“Is he… dead?”
The first to break the silence was Cha Eui-sung. He seemed to snap out of a daze, his face pale as a corpse.
“He’s with the Bureau of Regulation. If we touch him—if we mess this up—it could get really bad…”
Trembling, he stepped forward and pressed a hand to Lee Sang-jo’s chest. The man’s heart was still beating.
But the condition of his injuries was awful. It would be tough for him to survive without immediate treatment.
“Haah… This wasn’t supposed to happen. This shouldn’t have happened…”
Muttering in panic, Cha Eui-sung lifted his head—only to find Moon Tae-young staring down at him with a stony face.
The faint, lingering killing intent from the earlier fight still flickered in Moon Tae-young’s eyes. Even though he knew it wasn’t aimed at him, Cha Eui-sung bit his lip and dropped his gaze.
“What happened?”
Moon Tae-young asked in a low voice, the veins on his forehead still bulging visibly.
“…He contacted me. I don’t know how he got my number. I thought if I ignored it, it might cause trouble for you, so I agreed to meet him, pretending I didn’t know anything…”
“…”
“And then everything blew up.”
Cha Eui-sung answered with forced composure, but his face looked utterly drained and exhausted. As he wiped his lips, the blood he’d coughed up earlier smeared across the back of his hand.
He stared back and forth between Lee Sang-jo and his bloodstained hand, looking increasingly unsettled—until something like determination began to flicker in his eyes.
Looking straight at Moon Tae-young, he opened his mouth again.
“Haah… Listen closely, Moon Tae-young. I’m the one who hit this bastard, so I’ll take responsibility for this mess.”
Despite his clenched jaw, his trembling fingers betrayed his nerves. Swallowing dryly, Cha Eui-sung took a few shaky breaths before gripping his side and struggling to his feet.
Picking up the severed leg he’d sliced off earlier, he naturally grabbed The Silent Blade and tucked it inside his jacket.
“Whew… At first, I thought he was part of a squad sent by the Bureau. But after talking to him, it seems he came down here secretly, on his own. Even if that’s not the case, he clearly believes there’s only one Unregistered Awakened here in Cheongseri. So if I step in—”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“If I step in, I can handle it. I’ll keep my mouth shut and make sure no further harm comes to the village. If it comes down to it, I’ll even deal with him permanently…”
“I never asked you to do that. And why are you the one taking the fall for this? That’s more baffling than anything else.”
Moon Tae-young’s pointed response made Cha Eui-sung freeze in place. His bloodless face now flushed crimson from the tips of his ears, like someone hit dead center.
“That guy was coming after me anyway. There was no reason for you to get involved.”
“So you’re saying I should’ve just stood by and let your cover get blown?”
“Again, why is that your concern, Cha Eui-sung?”
Because I’m worried. Because I’ve been wanting to get closer to you for a while now.
Because pretending to care might be the only way I can get into your circle.
Because if I don’t force my way in somehow, fuck, I’ll never get close enough to save the world or retire or whatever and finally live a damn good life for once!
The urge to spell everything out burned at the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t spit it out.
Eyes wide under the pressure of Moon Tae-young’s questions, Cha Eui-sung opened his mouth to speak but faltered. Finally, as if all the fight drained out of him, he muttered,
“…I don’t know, either.”
Uhhhnnngh… At that moment, Lee Sang-jo let out a groan from his unconscious state. Cha Eui-sung gasped and looked at Moon Tae-young.
His eyes widened as he was forced to confront reality once more. An Unregistered Awakened who had just assaulted a Bureau agent. Blood-covered hands. Moon Tae-young, who’d appeared at the worst possible moment. And the severed leg in his hands.
Goddamn it. He couldn’t take this situation any longer—Cha Eui-sung shut his eyes. The limb slipped from his hands and hit the floor with a sickening thud.
The stress was overwhelming, making it hard to even think straight.
“It’s just… because you’re someone worth sticking around.”
Those were the words he finally settled on.
Moon Tae-young, clearly displeased with the answer, replied in a subdued voice,
“And you’re not?”
“You’re Seo-ryong’s teacher, and you’ve been in this village for a long time…”
“And you’re her uncle.”
“She has a real uncle. Honestly, Seo-ryong doesn’t like me much. I’m the one clinging to her and her family.”
“So because your niece doesn’t like you, you suddenly decided to take the fall for someone else’s crime? To become a martyr?”
If that kind of pathetic excuse was all he had to offer, even the Demon King might feel sorry for him.
Cha Eui-sung clenched his jaw and bit into the inside of his battered cheek. A sharp pain bloomed, filling his mouth with the bitter taste of blood.
His chest twisted. Maybe he was just too deep into the role.
A life where nothing had ever gone right. He’d only found a trace of himself after giving up and coming to this countryside village. The difference between them was that Moon Tae-young still had a future—while he liked Moon Tae-young.
“I just… I mean, I was always going to—”
Cha Eui-sung trailed off mid-sentence, gulping once, his expression dimming with resignation. He pressed a hand to his chest and spat to the side—not spit, but a clot of blood.
Oddly enough, the sight of the blood seemed to calm him. He spoke with a renewed composure.
“Let’s be realistic here. We’re already both caught up in this. If only one of us can walk away… shouldn’t it be the one who’s got a better shot at living well?”
“The one who’s got a better shot at living well, huh.”
“Once this is over, the Bureau’s people are going to swarm this place. They might even re-test the whole village for Awakening. But if you just keep your head down when that happens, you can probably get through it without any trouble…”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve said—over and over—that’s not what I’ve been asking.”
Damn it. Once again, Moon Tae-young snapped him out of it. Cha Eui-sung glared at him, frustrated, only for the other man to stride over with a fed-up expression and grab his arm.
That look in his eyes—like he was telling him to wake up—dug deep. Just as Cha Eui-sung opened his mouth, ready to explain how perfectly rational and calm he was being—
“Your injury. What happened?”
The question was more pointed now, his tone sinking into a dead-calm register.
Only then, as his eyes slowly dropped, did Cha Eui-sung notice how the bottom of his shirt was soaked in blood. His breathing, which he thought he’d steadied, was still ragged and erratic.
“Oh.”
Remembering the stabbing shattered his feigned serenity. The events from earlier that evening hit him all at once, his vision swimming under the weight of it.
Looking back, it had all happened so fast—Lee Sang-jo suddenly showing up and tearing through the village, the unexpected violence, the injury, the near murder he never meant to commit.
Cha Eui-sung’s eyes darted around. His breathing grew heavier. He stumbled through a reply.
“I didn’t think… I didn’t think I’d actually stab myself. I didn’t want to use my powers in front of him—it might’ve given me away—so I just… froze…”
“…”
“But it didn’t hurt that much, and earlier, it wasn’t even this—this bad…”
Moon Tae-young shook his shoulder to snap him out of it, halting the panic before he could collapse. It worked—barely. But realizing how out of it he was, Cha Eui-sung clammed up like a mollusk.
“Can I take a look?”
He didn’t even know what he was agreeing to as he nodded. It was only after he stopped rambling, after he’d finished weirdly defending himself, that Moon Tae-young knelt down and tugged at the bloodied hem of his shirt.
Sure enough, the wound at his side was still leaking. Slow but steady. Even so, for having yanked a deeply embedded blade out of his body, it could’ve been worse.
“Let’s treat it first.”
“…I can’t go to a hospital.”
Moon Tae-young shook his head as if to say, Don’t worry about that, then covered the wound again.
“Can you walk?”
“…Yeah.”
“Put your arm around my shoulder.”
Cha Eui-sung let out a soft groan—the man’s shoulder was higher than expected—and Moon Tae-young, without hesitation, bent down to make it easier.
He wrapped an arm around Cha Eui-sung’s waist. It was called helping him walk, but he was basically carrying him. Limping, Cha Eui-sung followed where he was led.
Is it over…?
The crime scene was getting farther away. With each dragging step, the tension in Cha Eui-sung’s shoulders eased.
He glanced at Moon Tae-young from the corner of his eye. The man didn’t seem concerned about the blood-soaked clearing behind them. He carried himself like someone with an ace up his sleeve. The kind of person you could count on. The kind of person who had options.
A baseless theory floated through Cha Eui-sung’s mind—that maybe, even if he hadn’t intervened, Lee Sang-jo would’ve ended up gone by the end of the week anyway.
Weird.
The fact that he hadn’t sensed Moon Tae-young’s presence at all until he appeared really bugged him. It meant he could’ve been watching silently this entire time.
And yet… the arm wrapped around him brought an odd sense of peace. His heart pounded loud enough to echo in his ears.
Was he just too immersed in the situation? Was this that method acting thing people talked about?
As he hobbled forward, using Moon Tae-young as a crutch, the bleeding slowed without any formal treatment. Still, every time his pulse spiked, Moon Tae-young adjusted his pace to match.
“You can let me go. I’m fine.”
But even as he gritted his teeth and said that, they reached their destination—Moon Tae-young’s home. A place Cha Eui-sung had only passed by from a distance.
He hadn’t expected to be stepping foot here, at least not anytime soon. It caught him off guard.
Good thing I stabbed myself when I did, Cha Eui-sung thought, letting himself go limp and leaning into Moon Tae-young as he closed his eyes.
***
Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz! Shrrrhhhhh!
It was a sweltering summer afternoon, the sun beating down from a cloudless sky. His scalp throbbed under the oppressive heat.
His arms and legs, limp and trembling from exhaustion, gave out beneath him—and someone kicked him, hard.
He wanted to scream, but his mouth was so battered he couldn’t even form a proper sound.
Cha Eui-sung had been beaten to the point his eyes nearly closed, then was dragged across the filthy dirt like a piece of trash.
“I’m pretty sure I warned you. Said if you bailed mid-way, you’d never see the light again.”
The slap that cracked across his face didn’t sting so much as it landed with a crushing weight. He chewed on something caught on his tongue and spat it out—a molar, soaked in blood, rolled across the ground.
In his narrowing field of vision, all he could make out was a thin stretch of blacktop shimmering with heatwaves and a vast, empty field of rice paddies.
“I told you not to touch the face. You trying to ruin the product? You know what product value means?”
“He’s a Hunter. The swelling’ll probably go down quick, anyway.”
The street, which had briefly come alive with noise, was now eerily silent again. There wasn’t a single soul left to hear him. Nothing around to grab onto. Nowhere to run.
Thrashing in vain, he was eventually tossed into the back of a battered old van.
They beat him several more times, telling him to stop bawling, but the tears wouldn’t stop.
That faint thread he’d been clinging to—whatever tiny hope he’d kept buried—was slowly unraveling into nothing.
Goddamn it. His life always ended up like this.
He could never forget that fleeting taste of happiness from long ago. It kept him trapped in delusions, clinging to hope, only to fall apart alone.
His eyes slipped shut under the weight of pain…
