# Chapter 27
As he left the building, Lee Hwan deliberately took the stairs. The stairwell, somewhat distant from the elevator, seemed to have a strangely cool, chilly smell.
The door leading to the stairs opened easily just by pressing the handle, but it was peculiar that when going from inside to outside, one had to twist and pull the handle.
‘The boundaries between floors are distinct.’
It was indeed suspicious. Examining the strangely unpleasant building, Lee Hwan reinforced the hypothesis he had been considering all along.
Blocking Gate C-17 alone wouldn’t push back the catastrophe. Like floodwaters during the rainy season, destruction would flow around one blockage and surge through elsewhere.
And…
‘Probably, if I closely monitor Kang Dongha, I’ll encounter signs of doom through some route.’
Lee Hwan quickly left the research building, his footsteps echoing do-do-dok.
There was no surveillance on the way in either. It seemed that once anyone left the research building, security didn’t bother with who it was.
When he barely made it to the cafeteria before lunch hour ended, for some reason there was still plenty of japchae, a popular menu item, remaining. Lee Hwan finally relaxed his tense body and whistled.
He didn’t take any rice. Instead, where rice would normally go, he received a mountain of japchae. The soup was kimchi bean sprout soup, perfect for clearing a blocked throat.
Unlike its entrance, his mouth had excellent volume capacity. The large portion of japchae he picked up with his chopsticks slid cleanly into his mouth without even a slurping sound. His cheeks, puffed out like a hamster’s, moved slightly with each chew.
‘I was worried it would take time to change clothes.’
Though he had recklessly used Kang Dongha’s card until his home was now overflowing with food, Lee Hwan still made the most of the company cafeteria. It wasn’t so much that he was stingy, but rather there was no reason not to eat there.
‘I missed this taste.’
A flavor that brought back the past. When it touched the tip of his tongue and slid down his throat, it was enough to ensure Lee Hwan’s mood wasn’t too bad until quitting time.
If there was anything somewhat decent about this shitty regression, it was these small things.
Making the most of the company cafeteria.
Tasting franchise burgers that would disappear in the future.
Finding TV shows that would lose their replay service after the Monster Wave, and putting lost family photos back into frames to hang above the bed.
The strange thing was that photos that once made his heart ache just by looking at them now only filled him with a faint longing. At first, he truly couldn’t even look at them for long.
So for the first few years, he couldn’t bear to look at them, hiding them deep somewhere. Just thinking about them would make his mood sink. Had he put them in a drawer, or slipped them between the pages of a book?
Then they disappeared. He only realized they were gone much later. Even after turning the house upside down, the photos never turned up.
‘Stupid idiot. Stupid idiot. Stupid idiot.’
With no one else to blame but himself, Lee Hwan quietly blamed himself. Why hadn’t there been even one family photo on his old phone?
The data he had collected was carefully transferred to an external hard drive by Lee Hwan, but since the entire neighborhood where he lived was destroyed and burned down in the final moment, it was probably lost forever.
‘Good to see you all again.’
In the evening, lying like dead on his bed after returning home, Lee Hwan silently greeted the barely visible photo frame hanging at his bedside. Being alone, it was a habit that had returned after just a few days.
Now Lee Hwan could often recall the moment just before his regression. Previously, the memories had been so painful that he only saw them forcibly in dreams, but now he could reflect on them comfortably.
In the final moment, what he had constantly thought of was Taesung. It was quite encouraging that he had thought of him instead of his family as he faced death and returned to the past.
He had thought he would bury them in his heart and never forget, but at some point, new relationships had filled and patched that space.
Still, the lost photos were honestly a bit regrettable, but…
‘Anyway, the photos are back.’
Along with himself.
Kang Taesung, you bastard. Someday when your memories return, you’ll really regret it.
Lee Hwan quietly murmured to himself as he closed his eyes.
* * *
Two and a half months after his regression. Lee Hwan was gradually tasting his past life again and preparing for his first proper interaction with Taesung.
As a result, he was busy from morning without actually doing anything. It seemed to take dozens of minutes just to gather a few items to take with him, picking them up and putting them down.
The black suit with deep navy accents looked incredibly sleek and sophisticated. Lee Hwan hummed a tune as he put on the clothes and packed various things into his bag.
As expected, the gate-specific bag was flat and light, fitting snugly against his back with almost no weight sensation. Going to high-end stores and recklessly swiping this expensive card gave him a feeling of relief, revenge aside.
“I deliberately- didn’t even use the discount coupons- you bastard-.”
Instead, he received tissues and red ginseng extract as free gifts. Drinking the watery red ginseng extract from morning made him feel energized, or maybe not.
Imagining Kang Dongha clicking his tongue at seeing the number of zeros in the card usage records made him laugh. As soon as he woke up, he had received a message saying that a car would be sent, and he figured it should be downstairs by now.
The car sent by Kang Dongha took him to the entrance of a mountain shrouded in complete silence. From here, he had to walk up. This place, which originally had a dolmen, had once become a disaster area when monsters crossed over due to the government’s poor management before gates were transferred to the private sector.
After that accident, the place became almost a ghost mountain, with no one venturing near except hunters who had reserved the gate. Ironically, the mountain path, now devoid of human presence, looked greener and healthier than ever before.
Lee Hwan sent the car away and lightly ran up to the middle of the mountain as if flying. In the distance across the middle clearing, he could see the gate, the administrator, and two figures in combat suits.
‘Kang Taesung…’
A person whose silhouette was so familiar.
Lee Hwan firmly adjusted his mask and slowed his pace as he headed toward the gate. Suddenly, sweat seemed to form at the edge of his forehead. Even in broad daylight, there seemed to be a heavy atmosphere around the gate.
There, Lee Hwan faced Taesung, who had finished preparing and was waiting for him.
His sharp eyes were still directed at Lee Hwan. As always, he had a neat appearance. His strong, smooth brow ridge and straight nose bridge seemed to well reflect his firm character. The black functional suit covered his long, thick, well-built upper body, and his chest rose and fell slightly with each breath.
On his solid right arm, a guard serving as a shield was firmly attached without any movement.
‘Ah…’
It was an item that would snap open when the arm was strongly shaken to create impact. Faced with such a familiar piece of equipment, Lee Hwan momentarily groaned inwardly as memories of the past came flooding back.
He felt strange. His mind kept rummaging through memories, making it feel not like climbing a mountain but like ascending some kind of stairway to heaven. Once he reached the top, he would cross over to the afterlife.
Lee Hwan, without realizing it, scanned Taesung as he gradually approached them.
As expected, Jade being beside him meant that he would also be going in together. Those sunglasses. His always-identical hairstyle and covered eyes were now almost familiar.
Unlike Taesung, he wore a jacket with many pockets over his suit. All sorts of small tools could be seen stuffed into it. And…
‘His sunglasses have changed.’
Lee Hwan was dumbfounded seeing Jade wearing something like sports goggles. Couldn’t he just take them off…? It would be dark inside the gate anyway.
Well, he was also wearing a mask. In other words, Lee Hwan needed to cover his face, and Jade needed to cover his eyes.
“Let’s warm up,” Jade said abruptly without any greeting.
“I already warmed up. Just do your thing,” replied Lee Hwan.
He had already fully warmed up his body by running in the park early in the morning. So that no matter what happened, he could respond calmly in front of Taesung.
As Lee Hwan began organizing his remaining preparations, rummaging through his bag in front of the gate, Jade briefly observed him before starting the briefing.
“Ganghwa-do Gocheon-ri public gate, Grade 2 animal realm. Main monsters are Red-backed Squirrels, Black-tails, and White-tailed Musk Weasels. Flying monster is the Long-feathered Hawk. The overall length is short, but there’s rocky terrain, so it will take some time. Estimated duration is about five hours and twenty minutes.”
Despite the high grade of monsters appearing and even flying monsters mixed in, it was quite a manageable gate. Gates that formed in mountains often had a mixture of animal, plant, and insect monsters, but this one was purely animal.
Knowing how visually harmful mixtures of plant and insect realms could be, Lee Hwan was glad he wouldn’t have to witness anything disgusting today.
Of course, animal realm creatures were also nothing like animals on Earth, with an overall grotesque appearance… but at least these creatures wouldn’t have tentacles or appear in larval form.
‘Ugh…’
When he had injured his leg in a plant realm gate previously, while he was immobilized, a tentacle-like vine had constricted his body, causing him to scream in panic despite the situation.
The wriggling sensation of it digging into his suit was still vividly recalled in his mind, giving him goosebumps whenever he thought about it.
At that time, Taesung had created such an inferno that smoke filled the gate interior. It was an uncharacteristic mistake that earned him a scolding from Lee Hwan for quite some time.
But today, at least only furry beast monsters would appear. Although these so-called squirrels were 60 centimeters tall with blood-red eyes and could drill through rocks with their front teeth in swarms, they were still much better to look at than insect monsters covered in chitin.
Among hunters, some claimed they were physically incapable of hunting cockroach-type monsters.
‘Even though they’re not really cockroaches, just monsters…’
Lee Hwan had experienced firsthand that when they were too large, their crawling sound wasn’t sasa-sat but dada-dak! And their wing sounds weren’t pararak! but padududu booong-. So he couldn’t entirely blame them.
