“Still busy?”
He phrased it politely, but it was just a roundabout way of asking, Are you still pissed off? No immediate response came.
Cha Eui-sung stared blankly up at the ceiling, then broke the silence with a soft comment.
“We… should talk, right?”
Still no reply. But this time, he heard a low sigh.
—Do you want to talk?
The question came only after a long pause, heavy enough to weigh on the chest.
It wasn’t just small talk—he knew that much. This wasn’t a casual chat or a chance to shoot the breeze.
He was about to answer with something like, Isn’t that why I called you in the first place? But instead, the words spilled out uninvited from his mouth.
“Can I come over?”
His voice came out unexpectedly small and pitiful, the end of the sentence tapering off. Not on purpose. But the person on the other end didn’t seem moved in the slightest.
—Not sure.
His face flushed instantly. Cha Eui-sung bit his lip and covered his forehead with one hand.
He hadn’t meant to beg for sympathy. And he got rejected anyway. It was humiliating as hell, heat crawling all the way up to the tips of his ears.
“Okay then…”
He should’ve just pushed through, but his mouth decided to kill the conversation just when he’d finally gotten a chance to speak.
As he pulled the phone away from his ear, cheeks burning—
—Come if you want. When you have time.
That calm, flat voice finally said what he’d been waiting to hear.
He answered immediately.
“I’ll come now.”
Click. The line went dead, and all the strength seemed to drain out of him in that moment.
Cha Eui-sung rubbed his overheated face with both hands, then lashed out by kicking the bed hard.
There was a loud crack, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.
He sprinted to the bathroom and immediately started fixing his hair. It had grown too long from putting off a trim, and it took him a good while to figure out how to part and pin it properly.
Then he scrubbed his face raw, practicing every expression he could think of in the mirror. He looked ridiculous, but if it meant surviving this do-or-die moment, he’d sell off his pride without a second thought.
On his way out, he grabbed the jangling keys—then stopped and set them back down.
Bringing them only to have them taken away would piss him off even more. He might end up yelling that the whole damn world could go to hell.
***
The gate was open.
After just a few steps into the yard, he heard the metallic clink of a latch, and the front door creaked open.
“Come in.”
A quiet voice slipped out from the gap in the doorway. Cha Eui-sung stepped into Moon Tae-young’s house, looking around aimlessly like someone returning to their hometown for the first time in ten years.
The living room was just as it had been when he’d broken in a few days ago. The doorknob was unchanged too—didn’t seem like the locks had been replaced.
Does he know I let myself in? Cha Eui-sung stared down at the beanbag chair in silence, lost in brief thought.
He hadn’t left any traces, but if Moon Tae-young did know… it would definitely count against him. Maybe he should come up with an excuse. Say he was scared of being abandoned?
No, that sounded way too pathetic and stupid.
As absurd as it was, even now, Cha Eui-sung found himself wanting to look good in front of him.
“…Have a seat.”
At the sound of that voice, he jerked his head up—Moon Tae-young was standing there, looking at him with a conflicted expression. Neat eyebrows, ugly glasses. It had only been about a week, but somehow that face felt disgustingly familiar and sorely missed.
“Here?”
“Weren’t you staring because you wanted to sit there?”
As if. What the hell does this guy think of him?
“What would I even do sitting by myself?”
“Then go ahead and keep standing.”
“So you’re not planning to sit with me anymore?”
“…”
Well, yeah. Even he had to admit this was a weird setup. Frustrated for no good reason, Cha Eui-sung plopped down onto the seat like a petulant kid.
An awkward silence settled between them. It felt like when the Progress Gauge had barely hit 20%—exactly like the first day he’d stormed into school and tried to endure.
“First of all, I’m here to apologize.”
“Apologize.”
“I think I said some harsh things back then. You know how it was… I was tired.”
“I’m sure you were.”
His words still carried thorns, but at least he was answering—that alone made it feel different from last time.
…Or was he just being sarcastic?
Cha Eui-sung turned his head slightly and quietly studied the face staring down at him.
And annoyingly enough, the thought that popped into his head was this: From this angle, looking up at him, his face doesn’t actually look that bad.
Thinking shit like that at a time like this—he wanted to slap himself.
He ran a hand through his neatly styled hair again for no real reason, then opened his mouth.
“How much should I say? What do you want to know?”
Even if his mind was all over the place, he wasn’t dumb enough to spill everything that hadn’t even been asked.
Moon Tae-young’s brow twitched instantly. The look in his eyes seemed to say, So you’re gonna try to take my measure before anything else, after all that drama?
“I don’t know how much you already know.”
“And if I seem clueless, you were planning to keep quiet?”
“Yeah. I’ve gotta choose my words. Even people who’re head-over-heels for each other keep secrets, right?”
He sounded pretty brazen, but it wasn’t just bluster.
Moon Tae-young probably had plenty of truths of his own buried under “Demon Kings” and “Outer Gods”—stuff Cha Eui-sung hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface of.
Trying to uncover everything in one go would be pointless.
Maybe it rubbed him the wrong way, but at least he seemed to understand where Cha Eui-sung was coming from. He crossed his arms with a deep sigh.
What was going through that neatly combed head of his now?
Is he calling me a conniving little shit right now? Or… maybe, just maybe, he’s a little glad to see me too?
Cha Eui-sung studied the taller man slowly, licking his lips.
“If I ask something… will you answer?”
“I won’t lie. That I can promise.”
“Then let me start with this.”
Moon Tae-young leaned forward slightly from where he sat, locking eyes with him.
Knowing his personality, he’d probably lead with something relatively light—like what happened the day he came back to Cheongseri, or the truth behind his hidden identity…
Something he could ease into, answer step by step. That’s what Cha Eui-sung was preparing for, balling a light fist as he pictured how this would go.
“What exactly is a Hero?”
Moon Tae-young threw a fastball dead center.
His expression cracked immediately, his gaze trembling.
“…”
“…”
Right before a crisis, time sometimes slows to a crawl.
In less than a minute, a hundred thoughts flashed through his mind.
Back in the second life, there were a few moments like this when facing Oh Se-dan. Every time, Cha Eui-sung had been grateful he wasn’t an F-rank anymore—because if he’d started sweating bullets, even the most clueless guy would’ve noticed he was panicking.
“…Did I say I wouldn’t lie?”
“You did.”
“…Right.”
Still… maybe he’d already blown his cover with that weird pause just now.
After a brief moment of deliberation, Cha Eui-sung picked the vaguest, most bullshit version of the truth he could find.
“I don’t really know.”
Before Moon Tae-young could butt in, he added a bit more fluff.
“I just… woke up one day and I was a Hero. There’s supposed to be a Demon King or something. That’s all I’ve got.”
“…Hah.”
Stuff like the second life or the Progress Gauge—he couldn’t let those slip even if it killed him.
The moment he said that out loud, no matter what excuse he gave, it’d be the end of whatever they had.
And if that happened… what would become of his mission? Of the world?
“What I do know is this: there’s been an invasion of Outer Gods in this world. And if nothing’s done, it’s going to be destroyed.”
“So it’s destined for destruction?”
“Apparently so.”
That’s how it went in the second life, after all. Cha Eui-sung swallowed dryly, remembering the meteor that had come crashing down over his head.
His fingertips felt cold. His gaze drifted unconsciously to the air—but the System didn’t pop up to shut him up.
Why not?
Was it because telling this much to the Demon King was somehow allowed?
Or was the System, like on the day he found the empty dungeon, too busy brawling under the surface of this world’s shell with Outer Gods to stop him?
Trying to hide his turmoil, he looked back up.
Moon Tae-young’s face had gone pale.
Looking closer, there was a thick vein bulging at his temple.
And yet his expression was perfectly composed—it was hard to tell if he was furious, or just tense because he’d heard something only he was supposed to know, spilling from someone else’s lips.
The way the air kept getting colder with every answer made it seem like he already knew something.
“Let me ask something else. How long were you planning to keep it a secret?”
“…Forever, if possible. What good would it do you to know?”
“If I hadn’t asked, I would’ve lived and died never knowing, huh.”
“Yeah.”
That single, clipped answer made his eyes narrow.
The air was turning icy—openly now. Cha Eui-sung felt something scrape deep inside his chest, a chill like claws raking against his heart.
He knows something. And it’s pissing him off.
As if confirming the suspicion, an odd gleam flickered across those black eyes.
It was a familiar kind of gaze. People with eyes like that—ones that didn’t fit their faces or the moment—nine times out of ten, they were the ones who blew everything up.
Sensing danger, Cha Eui-sung hastily tacked on more words.
“Wouldn’t that have made things… happier?”
“Happier?”
“I told you I’d help. With revenge. We’d finish that, move somewhere better…”
“…”
“The dungeon thing, we could pretend it was discovered late. It’d be tough, sure. But this place is getting shut down anyway. It’d be easier living in Seoul, so we could go there and—”
“…”
“You could keep teaching, if you want. If you get sick of dealing with kids, register as a Hunter or just laze around doing nothing…”
Fuck. Just how far was he going to ramble?
He’d said a lot, but in truth, this was just a fantasy he’d pieced together in his head during moments of turmoil.
A mess of wishful thinking—so embarrassingly selfish and clingy that he’d never planned to say any of it out loud.
It was humiliating. The fact that he, of all people, had been imagining something like that.
And now he’d gone and spilled it, right in front of the person it involved.
“So basically, I’d live and die by your side, Cha Eui-sung.”
Even so, he couldn’t stop.
Because that man—who just moments ago had been radiating tension—was now oddly calm.
“Why do you keep clinging to death like that? You sound like a damn funeral home.”
That offhand line helped him awkwardly wrap things up… but fuck.
The embarrassment hit harder than the danger.
Cha Eui-sung rubbed his burning eyes hard with his hand, jaw clenched.
The atmosphere hung somewhere between cold and downright lethal.
And then—for a long time—they said nothing.
When he finally dared a sideways glance, Moon Tae-young looked like he was chewing things over, trying to assess something.
“…Alright.”
Just when Cha Eui-sung was starting to feel antsy, the other man finally broke the silence in a flat, dry tone.
“It’s clear you know a lot more than you’re telling me.”
The words were surgically precise, cutting straight to the throat.
Shit. I’m screwed.
He’d gotten lost in the whirlwind of stupid feelings and forgotten—Moon Tae-young was, at his core, a sharp and brilliant man.
This wasn’t the first time he’d fallen into his pace, and remembering that sent a cold weight dropping through his stomach.
Back during the early days of regression, he’d even labeled the guy as a rival—should’ve walked in here with Plans B, C, and D already lined up.
But he’d been reeling from the Oh Se-dan situation, running on barely any sleep, and had completely lost his grip on what mattered most.
“It’s fine. I can take care of that part on my own now.”
But instead of a blade, what came back was… surprising. A calm response.
Cha Eui-sung stopped grinding his teeth and looked up, blinking.
…Huh?
Moon Tae-young didn’t even look angry.
He didn’t seem frustrated like he was giving up on the conversation either. If anything, his expression was peaceful—like someone who’d gotten exactly what they needed.
Instead of accusing him, he simply stared—calmly, silently—scanning him from head to toe with an unreadable gaze.
