He’d left in the morning, but when he came home it was evening. It seemed like he could finish eating and then go see Pyeonghwa. Dohae took out ingredients from the refrigerator.
Byun Taehui, leaning against the island table, giggled. He kept fiddling with the pearl hairpin in his hair, which was really annoying. He seemed exactly like someone hoping Dohae would talk to him.
Anyway, even if he asked, he’d just beat around the bush and get on his nerves. Whatever his ulterior motive was, Dohae didn’t want to give him what he wanted. When Dohae ignored him to the end, Byun Taehui spoke first.
-Honey, a fan came earlier and gave me tons of gifts, want to see?
-Throw them away.
-How cold. They said they bought one each day thinking of you.
-You keep them then.
Dohae also hated the followers who called themselves fans. It was unpleasant how they poured out affection just looking at his appearance without knowing anything about him. If he acted according to his real personality, they’d get scared and run away. Really, they’re all just hypocritical people…
‘Honestly, noona’s personality is total trash, you know? Always getting angry, cursing, only saying what she wants to say… I looked it up on the internet and it seems like narcissistic personality disorder? That’s what it looks like. So she probably has no friends? I fucking love it. I’m probably the only man who can accept that personality.’
He suddenly remembered what Pyeonghwa had said. He can accept it? What a joke. Dohae snorted. His courage was commendable, but who couldn’t say words? She was a virtual woman he’d never even seen.
-Honey, you’re not looking at your phone today?
Dohae had set it so only notifications from important people would pop up. There were no pop-ups today so he just let it pass, but Byun Taehui’s question was suspicious. Come to think of it, Pyeonghwa was quiet today.
‘He’s the guy who sends dozens when he’s working, why is he quiet?’
Dohae’s hand, which had been draining blood from the beef, paused. The blood spreading on the kitchen towel overlapped with Pyeonghwa coughing up blood.
The pupils that had dilated hugely without focus, the skin that had turned from pale to purple, the life that was gradually fading while unable to inhale or exhale…
Dohae immediately called Pyeonghwa. Only the ringtone kept sounding, the call didn’t connect. Dohae grabbed his car keys and left the house right away.
Arriving at Pyeonghwa’s house, Dohae rang the doorbell. No matter how long he waited, Pyeonghwa, who always came running with a clatter to open the door every day, didn’t come out. Thinking he might have collapsed, he opened his ki sense to check, but there was no one in the house.
‘Why is the front door…’
Dohae, who was calling Pyeonghwa again, furrowed his brow when he discovered that one corner of the front door was pierced open as if melted by high heat. The hole was about the size of a small ball that could go in and out.
‘It’s not a thief.’
If it were a thief, they would have pierced the top to open the door, not the bottom. Dohae knelt on one knee and reached out to observe the hole more closely.
-Kut!
The ring vibrated and heated up. Dohae groaned lowly and pulled his hand back. Then the ring returned to its original state as if nothing had happened.
-Ha… Noh Pyeonghwa.
Dohae stood up. Noh Pyeonghwa disappearing without a word, the hole in the front door, even the ring’s resonance – they were all clearly related. To solve the secret of the ring, he definitely needed to find Noh Pyeonghwa.
Dohae returned to his car and even put on a mask and sunglasses. Before he knew it, his hair had turned blacker than the night sky.
Crows that appeared from the shadows circled around Dohae before disappearing somewhere. Dohae thought that if Pyeonghwa was in this vicinity, he couldn’t escape his eyes. His footsteps walking leisurely were full of confidence and composure.
Two hours passed like that.
“Noh Pyeonghwa! Come out right now!”
Dohae shouted Pyeonghwa’s name loudly, not caring if people stared. Even after going around to the hospital emergency room, Pyeonghwa was nowhere to be seen.
Pyeonghwa sent messages to ‘DdoHaeNuna’ every time he went out. If he went to school, he would have said he went, and if he was meeting someone, he was the type to say he was meeting them. He knew he wasn’t close with his family, and knew he had no friends, but where on earth did he go…!
Dohae had no choice but to call Byun Taehui for help. Byun Taehui on the other end of the phone stuttered as if flustered, then confessed in his original low-to-mid tone without disguising his voice.
-Dohae, hyung is kneeling right now.
“Kneeling?”
-Actually, I met Pyeonghwa during the day earlier and had a drink…
“Are you crazy? You gave alcohol to a sick kid?”
-Pyeonghwa’s reactions were cute so I played around too hard. He left crying, but I didn’t know he wouldn’t go home. I’ll go out and look for him right away too. It’ll be okay, don’t worry too much. Pyeonghwa said he’s not terminally ill. He couldn’t say it because he was scared of you…
“Shut up! Ha, fuck! What did you do to make him cry? Don’t tell me you did pervert shit?”
-…
Click. Byun Taehui hung up. He called again but he didn’t answer. Dohae yelled “Fuck!” and grabbed the chain-link fence. Kwadeudeuk! The part of the fence Dohae grabbed shattered into pieces like dry noodles before cooking.
“I’m telling you that ball is weird! It keeps moving!”
“Hey! Don’t blame the ball because you can’t kick it. Who likes using it? You kicked it so hard it fell in the Han River. Go in and get my soccer ball out, idiot!”
“I said I’d buy you one. A better one! That ball is just weird! It looks fucking weird too!”
“It just looks like a soccer ball that got dirty with a ton of barnacles stuck to it?”
“Why would there be a soccer ball with barnacles in the Han River! In the middle of Seoul! It’s not even the beach! Ah, fuck! This is frustrating!”
“Rivers and seas are both water, so there could be barnacles, you ignorant bastard!”
The men who had been playing soccer inside the fence started fighting. Dohae wanted to rip all their mouths apart. Black energy began to spread out from under Dohae’s feet.
Just then, a round object that had been rolling avoided the black energy and hurriedly moved in the opposite direction. With purple patterns splotched on a black background, at first glance it looked like a soccer ball.
“…The egg?”
Dohae muttered with a frown. He’d seen something similar once when he picked up the ring at Jangmak Station. It was the egg that had been in Pyeonghwa’s transparent bag. Back then it was grapefruit-sized, but now it had swollen up plump to soccer ball size.
Dohae entered the fence and reached toward the egg. But before his fingertips could touch it, the ring burned hot.
‘So this was what pierced through the front door.’
The egg seemed to have grown much larger than the hole in the front door in just a few hours. Dohae followed behind the egg as it rolled diligently somewhere.
“Hey, stop fighting! That guy’s stealing the ball!”
“Crazy, he’s fucking huge? Isn’t he 2m? Who can beat someone like that…?”
“Ugh, you wimp. Can’t you even ask for the ball back? Excuse me! That’s our ball?”
The men approached calling out to Dohae. Dohae gestured toward the soccer ball floating on the Han River. Black energy whirled like a whirlpool around the soccer ball. The soccer ball that floated up fell at the men’s feet in a parabola. The men who had been staring blankly at the wet soccer ball shouted in excitement.
“Big bro! Thank you!”
“Wow, you’re on a different level from this shitty awakened bastard!”
“Kya, you’ve got a hell of a build, big bro! Please go ahead!”
Dohae didn’t respond and followed the egg. The egg wasn’t a normal animal egg, it was an item. Come to think of it, Pyeonghwa had a lot of items even though he wasn’t a Hunter. The ring, the transparent bag, and even that egg.
‘Not terminally ill? Ha, then what did I see?’
That day, Pyeonghwa had truly been on the verge of death. As Erebos’s contractor, there was no way he couldn’t sense the energy of death.
‘They said there was nothing they could do even at the hospital.’
There were a few suspicious points. Like how he became perfectly fine in an instant as if he’d never almost died, and how his face had been full of life with a healthy complexion ever since – it didn’t seem like a sick person, which was puzzling.
There was only one reason to cough up blood like that without being sick.
‘It’s a Constellation problem.’
People call Constellations who play with contractors like toys evil stars. But Dohae thought all Constellations were close to being evil stars. Even Helios and Erebos, who cherished him, were the same.
Because Constellations are not human, human common sense doesn’t work on them. What they call cherishing contractors also wasn’t affection. Only Dohae, who had contracts with two Constellations, could see into the secrets of Constellations unknown to the world.
Humans are food for Constellations. There are Constellations who eat their food neatly, and there are Constellations who play with their food. General Constellations and evil stars are distinguished by that difference, but general Constellations also leave food, throw it away, or toss it as dog food. So distinguishing from a human perspective who’s good and who’s bad is actually meaningless.
But Constellations are not gods. They’re not even similar to them. Constellations are just ghost-like beings without substance who can’t exert any influence.
