[Hey everyone, I’m actually a survivor of the Eid Portal at the MA Department Store.]
Bae Ji-han, who’d gained a decent following at school thanks to his gaming videos, ditched games altogether and started broadcasting his survival story from the Eid Portal.
[No joke, the guy was slicing through monsters like it was nothing—one swing, one kill. You should’ve seen how badass he looked in there…]
[I even text with him! He’s got such a baby face that you don’t notice in person, but over text? Total middle-aged man energy.]
[Anyway, I was walking up the escalator in the department store with him, and out of nowhere, he just lifts me up. Yep—like the princess carry thing Guildmaster Tae Woon does. He picked me up, took a few steps, and boom—we went from the 4th floor straight to the 8th! It was insane.]
[I blinked, and we were already on the 8th floor. Guildmaster Tae Woon was there too, and maybe because I’m tall and built, he thought I looked heavy. The second he saw me in that guy’s arms, he got pissed, grabbed me by the collar, and straight-up tossed me back. I’m not even that heavy though.]
[I got launched through the air twice that day—once in his arms, and once thanks to Guildmaster Tae Woon.]
Clips from the broadcast were later recirculated with the title: “A Cheerfully Clueless Himbo Roasting Tae Woon with a Smile.”
[Our dear guild leader, always so sweet and chill… but the way he holds back in front of his hyung? LOL.]
Fans joked that Bae Ji-han was probably the first—and likely last—person to roast Tae Woon and walk away unscathed.
While the internet buzzed with all kinds of chatter, Kim Sibaek was wrapped up in a very different kind of dilemma.
Should I move out…?
Tae Woon’s “confession”—though calling that kind of bold, relentless sex-flirting a confession might be generous—had been turned down more than once. Naturally, Sibaek worried that Tae Woon might be feeling hurt or awkward.
Honestly, just seeing him now brought that kiss rushing back, leaving Sibaek unsettled every time.
And now that he’d officially awakened as a Hunter, the timing felt right. If Tae Woon started acting the least bit awkward, Sibaek had already decided—he’d find a place and move out, just to put some physical space between them.
But as if to mock his overthinking, Tae Woon hadn’t changed at all.
“Hyung, people are probably gonna recognize you and make things annoying for a bit. Wanna just order in tonight?”
That was the first thing he said that evening, casually tossing it out as he stepped into the penthouse—same as always. His tone and behavior had completely snapped back to what they were before the Giantvine incident. And that alone gave Kim Sibaek a quiet sense of relief. He responded with ease, doing his best not to let his gaze linger on Tae Woon’s lips.
Days passed like that.
Early one morning, Sibaek did a sweep around the site near the Management Center where the incident had taken place. But there was nothing new to find. The faint hope that something might remain—some trace of the Paladins of Chaos—was quickly extinguished. Gwak Yoonsang looked swamped with follow-up work, and asking for additional data felt like overstepping.
Returning home empty-handed, Sibaek booted up his laptop and clicked around until the cursor landed on the News tab.
“You know how to access archived newspapers?”
Lord Biendeoé, currently mashing buttons on a rhythm game using the tablet Tae Woon had given her, narrowed her eyes.
[Death and Beauty sighs: Must I spoon-feed you forever?]
“Typing’s annoying… Ow.”
He’d been trying to use a god like a search bot, and it earned him a flick to the fingers. Rubbing his hand, Kim Sibaek lazily typed out “how to access old newspapers.” Thankfully, the search yielded results right away. Apparently, even this world had public access to historical news records.
He already knew what he needed to look up. Taking a slow breath, he began typing: Kim Sibaek, national fencing athlete.
“……”
There was no real reason to be nervous. Tae Woon had already shown him the old news clippings. But still, seeing it again made a cold pit form in his stomach.
Articles about national fencing teams came up—but not a single one mentioned the name Kim Sibaek. Not for international competitions. Not even for domestic ones.
He remembered the article and interview from when he’d won an Olympic medal in fencing. Remembered it vividly. And yet, it was gone.
He let out a dry, bitter chuckle.
He had lived with everything he had. Pushed himself. Fought hard. And yet erasing all traces of that life turned out to be so… easy.
[Death and Beauty watches you with quiet concern.]
“I’m fine. I got my emotional vaccine for this, remember?”
He tried to make a joke of it and turned back to the articles, reading more carefully this time. When Tae Woon had shown him those newspapers, the shock had hit too hard for him to process it properly. But now, he could finally look at it with clear eyes.
I’m a registered Hunter now, and with no current quests, I’ve got time. Once I join a guild officially, I’ll be busier anyway.
Wherever there should’ve been records of him, things were jumbled. His name was missing from Olympic and Asian Games rosters—teams were short one fencer. Even domestic match records and award lists listed other names in his place. His younger siblings remembered it the first way—total deletion.
They said there wasn’t even anyone similar to me.
Then what about the second case—substitution? Could that hold a clue to why his presence had vanished from Earth entirely?
At least when it came to domestic tournaments, his high school fencing teammates should’ve remembered him. But there was no way to track them down now. He couldn’t keep relying on Tae Woon forever.
Wait—didn’t Woonie say something about Tae Chul-hoon?
He adjusted the search date—August, 199X. Right after the National President’s Cup. The rare vacation he’d taken. The summer he’d met Tae Woon.
“Your role was replaced with a random guy who just happened to be in the neighborhood.”
Just like Tae Woon had said, Kim Sibaek’s part in that summer had been overwritten by some anonymous man. Despite how wild that case had been at the time, once his presence was scrubbed out, the early coverage of the incident had been trimmed down to almost nothing. Tae Chul-hoon, who’d originally been sentenced to death, now had his sentence reduced to life imprisonment.
“Tae Chul-hoon’s in Jeongseon Prison, so I should be able to visit him. I just got my new ID issued too.”
[Death and Beauty tilts her head and asks, “Where’s Jeongseon Prison?”]
“…Where was it again?”
Watching Kim Sibaek slowly peck out each letter with the grace of a toddler on a keyboard, Biendeoé couldn’t take it anymore and grabbed her phone to search it herself. It didn’t take long—Jeongseon Prison, a facility for high-risk criminals, came up immediately.
When Kim Sibaek fumbled around the Ministry of Justice’s correctional bureau site, struggling to find the menu button, Biendeoé flapped her wings and smacked the back of his hand.
[Death and Beauty clutches her chest in frustration, declaring she physically cannot watch this any longer.]
“Oh, then could you help me find the visitation application page?”
The tiny crow expertly navigated the site with quick taps and swipes. Turns out, same-day visitation applications were allowed.
[Death and Beauty asks what you’ll do if this Tae Chul-hoon guy refuses to meet you.]
“I’ll just say I’m a journalist or a novelist working on a piece about an old case.”
Sibaek let out a bitter smile.
“He used to love talking about himself in interviews. Couldn’t shut up.”
[Death and Beauty explains that in modern terms, he’s what you’d call an ‘attention whore.’]
“What’s an attention whore?”
The baby crow, already fully corrupted by the internet, excitedly launched into an explanation, and Kim Sibaek nodded along while placing the visitation request by phone. As expected, Tae Chul-hoon didn’t refuse.
Tae Chul-hoon—convicted of multiple murders.
He was the man who, thirty years ago, murdered Tae Woon’s parents and neighbors, abducted the young boy, and kept him locked away. He was also the man who had dragged Kim Sibaek’s life as a fencing athlete into the mud.
***
If he told Tae Woon he was going to visit Tae Chul-hoon, there was no doubt he’d insist on coming too. While Tae Woon didn’t seem to hold much visible resentment anymore, it couldn’t be easy facing the man who killed his parents.
So Sibaek kept quiet—right up through lunch.
Today’s cafeteria menu was saengtae-tang (pollock soup). Tae Woon, in peak filial mode, had brought over the hot soup for Sibaek himself, and while the gesture should have warmed him, it only made him feel uneasy.
Then, as he casually bit into a piece of fish meat, Tae Woon said, completely offhand,
“Hyung. You going somewhere today?”
