EVS Chapter 138

“Stop talking nonsense and tell me straight. What did the guild members say about you?”

“Nothing much besides asking if I was a pretty boy. Though I couldn’t help but hear what they were saying behind my back.”

Such shameless excuses.

It was a completely unconvincing excuse. At S-rank, senses became so sharp that many deliberately limited them except during combat to avoid constant stress from minor stimuli in daily life. That’s how Sa-yoon had been when he was S-rank.

So Jaehee could have chosen not to hear their gossip if he wanted.

But he wouldn’t have.

He would have been straining to catch every tiny whisper. Because he was someone who had a frightening obsession with ‘knowing things.’

“Continue.”

“Nothing special, I just learned several facts. Like how you brought in Han Geon-joo, raised him with devotion, but then he ran away.”

“You must have made some deductions to ask me about it.”

Getting irritated at the drawn-out response and finding Jaehee’s way of speaking oddly reminiscent of Geon-joo, Sa-yoon asked sharply. Jaehee lowered his voice.

“Was he the key?”

“…”

A perfectly ideal conclusion. Sa-yoon closed his eyes at the man who asked about the most complete fact one could reach from just a few scraps of overheard words.

It was a question that didn’t need answering.

This seemed like a question meant to satisfy Jaehee’s personal curiosity rather than get to the root of things. Not answering wouldn’t particularly damage their cooperative relationship.

“…The guild members have loose lips and empty heads, so they spout nonsense often. Don’t pay attention to it.”

“It doesn’t seem like mere nonsense though. Is my deduction wrong?”

However, Jaehee wasn’t the type to back down just because the other party exercised their right to remain silent. Hadn’t he already experienced that persistence on the day of thunder?

Tap, tap.

Sa-yoon’s fingers drummed the table with displeasure. Around then, Jongsik, who had been fidgeting like he was sitting on pins and needles, quietly said he’d step out and left. Sa-yoon touched his lips, disconcerted that he’d forgotten Jongsik was even there.

“Am I wrong?”

Even now, Jaehee seemed curious about the answer to his deduction. His skill at getting under people’s skin by asking repeatedly was impressive. Sa-yoon let out an empty breath and twisted his lips into a smile.

“Why are you asking so persistently, Jaehee? What, are you interested in the pretty boy position?”

When he asked mockingly, silence followed. The man’s black eyes blinked. As Sa-yoon, tired of the continuing battle of nerves, picked up his documents again—

This time Jaehee laughed. It was closer to self-deprecation than cynicism or mockery.

What the?

Sa-yoon frowned at that laugh that didn’t match the atmosphere.

“That’s unfortunate. If you’d asked five years earlier, my answer might have been different.”

Jaehee offered a response that came far too late. Sa-yoon put aside the documents he was looking at completely and stared at him.

“What do you mean?”

“I already have someone in my heart, so if the pretty boy position means being a lover, I’ll have to decline.”

“…What?”

Someone in his heart?

Did he have a lover?

This was information he hadn’t seen in Gyeongjin’s report. A lover that Night Rats couldn’t find out about? Sa-yoon tried to judge from his expression if he was lying, but quickly became convinced it was true. Because Jaehee was making an expression he’d never seen before.

An expression of desperate longing.

And one that seemed filled with regret.

“…If you have a lover, shouldn’t you be by their side instead of here?”

Could he be the type to prioritize the greater cause over his lover? While judging that it would make sense given his personality, Jaehee’s gaze rolled across the table.

“Ah.”

Like someone whose throat had been blocked and just cleared, the man touched his entire neck before speaking.

“They died. Inside a gate.”

Though his voice trembled very faintly as he answered, it was calm, and Jaehee’s expression remained composed with a smile. Sa-yoon’s lips quivered in the sudden silence that followed.

Damn this mouth of mine.

This unnecessarily free-speaking mouth was the problem.

How was he supposed to handle this atmosphere?

This was similar to but worse than the awkward atmosphere after asking about someone’s parents only to hear yesterday was their funeral. There was no way to handle it. After all, Sa-yoon was someone well-versed in reacting nonchalantly when asked what his father did and getting the answer that he was dead. It would end with showing no sign of wavering and saying ‘It’s okay, I’m dead too.’ But lovers were different.

When someone answered that their lover was dead after being asked if they had one, there was no lover who could reply ‘I’m dead too.’ So there was no way to resolve this awkward atmosphere that had suddenly become heavy.

Drip. Cold sweat ran down his spine.

Asking if he was okay would be strange, and saying it would be okay would be terrible.

Why did this bastard suddenly bring up his lover?

Just as the arrow of responsibility for creating the awkward atmosphere was about to return to Jaehee himself, the man smiled and spoke.

“I didn’t expect such a serious reaction. You’re surprisingly tender-hearted.”

“This isn’t being tender-hearted, it’s just common decency.”

“Well, I suppose that could be it.”

The man who had spoken softly closed his mouth again. Though the atmosphere had lightened considerably, Sa-yoon didn’t know what to say. Just moments ago, he had been annoyed at Jaehee prying about Geon-joo, but now he had become the terrible person prying about a dead lover. Despite having no such intention.

Thinking that he’d been feeling wronged quite often lately, Jaehee began sharing his story without being asked anything.

“Do you remember the Gate Break incident from 3 years ago?”

“…Yes.”

That was an incident that anyone over ten living in Korea would remember.

Gate Break.

An incident where monsters poured out when cleared gates experienced an unexplained saturation phenomenon. Unlike other gate saturations, the monsters that emerged then chose to gather in one place rather than harm people. As they gathered—one hundred, two hundred, three hundred, thousands of monsters—a massive new gate was created at that location.

No, it couldn’t be called gate creation.

It should be called fusion.

All the gates the creatures emerged from combined into one.

While it sounded simple when told as a story, it was an absolutely horrific incident at the time.

That gate became Korea’s first and the world’s first unmeasurable-rank gate.

Even after three years, that gate remained the only unmeasurable-rank gate to ever appear. That’s how unprecedented a catastrophe it was.

Sa-yoon couldn’t enter at the time because he was carrying out a system quest, but hunter associations worldwide formed an alliance and sent in three thousand of their best hunters to clear that single gate.

And one hundred returned alive.

Not even a thousand, but just one hundred out of three thousand.

Though they succeeded in clearing the gate, it was a day that left the whole world in tears.

“That day, I entered the unmeasurable gate with my lover.”

“That was brave.”

“We both thought we had to save the world. Both Yeon and I.”

It seemed his lover was named Yeon. Sa-yoon thought it fitting that two righteous and good people had found each other.

“I don’t regret that choice even now. Someone had to go in, and we gladly wanted to save people. If I have one regret, it’s that I was so weak that Yeon died protecting me…”

The man trailed off while fidgeting with his fingers. For the first time, Sa-yoon paid attention to Jaehee’s fingers. On his left ring finger was a silver ring.

“We were going to get married, but couldn’t.”

“…”

“We planned to marry after successfully clearing the gate. Inside the gate, Yeon even picked out baby names. Even though we hadn’t conceived yet, thinking about bringing new life into existence there while people were dying—I thought that was so beautiful. I fell in love all over again and we made plans to hold the ceremony right after getting out, but it wasn’t to be.”

He spoke while turning the ring on his finger. Frowning at the old sorrow in his matter-of-fact tone, Sa-yoon muttered internally that such melodrama didn’t suit his sensibilities before suddenly checking his own hand.

Speaking of rings, he had one too.

The Pair Ring of Palshil’s Connection.

Seeing the ring he couldn’t throw away even though one side had coldly severed it, Sa-yoon squeezed his eyes shut, thinking he and Jaehee had something strangely in common.

They were both in the same position of being unable to take off their rings.

However, while Jaehee wore his to remember and long for someone, he himself…

…Why still can’t I take it off?

As he muttered softly, Jaehee posed another question.

“So, that was what my lover was like, but what kind of person was Han Geon-joo? Now that I’ve finished my story, I’d like to hear yours.”

“…”

He certainly has skill.

After he opened up about his dead lover like that, how could Sa-yoon justify avoiding this conversation?

Thinking he’d been played, Sa-yoon first corrected Jaehee’s misunderstanding.

“…It wasn’t anything like lovers.”

“I see.”

“Just as you said, he was a key.”

The first key he’d found that could have changed the direction of his life.

The person who let him glimpse a clue about those who resist.

That was Han Geon-joo.

Sa-yoon recalled their first meeting, now already half a year past. Whether influenced by Jaehee first revealing his own secret, or simply wanting to get it off his chest somewhere, surprisingly once he started talking, the stories about his time with Geon-joo flowed easily.

It was possible because Jaehee already knew some of his secrets.

“He really was an infuriating bastard.”

After briefly sharing everything from how they met to how they parted, Sa-yoon fiddled with the pair ring he wore.

“You must have been heartbroken.”

“Yeah.”

Sa-yoon agreed readily. If he hadn’t been heartbroken, there would have been no reason to act as he did after Geon-joo left.

It was heartbreak stemming from many things.

The frustration of lost hope.

The emptiness of a severed relationship.

The void of a vanished will and anxiety like losing one’s way.

The loss of all those things had crashed over him as heartbreak. Sa-yoon tapped the table for a long while. Jaehee maintained silence without saying anything.

As if waiting for him to speak first.

After contemplating for a while, Sa-yoon opened his mouth.

“Jaehee.”

“Yes.”

“Where do you think I went wrong?”

In the end, Sa-yoon sought advice.

Sharing with the man who seemed most likely to give a plausible answer the question he’d held for quite some time.

Because he had no idea what to do after reaching S-rank, he needed to find his path.