“Hyung! I’m heading out!”
Hyungil slung his bag over one shoulder and stepped out the front door, crushing down the backs of his sneakers.
“Wear your shoes properly. You’ll trip.”
Igyeol followed him out to the entrance, wiping his hands on his apron while still wearing rubber gloves. Normally, he would have pushed him out the door telling him to hurry, but today, Igyeol stood there and watched Hyungil’s retreating figure for a long time. His school uniform shirt shone especially white in the morning sunlight.
Hyungil, who had been about to turn the corner of the alley, suddenly spun around.
“Hyung! Don’t forget the pork belly! I have two periods of P.E. today, so I’m gonna be super hungry!”
Hyungil smiled brightly and waved his hand widely. At that carefree smile, Igyeol’s stiff face gradually relaxed. Igyeol smirked and waved back at him.
“Got it. Be careful of cars, and come straight home!”
Hyungil grinned and disappeared beyond the corner of the alley. In the empty alleyway, only Hyungil’s footsteps lingered for a moment before dispersing. Igyeol stared at the empty alley where Hyungil had disappeared for a while, then slowly turned around and went back inside the clinic.
“…Pork belly. Right, I need to buy some.”
Igyeol muttered as he took off his apron. He should get quality fresh pork belly cut at the market butcher shop. Since Yeongwon ate scallion salad well, he should buy plenty of scallions too.
3 PM. Taking advantage of the lull in customers, Igyeol locked the clinic door and set out.
While he was out, he planned to pick up freshly harvested angelica root from Grandma Chunja’s field and stop by the butcher shop on the way to buy the pork belly he’d promised.
“Oh my, Boss Moon is here!”
Grandma Chunja, who had been trimming angelica root in front of the greenhouse, greeted Igyeol warmly.
“Grandma, did you finish sorting the angelica root? I’m going to feed the kids meat tonight, so I’ll buy plenty. Give me the good stuff.”
“Of course, if Boss Moon is asking, I have to give you the best.”
Grandma Chunja dusted off her dirt-covered hands and handed Igyeol a heavy black bag. As she handed over the bag, she looked up at Igyeol’s face intently, then smiled brightly with her wrinkled face.
“But Igyeol-ah. Your face has gotten really good lately. Before, you looked pale like someone who was sick, but these days your complexion is like an apricot blossom.”
Igyeol flinched at those words and rubbed his own cheek.
His face had gotten better. That was surely thanks to the high concentration of Holy Power that Sung Yohan poured into him every night as they joined together. As the curse emitted by the Fragment of Beelzebub was purified, vitality began to return to his rotting flesh.
“…Maybe it’s because I’ve been eating well. Thank you, Grandma. I’ll come again.”
Igyeol smiled awkwardly and turned around. In both hands, he carried plastic bags full of angelica root, the pork belly he’d gotten from the butcher shop, and pickled radish and perilla leaves that Hyungil loved. His steps were light. He could almost picture the kids grilling meat.
This damned curse too, and Baekya’s threat—they would all pass someday. If Sung Yohan was by his side and he could protect this daily life where the kids grew up safely, it was enough compensation for enduring 100 years of hell.
Though he’d hurried, it was well past 5 o’clock by the time he’d stopped here and there.
Igyeol approached the alley in front of Jangchun Health Clinic, carrying heavy bags in both hands.
“That bastard Hyungil, he’s probably already back making a fuss about being hungry, isn’t he?”
Chuckling, Igyeol turned the corner, and his steps froze in place like cement.
The scene at the clinic was bizarrely distorted.
In front of the glass door that should have been sparkling in the afternoon sunlight—
The clinic’s shutter was halfway down.
…Huh?
He’d definitely left it wide open when he went out.
It was a door he’d left brightly open, timed for when Hyungil and Yeongwon would return.
Igyeol’s breathing stopped. His mind flashed white.
Thud.
The plastic bags slipped helplessly from Igyeol’s hands.
From inside the bags that hit the ground, red blood seeped out slowly, breaking through the packaging.
Mixed among the herbal medicine scent was a smell that shouldn’t be there. A musty, fishy smell, like licking rusty metal. A smell he’d encountered every day for 100 years.
The smell of blood.
He heard the sound of dress shoes behind him. A low, heavy footfall. It was Sung Yohan returning from the Guild. Still in his suit. Sung Yohan’s expression wasn’t his usual relaxed face. It was coldly hardened.
“Igyeol-ssi. Stop for a moment.”
Sung Yohan warned in a low voice. He felt it too. Without answering, Igyeol bent down and pushed himself under the half-lowered shutter.
***
Inside the clinic was disastrous.
The first thing that caught his eye was the wooden bench. The bench that had been polished every morning, the one they’d used since Madame Kim Oksoon’s time—it was broken in half. Dust rose hazily between the split wooden pieces.
Next was the herbal decoction pot. The large pot that had been brewing Sipjeondaebo-tang was shattered into pieces, scattered across the floor. Black herbal medicine broth soaked the floor thoroughly.
No, it wasn’t just herbal medicine broth.
Igyeol’s gaze followed the floor. Dark red bloodstains dotted a trail. Past the overturned pile of medicinal herbs, over broken glass, past the counter.
At the end of the bloodstains, he saw a familiar object.
A backpack with a Myeongil High School badge. The shoulder strap was cut as if sliced by something sharp. It was Hyungil’s bag.
“…Hyungil-ah?”
Igyeol’s voice echoed inside the narrow clinic. Nothing answered back. Only the sound of herbal medicine broth dripping onto broken glass could be heard. Drip, drip.
“Hyungil-ah.”
There was no answer.
Igyeol crouched down next to the bag. He picked up the severed strap. The bag that Hyungil always complained was bothersome and only wore over one shoulder. When he’d said he’d buy a new one because the strap was loose, Hyungil had insisted this one was comfortable.
There was blood on the strap. Hyungil’s blood.
On the floor were clear marks as if something heavy had been dragged. The direction of the drag marks was toward the back door of the clinic. There were no traces of Yeongwon. Not on the second floor either. It seemed the Sanctum bodyguards had extracted Yeongwon first. Igyeol slowly stood up. For a moment, his head spun. He staggered from the dizziness but regained his balance.
His vision began to distort at will. The broken herbal pot of the clinic overlapped with the red-hot furnaces of the Demon Realm. The wooden pieces of the split bench appeared as fragments of the stone altar where his comrades had been crushed to death. The severed bag strap looked like the bowstring of a comrade who had called out to him until the very end before melting away.
The herbal medicine smell disappeared, replaced by the smell of sulfur. The stench of rotting blood began to sting his nostrils. His breathing quickened as he became short of breath.
His heart began to beat slowly, very slowly. Thump. Thump. Thump. One beat late, heavily. At the same rhythm as when his comrades were being torn apart inside the Gate of Reversed Heaven.
His hands trembled. The blood drained from the fingertips gripping the bag strap.
His vision narrowed. The walls of the clinic, the ceiling, the broken glass—everything was pushed back into pitch-black darkness. Only the bloodstains stamped on the floor remained vivid. Marks of being dragged. Marks of falling while resisting. Marks of struggling.
Something stirred deep in his heart. The Fragment of Beelzebub. The thing he’d barely suppressed for the past year and a half with honey water and daily life began to shake its shackles, sensing its master’s despair.
…Again.
I was late again. The moment that single line embedded itself in his mind, black veins began to rise like threads over the back of Igyeol’s hand.
***
“Moon Igyeol.”
A low voice reached him. It was a careful and desperate voice, like catching falling shards of glass. It was Sung Yohan.
Sung Yohan, who had pushed through the half-lowered shutter, closed his mouth upon seeing the devastation of the clinic. Then he looked at Igyeol’s back as he stood there in a daze, gripping the bag strap.
The usual languid unemployed boss wasn’t there. The energy flowing from his back was different. A suffocating energy that crushed the surrounding air. It wasn’t simply Demonic Aura. Sung Yohan instinctively felt it. That man was about to break right now.
Sung Yohan approached Igyeol and reached out his hand toward his wrist. He needed to suppress that rampaging energy with his Holy Power and inject stability. Just like every night when he’d snatch him up and Igyeol would let himself be caught as if unable to resist—if he grabbed him like that, it would work. If he grabbed him, he would calm down. Just as his fingertips were about to touch Igyeol’s skin—
“Don’t touch me.”
A voice like frost. A resolute voice that cut like a blade rang out quietly like a breath.
Sung Yohan’s hand stopped in midair. Igyeol slowly turned his head to look at Sung Yohan. In his unfocused pupils, a vivid, sharp killing intent had returned. Empty yet clear, containing everything while having nothing—that kind of eyes.
“…I need to do it now. Otherwise you’ll go berserk.”
“…Don’t. I don’t need it.”
Igyeol growled quietly.
“I don’t need to calm down. If I do, I’ll be late.”
Igyeol slowly set down the bag strap on the floor. He looked down once at his hand stained with Hyungil’s blood and clenched his fist.
“I have to go look for him. Right now. I have to go.”
“…I’ll find him.”
“I’ll do it.”
Igyeol whipped around to glare at Sung Yohan. His bloodshot eyes were heavily congested.
Sung Yohan swallowed once and withdrew his hand. His outstretched fingers trembled faintly. He wanted to grab him. He wanted to grab him so desperately it was driving him mad. The energy emanating from that man right now was eating away at Igyeol himself, and if left like this, this person might never come back.
But he couldn’t. Because Igyeol didn’t want it. Sung Yohan forcibly suppressed his rebellious heart. He wanted to forcefully take control, but he couldn’t. Not Moon Igyeol with that expression.
