time passed after he fell asleep like that?

Gyeol’s eyes suddenly opened.

His mind was clear and his head felt light, as though he had slept for a very long time. It was a refreshing sensation, as if the exhaustion that had clung to him in thick layers for ages had fallen away cleanly.

Gyeol slowly sat up. Then he noticed someone lying beside him.

“......”

He was not startled. The moment he realized it, he felt he already knew who it was. There was no surprise, no unexpected twist.

“......Unbelievable.”

Still, a laugh slipped between his lips. Letting his body droop forward, Gyeol looked down at Yo Han Sung, who was lying on his side beside him. He had crammed himself into the narrow gap between the place where Gyeol had been lying and the wall.

“This isn’t Tetris......”

He had asked for only half the bed, yet somehow managed to wedge his enormous body into the space.

One arm stretched far above him, lying loosely across the bed. It was easy enough to picture what had happened. He seemed to have stroked Gyeol’s hair until the very moment he fell asleep.

“You’re cute, you know.”

Gyeol whispered as he looked down at the utterly defenseless face of the man who had once seemed more threatening than anyone else in the world.

“...You’re making things difficult when you keep acting like this.”

What made it difficult was that Yo Han kept appearing new to him. That he kept showing Gyeol all these different sides of himself, and that each one struck Gyeol with fresh surprise every time.

No matter who looked at him, Yo Han Sung did not possess a single trace of cuteness. If someone were asked to choose the one quality missing from among his many charms, it would undoubtedly be cuteness.

Which meant the cuteness Gyeol saw in him belonged entirely to Gyeol alone.

It meant something inside him was changing.

After gazing silently at Yo Han’s face, Gyeol reached out and brushed his cheek. Flawless skin without a single blemish slid smoothly beneath his fingertips.

He carefully traced his face, then lightly rubbed the hollow above his eye with his index finger. His long eyelashes seemed to twitch, and then Yo Han let out a deep, pained groan and pressed closer to Gyeol.

There was no hesitation in the way he wrapped his arms around Gyeol’s waist. Yielding himself without resistance to the man who sought him even in his sleep, Gyeol stroked his hair for a while, just as Yo Han had done for him.

“...I keep wondering whether this is really right.”

Believing the other man was asleep made the words inside him spill out easily.

“I’m anxious... and scared.”

Even this very moment was proof enough.

They were filming. The cameras were running.

This man made him forget that obvious yet most important fact far too easily.

The sensation of losing control over himself was not particularly welcome to Gyeol. He had already experienced it once before. Even if it had only been youthful love, Gyeol had suffered through the fever of it.

And how had that ended?

So his anxiety and fear were only natural.

All the more so when the other person was none other than Yo Han Sung.

Was it because there were still things they had not resolved while filming? Or because of what Yo Han had done to him? The affection and hatred he had weighed against each other over and over had somehow merged into one, until he could no longer tell what it truly was.

Gyeol was confused.

“......”

And so, when the urge rose to kiss the sleeping man’s lips, Gyeol could no longer bear it and slipped out from beneath the blanket.

***

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

They had been preparing dinner for quite some time in an atmosphere that was awkward overall.

Yo Han, who had appeared late in the lounge, approached Gyeol with a sullen expression.

Jaekyung Park startled when he saw his face, hesitated, then moved away toward the stove on the opposite side. His expression practically said, Yo Han Sung can make a face like that?

Without looking at Yo Han, Gyeol kept slicing tomatoes as he answered.

“You looked tired. It seemed like you didn’t sleep well last night either.”

“......?”

Yo Han tilted his head at an angle.

Thud. In the silence, the knife struck the cutting board. Gyeol continued diligently quartering the tomatoes.

Watching the cut tomatoes being transferred into the frying pan, Yo Han asked,

“Are you feeling unwell?”

“No.”

“Something’s strange.”

He frowned as he muttered under his breath.

He was annoyingly perceptive. Still refusing to look at him, Gyeol gestured toward the basket with his chin.

“There’s nothing strange. We’re having tomato pasta for dinner, so take the mushrooms out of the basket and cut them into bite-sized pieces.”

Yo Han silently stared at him and swept back his hair. He seemed to be swallowing the words hovering at his lips, but Gyeol never gave him so much as a glance.

Until they finished preparing the ingredients and completing the dish side by side, not a single word passed between them beyond remarks about dinner preparation, such as, “Do I do it like this?” and, “Cut more.”

Unable to endure the tension flowing between them, Jaekyung alone hovered around helplessly before finally fleeing the lounge to join the Alphas grilling meat over a wood fire outside.

Only after the two of them were left alone did Yo Han quietly venture a question.

“Did I do something wrong?”

“...It’s not that.”

“Then why are you acting like this, Gyeol?”

“What am I doing?”

“You’re asking because you really don’t know?”

“......”

Their conversation could not continue because the other cast members entered the lounge carrying freshly grilled meat.

“Is the pasta not ready yet?”

“It’s done.”

Even during the meal, the detached atmosphere showed no sign of improving.

The fallout from the incident involving Hanseul Ga and Jaekyung Park still lingered, Hanseul had skipped both dinner preparation and the meal, and every Alpha remaining on the island was someone who had been connected to Gyeol in one way or another. There was little they could do about it.

“The pasta is really good.”

“The meat came out well too.”

A few ordinary remarks were exchanged for the cameras, but silence quickly returned.

Deciding it would be difficult to get any more usable footage that day, Producer Yoo suggested beginning the interviews early as soon as cleanup was finished.

Since it was the day of the Ivory Mansion dates, there would be no attraction vote either, so afterward they were free to talk comfortably or rest.

The cast accepted the suggestion without objection.

Before long, they began being called in for interviews one by one. Yo Han went first.

After the Alphas had been called in one after another, Jaekyung, who had remained alone with Gyeol until the end, rose from his seat.

“I’ll head out first. Thank you so much for today, and I’m sorry....... See you tomorrow, Gyeol.”

“Yes, Jaekyung. You’ve been through a lot today.”

Gyeol’s interview was scheduled last.

The interview focused mostly on Hanseul and Jaekyung. Questions like whether he had been offended, and what he had been feeling when he spoke to Hanseul earlier.

“Honestly, I can’t say I felt entirely comfortable. I’m not completely oblivious either, so there were moments when I thought, Wait, what?”

Gyeol began honestly, then added with a faint, strained smile,

“But I’m okay.”

Producer Yoo, who was conducting the interview that day, probed him with, “Really?”

Gyeol nodded calmly and spoke in a deliberately light tone.

“Really. I may not look it, but I’m a dating-show fanatic. When you watch them, maybe because the emotional exchanges get so intense... all kinds of things happen. So honestly, I’m more fascinated than anything. Something like this is happening to me too.”

Producer Yoo nodded along as she listened, then tilted her head to one side. She had caught on to something sharp.

“That makes it sound as though, separate from what happened today, you’ve experienced a major emotional upheaval or change yourself.”

Seeing Gyeol’s eyes widen, Producer Yoo lightened the atmosphere by asking, “Am I reading too much into it?”

Fidgeting with his hands in his lap, Gyeol shook his head without much hesitation.

“You’re right. My emotions are usually fairly steady... but on Pheromone Island, it feels like my heart is riding a roller coaster.”

“May I ask why, or because of whom?”

“I don’t think I could point to just one person. So much has happened over these fifteen days.”

Tommy, Jun Shin, and even Sun Choi.

There had certainly been uncomfortable and troubling moments, but the reason so-called “villains” like Woo Seok Jung and Hanseul Ga had not bothered him much was because merely facing the people who showed him their sincere feelings and devoting his whole heart to them had left him with nowhere near enough time. Sometimes it overwhelmed him, often it moved him, and on certain days it made him so sad he wanted to cry.

“Then let me rephrase the question. Who are you most concerned about right now?”

The answer was already decided.

Gyeol lowered his chin at an angle, then opened his mouth.

***

“Gyeol.”

The man stood within the shadows of the trees.

It was a meeting Gyeol had expected. He did not stop walking, and before long, he could see the man’s face bathed in moonlight.

“Are you avoiding me?”