Idol of the Heavenly One - vanish into fiction

Right, there were some things that strangely carried over even after reincarnation. One of them was ice cream. I hadn’t liked cold ice cream in my past life either. My teeth would ache after a few bites, and I would give up soon after, so I preferred things like popsicles instead. That habit stayed with me in this life too. Whenever I thought of ice cream, the first thing that came to mind was the sting in my teeth, so I rarely reached for it. It was a habit ingrained since childhood, so even when my mom occasionally brought some home, I always ended up eating the same thing. But today, of all days, what she brought happened to be the bar type. I shook my head slightly, saying that I wouldn’t eat it, just as Young-hyo had said.

“…What’s wrong?”

At that moment, Baek Jae-heon turned his gaze toward me. It was as if he had been watching me all along, his eyes resting squarely on my face. The moment I noticed, the faint lift of his eyes sent a strange tremor through my chest. I raised my eyebrows as if to ask what he meant by that look, but Baek Jae-heon didn’t open his mouth. Instead of answering, he just looked at me in silence, as if seeing straight through me.

“Maybe you seem like a grandpa to him.”

Young-hyo cut through the moment with a teasing laugh. I frowned and said, “I just don’t like the cold touching my teeth.” She lowered her head, chuckling like it was the funniest thing in the world. I felt a little wronged to be teased over something so trivial, but the one who bothered me wasn’t my sister. It was Baek Jae-heon, who still hadn’t taken his eyes off me.

I looked back at him without much thought, and before I knew it, my gaze drifted naturally to his lips. Having just bitten into the ice cream, they glistened faintly. That small trace instantly brought back the memory of last night. Lips tangled in a frenzy, breaths cold as they seeped in, the feverish sensations that had burned into my body—everything replayed in vivid detail. A shiver ran down from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, and at the same time, heat rushed to my face. Could it be that Baek Jae-heon was thinking of the same thing while looking at me right now? The thought alone made it hard to breathe, and I couldn’t even avert my eyes.

“…Ah, the ice cream is melting.”

I forced my gaze away, speaking with my face burning red. What I meant was “Stop staring at me,” but Baek Jae-heon hesitated for a moment, then briefly dropped his gaze to my lips. Then, with a soft sigh, “Ah…,” he turned his head away, a faint blush coloring his own face. So he must have just remembered last night too.

“Get some rest until lunch.”

My mom’s voice came from the living room. Only then did my face cool down a little, but the word “lunch” immediately echoed in my ears. Since I had already eaten in the morning, I didn’t think I could take another bite. I planned to politely say I was too full. But then,

“Yes.”

I heard Baek Jae-heon’s polite reply to my mom. The words I had prepared vanished on my lips.

“Show Myeong-hyeon’s room to him.”

“Oh… should I?”

My father, who had been hiding in the master bedroom to escape my mom’s endless line of dishes, appeared as soon as the food parade seemed to end. I had nothing else to do, so I nodded toward Baek Jae-heon, signaling him to come to my room.

“Sure.”

Baek Jae-heon popped the rest of his ice cream into his mouth, stood up, and followed behind me. Curious as ever, my grade-school sister Ji Young-hyo tried to follow us—or rather, to follow him—but our parents stopped her, telling her not to bother her brother’s guest.

So, in the end, only the two of us entered my room. Baek Jae-heon looked calm on the surface, but his eyes were filled with curiosity. It was just an ordinary high school boy’s room, so I couldn’t understand what was so fascinating. I stood by the door, watching him quietly. His eyes wandered around the room until they settled on my desk. Walking over, he spotted the small photo frames sitting on it and began to look at them.

“How old were you here?”

“That one? Nine.”

Then he picked one up. It was a photo taken when I was nine, standing in front of my father’s dojo, wearing a martial arts uniform and pouting. My parents loved that photo, apparently because my expression was livelier than usual. They said I had always been rather expressionless since birth, so they found that picture—where I looked adorably sulky—so cute that they had to keep it. Every time they saw it, they asked why I had been pouting that day, and every time, I told them I couldn’t remember.