Dojun sat down across from Hanul, who was smiling prettily, and asked.
“So how far have you gotten with your research?”
If this had only been the second bout of amnesia, Dojun would have played along with Hanul's coy little act well enough.
If Hanul wanted to put on airs because he'd decided Dojun looked useful, fine. Dealing with a Hanul who was at least fake-polite was easier than taking that personality raw.
Unfortunately, after the third bout of amnesia ended, the two of them had gone public.
Nobody had confiscated his phone, so there was no chance a Hanul who'd realized something was wrong with his memory hadn't looked anything up.
If he knows we're dating...
Then inside that little head of his, Dojun had already been promoted to excellent workhorse.
In other words, Hanul wasn't being nice to him in order to win his heart. He was working out how to bend someone whose heart he'd already won to his will.
“Whatever you looked up, it won't match what you're thinking.”
If Hanul was going to treat Dojun as his lover, not in any good sense but as a lovestruck pawn convenient to use, then there was no need for Dojun to keep up the formal speech and stand on ceremony either.
Besides, by one year, he was the older one.
At Dojun's dry, indifferent manner, Hanul blinked slowly.
“They tell me we're dating.”
Every detail calculated for effect, from the troubled look in his eyes down to the angle of his tilted head, Hanul hesitated and asked.
“Um, did we break up, by any chance?”
The lingering attachment he'd never quite managed to throw out gave a twitch at the question, but Dojun wasn't stupid enough to do something foolish twice.
He answered without giving any impression of hesitation.
“No, that's not it.”
“Then were we never actually dating in the first place?”
He was asking whether they'd faked it for some reason.
A very him line of thinking.
If he hadn't ended up in this kind of relationship with Dojun, Hanul would probably have faked a romance without blinking whenever it suited him.
Though that damn germaphobia would have stopped him from doing anything actually couple-like.
“We were dating because we both liked each other, and no, it wasn't a relationship where you were using me.”
Dojun laid out the truth before anything more infuriating could come out of Hanul's mouth.
“I know your real personality more than well enough. Acting won't get you anywhere with me.”
He added that if there was something Hanul wanted to know or something he wanted, he should just come out and say it, then circled back to his original question.
“So how far did you actually get? Ask if you're curious about anything.”
But Hanul, being the sort who couldn't take anyone's word at face value, wasn't about to shed his pretense over a single sentence from Dojun.
He smiled placidly, without batting an eye, as though he hadn't heard a thing.
And yet he didn't waste the chance to extract information either.
“Everyone seems to take my condition for granted. Why was the aftereffect made public instead of kept quiet?”
Right. Of course this is what he'd be most curious about.
He'd hate that his weakness had been broadcast to the world.
“You get a ton of public attention and you're in and out of dungeons constantly. There's no way to hide it perfectly. You said it yourself: better to come clean and use whatever can be used than to hide it and let it blow up into something bigger.”
“Is that so? It seems to me the risk of being used goes up instead.”
“Are you the kind of man who'd let that happen?”
Says the man who's suspicious of someone publicly known to be his lover.
Even now, Hanul could easily guess why he'd made that choice, and he was throwing the question at Dojun anyway.
To check whether Dojun was telling the truth. To check whether Dojun could be trusted.
Reading his intent without difficulty, Dojun continued evenly.
“And nobody's unaware that fleecing you means making an enemy of our entire guild.”
“The guild.”
For the first time, the smile vanished from Hanul's face.
But Dojun had no trouble spotting the satisfaction circling in those bright eyes.
With his appetite for power, owning a major guild clearly pleased him enormously. He'd probably spent most of his time while Dojun was away looking into just how useful this guild was.
Cute.
Dojun's gaze lingered on the faintly raised corner of his mouth, and by then Hanul had already rearmed his expression.
“It says I'm the deputy leader of Seonmyeong Guild. Is it all right for me to hold that position in a situation like this?”
Anyone who didn't know better would think Hanul was worried about the guild. In reality, he just didn't like being the deputy.
A few news articles were all it would take to work out that he was the true owner of this place.
Dojun gave an answer suited not to the question Hanul had manufactured, but to what he was actually thinking.
“It's more convenient in a lot of ways for your brother to hold the leader's seat. Everyone already knows you're the one standing behind him anyway. If you were in that chair, people would crawl out of the woodwork to pick at you over the amnesia. Even if it's only for show, it's better that your brother is the leader.”
Hanul fluttered his long lashes and stared straight at Dojun. When Dojun didn't look away, Hanul spoke softly.
“But you're the head of Seonmyeong's dungeon raid team, Dojun.”
What he meant was: why had his younger brother, Hanyeong, become leader instead of Dojun, his lover?
The guild's very name made it obvious the place belonged to Seon Hanul and Myeong Dojun.
Hanul loved money, honor, and power, so he was subtly airing a suspicion. If Dojun were truly the person he loved, then in a situation where his aftereffect kept him out of the leader's chair, he'd have handed it to his lover rather than his brother.
Family being family, he did favor his brother over outsiders, but Hanul hardly doted on the kid, and in practice he put his lover ahead of his brother.
So Hanul's question had a certain validity to it.
But the leader's seat was something Dojun himself had turned down.
“Positions with responsibility are a hassle. And I'm better suited to moving my body than to weighing this against that.”
Between being a high-rank awakened and not being ugly, he already drew more attention than he wanted. He had no desire to shoulder anything more on top of that.
If not for Hanul, Dojun wouldn't have founded a guild at all. He'd have signed on with the Hunter Association and lived a quieter life than this.
Whatever else, he certainly wouldn't have ended up in a romance this loud, the kind the whole world knew about.
“More than that, the raid team is where our guild's core talent sits, so it's better managed by me than by someone who loses his memory as often as you do.”
By title alone, guild leader looked more impressive than raid team leader, but the guild's main business was clearing dungeons, so Seonmyeong's core organization was unquestionably the dungeon raid team.
Which made it perfectly natural for Dojun, the strongest hunter in Seonmyeong, to be the one in charge of it.
Having once again returned an answer that fit Hanul's real question exactly, Dojun checked the time.
By now, even if Hanul couldn't let go of his suspicion entirely, he'd at least be convinced that Dojun was close enough to read what went on inside him.
He's not someone who'd open up all at once anyway.
Dojun rubbed at his neck, sore from not resting properly since he'd stopped the dungeon break, and started packing up.
“Let's talk about the rest at home. Seeing the place we live in together should make it easier for you to accept the situation.”
“...We live together?”
If he knew we were dating, he obviously knew that too.
Dojun looked flatly at Hanul, who was putting on a detestably startled expression, as if he'd only just learned it.
It's obvious what he's worried about.
A Hanul who'd lost his memories always reverted to February of his twenty-first year, before he'd ever met Dojun.
And the Hanul of that period had his germaphobia dialed to its absolute peak, thanks to the stress of dungeon life, where staying clean was next to impossible.
Unlike Dojun, who became a hunter at twenty-two, Hanul had been living as one since nineteen, so it wasn't hard to understand why his nerves had spiked past the breaking point.
“Want me to get you a separate place?”
“No, I couldn't ask that of you.”
With exactly one exception so far, Hanul had always suppressed his germaphobia and chosen to live together so he could keep an eye on Dojun, so the answer was entirely predictable.
Which meant Dojun could easily guess what request was coming next.
“For the record, don't worry about physical contact.”
What else could it mean, living with someone defined as your lover?
On top of that, Dojun had just told him they were dating because they genuinely liked each other.
But there was no way a Hanul with no memories and germaphobia at its peak could accept anything couple-like.
“It's not as if we had a platonic relationship.”
Recalling nights the current Hanul couldn't begin to imagine, Dojun shrugged at his expressionless lover.
“If I so much as hold hands with the you who has no memories, the you who gets his memories back throws an absolute fit.”
This was something like the destiny of a man whose lover had severe germaphobia and got jealous of his own self.
Dojun let out a small snort of a laugh at Hanul, who was watching him with an odd look in his eyes.
“So you can relax.”
