It felt like his entire chest had dropped below his knees. In the face of this surreal situation, his head swam like he was dreaming.
“Wh-Who are you?!”
The high-pitched scream, sharp with panic, made Go Yeong-won lift an eyebrow.
“You can see me, can’t you?”
His tone was calm, as if he truly didn’t understand why anyone would make a fuss. As if he were some kind of roommate in this house.
Cha Eui-sung didn’t need to see more—he shouted immediately.
“If you don’t get out right now, I’m calling the police. One! Two!”
“You must be flustered meeting me like this, but there’s no need to be alarmed. I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Th-Three! Four! Five!”
“I just wanted to talk, but there never seemed to be an opportunity. And, well, my body’s not in the best shape for wandering around.”
“Six! Seven! Eight…!”
“Come to think of it, I doubt you’d want to meet me outside either. And since I don’t want to cause trouble, I had no choice…”
“Niiiine! Teeeen…”
“Oh, you were counting to ten. Did you switch it up after three?”
Shit. The intruder clearly wasn’t even pretending to listen, and Cha Eui-sung’s face had gone pale.
He stumbled backward and picked up a shard of broken glass, but the figure in the dark simply raised a hand, as if to calm him.
With a flick of his index finger, click, the lights flickered on.
Under the bright fluorescent light, a refined face came into view, wearing an amused smile tinged with excitement.
“Ten.”
A bolt from the blue—if there was ever a phrase that fit a moment, it was now. Cha Eui-sung felt like his knees were going to melt.
“P-Please… spare me.”
“…Pardon?”
He shifted tactics immediately. What the hell could a civilian who just woke up do against someone who had identified an S-rank?
“I-I left my car there… I’m so sorry! I won’t ask for compensation or anything, just please…!”
“Ah.”
But Go Yeong-won only gave a soft chuckle and waved away the desperate performance, as if it were amusing at best. He even looked touched, like he’d just seen some convincing acting.
It didn’t feel like mockery. Somehow, that made it even more fucking humiliating.
He laced his fingers together into an X, forming a universal Hunter signal: I have no intention of attacking. Then he hesitated, realizing the gesture wouldn’t mean anything to a civilian, and waved his palm again in a placating motion.
“Right. I guess you wouldn’t know that.”
He slowly rose from the sofa. With every long stride he took, Cha Eui-sung flinched and scrambled backward, tears welling up in his eyes, wearing a look of sheer dread.
It was his ultimate, pride-shredding technique—an expression so pitiful, it could melt a heart just by being seen. If only this insane bastard would snap out of it and realize he was now guilty of trespassing and terrorizing a civilian.
“Don’t worry. I really didn’t come to hurt you. I just wanted to talk. That’s all.”
“Please don’t do this! Please!”
“You don’t need to act quite so dramatically. Even if I was going to attack you, you wouldn’t just sit there and take it, right?”
A strange thing to say. As if he knew something.
While Cha Eui-sung sniffled and shook his head, Go Yeong-won smiled warmly.
“Fellow S-ranks and all.”
That bomb of a statement dropped from his mouth as casually as if he were commenting on the weather.
…….
Thud. His heart sank again.
“……Excuse me? What are you talking about?”
He clung to what little composure he had left and denied it, but Go Yeong-won’s lips curled upward even more. He was so rattled that he could feel the pulse pounding at his temples.
He’d nearly faltered—but when you really thought about it, it sounded completely unhinged.
Cha Eui-sung shook his head with a quiver in his voice.
“Please… please just go! I won’t even report you!”
Hands trembling, he bowed over and over in a panicked plea. Go Yeong-won simply stood there, taking in the display like he was savoring it. It was impossible to tell what his angle was.
“Heh…”
After enjoying the impromptu drama for a while, Go Yeong-won finally opened his mouth again.
“You’ve heard that before, right? That Awakened are just like regular people? They were civilians before their Awakening, and the only difference now is they have powers—that kind of thing.”
“Hhng, I don’t know…”
“I think that’s only partly true. I believe it holds up to about A-rank.”
“Ugh…”
Like hell he cared.
“But S-ranks are a different breed. That’s how it feels. A slightly different species. I can sense it. Whenever I meet a ‘fellow’—it presses in. Like this deep, dense sameness with me.”
“Wh…what?”
“When I met Kang San-woo, when I met Park So-yang… And exactly five years and 221 days ago, in front of a middle school near Mok-dong—I felt the exact same thing. That one was pretty sensational, huh? An underage S-rank.”
His blood went cold. All the excuses and countermeasures he’d built up in his head disintegrated at once.
“I never fail to recognize my own kind.”
“……”
“Isn’t that right, Eui-sung?”
His voice was gentle but charged with conviction, worming into Cha Eui-sung’s ears. Something he had never even guessed during his entire Second Life at the Association came flying at him like a casual greeting and hit him square in the chest.
Go Yeong-won… can recognize S-ranks?
No way. He had to be lying. Maybe he was just fishing.
Even after all his regressions, Cha Eui-sung had never once heard of a skill that could detect S-ranks—and only S-ranks.
No, maybe it’s not a skill.
If it had been a skill, he wouldn’t be using vague words like “a faint feeling” or “a sense.” That just wasn’t how he spoke.
And those eyes staring at him—it was the same look Go Yeong-won had when the car got wrecked back in Taeju-gun. As if he hadn’t needed to investigate anything—he’d known all along.
It was too convincing to write off as a bluff.
“……”
“……”
Slip.
The tearful expression vanished from his face. His wet eyes dried to a calm chill.
His brown gaze swept the room in a flash, evaluating his surroundings. Quietly, his left foot slid half a span backward. A subtle but deliberate shift into a combat-ready stance.
Even for Cha Eui-sung, subduing Go Yeong-won without a sound would be nearly impossible. And he hadn’t planned on fighting here in this quiet town in the first place.
But given how different this man’s behavior was from what he’d known in his Second Life, he had to be ready for anything.
“Haaah…”
Noticing the change, Go Yeong-won let out a long breath, his chest rising as if inflated. There was a chilling sort of euphoria shimmering in his tremulous sigh.
“I really didn’t come to fight. Granted, this wasn’t the most polite hour for a visit.”
“What do you want?”
“Exactly what I said. As you know, our kind is rare.”
A conversation? He broke in at this hour just for a chat?
Not to mention, who even knew when he got inside? If Cha Eui-sung had been in a deep sleep, would he have just sat on that sofa till morning?
He wasn’t this insane before.
The things he was saying were completely unhinged—but his eyes were disturbingly sincere, free from any trace of greed. Suddenly, the rumors Cha Eui-sung had heard about him came to mind.
“Go Yeong-won supposedly only speaks with other S-ranks.”
Unless someone was a hardcore recluse, how could they possibly live like that? Sure, Go Yeong-won wasn’t exactly chatty, but he didn’t avoid conversations that were necessary.
It’s just that any non-work-related talk? That was strictly reserved for S-ranks. His entire personal life was accessible only to them.
“Fellow kind.”
Cha Eui-sung had never once felt pleased at that word coming from his mouth.
“Sorry, but I have no intention of speaking with you.”
“Really? I feel like we’ve got plenty to talk about.”
“Please get out of my house.”
“Like, for instance, why you’ve been living unregistered.”
Goddamn it. Cha Eui-sung clenched his jaw and took in a sharp breath. He’d been extremely careful up until now. Never in his wildest dreams did he expect to get caught in a scenario this absurd.
He had suspected a Hunter had been dispatched to Jeongchoduk, but— How the hell was he supposed to anticipate that one who could recognize S-ranks would show up?
For a split second, the Silent Blade stashed under his bed flashed through his mind. Cha Eui-sung instinctively began analyzing his opponent’s weaknesses, weighing his options.
Could he even drive a blade into another S-rank without making a sound?
Even if I can… what good would it do?
Even if a sneak attack somehow succeeded, someone like Go Yeong-won wouldn’t be scared off by a bit of pain. If anything, a shallow wound would provoke him and escalate the situation into a full-on fight.
And while this fellow ‘species-enthusiast’ might not kill a rare S-rank like him, once it got to that point— His plans for staying hidden, his mission to stop the Demon King, even his goddamn car would all be ruined beyond repair.
“This isn’t a threat. If you do end up working, I’d recommend the Association over the Bureau of Regulation. But if the person in question doesn’t want it, I’ve got no intention of forcing state registration.”
“Even turning a blind eye’s a crime, isn’t it?”
“Bit late to argue legality after breaking into your house.”
Click!
Before he’d even finished speaking, the front door’s lock clicked shut on its own.
Even with such an alarming display, Go Yeong-won’s expression remained casual—like he’d just helped lock up for the night.
Outside the window, darkness pressed in like a void, and for some reason, all of Cha Eui-sung’s urgency drained away—replaced by a heavy, bitter melancholy.
He had been grumbling to himself about having too much free time lately, since he hadn’t been able to hang out with Moon Tae-young… But that hadn’t been an invitation for a lunatic to show up unannounced.
“How about a quick chat over tea? I won’t stay long.”
“I don’t have any tea.”
“I brought some.”
Why the hell would you bring tea?!
He hadn’t noticed it before, but a sleek, high-end tea box was now sitting conspicuously on the dining table.
Go Yeong-won gestured toward it with a serene smile.
At least he didn’t come any closer. He just calmly took a seat at the dining table like a polite guest. No hostility. No erratic energy. That composed attitude was more in line with the Go Yeong-won Cha Eui-sung used to know.
Granted, the situation itself was still insane…
Cha Eui-sung let out a groan and finally unclenched his fists.
Beyond his discomfort and sense of danger, the curiosity he’d tried to shove away now began to creep up again.
The fact that he’d been found out—there was no undoing that. So at the very least, he had to get this man out of his house as soon as possible, so he could think things through in peace.
Roughly tearing open the packaging of the tea box, he filled a kettle with water and set it to boil.
