“Hyung, Min….”
“Yeah, Somin. I’m right here.”
“Hic… Soh-an hyung is acting strange….”
If Gong Min was that shaken, how much worse must the shock have been for Ryu Somin? His pale blue eyes still flickered with fear.
Gong Min brushed back his sweat-soaked hair and kept patting his trembling back. If only Ryu Soh-an would come to his senses and comfort his brother, but judging from the sounds echoing through the house, that hope felt distant.
“Soh-an hyung keeps staring at me with such cold eyes….”
At Somin’s trembling words, Gong Min’s heart sank. He’d felt it too. Since Soh-an had changed, his gaze had sometimes grown so icy it felt like it cut straight down to absolute zero.
Directed at him, Gong Min could accept it. Maybe, without realizing, he had hurt Soh-an. Looking back, he had never really done anything special for him.
But Somin? No—he should never have looked at his younger brother that way. The brother who once loved him more than anyone else in the world had become a different person overnight.
Ryu Soh-an had always been the kindest, most gentle boy Gong Min knew. But when anyone dared to hurt or insult them, he was the first to stand up in anger. That was how deeply he cared for them.
If only they knew the reason for this change, they’d do anything to fix it. But without an answer, frustration only kept piling up.
As Soh-an’s behavior grew stranger, a subtle tension had begun to settle over the once-peaceful mansion. Like water steadily filling a glass, that pressure finally spilled over today.
Only it wasn’t the glass overflowing—Soh-an had shattered it completely.
His sudden outburst left Gong Min wondering if things could ever return to normal. To outsiders, it might have looked like pent-up emotions exploding into a fight.
But for Somin, could he ever recover from the shock? To see the brother who had always been his greatest source of strength transform into a stranger—the fear of that alone must have been unbearable.
“…Maybe he just got hurt while healing someone else. Don’t worry. You know it too, right? That you’re the one Soh-an loves most in this world.”
With clumsy words, Gong Min tried his best to comfort him. Somin looked like a frightened child abandoned by his parents. Considering Soh-an had always been like both brother and parent to him, the comparison wasn’t wrong.
The words, meant only to soothe, weren’t entirely empty either. Soh-an had always treated the mentally wounded, and he once said their pain and emotions seeped into him a little at a time.
Maybe this time, the patient’s wounds had been so deep that Soh-an had absorbed too much. Otherwise, why would he turn on his friends with such murderous hostility?
“It’s not him… It doesn’t feel like Soh-an hyung anymore….”
No matter how Gong Min comforted him, Somin couldn’t calm down. Though he didn’t show it outwardly, unease consumed him, and he found himself constantly on edge around a brother who felt possessed by someone else.
Sometimes the weight of reality made him want to claw at his chest. With a body too weak even to run, he was vulnerable to stress. At times, despair left him feeling useless, like dead weight.
Hospital treatments were painful, monotonous, and draining. Sometimes he wondered what meaning life had left, and thoughts of death would creep in. But he endured—because Soh-an was by his side.
With a brother who loved him unconditionally, even a meaningless life was still worth living. When he turned twenty, he wanted to awaken as a Guide.
With Soh-an and the others being Espers, he dreamed that becoming a Guide would let him repay their love.
But then came that gaze—one he had never imagined receiving from his brother. The moment their eyes met, Somin felt like the worst person alive. That look made him feel it.
Barely concealed, laced with distrust and loathing—it was a gaze he had never once experienced in his life. At first, it confused him. But as time passed, anger began to smolder inside.
He had done nothing wrong. He endured the painful treatments. Each time despair made him want to die, he thought of his brother and pushed through.
To have all that effort rewarded with contempt—it was cruel. And today of all days—it was his birthday. The one day that should have been happiest had been ruined by his own brother. How could he not resent him?
“…I’ll find out why. So don’t worry too much.”
Gong Min continued patting Somin’s back, now still and stiff after his tears had dried. Until now, he had assumed Soh-an must have had his reasons and chose not to press him.
But now he realized he couldn’t leave it alone. Sometimes watching from the sidelines wasn’t the answer. If they let things go on like this, the cracks between them would only deepen. What happened today felt like just a preview of something far worse.
Gong Min held Somin until he drifted to sleep, then gently laid him on the bed and left the room. He had resolved to uncover the truth about Ryu Soh-an—and he was ready to act on it.
***
“Haah… hahh….”
Only after exhausting himself to the point of collapse did Ryu Soh-an’s sanity begin to return. Ever since healing Nabin, something inside him had been piling up, festering until it finally detonated like a bomb.
The blast had left devastation in its wake before its flames finally burned out. His flushed, bloodshot eyes trembled uncontrollably.
“What the hell have I….”
Looking back at what he had done, his face twisted with unspeakable despair. The mansion’s first floor was a ruin.
Furniture lay shattered beyond recognition, some ground to dust. The sofa that once dominated the living room was ripped apart, its shape unrecognizable.
Because this was an S-rank Esper’s mansion, protective Artifacts were scattered throughout, disguised as expensive paintings and sculptures. Without them, the house might have collapsed entirely.
Even so, the massive glass windows that had framed the garden like a painting were now jagged shards scattered across the living room.
The wind blowing through the broken panes chilled his sweat-soaked body, making him shiver violently. An S-rank Esper should never feel cold, but after losing control like a stranger to himself, his body shook to his very jaw.
As ragged as Soh-an’s breathing was, Han Jigang and Tae Yishin weren’t unscathed either. Their bodies still bore the marks of battle, though not as ruined as the mansion itself.
Blinded by rage, Soh-an had unleashed wild, indiscriminate attacks at them, each strike dripping with killing intent so thick it suffocated.
Unlike Soh-an, who emerged unscathed but drained, the two had sustained real wounds. They couldn’t fight him full-force; all they could do was parry his blows and strike back just enough to knock him out. Yet Soh-an had fought like a beast whose young had been stolen.
If he had been an offensive-type Esper instead of a healer, one of them might have been left in critical condition. The only saving grace was that healing wasn’t meant for combat, so the damage amounted to cuts and torn skin.
“You’ve come to your senses now?”
Han Jigang wiped the blood from his forehead with the back of his hand as he stepped closer. Soh-an knelt beside the ruined sofa, gasping for breath.
The sight of Jigang’s bloodied face seared into his mind. Realizing that he, of all people, had hurt Jigang made his breathing falter again, this time from guilt rather than exhaustion.
“At this point, I need to know. Why the hell you’ve been acting like this.”
Jigang’s tone sounded calm, but his voice was lower than usual. He was only trying to resolve things with words because the one who had done this was Soh-an.
If it had been Tae Yishin rampaging instead, Jigang wouldn’t have asked questions—he would have beaten him bloody first. That was how much his hands were still trembling from the aftermath.
