By Zephyria 
“The phrasing is a bit too grandiose.”
Joo-oh nodded, watching the overly solemn atmosphere being staged.
Seeing him scowl beside him, Mu-hae assumed he was trying to act like he knew something, but he didn’t even have the mental capacity to reprimand him.
Something was on the tip of his tongue, almost within reach. There was definitely a crucial clue he had missed somewhere.
“’Starpath Poof, Aberrants Gone!’ That would be simpler, right?”
He chuckled, muttering a catchphrase so childish it sounded like an advertisement for bathroom mold remover.
One wondered if he even realized that he himself was an Aberrant… With a chaotic mind already burdened by a frantic companion, Mu-hae found himself speechless.
“There are some more ordinary subtitles too. But these have all been erased as well.”
It wasn’t just the completed sentences. Even the parts where only concepts had been outlined were entirely deleted. Once again, he felt a sense of discomfort and agitation.
His subconscious had caught what his conscious mind had not. Much like how his instincts would sharply judge signs of danger when performing risky requests outside the city, even when there were no visible traces.
The flaw of the Starpath. Aberrants. Crystal Blue. Antagonism of the Return. And…
“Oh.”
The noisy Joo-oh suddenly stopped talking. He froze like a stone statue, scanning the empty air.
Then, as if witnessing an incomprehensible phenomenon, he tilted his head to the side.
“What.”
“…….”
“What. Why.”
“…….”
The fact that he remained silent even when offered attention was a signal that he had found something quite significant in his own way.
Though he hated to admit it, Joo-oh’s vision seemed as different as his intelligence; occasionally, he discovered clues in unconventional ways.
Considering that most of it was nonsense, it was usually a case of catching a mouse while stepping backward or a broken clock being right twice a day.
But damn it, he was actually helpful every once in a while, making it hard to ignore him completely. So, Mu-hae lightly touched his shoulder to snap him out of it.
“Mmm… Hmm. Haha, hahaha!”
After tilting his head for a long while, the guy burst into laughter again. Staring into the void like that, it was almost chilling, as if he were possessed by an Aberrant.
“What is it?”
“…Wow.”
“Hey.”
He arrogantly ignored the question and strolled toward the sofa.
He flopped down, remained silent for a moment, then lay flat on his side, letting out a long sigh—haaaa—and closing his eyes.
“My goodness.”
“Joo-oh.”
“…….”
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
Usually, if Mu-hae acted heavy and threatened him, Joo-oh would at least pretend to be intimidated. But even after his name was called, Joo-oh barely opened his eyes halfway.
After glancing at him with a strange expression for a long time, he suddenly began to hum. Hmm, Lala—the soft melody was similar to what Mu-hae had heard in front of the entrance at dawn.
“This time, Jin Mu-hae, you find it.”
Then he said that. With eyes gleaming with a peculiar light.
This time? Did he think he usually spoon-fed him everything?
All Joo-oh had ever “fed” him were candies, pies, jellies, and strangely flavored chocolates that he had forced upon him even when he declined.
…Forget it. If what he discovered was some absurd delusion, there was no need to hear it; if it was a decent thought, Mu-hae would find it soon enough anyway.
It would only be a headache to worry about various things at a critical moment. Jin Mu-hae raised an eyebrow slightly and snapped his gaze back to the wall panel.
“Jin Mu-hae, want something to drink?”
“…….”
“I’ll buy some snacks too. Oh, and I cleaned over there earlier.”
“…….”
“Want me to brush your hair?”
Just go and stop bothering me. He swallowed the words that had reached the tip of his tongue for the sake of decorum.
Usually, this was a guy who would steal other people’s clothes to lie on and act lazy, but for some reason, he had been brimming with energy since a while ago, insisting on serving him.
Of course, under the guise of cleaning, he had taken the shirt Mu-hae had left out. Still, the fact that he wasn’t rolling around right in front of him was a form of sincerity in his own way.
If the act of reaching for Mu-hae’s hair just now—only to be hit and retracted—was truly a pure attempt to help him groom himself, then Joo-oh was, very, very arrogantly, reversing the role of the caretaker Mu-hae usually played.
“If you annoy me one more time, I’m locking you in your room.”
Unaware that the threats of “kicking him out” or “leaving him behind” had transformed into something entirely different, Jin Mu-hae examined the records with a grim face.
He was starting to get genuinely irritated, wondering what on earth the guy had discovered to act like this. He had fed, washed, put to sleep, and taught a guy who couldn’t even speak properly to make him human, yet it was frustrating that he was hiding information about the Starpath in bits and pieces.
The West Wind, Teacher Jung, Director Gil, and now even Joo-oh were teasing him with the Starpath. None of them seemed to realize who was agonizing over uncovering the flaw of the Starpath.
‘How insolent.’
He should have hit him on the back of the head earlier. His hand had actually risen halfway, but he withdrew it because the look in Joo-oh’s eyes was too strange.
“Want to wash your hands?”
“I said I’d lock you up.”
What was more irritating was that he had taken him everywhere for so many things that he couldn’t even figure out where the hint had come from.
It would be several times easier to find a moment when that burden of a person wasn’t around than to ruminate on every incident he had experienced with him.
At least, since the guy wasn’t a complete idiot, the fact that he had been holding out in silence for hours suggested that it wasn’t a dangerous or urgent matter, which was a relief.
But the way he had been preparing to disappear without a word before was also a problem; he was simply unpredictable.
“Joo-oh.”
“Yes, Haemu Hyung.”
“Don’t try anything weird and get away from the screen.”
“Yes, General Manager!”
While answering energetically, he didn’t move away immediately; instead, he lingered and placed a hand on Mu-hae’s forehead.
Since Mu-hae had been suffering from frequent headaches lately, it was typical of him to ask if he was in pain whenever he frowned.
Then again, Mu-hae himself hadn’t expected to recall the memory of disappearing in a daze in that abandoned building. Since it was a side of him he’d never seen, Joo-oh must have been quite surprised, even if he didn’t say it.
Thinking about it again, it was in bad taste. They should have just left an encrypted address; instead, they played that wretched music and forced him to reflect on a useless past.
The fable and all that—even the encryption was closer to a crude fragment of a story…
‘If we put out all the fires with this, the smoke will disappear too.’
A single sentence from the fragment he had read until he was sick of it flashed through his mind with the clarity of an afterimage.
While pushing Joo-oh away in irritation, Mu-hae recalled the next part of the fable he had practically memorized.
‘If we put out all the fires with this, the smoke will disappear too.’
Noru said.
The wind observed the fruit for a long time, then shook its head.
‘With this, we can stop new fires from blooming, but we cannot erase the smoke that has already spread.’
…What was the next part?
“Ugh!”
He kicked his chair back with a crash as he stood up. Joo-oh, who had been hovering around, screamed in mock surprise.
Despite that, his eyes were still strange. Pupils filled with anticipation and excitement were directed solely toward him.
“The fruit that swallows fire…”
Click!
The sound of a photo being taken echoed, but he ignored it. A new connection had formed in his jumbled mind.
A scorched world. The fruit that swallows fire.
Light and heat that would vanish. Smoke that would not.
Noru. Jin Seong-jo. The wind…
“West Wind.”
He didn’t know why he hadn’t noticed this obvious fact until now. At the time, he had been too preoccupied with connecting the bolded letters.
No, before that, he hadn’t even thought to expand his thinking beyond those six letters.
Because digging into that felt too much like steadily approaching the goal of the Return, he had forced himself to erase it from his mind until Joo-oh disappeared.
His throat felt ticklish. A hesitation of “could it be” and an unknown longing seeped in.
“Did you find it?”
A pretty face leaned in and whispered in his ear. Mu-hae didn’t answer, as if taking revenge, but he couldn’t ignore the act of the other rubbing his cheek.
“Delete the photo.”
“No way. It’s a cutscene I’ve never seen before.”
Moreover, Joo-oh had such an overwhelmed look in his eyes that Mu-hae couldn’t bring himself to snatch the Watch away.
Mu-hae took a slow, deep breath and thought about the fable he had practically memorized.
A quarrel that broke out over an opportunity. The vanished fruit.
The problem with the fruit. The flaw of the Starpath.
‘That shouldn’t be the problem, though.’
The conversation he had with Teacher Jung on the day he turned the house upside down clicked into place.
It might be an overly hopeful delusion, but now everything seemed to be clearly visible.
“Pack some snacks.”
“Me?”
There was a place he had to visit after work tomorrow. And for quite a long time.
While Joo-oh had never sabotaged an important task just because he was hungry, it would be easier on Mu-hae’s mind to fill the guy’s stomach around mealtime.
Watching the figure run off to pack a bag, Mu-hae touched the Link Watch.
The contact information that the West Wind had unilaterally sent in the past was still entered in the message tab.
[I have a new proposal.]
[No matter how much I think about it, something as trivial as the flaw of the Starpath seems ambiguous as a price.]
Suddenly, his mouth went dry. When he turned his head, a glass full of juice that Joo-oh had poured was sitting there.
Well, in any case, he was helpful this time too. Jin Mu-hae quietly thought as he belatedly quenched his thirst.
258 – I Became an Anomaly in a Dead Game