Kim Sibaek glanced down at the hand Tae Woon was so insistently licking, then replied.
“My hand?”
“Yeah. The window in that semi-basement was tiny, and the backlight made it hard to see your face. But you reached your hand through the bars, remember? Holding a bag with a red bean bun and a bottle of strawberry milk.”
Tae Woon’s eyes grew distant, as if he were getting lost in memories from thirty years ago.
“You know how a baby duck imprints on the first thing it sees after hatching? That’s what happened to me.”
Tae Woon had no memories from before the age of five. For him, time started moving again from that moment—when he imprinted on Kim Sibaek.
“That’s why I like your hands so much. It feels like they’ll leave a mark on me again, just like they did back then.”
“…Woon.”
“Well, that’s only part of it.”
As if trying to lift the heavy mood that had settled over them while reminiscing, Tae Woon smiled lightly.
“They say hands are more sensitive than genitals, right? So if I keep sucking on your fingers, maybe it’ll make you remember me just as vividly as if we’d had sex.”
That ridiculous, cheeky line finally loosened Kim Sibaek’s expression.
“You don’t need to be this clingy. I couldn’t forget you even if I tried.”
“’Cause my dick’s huge?”
“…Yeah, well. That too.”
It was the kind of size you’d never forget… not that you saw one like that every day.
Grinning like a mischievous boy, Tae Woon leaned in and pressed their lips together. Even as he responded to the smooth slide of Tae Woon’s tongue, Kim Sibaek couldn’t stop thinking about something that had been bothering him for a while.
Seriously, when is this bed going to stop spinning? I’m getting dizzy.
What finally brought the rotating bed to a halt was a sudden phone call. After a brief conversation with a guild member on night duty, Kim Sibaek turned to Tae Woon, who looked thoroughly sulky after their alone time got interrupted.
“I have to head out. Today’s the day I was scheduled to work with the Fourth Strike Team, and they said an Eid Portal just opened. They’re planning to raid it.”
“Then as Guildmaster, I should—”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
Kim Sibaek cut him off—firmly, almost uncharacteristically—and after a moment’s hesitation, added quietly,
“They think the Eid Portal’s host might be a kid who was a victim of domestic abuse.”
***
[Death and Beauty demands a rotating bed.]
“……”
[Death and Beauty complains that you’re ignoring Her Divine Words.]
The baby crow flapped its wings furiously. Kim Sibaek, getting a faceful of feathers, sighed and rubbed his cheek.
“A spinning bed’s just dizzying, that’s all.”
[Death and Beauty insists that as long as it’s fun, who cares?]
“If we switch to a rotating bed, we won’t be able to use the canopy one anymore.”
“……!”
“And they don’t make rotating beds in child-size.”
“……?!”
The other guild members in the SUV desperately pretended they weren’t hearing Kim Sibaek talk to his familiar. Even after countless field missions and training sessions together, it was something they could never get used to.
Only Moon Sunghui, the team captain, forced a polite smile and played along.
“Does the crow need a bed too?”
“She wants a rotating one.”
Not just wants—she demands it, complete with honorifics. A faint twitch flickered at the corner of Moon Sunghui’s eye.
“If she’s okay with something smaller, how about a baby cradle? My nephews had one, and I remember it was fully automatic.”
“Oh.”
That actually sounded like a decent idea. With Moon Sunghui’s help, they eventually found a cradle decked out with extravagant, flowing lace—right as the SUV rolled to a stop.
“Looks like the car can’t go any farther from here.”
At the driver’s words, the group got out. Before them stretched a typical hillside slum—narrow alleyways, steep staircases, weatherworn slate roofs, and one-story houses thrown together with rough cement. While the rest of the city glittered with holiday decorations as Christmas approached, this neighborhood looked like a forgotten pocket of time.
As they walked toward the address provided by the Paranormal Phenomena Response Agency, Kim Sibaek chatted with Moon Sunghui, and the topic naturally drifted to the Cataclysm.
She reminisced that she’d only survived because she was on campus, watching a World Cup match from the school field.
“If I’d stayed alone in my apartment… how long do you think I would’ve lasted? I probably would’ve died to the monsters before I even Awakened.”
“You managed to hold out against the monsters at the university?”
“Yup. I never imagined it, but the campus turned out to be a great shelter.”
Jaewoo University, where she’d been a student, was one of the largest campuses in the country. The facilities were solid, the buildings could double as living quarters and barriers, and there were plenty of cafeterias and convenience stores. Most importantly, there were people from all sorts of backgrounds and majors.
She added that it wasn’t until Tae Woon joined that they truly realized the campus’s potential.
“He may seem like he’s always been this composed, but 21 years ago, the Guildmaster was still just a kid. When his group first arrived at the university, we thought a nun or a priest had brought them. But nope—a 14-year-old was leading the charge.”
The core members of that group were just children—Awakeners, all clustered around a single boy. Naturally, no one trusted them at first.
But the boy in black, eyes far too cold for someone his age, possessed power that could have crushed every survivor at Jaewoo University had he chosen to. In a world where surviving one day didn’t guarantee the next, that kind of overwhelming strength was everything.
With sheer, undeniable force, he silenced all resistance and reorganized the shelter. And just like that, he became its leader.
“There was a library on campus, right? When the Guildmaster took it back from the monsters, I remember thinking, Why even bother? It’s not like we can eat paper. But I was wrong.”
Reading those books—reconnecting with the world before everything collapsed—soothed the nerves of survivors who’d been pushed to the brink. And once the audiovisual rooms were restored, the effect was even stronger. Moon Sunghui joked that she never even set foot in the library back in school, too busy partying. But after the world ended, she found herself going all the time.
“Teaching the orphanage kids now and then probably helped, too. Emotionally, I mean.”
Her gaze drifted, lost in thought, as she murmured softly.
“Everything the Guildmaster had us do in that shelter… it all felt pointless back then. So minor, so trivial. But looking back now, every little thing—big or small—helped keep us sane. Helped us survive without losing our minds.”
“……”
“How could a kid—just fourteen—lead people like that, like he’d somehow been preparing for the Cataclysm all along?”
“Well… he’s smart?”
Kim Sibaek gave his usual dry reply, but Moon Sunghui’s words stirred something in him, like a pebble dropped into still water.
The Eid Portal had formed right in front of a shabby house midway up the hill. A mutt, tied up in a yard piled with trash, paced nervously. Given the conditions, the family inside was the most likely host.
A field agent from the Eid Portal Management Division, who had been controlling access to the area, approached Moon Sunghui and explained.
“Two-person household. Single father. The grandmother passed away two years ago. The father’s a day laborer. The son’s in first grade. Father hasn’t shown up for work and his phone’s off. The boy didn’t go to school today, either.”
“Oh no… I really hope it’s not the kid.”
“Same here.”
If a child—just a second grader—had reached the emotional breaking point needed to become an Eid Portal host… well. You didn’t even want to imagine what he’d been through. Just the thought left a bitter taste in the mouth.
Once the team had administered sedatives and completed their final checks, Moon Sunghui stepped into the portal. Kim Sibaek quietly followed behind her.
Countless pinpricks of starlight blinked around them like a drifting galaxy, brushing gently across his skin.
[Death and Beauty remarks that the scenery still looks a lot like the first time.]
Ahead, Moon Sunghui scanned the gray, mist-choked world with practiced eyes. The landscape was nearly identical to the real one outside—except the house belonging to the missing father and son was nowhere to be seen. The odds that one of them was the host had just gone up.
“They’re not in the immediate area. Let’s start by looking for any survivors.”
“People lose consciousness when they get pulled in, right?”
At the surprisingly basic question, Moon Sunghui blinked, confused. But then her expression softened, as if understanding something.
“Ah… You worked at the NIS, didn’t you? You probably haven’t done many portal raids. Yeah—once they’re swept in, they pass out instantly. Not even time to scream.”
But her explanation only deepened Kim Sibaek’s confusion.
“I had a dinner reservation, damn it.”
That’s what Tae Woon had said when he got pulled into the Eid Portal at the MA Department Store.
