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"I should have known you'd be listening," he muttered.
It wasn't really an option to not hear anything that happened so close. "Of course."
"That made you feel jealous, though, really?" His tone changed from annoyance to disbelief.
"I'm new at this," I reminded him. "You're resurrecting the human in me, and everything feels stronger because it's fresh."
Unexpectedly, a smug little smile puckered his lips. "But honestly, for that to bother you, after I have to hear that Rosé, the incarnation of pure beauty, Rosé was meant for you. Hoseok or no Hoseok, how can I compete with that?"
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He said the words as though he was playing his trump card. As if jealousy were rational enough to weigh out the physical attractiveness of the third parties, and then be felt in direct proportion.
"There's no competition," I promised him.
Gently and slowly, I used his imprisoned wrists to pull him closer to me, he lowered his head to rest it just under my chin. His cheek seared against my skin.
"I know there's no competition. That's the problem," he grumbled.
"Of course Rosé is beautiful in her way...." It wasn't as if I could deny Rosé's exquisiteness, but it was an unnatural, heightened thing sometimes more disturbing than attracting. "But even if she wasn't like a sister to me, even if Hobi didn't belong with her, she could never have one tenth, no, one hundredth of the attraction you hold for me. For almost ninety years I've walked among my kind, and yours... all the time thinking I was complete in myself, not realizing what I was seeking. And not finding anything... because you weren't alive yet."
I felt his breath against my skin as he whispered his response. "It hardly seems fair. I haven't had to wait at all. Why should I get off so easily?"
No one had ever had more sympathy for the devil. Still, I wondered that he could count his own sacrifices so lightly.
"You're right. I should make this harder for you, definitely." I gathered both of his wrists into my left hand so that my right was free, then brushed lightly down the length of his dripping hair. Its texture, slippery like this, wasn't so far from the seaweed I'd imagined before. I twisted a strand between my fingers as I listed his forfeitures. "You only have to risk your life every second you spend with me, that's surely not much. You only have to turn your back on nature, on humanity... what's that worth?"
