Q. My partner broke the front door handle and barged in to take care of me while I was sick. Is that… a good thing?
A. Call the police.
If someone posted that on an online forum, the top comment would definitely be that.
Q. But I think he assumed I was passed out and unconscious.
A. Wishing you the best with your romance.
Maybe if I throw in a few excuses, it’ll make more sense.
After wiping off a full layer of sweat, Cha Eui-sung buried his head into a fresh towel with a slightly clearer face. The unpleasantly damp pillowcase had long since been removed by Moon Tae-young.
He had flat-out refused to change clothes. If he took his shirt off, the wound on his arm would be exposed.
Seriously… normally, he’d be annoyed at someone messing with his hair. But when it was done so naturally, Cha Eui-sung didn’t even feel like protesting.
I really didn’t expect two whole days to have passed.
His breathing was still wheezy, but when he spat into a tissue, his saliva was nearly clear now.
His body seemed almost fully recovered. Just a bit more rest, and he’d be good as new.
In the end, Cha Eui-sung decided it was better to focus on getting back on his feet than to worry about Moon Tae-young.
It wasn’t like he was going to ransack the house while he was asleep and pull some shady stunt, right? At worst, he’d learn something meaningless like how he mumbled in his sleep.
With the room fully aired out, he slowly drifted back to sleep.
From time to time, faint clattering sounds reached his ears when his consciousness bobbed to the surface.
Familiar domestic noise. The kind your body reacts to even in your sleep. Clinking dishware, the sizzle of something on the stove.
Maybe it’d just been too long since he’d fallen asleep in a house where someone else was around. The presence of another person made things feel oddly surreal.
For some reason, Cha Eui-sung’s lips twitched faintly, like he’d been transported back to a distant time.
Thankfully, he didn’t dream this time. Each dip back into unconsciousness felt unexpectedly sweet.
“How are you feeling?”
When he came to again, the sun had already gone down.
A cool towel touched his forehead as he blinked open his eyes to see Moon Tae-young.
His face looked a little more relaxed now. His sleeves were rolled up—he’d clearly been doing something.
“You… didn’t leave?”
He asked drowsily, and without a word, a hand gently pressed to his forehead.
Cha Eui-sung simply blinked, silently taking in the sensation.
“Your fever’s gone. Your clothes are soaked—go wash up and change.”
His body definitely felt lighter. For the first time since coming home, Cha Eui-sung rose awkwardly from bed.
Shhhhaa—
Water poured down over him in the shower, and as it did, his mind filled with questions.
Sure, he’d been out of it, but why the hell had he just let Moon Tae-young do whatever and then gone to sleep?
How had it even gotten to the point where he was being nursed? Why was Moon Tae-young still here? What was he after?
It’s not like there was anything left to hide—he’d already hidden everything that needed hiding—but still, wasn’t it reckless to let a Demon King wander freely through his house like this?
But the thoughts all washed away with the sweat.
Maybe it was just that it had been so long since he’d really been sick. His brain went numb, and even worrying felt like too much effort.
With a refreshed body, Cha Eui-sung threw on some dry clothes and stepped into the living room.
“Hmm?”
Unexpectedly, the smell of food lingered in the air.
As he wiped the water from his hair, a warm, savory scent wafted over to him.
His stomach growled, and he froze mid-wipe, still clutching the towel.
What the hell…?
Ever since his Reawakening, hunger was practically a foreign feeling. His stomach was often empty, sure, but he rarely had any actual appetite.
Maybe I burned through too much energy recovering.
Then again, he had gone two days without food and had injuries on top of that. No wonder he felt drained.
Tossing the towel over his shoulder, Cha Eui-sung made his way to the table.
A broad back clad in a thin cotton tee stood in front of the stove, stirring something.
“What’s this?”
“I made something to eat. Sit down.”
Moon Tae-young glanced over his shoulder and answered casually.
A white porridge dropped in plops from the ladle into a pot.
Porridge…?
Did he even have rice in the house?
Running his fingers through the back of his damp hair, Cha Eui-sung sat at the table like he was told, but the whole thing just felt strange. And frankly, he didn’t like it.
Someone putting this much care into taking care of him, even making porridge… it felt like something out of a TV drama.
But maybe it was because he’d never dared to expect anything like it.
Even with the label of “partner” between them, it still felt like Moon Tae-young was crossing a boundary.
Still, awkward or not, his nutrient-starved body wasn’t about to argue.
The moment the scent hit him up close, his mouth watered and his stomach let out another loud growl.
Embarrassed, he pressed a hand to his stomach to silence it—but it was too late.
Moon Tae-young had already heard it, and placed a steaming bowl of porridge in front of him.
“You haven’t eaten this whole time?”
“I had a little before I passed out. Kind of.”
He was being completely honest, but for some reason it still sounded like an excuse.
While Cha Eui-sung gnawed on his bottom lip, Moon Tae-young took a seat across from him.
No one said anything, but both of them reached for their spoons at the same time.
And just like that, a quiet, unembellished meal began—no side dishes, no frills.
Hoo, slurp…
The porridge was pretty watery, but maybe because he was hungry, it tasted surprisingly good.
Finely chopped vegetables and egg—basic but hearty.
Honestly, after starving for days, he could’ve handled raw meat, so porridge felt a bit excessive. It was almost over-the-top.
It wasn’t spicy, wasn’t salty—just plain.
Gulp.
But it went down so easily.
Cha Eui-sung devoured the hot porridge like someone stranded in a snowstorm.
Crunchy bits of carrot, fragrant slivers of mushroom, eggs so soft they melted on his tongue.
Sure, he could always taste the ingredients individually, but it was rare for them to whet his appetite like this.
He ate so well that Moon Tae-young eventually paused his own meal just to watch.
That’s how fast his bowl was emptying.
“You didn’t have any ingredients, right?”
Swallowing another mouthful, Cha Eui-sung asked.
“I brought them. From home.”
“Oh. The ones from the fried rice before?”
“Surprised you didn’t even have a single grain of rice.”
Says the guy who didn’t either.
Cha Eui-sung muttered internally but held his tongue.
“I’ll grab a new handle from the city tomorrow and fix the door.”
“No need. At least you didn’t break the wall—this place is a rental.”
“You know how to fix it?”
“Nope.”
At his sullen tone, Moon Tae-young let out a faint laugh.
Cha Eui-sung reflexively rubbed his neck and looked away to his now-empty bowl.
They weren’t the type to talk much.
If Eui-sung didn’t poke or joke or ask something, their conversations always died quick deaths.
Naturally, silence returned to the table, with only the occasional clink of cutlery breaking it.
“Just leave the dishes. I’ll take care of them.”
“You should rest. It’s not exactly hard.”
“The room… was it you who cleaned it?”
“Just tossed out the trash. It was already pretty neat.”
Aside from the bed, everything looked untouched—and that was mostly because it had been untouched.
The house came pre-furnished, likely intended for the landlord’s son and his wife.
In other words, it was full of furniture that didn’t suit Cha Eui-sung’s taste or needs.
“Sigh.”
Finishing the last spoonful, Cha Eui-sung let out a long breath and leaned back in his chair.
With food in his stomach, his hibernating body slowly came back to life.
When Moon Tae-young silently asked with his eyes if he wanted more, he shook his head. That was enough.
As much as he hated to admit it, the food—and the sudden intrusion—had both been surprisingly satisfying.
After brushing his damp bangs up off his forehead, he must’ve looked more human, because Moon Tae-young visibly relaxed.
If he said goodbye now and sent him off, maybe the house would return to its peaceful, quiet state.
No more worrying about anyone snooping around, or accidentally leaving something out that might blow a secret.
And yet…
Cha Eui-sung didn’t say anything.
He just watched as Moon Tae-young quietly continued his meal—despite porridge needing no chewing, he was eating it painstakingly slow.
“Are you… gonna leave?”
He wasn’t even sure why he asked.
“Guess I should. Got stuff to prep before work.”
The answer came so clean and simple that he just nodded.
It was what he’d wanted, too.
No intention of clinging to someone who said they were busy.
Still, considering the guy had taken care of him and even fed him, Cha Eui-sung had been thinking of letting him stay a bit longer if he’d wanted to.
Nothing more than that.
The quiet meal came to an end, and when Moon Tae-young tried to clean up, Cha Eui-sung firmly waved him off.
Even if he hadn’t come over, he would’ve woken up around this time anyway, gotten himself some nutrients, and recovered.
There was no reason to ask for any more help.
***
The System—or more precisely, the Administrator of this dimension or whatever—was basically like a solo admin running a personal website.
This “site” was loosely managed under something akin to a cosmic-scale server, and under the laws of the universe, it was subject to things like server hosting, firewall protection, maintenance costs, and a bunch of imposed limitations.
The reason some of the System messages often appeared partially erased was likely because they contained information that violated those restrictions.
In short, there were things that regular users weren’t allowed to know.
That was why Cha Eui-sung wasn’t referred to with some lofty title like Guardian of Dimensional Blah Blah Only Understandable by Transcendent Beings.
Instead, he was simply called a “Hero of Earth”—a term made to fit human understanding.
The invader, too, no doubt had a name impossible to render in human language. But to Cha Eui-sung, he was just known as an Outer God.
DUN DUN!
One day, a strange new content update called “Dungeons” was added to dimensional Earth. And it created holes—anomalies the existing firewalls couldn’t contain.
Through these cracks came a powerful invader, one that aimed to devour the server and its resources whole.
Fortunately, the invader was shackled by the same universal laws—burdened with all kinds of handicaps. But the Administrator, too, was subject to those same restrictions. Scraping together a depleted maintenance budget, they rose to defend the dimension.
What started as a turf war over a tiny little site became, thanks to strict limitations and the Earth Administrator’s ingenuity, a proxy war using the planet’s own insignificant life forms.
Every time the Administrator sent warnings or intel to their beloved gladiator—the Hero of Earth—it burned through a considerable chunk of operating costs.
The Demon King, representing the Outer Gods, was probably in a similar bind.
…Or so it goes. What a load of bullshit.
That, after countless clues and an exhausting leap of imagination, was the full extent of what Cha Eui-sung had been able to piece together.
Leaning back, he pressed a finger against his wound, mulling it over.
Guess I won’t be seeing the System again for a while.
It had appeared during that hallucination inside the dungeon, after all. Even revealed a “Faded Photograph Fragment” that one time.
The Kingdom’s budget’s probably shot to hell by now. He figured it’d be months before he saw the next clue.
But as if to spit in the face of his logic, the System popped up in front of his eyes far sooner than expected.
[A reward is being issued from the Dimens░░.]
[Passive] Hero’s Right
—Enhances and amplifies an already-acquired sixth sense, as long as it does not exceed the Authority granted to the [Demon King].
A desperate, almost pitiful twist of the entire body—one that screamed of a feeble attempt to cheat the universe.
