Chapter 56 (1/2)
“Please, help us! Please!”
He was clinging onto someone’s leg and desperately crying out. Hak-Joon was sitting on a higher place, watching this scene unfold.
The person frantically asking for help was none other than himself.
<< A dream? >>
His face below seemed to be slightly older than his current self. Seeing how that version was crying out the names one by one, he must’ve been close with every one of them.
<< Who are they? >>
However, the real Hak-Joon had no idea who they were since he couldn’t see their faces. Even the names being called out were unfamiliar.
“Please, please…”
His figure sitting on the floor howling out came across as truly pitiful and sad.
No one looked back at him despite his ardent, desperate cries. They could’ve reached out or glanced in his direction at least once.
For some reason, the past and present didn’t seem all that different to him.
<< This dream…. >>
….It was so vivid that it irritated him.
He wanted to wake up as soon as possible. A dream with such an unpleasant feeling was so rare that it could probably be counted in one hand.
It was then, the scene below Hak-Joon changed.
“This… Goddammit…”
Expletives came out from Hak-Joon’s mouth.
His heart pounded away as his breathing became shallow and heavy. His vision was clouding over, and it felt like the inside of his head was getting hotter.
The ‘Hak-Joon’ below was currently holding onto a certain woman in the scene; it was the woman with short bob-cut hair was bleeding from both her mouth and eyes.
“But, why…?”
Step!
A familiar face approached.
It was the face he didn’t want to see, even in his dreams.
It was Jung Dong-Yeong.
“That’s why you shouldn’t have done that, Hak-Joon-ah”.
As always, he spoke with a kindly voice. With a tone seemingly chiding a younger brother, he was driving a cold hard dagger deep into Hak-Joon’s heart.
“Had you listened to everything I said, that girl wouldn’t have died, you know?”
“Aaaaaahk!”
“Aaaaaahk!”
Hak-Joon woke up from his dream with a scream.
His whole body was soaked in sweat. Hak-Joon had been sleeping inside a darkened storage facility.
<< Where am I? >>
His confusion lasted only for a short while.
He remembered the situation before he fell into a slumber.
<< I didn’t fall asleep, but… I got knocked out, instead. >>
His arm, the shoulders, and his back flinched.
His whole body was screaming in pain. He had blacked out while getting severely beaten up.
The face he didn’t want to remember popped back up inside his head on its own.
It belonged to Jung Dong-Yeong.
“Goddammit.”
A younger brother? Family? Friend?
What a nonsensical notion that was.
Jung Dong-Yeong always physically abused his fellow Guild members, the ones he called his ‘family’, for minor matters that didn’t warrant such a treatment.
“If you tell me the truth, I’ll go easy on you, Hak-Joon-ah. You knew, didn’t you?”
Jung Dong-Yeong was aware of Hak-Joon’s relationship with Su-hyeun and believed that the two were plotting something behind his back from the very beginning.
Of course, Hak-Joon didn’t know that and from his perspective, this whole thing came across as massively unfair.
“Didn’t I tell you what I hate the most? Lying and betrayal. Those two. I told you to never do those two things, didn’t I?”
“Heh.”
What a bunch of bullcrap that was.
Don’t do those two things?
“Just those two?”
That wasn’t even true.
Jung Dong-Yeong would start throwing his fists around first if something got on his nerves or pissed him off somehow.
If a dungeon conquest had been scheduled prior, he’d hold himself back but once the schedule was cleared, he’d start beating people up without fail.
This time, he went too far. Hak-Joon ended up fainting, after all.
Jung Dong-Yeong didn’t even bother to confirm the detail of the actual relationship and simply decided to vent some steam here.
Squeeze!
Bang!
Hak-Joon slammed his fist against the storage wall. His anger welled up so much that he could hardly contain himself.
He felt like abandoning everything and leaving.
Ring!
Just then, his phone with the cracked screen resting on the ground began ringing noisily.
Hak-Joon’s gaze shifted towards the name appearing on the phone’s screen. The moment he saw the name of the sender, ‘Yun-seon’, he ended up biting hard onto his lip.
He picked up the phone, sucked in a deep breath, and opened his mouth.
“…Hello?”
Su-hyeun changed his clothes at home, took a shower, and headed to the Awakeners Accreditation Authority immediately.
As he walked down the familiar hallway, several people recognized his face and began glancing in his direction. They were Awakeners that fought alongside him a few days ago.
<< I guess my quiet days are as good as over. >>
Even if he was left with little choice back then, there was no doubt that this event outed his face publicly. It might be limited to a few Awakeners at the moment, sure, but it was only a matter of time before everyone found out, too.
<< Well, this is annoying. >>
He wasn’t all that interested in the attention. Rather than feeling chuffed, he was instead burdened by it. To high-ranking Awakeners, ‘attention’ was the same thing as expectations.
Su-hyeun was well aware of how burdensome attention and expectation could be.
“Fuu-woo-”
Su-hyeun arrived before the director’s office and took a deep breath.
He had to meet the director sooner or later, but that didn’t mean he held a favorable impression of him. It’d be truly difficult to find a polar opposite of the director in this world.
Knock, knock!
Su-hyeun knocked on the office’s door.
When he did, the person on the other side answered.
“Come in.”