Park Taehan called a taxi and got me inside.
The moment the door shut, his hand closed tight around mine. I hadn’t been planning to run, but the grip felt like it was cutting off that possibility at the root. The place where our fingers overlapped began to go numb slowly.
“……”
I started to say something, then just closed my mouth. Nothing I said in this situation was going to make any difference anyway.
The taxi pulled away quietly. Through the window, the rain-soaked road slid past in a blur. The wipers moved in a steady rhythm. With no radio on, the car was filled with nothing but silence.
A few minutes passed.
Something was off. The scenery passing by outside wasn’t in the direction of Park Taehan’s place. Instead of the familiar upscale residential complex, I was seeing wide roads and orderly buildings.
I turned to look at Park Taehan.
“Where are we going?”
“……”
“Weren’t we heading to your place?”
Park Taehan didn’t answer.
Instead, with one hand still locked around mine, he was holding his phone in the other, looking down at the screen without the slightest trace of hesitation. He seemed to send a message, and then pressed the call button, giving a short nod and exchanging a few low words.
“…Yeah. On my way now. Got it. Get ready.”
The voice coming through the phone was too faint to identify. Only the vague outlines of words drifted past — the meaning never quite landed. I listened for a moment, then gave up.
Wherever we ended up, the result would probably be the same. The order might shift a little, but I’d end up being dragged to Park Taehan’s place eventually.
I turned my gaze back to the window. Raindrops catching the light of streetlamps slid slowly down the glass. Looking at them, the thought that had crossed my mind back in the examination room drifted up again.
Kimchi pancakes. The sound of them sizzling in oil, the thick, heady smell. The kind of food that sounds even better when it’s raining.
I wanted to eat some.
I thought it to myself, but the craving didn’t last as long as expected. Even the feeling of wanting it was vague. My mind tilted away in a different direction before long.
How am I supposed to tell the others.
The most important thing first was leaving the guild. Three S-rank Hunters in all of South Korea. Park Taehan and Seo Yungyeom as mentioned before, and the one remaining — Yu Segwon. I was currently a member of the guild he led.
That guy…
He probably wouldn’t react much, even if I told him the truth.
Yu Segwon was always like that. The type to assess the situation before leading with feelings. Even if someone were dying, he’d be thinking about what came next rather than being shocked. He might actually be the easiest one to tell.
While those thoughts were turning over in my head, the taxi had already begun to slow. The brakes pressed down smoothly, and the car gave a gentle sway.
I looked around. The street was familiar. I checked the window again just to be sure, and the feeling wasn’t wrong.
The large building directly ahead. The impeccably clean exterior and the row of security installations flanking the entrance. It was the Hunter Association headquarters.
Surely not.
Before I could open my mouth to ask, there was movement beside me.
The sound of a door opening. And the next moment, Park Taehan stepped out of the taxi first.
“Hey, wait—”
Before I could finish, his hand had already caught my arm and pulled. My body pitched forward before I could find my footing, and my vision lurched sharply.
“Hey! Hey!!”
The shout dissolved into the air. Park Taehan lifted me up again.
“Put me down, I said put me down—!”
I struggled, but it was pointless. He was already moving with the certainty of someone who had decided on a destination, walking straight toward the Association building. The automatic doors slid open, and a wave of warm indoor air rushed out all at once.
Unlike before when there had been no one around, this time countless eyes snapped toward us.
In the refined atmosphere of the Association headquarters lobby, the movement of people paused for just a moment. Some slowed their steps; some turned to look at us openly. A scene of an S-rank carrying someone inside was hardly an everyday occurrence.
I registered that fact belatedly, and a faint wave of embarrassment hit me. I covered my face with both hands. The heat I felt through my palms was somehow more pronounced for it.
“…I’ll deal with you later.”
“Sure.”
I’d muttered it almost to myself, but Park Taehan answered without missing a beat.
That made it even more irritating. The way he said it, as if he were absolutely certain there would be a later.
His stride didn’t waver even once inside the building. He turned in a direction he clearly knew well and headed straight for a private elevator.
The doors closed and the numbers climbed. 10. 11. 12. And then stopped at 13.
By this point I had a fairly good idea of who Park Taehan had been on the phone with earlier. Even trying not to think about it, there was only one answer.
Ding. The elevator doors opened.
Park Taehan stepped out without setting me down. He stopped in front of the door at the end of the hallway, and without knocking, pushed it open.
Bang.
“I brought him.”
Short. Succinct. A report.
The room was strangely quiet. And in the middle of it stood Seo Yungyeom. Without a word.
His expression was completely blank — like someone who had just lost the most important thing in the world.
“Inhu…”
My name barely made it out of Seo Yungyeom’s mouth. It came out heavy, as if each syllable had been pressed down and swallowed before being let out. Hearing it, I understood without needing any explanation.
Park Taehan had already told him everything about my condition.
“I said I’d tell him myself.”
There was a trace of irritation in my voice. I’d tried to keep my feelings out of it, but it didn’t quite work. My breath caught once before I finished speaking, and that only made me more annoyed.
Even so, Park Taehan didn’t look at me.
Having finally set me down on the floor, he walked straight toward Seo Yungyeom. Not a moment of hesitation in his step.
“Treatment.”
Park Taehan said it low.
“You can do it, can’t you?”
The words took the shape of a question but weren’t a request. Too sharp to be trust, too full of feeling to be a command. It was closer to a demand — insisting that somehow, he be told it was possible.
Seo Yungyeom said nothing.
He lowered his head briefly, then looked back at me. His gaze swept across my face in a quick, fleeting pass. His lips moved once, barely perceptibly.
The silence stretched.
In that stillness, Park Taehan’s shoulders grew more and more rigid. The air in the room sank slowly. It felt suffocating even though no one was holding their breath.
And then.
All quests have been cleared!
The notification that had congratulated me flickered to life again.
That was all. I looked at it with a slightly puzzled expression and checked the window again, but there was no particular change.
“For now, please sit.”
Seo Yungyeom deferred his answer and offered a seat at the same time. He was clearly trying to avoid giving a response right here, right now.
I let out a short breath and sat down in the chair. As my back met the backrest, the firm surface pressed into me.
Seo Yungyeom, seated across from me, couldn’t speak for a while. His gaze grazed past my face and eventually drifted toward Park Taehan.
“Is it really… Hunter-onset multiple organ failure syndrome?”
The question was clearly about my condition, but it wasn’t directed at me. He was looking at Park Taehan. Not so much wanting confirmation — more like hoping someone else would deny it for him. It was the very familiar kind of deflection Seo Yungyeom fell back on when he wasn’t ready to face reality.
So I steadied my breath, and before Park Taehan could answer, I spoke first.
“It is.”
“……”
Seo Yungyeom’s gaze moved from Park Taehan back to me. Slowly. Very carefully. As if preparing himself to look directly at those words.
And then his expression broke.
The muscles of his face tensed for a moment before going slack. His eyes wavered; his lips trembled just barely. Unlike Park Taehan, it didn’t burst outward — instead it collapsed inward, sinking from somewhere deep inside.
“When… when did this start?”
Seo Yungyeom’s voice cracked faintly. The question was careful, and because of that, all the more desperate.
When it started.
The truth was, the illness had been settling into this body for quite some time. I had repeated battles far beyond what a C-rank body could handle, and entered the next dungeon without time to recover in between. Every time, I had pushed past the limit. Looking back now, it was stranger that I hadn’t gotten sick at all.
I pretended to think for a moment, then opened my mouth.
“I only found out recently myself.”
It was a lie.
But if I told the truth, these two would clearly not be able to take it. They would dig deeper, feel worse, wear the face of someone regretting they hadn’t known sooner. Watching that was both exhausting and unnecessary.
“…Give me your hand.”
Seo Yungyeom continued. He reached out carefully as he said it.
His hand was trembling.
I was the patient, yet he was visibly more undone. His fingertips shook faintly, as if every nerve he had was laid bare.
In contrast, I placed my hand over his without hesitation.
The moment our skin touched, warm mana seeped in immediately. It was a familiar sensation. Not the kind of flow meant for treatment, but mana meant to survey the body’s condition. So it was slower, and more deliberate.
The mana didn’t stop at the hand. It traveled up my arm, passed through my shoulder, and pressed into the inside of my ribcage. It moved deep, feeling its way through each organ one by one.
The sensation was strange.
It didn’t hurt. But it wasn’t comfortable either. It felt like having an old wound pried open so someone could look inside. Like this body, which had been acting as if nothing were wrong, had finally been caught.
Drop. A single tear fell from Seo Yungyeom’s right eye.
“Yungyeom—”
I reflexively moved to sit up. The chair legs nearly scraped against the floor. But before I could, Seo Yungyeom’s hand tightened. He didn’t let go.
With his head bowed low, he crumbled just like that.
Tears poured out without him even having time to catch his breath. Unlike Park Taehan, there was no sound — but they wouldn’t stop. His shoulders trembled slightly, and the flow of mana wavered ever so faintly.
“…How did you bear it.”
A broken voice fell to the floor.
