What if.
What if he hadn’t gotten the day off?
What if the bus had come on time that day?
What if that middle-aged man hadn’t stopped to smoke?
What if it hadn’t been a sweltering summer day?
What if he hadn’t bought that ice cream?
What if he hadn’t dropped the bag?
What if he’d picked it up right away?
A chain of tiny coincidences, stacked one on top of the other, became inevitability.
And the boy met the child.
The part where he’d nearly screamed from the sudden sensation of being watched in such a random place—that was a small secret he’d keep to himself.
There, in that room, was a child.
A small, unkempt child wearing filthy, ragged clothes that looked like they hadn’t been changed in months, hair wild and overgrown.
As Kim Sibaek pressed down on his pounding chest and met the child’s gaze through the window, his heart began to race for a whole new reason.
“…….”
Sitting quietly in the middle of that tiny room, the child looked up at him, and it felt as though…
A wave of nausea surged. Kim Sibaek squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again.
The scene remained unchanged.
The ghost of his little brother, who had always waited by the door after school—the faint trace of that boy who lived only in his memory—wavered and overlapped with the child’s blank stare.
His throat burned. The summer heat pressed in, dizzy and suffocating.
Clenching his faintly trembling fingers into a fist, Kim Sibaek took a deep breath.
This wasn’t his brother.
It couldn’t be.
No matter how many times he told himself that, the child’s pitch-black, bottomless eyes swallowed him whole like a swamp.
Slowly, he crouched lower, and moved his trembling lips.
“Hey, little guy. What’s your name?”
“…….”
Of course, the answer wasn’t “Kim Siwoon.”
The child didn’t react at all, like he hadn’t heard a thing. His unfocused eyes just drifted lazily in the air.
“I’m… I’m Kim Sibaek.”
“…….”
“I’m a high schooler. Do you know Ilmun High? It’s just across the main road over there.”
He fumbled through the conversation, trying to coax something out, but the child gave no response. Maybe his hearing or vision wasn’t right?
That logical thought came too late—because what had already risen to the surface was the image of his brother. How he, too, hadn’t reacted to anything anyone said. Just like this child. The possibility that this kid might be developmentally delayed too made Kim Sibaek’s heart ache even more.
Suddenly, a loud growl echoed.
Still staring down at the child through the window—completely forgetting that he was basically spying into someone’s home—Kim Sibaek instinctively grabbed his own stomach. He hadn’t felt hungry, maybe because of the heat, but… what was that?
Then it happened again. Another loud grumble from a hungry belly. That’s when it clicked.
This kid was alone. A tiny child, barely three or four years old at most, sitting inside a house all by himself.
Kim Sibaek swallowed dryly and carefully asked again.
“Where are your parents? No big brother or sister?”
“…….”
“You’re all alone?”
“…….”
“…Are you hungry?”
Instead of an answer, the child’s stomach growled again.
“Wait right here. I’ll be back soon, okay?”
Feeling strangely panicked, Kim Sibaek gave a quick word of assurance before bolting out of sight.
Back at the same convenience store where he’d bought a popsicle earlier, he picked out a sweet red bean bun. He instinctively reached for a bottle of plain milk, then paused—it probably wasn’t to the kid’s taste. He swapped it for strawberry milk instead.
Racing back to the semi-basement apartment, he knocked lightly on the window bars.
“I brought bread! Want some?”
“…….”
“It’s really good. You don’t like red bean? Want me to get something else?”
The child’s gaze remained blank and unreadable—like staring into a bottomless well. How could a child’s eyes look so far away?
After a moment of hesitation, Kim Sibaek slipped his arm through the bars—one of which was slightly bent, leaving a gap. A black plastic bag dangled from his hand, filled with bread and strawberry milk.
“Can you see this? It’s food.”
He wiggled the bag a little, then let it drop. It landed with a soft thud right on the child’s lap.
Only then—finally—did a faint light begin to return to those dazed eyes. The once-hazy gaze slowly came into focus, and Kim Sibaek felt something shift as the child’s eyes began to reflect the world again.
He waved through the bars.
“Hi.”
A small, radiant smile bloomed in those dark eyes.
***
Biendeoé’s personal cradle arrived soon after—but it brought a whole new problem.
Groaning, Kim Sibaek sat hunched over the manual.
No matter how hard he stared, the white was still paper and the black was still just words. As a self-proclaimed analog man, learning to operate a fully-automated cradle was no easy feat. The power button was the only thing he could understand.
“If I press the power and it rocks a bit, can’t we just call that good enough?”
[Death and Beauty scolds you, saying that she must enjoy the rhythm—how dare you speak such blasphemy.]
“How much rhythm can a cradle this small even have… Ow.”
Flapping her tiny wings, Biendeoé flew up and headbutted him in the face, making him groan as he returned to wrestling with the manual.
“Adjusting the angle… um… is it this one?”
“This one.”
Suddenly, a heavy presence pressed against his back, and a hand reached over his shoulder to lightly tap the remote. The unexpected weight made Kim Sibaek’s upper body tip forward.
“When did you get here?”
“Just now.”
Tae Woon’s voice echoed softly near his ear, his tone lazy and relaxed as he leaned into him without reservation. That languid voice brushed against his ear and the nape of his neck, and even that brief touch sent a shiver rippling through him—goosebumps threatening to rise with the slightest contact.
It was a strange, unfamiliar sensation. Not something he’d ever felt from the boy who used to cling to him so freely. Was it because they’d crossed that physical line? Or because that boy’s name… was Tae Woon?
“You’re spacing out again, even though I’m right here.”
Tae Woon murmured as he gently brushed aside a lock of hair that had fallen near Kim Sibaek’s ear. It was nothing—just a simple touch, idle chatter. But even so, his hypersensitive nerves wouldn’t settle down.
When Tae Woon’s fingertips brushed against his earlobe, a tingling jolt sparked there. His low whisper seemed to melt directly into his skin, soaking into him along with his breath. It made his chest tighten with a ticklish kind of warmth.
“…Woon—”
Just as the word left his lips, a new system quest popped up in front of his eyes.
[The world is changing, and now you’ve unlocked the ability to tame magical beasts! 0_0) But above all, isn’t humanity’s eternal companion the noble Canis—family Canidae, genus Canis, suborder Caniformia, order Carnivora?]
[Quest 12]
[Spend at least one hour walking or playing outdoors with a member of the genus Canis.]
[Time Remaining: 220 hours 00 minutes 00 seconds]
Tae Woon noticed the twitch in Kim Sibaek’s brow right away.
“Did a quest just pop up?”
“Yeah. Wants me to hang out with a dog.”
“A dog? Like… an actual woof woof dog?”
Tae Woon even mimicked a bark—woof woof—and Kim Sibaek couldn’t help but find it oddly cute. Sure, it was another one of those annoying quests trying to shove him outside again, but… something about this one felt different.
Didn’t it say last time that clearing the Eid Portal would let me meet someone I miss?
He stared into the air, silently demanding more info, but the system window stayed frustratingly blank. There was no way to know what it was thinking. And yet another issue immediately came to mind.
“Where am I even supposed to find a dog right now?”
“There’s a Hunter in our guild who tames beast-type monsters that look like dogs. Should we try one of those?”
“Nah, the quest specifically listed biological classification. That rules out magical beasts. Anyone we know actually own a dog?”
[Death and Beauty says she saw a video about dog-walking part-time jobs on YouTube.]
“…When the hell did she even—”
How much time had she spent glued to that phone? At this rate, she understood Earth life better than he did—and he was born here.
While Kim Sibaek was busy questioning his life choices as a guardian, Tae Woon rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Then his odd, slightly crazed-looking eyes lit up with an idea.
“Hyung. Hey, Hyung.”
“Yeah, what?”
“You know my nickname’s ‘Mad Dog,’ right?”
“Oh… right.”
It was one of the first search results that came up with his name. Of course, in Kim Sibaek’s mind, “mad dog” conjured up something like a hyper little chihuahua or beagle—a yappy little monster people jokingly called a demon dog.
“Then if I go on a walk with you, shouldn’t that count for the quest?”
“……!”
It… actually made sense.
Genius logic, honestly.
[Death and Beauty warns you not to be seduced by literal dogshit reasoning.]
“Well, what’s the harm in trying? It’s worth a shot, right?”
“Exactly. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll crawl on all fours and bark like a dog the whole way through the park. We’ll try again.”
