Leansei tossed his towel over his damp hair as he ambled out of the master bathroom. He came to a sudden halt when he realized Xerchin was still sitting on the edge of the bed, his light blue eyes locked entirely onto Leansei's frame before sharply tracing down to his legs. Xerchin's ears flushed a dark, violent shade of crimson.
A wave of unexpected embarrassment and shyness crashed over Leansei, locking his joints.
Xerchin immediately snapped his gaze away toward the window frame, clearing his throat awkwardly. "I think... your shorts are a little too..."
Leansei subtly glanced down at his own buttocks—or more accurately, the dark, form-fitting athletic cycling shorts he had pulled on after his shower.
' It is indeed incredibly short and fitted, ' Leansei realized, his ears warming.
In terms of personal comfort, he had always preferred wearing sleek cycling shorts every single night, finding them the most flexible garment to wear whenever he slept. He sheepishly scratched his temple, his mind spinning into a defensive spiral as he reconsidered his lower wardrobe.
' Is it really that bad? Well, it's not like I am the only person currently residing in this penthouse tonight, and Perial is active in the other room... maybe it truly is too awkward to wear this around an audience? '
"Should I change?" Leansei muttered softly. He pivoted on his heel, walking back toward the small wooden cabinet and leaning forward to fish through the drawers for a pair of loose, standard Bermuda shorts instead.
Leansei flinched slightly when Xerchin suddenly bolted upright from the mattress. The athlete stood perfectly motionless for a fraction of a second, his ears looking as vibrantly red as a smashed tomato, looking exactly as if he had frozen solid from the gelid ice of an unexpected avalanche.
Leansei blinked through his glasses, looking at him with pure innocence. "What on earth is wrong with you?"
"N-nothing!" Xerchin stammered out, his synthetic composure crumbling into a rare, stuttering frequency. He shifted his weight toward the threshold. "I—is there any other available bathroom in this apartment?"
"Yes... there's a private one inside Perial's guest room—" Leansei started to explain, but he was cut violently short.
Xerchin practically rushed out of the master bedroom, his heavy footsteps retreating down the corridor before Leansei could even track his movement. Lean stared blankly at the empty doorway, holding the cotton Bermuda shorts in his hand as he scratched his neck in sheer confusion.
' What on earth is wrong with that guy tonight? Didn't he just used my bathroom earlier? '
He shook his head aggressively to dismiss the thought, stepping back into the master bath to quickly change into the loose shorts. Within a few minutes, he exited his room and walked straight into the main living room, instantly greeted by a glorious wave of pure high-society chaos.
Clustered around the coffee table, Corshe, Revin, and Xeilin were mindlessly munching on potato chips while staring intensely into a collection of opened textbooks and binders. They looked exactly as if they were performing a high-stakes, stressful brainwashing session. Meanwhile, on the plush rugs across the room, Beidhen, Rell, and Perial were aggressively operating their DualShock controllers, playing a competitive PS4 matching game.
Leansei's gray eyes subtly scanned the open layout, but he couldn't spot Xerchin anywhere in the immediate vicinity.
' Is he still barricaded inside the guest bathroom? Did he get an upset stomach or something? '
"Gavin! Come over here right now!" Corshe cheered loudly, waving a handful of chips through the air. "We were just actively teaching Revin the core concepts for the mandatory long test tomorrow morning."
Leansei walked over, dropping down onto the carpet beside Corshe. His gaze drifted to the textbooks scattered across the table, a sudden realization hitting his brain: these were Kean's personal academic binders.
"Oh... sorry about that, but we saw your textbooks sitting right on your open shelves," Corshe explained casually, flipping a page.
Thud.
A violent, suffocating pump exploded against Leansei's ribs, his heart hammering so frantically he genuinely feared it was going to bounce right off his chest cavity. His fingers began to twitch nervously, his blood running instantly ice-cold.
"D-did you guys... happen to open my leather bag out there?" Leansei asked, desperately forcing his voice to remain flat.
' The stolen semi-automatic pistol... I haven't taken the firearm out of that bag yet...'
"Ahh, no, absolutely not," Corshe reassured him, munching happily on a fresh chip. "You were busy inside the shower room, so we merely grabbed the binders from the shelf. We can't just open your personal bag without your explicit consent, Gavin."
Leansei let out one long, ragged breath through his teeth—a massive sign of profound relief. The paranoia vanished from his throat. Wanting to eliminate the security vulnerability once and for all, he casually stood up, retrieved his bag from the console, and quietly slipped the heavy firearm into the safest, most hidden interior compartment of his closet where only he could ever find it.
Once the weapon was secured, he returned to the circle, dropping beside Corshe to actively study the conversion metrics for tomorrow's examination.
"HAHAHA! I won again, you absolute loser!" Beidhen's rowdy voice roared across the room, a triumphant smirk cutting across his face as he turned to taunt Rell.
Rell's features twisted into a thoroughly annoyed scowl, but before he could argue, Perial let out a hysterical, beautiful laugh. Beidhen checked his celebration, blinking in surprise as he looked back and forth between her smug face and the digital television monitor.
"I'm actually the one who claimed the championship title, you idiot," Perial flexed, raising her tiny, slim arms in the air like a heavy-duty professional wrestler.
Rell and Beidhen could only glare at her with identical, frowning faces. At that exact second, the short hallway door clicked, and Xerchin walked back into the living room, his ears still distinctly flushed a dark crimson as he quietly claimed a spot on the far end of the sofa.
Leansei stole a brief, distracted glance at his side, before aggressively jamming his eyes back down into his notebook layout, his heart rate spiking as he forgot the exact definition he had been reading.
"Alright, who exactly invented the Celsius scale?" Corshe questioned, pointing his pencil at Leansei. But Lean sat entirely dazed, his thoughts completely wandering somewhere else. Xeilin and Revin noticed his foggy expression, trading a confused look before calling out to him.
"Hey..."
"Gavin!" Leansei flinched violently, snapping straight back to reality.
"W-what? What exactly was the question again?"
"Who invented Celsius?" Corshe repeated slowly.
"Anders Celsius," Leansei answered confidently, his real-life memories serving him perfectly.
"Who invented the Fahrenheit scale?"
"Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit."
"Convert exactly 40 degrees Celsius to Fahrenheit." Leansei stared blankly at his notebook, his mind operating like a heavy-duty calculator as he mentally executed the formula: multiply forty by nine, divide by five, and add thirty-two.
"104 degrees Fahrenheit," Leansei answered smoothly.The three boys frozen, staring at each other with completely surprised, amazed faces at the lightning-speed calculation.
"Honestly, I don't think you even need to participate in this review block," Revin noted with a teasing, playful tone.
"Well, what on earth do you expect from the official Vice President of the Student Council?" Xeilin added proudly.
Corshe fixed the frames of his round eyeglasses, his face lighting up. "Wow... is this the scientific reason why you are every single professor's favorite student on campus?"
"Shut your mouths and keep reading..." Leansei muttered, a small smile touching his lips as he shook his head, sharply averting his eyes back to his notes to hide his blush. He analyzed the criteria, calculating that there was likely only a twenty-five percent probability that these standard textbook definitions would appear on the actual test sheet; the remaining seventy-five percent would be the professor's own complex queries.
They continued their quiet study session for another block of time, while across the room, Xerchin remained perfectly silent on the sofa, maintaining his usual unbothered expression. Yet, through the shadows, his light brown eyes were secretly, intensely tracking the way Leansei concentrated on his binders.
"Argh! I completely give up on this garbage!" Beidhen barked with pouty lips, throwing his DualShock controller onto the carpet. He reached back, resting his palms a few inches behind his torso to lean back lazily. Perial dropped her own controller, raising her hand with a jolly, triumphant expression.
"I officially claimed victory yet again!" Perial cheered cheerfully.
"You—" Rell started to snap, but his sentence was cut short as his smartphone vibrated aggressively with a loud ringtone. He checked the ID, excused himself from the mat, and stepped toward the terrace to take the call.
"You are ridiculously good at this game," Beidhen muttered, looking completely dazed as if he had just brutally failed the final championship round at the Sea Games. "I utterly can't believe I just let a girl dominate the scoreboard against me."
"That's because you suck at gaming!" Corshe chimed in, his voice entirely unaudible and muffled because his mouth was stuffed full of potato chips, distorting the words completely.
"Who on earth is talking to me right now?" Beidhen mocked, cupping a hand over his ear as he pretended to be stone-deaf. "I can't hear a single thing over the crunching."
"You—" Corshe started to growl, but before he could launch a full physical attack, Revin reached across the table and shoved a massive marshmallow straight into Corshe's open mouth, effectively disabling his vocal cords. Corshe shot Revin a murderous glare, but surrendered, aggressively chewing the sweet treat instead.
"Kean," Perial called out suddenly, her voice dropping into a quieter register as she looked across at the table. Leansei shifted his head to glance at her. "Tell me... are you genuinely excited?" Leansei's forehead knotted into a hard, confused scowl, the underlying meaning behind her complex query entirely lost on him.
"Excited for what?"
"Oh, right. You still don't remember a single trace of it because of the amnesia," Perial sighed softly, tilting her head back to look at the ceiling as if she were actively reminiscing about their past milestones. "Every single summer break, without fail, you used to get so hyperly excited about traveling down to Levous City. In the past, you were entirely ready to leave absolutely anything behind or do whatever it took just to ensure you could spend your days there."
Leansei swallowed hard, his throat dry as his mind drifted into an absolute panic.
' If the real Kean traveled to Levous City every single year...Then... is there a slight probability that we had actually seen each other back home? ' Leansei's thoughts spun into a chaotic circle. ' Did we literally walk past each other on the streets of Levous City before all of this? No... that is impossible. It's not like I ever had the luxury to wander around other places outside of the specific diner, cafe and convenience where I worked and the library where I studied. '
"Oh, yeah! Gavin once explicitly told me during primary school that he would execute his absolute best performance just to secure a longer stay in Levous City," Corshe supplied, fixing his eyeglasses as he recalled the memory. "And every single time he returned to campus, he would look simultaneously sad and jolly as usual."
"Did he really?" Leansei whispered out unconsciously, the words escaping his lips before his brain could catch them.
The exact microsecond the question left his mouth, he froze, realizing his massive blunder. Panicking behind his teeth, he frantically scrambled to manufacture an executive excuse to play it cool. "I mean... yeah. I... I do remember feeling that exact way... but with the amnesia, I can't quite piece together the specific details of why." Leansei muttered, sheepishly scratching the back of his neck to look convincing.
The entire living room turned their heads, their eyes locking onto his profile as if they were waiting for a deeper explanation. Leansei kept his eyes fixed firmly on the table, unable to look his loyal friends in the eye as a heavy wave of guilt crushed his ribs.
' Do I truly have to keep spinning this web of endless lies to protect myself? ' Leansei wailed silently, a profound wave of sadness darkling his gray pupils. ' But it's not like I can ever reveal the factual truth to them... let alone stay trapped in this beautiful life forever. My time is running out. I am status-confirmed forced to leave this place sooner or later. '
"Enough of that! What if we just play a game?" Perial cut in, her features brightening into a jolly smile as she shifted her body to face the circle, raising both hands to the level of her neck.
"What kind of game are we even talking about?" Xeilin asked, looking up from his notes.
"It's a survival elimination game," Perial explained, her fingers expanding to demonstrate the mechanics. "Each one of us takes turns asking the group a specific question about something they've done or experienced. If you are that person, or if you've actually tried what was asked, you lose one life. The total life we all possess is exactly ten, and instead of writing the count down, we will use our own hands as our physical lives."
"That sounds incredibly lame," Beidhen whispered from his spot on the rug, his baritone voice casual.
Perial's eyes narrowed into a mischievous, sharp smile, completely catching the comment. "Which is exactly why the stakes are high. The very first person who completely runs out of fingers and loses all ten lives becomes the official loser—and the last person who asked is granted the absolute authority to hit that person with a mandatory dare."
Leansei felt a cold spike of anxiety hit his chest. The precise, wicked way Perial was casting a suspicious smile in his direction made him intensely worried that she was orchestrating a trap explicitly meant for him. He dithered at the edge of the circle, hesitating to join.
"Come on, let's just play, Gavin!" Corshe encouraged enthusiastically, nudging his arm to convince him. "We've already completed enough structured review for the test, and it looks like a quick game won't consume that much of our time anyway."
"Yeah, we can always just resume studying the conversion metrics right after the match is finalized," Revin added, a sweet, reassuring smile softening his features. He shot a glance over at Xeilin, who was already offering an obedient nod of agreement.
Faced with the unified front of his friends, Leansei realized he possessed absolutely zero choice but to comply. "Fine," he murmured, sliding closer to the rug.
The eight of them rearranged their seating on the floor, forming a tight, closed circle surrounding the low wooden coffee table.
"Alright, explain the exact execution of a round," Corshe commanded, leaning forward.
"I literally just did," Perial huffed.
"Then do it in a way that actually makes sense!"
"Argh, fine, you idiots," Perial grumbled, raising her left hand into the light with all five fingers extended. "If I were to initiate the round with a prompt like, 'Put down a finger if you have ever peed the bed as a child,' I would have to execute the action myself." On cue, she folded her thumb down against her palm. "But if the next question dropped was something like, 'Put down a finger if you currently dislike one of the specific people sitting inside this room,' my remaining fingers would stay perfectly still. It's incredibly easy pz."
The group offered a synchronized nod of understanding, each of them lifting both hands into the center of the table with all ten fingers extended.
"Wait, I just possess a sudden, burning need to ask—did you actually pee the bed earlier in your life, Perial?" Beidhen teased with a wicked grin.
Smack!
Corshe violently swung his rolled-up notebook, smacking Beidhen squarely across the shoulder to silence him. "That was just a theoretical example, you blockhead!" Corshe grumbled, before casting a sudden, doubtful look toward the model. "Right, Perial? It was an example?"
"It was completely an example, you absolute idiots," Perial barked, her cheeks flushing slightly. "Alright, let's officially initiate the match!"
"Who is slated to drop the very first query?" Corshe asked, scanning the faces.
"Since your mouth was the first one to question the line, you are automatically selected to lead," Beidhen supplied with a silly, provocative smile.
"You—!" Corshe pouted aggressively, crossing his arms as his brain scrambled to manufacture a clever prompt. After a silent beat, a proud, triumphant smile broke across his lips. "Oh, okay! Put down a finger if you are gay!"
The casual prompt struck the room like a physical blow, plunging the entire living room into an absolute, stone-quiet stillness. Every single pair of eyes in the circle slowly drifted toward Corshe, who stood completely perplexed by the sudden freeze, his proud smile withering away the exact microsecond he realized his question hadn't gone nearly as smoothly as his mind had anticipated.
Leansei stared blankly down at his own extended hands, his thoughts spinning into a defensive, complicated spiral. In terms of factual record, he had never once sat down to analyze his own sexuality, nor did he know whether his soul was status-confirmed straight or not. Throughout his brutal past life in Levous City, he had been entirely too consumed by basic physical survival and grueling part-time shifts to ever explore romance; he had never been permitted to spend personal time with a girl, let alone secure an actual girlfriend. Looking at his fingers, he found himself utterly unable to conclude which definition belonged to his heart.
Beside him, Perial sank into a deep, intense train of thought, her fingers remaining frozen as she copied Corshe's stunned expression. Across the wood, the dynamics of the circle shifted into an undercover war of glances: Beidhen's light brown eyes subtly drifted sideways, tracking Revin's reaction, while Rell shot a quick, intensely focused look toward Xeilin. Xerchin didn't look at any of them; his piercing gaze remained pinned entirely to Leansei's profile, analyzing the way the boy was staring at his own palm with a dazed, profoundly confused expression.
Xerchin's lips curved into a sharp, quiet smirk. He shifted his weight, his eyes accidentally crossing path with Beidhen, who was still entirely preoccupied with watching a silent, rigid Revin.
A heavy, suffocating layer of awkwardness wrapped around the four walls as the seconds ticked by, and not a single person in the room folded a finger. Corshe sat entirely frozen, his mind clearly trapped in a deeper, more complicated introspection regarding his own question than he had ever faced before.
"O-okay! Xeilin, your turn is next!" Perial blurted out awkwardly, desperately trying to shatter the tense, frozen atmosphere.
Xeilin cleared his throat, adjusting his posture as he scanned the extended hands. "Put down a finger if you have ever skipped an academic class."
"Oh, come on! That is not fair!" Beidhen pouted aggressively, let out a sharp huff as he folded his very first finger down against his palm.
"Completely unfair," Rell echoed, his features twisting into an annoyed scowl as he folded his pinky finger down to match the delinquent.
"I completely agree," Perial sighed, folding her own finger down with a defeated look.
Leansei stared at his hand, a vivid memory fragment rearranging itself behind his eyes. He recalled a specific morning back in his real life when he was walking toward his school building, only to receive a frantic notification that an emergency shift change required his immediate presence at his part-time diner job. He had simply prioritized his survival income, reasoning that an academic absence was infinitely easier to manage than losing his job.
Maintaining his absolute composure, Leansei slowly folded his first finger down.
The movement caught the entire circle by surprise. Every single head snapped toward him, their eyes wide as they stared at him completely dumbfounded, as if he had just spilled ink across a pristine white sheet.
"There is absolutely no way," Perial gasped, her jaw dropping in pure shock.
"Yeah, that is a massive lie," Rell added, his voice dripping with absolute disbelief. "In terms of campus record, you have never accumulated a single unexcused absence since the very first day of junior high school. Unless there was a critical medical emergency or you were literally hospitalized, your seat was always occupied."
' They really know every single detail about the old Kean, ' Leansei thought, a profound layer of guilt tightening his throat as he kept his eyes lowered. ' But the truth is, I am not Kean right now. I am Leansei. I am forced to answer these questions as myself. '
"Alright, look, let's just move past the logistics! Next question!" Perial commanded quickly, eager to keep the match moving.
"Have you ever experienced your very first kiss?" Revin asked softly.
Leansei's fingers froze over his palm as a sudden, distant childhood memory forced its way into his mind. He recalled a blurred scenario from his early days when someone had unexpectedly stolen his first kiss.
' Does that clumsy childhood incident even count? ' he questioned himself frantically. ' I guess... biologically, it does. ' Leansei slowly folded another finger down.
The game accelerated into a brutal, rapid sequence of queries that Leansei couldn't fully catalog through his fatigue. Prompt after prompt struck his real-life history, forcing him to fold his fingers down one by one until the timeline caught up to him. He looked down at his hand; he was left with exactly one single extended finger.
The rotation shifted, and it was officially Xerchin's turn to drop a question.
The athlete adjusted his stance, his light brown eyes locking directly onto Leansei's pale face. He looked at the extended hands around the table, noting with absolute precision that Leansei was the single executive player left on the dangerous brink of elimination. A hard crease cut between his brows, and his baritone voice dropped into an incredibly sincere, dead-serious frequency.
"Put down a finger... if a specific person sitting inside this very room currently makes your heart flutter." Leansei swallowed hard, his throat going completely dry as the words vibrated through his chest. He felt an immediate, violent thud explode against his ribs, his heart rate spiking into a frantic rhythm as Xerchin stared at him intently under the moonlight, his mercurial blue-tinted gaze piercing clean through his defenses.
The question sent a quiet shockwave across the rug. Revin sharply cut his eyes toward Beidhen, who had suddenly gone entirely quiet, staring preoccupiedly down at his own hand. Rell shot a quick, troubled look sideways at Xeilin, who looked deeply stressed by the emotional weight of the prompt. Across from them, Perial and Corshe locked eyes, their features softening into smug, knowing expressions as they watched the chaos.
In a fraction of a second, four of them folded their fingers down simultaneously.Meanwhile, Leansei sat entirely paralyzed, his hand trembling as an explosive panic hammered against his ribs.
' W-what on earth am I supposed to do right now? If I fold my final finger, the game is officially over and they will aggressively demand to know who the person is... and I cannot look them in the eye and say... No! That's a lie! I have never let my heart flutter for anyone sitting inside this condo, not even...'
Leansei risked a glance across the table, his gray eyes locking onto Xerchin. The athlete had already lowered his head, a heavy, unyielding shadow of gloom darkling his features as he stared down at the floor mats.
' Xerchin... '
Leansei thought, his chest tightening with a raw, agonizing ache. His fingers slowly began to weaken, his final extended finger hovering on the dangerous verge of folding down to confess the truth.
BZZZZT!
The loud, aggressive ring of the front door buzzer suddenly exploded through the penthouse, violently shattering the intimate standoff and cutting the tension in a single microsecond.
Leansei snapped his head around, letting out a long, trembling gasp of air as a profound wave of relief washed over his throat. He silently sent a prayer of gratitude to whatever entity had just pressed that button across the threshold. Springing up to his feet with clumsy haste, he backed away from the circle.
"I'll... I'll be the one to go open the front door," Leansei blurted out, a nervous, highly awkward laugh escaping his lips as he hurried down the short hallway to escape the trap.
He gripped the metal handle, unlocked the electronic bolt, and pulled the heavy door open. Standing in the dimly lit corridor was a delivery courier, clumsy balancing a massive, towering stack of insulated thermal grocery bags stuffed to the brim with hot restaurant containers.
Leansei blinked through his glasses, thoroughly confused by the sheer volume of food. "I... I think you have the wrong condo. I didn't order a single thing tonight."
"I did," Xerchin's deep baritone called out from directly behind his shoulder.
Leansei flinched violently, stepping sharply to the side to create space as his heart hammered against his ribs like he had just sprinted a hundred miles down an endless road without a single break. The close proximity of the athlete was making his head spin.
"Here you go, sir. The digital transaction cleared, and I have received the ten thousand payment on the account," the delivery guy announced politely, transferring the heavy load into Xerchin's broad arms.
"Let me help you with those," Leansei intervened quickly, desperate to look busy and hide his blushing face as he reached over to take half of the insulated bags.
"No, it's fine. I can easily manage the weight—" Xerchin started to reject the help, his light brown eyes searching Leansei's face.
Leansei didn't bother to let him finish the sentence. He aggressively snatched two of the heaviest plastic handles and marched straight back into the living room to break the contact. The exact second he dropped the steaming containers onto the marble island, the corporate packaging split open, releasing a rich, savory aroma that filled the entire penthouse.
The three friends on the floor mats immediately abandoned their binders, their eyes sparkling with pure, ravenous hunger as if they hadn't consumed a real meal in days.
"Whoa! Look at all of this!" Beidhen chuckled loudly, swaggering over to the island to aggressively tear open the lids. "My older brother is acting like a total material boyfriend tonight, isn't he?" Leansei's face burned a bright, breathless crimson at the ridiculous title, but before he could bark a denial, Perial clapped her hands together with a bright, cheerful expression.
"Hey, the night is still incredibly young! Why don't we turn on the television monitor and watch a movie together while we eat?"