To be frank, Beom understood that man.
More precisely, he understood the sensitivity the man was displaying.
They were not human, yet they were bound together by human relationships, and the relationship that man and Gyeon Jioh had mutually agreed to define was that of ‘lovers.’
And a relationship between lovers implied exclusivity.
One had an exclusive and exclusionary claim over the other and occupied the highest-priority position.
But the Gyeon Jioh Beom knew could not have been further removed from words like those.
When he thought about it, it was simple.
Could Gyeon Jioh distance herself from people, or from the world?
Could Gyeon Riok, Gyeon Geumhee, and the rest of her family be separated from her?
Could anyone truly ‘possess’ Gyeon Jioh exclusively?
Was such a thing even possible?
Gyeon Jioh was, by her very nature, incapable of fulfilling the expectations that lovers would ordinarily be entitled to demand and have met.
And because that man had watched Jioh more closely than anyone, he had no choice but to direct his dissatisfaction over those unmet expectations not at Jioh, but at others.
That was how he endured it.
Because he knew better than anyone that his lover simply was not that kind of person, and that he could not change her into whatever he wanted.
Beom would not have been able to endure it.
He had no confidence that he could.
Even if he…