# Chapter 148
A momentary disappointment hung on Taesung’s face. However, he quickly corrected his expression and spoke playfully.
“Into six pieces. I’ll measure the angles.”
“…What if they’re crooked?”
“Then I’ll eat the bigger piece.”
“What? Then you cut the steak. I’m going to eat it all.”
Anyone listening would think they were grilling an entire steak. Lee Hwan headed to the dining table, making giggling sounds.
The meal was extremely satisfying. Though the interior was unfamiliar, the home felt safe and peaceful. The food was tender and flavorful, causing exclamations to escape between his teeth with every bite.
Especially Taesung’s steak—it was something he had been craving all along. That crispy exterior. The texture of meat that was tender and moist but definitely wrapped around his teeth. Lee Hwan wore a smile of complete satisfaction.
Taesung even somehow knew to pour a glass of orange juice just as Lee Hwan was getting thirsty.
“Haah…”
This ordinary daily life was what he had wanted so desperately while wandering among monsters. He had endured and endured, hoping that someday he could live like this with Taesung again. Now it felt like he was receiving his reward, and his chest felt oddly tight.
Lee Hwan gulped down the food he was chewing and hesitated for a moment. His eyes met Taesung’s, then moved away, then back again as if pondering something, before he finally spoke.
“I still have a lot to say, but for now, um…”
As his fingers fidgeted, Taesung was watching it like a ghost. Lee Hwan took a deep breath and blurted out his words with a ‘whatever’ attitude.
“I’m glad we made it back safely together. I’m happy to be able to live with you like this again.”
He ended up saying something embarrassing. His ears seemed to heat up again. Though they had been together so long that they roughly understood each other’s thoughts and feelings without having to say anything, there were still some things he wanted to express out loud.
He thought Taesung would just smile slightly and say something in response.
Unexpectedly, his face hardened, and the corners of his eyes turned slightly red. His Adam’s apple moved significantly as if he was swallowing hard.
‘This guy, pretending to be fine.’
It seemed he too found the events leading up to the regression confusing and difficult. Lee Hwan reached out and placed his hand over Taesung’s. He hoped that the warmth transmitted this way could comfort him.
He erased any lingering anxiety or sense of déjà vu. After all, hadn’t they both regressed without any major accidents? That alone was something to be thankful for.
“No big news? Well, it is daytime.”
“Channel 109… Animal Party is having a hundred-day celebration for eight golden retriever siblings. Want to watch?”
“Oh, let’s watch.”
They exchanged various words while sitting on the sofa looking at the TV. They had useless conversations about which channel to watch, and occasionally brought up serious topics like what they should do from now on.
Of course, they also talked about skills. After all, it was thanks to the EX-grade skill stone that they had regressed in the first place.
“Honestly, I don’t know how it worked either… Do one-time skills exist? Once I used it, it completely disappeared, just like that.”
“That’s a shame.”
“I know, right? If we could use it multiple times, it would be a real windfall. If we failed, we could go back, and if we failed again, we could go back again.”
They knew that Kang Dongha was the cause of the monster wave and that the world would be destroyed because of it. However, they had no idea when the beginning of the catastrophe would occur, or how and where to intervene.
They had come back with the thought of stopping the destruction together with Taesung and living safely, so they could only roughly guess that everything must start around this time.
Naturally, there would be quite a bit of trial and error in finding clues and preventing the disaster. How nice it would have been to have multiple chances in such situations.
Taesung seemed to have the same thought as a bitter expression flashed across his calm face. Lee Hwan leaned toward him for no reason and cast his gaze at the TV.
“Nothing else changed?”
He suddenly asked. Nothing else. Was he asking if there were any more changes? Well, two new skills had appeared simultaneously with the regression.
However, without even knowing why he was hiding it, Lee Hwan instinctively shook his head.
“…No.”
With that answer, Taesung’s face darkened a little.
“When should we go take care of Kang Dongha?”
When he tried to change the atmosphere by mentioning the seed of destruction, Taesung showed mild displeasure. Even before the regression, he had knocked out Dongha’s teeth. From what he’d heard, the incompetent bastard was exactly the type of person Taesung would despise.
“I’ll handle that myself. It’s a family matter.”
“…Hmm, right. He was Kang Dongying’s brother, wasn’t he?”
Internal affairs of Naru, especially stories about Taesung’s relatives, were something Lee Hwan didn’t ask about and Taesung didn’t often share. But even without being told, Lee Hwan could tell that Kang Dongying kept pestering Taesung, who had no particular interest in politics.
Yes, Lee Hwan had thought Taesung would handle that side of things anyway. His role would be to actively jump in when firepower was needed later.
“Then for now… since we’ve regressed, I guess I need to register as an Awakened person again.”
“That’s true. Should we rest today and do it later? If you’re not going into a gate right away, it’s not urgent.”
Lee Hwan nodded, leaning over further, as he honestly didn’t want to see any monsters for a while. Taesung perceptively offered his leg.
Lee Hwan lay down comfortably, dangling his legs off the sofa, and listened to the puppy cries filling the living room.
It was barely noon. There was still an endless day to enjoy with him. He planned to play like this until evening, then go home and try out his newly acquired skills on the hill behind his house.
He wondered how they worked and how they would harmonize with his existing ability. His head was filled with curiosity.
Although he was quite surprised by the appearance of unknown skills, he was also excited. When had he ever gained skills in his life?
He had already seen, heard, felt, and known how Taesung’s power had increased tremendously with explosion and whirlwind. Thinking that he too might experience such synergistic effects made his heart race on its own.
The plan went awry right before dinner. Taesung stopped Lee Hwan as he was about to go home.
“We just came back. Let’s stay together a bit longer. Rest before you go.”
His face looked somewhat anxious, so Lee Hwan couldn’t cut things off and leave as he had before. He kept remembering how Taesung had embraced him and silently wet his shoulder right after the regression.
Originally, he had insisted on returning home because he didn’t want to show his broken state. But after the monster wave, hadn’t they taken turns sleeping on the streets, observing each other? He could now overlook such things without much concern.
So being here with Taesung in this house wasn’t a problem, but…
‘My gravity…’
This meant he wouldn’t have time to try out his skill.
Since he had already told him that nothing else had particularly changed, it felt awkward to now explain that actually, more skills had appeared.
‘This was 2022… right?’
Come to think of it, now that they were back in the past, it wouldn’t be bad to find and consume skill stones one by one. He thought about asking Taesung to help him visit gates where skill stones had previously appeared and snatch them one by one.
With Taesung, there would be almost no gate they couldn’t break through. Couldn’t he just pretend to have gained skills then?
‘Geez.’
He could have just said now that new skills had appeared, but somehow he ended up going around in circles. Meanwhile, Taesung, looking somewhat more lively, took Lee Hwan and showed him around the rooms.
‘This is the first time I’ve seen a house with so little human presence.’
Lee Hwan got the room with the softest-looking bed. Wearing the loose clothes Taesung gave him, he wandered around the living room, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu, as if he had done this before.
Despite never having stayed overnight at Taesung’s house before…
But such sensations were quickly buried by fatigue. Although his body was clearly from the past, his mind was still the same as in the future, worn out from countless battles.
He was so exhausted that at some point his head started to ache. When Lee Hwan showed signs of fatigue, Taesung pulled his arm, led him to the room, and gave him the caterpillar doll to hold.
“Where did you get this again?”
Though he wondered why he kept suddenly giving him such things, the soft feel wasn’t unpleasant. Lee Hwan blinked with sleepy eyes and eventually entered the room Taesung had chosen for him, falling into a short, deep sleep.
* * *
When he opened his eyes, it was dawn. The sky was still black, far from sunrise.
Lee Hwan stared blankly at the ceiling, slowly recalling where he was and what had happened to him.
The battle with the monsters was over. Just the previous morning, he had regressed seven years into the past. As he had longed for, Taesung had brought him to his home and grilled steak for him, and now Lee Hwan had woken up after eating his fill and having a good sleep for the first time in a long while.
It was too happy a development. It was perfect to the point of being unbelievable. Could this all be an illusion? Perhaps he had collapsed from exhaustion after the battle and was dreaming.
After all, he had often dreamed of peacefully playing around with Taesung whenever he fainted from injuries.
* A Amplification
* B Spatial Control (☆)
* C Gravity
Lee Hwan took a small breath as skills he had never seen before appeared intact before his eyes.
“Hmmph… haah.”
Only then did it start to feel real. He had really returned from the hellish future of destruction. To the past he had always dreamed of and longed for, but could never speak about out loud.
His nose began to sting, and something hot rushed up to his throat. When he had just returned, he had only felt tense with goosebumps, but after sleeping and waking up, the situation felt more immediate.
Lee Hwan silently shed tears for a while, then pulled up the blanket to wipe them all away. Then he took several deep breaths to erase any trace of crying and jumped up from his bed.
He didn’t want to waste time stupidly crying when he had seized such a fantastic opportunity. He had clearly wanted to check his skills before going to bed. So what about sneaking out now, while Taesung was also asleep?
Lee Hwan threw the doll that had fallen to the floor back onto the bed and left the room, holding his breath. The dark house was wrapped in silence.
The entrance password to this place was amazingly the same as in the past, so there would be no problem going in and out.
As he was thinking this and putting on his shoes at the door, suddenly a familiar voice came from the dark living room. It was a calm tone that was neither too high nor too low, without any emotion.
“Where are you going?”
Click. As the light next to the sofa turned on, half of Taesung’s face gleamed palely.
