We pushed through the packed street, reached a departnt store, bought a suit for Do Yehyun, and I picked out a few things I could wear too.
“When you’re buying mine, I’ll buy so clothes for you too, hyung.”
“Save your money and buy a place later.”
“I already have one.”
“You planning to live with forever? Bold of you.”
Well, he did used to say that nonsense about feeding for life. I brushed off his words and looked around the store when his voice ca again.
“How long are you going to live together with ?”
“Dunno. Until the world gets back to normal.”
“...By ‘back to normal,’ do you an a world without Gates?”
“Yeah.”
And I’d go back to my original world.
Of course, I had a few new things to think about on that front now.
I gave a brief thought to clearing out all this fun and returning to the world I ca from. Obviously dull and boring—but that’s what normal life is supposed to be: adequately dull, boring, and uninteresting.
“Do you really think a world like that will co?”
He asked seriously while I was off in my head.
I found it funny that he was already assuming we couldn’t return to life before the Gates when it hadn’t been that long since they appeared. Not that Do Yehyun was unique. Most of humanity had already gotten used to Gates and hunters.
I answered without hesitation.
“Yeah.”
“...Then would you live alone? Doing what?”
I’d only thought as far as getting rid of the Gates and never past that. I answered like it was nothing.
“Run a ski resort?”
“...Liar.”
“Why are you like this. It could be true.”
“Then let’s do it together. I’ll take shifts in the infirmary.”
“I’ll consider it.”
“Really?”
Of course, that day will never co. If the Gates disappear, the powers hunters have will naturally fade too.
Instead of answering, I smiled.
***
Once we finished shopping, we had absolutely nothing left to do. I tossed the choice to Do Yehyun again.
“Movie theater, arcade, or stake out a café with empty seats. What do you want?”
“Do you think the theater will have seats?”
“If it’s a boring-as-fuck movie, it will. Sort by lowest rating and look.”
“......”
And even then, it’ll probably be front row.
Sure enough, the ones with seats had dogshit ratings.
“A civil-servant Awakened male lead who saves people when a Gate explodes overnight? Now that the world’s like this, even movies like this exist, huh.”
I flipped through the reviews in pure awe. When I saw sobody write, “Pay for watching this crap,” I was convinced.
“No one’s going to be there. Looks like it’ll be gone in a day or two.”
“Should we go watch it?”
“Yeah.”
We bought two tickets on the spot and waited in the awkward {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} third row. The ratings were bad, the seats were worse, and yet it was disgustingly crowded.
Fighting off the strange feeling that my humanity was rotting in real ti, I watched the only truly exciting part: the ads.
And exactly ten minutes after the movie started, I fell asleep.
I woke up halfway, opened one eye, and looked around; mystifyingly, about half the people had vanished. Unless a Gate had opened and teleported them, it ant they’d read the room and bailed.
I leaned to whisper in Do Yehyun’s ear, his eyes still glued to the screen.
“Why’d people disappear?”
“...They left.”
Yeah. Wise choice, everyone.
Cracking my stiff back from dozing while sitting, I fixed my eyes on the screen like he did. I was pretty sure I’d slept an hour, yet sohow I understood everything that was going on.
Maybe he regretted sitting through this trash too—his hand clenched around the armrest like he was bracing. I watched his hand for a mont, then casually glanced around, timing our escape.
“Yehyun.”
“...Yes?”
The sound was loud enough that a whisper wouldn’t carry, but in the spirit of those theater-manner ads from the beginning, I kept it to a murmur in his ear.
“Wanna bail too?”
“You don’t want to see the ending...?”
“I actually slept.”
“...I know.”
“And it’s obvious he’ll get his happy ending.”
When he gave a tiny nod, I gathered our stuff. No one was watching anyway, but I’m a man of etiquette, so I bowed and slipped out of the auditorium.
Once we stepped into the lobby, the suffocation eased. Still rolling my stiff neck, I asked:
“Was it fun? You were watching hard.”
“...I don’t know. I couldn’t focus.”
“Then it wasn’t fun.”
Leaving him to state the obvious, I jingled the car keys I’d taken from my pocket.
“Let’s go.”
“...Ho?”
“Yeah. I picked the wrong day. Wherever we go it’s too crowded.”
“......”
Too cruel to end a promised day off like this? I hesitated, pocketed the keys again, and corrected myself.
“Or we could walk.”
“......”
“While we do your favorite Q&A ti.”
“I like that?”
“Yeah.”
Obviously he’s the one who likes it. Honestly, even if it wasn’t in the original, I’d already stripped his background bare through Joo Seowon ages ago. How shitty his family situation was, how miserable his earlier life had been.
Whether it’s canon or digging, a person’s life usually condenses to a few lines.
“I know everything about you.”
“...No, you don’t.”
“There’s sothing I don’t know?”
“Yes.”
He stared at for a mont with a blank face, then added:
“A lot.”
Can’t be that many.
Anyway, we walked together. We couldn’t go far with the car parked, so we planned to circle the nearby blocks and return to the garage.
“Not cold?”
“Not really.”
A casual question, a casual answer.
“Hm.”
Judging by his reaction, he wasn’t lying. Do hunters’ physical reinforcent affect cold resistance? That never ca up in the text, but I didn’t feel all that cold either.
We walked in silence until he asked:
“Do you want the Gates gone, hyung?”
“Mm... a little?”
The world needs a route where the Gates disappear and the story reaches an ending so I can live. Not the original ending, of course.
“Why?”
“Do you like Gates existing? We get disaster alerts every damn day.”
“......”
You can get used to it, but calling it good is a stretch—especially since it’s not like he’s raking in cash off dungeon rewards.
But after a long silence, he gave a yes.
“I think I’d be fine living like this.”
“Hm?”
Wasn’t he the one who ca back from a dungeon and wouldn’t shut up about seeing soone die for the first ti?
Before I could laugh at the nonsense, he hurried to add:
“This much... isn’t that bad.”
“What do you an?”
“If things go back, healers... probably won’t be that useful anymore.”
“You think getting a job would be hard?”
“Well... that too.”
I side-eyed him and thought. A kid who didn’t even finish high school—sure, I can see why he’d think that.
‘Guess I’ll make him take the GED.’
He went quiet again, then said:
“I... said I think of you like family, right?”
“Yeah.”
“But like you said, since I’ve never really had one, I don’t know if it’s real familial love.”
“Huh?”
He looked at steadily. His face didn’t show much, but the tops of his ears were flushed. The temperature was enough to redden ears and noses, but sohow my suspicion went elsewhere first.
And then, without hesitating anymore, he said nonsense out loud.
“Does Seowon hyung... know your family situation?”
“Which part. That my parents passed?”
“That, and what you told today.”
“What?”
“That your mom’s side were alcoholics, so you don’t drink.”
“No. He only knows they passed.”
Seowon never bothered to ask about that. He’d ask about other things first.
When I answered simply, a slow smile spread across Do Yehyun’s usually unreadable face. Attachnt issues, very clear.
“Then I’m the only one who knows the rest?”
“You’re really pleased about the weirdest things.”
“What’s weird about it.”
Is being pleased here the “right” thing? I wasn’t going to argue it. Didn’t matter anyway.
I mulled it over for a second, then spoke first.
“When I brought you in, I’ll be honest—part of the calculation was that you’d end up depending on .”
“......”
“But it feels like the objective got a little too achieved.”
“What...?”
“Family love, attachnt—call it whatever. Lately I’ve gotten suspicious.”
Seowon was a big part of that. He hadn’t stated anything as a certainty, but still.
‘Or maybe I’m the problem?’
For so reason, guys tend to flock to . As for dating, I did that based on dopamine more than gender.
‘Not that that’s the point.’
I studied him for a bit, then dropped the conclusion.
“Do you like ?”
“......”
“I left you enough hints to notice. If you didn’t, I thought I might get a little offended.”
His reaction made it certain. The faint pink of his ears had gone crimson while his face went pale. The temperature here hadn’t suddenly plunged, so the cause lay elsewhere.
Quietly, almost inaudibly, he still said it with a strange kind of confidence.
“...How could I not.”
“I’m going to cut in again. I don’t date. And long-term, not dating is the smart move.”
I cut him off before he could even finish.
He lowered his eyes to the pavent. On a street packed with people, in weather cold enough to freeze your ass off, we were having this kind of conversation while walking.
Not that I was annoyed... I just felt nothing. I knew what he’d say, and nothing I wanted to say ca to mind.
“If I date you... that’s a win for .”
“I’m telling you I’m not a win.”
“...I don’t date either.”
Would this change in his mind make him drift off, betray ? Maybe. But the risk of starting sothing was bigger.
“Okay.”
“......”
I tried to think of a good contingency and added quickly:
“If you ever get so fucking fed up you want to betray , or you want to switch jobs, tell .”
“...Huh?”
“I’ll seriously consider it.”
At that, his expression twisted a little. Color returned to his pale face.
“...Let’s just go ho.”
I shrugged and we retraced our steps.
Maybe because we’d co out of a movie, more ti had passed than I thought. By the ti we got back to the car, it was nearly midnight.
With a still-silent twenty-year-old in the passenger seat, I started the engine.
We rolled onto the road toward ho. I glanced at the guy clamping his mouth shut, clearly lost in thought, and offered a congratulations.
“Happy twenty-first.”
“......”
Shockingly, it was the New Year.
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