By Zephyria 
“No? I was just curious if there were any other benefits to taking a leave of absence. I’m going to balance school and work.”
He spoke boldly, squaring his shoulders. No matter how much he tried to brush it off as if it never happened, he couldn’t just snip it away as if with a pair of scissors.
“It’ll be very difficult to do both.”
“I can do it. There are kids who go to school while working two part-time jobs, right? I heard there are plenty of people who balance grad school and a career.”
“The scheduling will be…”
“Deciding to do both is a tough choice. Since we’ll be hiring someone for the administrative side while you’re in school, don’t feel too burdened.”
“Right, right. Unless something big happens in an Aberrant Realm, we usually only enter once a week, so you can just coordinate the dates.”
“I’ll work hard on weekends and overtime so I don’t become a burden to my Sunbaes!”
Receiving the cheers of the oblivious Song Hilda and Kim Min-seop, Yoo Jiha looked at Jeil Heon triumphantly. He wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, but for now, it felt like he had won.
…Or so Yoo Jiha thought, until he soon realized something was wrong. Jeil Heon continued his daily routine with complete composure. After returning from the team leader meeting, when conveying the meeting’s contents, and while handling paperwork.
“The security entity witnessed at the school is quite similar to the security entity at ‘KN Co.’ The same phrase appeared through the true eye as well. Even though it’s an Aberration bound to an Aberrant Realm, this similarity is…”
His voice wasn’t loud enough to ring through the entire office. However, listening to his voice softly lingering in his ears, Jiha’s heart gradually began to soak through. With a tone as quiet and calm as the sound of water echoing from a deep well… Gasp. Yoo Jiha, who had been listening hazily, snapped back to his senses. He had almost been seduced by a handsome-man tactic.
Lunch that day was poke, and Jeil Heon still remembered Jiha’s favorite ingredients and scooped them into his portion. Looking only at Jeil Heon’s attitude, one might think that the confession from that day had been a dream. Was this the seasoned maturity of someone born in the 70s who had been through it all?
Regardless, the poke was innocent, so Jiha stared at him while mixing it deliciously. When their eyes met, Jeil Heon gave a thin smile and even pulled out a tissue to wipe a crumb of seaweed off Jiha’s cheek. It was Yoo Jiha who flinched visibly when their hands brushed.
Watching his nonchalance, Yoo Jiha made a decision. He would show him the power of a Gen Z born in the 2000s. He couldn’t lose to a Gen X born in the 1970s like this.
“Team leader! Let’s go together!”
On the way home, Yoo Jiha quickly opened the passenger door and slid inside. Then, with a thick skin, he smiled.
“It’s a hassle to take the shuttle bus and transfer to the subway; could you drop me off at my parents’ house today? And please come pick me up tomorrow morning too.”
“Would you like that?”
Despite the brazen request to use a professional as a chauffeur for a round trip of over two hours, Jeil Heon not only readily agreed but actually came to pick him up in Suwon the next morning. For four days straight. For every single commute.
The Gen Z provocation failed. Yoo Jiha returned quietly to Pilgyeongdang. Thus, as the days flowed by on the surface as usual, it was a morning when he woke up late after spending the previous night pounding a cushion with Jeil Heon’s name on it.
“Jiha, you’re late. It’s time to wake up, right?”
In a half-asleep haze, Yoo Jiha was scooped up by Jeil Heon and carried to the bathroom; he only regained consciousness after washing his face with cold water. No, no matter how cold the water was, shouldn’t it be a problem for a strange man to casually open the door to a room where someone is sleeping, carry them to the bathroom, and then act like nothing happened? Where was the sexual tension?
Huffing and puffing as he finished washing, Yoo Jiha threw his long-awaited secret weapon at Jeil Heon, who was setting the breakfast table.
“Il-heon Hyung!”
“Yes, my son.”
“…”
Having given a spoonful and received a bowlful in return, Yoo Jiha sat quietly at the table.
“Are all people born in the 70s like that? My mom and dad aren’t! Ah, damn, this is too sweet.”
During lunch, Yoo Jiha grimaced while drinking the coffee he had asked Jeil Heon to get, having made the customization twice as complicated. He had intentionally customized it randomly to confuse him, but it was far too sweet. Thanks to that, however, his agitated footsteps calmed down a bit.
A sigh escaped him. No matter how much he pushed, Jeil Heon remained unmoved and maintained an unchanging attitude. He hadn’t intended to, but in contrast, looking back at himself being the only one anxious and restless made his heart noisy. If he…
“…Eh?”
A sight that suddenly flashed before his eyes stopped his thoughts. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and looked again, but the view remained the same.
Death Hundred Death Number (Room 404).
Room 404, which did not exist in the Management Bureau, was there. Moreover, it explicitly used the character for ‘Death’ (Death).
He had to enter that room. Suddenly, his heart began to beat rapidly. Dealing with floors and rooms containing the numbers 4 and 13 was explicitly stated in the new employee guide, but since he had always traveled with team members and had never been more than five minutes away even when rarely alone, he had never seen one directly.
It wasn’t a dangerous anomaly. As he calmed his breathing and suppressed the urge to enter, Room 404 vanished, and the entrance to the restroom appeared in his sight. The moment he turned his head with a sigh of relief, Yoo Jiha screamed and collapsed.
A young boy with his face turned toward his back was staring up at him.
The scream stopped after one burst because Ji-hwan, who was on the boy’s neck, finally entered his sight. Yoo Jiha desperately moved his lips. If he responded rudely to an Aberration cooperating with the Management Bureau, he wouldn’t even get a reward!
“Ah, I-I’m, I’m sorry. I’m already quite timid, and I was so surprised, ah, I mean, I wasn’t surprised to see you, sir, but because you appeared so suddenly, I mean that I was surprised…”
Fortunately, the Aberration didn’t seem to mind much.
「What part of me is awkward?」
“Y-your neck is too, uh, a bit, if you could turn your neck…”
「Like this?」
The boy grabbed his face with both hands and flicked it, as if opening the cap of a bottled drink. The head, which had been turned 180 degrees, moved another 270 degrees and rested on his shoulder. Yoo Jiha praised himself intensely for not screaming.
“Just a little, slightly, uh, just a bit more to the right, yes.”
「Hmm. Is this about right?」
The chilling sound of neck bones clashing rang out again, and the boy finally became a form that could barely be considered a normal human. The angle was still slightly off, but Yoo Jiha decided not to look below the neck.
‘By the way, who is this Aberration?’
[■]
The True Eye Text couldn’t be read for a single character, indicating just how high the Aberration’s rank was. Although Aberrations cooperating with the Management Bureau were listed in the Hidden World Record, there were more entities that couldn’t be viewed with a general employee’s security level. Honestly, no matter what this Aberration’s identity was, he wanted to escape this spot. Even if it was wearing Ji-hwan, talking one-on-one with an Aberration was too much strain on his heart.
However, the Aberration seemed to interpret his glancing eyes in a different way and introduced itself instead.
「This body is one of the Heavenly Seals, the Eight-Headed Chief.」
“Huck. The Heavenly Seal from the Dangun myth?”
「Actually, it’s a fake.」
“…Ah. Yes.”
As it turned out, some pseudo-shaman had created it while scamming people by claiming it was a Heavenly Seal, and the desires of the people who were fooled by it dwelled within, turning it into an anomaly. Anyway, how immersed in the secular world was it to use the word ‘fake’ so naturally?
「Thy face is full of worry, so I have intervened. Though I be a counterfeit imitation, I was originally meant to receive and resolve the worries of many.」
Now that the introduction was over, he wanted to return to the office, but the boy instead opened a psychological counseling center. He felt that if he tried to brush it off with a lie, his own neck might end up turning 180 degrees.
Hesitating, Yoo Jiha eventually opened his mouth. Since his heart was already turbulent, meeting a psychological counselor who listened attentively and even gave prompts caused an endless thread of words to flow out.
「Hoo. Thy inner self must have been in quite a state.」
“I’ve been holding out for a few days out of spite, but somehow the roles have been reversed and it feels like I’ve ended up in a power struggle…”
Before he knew it, the boy was sipping the coffee he had received from Yoo Jiha. In truth, who else could he have told these things to? Perhaps it was because it was an Aberration who didn’t know him that he could open up his heart.
The melancholy that had been vague until now took on a clear form.
Jeil Heon—he just couldn’t figure him out.