Mir's Anger and the Unexpected Twist
Even though she was a girl, Mir glared at me fiercely and stormed off while shouting, her face twisted in fury.
"Ugh! Ugh! Fuck! Just go die already!!"
After such a long time, the pure joy of it all was too much for me, and teasing her just a tiny bit had crossed the line. That was why Mir had pouted and turned away.
"Sorry, Mir. I went a little too far."
"I don't know anyone like you! Fuck off!!"
I chased after the distant Mir, apologizing profusely, but she ignored me completely and kept yelling that I was no one to her.
I didn't take her at her word and instead picked up the pace, catching up to her and sliding my arm around her middle to lift her off the ground.
"Let go! Let go, you damn bastard!! Let go!!"
"I'm sorry, okay? I couldn't help getting excited without realizing it. Really, I'm sorry."
When I suddenly hoisted her, Mir thrashed and kicked the air, demanding I drop her, but she had no idea how to fight or even how to shake me off. My grip held firm.
"Heh, heh! You damn bastard! You're a real piece of shit!"
"Yeah. Now that I've been called a bastard, can you stop being so angry?"
Cheon Seong tried to calm his rival down, but this time Mir's rage refused to fade. He knew he had gone too far—Mir had always carried a complex about her height and age, and Cheon Seong was well aware of that himself.
It was an unavoidable fact for him, even in this life and the last. How many people could claim to have ever teased someone the way he had?
In his previous life, he had never thrown out jokes because there was no one to receive them, and he hadn't even liked joking in the first place. He had actually avoided anyone who annoyed him to the point of irritation—especially Yoo Hwa-young.
After regression, he had playfully tormented Hwa-young once or twice during their underground auction meeting, but that was merely revenge for the years of torment in his old life. Even so, that was who he was. The only person he ever joked with was Mir.
Excluding Yuna, his childhood friend who had always been the first to approach him, Mir was the only one Cheon Seong had ever considered a true friend—and the first friend he had made on his own.
That meant Mir was one of the very few people he could tease without fear. Still, he had gone a bit too far this time.
"Hmph! Don't know who you are! You bastard! Just walk already!"
"Yes, yes. I will follow Miss Mir's orders."
Even though Mir's anger hadn't fully subsided, she huffed with a sniffle at his words, but she had stopped thrashing. She still called him a bastard, but somehow that felt different.
Walking while soothing her like that, Mir finally spoke up.
"By the way, you bastard."
"What? Something to say?"
When Mir called him by that name, he looked down and saw her face twisted with confusion as she asked, "Why are you carrying me like this?"
"Why? Because you were running away."
"What?! I know that! But why are you carrying me like this?!"
Cheon Seong didn't understand why she was acting this way.
"Because it's more comfortable this way."
"Didn't you have a girlfriend?"
"Yeah. But what does that have to do with it?"
Mir gave him a look as if he were insane.
"Someone with a girlfriend is carrying another girl princess-style like this? Are you crazy?"
"Hmm? But this is more comfortable. We can talk while looking at each other's faces."
Mir wondered why he was doing this and realized it was because she was being held in princess carry. That only confused Cheon Seong further.
He had picked her up purely because it was easier to hold someone who might run and because they could talk while facing each other. Why was she reacting this way?
As he thought it over, Mir let out a deep sigh, raised her hand, and smacked the back of his head with her palm.
"Listen to me. If someone else saw this, they'd think you're cheating."
"What? I'm not even dating you, so why would it be cheating?"
"You idiot! Think about it the other way around! What if your girlfriend saw you carrying another girl like this?!"
"Well, first I'd cut off your limbs, cauterize the stumps to stop the bleeding, then torture you while alternating with medical treatment, and finally make you bleed to death..."
BOOM!!
Mir had cut him off mid-sentence and slammed his head down even harder than before. In other words, Mir had no idea how to fight, but she was at least as strong as an ordinary person—or stronger.
"Aaaah! My hand!"
"You hit me too, and now my head hurts. What if you were an ordinary person and suddenly started throwing punches?"
Mir clutched her own hand as if it had been the one hit, then Cheon Seong treated it for her.
"Ouch... I only know how to fight. I'm not asking about that! How do you think it would feel? Not what I'm going to do, but how it would feel!"
"Hmm... it's a bit too screwed up?"
"Exactly! That's the right answer!"
When Cheon Seong answered how it would feel, Mir shouted that he was right.
"Now think about it the other way! If your girlfriend saw this, she'd be so happy, right?!"
"Hmm... I guess so. Okay."
As expected, when he thought about it the other way, it looked like Yuna would be furious if she saw the scene.
Cheon Seong thanked Mir for telling him and adjusted his hold.
"Hey, you bastard. What kind of bullshit is this now?"
"Huh? I just changed the way I was carrying you like you said. Why?"
The way Cheon Seong spoke casually made Mir's insides boil. After all, that was exactly what he had done.
"You fuck!! What the hell did you think my words meant the whole time?! I said don't carry another girl! Then you shouldn't have been carrying her on your back either!!"
How the hell did this bastard's brain work that it switched from princess carry to piggyback?
Even if he hadn't noticed, shouting like that should have made him put her down. What kind of twisted logic allowed him to come up with a solution like this?
After that, he actually smacked his own forehead with a loud smack.
"Well, friends can carry each other too, right?"
"Who said we're friends! We're not! And what I said was—don't contact other girls if you have a girlfriend! I'm not the one who can't walk, so what's the bullshit?!"
Stop.
Cheon Seong's footsteps halted dead in their tracks the moment Mir shouted, and he turned his head to look at her.
"What? Did I say something wrong?"
Mir was stunned by Cheon Seong's sudden change and screamed, but he simply stared at her in silence before speaking.
"We're not friends?"
Snap!
When Cheon Seong asked if they weren't friends, Mir's forehead vein bulged like a cross and she grabbed his head with both hands, shouting.
"Are you fucking kidding me right now?!"
"What can you even do about it? You can't do anything with your strength, Mir."
"Use your head sometimes!...Wait, what?"
Mir tried to scold him for not using his head but suddenly froze at the feeling of déjà vu.
"Hey. What did you just call me?"
When Mir asked who he had just called her, Cheon Seong answered calmly.
"Hmm? I called you Mir. Why?"
"Ah, no, you never called me that before. Why the sudden change?"
Cheon Seong's calm tone made Mir wonder if he was running a fever and pressed her hand to his forehead. It was cold, not hot, and that only deepened her confusion.
"Well, friends can call each other by their names too."
"Crazy bastard. Even if we're not friends. We're business partners, you idiot."
As Mir kept looking doubtful, Cheon Seong smirked and asked if friends could do that. Mir drew a line and insisted they were only partners, not friends.
Yet a tiny smile crept across Mir's lips, and the title had changed from bastard to crazy bastard, though neither knew it was an improvement.
'Good thing it got better.'
Cheon Seong noticed Mir no longer hated being called his friend and felt his own irritation ease a little. He thought it was fortunate.
Small smiles formed on both their lips as they walked along, bickering lightly. If anyone else had heard, it would have sounded like a private conversation between close friends echoing through the laboratory corridor.
And then.
Hidden from Mir's sight, Loki and Sara watched with wide eyes, amazed by the scene.
'Loki and Sara... they've been moving on their own too. It's been a while.'
Of course he couldn't trick them, but Cheon Seong had known Loki and Sara from his previous life, so the emotion was fresh all over again.
After reaching their destination and setting Mir down, they continued their usual bickering exactly as before.
"L-leave me alone!"
"H-help us! Please... please h-help..."
Their destination was a place where countless cries echoed and the ground was soaked in blood. But the two of them laughed at the sight, cheerfully discussing what to do with those people.
After all, these people's lives were nothing but material for pulling down the single person named Cheon Yoo-seong.
To those few who still had their minds, the conversation between Cheon Seong and Mir was nothing more than tears of despair that would stain the ground red. But to Cheon Seong and Mir, it was simply the tear of a predator who would devour the prey without a second thought.