A week had passed since Lee Kanghyun voluntarily entered the detention cell.
The Association’s detention facility had a higher security level than a regular holding cell, and because of that, even visitation was completely prohibited.
The past week had been nothing short of hell for Kang Yujun.
Kanghyun was sensitive. He detested filth and found unfamiliar environments bothersome. Was he eating properly? Could he even sleep on the hard floor? What if he was sick somewhere but couldn’t say anything and was suffering alone?
The more his thoughts spiraled, the more his insides burned.
Finally, the court issued a release order. Of course, the charges hadn’t been cleared. Kanghyun was still a suspect and had to undergo investigation while not in custody. But at least now he could pull him out of that cold iron cage.
Yujun blamed himself. If only he had moved a little faster, Kanghyun wouldn’t have walked into a place like that on his own.
Even though he’d walked in himself, the detention cell was no different from a prison. He couldn’t even imagine how suffocating that place would be for Kanghyun, a free spirit. Perhaps he was crouched in a corner, glaring at him with hollow eyes, resenting him.
Yujun clenched his fists tightly.
He stopped in front of the heavy iron door. A staff member hurriedly tagged the card key and entered the password.
Yujun took a deep breath once and threw open the firmly closed iron door.
“Kanghyun…!”
Then he entered the room with the momentum to rush over and embrace him immediately.
“……”
However, the moment he saw inside the room, Yujun’s steps halted.
The pitiful stray cat caught in the rain that he’d imagined wasn’t there.
Kanghyun was lying on the cramped cot. Very comfortably at that, sleeping without a care in the world. He looked utterly blissful.
“…Ha.”
A hollow laugh escaped from Yujun’s mouth.
Worry? Anxiety? Nervousness? All those emotions that had dried up his blood for the past week evaporated in an instant.
Who was I even worried about….
Far from losing weight, his face seemed to have filled out a bit, perhaps thanks to regular meals. Though his scrawny body was still the same.
Dumbfounded, Yujun couldn’t speak for a while and just stared down at that sight blankly. A laugh leaked out along with his relief.
Right. This is Kanghyun.
He slowly approached the bedside. Then he crouched down and brought his eye level to match Kanghyun’s face hanging off the bed.
“Kanghyun-ah.”
Kanghyun didn’t move an inch.
“Kanghyun. Wake up. We have to go home.”
His fingertips tapped Kanghyun’s cheek and pressed down on it. It wasn’t soft. Rather, he could feel bone.
And I thought he’d gained weight. Once they got out, he’d have to feed him first. Yujun resolved.
As he kept pressing his cheek, Kanghyun’s brow furrowed slightly.
“Mmm….”
Kanghyun shook his head as if annoyed. He arduously pulled his neck that had been bent off the bed back up to lie straight, then mumbled with his eyes still closed.
“…If it’s food, just leave it there.”
“It’s past mealtime. It’s release time.”
“Don’t care. Just 5 more minutes.”
Kanghyun pulled the blanket over his head. He didn’t even seem to have the will to figure out what was going on. He was just irritated at having his sleep disturbed.
Huh. Yujun let out a hollow laugh.
“Hey. Your detention was rejected. You can leave.”
He yanked the blanket off. Then Kanghyun stared at Yujun blankly with irritated eyes.
It took 3 seconds for his focus to settle, and another 2 seconds to recognize who it was.
“…Huh? Yujun?”
Kanghyun asked belatedly in a sleep-laden voice.
“Why are you here? Did you get arrested too?”
“I came to pick you up, idiot. A week has passed.”
“Already?”
At those words, Kanghyun blinked as if he couldn’t believe it.
“Get up. Let’s go.”
Kanghyun, who sluggishly raised his upper body, sighed softly.
“Ah, I liked it here though.”
“What’s good about this cramped place?”
“It’s quiet. No one talks to me. Since I don’t have my phone, I don’t get calls from you either.”
At those words, Yujun’s eyebrow rose slightly. So he liked that he didn’t get calls from me?
Isn’t that too much? He’d been anxious for a whole week worried that Kanghyun might be having a hard time. But the person himself liked this place because he didn’t get calls?
Without realizing it, feeling a bit hurt, Yujun roughly grabbed Kanghyun.
“Aren’t you coming out?”
He dragged Kanghyun out. Kanghyun was walking sluggishly down the corridor when he suddenly stopped as if remembering something.
“Hey, Yujun.”
“Why? I have the car waiting. Let’s hurry and go eat.”
Yujun spoke in a slightly curt voice and pushed Kanghyun’s back. However, he didn’t budge.
“Before we eat, there’s something I need to check.”
“What?”
Kanghyun pointed below his feet, to the basement of the Association building.
“Let’s go see the corpse.”
Yujun’s eyes widened.
“Corpse? You mean that intruder?”
“Yeah. That bastard’s body, it’s in the Association morgue, right?”
“Right. Since crimes involving Awakened are under the Association’s jurisdiction, the body would be here too.”
“I need to see it.”
Yujun’s expression turned puzzled.
“Now? If you want to officially request to view it, you have to go through procedures. There’s no family since the identity is unknown, but you also need approval from the prosecutor in charge, and also….”
“Wait. No family? Unknown identity?”
“Yeah. Dental records, fingerprint searches all came back empty. Since there’s no next of kin to claim the body, it’s still being stored.”
“Then why did Assemblyman Kim make a fuss at you about not thinking of the family?”
Yujun shrugged.
“He was nitpicking. Making up things that don’t exist to attack me.”
Kanghyun let out a hollow laugh in disbelief.
Bringing up a non-existent family to attack his morality meant the truth didn’t matter from the start. The goal was just to attack an S-rank Hunter.
He was almost impressed by that shamelessness.
“Anyway, going through official procedures is a waste of time.”
“Then what? Want to give up and go eat first?”
“Give up? Who said I’m applying through official procedures? I’m just going to go in and see it now.”
“…How?”
“Sneak in.”
Yujun doubted his ears for a moment.
“Are you serious? Isn’t that bothersome?”
“It is bothersome. But something’s off.”
Kanghyun’s eyes turned serious.
“The autopsy results are strange. I only broke his arm, but they’re saying torture marks and whatnot. Like someone manipulated it. I need to check with my own eyes.”
At his resolute attitude, Yujun fell silent for a moment.
Autopsy results.
The contents of the autopsy report he’d seen a few days ago flashed through Yujun’s mind.
He too had felt a strange sense of dissonance when looking at that document. He just hadn’t been able to dig deeper because the situation was urgent. Getting Kanghyun out had been more important for the moment.
If, as Kanghyun said, those wounds were fabricated or caused by a third party’s intervention?
“Are you going to do it or not? If not, I’ll go alone.”
“We have to. Of course we have to.”
Yujun quickly erased his serious expression and nodded with a smile. Nothing had been confirmed yet, and he didn’t want to transfer his anxiety to Kanghyun unnecessarily.
“Our Kanghyun wants to play cat burglar, so his butler should help him.”
Kanghyun’s face scrunched up. It was a somewhat serious situation, but that bastard was joking around again.
“Never mind.”
Kanghyun glanced around. In the Association lobby, employees and Hunters were busily coming and going.
“The main entrance has too many CCTVs, bothersome. Let’s go through the employee passage.”
Kanghyun turned toward the side of the building. Yujun followed behind with an intrigued expression.
They stood in front of an iron door on the side of the building with an “Authorized Personnel Only” sign. He tried turning the doorknob, but it was firmly locked and just rattled.
“Know the password?”
Instead of answering, Kanghyun grabbed the doorknob again.
Crack.
So that the sound of the hinge being torn off wouldn’t be made, he crushed only the internal locking mechanism with extremely delicate force control.
The door slid open smoothly.
“Strong.”
Kanghyun didn’t even respond to that compliment and just grumbled.
“Be quiet now.”
The two stood in front of the emergency stairwell. The morgue was on basement level 3. The ceiling was high, so they’d have to go down quite a lot of stairs.
However, there were CCTVs throughout the stairwell. If they just went down, they’d get caught immediately.
As Kanghyun glared at the CCTV, Yujun stepped forward.
“I’ll do it.”
Yujun lightly snapped his fingers.
The moisture in the air instantly created thick fog around the CCTV lens. On screen, it would just look hazily blurred due to humidity, and there would be no trace of anyone passing through.
Some might suspect it was Yujun’s ability, but so what if there was no direct evidence?
“Oh. That’s useful.”
“Thanks for the compliment.”
The two S-rank Hunters descended the stairs silently.
They arrived at the basement level 2 corridor. This was an area mainly used by researchers.
Kanghyun hid behind a wall and timed it. To enter the basement level 3 security area where the morgue was located, they needed an ID card.
After waiting a bit, a researcher wearing a white coat walked by with an ID card hanging around their neck.
“Should we knock them out and take it?”
When Yujun whispered, Kanghyun recoiled.
Is this bastard really a national hero? He’s talking about knocking someone out like it’s nothing.
“No. Don’t make things bigger.”
The moment the researcher turned the corner, Kanghyun moved quickly.
There wasn’t even a brushing sound. Kanghyun’s afterimage passed by the researcher’s side.
The researcher tilted their head.
“What? Was that wind?”
They nonchalantly pressed the elevator button. Then they lifted the lanyard around their neck to tag it on the reader.
“Huh?”
But the ID card that should have been hanging at the end of the lanyard was gone. Only the lanyard was dangling around their neck.
“Where’d it go? Did it break?”
The flustered researcher looked around at the floor.
They didn’t know. Behind the emergency exit some distance away, Kanghyun was waving the ID card held between his fingers toward Yujun.
