Chapter 23
‘Hunter Baek Mujin looked so utterly lost.’
Should he have said something? Shouldn’t he have given some appropriate response? With no memories coming back, everything was just vague and confusing.
“……”
Eunseong, who had been blankly sitting for a moment, soon shook off his thoughts. Then he squirmed and lay down, curling his body under the blanket. He decided to follow his advice to rest for now.
Lying flat with an ice pack over his eyes, sleep began to pour over him like a lie. He had gone through quite an ordeal after all.
What was that fire that killed the Boss? Eunseong raised both hands and repeatedly clenched and unclenched his fists.
The rift byproducts obtained from hunting low-grade monsters that emerged from rift fragments transformed from poison to gold after detoxification work. The Boss was a vicious human but not thoroughly meticulous, so when his belly got full, he would drop crumbs.
Though Hanyeong worried about revealing his abilities to people, he never regretted it because the harder he worked on detoxification, the more crumbs fell. On days when brokers came to trade rift byproducts, they could share meat with the tent village people and light fires.
This meant he had suspected from the beginning that he was a production-type or support-type hunter. But that fire, that kind of power—he had never felt even the slightest hint of it once in three years.
If he could use fire as naturally as his purification ability that flowed like breathing, he wouldn’t have spent winter so cold. And Hanyeong wouldn’t have gotten beaten either. He had used it for the first time when killing the Boss.
‘Used’ was inaccurate. Rather, it was more like the fire had used him.
That fire that he had wielded but wasn’t by his own will disappeared like a lie. He felt that the disappeared memories, Mujin, and that fire were all connected like a key.
By the way, what’s with this bed……
This is trouble. Now he won’t be able to sleep in the tent village bedding. Geumseum was thinking about returning to the Bottom without realizing he was feeling comfortable in Mujin’s house as if it were his own. It was contradictory.
“……”
The bed was full of Mujin’s scent. After giving him the bed, was he planning to sleep somewhere else?
At the end of all these thoughts, what came to mind again were Mujin’s black eyes.
Wasn’t this treatment too generous for someone picked up from the street? He guessed that he and Mujin were definitely friends. Perhaps they might have been even closer, like family.
‘You died.’
It would be absurd. A friend he thought was dead was living a new life having forgotten everything cleanly—he would be bewildered too. So those pupils must look like they have so much to say.
He should apologize tomorrow. Sorry for not recognizing him.
Now that he thought about it, it was quite unnatural that he hadn’t been curious about his past while living with Hanyeong for the past three years. He had thought it might be memories he didn’t want to recall.
He also felt the desire to remember and give Mujin the right answers.
“……How frustrating.”
But right now, worrying about Hanyeong was more urgent. Eunseong consciously shook off thoughts of Mujin, even shaking his head.
How was Hanyeong doing? It would be nice if he had healing abilities or something, some way to help Hanyeong.
After various thoughts, Eunseong fell fast asleep.
* * *
Mujin, who had moved to the next room leaving Eunseong behind, sat quietly in a chair listening for sounds.
He thought that once he left the room, Eunseong would surely look around here and there and fiddle with the locking mechanism. He also worried about how to respond if he tried to escape. But unexpectedly, Eunseong chose to obediently lie down. There were sounds of tossing and turning for a while, then it became quiet.
Only then did Mujin look at the laptop spread before him. On the screen was a map showing the point where Eunseong was discovered, traces of the tent village that had been not far away, and the location of the rift that occurred that night, all connected with dots and lines.
That Eunseong was alive was definitely a miracle and something to be grateful for. What Mujin found strange was simply how he had been living at the ‘Bottom.’ Having lost all his memories completely. And what about those eyes and hair?
Mujin kept his gaze fixed on the screen and recalled that day three years ago when Huiseon Building collapsed, that moment he could never forget even in death. At the same time, Mujin also recalled the night he found Eunseong again.
That night, Eunseong had lost his human form and transformed into a fireball itself. Had he escaped the collapsing building by transforming like that?
“……I should consider re-awakening too.”
It would be easier to immediately examine Eunseong’s body and interrogate him to make him spill everything about the past, but Mujin didn’t want to do that.
His fear was immense. He felt that if he touched him wrong even slightly, Eunseong would disappear like a mirage. He didn’t want to do anything carelessly.
Mujin brought up Hanyeong’s information on the screen. According to genetic information, there seemed to have been awakened hunters among distant relatives, but looking at his current body, he had neither abilities nor even the seed of a core. The conclusion was that he wasn’t someone planted beside Eunseong with purpose.
“How attached they must have become over three years.”
Recalling the voice that called Hanyeong so tenderly made that gap he didn’t know feel even larger. So from now on, he had to thoroughly investigate Eunseong’s past three years.
From how he escaped the collapsed building to how he ended up at the ‘Bottom,’ how he survived avoiding rifts all this time. Who he met and who he conversed with.
To guarantee Eunseong’s safety, he had to know everything without missing a single detail.
Mujin took out his phone and flipped through his contacts. Soon he called Yeon Seokchun’s number. He was the former team leader of Eunseong’s guild Yuseong, and now that Yuseong had disintegrated, he had become unemployed.
– What brings you to call?
Mujin rolled his tongue briefly, then spoke directly and shortly.
“I found Eunseong.”
– …….
At the completely unexpected news, Yeon Seokchun couldn’t continue speaking for a moment.
– Is he healthy?
“For now.”
– Thank goodness. Really, really thank goodness.
Though it was a lackluster answer compared to the earnest question, Yeon Seokchun trembled with joy in a voice full of trust. This was about Eunseong. Mujin’s answer couldn’t be something carelessly uttered. Since Yeon Seokchun also hadn’t believed Eunseong was dead, he immediately spoke in a firm voice.
– What should I do?
Three months after Eunseong went missing, when his death became an established fact, the guild leader position of Yuseong officially became vacant. Yuseong Guild, which had been shaky even when Eunseong was alive, became like a candle before the wind.
It would have been good if they had quickly picked someone with the bloodline and abilities closest to ‘Yuseong’ and seated them in the guild leader position, but without justification and with similar abilities, the fighting never ended.
Eventually, through active intervention from various guilds and the Rift Control Agency, Yuseong was disbanded and Yuseong’s legacy was either auctioned off or absorbed as national assets.
In this process, there were hunters who accepted civil service positions with the Control Agency, while others like Yeon Seokchun chose the path of unaffiliated hunters—essentially unemployment.
Mujin couldn’t just abandon those whom Eunseong had relied on like family. After repeatedly persuading Yeon Seokchun, he succeeded in forming a guild together.
They couldn’t even register officially yet and were just an unauthorized group, but just creating a place for Eunseong to return to, a place he could consider home, allowed Mujin to breathe.
“There’s a lot to do. A lot to investigate too. Let’s start with the ‘Bottom’ first. I’m planning to trace back from the point where Eunseong was discovered.”
– Understood. I’ll form a team immediately.
“Please trace back three years. I’m sending all the data now.”
– Yes, I’ve received it.
Yeon Seokchun’s voice trembled finely through the receiver. Mujin repeatedly emphasized that there must be absolutely no mistakes.
“You saw the news, right? The fact that Eunseong has returned alive must be kept secret. Move only with the most trustworthy people, with minimal personnel.”
– Yes.
“And Eunseong has no memory.”
– What? What did you just say?
Mujin gave Yeon Seokchun a few more pieces of information before ending the call.
It was true that he had gone around venting his anger for a while after losing Eunseong.
He had cut out the tongue of a personal broadcast VJ who spread fabricated information as if it were fact, claiming that Eunseong had tremendous inferiority complex toward his older brother Jaeseong and had impersonated Jaeseong for a while after the accident to continue living.
He had captured an idol who used his resemblance to Eunseong as a selling point and locked him in an abandoned building in the old downtown. He had carefully provided food so he wouldn’t die, but since he couldn’t properly swallow even a sip of water, he ended up releasing him after a week.
What about those who carelessly left dirty comments? Recalling when he had visited each one to pull out their teeth and break all their fingers, Mujin raised an eyebrow. Those who were weak to the strong and strong to the weak were truly ugly when they cried.
Spending his days like that, Mujin gradually became unable to bear it. At the thought that he was protecting Eunseong’s phantom, and that it was too late.
He was consumed by the thought that he should have stepped forward more actively to protect him when Eunseong was alive, and punished himself.
“Not anymore.”
Mujin closed the laptop and stood up. One mistake was already too many.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
