Chapter 70

“Seriously... I regret it so much. That fucking psycho, and I actually...”

Jaekyung Park couldn’t get ahold of his emotions at all.

Apparently, Jaekyung’s name had been called before Hee Jun’s, and his mailbox had been empty too.

Woo Seok Jung had turned his back on him once again.

Dropped right into the middle of the already catastrophic atmosphere, Hee Jun awkwardly sat in the corner, doing the only things he could think of—offering Jaekyung tissues and rubbing his back.

Honestly, Hee Jun was just as bewildered.

After matching with Woo Seok and going into the Time Booth together, Jaekyung had seemed strangely excited afterward. His cheeks had been flushed, his mood soft and loose, so Hee Jun had vaguely assumed things must have gone well between them.

And now suddenly it was this.

No matter what, it felt strange for someone to be this devastated just because a favorability card hadn’t arrived. Considering how Jaekyung’s emotions had been swinging wildly between rage and happiness earlier, the crash felt far too sudden.

Sure enough, Jaekyung quickly confessed the reason.

“Do you know what Woo Seok Jung did in the Time Booth? He kissed me.”

Hee Jun’s lips parted slightly.

The shock hit hard enough that he couldn’t even react properly, but Hanseul Ga immediately exploded in outrage like it had happened to him personally.

“And after that he sent his card to someone else?”

The emphasis on someone else was impossible to miss.

Jaekyung latched onto it instantly.

“I’m sure... he sent it to that person.”

Even without saying the name, it was obvious who he meant.

Gyeol Go.

But seriously, what exactly had Gyeol done wrong?

Woo Seok was the one acting unstable and erratic. What fault did Gyeol have in any of this?

Hee Jun’s head spun.

Still, he wasn’t completely oblivious to the atmosphere, so this time he swallowed down all his questions instead of speaking.

Jaekyung wiped furiously at his eyes with his sleeve.

“There are things... things I can’t even fully say out loud, that’s why I’m like this. Seriously, I can’t talk about it...”

“If it’s hard to talk about, you really don’t have to force yourself.”

Hee Jun hurried to soothe him.

Unlike him, Hanseul’s eyes practically gleamed with interest.

“What happened?”

At the question, Jaekyung only breathed harshly for a long moment.

He looked like he was debating whether or not to reveal the “things he couldn’t say.”

Honestly, though, it seemed obvious Jaekyung wanted someone to hear it. If he truly didn’t want to talk about it, he wouldn’t even be hesitating like this.

The atmosphere kept getting worse and worse, enough to make Hee Jun’s blood run cold. He was just about to tell Jaekyung again that he didn’t need to force himself to speak—

when Jaekyung leaned forward first and beckoned them closer.

“...Can you come closer? This is seriously... something nobody can overhear.”

Unfortunately, Hee Jun wasn’t cruel—or firm enough—to refuse someone who was crying.

As Hee Jun and Hanseul leaned in, Jaekyung cupped his hand around his mouth and started whispering.

His voice was so quiet they had to focus carefully just to make out the words.

“After the Time Booth ended...”

A moment later, Hee Jun’s eyes widened.

What Jaekyung was describing was genuinely shocking.

Apparently, while they were kissing inside the Time Booth, Woo Seok had gotten extremely worked up.

Jaekyung said he’d repeatedly had to shove away Woo Seok’s hands whenever they tried to slip under his clothes to touch bare skin, and he’d also had to stop him from rubbing his ass through his pants.

Even after the Time Booth ended, Woo Seok hadn’t calmed down.

When they started walking back toward the lodging together, Woo Seok had dragged him into the forest.

A secluded path with no cameras and almost no staff or cast members around.

Jaekyung said he’d told him they shouldn’t do this and tried to convince him to just go back to the lodging instead.

But Woo Seok refused to back down.

He kept sweet-talking him, coaxing him softly, asking, “Don’t you trust me?”

“Even when I still hesitated... he told me he thought he really liked me. Said he wanted to stay together longer.”

In the end, Jaekyung gave in and followed him into the forest.

Once they were fairly deep inside, Woo Seok hid them behind a tree and grabbed Jaekyung’s hand, dragging it straight to his crotch.

“...That fucking psycho. He was hard.”

Giving off thick Alpha pheromones, Woo Seok asked Jaekyung to touch him.

When Jaekyung panicked and froze, Woo Seok started kissing him again, pushing their tongues together.

Jaekyung admitted the heavy, heated kissing had made him melt completely.

At this part, Jaekyung started smacking his own head repeatedly.

“I think... I was drunk on the pheromones. I wasn’t in my right mind.”

Swept up in the atmosphere, they’d ended up groping each other over their clothes while kissing.

Woo Seok kept flooding the air with pheromones, and as the heat escalated, Jaekyung gradually lost his grip on reason too.

While biting and sucking at his tongue, Woo Seok had taken advantage of the moment to slip a hand under Jaekyung’s clothes.

That was when he bit his neck and left the hickey.

What finally snapped Jaekyung back to reality was Woo Seok shoving fingers between his ass cheeks.

The shock hit him like ice water.

Jaekyung immediately shoved him away.

Woo Seok didn’t back off easily.

He kept saying things like it was fine, it would only take a second, didn’t it feel good, he’d make him feel even better in no time...

One sleazy line after another.

Jaekyung said he suddenly felt like things were genuinely about to go too far if this continued, so he shoved Woo Seok away with all his strength.

Then he told him,

“I said... ‘It’s too soon. Let’s do it next time.’ I thought that was the only way to make him stop.”

After a long time persuading him, Woo Seok finally nodded.

Then he licked the fluid off his fingers with a wet smack of his tongue, openly showing how disappointed he was.

After that, the two of them split up there.

They figured it would look more natural if they returned to the lodging separately with a time gap between them.

Jaekyung said he’d been completely out of it.

Confused about what had even happened.

He’d walked back toward the lodging in a daze.

And then he’d run into Gyeol.

“At the time, I thought Gyeol was helping me. He wrapped his handkerchief around my neck to hide the hickey, stopped the cameras from catching it... I was seriously so grateful.”

“But then I ended up seeing that scene, right?”

Hanseul smoothly jumped in.

Jaekyung nodded while blowing his nose into a tissue.

When Hee Jun stared blankly in confusion, Hanseul explained with the air of someone generously filling him in.

“You remember how Gyeol Go and Woo Seok Jung came in together during dinner earlier, right?”

Together? Had they?

Hee Jun could barely remember because he’d been so focused on cooking at the time.

Then he vaguely recalled four people walking into the lounge together.

Yo Han Sung.

Hanseul Ga.

Woo Seok Jung.

Gyeol Go.

Before Hee Jun could even ask why Hanseul was specifically framing it as just the two of them, Hanseul continued calmly,

“After sending Jaekyung away like that, it looked like Gyeol went on a forest date with Woo Seok instead. Seems like they stayed together the whole time after he split from Jaekyung. At least two hours.”

“Ha...”

A dark sigh escaped Jaekyung.

“And when Yo Han and I went to look for them, I ended up seeing that scene.” Hanseul continued. “Gyeol pretending to lose his footing on purpose so he could fall into Woo Seok’s arms.”

“...Fuck. Seriously.”

Beside the cursing Jaekyung, Hee Jun felt dizzy.

Gyeol Go did that?

It didn’t sound like something he would do at all.

And no matter how Hee Jun thought about it, Gyeol had never seemed interested in Woo Seok beyond basic politeness. If anything, he’d looked like he was trying very hard not to encourage him.

“And then Woo Seok didn’t even send Jaekyung a favorability card afterward. It’s obvious who he sent it to instead.”

Hanseul finished the story in an eerily calm tone.

“I’m seriously not letting this go... I can’t just let this go.”

Jaekyung’s voice trembled again as his whole body shook.

“It’s so humiliating. I regret it so much. How much of a joke did they think I was...”

He buried his face into the pillow he was clutching.

“They’re horrible people. They’re going to get punished someday.”

Hanseul patted his back gently.

Listening to the quiet sobbing that followed, Hee Jun sat there frozen solid.

He genuinely had no idea what he was supposed to do.

***

By the time Gyeol returned to the lodging, every light was off except the small lamp beside his bed.

Still wearing his sleep mask, Isu Yoon was already asleep with half his face buried under the blanket.

The moment Gyeol finished showering and collapsed onto the bed with his exhausted body, he fell asleep instantly.

And all night long, he dreamed restlessly.

Most of them were dreams tangled up in the past.

His trainee days with Jun Shin.

That brief happy stretch after SAVE ME debuted.

Their separation.

Yuli’s birth.

A child growing bigger day by day. Crawling. Talking. Walking. Running.

Then his return to the entertainment industry.

Meeting Yo Han Sung on set.

The moment Yo Han’s warm smile suddenly flipped into cruel humiliation.

Time accelerated violently.

Pheromone Island.

Everything that had happened over the past six days.

Tommy crying in front of him.

Sun Choi smiling at him.

The fact that every time Jun cried in front of him, even though Gyeol could never say it aloud, it hurt so badly he thought he might die.

The feeling of his chest tearing apart.

And then—

“Do you know why I’m like this?”

Yo Han’s face in the darkness of the night.

The emotions from that moment resurfaced vividly.

Gyeol felt confused.

And furious.

“I don’t know why you’re acting like this, and I don’t want to know.”

If he could, he genuinely wanted to punch Yo Han right in the face.

“Asking me something like that is unbelievably hypocritical, don’t you think? If you want answers so badly, figure them out yourself.”

So he never said it aloud.

“Because you told me to do exactly that too.”

That every word Yo Han said sounded like he wanted him.

Yo Han stared at him silently for a moment before suddenly laughing like he found the whole thing deeply entertaining.

His face broke into a smile so dazzling and beautiful it almost made Gyeol hate him.

That face was the last thing he saw before he was violently dragged upward out of the dream like someone being hauled out of deep water.

“Pheromone Island, Day 7.”

The announcement echoing through the room was what woke him.

Gasping for breath, Gyeol listened to the broadcast.

“All participants, please gather in the lounge by 10 a.m.”