Free Web Novel“Let’s kiss.”
Yoon Taehee’s eyes widened.
“...What?”
Jaegyeom abruptly threw off the blanket, sat up, and climbed on top of him. The bed creaked loudly beneath the sudden movement.
“You always do whatever you want. Why can’t I?”
His tone was completely matter-of-fact.
“...”
Taehee looked genuinely flustered.
The expression gave Jaegyeom a strange thrill of satisfaction.
Then, all at once, Taehee turned his face away.
“What are you doing?”
Jaegyeom grabbed his jaw and forced him to look back.
Taehee looked deeply uncomfortable now, eyes darting around as though he didn’t know where to focus them.
“Close your eyes.”
At the sharp command, Taehee hesitated briefly before reluctantly shutting them. His eyelashes trembled faintly.
Jaegyeom stared down at the absurdly beautiful face beneath him and slowly lowered himself closer.
Just before their lips touched, he murmured,
“Hey.”
Their noses brushed lightly together.
Taehee opened his eyes again.
“You’re not Yoon Taehee, are you?”
His expression froze instantly.
Still holding his face, Jaegyeom braced one hand against the mattress and tightened his grip on Taehee’s jaw with the other.
“Who are you?”
And then—
The jaw beneath his hand suddenly collapsed like jelly.
It squished grotesquely under his fingers. freewebnovёl.ƈom
Startled, Jaegyeom jerked his hand away.
“...What the—”
He stared down at his own hand in confusion.
And then—
“Seventy-Seven!”
***
“Seventy-Seven!”
Something yanked him upward.
Jaegyeom’s eyes flew open.
Blinding white light flooded his vision.
The first thing he saw was Im Hyomun’s face looming in front of him.
“Wh-what?”
Startled by the completely different face from the one he’d just been looking at, Jaegyeom recoiled so violently that he tipped backward with the chair.
“Hey! You okay?”
Im Hyomun hurriedly reached out.
Jaegyeom, now sprawled on the floor, grabbed the offered hand and staggered back to his feet. Still dazed, he looked around wildly.
“...Why am I here?”
It was the lounge on the third floor of the main building.
***
Jaegyeom had stayed awake the entire night.
“When I kiss you, you can slap me.”
Yesterday, Yoon Taehee had kept his word and kissed him.
And the moment the kiss ended, Jaegyeom slapped him across the face.
Unlike last time, when he’d been caught off guard, this time he’d managed not to use spiritual force. Even so, the blow had been hard enough to snap Taehee’s head sideways and split open the wound on his lip that had only just started healing.
Taehee turned his eyes toward him.
Then, seemingly unconcerned by the pain, he pressed his tongue briefly against the reopened cut, sucked once at the blood on his lip, and turned away without another word, leaving through the emergency stairwell.
Jaegyeom had remained there alone in the dark stairwell for quite a while afterward, completely dazed.
By the time he returned to the office, Taehee had already left work. His desk was empty.
Jaegyeom had slapped him partly out of pride.
He’d clearly warned him not to kiss him, and Taehee had ignored him anyway.
It had been an act of spite too—because some part of him had felt Taehee believed Jaegyeom wouldn’t actually hit him.
But afterward, the only thing left was irritation.
The more he thought about it, the more it felt like he’d been provoked exactly the way Taehee intended.
And the thing tormenting him most was what he was supposed to do with Yoon Taehee from now on.
That question had kept him tossing awake all night long.
Unfortunately, he still had to come to work the next morning.
When he arrived at the office, only Pyo Jiho and Kang Ibin had clocked in.
Because of the nature of the Exorcism Unit’s work, nights tended to be busy while mornings were relatively quiet. Spirit activity dropped sharply after dawn, which naturally meant fewer incidents and fewer calls.
That was why most Naja preferred morning shifts.
During slow hours, people could browse the internet, study privately, or simply breathe for once. Every month, scheduling became a fierce competition to secure more morning shifts. The fact that newcomer Jaegyeom even got one at all was entirely due to Team 1’s consideration for him.
Unfortunately for Jaegyeom, today that peaceful morning shift felt more like torture.
After spending the entire night °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° trapped in his own thoughts, silence was the last thing he needed. Every empty moment only gave those thoughts more room to crawl back in.
But he was still a newcomer.
The senior members had absolutely no intention of making the rookie work hard, especially during the least hectic hours of the day.
There was practically nothing for him to do.
The only saving grace was that Yoon Taehee was off today.
“Jaegyeom, are you okay? You look awful.”
Kang Ibin peeked over the partition with a worried expression.
Trying desperately to distract himself, Jaegyeom had been scribbling paging incantations over the back of a sheet of paper. What had started as empty space was now crammed full of writing.
“You should go get some air.”
Kang Ibin stood up and began shoving him insistently by the back.
Even when he repeatedly insisted he was fine, her hand didn’t let up.
In the end, Jaegyeom reluctantly stood.
Practically chased out of the office, he wandered down the hallway and headed toward the lounge on the same floor.
Each floor of the main building had a small pantry and break area at the end of the corridor. Jaegyeom lingered around the coffee machine and microwave for a bit before grabbing a newspaper from the rack and sitting down at one of the tables.
He’d only meant to kill time before going back upstairs.
Or rather—
He definitely had been reading the newspaper.
Apparently he’d fallen asleep without noticing.
“Fuck... what kind of dream was that...”
After finally piecing together what had happened, Jaegyeom covered his face with one hand.
How the hell could he dream something like that?
Maybe it was because he hadn’t really talked properly with Taehee yesterday, and it had stayed on his mind. Maybe some part of him wanted to speak honestly, even if only in a dream.
But kissing Yoon Taehee at the end—
Of course he knew people did things in dreams they’d never consciously choose.
Still, he couldn’t forgive dream-himself for it.
The worst part was how vivid it had felt.
“Seventy-Seven, did you seriously stay up all night? Damn. Look at those dark circles.”
Still clutching his head, Jaegyeom slowly looked up.
He’d completely forgotten Im Hyomun was there.
At some point, Hyomun had already sat down across from him.
“...Why are you even here?”
Jaegyeom acknowledged him reluctantly.
“Hm? I came to buy a drink.”
Hyomun pointed toward the vending machine in the corner of the lounge.
“I woke you up because you were groaning in your sleep. Thought you were having a nightmare.”
He’d come in for a drink and found someone collapsed asleep across the table first thing in the morning. It had looked weirdly familiar, and when he checked closer, it turned out to be Seventy-Seven.
Honestly, Hyomun had briefly envied how relaxed the Exorcism Unit apparently was.
But Jaegyeom had looked strangely tense in his sleep, like someone pinned down and struggling to breathe, so Hyomun had decided to wake him up.
Then Jaegyeom nearly died of shock.
“So? Nightmare? What was it about?”
Instead of answering, Jaegyeom only cleared his throat awkwardly.
“...Don’t you have a lounge on your own floor? Why come all the way here?”
“Huh? Oh. The vending machine upstairs is broken.”
Hyomun clicked his tongue.
“They seriously need to fix that thing already.”
Jaegyeom glanced at him briefly before lowering his eyes back to the newspaper.
He flipped through it absentmindedly and let out a long sigh.
“So you worked morning shift today too. Huh? But why weren’t you on the bus? What time did you leave?” freewebnσvel.cѳm
Just as expected, the morning buses had been crowded.
Today, Jaegyeom had deliberately let several 7212 buses pass before taking a different route to work.
At this point, the effort felt completely pointless.
“You’re loud. Stop talking to me.”
“Come on, let’s chat. We’re colleagues.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
“Why not?”
Then Hyomun suddenly looked around and lowered his voice.
“So what happened?”
“What?”
The abrupt question made Jaegyeom frown.
Hyomun narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
“The person we talked about before.”
