By Zephyria 
“Listen…”
Na Jeong-woo, who was about to express his frustration that he truly hadn’t intended to stab him, faltered at the look on Kim Si-baek’s face. The words stumbling from his lips were swallowed whole.
To be honest, even after experiencing Kim Si-baek’s abilities firsthand, he had never found him intimidating. There was the soft image he projected while hanging out with Tae-un, and although he seemed to draw a subtle line between himself and the guild members, he was fundamentally polite.
He taught the guild members without asking for anything in return, and he had even treated Na Jeong-woo after the latter had openly picked a fight with him, without showing any particular displeasure. To Na Jeong-woo, Kim Si-baek’s impression sat somewhere between a pushover and a good man.
But now, it was different.
“…….”
His manner as he silently approached and sat at the opposite desk was still calm and composed, but the atmosphere had shifted. It was the cold light permeating the deep hazel eyes staring steadily at Na Jeong-woo, and the determination felt in his firmly closed lips and jaw.
The man sitting before him was clearly a man who had been refined and tempered through a much longer period of hardship than his outward age suggested. Na Jeong-woo only now realized that the generosity that had made him seem like a pushover was actually a leisure born from a clear awareness of his own strength. For the first time, the fact that he was forty-nine years old felt real.
Na Jeong-woo clenched his fists tightly beneath the table. His spine stiffened with tension and his throat went dry, even more so than when he was being interrogated by Yang Eun-ho.
Kim Si-baek, who had rendered him motionless with a mere glance, parted his lips slightly.
“Give me your hand.”
For a moment, an absurd thought crossed Na Jeong-woo’s mind—that Kim Si-baek had seen his clenched fists under the table. After swallowing hard, Na Jeong-woo cautiously placed his hand on the desk.
Under Yang Eun-ho’s questioning gaze, Kim Si-baek overlapped his hand on the back of Na Jeong-woo’s. A faint glow permeated the skin, causing Na Jeong-woo to flinch reflexively, but there was nothing wrong with his body. He wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but he actually felt a sense of clarity in his mind.
“Why did you go to the amusement park?”
“……I mean, you don’t need a special reason to go out and have fun, do you?”
Completely intimidated, Na Jeong-woo answered hesitantly.
“You said that attacking me was not of your own will?”
“……Yes.”
“Then let us retrace your steps slowly. I heard from Hunter Pi Min-hyeong that yesterday was the first attack squad’s day off. What time did you wake up?”
“At 6, like usual……”
“And what did you do after that?”
“I washed up and went out for a jog immediately.”
And so, he recalled his daily routine from the morning, one by one. After jogging, he washed up and prepared a simple meal. Living alone, he accessed an OTT service on the TV to have something on while eating, and he once again recognized today’s date.
The date Kim Si-baek had decided to go to the amusement park.
“……Eh?”
As soon as he reached that point, his memory suddenly cut off. As Na Jeong-woo’s eyes darted around in confusion, Kim Si-baek asked in a calm tone.
“Do you not remember anything after recognizing the date?”
“No, I don’t.”
Until just a moment ago, he had held the belief that ‘there was no special reason, but I went to the amusement park on my own,’ but as he retraced it step by step, the foundation of his incomplete memory quickly crumbled.
“Let’s go back again. What time did you wake up yesterday morning?”
Stuttering, Na Jeong-woo followed his lead and retraced another day’s routine, starting from waking up. A day spent waking up in a tent in the field and hunting magical beasts.
Finding nothing unusual, Kim Si-baek asked about the day before that. In this way, he retraced the days backward.
“And after that, I heard the news at a cafe that the Hunter was teaching the guild members. After I finished my coffee, I went out to smoke, and……”
The memory cut off again. Na Jeong-woo stammered, his face turning pale.
“Sunglasses. I met a foreigner wearing sunglasses. His eyes were strange—even the white parts were completely black! He was a young man, and, uh, as soon as I encountered him, my memory vanished. Why didn’t I realize that until now?”
Feeling that his own story sounded abrupt, Na Jeong-woo rambled. Yang Eun-ho, who had been listening while leaving things to Kim Si-baek, frowned as if he found it hard to believe, but Kim Si-baek asked again quietly.
“Do you remember the foreigner’s face?”
“Yes! How could I forget a face where even the sclera was pitch black?”
“Chief.”
When Kim Si-baek looked back, Yang Eun-ho responded readily, though his face still looked uncertain.
“I’ll look for a montage artist.”
A specialist summoned in haste created a montage based on Na Jeong-woo’s testimony. The young foreign man with eyes black even to the sclera was, as expected, Edokus. Despite the expectation being correct, Kim Si-baek did not feel relieved.
‘He came all the way to the company cafe, yet why didn’t I notice?’
It wasn’t the early period when Edokus could mimic humans shortly after being created by Chaos. The magical energy of Edokus in his true form was impossible to hide completely by any means; to infiltrate a human city and play tricks, hadn’t he had to move a seed bearer?
Though his divine power had decreased significantly, his sensory perception had not become dull. If it was to the point where even Kim Si-baek couldn’t detect him, then either Edokus had regressed in time to the period when he wore a human shell and mimicked humans, or…
‘I have become weak enough that I couldn’t even detect him.’
If so, there was only one reason why Edokus was discovered on Earth. When he was swept into the rift, a fragment of Edokus had also come to Earth.
‘If he had just stayed quiet, I might not have noticed until the end. Why did he have to poke around and cause trouble… No, that’s right. If it’s Edokus, that’s exactly what he’d do.’
Edokus was the kind of person who, out of fear that he might be crushed to death if his house collapsed, would choose to tear down the house himself and sleep upon the shattered fragments.
While Kim Si-baek was lost in thought, Pi Min-hyeong and Yang Eun-ho were also examining the montage.
“First, I’ll warn the guild members to be cautious of this person.”
“And to your other acquaintances, Hyung-nim… Hyung-nim? What are you thinking about?”
“Ah, sorry. Why did you call me?”
“Shouldn’t we show the culprit’s photo to your acquaintances as well?”
Kim Si-baek had very few acquaintances outside the guild. Recalling them, Kim Si-baek shook his head.
“It’s fine. I heard Director Noh and Ji-han are Buddhist, and Section Chief Gwak is Catholic. Please just relay this to the HG Guild.”
“Eh?”
Yang Eun-ho was puzzled by the sudden remark, but right now, there were other things to do than explain this.
“Could you help me manufacture the medicine to treat Un-i?”
[Death and Beauty explains that your younger brother remains unchanged.]
Biyendwe, who had been watching over Tae-un while he was away, welcomed Kim Si-baek with a divine utterance. Kim Si-baek sat in the chair next to the bed.
Tae-un lay quietly asleep in bed, as if he had never coughed up blood. It felt strange to see him in the comfortable loungewear Yang Eun-ho had rushed to buy, since there was nothing but black suits in his wardrobe.
Even his only colored clothing, his training suit, was something Pi Min-hyeong had asked to order a few more of when purchasing. Within a landscape of colorless whites and blacks, he looked precarious, as if his breath might fade away at any moment, making Kim Si-baek’s heart ache even more.
What had been smeared on Na Jeong-woo’s dagger was not an ordinary poison, but a poison Edokus had personally touched. The energy of Chaos was dense.
Furthermore, the poison of Sang-ryu remaining in Tae-un’s body was also from an S-class magical beast, so while not as much as Edokus, the energy of Chaos was thick. Edokus’s poison had acted as a stimulant that drove Sang-ryu’s poison into a frenzy. He should have realized sooner that the identity of the dissonance he felt during detoxification was an old, lingering poison.
In the end, if it hadn’t been for himself, Tae-un would not have suffered such severe injuries, regardless of the poison in his body.
He groaned softly, rubbing his forehead. Even after suffering severe injuries from toxic energy tearing through his body, Tae-un had tried to endure the pain alone. Recalling those feelings, it felt as if a blade were bursting through his churning heart.
Bound by the phantom of his dead brother, he had put a living child in danger. He was a pathetic human being. How could he even call himself an older brother?
“……There was a time in the past when Un-i collapsed because of me.”
[Death and Beauty asks if you are talking about the blind date incident.]
Swallowing a bitter smile, Kim Si-baek replied.
“Even before that.”
That day was Kim Si-baek’s birthday.