“What does that mean....”
“If you’re curious about something, ask properly. So I can answer.”
“.......”
If Kwon Taehan got involved, plausibility could be resolved up to a certain point. I wouldn’t be able to tell him everything of my own will, but something like this kind of loophole...... they’d probably allow it. Maybe.
Then why hadn’t “Seo Jehyun” tried to let Kwon Taehan know this before?
‘Because I’d have to kill him again?’
If you had to keep repeating something when you didn’t even know when it would finally succeed, you’d probably want to shove aside little risks like that. But I had never intended from the start to bear Kwon Taehan’s thousand lives.
I could see the look in Kwon Taehan’s eyes as he tried to read what I was thinking.
‘He’s taking fucking forever... thinking.’
I pressed down hard on the tip of his shoe, meaning to hurry him along. Kwon Taehan’s brows twitched strangely, maybe because even that caused a faint stab of pain.
After a fair amount of time had passed, Kwon Taehan slowly asked in a subdued voice,
“Do you... know me?”
“Well, you? The whole country knows you.”
“I mean do you know what this question means.”
Because his voice had dropped so low, it almost felt a little like I was being threatened. Not that it felt threatening at all, of course.
I looked at Kwon Taehan for a moment, then answered simply.
“Yeah.”
At that, Kwon Taehan, who had been moving his lips like he was about to pour out questions at once, closed his mouth again.
There were gaps between his questions. I didn’t think he was the type to think this deeply, but it looked like he was earnestly working his brain.
I left Kwon Taehan to think on his own and quietly observed him. We hadn’t actually been face to face that many times, but he felt excessively familiar.
Whenever I thought about the “Seo Jehyun” Kwon Taehan searched for and even resented, I felt a strange sense of dissonance. I had definitely looked into that point in the past several times, and sometimes I’d even been assimilated into it, but that still didn’t make it my memory. At best, it was like watching it a little more closely...... like a video.
But separate from that, I did feel like I’d known Kwon Taehan for a very long time.
Kwon Taehan stared at me for a long while with complicated eyes, then opened his mouth.
“That’s a lie.”
What?
The guy who had been struggling with himself just moments ago spoke in a firm voice all at once. For a second, my brow furrowed without me realizing it.
“You’re just making assumptions because of how I’ve been acting, figuring there’s something there. The fact that you won’t tell me directly and are making me ask questions too... you’re trying to draw words out of me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re good at psychological games... and every time something like this happens, you act clever.”
For a moment, that insane bullshit pouring out of his mouth almost made me grab him by the collar. Kwon Taehan kept talking stubbornly through my baffled reaction anyway.
“You probably won’t understand even if I say this.... ...But it’s certain something has changed. And there’s no way that’s because of you.”
“Taehan, get it together.”
“I already... am together.”
Saying that, Kwon Taehan added calmly,
“If I wasn’t, I would’ve believed you again this time.”
With those words, I felt Kwon Taehan’s hand remove mine from his arm. He stepped back, then widened the distance that had closed between us.
“A settlement.... Do whatever you want. I don’t want to get involved with you anymore. At least not this time.”
“.......”
“Just once... please.”
For someone using the word please, he didn’t look all that desperate.... Was this another result of emotional wear and tear?
When I lightly furrowed my brow, Kwon Taehan stared somewhere else for a long while, then turned his head back toward me.
I didn’t say anything. I just waited for Kwon Taehan quietly. He looked at me like he still had more he wanted to say, ground his teeth slightly, then in an instant let all the strength go out of himself.
“And, Seo Jehyun.”
“.......”
“Even if everything you said is true, I still won’t trust you.”
I hadn’t answered anything he’d said this whole time, but this once I couldn’t help asking back.
“Why?”
“Because even if every word you said is the truth, it’s still better not to trust you.”
With that, Kwon Taehan left his hospital room.
No, to be exact, he tried to leave, and the attempt failed pretty easily. I grabbed Kwon Taehan as he was fiddling with the door lock, spun him around, and shoved him against the wall.
“Ugh!”
I braced an arm tightly near Kwon Taehan’s shoulder, pinning him in place so he couldn’t move.
“There are CCTV cameras everywhere, and I don’t want to make the picture look weird, so how about we keep talking a little longer, quietly? If one more strange scandal breaks out, I feel like someone’s really going to kill me.”
“Are you doing this because you want your arm broken or something?”
“No, I hate getting hurt.”
I loosened my arm and pressed the center of Kwon Taehan’s chest with my palm, blocking him from getting past me. Though if Kwon Taehan really decided to use force, he could break out of this in no time.
“Take your hand off me. Before I knock it away with force.”
“Don’t show off your strength against someone weaker... and listen to the end.”
“Weaker? Ha, since when did you...?”
I easily ignored what Kwon Taehan said and smiled as I looked at him quietly.
“Now.... Taehan, think about this simply.”
“.......”
“Even if you keep trying to avoid me, it won’t really do much. You’re going to keep going around clearing Gates anyway, and the media’s going to show you countless times. If you hate that, then start living as a recluse right now. Go hide yourself quietly on some island nobody knows the name of... then maybe I won’t be able to find you.”
“.......”
“But there’s no way you’d do that. You know that yourself, don’t you?”
I slowly let the strength out of the hand that had been pressing against his chest to hold him in place. Waiting for Kwon Taehan’s gaze, which had briefly dropped to my hand, to rise back up to my eyes, I went on in an easy voice.
“Don’t think something like today... is only going to happen once... just wait.”
“Ha.... Seo Jehyun, are you fucking kidding me right now? I could kill you right now, this second. The only reason I’m not...”
“Then want to try killing me?”
I cut off Kwon Taehan’s pathetic words and asked seriously.
“...What?”
I had thought once or twice that I might let him kill me once. Well, if I’d killed him 999 times, then dying once myself wasn’t exactly a loss. Of course, if he actually came at me trying to kill me, it’d be fucking awful.
I grabbed Kwon Taehan’s hand where it had fallen limp at his side and pulled it up to my neck. I could see him bracing and resisting halfway through, but not enough to make it difficult to force his hand around my throat.
“Let go.”
“How about we trade once each? I don’t mind.”
Right after that, I felt a sharp stinging pain at my neck, and his hand was roughly torn away. When I lightly brushed the spot where it hurt, a thin bead of blood had formed.
“You...!”
“Set up an office. It’ll be better for you to be attached to a guild anyway.”
“.......”
“There’s no guild out there that’ll suit your taste, so put your own name on one and build it.”
Even if I didn’t say something like this, after repeating several lives, he would end up founding a guild on his own anyway. But if that got pulled a little earlier, things would get a lot easier.
“Yeah, all that long-winded contact... I don’t need that either.”
“.......”
“But I’ll come find you. Whether it’s my curiosity or your questions... if something comes up that needs to be resolved? Ah, just so you know, I’m very curious about a lot of things. Even now.”
“.......”
“So think carefully.”
I meant that. If another day came when we ended up talking in a hospital room again, from that point on it would be pretty funny.
With that, I left the hospital room. Outside, I saw Do Yehyun waiting quietly for me.
“Let’s go.”
“...What about the settlement?”
“He said he’d do it. Doesn’t seem like he cares much, though.”
We went down to the first floor, I talked about the broken lock, gave them Joo Seowon’s number as the contact for future compensation, and then immediately caught a taxi outside.
While sitting side by side with Do Yehyun in the back seat, I suddenly got curious about the expression on his face and turned to look at him.
“So in the end there was no point bringing you along today. We didn’t even get to go into the dungeon.”
“It was worth it. You didn’t get hurt, hyung.”
“Really? Then that’s good.”
Do Yehyun stayed quiet for a bit, then abruptly brought something up.
“While you were gone, I looked into some things about you.”
“What did you look at?”
“The news was up... people’s reactions and stuff. I thought maybe it might help you.”
“Yeah? And how was it?”
Well, how good could the reaction possibly be to me cleanly ramming the country’s new S-rank with a car?
Still, pretending to be interested, I asked Do Yehyun,
“It’s not very good. A lot of people are arguing over whether it was sudden unintended acceleration or not, and there’s speculation about you and Hunter Kwon too. Naturally... the bad kind.”
“Hmm.”
“Does it bother you?”
Do Yehyun’s eyes stared straight at me without wavering. I lightly answered while brushing his cheek with my thumb.
“No.”
“I figured.”
“Why, does it bother you?”
I suddenly became curious what Do Yehyun was thinking when he brought this up. He looked calm on the outside, but was he calm on the inside too?
Do Yehyun looked at me and slowly blinked those big eyes, then asked back in a voice stripped of personal will,
“Should I use it?”
Without answering, I quietly studied Do Yehyun’s expression and slowly withdrew the hand that had been touching his cheek. Even after that, his gaze remained thickly fixed on me for quite a while.
***
It had been a very long time since Im Haekyung had felt something so unusual. It seemed close to anger, but calling it anger outright didn’t quite fit. It felt fresh.
“Haha....”
Quietly looking at the phone that had either disconnected or simply returned no response, he calmly rose from his seat.
There was no way it had been some sudden accident. If it had, Seo Jehyun wouldn’t have acted that calmly. If anything, he would have exploded in anger....
Im Haekyung immediately opened the office door and called over the employee standing outside.
“Could you find out what happened just now involving Hunter Seo Jehyun?”
“Yes.”
The answer that came back at once was crisp, but at the same time faintly uncomfortable. Im Haekyung considered for a moment whether to wipe the subtle interest and question out of the employee’s eyes, then quickly gave up on the thought.
‘What am I supposed to do with this....’
