"I have to talk to you, Kean," Tyvan insisted, his sharp voice entirely disregarding the protective barrier of the people surrounding his target.
Leansei let out a long, ragged breath through his nose, slowly turning his head to face him with a cold mask. "We don't have a single thing left to talk about."
"But Kean—"
"Are you actively bothering my more-than-just-a-friend?" The argument came to a sudden halt as Beidhen stepped into the moonlight, looking entirely lavish in his tailored formal wear, a crystal wine glass balanced casually between his fingers.
Three heads snapped toward the newcomer in unison, except for Tyvan, whose face merely twisted into an intensely annoyed scowl. Beidhen strolled over with effortless confidence and instantly slung a heavy arm right back around Leansei's neck. Xeilin let out a quiet sigh, shaking his head at the display; he knew all too well that this overbearing, dramatic boundary-crossing was just classic Beidhen behavior. Meanwhile, Corshe kept his fierce glare pinned entirely on Tyvan, and Revin watched the interaction play out with a completely unreadable expression.
"More than just a friend?" Tyvan echoed, his jaw tightening as a deeply fazed, bewildered look crossed his features.
"Oh, yeah. This guy right here is way more than just my ordinary friend," Beidhen proclaimed proudly, a smug grin cutting across his handsome face. Leansei let out a sharp, irritated snicker, aggressively trying to hoist the heavy arm off his shoulder, but Beidhen's limb felt as unyielding as a brick dumbbell.
Tyvan's eyes narrowed into a dangerous, lethal glare. "You all need to mind your own damn business. This is strictly between me and him. I don't want a bunch of worthless flies clinging around us." Leansei stared at Tyvan, his expression turning dead-serious. He couldn't decipher what complex, deep-seated history Kean actually shared with this boy, but looking at his friends, he was entirely ready to draw a definitive line in front of this high-society crowd.
"Oh, I know exactly why we fly around you like butterflies—and honestly, who wouldn't?" Beidhen countered smoothly, a wicked smirk playing on his lips. "But trust me, the only things flies actively cling to are rotten, disgusting pieces of shit."
Corshe sharply bit his lip, turning his head away to forcibly stop himself from bursting into a loud laugh. Beside him, Revin and Xeilin let out a series of fake, theatrical coughs to mask their own amusement. Taking advantage of the sudden shift, Leansei gathered his strength and finally shoved Beidhen's suffocating arm off his neck.
Tyvan's hands balled into tight fists, his broad shoulders tensing as if he were about to throw a punch, but Leansei immediately stepped forward to cut him off, refusing to let a physical altercation break out on the roof.
"You have absolutely no right to talk to my friends like that," Leansei stated, his voice flat and unyielding. Looking at the protective circle around him, a profound wave of gratitude washed over his chest.
' I've finally met real people who are completely true to me, people who will always be there for me. ' Kean, you found an amazing friends. '
Leansei forced his voice to remain perfectly detached as he faced the boy. "I'll... I'll talk to you whenever I am actually capable of doing so. But right now, my mind is completely messed up."
In reality, Leansei knew he could never bring himself to confront Tyvan normally—not now, and probably never. He simply couldn't handle the suffocating weight of the abandonment he had suffered years ago in his past life.
"I need—" Tyvan started aggressively.
He was cut violently short for a second time as Xerchin stepped smoothly into the frame, sliding his hands casually into his trousers pockets. The crisp night breeze whirled through his messy, perfectly styled hair, and under the pale moonlight, a dangerous, mercurial blue glint twinkled within his sharp eyes. He looked absolutely dashing, a striking vision that made Leansei's heart skip a violent beat, forcing him to sharply glance away toward the floorboards.
"Didn't you hear exactly what he just said?" Xerchin stated flatly, his unbothered poker face entirely cold. "He told you he will talk to you soon. So turn around and leave."
Tyvan let out a low, hushed growl, locking his eyes with Xerchin's freezing glare. A suffocating, intense layer of tension spiked violently within the atmosphere as the two elite heirs measured each other. Finally, Tyvan snapped his gaze back to Leansei, staring down at the boy's bowed head for a lingering, frustrated second, before turning on his heel and marching away toward the roof lounge.
The group collectively let out a deep, synchronized sigh of relief the moment his shadow vanished. Corshe's tense posture evaporated, a joyous, innocent smile lighting up his face as he bounded over to stand right in front of Beidhen.
"Wow, what an absolute masterpiece of a rebuttal!" Corshe cheered excitedly, tiptoeing to playfully tap Beidhen's broad shoulder. "In fact, I'm pretty sure that is officially the single good thing you have ever said since I met you."
Beidhen paused, his brow furrowing as he tried to deduce whether the comment was a heavy piece of sarcasm or a genuine compliment. Shrugging it off, a proud smirk returned to his face. "Well, I'll happily take that as a compliment anyway." Beidhen slid his hands into his pockets, his light brown eyes subtly drifting over to the side where Revin was standing solitary against the railing. Revin was staring intensely up at the beautiful night sky, his dark hair waving softly in the howling wind gales of the 82nd floor.
Corshe couldn't cease his quiet giggling, thoroughly pleased by the drama, while Xeilin kept nodding along, physically pressing a hand over his mouth to stop himself from letting out a loud guffaw in the middle of the garden.
Leansei turned his head to watch Beidhen, noticing the unusual, intense focus in the delinquent's eyes as he stared at Revin's profile. But as he shifted his weight, his gray eyes accidentally crossed paths with Xerchin's.
Xerchin was standing a few meters away, staring directly at him with a profound, overwhelming wave of sadness darkling his eyes.
A sudden, agonizing wave of pure guilt crashed straight over Leansei's chest. The memory of the harsh, final rejection he had hurled at the athlete outside the restroom flashed vividly behind his eyelids. He couldn't decipher whether the raw, fractured look on Xerchin's face was a manufactured piece of high-society dissimulation or not—or, more accurately, he was entirely terrified of finding out the truth.
Leansei looked down at his shoes, a desperate urge to retract his previous words tightening his throat. In the heat of the moment, driven entirely by the chaotic, painful emotions suffocating his chest, he had failed to accurately imply the boundary he wanted to set. Instead, he had lashed out with words that were completely unclear, flawed, and unnecessarily cruel. He had only made a complicated situation infinitely worse.
He took one short breath, opening his mouth to take it back—but the words died in his throat.
A few meters away near the manicured hedges, Seleigh was watching their exact row, standing elegantly alongside Revinah. The sight of Xerchin's beautiful, high-society fiancée snapped Leansei right back to reality, freezing the blood in his veins. Remembering the permanent boundary dictated by this body, he sharply turned his back on the couple. He marched across the grass, slotting himself directly between Xeilin and Corshe to escape the pressure.
The moment Leansei approached the pair, Xeilin's eyes widened in panic. He immediately lowered his head, a furious, burning flush of dark red spreading rapidly across his cheeks. Leansei noticed the sudden embarrassment, but chose not to press for details; the council president looked so thoroughly nervous and flustered that asking would only worsen the scene.
"What exactly were you two gossiping about over here?" Leansei asked softly, trying to ground his own racing heart.
"Well..." Corshe started, cutting his own sentence short midway. He shot a glance over at Xeilin, a thoroughly mischievous, naughty smile curling onto his lips. "We were just having a highly detailed discussion about a certain mutual... friend of ours." Leansei shot them a deeply confused look, his brow knotting, but he decided to let the matter drop, too emotionally exhausted to dig any further.
A quiet, fragile atmosphere settled over the three boys as they listened to the wind howl across the high-rise structure. But the peace was abruptly broken when Corshe suddenly turned his head, his eyes locking onto Leansei with intense, unprompted curiosity.
"Hey, Gawin...what exactly is the real history between you and Tyvan?" Leansei froze, the question striking a raw nerve as his mind short-circuited.
' The history between Kean and Tyvan...'
He looked down at the dark lawn, a profound, unyielding sadness darkling his gray eyes as he framed his response around the permanent cover of his new existence.
"Because of the accident...I don't remember a single trace of my past or Kean's past," Leansei whispered, his voice cracking with a layer of genuine heartbreak. "And honestly... I simply don't possess the courage to confront him right now."
.
A few minutes later, the heavy rooftop doors swung open. The serene stillness of the garden was instantly shattered by a wave of aristocratic laughter and simultaneous chatting as the parents and the upper-middle-class registry surged onto the 82nd floor.
Leansei straightened his posture, his eyes scanning the incoming crowd. He froze, his breath locking in his throat as he spotted a highly familiar face—the exact face he had seen merely seconds before he plummeted off the cruise deck into the freezing ocean.
Their eyes locked. The girl's face lit up with superficial joy, her vibrant red hair bouncing in rhythm against her shoulders as she practically ran across the lawn toward him.
"Kean! I am absolutely pleased to meet you again!" she cheered loudly. Before Leansei could even process her arrival, she stepped flush into his personal space, pressing her cheek against his in an aggressive high-society greeting.
Leansei stood entirely paralyzed, staring at her with a thoroughly fazed look. Even through his shock, his peripheral vision caught a sharp, devastatingly intense pair of eyes locking onto their position from across the garden. Forcing his focus back to the immediate threat, he subtly shifted away from the girl, masking his panic under a layer of absolute detachment.
"May I... know exactly who you are?" Leansei asked, his voice entirely flat. The red-haired girl dangled her designer clutch, letting out a high-pitched, theatrical laugh.
"Oh, right! I completely forgot you have that tragic amnesia now. But anyway—"
"What on earth do you find so hilarious?" Corshe interrupted, his voice dropping into a thoroughly churlish, aggressive manner as he stepped forward to shield his friend.
Leansei watched the exchange, his mind spinning. He knew with absolute certainty that this girl was entirely two-faced. A dark, fragmented memory told him that the cruise ship incident had been her direct fault, but he also recognized that he couldn't openly voice his accusations; to the rest of the world, that near-fatal plunge was an unpredictable accident.
"Oh, nothing really," the girl chimed in a precipitous, entirely mindless way, rolling her eyes. "I just suddenly remembered someone who clumsily fell right off the deck."
Thud.
The words hit Leansei like a physical blow. A violent, suffocating pump exploded against his ribs, his heart hammering erratically as the agonizing memory of falling into the abyss of the black lake rushed back behind his eyelids. His hands shook inside his pockets, his fingers curling into a tightly clenched fist as his gaze dropped to the floor. He could practically feel a dark, suffocating presence bleeding into his shadows, threatening to swallow his humanity whole.
Corshe sharply glanced at Leansei's profile, taking a sudden step back. He was completely taken aback; a heavy, terrifying presence—an aura of pure, raw trauma he had never witnessed in the boy before—was radiating off Leansei's shoulders. Recognizing that this mindless, arrogant lady had crossed a lethal line, Corshe's face contorted with rage.
He opened his mouth to bark a harsh insult at her, but the words died in his throat as a massive shadow loomed over the group.
Xerchin strode into the light, his handsome features frozen in a lethal, bone-chilling glare directed straight at the red-haired girl. The girl's superficial smile withered instantly. She swallowed hard, her skin turning completely pale as she shrank under the terrifying, protective aura Xerchin radiated from behind Leansei's back.
"I—I think I better head back inside, Kean. See you around," she stammered out frantically, her voice shaking before she turned on her heel and ran away into the safety of the crowd.
Leansei couldn't hear a single trace of the surrounding high-society chatter anymore. The only sound filtering through his brain was the deafening, rapid pump inside his chest cavity. A cold layer of sweat broke across his temples, running down his skin as the sheer weight of the near-drowning experience paralyzed his nervous system.
His knees buckled, his legs weakening completely as his balance fractured. He began to stumble toward the concrete pavement, but Corshe's fast reflexes saved him, his hands snapping out to securely catch Leansei's collapsing frame with an expression of intense, deep-seated concern.
Xerchin immediately lunged forward, his arm extending to pull Leansei into his own chest, but his fingers froze mere inches from the navy blue fabric. The bitter memory of Leansei's harsh rejection outside the restroom flashed in his mind. His jaw clenching, Xerchin slowly, painfully lowered his hand back to his side, sharply turning his head to look at Beidhen, who was already striding purposefully toward them.
The brief eye contact between the Vcheroi brothers carried an intense, almost telepathic layer of communication. They analyzed the crisis in a fraction of a second. Beidhen gave his older brother a single, firm nod of absolute assurance, effectively taking responsibility for the situation.
Xeilin and Revin hurriedly broke away from the main lounge tables, their faces dropping into synchronized, worried looks as they rushed over to join the circle.
"I'll carry him downstairs to a private lounge room," Beidhen announced clearly, sliding his arms under Leansei's frame to assist him toward the back stairs while the surrounding adults remained completely wrapped up in their loud corporate discussions.
From across the lawn, Felean tracked their movement, quickly plastering a frantic, worried brotherly mask over his features as Mrs. Ferech finally noticed the commotion. Her eyes widened in panic as she hurried over, her heart dropping at the sight of Leansei's entirely pale, unresponsive face.
"What on earth happened?!" Mrs. Ferech gasped out, but before the panic could disrupt the gala, Beidhen pitch-perfectly managed the crowd, answering her questions in a polite, highly disciplined manner as he escorted the boy away.
.
Leansei slowly fluttered his eyes open, a quiet groan escaping his dry throat as he sat up against a mountain of plush, soft pillows. He adjusted his glasses and looked around, blinking at the familiar, expansive layout of his bedroom inside the Ferech mansion. A damp white towel slid down from his forehead from the movement. He caught the fabric, leaning over to drop it into a nearby silver bowl resting on the nightstand.
"Look who's finally awake."
Leansei flinched violently at the sound, turning his head sharply toward the far side of the room. Felean was leaning casually against the wallpapered wall, his arms crossed over his chest.
"You truly possess a magnificent talent for ensuring every single eye in a room is fixed on you, don't you?" Felean stated, his tone dripping with pure, unadulterated annoyance.
"Well, it's certainly not my fault that I am infinitely more famous and memorable than you will ever be," Leansei countered flatly, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress to face his brother.
Felean's jaw clenched into a hard line, his hands balling into tight, angry fists. Striding forward with an irritated, aggressive look, he reached down and violently grabbed a fistful of Leansei's casual shirt, yanking him upward.
"Why exactly did you have to come back here alive anyway?" Felean hissed, his voice dangerous and low as he glared into his eyes. "You should have just died out there in the ocean—"
Leansei remained entirely calm, his heart rate steady as he stared back into the furious face. He still couldn't decipher what deep-seated malice or dark history Kean actually shared with this boy to drive their relationship to such a toxic, broken state.
"Can't you at least give me a brief break?" Leansei asked softly, his voice devoid of fear. "I literally just woke up from an episode." Felean let out a sharp, highly sarcastic chuckle, his grip tightening around the fabric until the threads strained.
"Don't you ever dare forget that everything is entirely your fault. It's your fault that my life is twisted this way, and you can never blame a single other person for the permanent damage you caused."
Leansei merely stared back at him in absolute, hushed silence.
' So... whatever happened in the past was explicitly Kean's fault? ; he thought, a quiet curiosity twisting inside him. ' I am genuinely starting to wonder what dark secrets these two brothers are hiding. But... it's completely out of my league. It's not my concern anymore. I just need to survive long enough to leave this entire place permanently. '
"Don't you ever expect me to treat you like an actual brother," Felean whispered venomously, his face mere inches away. "Because as far as I am concerned... the real Kean died on that ocean." With a harsh, violent shove, he released his grip on Leansei's clothes, stepping back.
Click.
The bedroom door suddenly swung open, and Mrs. Ferech stepped across the threshold, a startled, pale look entering her features as her eyes locked onto the two boys. Felean froze instantly, his mouth opening as he found himself entirely out of words—caught completely red-handed in the middle of his true, toxic self.
"What exactly is happening in here?" Mrs. Ferech demanded, her forehead knotting into a hard, suspicious line as she balanced a heavy silver tray in her hands. "Are you two actively fighting right now?"
"I—I..." Felean stammered, looking down at his shoes as his charismatic mask crumbled into a helpless silence.
"My legs suddenly suffered a massive cramp," Leansei intervened smoothly, turning his head to look directly at the mother. "I merely asked him to help lift me up so I could stretch."
Hearing the seamless excuse, the suspicion vanished from Mrs. Ferech's face, her hard frown fading away as she nodded understandingly, walking deeper into the room. "Is that truly all it was?" she sighed with relief, carefully setting the heavy tray onto the mattress beside him. She turned a warm look toward her youngest. "How exactly is your brother feeling now, son?"
Felean shot a quick, warnings-filled glance at Leansei, desperately scrambling to reassemble his polite facade. "He's... he's doing perfectly fine now, Mom." The timeline finally clicked in Leansei's brain, memory fragments rearranging themselves as he recalled the chaotic, suffocating atmosphere of the rooftop garden and the red-haired girl's words.
"What exactly happened after I lost consciousness?" Leansei asked, shifting his weight.
Mrs. Ferech stepped closer, reaching out to gently press the back of her warm palm against his forehead to check his temperature. "You suddenly suffered an exceptionally high fever while we were standing out on the rooftop. The family doctor examined you and stated that an unexpected trigger had violently reawakened your past trauma... which is exactly why your body collapsed into a fever."
"I guess Beidhen carried me all the way to the car, then," Leansei muttered, sheepishly scratching his temple as he recalled the delinquent's arm around his neck.
Mrs. Ferech smiled beautifully, reaching over to lift the polished silver cover away from the tray, revealing a bowl of steaming, perfectly prepared porridge flanked by crisp bacon and a fried egg. The savory aroma filled the bedroom instantly. "No, silly. A completely different person drove you all the way back to the estate and carried you up to your room," she cooed, sliding the tray closer to his lap.
Leansei quickly grabbed the silver fork and spoon, his appetite roaring as he realized his stomach was entirely empty. He began aggressively chewing a piece of bacon. He felt as though he hadn't consumed a real meal in days, and the culinary execution of the dish was absolute perfection.
"You've been trapped in a deep sleep for an entire day and a half, my dear," Mrs. Ferech noted softly, placing a small plastic cup containing his mandatory pills onto the nightstand. She watched him eat with a profound sense of relief. "Make sure you drink your medication the exact second you finish that plate." Leansei nodded happily, thoroughly enjoying the comfort food. But his movements froze completely as his mother dropped a casual, conversational remark into the quiet room.
"Oh, right... Xerchin was the one who brought you home. He insisted on driving you back himself, and he personally carried you in his arms all the way up the stairs to this very bed."
Cough!
The food lodged squarely in Leansei's throat. He began choking violently, his face turning a bright, breathless crimson as his heart short-circuited. Mrs. Ferech gasped in alarm, frantically reaching over to lift the glass of water from the tray and pressing it against his lips until he drained the liquid in several desperate gulps.
He sat completely frozen against the pillows, a sudden, explosive panic hammering against his ribs at the mere mention of the athlete's name.
' Xerchin drove me home? He personally carried my body up to this room and laid me on this bed after everything I said to him?! '
"W-what...???" Leansei gasped out, his gray eyes wide with absolute, pure shock.
o///_///o