* * *
“His condition is quite poor. You said he was completely an ordinary person before falling into the Gate, right?”
In the room, where only Suhyeon’s steady breathing and the sound of machines echoed, Ryu Yihan looked at the core X-ray and made a displeased tsk sound.
The man of sorrowful beauty, whom Hajin had brought, emitted no wavelength, embarrassing for a supposed Guide.
Even if he didn’t have a wavelength, the shape of his core was serious.
He had abandoned his thesis, academic conferences, and all the piled-up work because he thought he’d finally get to meet someone who had emerged from a Gate, but it seemed treating the person would be more troublesome than expected.
However, Yihan soon shrugged.
Who was he?
Wasn’t he Ryu Yihan, who had climbed to the top with this one genius brain, starting from the bottom?
There was no treatment he couldn’t perform.
Ryu Yihan’s eyes sparkled as he looked at Suhyeon, who was lying peacefully unconscious.
This was a chance to exclusively study a person who had fallen out of a Gate.
It was not an opportunity to refuse just because the treatment might be a little difficult.
“The research value is overflowing, absolutely.”
“Don’t even think about doing anything reckless.”
As Hajin issued a warning, having heard his muttered thoughts like a ghost, Yihan frowned and looked at him.
His damned friend seemed to have lost his mind since earlier.
“Did you seriously eat something bad?”
To be honest, Yihan had almost fainted with exaggeration when he first saw Hajin carrying Suhyeon.
Yihan had known this cold-blooded person, a mix of mysophobia and misanthropy, since his school days.
Countless people were drawn to his handsome looks, but Hajin always drove them away with a look of contempt.
He had mellowed out a bit compared to his childhood, but seeing the Espers who worked under him still trembling, it was obvious what he was like.
But this Hajin had appeared before him, holding someone.
“Nonsense.”
“No, seriously. Did you eat something wrong? I truly thought Suhyeon had brainwashed you.”
He hadn’t carried him in like baggage with an expression full of repulsion and contempt; he had carried him carefully, as if handling a precious glass artifact that would shatter with a rough movement.
Yihan thought his eyes had finally stopped taking orders from his brain and were seeing something else entirely.
And what about his expression?
Although it had returned to being aloof now, it had clearly softened when he looked at Suhyeon earlier.
Even though it was still an indifferent face, it was visible to Yihan, who had known this bastard for over ten years.
Shin Hajin with a soft face, holding someone dearly—if the Association people heard this, a hundred out of a hundred would faint.
“Be quiet.”
Yihan tilted his head.
The way he coldly pushed him away was indeed the original Shin Hajin.
But didn’t the fact that he carried Suhyeon mean that this guy’s mysophobia was gone?
“Hey, so can I touch you now, too? AAGH!!!!!”
Yihan grinned and tried to touch Hajin, but a blue flame erupted in the air without warning, and he turned pale and jumped back.
“Hey!!”
Not only that, an invisible force violently pushed Yihan out of the room.
The last thing Yihan saw before he tumbled was Shin Hajin glaring at him with those blue eyes next to Suhyeon.
BANG!!!!
The only entrance to the medical equipment area on the second floor slammed shut with a loud noise.
“HEY!!!!”
Yihan yelled, but the door didn’t open.
‘Is he kicking out the doctor?!’
‘That personality-wrecking bastard! I hope he falls flat on his face and busts his nose next time he goes to close a Gate!’
Yihan thought that bringing Suhyeon meant the personality-wrecking bastard had finally evolved into a person with a proper personality.
‘Wait, but if he hasn’t changed, then why is he acting all fine and gentle in front of Suhyeon?’
Yihan, who had been grumbling for a long time after being kicked out, suddenly paused at a fundamental question that came to mind.
Didn’t they say Chae Suhyeon popped out of the German Gate and ran into Shin Hajin?
There shouldn’t have been any prior connection.
Yihan stroked his chin and hummed, thinking back to the scene from earlier.
Hajin’s behavior—precious, careful, and kind only toward Suhyeon, his softened expression, and Shin Hajin’s ability to touch Suhyeon while prohibiting Yihan from touching him…
It all suggested he was treating someone special.
Suhyeon said he wasn’t an Esper, and since he awakened as a Guide, was it because of the Guiding?
But if that were the case, Yihan himself was an Esper, albeit F-class.
He didn’t feel any Guiding coming from Suhyeon, whose core was unstable.
Most importantly, if Shin Hajin was an Esper who treated Guides specially, he would have treated other Guides like this long ago.
He wouldn’t have haughtily declared that they should only use remote Guiding and not touch him, with a contemptuous glare.
Yihan, who had seen that spectacle a few times before, quickly dismissed that assumption.
‘Then why?’
Shin Hajin was treating Suhyeon as if, as if, he were in first love—
“…Crazy,”
Yihan instantly erased the one-second-ago version of himself who had thought that thought from his brain.
Shin Hajin liking someone?
Never in a million years. Shin Hajin would never do that.
Suhyeon is, well, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’
Whether his friend was weird or not, all he had to do was care for Suhyeon, the precious research material that emerged from the Gate.
Anything related to the Gates was like enlightenment to him.
As for Shin Hajin liking Suhyeon, ugh, the thought of it gave him chills again. Yihan would bet his hand on that not being true.
‘Hmm, no, hands are important, let’s go with a foot.’
And so, the genius doctor, a fanatical devotee of the Gates, would later cry his eyes out as he had to cut off his foot.
Hajin would frown at the sight, and Suhyeon would subtly hide behind Hajin, looking at Yihan as if he were a germ.
Yihan, made more sorrowful by this, would cry even more pathetically.
But this is a story for a little later.
*
When Suhyeon regained consciousness, he was alone.
Morning sunlight poured through the window.
Suhyeon blinked his light-colored eyes a few times at the unfamiliar ceiling before realizing, a beat too late, that this was Hajin’s house.
‘I lost consciousness again.’
‘At this rate, I’ll be collapsing twice a day.’
Suhyeon sighed and rubbed his aching chest as he sat up.
An IV line was stuck in his hand, and the bag was connected to a movable stand.
Suhyeon was lying inside something shaped like a large, semicircular tube emitting a cold light, and seeing it like this, it really did look like a hospital.
“…I guess I can leave now?”
He wasn’t in pain right now.
Suhyeon cautiously got up and out of the tube, grabbing the IV stand.
His unusually pale feet touched the floor.
He still swayed, but he felt a little stronger than yesterday.
Suhyeon, clutching the stand, walked past the area filled with medical machinery.
As he opened a door, he saw the stairs he had been carried up yesterday.
‘I can’t go down the stairs with the stand, though. Hmm.’
Suhyeon’s face lit up when he looked around and spotted a transparent elevator across the hall.
‘An elevator inside a house.’
That was surprising in itself, but given the size of this mansion, it made sense.
‘Ding,’ with a small, clear sound, the elevator door opened, revealing the well-lit first floor. In the distance, he saw the familiar figure of a man.
Suhyeon paused as he approached.
Hajin was asleep, slumped on the sofa.
Suhyeon carefully headed toward him, making sure not to make a sound.
He saw his black eyelashes casting long shadows on his cheeks.
‘Why?’
Was it because the sight felt like a painting?
Suhyeon watched the sleeping man who had brought him here for a long time.
Hajin’s well-defined muscles were subtly visible beneath his black crew-neck shirt.
Even though Suhyeon had tried to be as quiet as possible, Hajin must have sensed his presence, because his eyelids quickly fluttered open.
The blue eyes hidden within blinked a few times, then regained their focus and looked up at Suhyeon.
‘Would it be funny to say I felt a bit disappointed?’
“Are you awake?”
His voice, already low, was lower now, hoarse from sleep.
Growl—
The sound that broke the quiet air of the first floor was, amusingly, the sound coming from Suhyeon’s stomach.
Suhyeon instinctively looked down at his own stomach.
Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember putting anything in his mouth since right after he came out of the Gate.
He had collapsed several times already, so he hadn’t even thought about eating.
It was a little embarrassing. Hajin must have heard the rather loud noise, as he chuckled.
“Do you usually eat breakfast?”
He often skipped it because he was too lazy, but he was hungry now.
When Suhyeon silently nodded, Hajin called someone, and soon after, they were sitting at the dining table with some simple sandwiches.
As Suhyeon was quickly eating, he suddenly felt a gaze and looked up to find Hajin staring intently at him.
“I know your name. How old are you?”
“Twenty-three… Um, twenty-six.”
Suhyeon changed his answer, having belatedly realized that three years had passed.
“What about you, Hajin?”
“I’m twenty-nine. I guess time flowed strangely inside the Gate?”
Suhyeon thought they were similar in age, but surprisingly, he was a little older.
‘No, wait, they are similar in age,’ it’s only a three-year difference.
Suhyeon reaffirmed in his mind that he was twenty-six and nodded.
He didn’t really want to think about the Gate, but Hajin must have been quick-witted, as he didn’t miss his hesitation and asked:
“I thought it had been at most two or three days.”
“…I see.”
After answering, he didn’t say anything more.
‘Did I imagine it?’
Suhyeon tilted his head at the impression that Hajin was subtly downcast, and then opened his mouth first with a thought that had just occurred to him.
“By the way, did I have any belongings with me?”
It was the first thing he thought of after waking up.
Of course, it wouldn’t be strange if he had none, given everything he had gone through—being sucked in, popping out, and collapsing—but he hoped his phone and wallet were okay.
“Ah, yes, you did. I’ll get them for you.”
‘What a relief.’
Suhyeon’s face immediately brightened.
* * *
