By Zephyria 
No sooner had the day broken than an email arrived from an unknown sender.
Looking at the message, which simply stated the time and place, Mu-hae realized that this was the ‘arrangement’ Kang had mentioned.
“Wake up. We’re going out.”
“I’m already awake.”
“Then get your head off me. Why are you lying on top of someone when there’s a perfectly good pillow?”
It wasn’t that Mu-hae disliked Joo-oh clinging to him, but it was a bit troublesome to be stuck together like this first thing in the morning.
Mu-hae struggled to subdue the subtle stirring below as he pushed the whining body away.
Having just woken up, he was warmer and softer than usual. The pleasant sensation of his skin touching Mu-hae’s clouded his mind.
His disheveled hair was almost deliberately cute. Joo-oh sniffed, taking in Mu-hae’s scent, and grinned.
“We’re going to eat. If you’re late, there won’t be any soup left.”
Only after hearing about food did the sluggish Joo-oh jump up. He must be ravenous, having gone without food all night.
Normally, one doesn’t feel hunger while sleeping, but that was only true for people with ordinary stomachs. Joo-oh usually ate well as soon as he opened his eyes.
“I want to eat noodles.”
“What noodles?”
“They sell banquet noodles near here.”
“How do you know that?”
Joo-oh mumbled, trailing off, saying he had seen it on the way in yesterday. Mu-hae watched him suspiciously before picking up his backpack and handing it over.
“Why is this so light? Did you already eat all those crazy skewers?”
“…It’s my bag! Why are you touching it!”
“Want me to take them away?”
“I didn’t eat them all. And I’m going to buy more.”
Joo-oh stopped his pointless resistance and immediately became docile. He must be irritable from being hungry, making a fuss over everything.
In any case, noodles were a good choice. They were cheap, plentiful, and you could eat a lot without it being obvious.
If he ordered extra and fed him about three bowls, he would follow quietly until the afternoon.
“Hot food should be cooled down before eating.”
“It wasn’t hot.”
That was overly optimistic. Joo-oh ate ordinary food in an extraordinary way, devouring five bowls.
The sight of him instantly finishing a steaming bowl, soup and all, was something to behold.
Some crazy guy even applauded. Afraid of attracting more attention, Mu-hae quickly led him out of the restaurant.
If he hadn’t developed a fast eating speed from years of mercenary work, he wouldn’t have been able to finish his own noodles.
Only then did they enter a proper residential area and visit every place that sold clothes.
Researchers were the type who lived for their own egos, so they wouldn’t be able to have a proper conversation with someone dressed like a mercenary.
Fortunately, the email Kang sent contained a one-day key code, so they were able to pass through the gate without any problems.
“I heard you graduated from…… auditing.”
Unexpectedly, the researcher they met was extremely humble from the start. There was an anxious glint in his eyes, as if he had misunderstood something.
Mu-hae kept his mouth shut to assess the situation, but Joo-oh suddenly interjected.
“Who told you that?”
He was wearing a cheap casual suit and using an unfamiliar tone while maintaining a solemn expression.
The unique rhythm infused in Joo-oh’s syllables was definitely a variation he had heard before. That is to say…
Kang. It was Kang. When he contacted Kang in the early morning, he had used exactly that kind of intonation over the Link Watch.
‘You weren’t asleep.’
He must have been pretending to be asleep and eavesdropping on the conversation with Kang. The twitching he felt on his leg in the early morning was not his imagination.
He resisted the urge to smack him on the back of the head, as absurd as it was. If he had said something like, ‘Hi, I’m Joo-oh,’ as usual, he would have immediately pushed him away.
He must have grown in his own way, making a pretty good judgment. The researcher shook his head frantically, looking flustered.
“W-well, no one told me specifically… It’s just that there have been some unfortunate accidents in our department recently. But as I reported, it’s not a matter of a lack of new employee training or a disregard for safety.”
Judging from the situation, it seemed that a researcher affiliated with some Company had been called out. Mu-hae didn’t know much about it, but there was no way a corporate audit would be conducted so sloppily.
Clearly, the Company was trying to quietly cover it up by creating a formal procedure. Even in Goryeo City, when problems arose from subcontracting to mercenaries, they would handle it just enough to avoid being held accountable and quietly cover it up.
Kang had boldly sent Mu-hae to this meeting without any prior explanation. Only after realizing that did Jin Mu-hae open his mouth.
“The higher-ups are aware of that, so please cooperate with the investigation.”
The questions that followed were so pointless that the researcher’s tension eased. Name, age, good restaurants in the area, the time of sunrise during this period, and so on.
He flinched a little when asked about internal information or confidential matters, but Mu-hae passed it off without any change in expression, even with answers that anyone could tell were lies.
“Let’s keep it moderate. It’ll be troublesome if it’s too obvious.”
With that light warning, the researcher’s answers, which had been nothing but lies, began to mix with the truth. Only then did the real questioning begin.
“Do you have any acquaintances from Solar City?”
“I only have one in Seogyeong City.”
“I’m sure they’re upstanding citizens. What about outside the city?”
“Oh, um. There’s someone I lost contact with a long time ago. I only know they’re alive. I’ve received contact before.”
Was this the truth, or a lie? The judgment could wait; for now, he had to gather as much information as possible.
The story he got was that the person outside the city used to be a researcher from Solar City. It had been over a decade since he had seen him, and he had become wild and rode Aberrants.
He didn’t belong to any human city and had settled in a shelter hundreds of kilometers away from Seogyeong City.
The part about riding Aberrants was obviously a lie, but the rest was information worth looking into, even if superficially.
‘Couldn’t he have arranged something more normal?’
He was grateful for the help, but he doubted whether this could be called an arrangement.
Mu-hae recalled Kang’s mischievous voice and glanced at Joo-oh.
He hadn’t interrupted since opening the conversation and was diligently sucking on his straw.
Already, four cups of colorful sugary drinks had disappeared into his stomach. He kept glancing at the empty cups and clenching his fists, as if he was trying to resist the urge to chew on the ice.
After leaving the meeting and returning to a remote alleyway, Mu-hae pondered for a moment.
This was the first time Joo-oh had participated in a conversation so normally. He should be praised for it, but if he did, wouldn’t he start acting up all the time?
“I wanted to drink melon soda too, but I held back. Good job, right?”
He didn’t know. He would have to see what happened then. Mu-hae ruffled his neatly styled hair.
Joo-oh’s lips curved upward with an extremely proud expression. His eyes narrowed so much that they formed crescents.
“What are we going to do now?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to visit all the shelters within a radius of dozens to hundreds of kilometers, I guess.”
“Do you believe it?”
“If I don’t, what choice do I have?”
“I believe it.”
Joo-oh stared at Mu-hae with unwavering eyes. There was a strange atmosphere that made him feel like he knew something, and all the things he had experienced with him suddenly came to mind.
When Joo-oh acted like that, things usually went well.
“That person looked to the right when he lied, and hesitated a little when he told the truth.”
Did he? Mu-hae had carefully observed him, but he didn’t seem to have glanced to the side.
Seeing his puzzled expression, Joo-oh added an explanation.
“0.2 seconds? About 0.3 seconds.”
With such a short time, it would be more accurate to say that his pupils flickered rather than glanced to the side.
He already knew that he had keen senses, but he hadn’t realized it was to this extent.
“Are we going straight to the shelter?”
“No. Since we’re here, let’s do some sightseeing.”
The opportunity to roam another city, especially Central, didn’t come often. Besides, if they were going to visit at least ten shelters, even Mu-hae, who was specialized in survival, needed thorough preparation.
Jin Mu-hae looked at the key code, which must have included accommodation, and thought of the hotels in Central.
“We can use a bathtub today.”
“Really?”
Joo-oh smiled brightly. He didn’t know he liked playing in the water so much, living in a house without a bathtub.
They ate dinner with street food. Since they were staying at a hotel, they could have found a better restaurant, but Joo-oh refused for some reason.
‘Expensive.’
‘How do you know it’s expensive?’
‘I could eat ten more servings of stir-fried meat and apple waffles with that.’
He only said that, but he didn’t eat ten servings of stir-fried meat. Instead, he went around eating exactly one serving of various foods quickly and neatly.
If Mu-hae hadn’t dragged him away, he would have kept doing that until dawn. For some reason, Joo-oh was more focused on tasting all the food than on finding delicious food.
Then, once he was full, he seemed tired and sat on the hotel bed, staring blankly into space. Mu-hae, who had finished showering first while waiting, nudged him, and he woke up sharply like a robot turning back on.
“I’ll be back.”
“You’re going to shower. Not going to play.”
“Of course. Jin Mu-hae is stupid?”
As expected, he didn’t seem to be planning to wear underwear under his gown this time either, and he went straight into the bathroom without even touching his bag.
Sure enough, the sound of splashing water came from inside again. Mu-hae was so dumbfounded that he couldn’t even laugh.
Had he been looked down on at some point? For him to say such arrogant things like, ‘Is Jin Mu-hae stupid?’