7 hours ago.
Jeong Euijin quickly caught Lee Jaea in his arms as the man lost consciousness all at once, like a fuse had suddenly blown.
“Lee Jaea! Lee Jaea!”
He called his name while gently shaking him. Even that alone made Lee Jaea’s small head loll heavily. Worried he might hurt his neck, Euijin carefully cradled the back of his head — yet he didn’t stop calling his name.
“Lee Jaea, wake up! …Jaea hyung!”
Still, Lee Jaea showed no response whatsoever. Had Euijin’s sharp ki-sense not caught the faint sound of Jaea’s quiet breathing, he would have been convincing enough to pass for a corpse — eyes shut tight, not a single movement.
Drained of all color, Euijin’s mind flashed back to something Lee Jaea had said before.
— We don’t operate after midnight. I enter a forced sleep state as well.
— So if you need anything, please visit only during business hours.
With one arm effortlessly supporting Lee Jaea, Euijin slipped his other hand into his jacket pocket. From the pocket connected to a small subspace, he withdrew a pocket watch engraved with a golden pattern, and checked the time without turning on any lights.
Midnight.
To be precise, about three minutes had passed since then — but it was clear that the moment Lee Jaea had lost consciousness was midnight itself.
In that case, something going wrong with Lee Jaea wasn’t likely.
Once the relief settled in, many thoughts followed.
It really is you, hyung. …I wasn’t imagining things after all.
The moment he heard Lee Jaea’s voice.
The moment he made out his silhouette.
The moment their familiar gazes met.
Every single one of those moments had revealed the person he remembered, unmistakably — there was no way he couldn’t have recognized him.
The instant he was sure it was Lee Jaea, he’d nearly thrown both arms out and pulled him into an embrace. If Jaea hadn’t been pretending to be a Player while surrounded by others, he surely would have.
It was a world full of Players who looked down on NPCs — who didn’t even see them as the same kind of people. With the Special Supply Station gone and stripped of the system’s protection, Lee Jaea was nothing more than a fragile existence that any Player could effortlessly shatter with a single careless hand.
That was why Euijin had deliberately kept his emotions in check and pulled Lee Jaea aside alone. He had believed that once they were just the two of them, Jaea would recognize him too and be openly glad to see him. Just as Lee Jaea was someone so incredibly special to Euijin, he had believed that Jaea, too, wouldn’t see him as just another one of the countless Players.
But……
Damn system.
It seemed like the system had pulled something when it released Lee Jaea from his ties to the Special Supply Station.
Otherwise, there was no way Lee Jaea wouldn’t have recognized him.
Euijin’s jumbled thoughts steadily sorted themselves out as he looked down at Jaea sleeping like he’d been knocked unconscious.
I have to protect him.
Given that he entered a forced sleep state at the stroke of midnight, it was clear he was still an NPC. Whether Jaea was mistakenly believing himself to be a Player, or whether there was some other circumstance behind it, Lee Jaea had no business being here.
Either way, once he found Lee Jaea, Euijin had always planned to take him somewhere safe — somewhere Players couldn’t reach. He already had more than enough items prepared for him.
It was a place he had secured long ago, envisioning the day he would bring Lee Jaea out of the Special Supply Station.
Euijin lifted Lee Jaea with ease. Whether it was due to his strength stat or because Jaea was slenderly lean, he felt as light as a small child. Light enough that Euijin could have held him with one arm without trouble.
A faint wish that he weighed just a little more, paired with the thought that he’d have to feed him all sorts of things from now on, welled up inside him.
Euijin moved with careful steps, as though cradling a precious piece of glass craftsmanship. Rather than opening the front door right beside him and stepping outside, he headed deeper into the familiar interior.
For now, I’ll let him rest here — and once tomorrow’s raid is over, we’ll leave together. The second sequence might start up right away, but… Jaea hyung’s safety comes first.
Euijin walked through the darkness-filled interior without a moment’s hesitation.
It was only natural that Players who had leveled up to a certain degree could see as clearly in thick darkness as they could in broad daylight — but for Euijin, this space was familiar on a level that went beyond that.
Because this room was shared by the leader and Euijin, and no one else.
With the leader currently absent —
Euijin was the only one who could enter this room. As one of the group’s inner circle, Heo Yunji could enter as well, but if he activated the front security system, not even she would be able to get in.
So right now, this place would be safer for the current Lee Jaea than anywhere else in the world.
Even after laying Lee Jaea down on the bed in his room, Euijin didn’t particularly turn on the lights. Even if it was a forced sleep state, he thought it might somehow disturb his rest.
He swapped out the blanket and covered him with a different one. Euijin, who never had trouble regulating his body temperature, usually just tossed a thin blanket over himself because he hated feeling stifled — but he couldn’t do the same for Lee Jaea, so he pulled out the cleanest, warmest blanket he had.
After tucking it carefully all the way up to Jaea’s chin, Euijin perched on the edge of the bed and let a remorseful expression cross his face.
I pushed too hard. Stupid — letting my emotions get ahead of me like that……
If Jaea had lost his memories, he would be far more disoriented than Euijin himself — and yet Euijin had forgotten even that, doing nothing but press him relentlessly. He’d have to talk to him calmly when he woke up in the morning, so Jaea wouldn’t be frightened again like he had been today.
After silently looking down at Lee Jaea for a long while, lost in regret, Euijin carefully reached a hand toward his face.
Euijin’s long fingers slowly swept aside Lee Jaea’s slightly disheveled bangs. The sensation of thin, soft hair spread pleasantly through his fingertips.
…So this is what you look like, hyung.
How desperately he had wanted to see him.
He had wanted to see Lee Jaea’s face so badly that he’d traveled to Special Supply Stations in other zones, searching for Runestones that could nullify Perception Interference.
What his face shape was like. What kind of eyes and what kind of gaze he used to look at him. How pretty the curve of his lips would be when he smiled.
He had wanted to see it all with his own two eyes.
Now that he had finally come to this moment, the feeling was strange.
It was a peculiar sensation he couldn’t quite put into words with something as vague as “moved,” “happy,” or “overcome with emotion.”
Euijin’s fingertips, which had been gazing down at Lee Jaea with an almost spellbound look in his eyes, drifted slowly downward. They passed over eyebrows with a texture entirely different from his hair, and came to rest on the smooth curve of his eyelid.
In that instant, his fingers grazed a set of long lashes — and he flinched involuntarily.
The sleeping Lee Jaea still showed no reaction. Even so, Euijin froze in place for a moment, like a child caught doing something he shouldn’t.
Before long, Euijin’s trembling fingertips moved again.
His fingertips traced the prominent cheekbones and kneaded the soft flesh of his cheek before sliding down the rather sharp ridge of his nose. Then they came to rest on the soft lips parting with each steady breath — and again, he went still for a brief moment.
Before long, Euijin’s fingertips had grown hotter than Lee Jaea’s own warm skin.
Just as Euijin’s fingers were grazing Lee Jaea’s lips in a ticklish brush —
— Euijin. Heo Yunji is looking for you.
Roks’s telepathic message cut through his mind, and he quickly pulled his fingers away. Remembering belatedly what he had been doing, the tips of his ears grew faintly warm.
Euijin rose from where he’d been perched on the edge of the bed, cast one last lingering look back at Lee Jaea, and finally stepped out of the bedroom.
Stepping into the villa corridor, Euijin ran into Heo Yunji, who had just come up the stairs.
“Hey, what happened? What about Lee Jaea?”
“He fell asleep.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Guess he was tired.”
Euijin was perfectly nonchalant as he faced a wide-eyed Heo Yunji.
But Heo Yunji, who knew Euijin’s nature well — his general indifference toward others — couldn’t simply let it end with an “Oh, is that so.”
“That’s it? No further explanation?”
“Is there anything that particularly needs explaining?”
Heo Yunji stared at him for a moment before shifting her gaze to the front door behind him. It was the room where the leader and Euijin lived together — a room only the two of them and Heo Yunji were permitted to enter.
Certain that Lee Jaea was inside, Heo Yunji studied Euijin with an unreadable expression. After holding his gaze for a brief moment, she moved to step past him.
“Alright, fine. I’ll go get him.”
She didn’t know what Euijin’s intentions were in letting Lee Jaea into the room, but she couldn’t just leave someone who’d fallen asleep there unattended.
As Heo Yunji moved to enter the room, Euijin pressed one hand firmly against the door. Yunji’s strength stat was on the higher end too, but it was nowhere close to Euijin’s — no matter how hard she pulled, the door wouldn’t budge.
“…What are you doing?”
“I told you, he fell asleep.”
“That’s exactly why I said I’ll carry him on my back and bring him somewhere myself.”
“Just let him sleep here.”
Heo Yunji thought for a moment she’d heard wrong.
That was just how startling Euijin’s words were.
Not only had he gone out of his way to pull aside someone he’d met for the first time today — even going as far as lying to get him alone — but now he was letting him into his room and saying he’d let him sleep there? The person who never let even fellow Eclipse members into his room? The one who used to say he liked some NPC more than actual people?
For a moment, Heo Yunji’s face went completely blank before her eyes narrowed sharply.
“What’s going on?”
“What do you mean.”
“It’s already strange enough that you let someone you just met today into your room — but now you’re saying you’ll let them sleep there. This isn’t something I can just brush off as a momentary surprise.”
Heo Yunji’s gaze grew increasingly pointed.
“You — what exactly is your relationship with Lee Jaea?”
