# Chapter 27
If it had physical form, it would definitely have been a bluish-colored cave-like voice. He interrogated Dowoon without giving him room to breathe.
“That son of a bitch, did he to you…”
“He didn’t do anything.”
Perhaps because being under Jeonghoo’s glare made him feel like his conscience was being plucked bare, Dowoon hurriedly offered an excuse. His voice was as small as an ant crawling through grass.
“Fuck, yes, he kissed me. He said if I didn’t want to go berserk, I should stay still and take it. What was I supposed to do?”
Only after spitting this out in irritation did Dowoon realize he might have seriously exposed Cha Haseong’s private life.
Scratching his cheek roughly, he spoke as if scolding himself. Long nail marks had undoubtedly bloomed on his cheek.
“It’s not like I’m completely happy with this situation either. I feel terrible because it’s like I’m forcing myself on someone who clearly doesn’t want it…”
“…”
“When I think about how much more he’ll hate me, I feel like I could die from despair.”
It was an honest lamentation with genuine feeling mixed in, but Jeonghoo still didn’t seem to trust him, giving him a cold gaze.
Staring intensely at Dowoon’s face as if looking at an immature cousin, he asked in a rather serious tone. His thick palm covered and rubbed Dowoon’s head.
“Why would that guy hate you? Why would he make the great Yeo Dowoon feel hopeless?”
To which Dowoon replied as if he’d heard a ridiculous question.
“…Because I like him.”
To Dowoon, Cha Haseong was both a savior who had rescued him from terrible rampages and something like a rare jewel from mythology.
Someone so precious and heartbreaking that he couldn’t bear to touch him forcefully.
Just thinking about the breath and warmth Haseong had given him made Dowoon feel like he could conquer monsters and return safely even if he fell into the hell of an underground dungeon.
Most of the idiots at the Esper base probably harbored similar desires.
His disorderly voice flowed quietly.
“I know I’m pathetic, so I said I would retire, but you’re the one who joined forces with the base to interfere. If you pretend now like you don’t know, I’ll be crushed.”
“…”
“If you had to see the face of someone you had a one-sided love for every day, brushing hands and pressing lips, you wouldn’t be in your right mind either. That’s the state I’m in right now.”
Though he hadn’t thrown these words out seeking sympathy, for some reason, Jeonghoo sighed deeply as if troubled and answered.
“The fact that you think I’m in my right mind is at least fortunate.”
The arm with the tightly pulled shirt collar moved back and forth in front of Dowoon’s eyes, unnecessarily grating on his nerves. Just recalling the moment those hands touched his skin made Dowoon feel like moss was growing on his neck even now.
But he tried hard to suppress his unsettled feelings and pleaded.
“At least I’m not flailing around like a madman.”
“You’re one step away from it.”
“…”
“Though it doesn’t seem like a situation that would improve by flailing around. …Where are you looking?”
Jeonghoo, who had been speaking frankly, noticed that Dowoon’s gaze had completely shifted away from him and asked.
Even furrowing his brow with narrowed eyes, Dowoon soon raised his voice as if reproaching him.
“Why did you bring that bastard?”
“Ah… that guy.”
What caught Dowoon’s attention was Yoon Minoh, who was squatting in a duck position far from the flower bed, crawling around the street.
Judging from Minoh’s face, which was crumpled as fiercely as his own, it seemed Jeonghoo had bound his mind and inputted commands that would be difficult to comprehend in a sober state.
With his thigh muscles bulging as if about to burst, Minoh repeated right and left turns like the world’s fastest white duck. Watching his dazzling footwork in a trance-like state, Dowoon asked.
“Is he bound?”
In response, Jeonghoo, instead of answering, flicked his finger and flipped Minoh from a duck position to a frog position. Minoh’s mouth also twisted diagonally, seemingly filled with all kinds of curses.
However, Dowoon could hardly laugh at the ridiculous scene.
Even he had memories of being thoroughly subjected to Jeonghoo’s mental manipulation during his early days at work, going around in a handstand position.
Playing with Minoh as he pleased, Jeonghoo explained as if it were nothing.
“I had to bind him. He was running around everywhere like he was about to cause an earthquake.”
“…What confidence do you have to keep such a dangerous bastard around?”
It was reaching the point where Minoh’s back, drenched in sweat from building lower body strength in a brutal way, was beginning to evoke pity.
“A dungeon opened in Yeouido, so take him with you. They say only C-class monsters are appearing, so think of it as giving him field experience. Take it easy.”
Wondering why he had been searching for him in broad daylight, it seemed this damned scheme had been hidden. Dowoon was about to advise him to tease Minoh adequately since he must have learned something by now, but upon hearing the revealed point, he narrowed his eyes and refused.
“If it’s C-class, tell Ko Ijae to go. I don’t deal with such low-level creatures.”
“He’s your partner, isn’t he?”
“You didn’t give me field experience when you were my partner either.”
“Instead, I lived with you for several years.”
It was a rebuttal that left him speechless, even with ten mouths.
As Dowoon looked into the distance as if dawdling, Jeonghoo opened his mouth as if driving in the final nail.
“You want to do that instead?”
“…I’ll deploy.”
“Good decision.”
When pushed this far, Dowoon’s best option for his own well-being was to follow his superior’s orders and deploy to the dungeon checkpoint.
Just thinking about having to live with a psychopath like Yoon Minoh made him feel miserable and empty already; he wanted to avoid it by any means necessary.
It was just as he was taking steps like a grub to pick up the sprawled Minoh.
“Dowoon-ah.”
Whenever Jeonghoo called him “Dowoon-ah,” Dowoon often felt a surge of emotion.
Brother, teacher, and parent.
The man who had, at some point, squeezed into Dowoon’s narrow human relationships and volunteered for roles no one else wanted, whispered with a smile like a beautiful scenery.
“I haven’t changed the password to the officetel.”
“…”
“Come find me if you change your mind.”
But just ruminating on those words evoked a sense of guilt as if committing the taboo of incest, and Dowoon fled the flower bed.
‘Come to me if you want to try abstinence.’
He had tried to wash away the echoing bass voice more than a hundred times.
***
Dowoon and Minoh matched much better than they themselves felt.
Although Dowoon still didn’t understand the principle of centrifugal force as defined by Minoh, when he amplified power to help with attacks, Dowoon would give him a look that said, “Even a guy like you has some use.”
BANG, CRASH!
This dungeon was a sinkhole that had opened in the middle of the four-lane road in Yeouido.
If not for the development of the gate prediction simulation by the base, which could now reliably forecast C-class dungeons, there would certainly have been overflowing casualties and injuries.
Fortunately, today they were able to methodically dispatch monsters without innocent sacrifices thanks to the road being controlled in advance.
Dowoon, who had been firing ice at the monsters crawling out of the sinkhole, passed a cluster of monsters to Minoh like a soccer ball when he sensed him approaching.
Finding himself face to face with a bizarre purple-furred face, Minoh unleashed his ability with a loud scream.
“It’s fucking ugly, damn it!”
“What, did you expect monster bastards to be pretty?”
“This is too much even after everything else!”
At that noisy outcry, Dowoon snickered, recalling how he too had once shuddered while facing these furry creatures that popped out of sinkholes.
Scholars collectively named these ugly monsters “subterranean monsters.”
They also speculated that monsters from underground dungeons that mainly erupted in high-altitude mountain ranges would have similar appearances.
After all, having crawled around in pitch darkness without seeing sunlight, they were bound to have particularly terrible and grotesque appearances, like deep-sea creatures among monsters.
As if predicting its impending death, one monster shook its head, making a sorrowful cry.
<KIRRRRRRRK…!>
After passing by Minoh and destroying the last monster, Dowoon emerged from the sinkhole covered from head to toe in the dark liquid that the strange creature had spat out while squeaking.
Minoh, who had easily stepped onto the ground using centrifugal force, held his nose tightly and asked.
“Are you okay? The smell is absolutely terrible.”
It was a stench that mixed both ginkgo and sewer smells, so anyone smelling it for the first time would inevitably vomit.
