# Chapter 116
Lee Hwan looked around at the people who were subtly avoiding his gaze.
‘By the way, earlier… I think someone screamed.’
Come to think of it, had anyone been injured when the spines flew? As Lee Hwan shifted his gaze, he saw a colleague applying pressure to stop the bleeding on his shoulder.
Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be a deep wound, as the bloodstain hadn’t spread much. Still, since it was a scratch from a monster, for someone with an immune system incomparably weaker than an Awakened person’s, he would need to undergo various tests and spend some time in the hospital.
‘I feel like I’ve been in this situation before.’
With a sense of déjà vu, he remembered that this person had witnessed Lee Hwan’s battle up close before. He was the one who had been closest to the masked Lee Hwan in Gate C-17.
As their eyes met, the man’s eyes gradually widened. An Awakened person dodging attacks and hunting monsters with similar movements by kicking off walls… Being rather perceptive, he seemed to vaguely recognize the identity of the one who had saved the Support Team that day.
‘He’ll really do well in Team 1.’
At this point, either the Hunter Management Bureau or Naru would come after him anyway, but there was no need to let the whole world know he had been with Kang Dongha.
Instead of telling him to keep quiet, Lee Hwan raised his index finger and pressed it gently against his lips. There would be no harm to him even if he pretended not to know. So, having survived twice, he hoped the man wouldn’t make any unnecessary reports.
After confirming that his dazed colleague nodded blankly, Lee Hwan slipped away from the path while everyone was busy checking on each other and surveying their surroundings.
—Crackle— Are you all right there? Are you okay?
The entrance leader’s voice belatedly came through the radio. He detached the radio from his waist, dropped it to the ground, and ran increasingly quickly toward the gate entrance.
Tension and fear about what was about to happen choked him like smoke.
Only Naru could have done this to the gate. Otherwise, such chaos, which had never happened before his regression, couldn’t suddenly mutate exactly as he had witnessed in the Red Room.
Moreover, the substance likely released in this gate was probably the base material for the secret research. And it happened right after Lee Hwan had rummaged through the laboratory.
They must have tried to bury him along with the gate. At that thought, Lee Hwan felt a heavy weight pressing on his chest. They had judged that the lives of a few supporters would be a small price to pay to stop him, so they tried to kill him.
This meant they had discovered the infiltration of the underground laboratory earlier than the two weeks Kang Dongha had predicted…
‘Haaa…’
Either Kang Dongha was angry at him for missing the opportunity, or Naru’s security was more thorough than expected.
The gate, now free of monsters, opened obediently. Lee Hwan silently exited the gate and looked around.
As if anticipating an overflow of monsters, not even the nose of a management staff was visible. However, there was a faint presence in the distance, suggesting someone was waiting without even bothering to hide.
Thankfully, the area was densely wooded. Lee Hwan ran while muting his footsteps and quickly left the vicinity of the gate. When there was no longer any trace of human presence around, he sprinted down the mountain and slipped into a different neighborhood.
After wiping blood stains with wet wipes and getting into a taxi, he realized he had put his phone in his inner pocket. When he turned on the power he had switched off, there were 30 missed calls and two text messages.
[The laboratory noticed the missing drug. Kang Dongha reported Kang Taesung as the mastermind. Kang Taesung was caught trying to delete CCTV records and is being pursued. The old guests still don’t know about this.]
[Run.]
It was Jade’s final warning sent while Lee Hwan was trapped in the gate.
“Ah…”
Lee Hwan felt like his vision was blurring momentarily from severe stress. His body kept sinking down under the seat.
He had already expected it wouldn’t be easy to get away with this. But to think they would pin his betrayal on Taesung.
He really was someone who could earn a degree in making people miserable. How did he even know Lee Hwan was preparing to flee?
Then suddenly, Lee Hwan realized that Kang Dongha was the type of person who would have someone go through even his discarded trash.
‘Since that day, I’ve been organizing my affairs without contacting him…’
He must have already sensed the betrayal. And as payment, to get rid of a thorn in his side, he implicated not only Lee Hwan but also Taesung, whom he adored, to bring them both down.
‘Stupid idiot.’
Lee Hwan cursed himself inwardly. He should have observed him closely instead of avoiding him. Due to his confused state of mind, he had believed in the vivid memory shown by the fragments of causality. He had overlapped that desperation with the current Kang Dongha.
So even though he might not have waited quietly for weeks, Lee Hwan had believed Dongha would only throw him into Naru’s jaws. That’s why he had been relieved that he just needed to either escape or get caught. He hadn’t thought Dongha would destroy everyone Lee Hwan cared about.
‘That damn CCTV, I felt uneasy about it.’
Lee Hwan closed his eyes tightly and then opened them.
That man Jade. He had said Taesung always acted without contact recently, so it would be the same this time too. What was this, like leaving a letter before leaving home and then getting kidnapped and treated as a runaway?
Fortunately, amid the misfortune, the fact that Naru was pursuing him meant Taesung had fled before the “investigation team” arrived. At least he wasn’t dead or severely injured and dragged away.
‘But there’s an even more fucked-up assumption that prevents me from being relieved.’
Lee Hwan gazed out the taxi window, lost in thought.
The reason Taesung had fled without a word was probably because what he would face if caught would not be a gentlemanly interrogation.
After all, what they had done wasn’t a common crime like embezzlement or labor law violations. It was a major incident that not only shook the foundations of the giant corporation Naru but also threw the future of the Kang family into the mud.
Before the regression, since monsters were pushing in, the government didn’t have the capacity to investigate deeper, and they were in a position where they had to borrow their hands in urgency… But in a world where destruction wasn’t approaching, they would surely perish alone.
In other words, from their perspective, it was a serious case where they needed to shovel up all involved parties and dump them in seawater.
Before the bigwigs of the Health Promotion Association realized the truth and abandoned Naru. Before they were completely surrounded with nowhere to escape.
‘And Kang Taesung… is certainly a convenient card to discard at the last moment…’
Although he was from the same family, he was quite a detached existence. In the kingdom essentially made up of the chairman’s direct descendants, he alone was a branch member in an insignificant position.
The late-born son of the chairman’s half-brother, who was also a late child. Moreover, the brother with whom there had been no exchange had been dead for a long time. Had he not Awakened as an S-class, they wouldn’t have even brought him into Naru, and would have cut off even the living expenses they had been sending out of moral obligation as soon as he became an adult—that’s how much of an outcast Taesung was.
He had suddenly Awakened like a bolt of lightning and attracted media attention, and on top of that, his ability was excellent and his personality was not docile, so many people were wary of him even in normal times.
Such a person suddenly obediently crawled in and dipped his foot in Naru’s secret experiments, and then used someone to clean out the underground laboratory?
They would thoroughly investigate what happened and then lock him up in a mental hospital for life, and that still wouldn’t be enough. If they wanted a cleaner disposal, despite his valuable power, he might even be treated as missing.
Thinking it was probably the latter, Lee Hwan felt a sense of urgency. His fist, which he had been clenching all along, became stiff.
He wanted to meet him. He wanted to confirm with his own eyes that he was okay. He needed to explain the details of the incident to him and protect him.
‘Jade said it was Kang Taesung who bought that safe house.’
If so, Taesung would surely go to the safe house in Busan, going round and round to avoid tracking. If Lee Hwan wanted to meet Taesung, he too needed to conceal his destination for safety.
In the taxi approaching his destination, Lee Hwan nibbled on his lips. The reason Naru had tried to bury him in the gate, even at the cost of abandoning employees, was because it was the cleanest disposal. If they disguised it as an accidental death, they would face public criticism but could successfully cover up the crimes Naru had committed.
However, the moment Lee Hwan escaped the gate and entered society governed by law, they couldn’t just randomly grab and kill people in front of ordinary witnesses. Especially if that person was an Awakened skilled in combat.
Furthermore, once the Management Bureau took Lee Hwan away as an unregistered Awakened, they wouldn’t immediately report him to the Hunter Management Bureau for now, in case word might leak, until rumors naturally spread.
“We’ve arrived.”
His mind was still in chaos, but they were already in front of the station. He hadn’t even fully grasped the situation yet.
Lee Hwan habitually reached for his phone but suddenly recalled Jade’s words.
‘Don’t use cards, and don’t contact anyone with your phone. Even prepaid phones won’t work in this country. Electronic mail can also be traced if necessary, so avoid using it as much as possible.’
His heart sank once more. Right. The phone.
According to his warning, they would have already tracked Lee Hwan’s location. Yet no one had come to take him away. As if they were waiting for something.
‘Kang Taesung… is being pursued, he said.’
They must have a Plan B. If so, seeing Taesung as the head of this incident, they might be trying to follow Lee Hwan this time. With this plausible speculation, Lee Hwan gritted his teeth.
Then, while he was still alive, he needed to buy some time. A firm resolve burned slowly like coal, scorching his insides.
After paying the taxi fare with his phone, which he had been about to put away, Lee Hwan quickly ran into the station. There, he picked up the luggage he had prepared in advance and headed to his first destination according to his hastily formed plan.
The place Lee Hwan urgently visited with his bag was the café he always frequented.
