Our lips parted awkwardly.
Watching “myself” kiss him felt strange.
No, from a certain point onward, it could not even be called watching anymore.
Because “I” had originally been me.
That did not mean I could directly feel the sensation of kissing him, but rather...it was a bizarre feeling, like recalling sensations buried somewhere deep in old memories.
It felt like a moment like this had existed before.
No—it had existed.
One of the suppressed mental barriers abruptly shattered.
It was not simply that a veil had been lifted. Rather, it felt as though a fact sleeping in one corner of my memories had suddenly pierced into my mind.
I had never kissed Kwon Taehan before.
Not even in the countless worlds where only the two of us remained.
I had tried all kinds of methods in order to reshape Kwon Taehan’s life “into the form I wanted,” and though he was ultimately “deleted,” I still never imagined something like this would happen in any of those processes.
So why had things become like this?
Where had it started going wrong?
Because of the days I abandoned him in order to stop him?
Or because I severed his relationships with others until he depended solely on me?
I did not know.
There were too many variables....
Even amidst all that confusion, however, kissing him was not particularly difficult.
I parted our joined lips and slid my tongue inside.
His stiff lips were tense as though they had never been opened this way before.
He even seemed slightly uncomfortable.
His mouth opened a beat late, unable to properly follow my tongue, only lingering clumsily in place.
I opened my eyes and observed his reactions while slowly massaging the back of his neck.
I needed to confirm whether this was tension—
or physiological disgust.
After all, Kwon Taehan only had me....
So even if he had gone a little insane and mistaken friendship or familial attachment for romantic feelings, it would not have been surprising.
Still, friendship was easier to accept than family.
And romantic love was easier to accept than friendship.
Because it had the shortest lifespan.
After all this ended, he had to survive properly.
That too was part of my plan.
And if he kept feeling this sense of deprivation throughout the process....
'No.'
Wouldn’t recovery be fastest if he convinced himself that everything had simply happened because of love?
Breakups between lovers were ordinary.
Most people broke up and eventually recovered.
They found someone else.
But family—
that was the kind of thing still leaving him with trauma even now, which made it troublesome.
And friendship too...its persistence and depth made it more complicated than affection.
I gently cupped Kwon Taehan’s cheek and pressed my weight down until he was fully pinned to the floor.
As his body fell backward, Kwon Taehan reflexively grabbed my shoulders.
Throughout the entire process, our lips never separated even once.
“Taehan.”
I flicked his lips lightly with my tongue, and the lips that had been tightly shut slowly parted on their own.
Smiling faintly as though narrowing my eyes, I pushed deeper into his mouth.
After the kiss ended—after thoroughly exploring every corner inside his mouth—I lowered my head and quietly looked down at him.
I knew exactly what his field of vision must look like.
A blazing red warning window flashing insistently for him to save the world.
Even though “the current” me could no longer see the warning windows.
Kwon Taehan kept flinching, his gaze repeatedly drifting away from me toward empty air.
Just before lowering my head to kiss him again, I covered his eyes with one hand and whispered,
“Don’t open your eyes.”
Beneath my palm, I felt his eyes slowly close.
His eyelashes were not particularly long, yet every blink still tickled my hand.
Covering his eyes, I invaded his mouth once more.
This time, his lips opened far more easily than before.
***
After a long kiss, I left Kwon Taehan where he was and turned off the lights.
There was no deeper intention behind it.
I simply wanted to physically block the warning windows.
Though I had no idea whether it actually worked.
In a hoarse voice, Kwon Taehan asked,
“Why did you accept me?”
“Just because.”
“I guess... maybe I liked you like this all along.”
Well, probably not.
Still, letting him misunderstand was not a bad thing.
“I’ve never... liked a guy before.”
“So you liked girls before?”
“Don’t really... remember.”
“Quit bullshitting.”
“...Back in middle school.”
“Who?”
“The class president from my class....”
That made sense.
Losers who never fit in with the class usually ended up obsessing over student council types who paid a little attention to them. Pretty standard.
I reached out through the darkness and found Kwon Taehan lying on the floor.
Suddenly, the moment felt excessively quiet.
The world was ending, and yet it was this peaceful.
In a way, it was almost funny.
“Really? What was the class president like?”
“Honestly, I barely remember her face.... Short hair? She was kinda short. Like 160... 165? I dunno, I’m bad at guessing women’s heights.”
“So there was a decent size difference.”
“She wore glasses. I remember she was smart too.”
“Mm.... Right.”
Replying indifferently, I lay down beside him and lightly tapped his arm with my fingers.
Each time my fingertips touched him in a steady rhythm, Kwon Taehan’s body jerked slightly.
“...You’ve dated before, right?”
“No.”
“Seriously?”
“No.”
“.......”
When I answered carelessly, Kwon Taehan shifted his gaze toward me.
The light coming in through the windows was enough for me to clearly see his expression.
He looked wronged.
“You have dated.”
“A decent amount, maybe.”
“Back in high school?”
He asked a lot of questions.
I lifted the hand that had been tapping his arm and rubbed near his eyebrow instead.
When I failed to answer, Kwon Taehan slowly changed the subject on his own.
“You told me to get married.”
“Do it.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I said get married and have two kids.”
“I think I might actually be gay.”
Bullshit.
The sheer absurdity made me laugh out loud for a second.
Kwon Taehan’s eyebrows twitched, apparently mistaking my laughter for mockery.
“...Can’t you just keep being my family instead?”
“Keep? You’re saying it like we’re family already.”
“We are. ...At least to me.”
“You’re seriously delusional.”
“We’re gonna keep living together, right?”
The way he endlessly sought reassurance was ridiculous.
I stared at him quietly before curling my lips upward.
“How far are you willing to go? You gonna earn money for us? What if your powers disappear and you turn back into a weak loser?”
“I already have a ton of money saved up. I can’t even spend it all anyway....”
“You never know.”
“I’ll get a job.”
“For fuck’s sake, obviously. Talk about something else. Maybe I’ll consider it if living together sounds worthwhile.”
What ridiculous nonsense.
Laughing under my breath at Kwon Taehan’s shameless bullshit, I prompted him for another answer.
“What else?”
“...I already cook now.”
“We order delivery or buy food way more often, so have some shame. And it’s not like you make anything amazing anyway, where the hell are you getting all this confidence from.... Fuck, at that point I’d rather just order food. Or are you gonna wear an apron and go take cooking classes? There’s a cooking academy nearby, isn’t there? Make breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day.”
“.......”
“Why aren’t you mentioning the other housework? Cleaning, laundry, organizing, taking out recycling.... What about all that? You gonna do all of it too?”
“If I do everything, then what do you do?”
“Fuck, Taehan. You’re the one trying to appeal to me right now.”
The audacity on this bastard.
I lightly shoved his forehead a little harder than necessary.
Kwon Taehan bit his lip slightly before clenching his teeth like something displeased him.
“You told me to earn money, so how the hell am I supposed to make lunch too....”
“You wake up and make lunch before going to work, obviously. Saying the obvious here. Wake up at like four in the morning, make breakfast, finish all the housework, prep lunch too, then head to work. Oh, and make sure breakfast and lunch menus don’t overlap.”
“Are you a king? Why the hell do I have to do all that for you? Forget living together. Let’s just live next door to each other.”
“Why bother?”
“Seo Jehyun, you....”
Half-rising from where he had been sprawled out, Kwon Taehan quietly looked down at me.
His lips parted several times as he searched for the right words before finally speaking.
“You like me.”
Pretty bold statement for someone who did not sound confident at all.
Kwon Taehan cautiously watched my reaction.
I raised one eyebrow and replied,
“Don’t I?”
“Later... once you end up liking me as much as I like you, then we can renegotiate the housework division.”
So he thought he loved me that much?
'Ridiculous.'
A minute ago he had hesitated over a kiss, yet the moment he misunderstood something, he became fearless.
Without bothering to correct his misinterpretation of my feelings, I narrowed my eyes.
“I’ll think about it.”
In the end, all I needed was to buy time.
Conversations like this were more than enough.
Even now, Kwon Taehan’s chaotic vision was probably still flooded with red warning windows, and the violent pounding of his heart was likely caused not by affection but by anxiety...
though honestly, that did not matter either way.
That night, Kwon Taehan tried to sleep on the hard floor to regulate his condition, while I sat quietly in place waiting for dawn to come.
Over the course of a single night, the world changed.
The Dungeons that had erupted simultaneously across the globe became absurdly difficult to clear because four of the world’s major S-rank forces had effectively “disappeared.”
Originally, this Dungeon had not been the definitive turning point that destroyed the world.
It was merely the preliminary stage meant to eliminate most of the world’s S-rank personnel.
But I needed to accelerate the timeline slightly.
If things progressed any further than this, Kwon Taehan would inevitably save the world.
And I did not want a world like that.
The world had to end.
The protagonist chosen by God absolutely had to fail.
Because only an ending that completely deviated from God’s intentions could prove that the God who orchestrated and arranged all of this had failed.
The world ends, and only the protagonist destined to save it survives.
Far away in the distance, dawn slowly began to break.
Because the Dungeon Break could not be stopped, one enormous high-rise building had been completely crushed into rubble.
The buildings beside it were the same.
Several structures had fully collapsed, and countless overturned cars lay scattered like broken toys.
Normally, emergency broadcasts would have made even this apartment unbearably noisy by now...but I had prevented that in advance.
That was why I had deliberately brought Kwon Taehan here.
My eyes felt painfully dry from lack of sleep.
Even so, I could not afford to miss the sunrise.
The morning of the world’s destruction had arrived.