# Chapter 123
## Their Time Together
An awkward atmosphere lingered for quite a while after they finished their meal. Lee Hwan sat down first, leaning back in his chair, and shortly after, Taesung leaned against the wall as their conversation began.
Preventing destruction. After reminding himself of his goal once more, Lee Hwan became calm again. As his brain, now fueled with energy, began to spin rapidly, it became a little easier to hide his expressions.
“Should I start by explaining my situation?”
“……”
“There’s no rush, so if there’s anything you’d like to say first, please go ahead.”
Whether he liked it or not, Lee Hwan had to stay here for a few more days. And since Taesung would also need to lay low for the time being, they still had quite a bit of time to spend together here.
Thanks to that, Lee Hwan generously offered to let Taesung start the conversation, but Taesung merely kept his lips firmly sealed, waiting for Lee Hwan to speak.
“Begin.”
“Sure, whatever. My story isn’t anything special. As you know, I infiltrated the basement of Building D, extracted some information, and while I was at it, took Jade’s drug.”
Looking at Taesung’s expression, the reaction was somewhat lukewarm. Perhaps he already knew this story and found it uninteresting. Lee Hwan roughly wrapped up the story of the underground lab in a few sentences and brought up the gate transformation.
“Then two days ago, I was working as a Supporter at a gate when suddenly the entire gate started to move. Even though it had already been cleanly cleared and there was no way monsters could appear, I heard howling sounds from a distance…”
“No.”
“…Pardon?”
“I want to hear it from the beginning.”
But even that didn’t seem to satisfy him as a sudden interruption came. Lee Hwan made an ambiguous expression.
From the beginning? He wasn’t sure which beginning Taesung meant. After regression? Or when he started working at Naru and began gathering information?
Noticing his confused gaze, Taesung pointed out an appropriate time with an expressionless face.
“From when you approached Kang Dongha.”
“…Hmm.”
Though he didn’t specifically mention it, Taesung must have known that Lee Hwan had connected with Kang Dongha after being beaten up and running away. Shouldn’t the starting point be when his head was cracked rather than when he attached himself to Kang Dongha?
Lee Hwan sighed crookedly. It wasn’t particularly pleasant to recall, and remembering it only left a bitter aftertaste. After regression, he had been greatly frustrated, attacked, and had run away. Afterward, by hooking Kang Dongha, Lee Hwan had entered a life full of tension, always watching carefully.
‘But that crazy bastard planted bugs, provoked Kang Taesung…’
Thinking about all the things he’d endured made him shudder. The alliance with Kang Dongha always felt like wandering through endless mountains. Looking back now, it was a miracle he hadn’t died in some random place and had somehow managed to gather the pieces of causality.
For Lee Hwan, it had truly been half a year of barely surviving.
“This isn’t much… either. I needed support for my plan, so I chose an appropriate sponsor. He was suitable at the time, in his own way. At the time.”
“Plan?”
“To stop the partial awakening project.”
Well, back then he had only vaguely thought about stopping the monster waves whose cause he didn’t even understand, but since all causes ultimately led to partial awakening, it wasn’t wrong.
He wanted to explain in more detail, but saying things like saving the world or stopping monster waves would probably give him a nosebleed before the words even left his mouth.
When Lee Hwan closed his mouth, Taesung’s face hardened. The reason was obvious without looking. It must seem extremely suspicious that an outsider knew about and was trying to stop an experiment that even he himself was unaware of.
“I’m not an industrial spy. Not a secret agent either. And I have no intention of making money from this anywhere.”
“I never said such things. Where did you get the information about the project?”
“I wonder. If I said I came from the future, would you choke me again?”
At his slightly crooked tone, Taesung’s eyes grew sharper. However, Lee Hwan felt rather at peace, thinking Taesung wouldn’t grab him by the hair in the safe house.
When Taesung didn’t reply, Lee Hwan continued speaking with his arms crossed.
“After that, well… I continuously passed information to my sponsor, stole an ID card, went into the basement, and came out. Actually, you probably know this much already.”
“Sponsor, huh.”
“I couldn’t bring money and power back from the future, you see.”
More precisely, he had come back with Taesung’s memories held as collateral.
“I brought some evidence of the experiment from the basement. I plan to report it to the International Journalists Association to stop it. If things go my way, Naru will face a tremendous storm.”
“Ha… You’ve managed to scheme quite well without any helpers. Does Naru know about this?”
“They probably didn’t know until I ran away. At that time, their target was you, not me.”
Although the gate had been altered, it wasn’t to the extent that monsters would flood out. Also, they had originally planned to track him, considering a Plan B assuming he would survive. The hand that choked him had been looser than expected.
‘Well, any B-class or lower would definitely have died in that situation…’
It’s just that they had misjudged Lee Hwan’s abilities, but they had indeed intended to kill him. Nevertheless, Lee Hwan could implicitly understand. If they had wanted to confirm his death, he would have been disposed of long ago.
If they had known that the information leak would come from Lee Hwan rather than Taesung, they wouldn’t have let him go so easily. He would probably have been dragged away as soon as he exited the gate, injected with a lethal dose of truth serum, and crossed the river to the afterlife.
Just by the fact that he was sitting here safely, Lee Hwan could roughly guess the situation.
‘But… do those bastards still not know?’
Even someone like Kang Dongha had figured out his identity. So if Naru had stepped in, they would have thoroughly investigated “Joo Lee Hwan’s” background by now.
‘Then they would have already gone through all the call records and emails.’
He had deleted everything, but with their abilities, they might have somehow read his communications with Praxis.
‘If I get caught, I won’t die peacefully.’
Lee Hwan swallowed his near-certain deduction without voicing it. He didn’t want to be looked at as reckless by bringing up such things in front of Taesung.
“‘At that time’?”
However, Taesung seemed to understand perfectly what should have come next in the atmosphere, as his face radiated coldness while striking at the core.
Lee Hwan pretended not to notice and rolled his eyes, changing the subject.
“The evidence will be delivered directly to the Journalists Association, that is, Praxis. After everything is done, Naru will be turned upside down.”
“Safety?”
“If you stay away from me, you’ll get hurt less.”
Lee Hwan calmly answered Taesung, who was pressing the issue.
Once Naru caught on to the whole situation, an all-out attack would be launched at Lee Hwan. Rather than lingering around and getting hit again, it would be better for him to quietly remain at the safe house after Lee Hwan had left.
But despite his well-intentioned words, Taesung still maintained his cold expression.
“I’m not asking about my safety.”
“Jade won’t get hurt either.”
“Don’t you know what I’m talking about?”
“Any safety beyond that doesn’t seem to be your concern.”
Lee Hwan ignored the cold face and cut off the conversation.
Taesung had already been reduced to this state while silently helping him. Lee Hwan didn’t want to leave any more danger on his record. He just wanted him to stay quiet until his memory returned.
‘These days, my dreams keep taking that shape too, which is ominous.’
Perhaps due to stress, nightmares had become increasingly frequent. Since the monster wave, his nightmares always featured Taesung getting hurt or dying, so by now there must be dozens of his corpses piled up in his dreams.
The reason he had been able to endure all sorts of hardships until now was because those were just dreams. Lee Hwan couldn’t turn even a shred of those dreams into reality.
“…How do you plan to contact Praxis?”
“I wouldn’t ask for your help. Let’s not push our luck.”
“I’m also in a situation where it would be difficult to survive if Naru remains intact. I need to stake everything on this.”
“Even if the contact fails, as long as the misunderstanding is cleared up, you won’t be attacked by Naru anymore. Instead of staking your life on something strange, just stay back.”
“I wonder about that.”
At his tone, which showed no intention of doing so, Lee Hwan held his forehead. Somehow, Jade suddenly came to mind. The person who usually had a dry face but occasionally raised a vein on his forehead when talking about Taesung.
“How can you guarantee I’ll be safe? I almost lost my head just yesterday.”
“Weren’t you injected with a paralytic or anesthetic? If they really wanted to get rid of you, they would have just shot you.”
“How can you assert that they added the drug to avoid killing me?”
Finishing his words, Taesung slowly pulled up his clothes. As his still blotchy torso was revealed, Lee Hwan tried to quickly look away again but paused.
Now he could see that among the fading bruises, there was a burst wound. It seemed most of it had already healed with his ghost-like recovery ability, but judging by its shape and position, it was most likely a wound where a bullet had grazed him.
“This is…”
It wasn’t that they hadn’t fired a gun. It was just that Taesung had blocked or dodged everything. The anesthetic was probably a supplementary attack.
Naru was hunting him more brutally than expected. As if they didn’t even care about bullet wounds or broken limbs.
Thinking that he might really have never seen him again, Lee Hwan felt his heart sink.
“Why, to such an extent…”
They were the kind of people who would wipe out an innocent support team in one sweep. If Taesung was considered a thorn in the side by his relatives, there would be nothing stopping them from killing him as a precaution. After all, he had dug too deep.
Still, Lee Hwan had thought he was living a better life than himself in that kingdom filled with blood relatives.
Taesung seemed somewhat satisfied with Lee Hwan’s face, on which disappointment spread without any attempt to hide it. Yet when Lee Hwan had tried to offer him a safe position, he had shown an uncomfortable expression.
His mood was completely unpredictable. It was different from before the regression, when Lee Hwan could sense his feelings without him saying anything. Well, even back then, he occasionally pretended to be calm and mysterious. Usually in a way that would not worry Lee Hwan.
“Can I join that plan now?”
Would it be too much of an assumption to think that his voice now seemed not just satisfied but even slightly pleased? Lee Hwan scrutinized Taesung’s face, which still showed no change, and then pressed his lips firmly.
“…I see why Jade gets so annoyed with you.”
Only then did Taesung’s mouth corners rise slightly.
