#6. Why Am I So Angry the Moment I See You?

That dark, damp, and secretive corner, completely hidden out of sight.

As yesterday’s shameless fantasy replayed vividly in his mind once more, his throbbing lower body began to respond as if it had been waiting for this exact moment.

‘This crazy, godforsaken body…! My thoughts are filled with that bastard, and now my body is too. Am I genuinely losing my mind!’

Yuhwan clenched his fists so hard he looked ready to smash the steel chair right in front of him into pieces.

He was by no means a loose, depraved libertine, yet the sheer memory of the obscene, lustful acts he had committed against Haneul Jang inside his dream caused a searing, scalding heat to flush across his cheeks. His logic and raw instincts were caught inside a trap named Haneul Jang, completely failing to function.

Breathing heavily, Yuhwan desperately tried to cool his raging heat. He then spat out a freezing, sharp refusal toward Yoo Gyeong-ho.

"There's no way I can trouble a third-year regular senior the moment I arrive."

"What?"

Yoo Gyeong-ho let his arms drop in pure disbelief, staring intently at Yuhwan.

"I will begin once the first-year rookie catcher, Haneul Jang, arrives."

Yuhwan’s voice was laced with a razor-sharp, lethal edge.

Gyeong-ho let out a laugh, lightly tapping his mitt as if the situation was utterly absurd, but the sound didn't even register in Yuhwan’s ears.

Yuhwan's gaze remained obsessively, single-mindedly locked onto the exact direction from which Haneul Jang would appear.

***

"Achoo!"

The exact moment Haneul Jang’s feet crossed the threshold of the lecture hall, his past-life trained muscles triggered an explosive burst of speed as if reclaiming their deeply engraved memory.

It was a bizarre sensation—realizing that his physical capabilities improved by leaps and bounds with each successive lifetime.

Did the grueling, agonizing training from his previous existences genuinely store itself directly within his soul? It was a thoroughly tragic, twisted blessing.

The raw instincts from his very first life, where he had lived as a short-distance track sprinter, were shining brilliantly in this moment of sheer desperation.

The childish, venomous spite—the absolute refusal to watch Yuhwan form a battery and sync up with Yoo Gyeong-ho even if it killed him—fueled his full-on sprint.

The students across the campus parted to the left and right like the Miracle of Moses, carving a path for him. He couldn't care less about the countless, piercing stares pinning against the back of his head.

That bastard must have arrived an hour early to warm up. If I get there right now, I can catch his balls before Yoo Gyeong-ho ever gets a chance to wedge himself in.

Please, let him not be entangled with Yoo Gyeong-ho. Even amidst the suffocating agony of his lungs tearing apart, Haneul’s heart violently lunged with anxiety.

Thwack!

From deep within the barrier of the baseball field far away, the heavy sound of a ball brutally ripping into the heart of a mitt shattered the quiet serenity of the campus.

‘Ah, damn it! Am I too late?’

The sharp, echoing impact tightly squeezed Haneul’s heart.

It was the unmistakable sound of Yuhwan’s signature, destructive fastball, easily clocking near 160 km/h. The mere realization that Yuhwan was already throwing to someone else burned his insides to a crisp.

***

Haneul pushed through the agonizing pain tearing at his lungs, forcing his two legs to accelerate even faster.

If he had known things would turn out like this, he would have used a severe flu as a convenient excuse to cut class and leave early.

The belated regret leaked through his lips as a quiet, breathless groan.

Desperately scanning the mound as he reached the field, Haneul’s eyes violently trembled in pure shock.

‘Wait… what? That guy… he's the ace from Y University, isn't he?’

The figure standing proudly on the mound was not Yuhwan. The shocking reality that an entirely unexpected individual was occupying that space completely turned his logic into a blank white noise.

According to the memories of his past lives, Yuhwan was supposed to be standing right there. Facing this unpredictable anomaly, his mental gears ground to a halt. Haneul stopped dead in his tracks at the entrance of the field, gasping heavily for air.

"Achoo!"

The sneeze he had desperately tried to hold back exploded like a bomb, drawing every single gaze from the bustling field directly toward him. Forcing his way through those countless eyes, Haneul’s desperate gaze as he searched for Yuhwan's silhouette was nothing short of grim and tragic.

The sudden wave of embarrassment made him want to turn around and flee into hiding. If Yuhwan wasn't even here, there was absolutely no reason for him to mingle in this noisy crowd. Just as he was about to turn his steps away—

A cold, incredibly luxurious fragrance wedged itself from right behind his back. A sleek, gray luxury handkerchief gracefully entered his field of vision.

"How noisy."

The exact moment he faced Yuhwan’s towering silhouette—standing with an arrogant posture, his hands callously shoved deep into his jacket pockets—Haneul’s heart completely stopped beating.

The sharp, dangerous contour of his thighs tracing down his denim jeans exuded a thoroughly menacing, overwhelming masculinity.

***

Due to his relentless, disruptive sneezing fiasco, Haneul Jang was ultimately relegated to sitting pathetically on the dugout bench.

Yet, Yuhwan also refused to change into his uniform, crossing his long legs and slouching near the edge of the bench with a thoroughly lazy, defiant posture. Without casting a single glance toward Haneul or offering a single word, Yuhwan's eyes remained fixed obsessively on the mound.

If he was going to act this way, why the hell did he hand over his handkerchief in the first place? He was a man whose deep inner intentions were entirely impossible to decipher.

Sprawled lazily on the bench with his legs crossed, Yuhwan’s current demeanor was unnaturally quiet compared to his usual self. As if maliciously testing Haneul’s pool of patience, the dangerous gaze with which he scanned the field brimmed with a volatile, unstable madness.

To a baseball-crazed monster who would normally go completely wild with an urge to throw the moment he saw a ball, this behavior felt as if the sun had risen from the west.

With his arms folded like a cold, detached bystander, Yuhwan stubbornly guarded Haneul’s side, meticulously dissecting the strengths and weaknesses of every upperclassman and teammate on the field.

"Where the hell are their eyes even attached when they play baseball?"

"They must do nothing but breathing exercises for their daily conditioning."

"Nothing but a bunch of utterly hopeless, pure amateurs."

As if he were the chief director or the billionaire team owner himself, Yuhwan’s sheer arrogance pierced straight through the sky.

The brutal venom he spat out while watching the seniors' fielding errors and empty, pathetic swings was utterly merciless.

A man who always acted entirely on his own whim, behaving as if the absolute center of the universe was himself.

Yet, Haneul Jang intensely loved this deeply dictatorial, sadistically inclined Yuhwan anyway.

He had loved him through the endless accumulation of time, across four lifetimes, until his very soul had worn down into dust.

Several upperclassmen approached, holding out a fresh uniform to call Yuhwan out to the mound, but Yuhwan aggressively guarded his seat, using the utterly ridiculous excuse that he needed to look after Haneul because of his poor physical condition.

Trapped on a bed of needles, Haneul endured the absurd, bewildered stares piercing from all directions while glaring directly at Yuhwan.

It felt utterly infuriating watching Yuhwan behave as if a few mere sneezes were some sort of incurable, terminal disease. He wanted nothing more than to immediately change into his uniform and fly onto that green grass right this second.

"Yuhwan, what the hell do you think you're doing right now? Hurry up and go throw some balls. Why on earth are you just sitting here like this?"

Haneul threw a razor-sharp voice at him, desperately trying to force Yuhwan back to his rightful place.

The sheer humiliation of wasting Yuhwan's priceless, golden time because of himself cut deep, but at the exact same time, a cowardly, pathetic lust—a desperate desire to not leave his side—anchored his ankles firmly to the ground.

But right then, at that exact moment—

"I’m pretty sure I told you not to cling to me like a creep, didn't I?"

Exuding a volatile, dark aura that looked ready to swallow him whole in a single bite, Yuhwan glared straight down at Haneul with the most furious expression the world had ever seen.