By Zephyria 
A few guesses branched out, but Kang Suk-young soon shook them off. To put it coldly, Lee Yeo-jin was a descendant of a bastard who had never even been recognized as a biological child. In the last 600 years, there had never been a single instance where the Sealed One of the Ten Thousand Waves Flute was a royal bastard. Furthermore, in a strict sense, Lee Yeo-jin’s daughter wasn’t even a royal descendant.
For an Aberration, it was a picky bastard when it came to human bloodlines. Muttering a curse under his breath, Kang Suk-young returned to comparing the old photographs and memories. He decided to take his time investigating whether she was indeed Nam Hyeon-woo’s daughter, as it wasn’t an urgent matter.
Q. I started dating my workplace crush who is my boss, but there’s a problem. He’s already so handsome that I can’t stop smiling just by looking at his face, but what do I do if I can’t hold it back in the office? What if I want to pounce on him and kiss, kiss, kiss him! What if we get caught? They say everyone in the office, even the photocopier, knows about office romances!
A. Just do your work.
One of the first things Yoo Jiha did after starting the relationship was recovering the photos he had deleted from his phone. Fortunately, they hadn’t been completely erased and were still in the trash. Phew, whoever’s boyfriend this is, he’s seriously handsome. A satisfied smile naturally played on his lips. He wanted to spend the whole day doing nothing but lounging around and admiring his boyfriend, but the sun was up, and he had to go to work and school. Yoo Jiha forced his sluggish body to move and climbed into the passenger seat.
“I’m not late for school yet, right?”
The car had stopped on the roadside near the West Gate, but opening the door wasn’t easy. Am I the only one who doesn’t want to go to work or school? Am I the only one who doesn’t want to leave his side?
He stole a glance, but Jeil Heon’s expression as he made eye contact with a simple “Hmm?” was cruelly no different from usual. Was starting to date yesterday just a dream? Had he been bewitched by an anomaly? Or perhaps for an experienced adult like Jeil Heon, dating didn’t make much of a difference?
Feeling somewhat depressed, Yoo Jiha suddenly clung to his arm.
“How can I go alone when there’s a rabbit-like mister at home! I heard rabbits die if they get lonely!”
“Ahaha, since when did I become a rabbit? Besides, I have to go to work today too.”
“In my heart, I want to skip school…”
As Yoo Jiha grumbled, he quickly covered his ears.
“I won’t listen to any boomer-like nagging about how a student’s duty is to study…!”
What came back as an answer wasn’t nagging, but lips softly overlapping. Startled, his teeth parted slightly, and Jeil Heon tapped against them as if knocking. Suddenly, his heart began to thumping wildly. Yoo Jiha squeezed his eyes shut and opened his lips a bit more. A soft tongue slid smoothly between the tense lips.
The tongue entered slowly, licking the inside of his mouth as if exploring. The hands that had been covering his ears slid down to grip the man’s collar, while a large palm instead caressed his ear and stroked the nape of his neck. The stimulation inside his mouth alone was enough to make his mind go hazy, and the fingertips fiddling with his earlobe felt as if they were spreading fire.
Trembling, not knowing what to do, he clumsily pressed against the man’s tongue, and a low chuckle spread between their locked lips.
“Why are you so good at kissing?”
He wanted to protest the voice filled with playfulness, but he was too busy gasping for air to do so. The man took his lips again and playfully wrapped around his tongue. It was a gentle gesture, as if teaching him how to kiss, but to Yoo Jiha, it was intensely sweet. It felt as if what was rolling in his mouth wasn’t a tongue and breath, but chocolate.
When their lips parted for a moment, he opened his eyes while panting. In his hazy vision, the man’s eyes—unlike the gentle kiss—were dark and obsessively stained. Yoo Jiha realized he had been mistaken. It wasn’t that he was the same as usual. The man, who usually controlled his emotions with familiarity, could no longer hide them completely. He, too, did not want to be apart from him.
Upon realizing this, the heat that had been spreading faintly like embers within his body flared up violently like a wildfire. At the same time, his courage surged. It was just as Yoo Jiha boldly wrapped his arms around the man’s neck.
Suddenly, the sound of a fake cough came from the empty back seat.
「Ahem, ahem. This area is a no-parking zone. When exactly do you intend to head to school?」
“…?!”
Turning around in shock, he saw Gong Ran-sa sitting there, looking extremely embarrassed while staring at a distant mountain.
“Aaaaaah!”
Yoo Jiha screamed and bolted out of the passenger seat. In any case, the primary goal of going to school was achieved. Jeil Heon was equally stunned.
“When on earth did you…”
「I returned early this morning and had something to tell you in Yoo-gun’s absence. So, I was waiting secretly until you dropped Yoo-gun off at school, but I can’t believe you’d start this first thing in the morning, goodness!」
Gong Ran-sa, who had been feeling awkward, transitioned into anger.
「I can overlook it for Yoo-gun since he is inexperienced, but how can you be like this too! No matter how open young people are these days… in my youth, just holding hands was… above all, the school is right there, what shamelessness… For those who want to learn but cannot, I have taught at night schools and Sunday schools…」
“I’m sorry…”
The man born in the 1970s was utterly dismantled by the long lecture of a man born in the 1900s, who was outraged by the lack of public morals among today’s youth. Only after being mentally exhausted was he finally able to hear the business at hand.
“You said you visited Mount Guwol in Hwanghae Province? Wasn’t it dangerous?”
The leadership of North Korea had long been in league with Aberrations. It was a dangerous place not only for humans but also for weak entities like Gong Ran-sa.
「Mae-gu accompanied me. That fox is the guardian deity of that land.」
“Ah, that’s a relief. If it was Mount Guwol at this time, did you visit Mansin Nam Soon-ho’s shrine?”
「The shrine that the Mansin inherited before defecting to the South is still preserved on Mount Guwol. A goblin who claimed to have received help from the Mansin in the past was protecting it.」
“Is that so.”
Jeil Heon tapped his knee with his finger. Nam Soon-ho was the shaman who had used the Forbidden Pressure Talisman to seal the Smiling Man. Just before his death, he had exhausted his last bit of divine power to pray over the talisman, which successfully sealed the powerful Aberration, the Smiling Man, for a long period of 17 years.
The shrine had been destroyed along with Nam Soon-ho’s death, but if it was an old shrine in North Korea, there might be a useful Divine Tool left to deal with the Smiling Man. Gong Ran-sa confirmed that his hope was correct.
「I discovered a Divine Blade there. It was inherited from the Mansin’s spiritual mother, but it was lost during the war.」
“I assume you couldn’t bring it back.”
「Tsk. I lack the physical strength to carry a blade, and if Mae-gu touched it, it would be contaminated. No matter how high the Mansin’s divine power was, it cannot compare to Mae-gu.」
Even for Jeil Heon, secretly crossing the ceasefire line and returning would be a grueling task. While he was pondering how to retrieve it, Gong Ran-sa continued as if guessing his thoughts.
「There is no need for you to visit personally. Mae-gu said he would devise a way. If nothing else, he is serious about this particular matter.」
“…That may be true, but.”
Mae-gu operated on the principle of mutual non-interference with the Management Bureau. Unless it was a situation where foreign anomalies crossed into the Korean Peninsula due to an external invasion, he did not interfere in the Bureau’s affairs. The reason he was helping Jeil Heon was ambiguous.
‘He did say that a senile old monster is not beneficial to him either…’
He had heard the explanation that it was related to the Ten Thousand Waves Flute, which was said to have gone senile, but it wasn’t a particularly convincing reason.
‘In the first place, it’s hard to fully trust Mae-gu’s words, but isn’t Mae-gu actually the older one?’
The first record of Mae-gu being sighted was in Geumseong of Silla in 205 AD, meaning he must have become a goblin before then. He is at least 400 years older than the Ten Thousand Waves Flute, which became an Aberration in 682 AD.
While Jeil Heon was momentarily lost in thought about who the truly demented Aberration was, Gong Ran-sa slid his hand forward. An ID card lay on his palm.
「Since he said he absolutely couldn’t use a burner phone, Mae-gu made a fake ID. Please ask your younger brother to apply for a credit card using this ID.」
“Ah, yes. I’ll have the card linked to my account.”
After dropping off a satisfied Gong Ran-sa at a Zumba dance studio, Jeil Heon also headed to the Management Bureau.
As he drove in the quiet car, new thoughts began to swirl. He had overlooked it yesterday due to the chaos, but Park Jun-yeol’s condition was definitely strange. There was no reason for someone who had undergone memory erasure at the Bureau to suddenly show murderous intent toward Yoo Jiha. At least, not in a normal situation.
Perhaps Park Jun-yeol was…