By Zephyria 
〈They say there’s a high possibility that the host of the Id Portal was a child suffering from domestic violence.〉
A bitter smile formed as Kim Si-baek recalled the words he had left behind. He knew it was out of consideration, born from a heart that worried for him, but he couldn’t help the lingering bitterness. His own family circumstances hadn’t been any better.
Among those he worried about, the child who was the host would certainly be included. Because of that, Tae-un searched the surroundings as soon as Kim Si-baek entered the portal. While it was originally the duty of the Id Portal Management Division, progress was certainly faster when an S-class hunter stepped in rather than a mere civil servant.
Within a few hours, he found the father, who had been one of the host candidates. The reason the father hadn’t been swept in was likely because the child didn’t want to accept him, even within their own mental landscape.
Even after being discovered while hiding, the man tried to flee again before being caught by Tae-un, shouting until the end that it wasn’t his fault.
“That damn brat, acting so self-will—urk!”
Feeling no need to exchange words, Tae-un stepped on the man’s neck as he lay sprawled on the ground, shutting him up. The man struggled, making choking sounds. Since the Id Portal itself was proof of child abuse, the man would be arrested immediately once the portal was cleared.
The child would also be separated from the father, so he could stop worrying about it here, but… this was a good opportunity. After a brief moment of thought, Tae-un made a call. The line connected shortly.
Un-ah. What’s the matter?
Sister Benedicta’s voice came through the phone.
It was the fourth day since the Id Portal had formed. The civil servants taking turns guarding the perimeter were shivering.
【The Guild Master will stay until it’s cleared, right? ㅠ】
【Yeah.. ㅠㅠ】
Standing with his hands thrust into his trouser pockets in his usual attire, he looked as solid and straight as a statue. Aside from the ominous rumors that accompanied his reputation, his appearance was breathtakingly handsome, but the admiration was short-lived.
When a man who already had a fierce impression hardened his face into a blank expression, the officials couldn’t even breathe, overwhelmed by the feeling that he might massacre everyone around him out of exhaustion or boredom from waiting.
‘A leash… we need a leash…’
“Leash” was a slang term that had spread through the Supernatural Phenomenon Response Agency thanks to Gwak Yun-sang’s loose tongue—referring to Kim Si-baek, the leash for the mad dog.
How much time had passed in this atmosphere of terror?
Tae-un, who had been maintaining the same posture even after the sun set, suddenly lifted his head. At that moment, the flickering flow of the Id Portal stopped. It had been cleared.
The Portal Keeper was a grotesque landscape, looking as if a young child had scribbled all over it with crayons. A space isolated from its surroundings, distorted into pitch black, and a hideous man with red eyes assimilated into that place. It was the house and the father manifested within the child’s mental landscape.
As the core was destroyed, the gruesome scenery collapsed. Kim Si-baek hoped this would help the child wake up from the nightmare, even if only a little.
“Let’s get out before it completely collapses.”
Under Moon Seong-hee’s direction, the raid members helped the elderly out one by one, and finally, Kim Si-baek and Moon Seong-hee followed.
“Si-baek hyung!”
As soon as they stepped out, a slender yet deep, bass voice calling out for Kim Si-baek was heard. Before he could even react, a large shadow lunged at him—to be precise, a weight of 0.1 tons crashed into him.
[Death and Beauty fly up from your head in sheer terror.]
The impact was so strong that even Biyendwe was nearly flung upward, and Kim Si-baek was pushed back three steps. Anyone else would have likely been knocked flat by the force and weight.
‘If it were Un, he probably would have liked being knocked flat…’
Perhaps he had lunged hoping to knock him down. Before the sudden suspicion could turn into certainty, Tae-un clung to him tightly, rubbing his cheek. He was still putting his full 0.1-ton weight into it.
“Hyuuuung… do you know it’s been four days since I last saw you?”
“What? Four days have passed outside?”
Upon hearing that, the budding suspicion vanished completely. Having never been apart from Tae-un for this long since returning to Earth, Kim Si-baek’s eyes overflowed with pity. As if responding to that pity, Tae-un’s eyebrows drooped even further.
“I missed you so much that I even lost my appetite…”
A kid who ate so much and so well, fitting his massive frame, had lost his appetite—just how much emotional distress must he have suffered…
“Oh, goodness. Your face has shrunk to half its size.”
[Death and Beauty points out that the man’s face looks exactly the same as it did this morning.]
“Eh? Can’t you see his cheeks have hollowed out?”
[Death and Beauty laments, wondering if this is a blind spot or what on earth this should be called.]
Tae-un, who looked gaunt only in Kim Si-baek’s eyes, pouted his lips primly. Feeling even more heartbroken by the sight of him appearing to have no energy to speak, Kim Si-baek patted his backside, telling him to wrap things up quickly so they could go eat something delicious. He remained oblivious to the horrified silence that had taken over the surroundings.
Having escaped the fear of death only to face a new kind of terror, the civil servants trembled as they barely managed to resume their duties and soon found the child.
“We found the child!”
While an Id Portal is active, the host is isolated from the world. The condition of the child, who hadn’t had a single sip of water for four days, was very poor. Kim Si-baek approached the medical staff who were bustling to care for the unconscious child.
“Please let me see the child for a moment.”
While people were shocked by his manner and speech, which seemed perfectly refined and decent when Tae-un wasn’t around, a cluster of light from his hand seeped into the child.
Soon, the child let out a small groan and opened their eyes, and sighs of relief and exclamations of awe flowed from the crowd.
“I haven’t fully restored their health. Please take good care of the child.”
“This much will be enough to hold out until they reach the hospital. Thank you!”
The people who had shed their heaviest burden began the remaining cleanup, such as receiving reports on the situation inside the Id Portal or interviewing residents. All while desperately ignoring Kim Si-baek, who stood supporting the weakly leaning Tae-un.
Soon, the child lying on a transport stretcher was moved to an ambulance, and the residents were also seen boarding another ambulance to the hospital as a precaution.
〈It’s better to be in an orphanage than to grow up under parents like that.〉
Just as those words he had heard in the past suggested, there are sometimes guardians who do nothing but harm a child. Kim Si-baek prayed silently in his heart for the child’s wounds to heal, and his eyes shifted slightly upward. When their eyes met, Tae-un tilted his head inquisitively.
“Do you have something to say?”
“…Um, no.”
Kim Si-baek swallowed the question that had arisen when he recalled his own Id Portal, which was similar to the child’s.
Un-ah.
If an Id Portal were to occur for you, would it be the night your parents were murdered, or would it be Tae Cheol-hun? Or perhaps… the moment you and I faced each other through the window of that semi-basement room.
August 4, 199X.
It was an exceptionally sweltering summer. To the point where the joy of winning the President’s National Men’s and Women’s Fencing Championships evaporated in the heat.
〈Don’t just play around because I gave you a few days off. Moderate your eating. Don’t just lounge around because it’s hot. But if you overdo it outside and collapse, you’re in trouble, okay?〉
Recalling the coach’s nagging, which was impossible to pin down as to what he actually wanted him to do, Kim Si-baek stood blankly at the bus stop. Sweat poured down him even while standing still. Even as he fluttered the cheap fan he’d received from the Fencing Association at the arena, the heat didn’t subside in the slightest.
‘When is the bus coming?’
Since he had finally gotten some time off, he was on his way out of the dormitory with the intention of resting deeply at the orphanage. Perhaps he had misread the dispatch time since it wasn’t his usual time, but the bus showed no sign of arriving.
Bored of waiting endlessly, Kim Si-baek flipped through a newspaper someone had left behind. He flipped through the economic section, which was filled with terms he couldn’t understand despite being in Korean, and found a martial arts novel being serialized.
‘Was this what the director used to read in his spare time?’
Flipping further, a sports newspaper appeared. Since the pages contained not only novels but also comics, Kim Si-baek thought about killing time by reading them, but he left the bus stop in less than five minutes. This was because a middle-aged man had appeared at the stop and begun chain-smoking.
‘I’ll just walk. I can use it as exercise…’
He was an athlete, after all; surely he wouldn’t collapse just from walking a bit, no matter how hot it was.
To take the shortcut to the orphanage, he had to enter an alley and cut across the neighborhood. Walking briskly through the neighborhood while fluttering his fan, Kim Si-baek eventually succumbed to the heat and bought a tube ice pop from a convenience store. It would be fine to eat one ice cream.
‘Come to think of it, it’s been a really long time since I’ve walked through this neighborhood.’
Avoiding the public restrooms for residents, he turned into another alley and bent over to pick up the ice pop wrapper he had dropped. The light wrapper fluttered away on the wind from his fingertips. Having narrowly missed the wrapper, Kim Si-baek walked one step further, complaining slightly.
And then he encountered them.
The black pupils beyond the small window of a semi-basement room that opened into the alleyway.