A/N: Sorry for making you wait so long again! TT_TT I’m such a terrible author … delaying the update every time … *bows* I’m not

sure how you think about this chapter but if you feel it’s too dramatic or unrealistic, please tell me … I need criticism of course … and

if you find it still confusing, please wait for a little more … since it’ll be unfolded bit by bit … Enjoy and let me know your thoughts! <3

Sitting on his bed with a sigh, he tried to keep his breathing normal again after carrying a grown-up man on his back. He already had

carried Hyesung in the earthquake incident before but he must admit that that guy was heavier than he seemed.

Taking a glance at the man lying unconscious on his bed, he let out another heavy sigh. Everything had happened so fast in front of his

eyes. This time, he thought he had gone too far, forcing the other too much to get some answer on his suddenly cold behavior. He had

lost his mind for a moment, being tired with confusion and frustration, and he could not stop attacking Hyesung with his questions, being

blind from the other’s panicked expressions. Then, the next second he had got back his sense, Hyesung had already fainted, his legs

giving in and if there were no hands to grab him, he would fall in a heap on the cold floor. After all, he had no choice but had to carry his

neighbor to his own apartment since he did not know the other’s door password, obviously.

He took a deep breath, standing up to change his work attire with comfortable ones and then, he noticed a lot of sweat forming on

Hyesung’s face, that was still covered with a mask. Being hesitant for a while, he decided to take off the mask since it seemed quite

suffocating to his eyes and also the thick hoodie that contradicted the current weather. A basic white T-shirt appeared behind the hoodie

and Hyesung’s bare face under the mask made him recall the morning that he had seen him without a mask for the first time.

As he thought all this time, Hyesung was not an ugly person and actually, he was quite pretty for a guy. Fair complexion, thin lips, small

nose and V-line made him look quite delicate and he wondered if there was no mask on those features, Hyesung could surely be a girls’

man or a man that girls would be jealous.  

Folding the hoodie neatly and putting it on the edge of the bed, he started changing clothes and after putting on his tank top and shorts,

he glanced at the one on the bed for the second time to check. Hyesung seemed quite tensed even in his unconscious state, frowning and

pursing his lips tightly.

“Why can’t he let himself relaxed even in this condition?”

That question suddenly popped up in his mind and together with it, he felt an unknown lump forming in his chest. Unknowingly, he let out

a deep sigh imagining what kind of burden Hyesung was carrying in his heart. Although they had just met for a few weeks, even he could

sense the insecure and frightened inner of the other gradually, based on his behaviors and it made him feel quite sorry for his neighbor.

Hyesung was obviously still in his 20s; maybe two or three years younger than him or maybe even at the same age with him. Seeing a

young guy like him burying himself in loneliness and severe insecurity actually could make everyone’s heart heavy and sorrowful and here,

he was not the exception, too.

Shaking his heard slowly, he got out of the room to grab something to eat since the unconscious Hyesung did not seem to wake up soon.

He just poured the hot water into the instant ramen cup and with that ramen cup and a can of beer, he shifted his position to the front

of TV, starting to browse channels after channels. It was just natural that you could not find the TV programme that was interesting

enough to grab your attention when your mind had already been wandering to somewhere else, surely not on the LED screen in front of

you.

There, he ended up thinking about Hyesung again, putting down his ramen and TV remote for a while.

“Hyung … Please … Don’t … Please …”

They were the last words he could catch from Hyesung’s mumbling before fainting. He was sure he had not heard wrong then but one

thing surely made him confused like hell at the moment.

“Why did he call me Hyung???”

Leaning all of his weight onto the back of the couch, he knew at present, there was a frown on his face and he clicked his tongue, being

a little frustrated gradually. There was no way that Hyesung had called him Hyung. Since the time they had met, he always called him

“Eric-ssi” and from the other’s cold and distant attitude, he was sure that Hyesung would never call him in a way of being close or

intimate.   

So he had been calling someone else? Not him but someone else?

Then, the image of pleading Hyesung appeared in his mind, being replayed again and again at the part of “Please …. Don’t … Please …”.

He thought he had seen a pure shocked and scared aura in his slightly widened eyes and Hyesung’s looks at that time were like those of a

prey in front of a tiger or a lion. At that time, being so helpless and begging to spare him, Hyesung had seemed that he had already lost

his rationality due to his immense fright and finally he assumed that maybe the other had been seeing that unknown person called

“Hyung”, who must be surely the close person to him, replacing his face, Mun Eric’s.

It seemed that he must have triggered something that scared the heart out of Hyesung and it must be his a little aggressive sudden

action that had led the other to lose his consciousness right away.

With the thought of it, he became more and more uneasy, blaming himself for losing his head for a moment over a small matter.

Actually, even himself found it quite surprising. It was not like him at all. The action of bursting out face to face for being treated like an

invisible man and getting the constant cold shoulder from Hyesung was not surely the thing he would do in the past. Most of the times, he

was friendly but to the ones who did not care his existence, he usually did the same back, not giving a damn about them.

However, Hyesung was different.

Since he had got that short note full with cold words from Hyesung, he could not help but fight with his own mind every single day. He

had been frustrated at first, of course. All he had got back from his little good deeds was a note telling him not to care.

So, he had decided not to care like Hyesung had said.

He had tried at his best. Tried to act according to his usual attitude. “Don’t give a damn on people who don’t want you”.

But, after a few struggling days, he had come to feel that there was something else under the mass of his frustration on Hyesung. That

something was becoming too strong that he could not ignore it anymore.

The attachment, the name was.

He even had not wanted to admit the existence of “that” at first. But he had slowly found himself wondering about the possibilities of

Hyesung’s past and another noticeable one was that he had been starting to feel wanting to take Hyesung out of his shell, waking him up

to see the different world. It was just too suffocating for him to see the other in all those thick clothes, mask and among all of this, his

deep insecurity and loss of trust to others. He understood it was not his place to concern and it was not a piece of a cake to make

Hyesung open up to him since they were still strangers, like the other had said. Both of them did not know each other well, except names

and the apartment numbers they lived in. Moreover, Hyesung trying to keep distance away from people did not help at all. But his mind

was still going back to the nervous pair of eyes that had never looked at his face more than one second.

Like that, he had become attached to the weird guy called Hyesung in no time.

After thinking many times to ring up the doorbell of Hyesung’s apartment, he had not succeeded since there was still his pride lingering

around. And he understood the other had been avoiding him all week as he had not bumped into him even once after receiving the note.

The strong competition between the want to meet Hyesung and clear all the mess between them by asking out loud what the hell

Hyesung was thinking and his stubborn ego telling not to find the person who had done wrong to him first had worn him out to no end.

That was why he had exploded when he had finally seen his neighbor in the elevator this evening.

And the result was that the weird person who was trying not to close with him was now lying on his bed, unconscious.  A sigh slipped

again from his lips just by thinking about the consequences coming after the other woke up.

“Hope he wouldn’t get too shocked again …”

Murmuring to himself and sliding his back along the sofa, he closed his eyes slowly, relaxing his tired muscles.

“I’ll just take a short nap …. Ok …”

With half-opened eyes, he tried to get up from the couch but the tensed muscles, the result of sleeping on the couch for a long time,

made him groan with pain. Glancing at the digital clock on the table, his eyes got wider in a flash since the numbers being shown were

4.30.

That meant he had slept almost all night on the couch in an uncomfortable position. No wonder at the moment, his whole body was

aching like hell.

He stood up with difficulty before stretching his tensed limbs and heading towards to the kitchen to grab water for his dry throat.

Gulping down the water, one thing suddenly crossed his mind giving him a little heart attack.

“Ah! Hyesung! How could I forget him!”

Then, he nearly sprinted towards his bedroom and only took a break in front of the door, turning the knob slowly as possible and slipping

into his own bedroom like a thief without making a sound. There, he saw a curling figure on the bed with his back facing the door.

Tiptoeing towards the bed, he stole a glance at the sleeping Hyesung and got shock finding the other’s lips were trembling and there

were lots of sweats dripping from his temples.

“Ammm …. Please … Nah …. Pleass … eee …”

Soft whimpers entered his ears and he noticed how Hyesung was grasping the bedsheet so tight, even to the extent of ripping it apart.

Realizing the other was having a nightmare, he naturally put his hand on the back of the poor one, moving it slowly in a soothing way. It

was what he had learnt from his mother whenever he had had nightmares in childhood.

“It’s ok .. Hyesung-ah … It’s ok …”

But the result was opposite to what he had expected. Instead of calming down and falling asleep, Hyesung’s expressions got more tensed

and his grips on the bedsheet were released to hit the air aimlessly in a sudden.

“Don’t … do this … Why? … No … Ahhhh!”

Then, out of nowhere, Hyesung’s eyes went shot open and his body even sprang up from the body while his arms and legs were all over

places in a quite furious way. This caught him off guard and in the next second, he found himself being hit and kicked by the violently

struggling Hyesung.

“Hyung … I’m begging you … Why are you doing this to me? … Why? … LET ME GO!”

There, he noticed that Hyesung did not realize it was him although he was already wide awake. It seemed that he was having a panic

attack, even not knowing who was in front of him and struggling so hard by instinct. Although he tried to calm down the other, Hyesung

was too forceful by means of panic and adrenaline and at the next second, he felt the world spinning around suddenly.

“Ouch!”

His cry echoed in the bedroom due to the pain in the back and then he heard unstable running footsteps going away from the room. He

fell from the bed in the struggle with Hyesung and now the other had instinctively ran out of the room. Ignoring his pain, he got up and

chased after Hyesung who had already been out of his apartment and was starting to running the stairs down while stumbling here and

there. When he was about to grab the other, Hyesung suddenly slipped and fell down along the stairs until his body hit the floor.

“Hyesung!”

Jumping over the stairs, he ran to the heap falling on the cold floor. He lifted Hyesung’s body onto his lap and found there was a blood

seeping from his scalp, making his heart stop. But on second check after calming down himself, it was just a small impact. Hyesung went

unconscious again and as soon as he tried to scoop him up for heading to the nearest clinic, he heard the footsteps going up the stairs.

“What’s happening here?”

A woman’s voice entered his ears first before a small built lady in a quite nervous state appeared in front of his eyes.

Then, the next second, looking at each other, the exclamations from both of them echoed around the stairs together.

“Nuna!”

“Eric?”