It was more than ten minutes later when Seo-ryong finally showed herself.
Not long after the message had been sent, the doorbell rang repeatedly like someone was losing their mind—which meant she probably already knew it was Cha Eui-sung making a fuss in the house.
“Seo-ryong. Kim Seo-ryong.”
When Kim Jeong-baek knocked on the door and called out, the child with drooping lips came out into the living room.
Cha Eui-sung pulled a chair over and sat her down in front of him before opening his mouth.
“I heard what happened.”
“…Yes.”
“I’m not here to interrogate or scold you, so you don’t need to lower your head.”
“Okay.”
He was half here to interrogate, sure, but if the kid was this deflated, it’d be hard to get anything coherent out of her.
Whether it’s a kid or an adult, once someone thinks they’re in trouble, they start making excuses.
If he wanted Seo-ryong to give an objective account, he needed to lighten the mood first.
“I just want to know the details of what happened. And it’s probably better for you to talk about it here with me than with your teacher or Chansol’s parents.”
“Okay.”
“If it’s not related to the teacher, you can skip anything that puts you in a bad light. Sound fair?”
A flicker of life returned to her downcast face.
When Cha Eui-sung handed over the jelly pouch he’d confiscated from Kim Jeong-baek, Seo-ryong crinkled it with a rustle and stuffed it into her pocket.
“Chansol-oppa’s the best at Polyphocas in school, but I killed him three times and he got mad, saying why was I only targeting him. Then he accused me of cheating and said I was using hacks.”
“It’s a kids’ game. On the phone.”
“Don’t butt in.”
“So we got into a fight, and then he kept saying my uncle’s a host, like a male host, and kept asking if I even knew what that meant, so the fight escalated…”
“Park Chansol was acting like a punk, so you clocked him a few times?”
“Watch your language.”
“I said don’t butt in.”
“Yeah. But then he got a double nosebleed and started crying, and the teacher came.”
Once they filtered through Kim Jeong-baek’s interruptions, the whole story turned out to be exactly what it sounded like—a kids’ squabble.
Not as big a deal as it might’ve seemed, and not something that needed to be spelled out right in front of the kid who got chewed out.
Cha Eui-sung also seemed completely unaware of the rumors floating around the neighborhood, so from Moon Tae-young’s point of view, it wasn’t something he could just lay out for him, either.
Still… I can’t keep ignoring this.
If he wanted to make a serious run at becoming Moon Tae-young’s best friend, then annoying as it was, he’d have to understand the guy’s social position and situation.
The village’s one and only teacher—expected to be a trustworthy figure, stuck in a job that forced him to be tangled up with multiple households.
On top of that, he was in his twenties, the perfect age for people to meddle in others’ business.
Even a sixth-grader was calling him a “host,” so clearly, someone like Cha Eui-sung messing around here would look shady as hell.
Do I just spin this into some sob story for sympathy points? Feels like my image is spiraling out of control…
While mulling over it, he looked toward Seo-ryong again. The girl was just staring down at her schoolbag on the floor.
She hadn’t even been scolded, yet her mood seemed to sink further and further.
Maybe she was feeling guilty, like she’d let Eui-sung down over something she was asked to do.
Come to think of it, he had given her a gift recently, kind of like an incentive—maybe that’s what was making her feel even more guilty.
After being around shameless guys like Kim Jeong-baek all the time, he’d stopped paying attention to the small stuff.
He suddenly recalled the defeated looks on his subordinates’ faces back when he worked at the Hunter Association.
Sure, they wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes after getting chewed out, but they were always messing things up somewhere else.
He couldn’t just leave it like this. Moon Tae-young was sharp—he’d pick up on something.
Cha Eui-sung tossed the lavender-colored schoolbag at Kim Jeong-baek and casually spoke to Seo-ryong while the man headed toward the girl’s room.
“Seo-ryong.”
“Yes?”
“Do you remember what I told you on my first day at school?”
“Which part?”
“That you should just do what I asked you to and otherwise live your life as usual. I don’t care if you fight or skip school. I’m not in a position to scold you over stuff like that.”
“…”
“I’m not scolding you.”
“…Okay.”
“But I’m also not about to praise you for it, so… hmm. That puts me in a bit of a bind.”
“…”
“Seo-ryong. Since you said it happened because of me, I’ll give you one special tip. Do you know why you shouldn’t hit people?”
“Because violence is bad.”
“That’s the textbook answer, yeah. But to add one more thing—it’s because no matter what the other person did wrong, the one who throws the first punch is always the one who gets blamed.”
Maybe that answer caught her off guard. Her downcast eyes slowly lifted to meet Cha Eui-sung’s.
“Unless you’re a Hunter or something, within the bounds of protection, brains beat fists. If you don’t want to lose a fight, you’ve got to be smart.”
“How?”
“You’ve got to think about what kinds of actions people will sympathize with, and what things they’ll hate. Move accordingly. The more people you have on your side, the better your odds of winning.”
“Uh… I’m not sure I get it.”
“Put simply—don’t let your fists fly first. And if you really have to hit someone, don’t slap them across the face where everyone can see. Hit somewhere like the stomach where it’s not obvious. And make sure everyone knows what you’ve suffered. Next time you get into a fight, remember what I said.”
Just as the advice wrapped up, Kim Jeong-baek came storming back in.
So that’s why he took so long—he’d clearly been eavesdropping on the conversation.
“What the hell are you teaching the kid?!”
“Yes.”
“Seo-ryong, don’t answer! And don’t go hitting anyone in the stomach either!”
“Well, seeing as you’ll probably give her a lifelong moral lecture about this, I’ll leave the rest of ethics class to you.”
“Stop talking already!”
Never mind the fact that he made a living through borderline illegal work, Kim Jeong-baek went ballistic.
Unbelievable. Like he had any business bragging about his education methods.
Cha Eui-sung had clearly heard him recently, spouting off about how to distinguish between a CEO and a teacher, or some such nonsense.
After Jeong-baek sent Seo-ryong back to her room, Cha Eui-sung raised both hands in a gesture of surrender, trying to calm him down.
“It was just advice. You can’t take care of her forever, can you? If her parents aren’t going to be actively involved, she needs to learn how to fight smart.”
“What the hell! That’s—ugh! Actually… that brings up a real issue. How long are you planning to stay here? You gonna be around till Seo-ryong graduates?”
The moment his younger brother was mentioned, Kim Jeong-baek’s face clouded over.
Apparently, he was more attached to living with his niece than he’d realized. And if he remembered correctly, Seo-ryong had said she was doing better these days too.
But Cha Eui-sung had only one goal: to finish this job quickly and ditch the whole Hero role altogether.
Once it was over, he had zero plans to ever come back to Cheongseri.
“Dunno. Still not sure yet.”
He dodged the question and glanced out the window—it was already completely dark outside.
Now that he’d heard about the situation and talked to Seo-ryong, he had no reason to linger.
Cha Eui-sung stood up, tossing his plastic cup into the sink.
“Once you’re done with the meeting tomorrow, let me know right away. Don’t forget you’re supposed to be helping me manage my image too.”
“So you’re not a bad person—just eccentric?”
“Right. Just someone who avoids people ‘cause being good-looking gets him into trouble.”
“You really just said that out loud, huh…”
“Well, it’s true.”
He would’ve loved to stick around and see how Kim Jeong-baek’s face changed after that, but unfortunately, this wasn’t a scene where he belonged.
With a trace of regret on his face, Cha Eui-sung fiddled with his phone and left Kim Jeong-baek’s house.
***
The next day passed at a painfully slow pace.
He was already sick of blankly watching TV or mindlessly scrolling the internet, and any attempt to create tasks for himself just ended with him rechecking the bait he’d already laid out.
Despite the rumors calling him a loafer, Cha Eui-sung had no talent for killing time. The disparity in lifestyle standards may have been stark, but both before and after Regression, he’d always lived diligently.
Because I couldn’t afford not to.
Yawn. He wasn’t even tired, yet a yawn slipped out. As he popped a handful of cereal into his mouth instead of eating a proper meal, he started pondering the definition of leisure.
While his mind wandered in circles, a memory from the past suddenly resurfaced.
“Mr. Eui-sung, do you even know what your hobby is?”
“I do. And I don’t have any.”
“Then meet people. Whether it’s a one-time thing or a real relationship. I’m seriously trying to give you advice here. Because we’re the same kind.”
“But then I won’t have time to work.”
Out of all the S-rank bastards, one in particular had meddled in his life for quite a while.
He was the one who’d recommended therapy. He was also the one who occasionally summoned Cha Eui-sung on weekends to hassle him.
Each time, instead of a real answer, Eui-sung would request an anti-terror squad deployment or to be assigned to a flooded dungeon. Eventually, the guy had given up with a shudder, fed up beyond belief…
“Not something you feel you should do. Something you want to do. Don’t you have anything like that?”
He said that while asking about hobbies. It struck Cha Eui-sung as a very privileged question.
Because back then, he was someone who wanted far too many things.
“How could anyone live doing only what they want?”
The conversation ended there. They never talked about it again.
Not that they had the chance. S-ranks didn’t stay at the Hunter Association. Once they hit their required activity quota, there was rarely any reason to see them again.
“Something I want to do, huh…”
Cha Eui-sung muttered, suppressing a sense of irritation. As if relaxing his brain had opened the floodgates, memories he’d rather keep buried kept trying to surface.
Before Regression, before he’d even Awakened.
Whenever he walked past a café, he wanted to go in.
He wanted to sit there for hours like other people, eating cake and sipping drinks.
He wanted to have a day off.
He wanted to wake up to an alarm in the early morning, realize there was nothing scheduled, and go back to sleep.
Right.
He wanted to buy some stir-fried noodles in a paper box and go to any random park.
That way, he could pretend he was traveling—escape the suffocating reality, if only for a little while.
He didn’t want to bring his mother home from the hospital. He wanted her to stay under professional care.
If that had happened, they could’ve had a proper celebration the year he became an adult.
Even if you excluded the memories too hazy from time, he could still list dozens of those quiet, small dreams without hesitation.
After his First Awakening, and even after his Reawakening, the pitiful and humble wishes never stopped piling up.
That was why a life of nothing but work had felt so torturous. He kept enduring it, clinging to the belief that once he achieved his goal, all of it would finally be rewarded with happiness.
I was definitely like that back then….
But now, he wasn’t so sure.
Something had changed since this final Regression.
That vague yearning to be happy was like a haunted cave painting that clung to his soul and gnawed at him.
Even worse, he’d started recalling the past more frequently.
During the second round, he’d been so busy that he hadn’t even had time for such thoughts.
Look at him now, dredging up all this useless, miserable crap…
CRACK!
His thoughts stopped only after he reflexively slammed the cereal box down.
He shoved aside the now-flattened box and ran his fingers over the floor to check for damage.
Damn it. He wished Kim Jeong-baek would hurry up and call.
Being stuck in this quiet-ass town, stewing alone in a pot of idle time—it was enough to drive anyone insane.
As he picked up the shattered cereal bits one by one, Cha Eui-sung continued his meaningless staring contest with time that refused to move.
It wasn’t until after 4 p.m. that the call finally came.
