By Zephyria 
Side Story 1
The Kun raid ended successfully. The hunters returned to base camp, trying to calm their lingering excitement. Since the Supernatural Phenomenon Response Agency took charge of the cleanup, including the collection of magic stones, and the profits were to be distributed later, their steps were even lighter as they had no tedious chores to worry about.
While everyone was buzzing with excitement, Pi Min-hyeong was preoccupied with one concern.
‘Where the hell did that bastard disappear to?’
Even Kim Si-baek, who had gone to find Tae-un, was completely silent. It would have been great if phones were functioning properly, but the signal in Seoul was barely working. He wasn’t worried, as those two were the type of people who could return unscathed even if thrown in front of a magical beast’s nest, but the problem was tomorrow.
Tomorrow morning, as they headed south from Seoul, they planned to film the scene of the hunters crossing the Han River. It was the first time in 21 years that the river was being crossed. Since it was a historic moment, the scene would be plastered across all sorts of articles, and perhaps even make it into textbooks.
Tae-un’s contribution to this raid had been significant; if he were excluded from that, the guy himself wouldn’t care, but Pi Min-hyeong felt he would be the one annoyed.
“Are Tae-un oppa and the mentor still not back?”
Seo Gae-un asked him, seemingly sharing the same thought.
“It’s already night. Shouldn’t we go look for them?”
“Where would we go?”
“That’s the thing…”
Seoul was not exactly a small piece of land. After groaning for a bit, Pi Min-hyeong snapped his fingers.
“The magical beasts would be dead in the direction those two disappeared, right? So…”
Just as he was about to voice the brilliant idea of searching by following the trail of dead magical beasts, Seo Gae-un roughly grabbed his arm.
“Look, the mentor is here!”
“Huh? Where? Hey! Don’t pull me! Ah, I’m coming!”
Regardless of whether Pi Min-hyeong tripped or fell because he was yanked while off-guard, Seo Gae-un dragged him along in one breath. They rushed toward Kim Si-baek, who was peeking out from behind a building outside the base camp where the light didn’t reach well.
“Mentor! Did you find oppa?”
“About that…”
“Where did he suddenly go? Did he have other business in Seoul?”
Faced with Seo Gae-un’s rapid-fire questions, Kim Si-baek gave a very troubled smile and gestured for them to follow. Pi Min-hyeong and Seo Gae-un tilted their heads in confusion but followed him around the back of the building.
Once they reached a blind spot invisible from the base camp, Kim Si-baek slowly brought out a child from the darkness. A scrawny boy dressed in rags clung tightly to him.
“…….”
As Pi Min-hyeong and Seo Gae-un looked down at the child, who wore a very sullen expression unlike a typical young child, their eyes began to tremble violently. They wanted to deny reality, but memories they couldn’t deny kept flooding back.
It wasn’t that they remembered their friend’s face from 30 years ago perfectly. However, thanks to the photos of Tae-un from his orphanage days that Lee Han-gyeol kept preciously in his phone gallery, that unforgettable face was being superimposed onto the child before them.
After a stunned silence, Pi Min-hyeong’s lips barely managed to move.
“Fuck. What is this.”
Pi Min-hyeong pressed hard against his throbbing temples. Even though it was clearly Korean, words he couldn’t comprehend overflowed.
“……So you’re saying you encountered a new type of magical beast that shows illusions, and after waking up from an illusion where Tae’s childhood appeared, that bastard became like this?”
“That is correct.”
“And the magical beast?”
“While I was flustered because the kid got younger, it just happened that…”
“…….”
He wondered if this kind of thing even made sense, but in a world where all sorts of bizarre magical beasts appeared, he couldn’t simply dismiss it as bullshit. Above all, wasn’t it an obvious fact that Tae-un had become a child?
Seo Gae-un was slightly more composed than Pi Min-hyeong, who felt like he was losing his mind. She brought up a practical issue.
“Surely he won’t stay a child forever?”
“Since this is a phenomenon I’m experiencing for the first time, I’m not sure either.”
“…….”
As they grew more dizzy from the explanation, it was the attitude of Tae-un—the party actually affected by this rare phenomenon—that snapped them back to their senses. The child, who had been wearing a grumpy expression, beamed and snuggled into Kim Si-baek’s arms the moment Kim Si-baek stroked his scruffy hair.
In other words, it was the usual Tae-un.
‘Fuck. Seeing him act like that, I guess he’s doing fine.’
‘It’s a relief that oppa doesn’t seem shocked…’
Pi Min-hyeong, having crumpled up and thrown away his worries for the other, rubbed his face roughly.
“Well, uh… since it’s already happened and can’t be undone… how should we handle the aftermath?”
In response to the awkward choice of the word ‘aftermath,’ a very fair and slender melodic voice was heard instead of Kim Si-baek’s. Goosebumps broke out all over Pi Min-hyeong’s arm. It was damn creepy.
“We should keep it a secret for the time being while we monitor how his physical condition develops.”
“Even if you handle it that way externally, you have to explain why you suddenly vanished, right? Otherwise, it’ll get more annoying because of weird rumors.”
“Eun-ho will take care of it.”
Now that he thought about it, that was true. They had a wonderful younger brother who was good at studying, smart, and excelled at tidying up the messes Tae-un made.
Having lightly shifted the burden of worry, Pi Min-hyeong and Seo Gae-un now felt like comfortable spectators, poking Tae-un’s cheeks or touching his hands.
“You were really small when you were a kid. You’re so tiny and cute it’s annoying.”
“Kids this age are originally all cute, sir.”
“That’s true.”
“I was cute too.”
“Yeah, no you weren’t. You were beating up other kids back then too.”
“I only beat up Min-hyung oppa.”
Naturally, Tae-un showed his dislike, but perhaps because Kim Si-baek was beside him, he kept his temper in check. Pi Min-hyeong suddenly remembered something.
‘But at this rate, we really can’t take the photo of crossing the Han River, can we?’
The question of whether it was okay to skip a shoot that might be immortalized in a textbook lingered, but he swallowed it after seeing Tae-un’s face as he snuggled into Kim Si-baek. He looked happier than taking a hundred of those historical photos, so there would be no problem.
“Ah, and as for Gloiuken…”
At the faint sound of Kim Si-baek’s voice, Seo Gae-un’s eyes widened.
“Glo-what did you say? Is that a person’s name?”
“……No, it’s not.”
His expression as he glossed over the words seemed to sink gloomily for some reason, but as if it were a momentary illusion, he quickly returned to his original expression.
‘Did I see that wrong?’
Pi Min-hyeong tilted his head but focused on the task of tormenting Tae-un by stretching out his rice-cake-like cheeks, which were scrunched up in a frown. It was an opportunity that would never come again in his life.
✽ ✽ ✽
Externally, it was announced that Kim Si-baek lost his divine power because he exhausted all his strength on the barrier that defended against the attack of the Kun, which had evolved into a swarm. As a result, since it was essentially the same as sacrificing his own abilities, his reputation actually grew as more people felt sorry for him.
“By the way, why does divine power still remain in people’s perception?”
To Kim Si-baek’s question, Tae-un answered immediately without much thought. He had probably been thinking about it for a while.
“Even before you returned, Hyung, there were occasionally people with the potential to manifest divine power. Since the ‘power of faith’ became known because of you, someone among them might manifest divine power anew. For example, Sister Hyo-ju Agnes.”
“……The sister too?”
The fact that Hyo-ju Agnes had the potential to manifest divine power made Kim Si-baek feel somewhat excited.
Meanwhile, the urgent news that Tae-un had suddenly become a child was shared only privately with close associates, Director Noh, and Gwak Yun-sang. In contrast to Lee Han-gyeol, who was on the verge of going wild while lifting Tae-un up and spinning him around, Yang Eun-ho suffered from an intense urge to throw away the resignation letter he kept preciously in his arms.
Still, as everyone believed, they managed to settle things somehow.
“Let’s just… consider it a sabbatical for the time being. Everyone saw that Hyung was perfectly fine during the raid, so the excuse of being injured won’t work…”
Yang Eun-ho, who did nothing but sigh deeply, desperately pleaded with Kim Si-baek while trying to ignore Tae-un, who was sitting triumphantly on Kim Si-baek’s lap.
“So, Mentor, please grow Tae-un hyung back quickly.”
Since the atmosphere in the hunter industry had become quite relaxed following the success of the Kun raid, and since this was the first time Tae-un had taken a long-term leave, not many people questioned it. However, Kim Si-baek was unaware that rumors were circulating on the company bulletin board, whispering that the two of them had gone on a honeymoon, since Kim Si-baek had also taken leave to help with childcare.
Even if he had known, he probably wouldn’t have cared. Because the only thing occupying his mind wasn’t just the young Tae-un, but also the people who had disappeared.
“…….”
Sitting on the sofa, Kim Si-baek slowly stared at his phone screen. No matter how many times he rewatched the publicly released footage of the Kun raid, the priest, who had a powerful presence and was a head or two taller than ordinary people, was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the image of the baby crow that had always been near Kim Si-baek.