By Zephyria 
Kim Si-baek quickly turned his head toward the direction of the voice. Instead of broad, firm shoulders and a thick neckline, he saw only empty air.
Wondering if he had missed something, he lowered his gaze and found a petite, white-skinned, beautiful young boy standing there, barely reaching his chest. The child beamed at him with a face as soft as downy fuzz.
“Hyung.”
The clear voice, untouched by puberty, made Kim Si-baek’s heart surge. The beloved child he thought he would never see again was vividly alive before him. His heart hammered so violently it felt as if it might leap out of his chest.
“Un-ah! You’re Un-i, right?!”
“Who else could I be but Si-baek hyung’s Un-i?”
“Aaaagh! So cuteeee!”
Overcome with excitement to the point of momentarily forgetting the current situation, Kim Si-baek’s head flushed with heat as he grabbed the boy by the waist and hoisted him high into the air. The boy burst into giggles, saying he felt dizzy.
The healthy, chubby baby fat, the delicate and distinct features, the clear, pale skin without a single common pimple or blemish, and even the weight that fit perfectly in his palms when he held him. It really was his younger brother.
An overwhelming amount of loveliness struck his heart. Finding it difficult to breathe, Kim Si-baek gasped for air.
[Death and Beauty cannot believe that this is cuter than expected and doubts his eyes.]
“How did this happen?”
“It seems the host of the Id Portal is perceiving my past self very intensely. So intensely that it’s erased my current appearance and brought this back.”
“Ah, you said the portal is constructed based on the host’s perception.”
“Looking at the clothes I’m wearing, I think it’s from when you met me after the Great Cataclysm.”
The difference from the 14-year-old Tae-un Kim Si-baek remembered was that he was wearing a black t-shirt and jeans, with black gloves.
Carefully setting him back on the ground so the child wouldn’t feel dizzy, Kim Si-baek couldn’t resist the impulse and began squishing the boy’s soft cheeks. While 35-year-old Tae-un also had soft skin, this baby fat was incomparably more chewy and squishy, clinging to his fingers. Haa.
[Death and Beauty sharply tells him not to imagine strange moans.]
At that sharp rebuke, Kim Si-baek barely managed to pull himself together and examined the portal. His hands, however, were still poking and prodding the plump cheeks.
At a glance, it seemed they were standing on the path between the Management Center and the magic stone warehouse, but the scenery was so dizzying it made his stomach churn. Ventilators flowed toward the sky, and street trees hung from telephone poles, fluttering. The buildings weren’t rectangular but were crushed, unevenly tilted, and scattered, with clouds turning into solids and pouring down beneath them.
It was a sight as if a surrealist painter’s work had been manifested in reality. Within that scenery, Kim Si-baek’s senses and mind were also twisting. He felt as if, if he let his guard down, he would go completely mad and end up slamming his face into the ground, claiming he had to see the world with his knees and walk with his head.
Tae-un, whose cheeks were being held, babbled with indistinct pronunciation. To Kim Si-baek’s ears, it sounded like baby talk.
“It’s because the host is right on the verge of mutation, so their consciousness is too confused to even construct the world. If you’re not careful, people who enter the portal can get swept away and lose their sense of self.”
“Ah, really? I’ll have to stay sharp then.”
“Though if your heart is as firm as yours, hyung, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
If it were up to him, he would have spent forever cradling and fussing over the young Tae-un, but time was of the essence. Swallowing his regret, Kim Si-baek let go of the cheeks and gripped Tae-un’s hand instead. The feeling of the small fingers wiggling inside his palm was devastatingly harmful to his heart.
“You have to hold hyung’s hand tight. It’s dangerous, so you can’t let go. Got it?”
“Yes!”
Tae-un answered happily.
Carrying the violent thumping of his heart, Kim Si-baek ran for a while before he realized a problem. 14-year-old Tae-un was smaller than other kids his age—he was cute, adorable, cute, tiny, cute, and his legs were cute, short, and cute, so his stride was cute, small, and cute.
[Death and Beauty asks in return if he is not still a powerful Awakened, as the essence does not change just because one appears smaller in another’s perception.]
Ignoring the divine utterance, Kim Si-baek asked urgently.
“Do you want hyung to carry you on his back?!”
“Yeah!”
The child’s gesture of reaching out his arms with a bright smile, as if he had been waiting for the offer, was truly beyond adorable. At a level of cuteness that wouldn’t hurt even if shoved into his eyes, Kim Si-baek screamed internally and hoisted Tae-un onto his back. He wanted to give him a piggyback ride on his shoulders, but he barely managed to restrain himself with the last shred of his reason.
Tae-un’s slender arms hugged Kim Si-baek’s neck tightly, rubbing his plump cheeks against him.
“Since I’m pressed close to hyung on your back, there are so many things I want to say, but I think if I said them in this body, hyung would be the one taken away instead of me, so I’ll hold it in.”
“…….”
Kim Si-baek barely managed to recall the fact that this dainty, angel-like beautiful boy had been pestering him to have sex just a few hours ago. He had postponed it because catching the magical beast was urgent, but a pile of distressing worries awaited him once they got out.
‘But right now, our Un-i is the cutest in the world! Though Un-i is always the cutest in the world!’
In a sort of escapism, Kim Si-baek leaped forward nimbly.
Inside the messily distorted portal, even the ground wasn’t stable. Not only did the floor give way beneath his feet, but he also felt himself slipping and falling onto the top of an elevator of a building he had already passed. When he phased through a wall, he found himself landing on a rooftop railing.
Every time he blinked, the scenery shifted and wavered. Being in a world of incomplete transformation, his mind would have been scattered even if he had stayed still, but his consciousness kept becoming dull, as if he were sinking into a massive current. He thought that, as Tae-un said, quite a few people must have been swept away and lost their egos.
The only saving grace was that the magical beasts were in no better condition. The magical beasts, whose intellect was significantly duller than humans, had already been swept away by the overflow of the world.
“At this rate, they can’t even be called magical beasts.”
He paused briefly atop a bus that was in the process of evaporating and scanned the surroundings. The magical beasts were merging with the world, emitting strange sounds like leaking air that were neither screams nor groans. Even Kim Si-baek, who had seen almost everything over the long years, frowned at the sight of magical beasts melting and tangling together like chimeras, eventually blending into telephone poles.
“I wouldn’t mind if my body became one with hyung’s, though.”
“Un-ah, if you keep saying bad things with that cute face, I’m going to spank your butt.”
“Spanking play is great too. My adult butt is firm, so it’ll have a nice, snappy sound.”
“…….”
Since he had forgotten most of his English, he didn’t know the exact meaning of ‘spanking,’ but he could guess roughly, so he didn’t bother asking. The moment his focus wavered, the thought “I should have sex with hyung” pricked his mind. Kim Si-baek swallowed the distress with a sigh and ran again through the undulating streets. If he kept thinking about it, he might actually merge with the surroundings.
“The Portal Keeper of the Id Portal is at the deepest point, right?”
“That’s true, but the deepest point isn’t clear. Usually, since the host perceives it strongly, a symbol that feels like ‘this is the place’ appears, like the department store last time. Hmm, if it’s related to trauma, we might have to search for a long while.”
It was exactly as he said. He knew he was around the Management Center, but wherever he looked, it was just a generic urban landscape.
Just as he was worrying that he might have passed the deepest point, after running about another 100 meters, the tangled scenery around them changed rapidly. The streets, which had been a bustling city center despite being ruined, were suddenly stained with blood and collapsed, becoming a wasteland with deep scars of fierce battle.
Above all, the place looked vaguely familiar to Kim Si-baek. A place he had visited as a fencer.
“……Dongdaemun Stadium?”
“I guess the deepest point is Dongdaemun Stadium.”
Tae-un fell silent for a moment as if thinking, then continued.
“If it’s Dongdaemun Stadium from 21 years ago…… I can roughly guess who the host is and what the Portal Keeper might be. A mass slaughter occurred there. If a perception strong enough to be manifested as an Id Portal remains even after 21 years, it must be a survivor of that tragedy.”
“Did something like that happen?”
“Many people took refuge in the Dongdaemun Stadium shelter, but because the top was open, they were vulnerable to flying magical beasts.”
“Is the Portal Keeper a flying magical beast?”
With a lack of divine power and having left his sacred artifacts back at the mak slecht, he had no immediate way to directly attack a flying magical beast. While he was contemplating ways to climb high or throw nearby objects, Tae-un hugged his neck from behind with a bit more strength.
It was a desperate gesture, like a child clinging to a parent after a terrible nightmare, and Kim Si-baek’s heart sank involuntarily. What had this child experienced in the tragedy of Dongdaemun Stadium?
A faintly trembling voice whispered, harboring an old fear.
“……The cause of the massacre at the Dongdaemun Stadium shelter was human.”