Kang Yujun flung open the closet and grabbed the first loose short-sleeved t-shirt and shorts he could get his hands on. Then he burst back out into the living room and threw the clothes at Lee Kanghyun, who was still wriggling on the sofa trying to find a comfortable position.
“Wear that to sleep! Don’t sleep naked!”
The wide t-shirt fluttered down over Lee Kanghyun’s face. Kang Yujun didn’t give him a chance to respond and fled back to his room.
BANG!
The door slammed loudly. Lee Kanghyun shook his head to shake off Kang Yujun’s t-shirt covering his face. As the shirt fell away, he stuck just his face out from inside the towel and stared incredulously at Kang Yujun’s tightly closed bedroom door.
“Is he really crazy?”
It was already strange that he’d suddenly rolled him up like kimbap, and now he was throwing his clothes at him and hiding in his room. He really couldn’t make heads or tails of him.
If he were a woman, he could understand Kang Yujun being embarrassed like that. But between men, he couldn’t understand at all why he was acting this way.
Besides, it was ridiculous that he’d left him wrapped up like this.
You should untie me before you go so I can decide whether to put on clothes or not, you blockhead.
“Ah, this is annoying. I’ll just sleep like this.”
In the end, he rubbed his cheek against the sofa while still wrapped in the towel and fell into a deep sleep.
***
Meanwhile, Kang Yujun, leaning his back against the tightly closed door, had slid all the way down to sit on the floor.
The sight of himself abandoning Lee Kanghyun alone in the living room and running away was ridiculous even to him, but he didn’t have the confidence to keep facing him.
Kang Yujun buried his face in his knees. Then he heard his heart pounding like crazy. The defenseless image of Lee Kanghyun wriggling while wrapped in the towel overlapped with the wet body he’d just seen in the bathroom.
Recalling that pale, thin body brought back another memory. A winter day five years ago that Lee Kanghyun himself didn’t even remember, but only Kang Yujun remembered. February when he was twenty years old, with university admission right around the corner.
Having just become an adult, drunk on the sense of liberation, he’d been guzzling alcohol at a bar with his friends until dawn. Being twenty-year-olds without money, they all drank like crazy with hardly any snacks, and Kang Yujun was also quite drunk.
BEEP—! BEEP—!
While they were drinking heavily, disaster alert sounds began blaring loudly from everyone’s phones in the establishment.
‘Ah, that scared me. Ah shit, did another one break out?’
One startled friend checked his screen. Soon after reading the content, he nonchalantly put his phone back.
[C-rank small-scale Gate Break occurred in XX District. Nearby residents please evacuate to a safe location.]
‘Only C-rank? It’s fucking far from here too. Those Hunter bastards will suppress it all in like 10 minutes anyway.’
Gates had first appeared just a few months ago. Back then, people would turn pale and flee just from hearing the alert. But soon, with the alarms going off constantly, people gradually stopped caring.
Even after receiving the disaster text about a Gate Break, everyone casually clinked glasses and laughed.
Kang Yujun was no different from them.
It won’t come all the way here.
Thinking complacently, he downed his lukewarm soju.
The conversation at the table naturally began flowing toward talk about Hunters.
‘If you just awaken as a Hunter, you rake in money, right? I’m so jealous, seriously.’
‘I know. But why isn’t that Lee Kanghyun guy doing anything even though he awakened as S-rank? Is he some rich heir?’
Another friend sitting across the table spoke up while eating snacks.
‘His parents died right in front of him to a monster, so the shock must be huge. It’s pitiful.’
‘If it were me and I saw my mom and dad die in front of me, I wouldn’t be a Hunter or anything either? I’d just tell everything to fuck off.’
Kang Yujun didn’t join in and just fiddled with his glass. This conversation made him very uncomfortable.
Things like Hunters and monsters felt like stories from another world completely separate from him. He had no particular interest or curiosity. Above all, he hated casually talking about someone else’s tragedy as drinking table fodder. He didn’t want to have this kind of conversation at a drinking session meant to be fun.
‘But Lee Kanghyun is fucking handsome though. Ah fuck, the world is so unfair. S-rank, tall, and handsome too?’
‘What’s handsome about him? He looks scary as hell. Would girls even like him? They’d pass on him for looking like a criminal.’
At one friend’s comment, jeers erupted simultaneously.
‘Wow, that bastard’s jealous.’
‘I am not!’
Seizing the moment, Kang Yujun smoothly changed the subject entirely.
‘Then people would just report you to the police when they see your face. Saying a criminal escaped.’
‘Kang Yujun, you son of a bitch!’
The drinking session began filling with ordinary chatter again. After enjoying themselves, Kang Yujun headed home quite drunk at a late hour past dawn.
He was walking a somewhat long distance to save taxi fare and sober up.
‘…Huh?’
His eyes met with bizarre glowing eyes gleaming in the darkness. It felt like all his drunkenness vanished in an instant. It was a monster from the Gate Break he’d casually dismissed at the bar earlier.
Kang Yujun, a mere ordinary person, slowly backed away. It was a C-rank Gate Break, and more than an hour had passed since it broke out, so he’d thought it would have been suppressed already. While inwardly cursing his complacency, his gaze was sharply tracking the monster’s movements.
The moment he judged there was some distance between him and it. Kang Yujun turned his body without delay and began running at full speed. However, as an ordinary person, he couldn’t match the monster’s speed. The monster’s front paw, catching up in an instant, struck Kang Yujun’s right leg.
‘Ugh!’
Kang Yujun’s body, losing its center, tumbled to the ground. Only after rolling on the ground several times did the movement stop.
His vision flashed white with pain. His right leg in particular was bent at a grotesque angle. The bone was clearly broken.
Damn it! Kang Yujun gritted his teeth until his lips bled. Forcibly holding onto his fading consciousness, he racked his brain.
His leg wouldn’t move. Then should he crawl? No, he’d be caught right away. A place to hide nearby? None. A weapon? As if there would be one.
No matter how frantically he wracked his brain trying to find a way to survive, no answer came.
I’m going to die.
He’d studied himself to death and gotten into a prestigious university. And now he was going to die without even attending.
It was unfair. He didn’t want to die like this.
As the monster charged, Kang Yujun squeezed his eyes shut in preparation for the coming pain.
THUD!
But instead of the terrible pain he’d expected, he heard the sound of something bursting. At the same time, hot, sticky liquid splattered onto Kang Yujun’s cheek.
Kang Yujun cautiously opened his tightly shut eyes.
The first thing that entered his vision was the monster’s corpse, its head gruesomely blown apart, embedded right in front of his nose.
‘Huk…!’
Kang Yujun flinched in surprise at the terrible, grotesque sight and gasped. On the ground, crushed flesh and hideous blood pooled abundantly.
It was the moment he instinctively hurriedly moved his gaze upward.
Someone was standing tall, looking down indifferently at the sitting Kang Yujun.
The dying old streetlight flickered. The person standing under the light was Korea’s second S-rank Hunter, Lee Kanghyun, who had been the topic of conversation at the bar earlier.
Kang Yujun’s gaze met his. In that moment, the fear of death he’d felt just moments ago and the monster’s terrible corpse were instantly forgotten. He couldn’t see anything. Only Lee Kanghyun’s cool face looking down at him filled his entire vision.
Kang Yujun stared up at him in a daze. When he’d seen him on the news screen, he’d just thought he was handsome but had a somewhat scary impression and hadn’t given it much thought. But the face he encountered right in front of him was completely different.
Lee Kanghyun was on edge as if he’d kill you if you approached and so much as touched him. But at the same time, he looked strangely tired and precarious. His eyes especially were empty, as if he had no will to live at all.
Twenty-year-old Kang Yujun, looking up at that sharp face that seemed to find even living itself bothersome without an ounce of motivation, thought:
He’s not scary.
Rather than scary… he’s pretty.
Up close, Lee Kanghyun wasn’t the frightening S-rank Hunter from the news. He was a twenty-year-old who hadn’t fully shed his boyishness yet, no different from himself who’d been drinking just moments ago.
Moreover, while he hadn’t noticed when seeing him through a screen, in reality Lee Kanghyun looked too thin. Though it was winter and he was wearing thick clothes making it hard to see, his nape and the glimpse of his wrist were thin and precarious, as if they’d snap if gripped in one hand.
He couldn’t take his eyes off Lee Kanghyun’s face. Looking at his red lips contrasting with his bloodless white face, he thought:
How can a guy be so pretty? It doesn’t make sense.
Was it because he stared too intently? Lee Kanghyun furrowed his brow sharply. The blatant stare seemed to displease him.
‘Your leg.’
He spoke curtly.
Kang Yujun tried to say he was fine. He didn’t want to look pathetic in front of him.
But the moment he tried to open his mouth, the pain he’d been suppressing flooded in.
‘Ah…! Ugh….’
Though he gritted his teeth, the groans that escaped wouldn’t stop.
Lee Kanghyun looked down at his state silently and sighed as if caught up in the most bothersome situation in the world. He slowly approached Kang Yujun and crouched down.
A strangely cool yet sweet fragrance came from him, making Kang Yujun’s mind hazy.
With eyes full of annoyance, he glanced over the bent leg and clicked his tongue briefly with a ‘tsk.’
‘…It’s shattered.’
Lee Kanghyun’s face up close was far more surreal than when seen from afar. It felt like he’d be completely overwhelmed. Even the pain of his leg bone being crushed felt paralyzed the moment he looked at that face. Like an entranced person, he stared blankly at Lee Kanghyun’s face in a daze.
Lee Kanghyun, still crouching, rustled around looking for something. Come to think of it, a black plastic bag was hanging from his slender wrist.
He took out a water bottle and a couple of unidentifiable pills and thrust them forward.
‘Take them.’
Kang Yujun received the pills and water. He didn’t even think to ask what they were. Simply because Lee Kanghyun was giving them to him, he thoughtlessly threw them in his mouth and swallowed the water.
Gulp. As his Adam’s apple bobbed, Lee Kanghyun’s brow furrowed even more fiercely than before. He glared at Kang Yujun sharply, openly showing his displeasure.
‘You sure eat up what strangers give you. No fear at all.’
He slowly rose from his spot.
‘I reported it, so handle the rest yourself.’
Is he leaving already? Feeling an inexplicable disappointment, Kang Yujun realized he hadn’t even thanked him yet.
‘Um… Hunter Lee Kanghyun! Thank you for saving me!’
Kang Yujun mustered his courage and shouted.
A pause.
For just a brief moment, Lee Kanghyun’s footsteps stopped. However, he didn’t look back until the end and walked away, disappearing.
As Kang Yujun’s gaze blankly followed his retreating figure, his vision rapidly blurred and his eyelids became heavy as a thousand pounds. He lost consciousness just like that.
……How much time had passed? Kang Yujun opened his eyes in a hospital room.
What Lee Kanghyun had given him seemed to be sleeping pills. Thanks to them, he was able to rest comfortably, forgetting even the pain of his broken leg.
Even after regaining consciousness, Kang Yujun lay in a daze for a while. His head was completely filled with thoughts of Lee Kanghyun.
