By Zephyria 
“Hey, hey, where do you think you’re going!”
The children were heading toward a space filled with corpses. Ha-jin, growing frantic, ran to block the entrance.
“I told you to go home, why aren’t you listening? Huh?”
At his scolding, the younger sibling whimpered and replied.
“W-we heard our dad say there were vitamin drinks in there… he said he bought some last time. And puffed rice too… we’re hungry and wanna eat…”
“…Ah.”
He was speechless once again. The food the children spoke of was all inside the bundle he was currently carrying.
Ha-jin scratched his cheek in embarrassment, then his eyes met with Eden, who was watching them with his arms crossed.
❖ ❖ ❖
The rooftop above the town hall, a parasol table.
Eden leisurely observed the children, who were mindlessly eating puffed rice, smearing powder on their philtrums. Tear tracks were thickly dried on their grimy faces.
“Dad said he’d bring food, that he’d come by 3 o’clock. But we were too hungry. But I remembered he said he bought drinks at the town hall before, so I came with my sibling.”
“A-and we lost Grandmother, um, she was in front.”
Eden nodded once in response to the children’s rambling words, then chided them with an indifferent expression.
“Still, you shouldn’t wander around alone without an adult. What if something bad happens? Don’t do it again.”
“…Okay.”
The children glanced at him, their faces filled with fear.
Looking at the children’s round eyes, so unlike their appearance, naturally reminded him of his nephew Byeol. Had he been influenced by Do Ha-jin, who constantly talked about missing his group?
Was he eating well, did anything hurt, was he being good… Even though it wasn’t a problem that could be solved with worry, he had been wasting emotions more frequently lately.
“Hey kids. Eat slowly, you’ll choke.”
Regardless, Ha-jin sat close beside the children, volunteering to be their guardian. If they seemed to be choking, he’d hand them a vitamin drink, and if they said they wanted sweet bean jelly, he’d peel it himself and put it in their hands.
And when the siblings missed their dead Grandmother and tried to hold back tears, he even reddened the tip of his nose along with them.
In the meantime, perhaps because they were hungry, they didn’t miss their share and stuffed it into their mouths. His gaunt cheeks puffed out like a squirrel hiding acorns.
Eden scanned Ha-jin’s rather long hair, the smooth philtrum without a single hair, the sleek and soft nose like a beoseon, and the cheeks that had been flushed in recent days.
As he visually savored the strange face where dishevelment and neatness coexisted, he suddenly had a small question.
‘Since when did I become so… soft on Do Ha-jin?’
Like the current situation of sharing food with complete strangers, the moments where he chose Ha-jin’s comfortable face, even at the cost of his own loss, had been increasing since some point.
Was it the fingertips that handed him the purple flower that started it? Or was it the lips that boasted he wouldn’t die?
As he traced back to the starting point, several afterimages flashed through his mind. Scenes with nothing in common began to press down on his chest with a dull ache.
The warmth that bloomed in their clasped hands, and even the firm Adam’s apple that endured the sadness…
Just then, Ha-jin, who had been patting the child’s back, glanced back at Eden.
“……”
“……”
Perhaps misunderstanding his contemplative gaze, he hesitated and offered an unasked-for explanation.
“I’m eating well. So Jeong Tae-geon Darling, please eat quickly too.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Ahem! Ha-jin, seemingly embarrassed, cleared his throat. He rummaged through the bundle. Soon, a bright red Hwatu case appeared on the table.
“Where did you get that?”
At the question filled with bewilderment, he shrugged, neatly fanning out the Hwatu cards in a fan shape.
“I saw it when I was rummaging through the food earlier. It would have been nice if it was poker cards, but I brought it just in case.”
His fingertips, much rougher than before, carefully traced the texture of the cards. The children’s eyes, which had been as dead as a fish’s, began to fill with curiosity.
Ha-jin easily drew their attention.
“Okay, we’re going to play a very fun game now. First, can you pick the prettiest card out of these? Don’t tell me, just think about it in your head. Got it?”
“…D-do we pick now?”
“Yeah. Don’t point with your finger, just in your mind.”
They hesitated and looked around for a moment, but soon the children were completely engrossed in Ha-jin’s amazing eloquence and flashy hand techniques.
“Wow!”
In response to their enthusiasm, he showed off various impromptu skills.
Do Ha-jin, who had loudly proclaimed that he wasn’t the type of man to show magic to just anyone, was wasting his talent more lavishly than anyone else. He had tried to rest, but instead, he was just wasting his energy.
“If I spread this out here… the two chrysanthemums I mentioned earlier! How about that?”
“Wow…!”
After that, the enthusiastic show continued tirelessly.
It was only after Eden told him to stop that the show, which lasted a full hour, came to an end. Ha-jin handed the two chrysanthemum cards to the children, who were still lingering in the afterglow, as a commemorative gift.
“Thank you, magician Hyung.”
“Thank you!”
The children bid their farewells cheerfully, their faces brighter than before. Soon, the siblings, escorted by Pie, disappeared down the stairs.
Ha-jin went to the railing and quietly watched the children’s retreating figures. Fortunately, there were no signs of zombies. A relieved sigh escaped his lips, and beads of sweat formed on his forehead.
“Why do you go so far? It’s not like you have energy to spare.”
Eden, who had approached him unnoticed, chided him, and Ha-jin waved his hand dismissively.
“We still have a lot of rest time left. I’ll make sure it doesn’t cause any trouble…”
“I’m not nagging, I’m worried about Do Ha-jin’s condition. Do you even know what your face looks like right now?”
Eden, swallowing his annoyance, flicked his reddened cheek with the back of his hand. Ha-jin blinked, then let out a foolish exclamation.
“…Oh.”
“What is that reaction?”
“Jeong Tae-geon Darling is… how should I put it… when I think you’re being annoying, you’re also strangely kind.”
Eden, who had been about to return to the parasol, stopped. He sighed and grabbed Ha-jin’s arm, who was being overly honest.
“You really don’t know how to hold back.”
At the low murmur, Ha-jin belatedly looked around.
As they sat back down under the parasol, Pie’s tail, who had been dozing on the ground, wagged. Ha-jin, who poked Pie’s moist nose, smiled awkwardly at Eden, who offered him bottled water.
“Seeing the kids reminded me of the old days. When I was about their age, I was very conscious of others and often acted in ways that weren’t appropriate for my age.”
He looked into the air as if recalling memories.
“I think it was when I was 10. A magician came to the welfare center and played a lot of tricks, especially on my brother and me. He showed us magic for hours, even after his volunteer time was over. He was sweating profusely… At the time, I wondered why he was putting so much effort into it, but now that I think about it, it must have been because the kids weren’t acting like kids, so he felt sorry for us.”
Eden’s gaze turned to Ha-jin’s hands, which were fiddling with the Hwatu cards.
Welfare center, siblings, volunteer work… He never talked about his family except for his brother, so it seemed he didn’t have parents in the first place. He thought he had vaguely heard about an uncle before… He swallowed his speculation and changed the direction of his question.
“Is that when you first encountered magic?”
“Yes, the magician I met then is my teacher.”
“You decided on your dream at a pretty early age. Your teacher must have had a big influence on you.”
“Hmm…”
At the end of his humming, Ha-jin began to move the cards back and forth between his fingers again.
“To be honest, this is the only thing I’m good at. When I do interviews or something, I often say things like I became a magician because I wanted to protect people’s romance and innocence… but I just made it up.”
“For something like that, it seems pretty sincere.”
The rain man card, which had been moving over his fingers, fell to the ground. Ha-jin chuckled at the remark.
“As I added meaning to it later, it became sincere at some point.”
“You mean the belief that you will protect romance and innocence?”
Ha-jin, who had been about to pick up the fallen card, suddenly raised his head with a playful expression.
“Jeong Tae-geon Darling, you seem very interested in me today?”
He asked teasingly, but for some reason, he only stared at Ha-jin without any particular response.
“……”
What is it? Ha-jin, who was rather flustered by the sudden silence, rolled his eyes and continued to ramble.
“It’s not a belief, more like a resolution. Imagine that I’m the only magician left in the world. Shouldn’t I survive to preserve humanity’s innocence and romance?”
He kept giggling as if he found his own words funny. But Eden didn’t laugh. It was because he had glimpsed the unhidden sincerity buried in the playful words.
He tilted his head slowly, looking at Ha-jin, who was awkwardly trying to wrap up his laughter.
Suddenly, a question arose.
Will that voice, full of the belief that he will protect humanity’s romance, also remain as a vivid afterimage in a corner of my memory someday?
Perhaps embarrassed by the gaze that kept staring at him, Ha-jin’s gaze fell to the table. He fiddled with the Hwatu case like a 10-year-old child, continuing his play.
In the middle of a too-quiet village, where the shadow of death was thickly cast, the two people were constantly aware of each other and exploring each other in their own ways.