By Zephyria 
Despite staying up all night for his shift, Jeil Heon climbed the mountain path without a single sign of fatigue. The hikers who had been meddling with him for hiking in casual clothes and sneakers vanished once he turned onto the animal trails.
Passing a sign that forbade entry and venturing deep inside, Jeil Heon stopped before a straw rope.
“…….”
The straw rope had been severed while contaminated. Not from the outside, but from within. Crossing the rope that could no longer perform its duty, Jeil Heon leaped inside in one bound and headed toward the cave.
There, scattered about, were fragments of a human that hadn’t been there during the last inspection. Pieces of flesh where blood had clotted into the shape of a smile mark.
“Haa…….”
Jeil Heon sighed in front of the shattered rock and the rusted Divine Blade. The Smiling Man must have taken advantage of the weakened seal to use a contaminated human to tear the Talisman.
Twenty-two years ago, just before being murdered by the Smiling Man, Nam Soon-ho had exhausted his final bit of divine power to devise a way to seal the Smiling Man before he died. Then, seventeen years ago, Jeil Heon had used the Gold-Pressure Talisman—which was practically a memento of her—to seal the Smiling Man in this very spot. He had done so at the cost of being devoured by a Blind Eater contaminated by the Smiling Man.
In a sense, he and the Smiling Man had almost erased each other’s existence from the world for seventeen years.
“Just how many people do you have to kill before you’re satisfied?”
Jeil Heon ruffled his hair roughly and bit his lower lip. Since he had been liberated from the Blind Eater, it was obvious that the Smiling Man would find a way to break the seal. To achieve its purpose, it absolutely had to find him.
The seal was already weakened. Even if Jeil Heon hadn’t been involved, it would have broken in the near future. It was faster than expected, but there was no reason to be confused.
Quickly regaining his composure, Jeil Heon checked the surroundings to see if there was anything useful. The hermitage where Nam Soon-ho died was unchanged from seventeen years ago. All that remained were the torn Talisman in the cave and the rusted Divine Blade. After some thought, Jeil Heon picked up the Divine Blade. Perhaps he could find Mae-gu’s spirit messenger with this.
The area was silent. The corpse with the smile mark was shriveling up without rotting, as neither animals nor insects were drawn to it. There was only one way to purify a corpse so extremely contaminated.
Gathering the straw rope, Jeil Heon placed it beside the body and set them both ablaze at once. The fire blazed fiercely without leaving the cave, then died down on its own.
Wrapping the Divine Blade in an old cloth found at the hermitage, Jeil Heon took one last look at the cave before descending the mountain.
“Just like how you sent those contaminated Aberrations to the Management Bureau, I suppose you’re hiding among humans, just watching.”
The crevice in the rock where the Smiling Man had been sealed was barely deep enough for a single hand to fit. Having been trapped for a long time, unable to move a muscle except for occasionally revealing its presence to the outside, its rage would now be directed at him.
Jeil Heon whispered softly, as if speaking to the Smiling Man.
“So, just follow me. Only me.”
Not Jiha, but only him.
* * *
He had encountered the Aberration identified as the Smiling Man before. Back then, it had simply been a terrifying and dangerous Aberration, but now it carried a heavier meaning.
Jeil Heon had said he failed to protect his family from anomalies in the past. And he had lost an acquaintance to the Smiling Man. Nam Hyeon-woo, Nam Soon-ho’s son, was the only person with whom he had maintained a connection even after joining the Management Bureau. He couldn’t even begin to fathom the feelings of a man who had to lose someone he had been that close to.
‘He didn’t show any sign of it when the Smiling Man appeared….’
Thinking about it made him feel upset again. The Jeil Heon that Yoo Jiha knew was a person who embraced him warmly, played mischievous pranks at times, and wore a steady, firm smile. However, behind that facade, there must have been losses he knew nothing about.
Knowing the twists and turns of the hardships he must have endured, it felt terribly unfair that Jiha had gotten angry at him simply for treating him like a child. He shouldn’t add more distress to someone who already carries so much pain….
Yoo Jiha resolved that he would apologize for acting sharp once he returned home. It’s fine. They say in a relationship, the one who likes the other more is the loser. It’s not like they’re breaking up; they can just skip the sex for a bit. People die while having sex, but nobody dies from not having it.
In this decadent era where anyone can easily access 19+ media with a single touch, and those born in the 1900s lament the fall of public morals, a platonic relationship might actually possess a pure value called for by the times. In a world so lewd that people have sex with strangers without even knowing their names in a single night, wouldn’t a relationship where they just hold hands and sleep be more special?
Having finished his mental victory, Yoo Jiha fell asleep while waiting for Jeil Heon to return. He was quite tired, even though he had done nothing but sleep in the duty room.
[Jiha, I’ll be away from home for a few days. Sorry.]
However, when he woke up, all he saw was a single text saying he wasn’t coming home. Dumbfounded, he called immediately, but Jeil Heon’s phone was off. When Yoo Jiha went to work the next day, he discovered that he had taken annual leave for the entire week.
“…….”
Yoo Jiha calmly reflected on whether he was being overly sensitive. His partner hadn’t provided a detailed explanation following the five Ws and one H—such as the reason for his absence and a request for understanding—but had simply vanished, leaving a meager twenty-three-character text. Is it acceptable to justify this by saying they are in a cold war?
“This is definitely a situation to be angry about!”
He huffed and sent texts, calling frequently, but the phone remained off. After two days passed without any results, he began to feel anxious. Could this old man have wandered off alone, leaving his partner behind, and gotten into an accident? He’s so pretty; what if he was kidnapped? What if he became a drunken pushover and had his organs harvested?
Making a grand decision, he went all the way to the Director’s office.
“If the boarder doesn’t know the whereabouts of the landlord, who would?”
“……Uh, usually a friend, isn’t it?”
“You don’t call a relationship where you want to punch the other person in the mouth a ‘friendship’.”
“I feel that way sometimes too.”
Though he formed a bond with Kang Suk-young in a strange place, there were still no results. He asked Gong Ran-sa as well, but she was equally clueless.
「I do not know if he went to find it himself because there has been no progress on the task Mr. Je requested of me.」
“What kind of request was it?”
「It was a secret request.」
“…….”
For some reason, it smelled like “adult business” that shouldn’t be pried into. Thus, more aimless time flowed by. Yoo Jiha’s internet history became filled with searches like ‘avoidant personality’ and ‘ghosting breakup.’
But he felt he was guessing wrong. Jeil Heon wasn’t the avoidant type, and even if they broke up because of Jiha’s fault, he was the kind of person who would apologize and say he was sorry rather than ghosting him.
The phone was still dead silent. Even after taking twenty-four selfies and attaching the prettiest one with the message ‘Waiting for you, Mister ♡’, the text remained unread. It was the same even when he sent phishing texts like ’50 million won has been deposited,’ ‘I have your precious person,’ or ‘This is the Western District Prosecutors’ Office.’
“Is something up with you?”
Not just his teammates, but his friends began to worry. Yoo Jiha condensed the long-winded story—’I fought with my boyfriend, who is twelve years my senior, my boss, and my landlord, because he treats me like a child and refuses to have sex, and then he suddenly went missing’—into a single sentence.
“My landlord ran away with my security deposit (my heart) and I can’t reach him.”
“Crazy. Did you report it to the police?”
“If it’s a boarding house, don’t his family members live there too?”
While drinking with friends and excitedly grumbling about the landlord, a tempting piece of advice came his way. Jeil Heon’s family. He had never met them, but he knew who they were.
In a fit of anger and intoxication, Yoo Jiha sent an email to the JL Group PR team starting with, ‘Hello. I am a boarder at the residence of Mr. Jeil Heon, the Chairman’s eldest brother….’ Of course, he didn’t send it expecting to actually reach Je Seong-jae. It would obviously be treated as a joke and cut off by the staff. Knowing that, he hadn’t even included his contact information. He just wanted to vent, even if it meant doing something this childish.
The night after Jeil Heon still hadn’t returned home, a call came from an unfamiliar number.
Is this Yoo Jiha?
“Yes, who is this?”
Sorry for the late hour. I am Je Seong-jae, Il-heon Hyung’s younger brother. You sent an email to the company, right?
It took Yoo Jiha one minute and thirty-seven seconds to process that sentence.