[Tomorrow X Together Yeonjun/ Yeonjun Soobin] Red Nest

[Yeonsup] Red Nest Episode 6

 

Yunjun's lips that had touched the back of his hand lifted away, but as if lingering in the wake of them, a cold warmth remained on Soobin's skin for a long time.

Soobin hurriedly pulled his intertwined hands apart and stepped back beside the bed.

At the sight of Soobin at a loss, clutching the back of his hand tightly with the other, Yunjun let out a low laugh as if he'd forgotten even the pain in his shoulder.

“You don't have to make it so obvious; I can see everything, Soobin.”

“...I'm not sure what you're talking about.”

“Your ears are red all the way to the nape of your neck, and you're saying with your whole body that you're worried about me.”

Yunjun got up from his seat and straightened his collar. His movements were just slightly slowed by the shoulder he'd treated a moment ago, but that languid, oppressive air of his remained unchanged.

Yunjun glanced over the scattered fragments of furniture and the ashes of the lowly brutes strewn across the floor.

“This room won't be usable for a while. Let's move to another room.”

As Yunjun took the lead and walked ahead, Soobin hesitated for a moment before following after him.

The hallway was in disarray.

The manor's servants were busily moving about, clearing away the broken wall and wiping up the bloodstains.

Whenever Soobin passed by, he could feel their gazes turning toward him.

A human who had given first aid to the master's wound and guarded his back.

At first they'd thought he was nothing more than simple prey or a creature kept for breeding, but he'd become someone who had earned his master's trust. Their eyes flickered between wariness and curiosity.

The place Yunjun brought Soobin to was the deepest part of the manor: his own bedroom, connected to his private office.

It was much larger and more spacious than the room Soobin had stayed in the night before, a space thick with a cool rose scent.

“Stay here.”

“Huh? This is your room, Mr. Yunjun.”

“What if those lowlifes storm in again? It's safest to keep you right in front of me.”

Yunjun spoke as if it were an utterly reasonable explanation, then flopped down carelessly at the desk in his office.

On the desk were piles of reports on the attack and documents detailing the relationships between the families.

It was clear that the attack had only made the rumors within the pureblood vampire faction about Soobin's presence even louder.

Soobin sat quietly on the sofa beside the bed, watching Yunjun.

His furrowed brow and tightly pressed lips as he flipped through the documents. As the ruler of the night, he looked somehow weary in the shoulders, as if the burden of protecting the manor and his territory weighed on him.

'Because of me... did things get even more complicated?'

Soobin couldn't hide the bitter feeling in his chest. In the Hunter family, he'd been a useless failure, a burden; and even here, he felt like nothing but a burden bringing crisis to Yunjun.

“What are you thinking about so hard?”

Before he knew it, Yunjun had set the documents aside and come up in front of Soobin.

With one arm resting on the back of the sofa, Yunjun looked down at Soobin with eyes that seemed more fleeting and wistful than before.

“It feels like I'm becoming a burden.”

Soobin murmured honestly.

“In the family, I was a burden too... and even here, my being here caused an intrusion, and you got hurt, Yunjun.”

Yunjun was silent for a moment. Then he slowly lifted a hand and gently brushed through Soobin's neat hair.

His fingers passed through Soobin's hair and softly touched his cheek.

“Don't mistake it, Choi Soobin.”

Yunjun's voice was low, but for some reason, it was warm.

“If you were a burden, I would have thrown you away at that place yesterday. Protecting you was my choice, and you protected my back, didn't you?”

“......”

“To me, you're not a burden... you're the one thing in this uninteresting eternity that lets me breathe properly for the first time.”

Yunjun's red pupils glowed faintly.

It was not the gaze of a predator's obsession or greed, but of someone craving the only warmth he'd found at the end of a long, lonely life.

Yunjun slowly lowered his head and pressed his lips to Soobin's forehead.

Unlike the somewhat threatening physical contact from the night before, this was a deeply gentle, careful kiss, almost like a blessing.

Soobin closed his eyes in the enveloping silence. Even when Yunjun's lips left his forehead and moved past his cheek to near the nape of his neck, this time he didn't feel like running away.

All he felt was the cold rose scent wrapping around him, and Yunjun's deep sincerity within it, making his heart beat on and on.

The enormous wall that had stood between the two of them—hunter and vampire—was slowly melting away in the temperature of this silence.