By Zephyria 
Kim Si-baek looked at his hand, which Tae-un was obsessively licking, before answering.
“My hand?”
“That’s right. The window of the semi-basement room was small, and the backlight was so strong that I couldn’t even see your face properly. But you reached your hand through the bars. Holding a bag with red bean bread and strawberry milk.”
Tae-un’s eyes closed distantly, as if wandering through a past from thirty years ago.
“Just as a baby duck imprints on the first object it recognizes upon hatching as its mother, I did the same.”
Tae-un’s time, having completely lost all memories prior to the age of five, began to move from that very moment. The moment he imprinted on Kim Si-baek.
“That’s why I really like your hand. Because I feel like it will be deeply engraved in me, just like back then.”
“……Un-ah.”
“Hmm, there’s another reason too.”
Tae-un smiled lightly, as if trying to lighten the atmosphere that had grown somewhat heavy while dredging up the past.
“They say that in some ways, the hands are more sensitive than the genitals, so I thought that if I suck on them, you might remember me as much as if we were having sex?”
At the return of his natural, unabashed boldness, Kim Si-baek’s expression softened.
“I won’t forget you even if you don’t cling to me this clingily.”
“Because my cock is big too?”
“……Uh, well, that helps a bit.”
It was indeed a size rarely seen, enough to be unforgettable…
Tae-un smiled mischievously like a boy and pressed their lips together. Even while responding to the tongue sliding smoothly inside, Kim Si-baek pondered a concern that had been lingering for a while. Just how long was this bed going to keep rotating? He was starting to feel dizzy.
What stopped the bed was a sudden phone call. After finishing the call with a guild member on duty, Kim Si-baek spoke to Tae-un, who looked sullen because their private time had been interrupted.
“I have to go out now. It’s the day I’m scheduled to work with the 4th Attack Squad, and they said an Id Portal appeared and they’re going to clear it.”
“Then I’ll go too as the Guild Master—”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t.”
Cutting him off with an uncharacteristic firmness, Kim Si-baek hesitated before continuing.
“They say there’s a high possibility that the host of the Id Portal is a child who suffered domestic violence.”
✽ ✽ ✽
[Death and Beauty demands a rotating bed, claiming your follower also needs one.]
“…….”
[Death and Beauty gets irritable, telling you not to pretend not to see the divine utterance.]
The baby crow fluttered its wings. Kim Si-baek, who took the flutter directly to the face, rubbed his cheek and sighed.
“Even if the bed spins around and around, it’ll only make you dizzy.”
[Death and Beauty insists that as long as it’s fun, that’s enough.]
“If we change it to a rotating bed, you won’t be able to use the canopy bed.”
“……!”
“And there are no rotating beds in children’s sizes.”
“……?!”
The other guild members in the SUV desperately pretended not to hear Kim Si-baek’s voice conversing with a pet bird. Despite having hunted in the field and trained together, it was a sight they could never get used to.
Only Moon Seong-hee, the attack squad leader, tried her best while smiling awkwardly.
“Does the crow say it needs a bed too?”
“He wishes to have a rotating bed.”
It wasn’t just that he ‘wanted’ it, but that he ‘wished’ for it—using honorifics. Moon Seong-hee’s eyes twitched slightly.
“If a small size is okay, how about a baby cradle? I saw the ones my nieces used, and they make them fully automatic these days.”
“Oh.”
That seemed like a good idea. By the time they found a cradle decorated with lavish, flowing lace with Moon Seong-hee’s help, the SUV came to a stop.
“I don’t think the car can go any further from here.”
At the driver’s words, the party stepped out of the SUV. The sight before them was a typical hillside slum. Narrow alleys and steep stairs. Faded slate roofs and single-story houses haphazardly put together with cement. As Christmas approached, the city center sparkled with colorful decorations, but this street seemed to be the exception.
While walking toward the address provided by the official from the Supernatural Phenomenon Response Agency and talking with Moon Seong-hee, the topic shifted to the Great Cataclysm.
Moon Seong-hee, who was a college student at the time, recalled that she survived because she was at school to cheer for a World Cup match on the sports field.
“If I had been left alone in my studio apartment, how many days would I have survived? I probably would have been killed by a magical beast before I even awakened my abilities.”
“Did you withstand the attacks of magical beasts at the university?”
“I did! I couldn’t have imagined it before, but the university turned out to be a pretty decent spot for a shelter.”
Since Jaewoo University, where she was enrolled, was one of the largest universities in the country in terms of land area, the shelter facilities were excellent. There were enough buildings to serve as living spaces and defensive walls, and there were several cafeterias and convenience stores on campus. And there were people from various majors.
Moon Seong-hee mentioned that it was only after Tae-un joined that they realized the university’s potential as a shelter.
“Even though he seems to have been exactly as he is since birth, the Guild Master 21 years ago was a complete child. When the Guild Master’s party first arrived at the school, I thought a nun or a priest had brought him, but lo and behold, the leader was a kid only 14 years old.”
Furthermore, the core of the party consisted of Awakened who were nothing more than children, centered around the boy. Naturally, they couldn’t trust them from the start.
However, the boy in black clothes, with a cold gaze unbecoming of his age, possessed abilities that the survivors of Jaewoo University could not defeat even if they all attacked together. In a world where you could survive today only to become a magical beast’s prey tomorrow, that was an absolute value.
Suppressing the opposition with overwhelming force, the boy organized the Jaewoo University shelter and naturally became the shelter leader.
“Universities have libraries. When the Guild Master reclaimed the library from the magical beasts, I wondered, ‘We’re not going to survive by chewing on paper, so why go this far to protect it?’ But I was wrong.”
Reading books and encountering civilization and daily life from before the collapse soothed the nerves of the survivors who had been driven harshly. Even more so once the audiovisual room was restored. Moon Seong-hee joked that while she never went to the library during her school days because she was too busy drinking, she went often after the world ended.
“I think teaching the orphanage children to study in my spare time also helped emotionally.”
Moon Seong-hee murmured softly, her focus drifting for a moment as she retraced the past.
“The paths the Guild Master led us on in the shelter seemed like useless, trivial things, but looking back, everything helped us survive without our minds collapsing or going insane, whether in a big or small way.”
“…….”
“How could a 14-year-old child lead people as if he had prepared for the Great Cataclysm?”
“Hmm, because he’s smart?”
He replied casually as usual, but Moon Seong-hee’s question threw a pebble into the calm waters of Kim Si-baek’s mind.
The Id Portal had formed in front of a house located halfway up the hill. The family of the dilapidated house, where a dog was tied in a trash-strewn yard pacing anxiously, were the primary candidates for the host.
An official from the Id Portal Management Division of the Supernatural Phenomenon Response Agency, who was controlling the perimeter, explained to Moon Seong-hee.
“It’s a two-person household under a single father; the grandmother passed away two years ago, the father is a day laborer, and the son is a first-grader in elementary school. The father seems to have gone missing without turning on his phone or going to work, and the son didn’t attend school today.”
“Oh dear… I hope it’s not the child.”
“Me too.”
If a child as young as a second-grader in elementary school had emotions that crossed the threshold to become the host of an Id Portal, the reason for it… just imagining it left a bitter taste in the mouth.
Moon Seong-hee waited for the squad members to inject nerve stabilizers, finished the final check, and entered the Id Portal. Kim Si-baek silently followed behind her.
Countless lights of tiny stars, like a universe, flickered and lightly brushed over him.
[Death and Beauty remarks that the scenery is similar to the first one.]
Moon Seong-hee, who had entered first into the world billowing with grey mist, scanned the surroundings with familiarity. The scenery in view was identical to the reality outside, but only the house of the missing father and son was missing. The possibility that one of them was the host of the Id Portal increased.
“I don’t see them around here, but we should look for survivors first.”
“People who are swept in lose consciousness, right?”
Moon Seong-hee looked puzzled at the elementary question, but soon seemed to understand the reason and softened her expression.
“Ah, if you worked at the National Intelligence Service, you probably don’t have much experience clearing Id Portals. You lose consciousness the moment you’re swept in. Without even time to scream.”
Her explanation, however, left Kim Si-baek with more questions.
〈I made a restaurant reservation, how annoying.〉
Tae-un had said those words when he was swept into the Id Portal at the MA Department Store.