# Chapter 102
“Over here.”
Lee Hwan was huddled near the basement stairs inside the common entrance, in a spot where no light reached. As he sat there slumped, he looked strangely small.
Ever since the first-floor residents started keeping the hallway door closed due to privacy and noise concerns, the area around the basement stairs and elevator had become darker during the day than at night when the lights weren’t on.
To make matters worse, someone always wore sunglasses wherever he went.
So Jade could only properly see Lee Hwan’s face when the elevator opened and light spilled out.
“…Why do you look like that after just a few days?”
A face paler than usual with disheveled, messy hair. Under the wan light, his face looked like someone who had been bedridden for at least ten days before getting up.
Jade unconsciously reached out his hand only to stuff it back into his pocket. Lee Hwan’s appearance was that precarious.
Come to think of it, he’d seen that sickly look before. When Lee Hwan had been carried in unconscious with monster fragments embedded in his side.
‘Is he sick again?’
That was Jade’s first thought, though he felt bad for thinking it. It wasn’t common for an Awakened person to be sickly so frequently. Last time was unavoidable because of his injury, but now he looked perfectly fine without a single scratch anywhere.
But then Jade realized that, unlike Taesung, Lee Hwan wasn’t S-class and might have lower durability, and he wasn’t exactly the neatest-looking person normally either.
‘They said it was malnutrition back then, I think.’
It had been surprising to hear that from the doctor at the time. How much starvation would it take for an Awakened person to suffer from nutritional deficiency?
Whatever the reason, Jade guessed that might be why Lee Hwan was unwell. A grown man who couldn’t even take care of himself properly. Jade was about to ask what he wanted when—
“This.”
Inside the bag Lee Hwan slightly opened, a pale green drug peeked out from between ice packs.
“T.D.F.”
“…What?”
Jade asked again as if he’d misheard.
The partially opened bag in front of him seemed to sway in slow motion. Jade felt like he was in a dream, endlessly falling after stepping on ground that had suddenly given way. It was such a shocking and surreal moment that he almost wanted to slap his own cheek.
T.D.F. If that all-too-familiar acronym referred to the drug he knew, this shouldn’t be out here like this.
Lee Hwan’s face, visible as he slightly lowered his sunglasses, was impassive and exhausted, making his thoughts unreadable. Jade stared at him for a while before unconsciously pressing a hand to his own head.
“…Put it back. I don’t know anything about this.”
Then he turned away immediately as if the other wasn’t worth dealing with anymore.
He suddenly felt dizzy. It was as if the path ahead had stretched from an already overwhelming distance to something impossibly further, and a sense of hopelessness surged from deep within his chest.
“Don’t worry. I didn’t leave any trace of your involvement. The other experiment-related drugs… should have disappeared too.”
“I said I don’t want to be involved.”
“Then don’t get involved and stay out of it.”
His tone remained impressively sharp despite looking completely drained. Jade pushed his sunglasses back up and glared at him.
What was wrong with this guy? Was it because he’d mentioned dying? Just because of that?
Why did everyone around him always miss his intentions? A small lament escaped between his teeth.
He was trying to pave a way for himself to disappear, but it felt like deer and bears kept coming along, howling and digging everything up with their noses. He had less and less idea of how to deal with this.
Soon, hunters would come rushing in with rifles. Jade almost let out an audible lament, but Lee Hwan’s next words made him close his mouth again without a reply.
“That experiment is doomed to fail anyway, so there’s no reason to volunteer for a dog’s death.”
Dog’s death. Those words hit the mark. In a way, he was right.
According to the “future” information Jade had heard from Lee Hwan previously, the experiment would remain at a standstill no matter how many lives were sacrificed for it.
And then something major must have happened to cause the regression. Naturally, the experiment couldn’t have continued afterward.
‘Plus, that drug… he must have gone down there to get it.’
Jade didn’t know what this guy had done there or what he had read, but he must have learned that Jade was a dummy test subject meant to prevent the experimental subjects from going berserk or experiencing abnormal metabolic reactions.
So he’d impulsively taken the drug.
“Haa… what a guy.”
But Jade hadn’t been interested in the experiment’s success or failure from the beginning. He’d just thought that, since these lives would be lost anyway, he might as well use them to try and get rid of his toxic obsession with Taesung and his circle.
‘Are you crazy? I told you not to get involved in that.’
‘Well, I already did.’
But he was always swayed by Taesung, and lately even that wasn’t going well. So in truth, there was probably no better expression for his meaningless end than “a dog’s death.”
‘These bouncy balls…’
Jade gritted his teeth.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, after Jade had agreed to the experiment, Taesung approached the HPA and was deliberately walking a dangerous line, attracting all kinds of attention. As if whispering that he knew why Jade had gone to the laboratory.
Sure enough, the experiments on Jade had momentarily slowed down afterward. That was also why he could now receive only light drug injections and move freely outside.
But there was no telling how long things would go Taesung’s way. If the situation changed drastically even tomorrow, the peace would be shattered, and not only would he be backed into a corner, but Taesung would be as well.
“Damn it.”
He muttered aloud, but Lee Hwan’s gaze remained unwavering. Truly, no one moved according to his intentions. Not this one, not that one.
Jade’s eyes rolled with hesitation as he stared at Lee Hwan standing there holding the bag with the drug.
He still looked unwell. Despite his determined eyes, his cheeks and eye area were reddened, and he seemed so weak from the eyebrows down that it looked like he would collapse if pushed even slightly.
What had he gone through in the basement before coming up? Jade knew better than most just how much of a hellhole that laboratory was, having been half-dragged in there himself.
Jade realized that even if Lee Hwan had been severely injured there, he would thoroughly conceal his wounds regardless.
Hadn’t he neglected his side injury until he collapsed and Taesung picked him up last time?
“Haa…”
He couldn’t just leave someone who had gone so far as to bring him the drug. Finally, Jade sighed deeply and snatched the bag.
“Follow me.”
Then he grabbed Lee Hwan’s arm, pulled him into the elevator, and brought him straight to his apartment. He didn’t want to discuss this outside for long, and his action was also partly impulsive.
Initially in the hallway, Lee Hwan’s expression suggested he just wanted to hand over the bag and leave. But when Jade pulled him along, he didn’t forcefully pull his arm away and followed quietly all the way to the apartment entrance.
‘Was he always this easy to handle?’
Something felt odd, so Jade thought carefully and realized that despite wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt, the arm he was holding was burning hot, suggesting a high fever.
‘Close to 40 degrees, maybe.’
Then even if he was pretending to be fine while standing, he was probably half out of his mind.
His brown hair, which smelled like shampoo as if he’d just washed it, was dry and disheveled. Now that Jade had accepted the drug, it was as if all tension had suddenly left Lee Hwan’s body; he couldn’t even properly hold his head up anymore.
Jade felt that if he sent him away now, he might end up seeing an ambulance in front of the building.
When he saw him earlier this year, he didn’t seem this bad. Jade sensed that another unexpected kid had become entangled in his life.
“…I’d rather die as a mercenary.”
Fortunately, Lee Hwan seemed to have missed his muttered words. He looked momentarily confused, but now that they were inside the apartment, his expression was slightly dazed.
* * *
As soon as they entered, Jade shoved the drug into the freezer, bag and all. Then he stood frozen in front of it for a long time, his expression showing he had no idea what to do with it.
After handing over the drug, Lee Hwan looked like his strength had drained away, as if he’d completed his task. He should have been lying sick in bed but had somehow arrived here safely, evading surveillance with his own mental fortitude.
At first, he tried to leave several times, but now it seemed he didn’t even have the energy for that anymore. He just sat blankly where Jade had placed him.
Seeing his slumped figure, Jade’s irritation and anger subsided instantly. He quickly looked Lee Hwan over and reached for his phone.
‘Should I call a doctor?’
He briefly thought of Taesung but had a bad feeling about putting him together with Lee Hwan, especially given Taesung’s recent strange behavior.
Hadn’t Taesung abandoned his own home and wandered about recently? Jade had never seen Taesung act so recklessly. He would surely react unfavorably this time too.
Besides, Jade had recently realized that whenever he mentioned Lee Hwan, a strange anxiety appeared in Taesung’s eyes. Like a wounded soldier with chronic anxiety symptoms.
‘What happened before the regression to make him react that way toward someone who supposedly lost his memory?’
The image of Lee Hwan with a nosebleed overlapped in his mind. Jade felt as if his own heart was beating irregularly.
If they had been that close, Jade must have brought them together before he disappeared. But that time wasn’t now. Thinking of them together kept giving him an uneasy feeling—the timing wasn’t right.
So today he would take care of this “friend” from the future himself, and later bring him to Taesung’s side.
Jade found a cooling pad from deep in a drawer—not even sure when he’d bought it—and slapped it onto Lee Hwan’s forehead, then pushed him to lie down on the sofa.
When Lee Hwan suddenly seemed to come to his senses and tried to get up, Jade dumped a bundle of blankets on top of him.
“Rest before you leave. Don’t wander around in that state or you’ll end up in a worse condition.”
Despite those words, Lee Hwan continued to squirm uncomfortably, unable to stop being cautious, until he saw a cushion that had fallen to the floor.
Did that bring him some kind of comfort? For reasons unknown, he calmed down surprisingly quickly, then promptly buried himself in the blanket and began to doze off.
Jade watched as Lee Hwan blinked and then closed his eyes for a long time. Only after making sure he was asleep did Jade quietly call a doctor. He thought he would feel better only if a professional confirmed there was nothing seriously wrong with Lee Hwan.
