By Zephyria 
Jin Mu-hae’s unusual behavior continued even at the Electronic Store.
“Hello.”
“Yeah, hello. Does he need his equipment checked too?”
“No. He just came along. More importantly, I need to check the ammo and have a word with you inside.”
As Mu-hae reached out, Joo-oh thought he was going to push his hat aside.
But, heartlessly, he waved him away and grabbed a tool from behind.
“Is it urgent?”
“Not very urgent, but if I had to say, it’s my heart that is.”
“…Annoying guy.”
Joo-oh hesitated, then pulled back his hood and walked into the corner.
A little sad, but it was okay. Joo-oh always took off his hat first. If Jin Mu-hae was busy and he bothered him with this, he wouldn’t be a good helper.
“You’re not giving me a drink today.”
“Do you even know how much that costs? I have nothing to eat.”
It wasn’t that Jin Mu-hae didn’t take care of Joo-oh at all. When he went inside with Director Gil, he didn’t forget to gesture for Joo-oh to follow.
He even pushed the drink Director Gil gave him to the side and handed it over. Joo-oh sat next to him on the sofa and quietly accepted it.
“Actually… it’s about what you told me last time. About Gu-reum.”
When Jin Mu-hae got to the point, Director Gil’s expression became a little uncomfortable. The man cleared his throat and glanced at Joo-oh for no reason before shifting his gaze back to Mu-hae.
“I’ve received some help from Gu-reum lately. But sometimes the scale is beyond imagination.”
“Ahem. Is that so.”
“I recently heard something like this. That there might be someone behind Gu-reum.”
“Where on earth are you hearing such things?”
“There is, roughly. Of course, it’s all speculation.”
Mu-hae stopped there. He had said everything he knew, a silent signal to let him know if he had any ideas.
Director Gil took a few sips of the carbonated drink with fine bubbles before slowly opening his mouth.
“Mu-hae. I only have this to say to you. Gu-reum is not someone with that kind of power.”
“You’ve already said that.”
“Yes. I’m always doing my best to help.”
“You have something in mind, don’t you? You’re making a guilty face.”
Watching the two people exchange words, Joo-oh also drank the drink in front of him.
As the sweet and fizzy liquid passed down his throat, it felt like his shrunken heart was stretching again.
As expected, sweetness is good. It made him feel happy in a different way than meat. When Joo-oh smiled, Jin Mu-hae’s gaze lingered on him for a moment.
He slid his own drink in front of Joo-oh. In that moment, Joo-oh was so happy that he almost clung to Mu-hae.
Jin Mu-hae doesn’t hate him after all. He’s become a little strange, but he still thinks of him.
Of course, even if he hated him a little, his existence alone would have been enough comfort for Joo-oh. Still, as much as possible, Joo-oh felt more comfortable if the protagonist he loved so much also liked him.
Because Joo-oh likes Jin Mu-hae so, so much. He would be very sad if he was hated by him.
“If it’s hard to say, it’s okay. Do you know anything about Solar City?”
“Solar City? Why there all of a sudden?”
After showing a reaction that it was out of the blue, Director Gil’s pupils dilated slightly. The hair near his ears moved subtly, and tremors were detected in the muscles around his eyes.
Joo-oh watched the conversation between the two with great interest, sipping the bright yellow drink. He was going to save as much as possible. Until Jin Mu-hae’s conversation was over.
That way, he could watch enough without interfering in this interesting moment.
“You know that my father’s research went there.”
“That’s right. There were people there with similar goals to ours.”
“What if that research wasn’t just limited to their group?”
“Hmm… go on.”
“I found a message from a Solar City researcher who had contact with Return Flight. Before the liberation of mankind or whatever, it seems that stopping the creation of the Crystal Zone has become a top priority.”
“So that person partially disclosed Return Flight’s research to the city?”
“Then they would have continued the research even after Return Flight failed. They would have achieved more direct results in ending Crystal Blue.”
Director Gil’s eyes gradually lit up as he listened to Mu-hae’s words. It was quite a sight to see the vitality gradually returning to the face of a man whose passion seemed to have dried up to the roots.
Although he didn’t say it, a hint of admiration faintly crossed his face. Joo-oh sipped, wetting his lips with the sweet drink, and carefully examined Director Gil’s appearance.
“Mu-hae. To be honest, when you first brought me Seong-jo’s documents…”
“Yes.”
“I was half expecting and half giving up. It’s a harsh thing to say, but I didn’t think you’d follow through to the end.”
“Considering that you even released the tea leaves.”
“Of course, I know that you’re smarter than you look. It’s not as hard as pioneering for the first time, since it’s about uncovering the rails laid by Return Flight. But it’s not an easy path. But…”
Director Gil took a long breath and rummaged through his pockets. Click. He lit a cigarette and looked up at the ceiling, muttering.
“You must have inherited the brains. And good drive. It’s better than I expected. It’s a funny thing to say, but if you had been in Seong-jo’s position back then, I might have lent a hand.”
“The funniest thing is that I’m different from what I look like.”
“When someone speaks, listen seriously. You little brat.”
Gulp. Joo-oh drank the last sip without leaving a drop. He shook the empty glass, and a few drops of drink fell onto his saliva-filled tongue.
Joo-oh, who had been smacking his lips, finally joined their conversation.
“Jin Mu-hae. That thing. The one you just have to pull the lever on.”
Mu-hae glanced sideways and nodded once. When he patted his leg as if he had done well, Joo-oh felt like his stuffy mood had been completely dried and was flying away.
Director Gil looked at them, wondering what they were talking about. Joo-oh tried to lower the corners of his mouth, which were rising, and quickly crossed his arms.
“I heard that Return Flight’s plan collapsed at the last minute. But was there anything more to research at Solar City?”
“I don’t know where you heard that… but it wasn’t completed. It would have been different if we had more time and resources.”
“Gu-reum said it was in a state where all you had to do was pull the lever.”
“Lever… yes. Everything would have been over if only one trigger had been resolved. We lacked the experiments and samples for that. Mu-hae. It was a really big city. The opportunities and conditions were better than here. I thought it would definitely succeed. Then everything fell apart.”
The young man who dreamed of the beginning of a new humanity was stuck in a corner of the slums, burdened with shackles like surveillance and aftereffects, and grew old.
Less than 10 years later, Solar City collapsed, and Jin Seong-jo, who was the mainstay of Return Flight, also passed away.
What kind of feelings did those who remained between the musty reality and the faint hope have as they looked at Jin Mu-hae?
Joo-oh rattled the empty cup and stared intently at Director Gil. As an avid player of “La Vida Blue,” he also wanted to see him in his youth.
His expression when everything was broken, or the background story that would have flowed differently if a certain event hadn’t happened.
He seemed to have endured day by day thinking about these things until he became an Aberrant and lost his reason. The feeling was so familiar that Joo-oh may have often had similar delusions even before falling into the game.
However, he still didn’t have any significant memories of the past. The only thing that had changed was the dreams he often had.
Now Joo-oh didn’t just see a bright monitor in his nightmares. He felt a strange sensation of drying up in front of the monitor for what seemed like an eternity.
“What.”
Finally, Director Gil noticed his gaze and raised his eyebrows. Joo-oh shook his head and quickly turned his head away.
Regardless of Gu-reum or Solar City, Jin Mu-hae’s daily life continued as usual.
Joo-oh stuck to him and boarded the Small aircraft as he went out on a request.
The difficulty of the requests received from the Company was gradually becoming easier. It seemed that Jin Mu-hae was only choosing to accept simple missions.
When he was directly playing the game, Jin Mu-hae’s line was ‘reducing requests’, but that didn’t mean that the difficulty of the side quests would also be lowered.
So the gradually smaller requests were a kind of change. Of course, it may be that he was handling tasks that were omitted and did not appear in the story.
“Hoo. There were three of them.”
“…You just caught two.”
“One ran away.”
Joo-oh easily defeated the Thorn wolf and shook off his blood-soaked hands. For a moment, he almost licked them clean out of habit, but he calmed down as he smelled Jin Mu-hae’s scent amidst the thick smell of blood.
Whoosh. Mu-hae threw something. When he received it, it was a wet wipe. Lately, he had always wiped his hands for him, but suddenly he handed him the whole pack of wipes without even pulling one out.
When Joo-oh stared at Mu-hae blankly, he openly averted his gaze.
‘He used to give it to me like this.’
When you think about it, it hasn’t been long since he took such good care of Joo-oh. So there’s nothing strange about it, but his heart doesn’t feel that way.
It felt like a hole had formed under his windpipe and something was being sucked out.
“Go inside while I check the Detector.”
“Me too. I want to do it too.”
Mu-hae, who would normally have told him not to bother him and to eat a meal replacement pill, paused for a moment.
“Do you know the location?”
Unexpectedly, he showed a positive sign. It was the first time he had properly interfered in his work.