# Chapter 42
Kang Taesung twisted Lee Hwan’s right arm and pinned his body to the ground. The cracking sound reached his ears with chilling vividness as terrible pain arrived.
“This… Argh, let go!”
Is it broken? No, the shoulder was dislocated. If that’s all, he could fix it himself. Even in pain, Lee Hwan immediately searched for an escape route.
“If you didn’t like it, you should have just said so. There was no need to stab someone in the back like that.”
The more urgent the situation, the calmer he needed to be. Losing focus for too long could mean death for a hunter in the apocalypse. Monsters didn’t care whether humans were in shock or not. If he lost consciousness even for a moment, he might lose his head too.
Fortunate or unfortunate, thanks to those terrible experiences from the future, Lee Hwan could barely maintain his sanity despite this insane attack.
‘Stab in the back? When did I…!’
It was hard to dismiss Taesung’s words as lies when he had already been hit twice. Unless this era’s Taesung was more of a thug than he could imagine, Lee Hwan clearly didn’t know something. If so, figuring that out was the priority.
Though groaning in pain, Lee Hwan dissected Taesung’s words from earlier and laid them out in his mind.
Taesung was furious. Why? Because he thought Lee Hwan had handed over a “report.” The report was related to test subjects, so naturally it would have flowed to where experiments were being conducted.
The test subject was presumed to be someone close to Taesung. Given that he personally chased Lee Hwan down like this, it must be someone extremely close to him. Lee Hwan could easily think of one person.
Jade. The “dog” that Kang Dongha dismissed. Research Building D, and experiments…
‘Ah.’
For a moment, it felt like lightning struck his head. His vision flashed, and naturally, his thoughts flowed to Kang Dongha. Lee Hwan tried to resist the weight crushing him, but he felt all strength draining from his body.
When was the last time he had contact with Kang Dongha?
He hadn’t gotten a ride today. He had spoken on the phone a few days ago…
‘Can you take the items I prepared there to the laboratory on the second floor of Building D?’
The voice from his memory brushed Lee Hwan’s ear like an auditory hallucination.
‘The document envelope…!’
That was just a simple errand. He had carried a sealed envelope, so how would he have known what was inside? But just as he was about to protest this way, Lee Hwan recalled the red sunset he had seen while leaving Building D.
Taesung wasn’t a fool. He wouldn’t have come here and done this based on simple circumstances. Lee Hwan groaned softly. He had been inside for too long.
From Taesung’s perspective, Lee Hwan had gone into the research facility with documents related to Jade, walked around the lab, and soon after something had happened to Jade. Probably.
There were more than a dozen researchers who had seen him. Perhaps that damn information department knew about it. Or maybe there was someone among the researchers who would relay this information to Taesung.
“It wasn’t, ugh… it wasn’t me.”
Lee Hwan groaned as he raised his voice. It was truly a ridiculous misunderstanding. The fact that the target of this misunderstanding was Kang Dongha made it so absurd and unfair that Lee Hwan was nearly going crazy. However, Taesung showed no sign of listening, not even by his breathing.
Pain surged again from the twisted arm.
“Gugh, aaagh!”
“I warned you. There must be a good reason for someone with all limbs intact to be living like this.”
Taesung growled. His low voice now carried quite a bit of emotion. As if expressing his anger, he pressed down on the twisted arm, making a thudding sound, and Lee Hwan felt for a moment that Taesung’s words hurt more than the pain in his arm.
‘There must be a good reason to be living like this…’
He was saying this because he didn’t know that he himself was the reason, but somehow Lee Hwan felt those words were beating him down. Lee Hwan gritted his teeth, trying hard to suppress the welling sadness.
Honestly, he was furious. Kang Dongha’s antics were infuriating, but he could let them go since they were unavoidable. He could also understand the negative reactions from the support team as “that’s how it is.” But it was different when it was Taesung, of all people, saying those things; it made him feel wronged first.
‘Yeah, it’s my fault for not helping him find his memories, who else can I blame…’
But in the end, going around in circles, the only one to blame was his intact self.
‘Damn… I need to escape first to find out what’s really happened.’
Lee Hwan bit his constantly quivering lips and tried to shake his body once. He was still firmly caught.
The priority was escape. Taesung, who had charged in like a grizzly bear, didn’t seem intent on letting him go, and struggling aimlessly would only cause more pain, so it seemed better to think of another approach.
What was funny was that even in the midst of all this, when Lee Hwan stopped resisting and relaxed his body, Taesung’s pinning movement also gently ceased.
How could he break through this brutal restraint and escape? After pondering for a moment, Lee Hwan noticed another discrepancy.
‘…This bastard, it doesn’t seem like he’s using his ability yet?’
Taesung, who would normally be quick to summon flames, had struck Lee Hwan with bare hands and restrained him with just his body. Normally, he would have already given Lee Hwan a half-body bath of flames.
Puzzled, Lee Hwan quietly rolled his eyes and then realized. This was an unkempt mountain path. If he lit a fire and threw it around to catch someone, it would cause a forest fire big enough to make the news. Even though he was Taesung, if he faced off against Lee Hwan, he’d lose control and more.
Next, Lee Hwan recalled the stats recorded at Naru before the regression. Taesung had exceptionally good physical strength. Even more so than ordinary Awakened individuals. If it came down to pure strength, it would have been a definite loss even with his past body, let alone in his current state.
But…
‘I can use my ability.’
He just needed to escape from this grip. If caught, he’d be burned on the spot, but once he created some distance, there wasn’t much concern about flames flying at him.
Lee Hwan’s eyes glowed faintly, and space was designated around Taesung’s head.
“…!”
He blocked Taesung’s breath. Taesung flinched for a moment but didn’t loosen his grip. Still, it seemed his concentration was disrupted briefly. Taking advantage of this, Lee Hwan violently twisted his arm to free his body, flipped over from his prone position, and threw a punch with his other arm. His twisted arm ached, but he couldn’t stop.
“Let go!”
Whack! With a crisp sound, his fist directly hit Taesung’s right cheek. Fortunately, he could pull his body away and face him. But that was it; his caught arm wouldn’t move.
Damn it. Lee Hwan, cursing under his breath, instead of pushing Taesung away, grabbed his dangling arm with his intact hand. And then, whack.
“Ah, ugh…!”
As he slammed into Taesung at the right angle, a cracking sensation was followed by intense pain. Still, after popping his dislocated shoulder back in, he began to regain some strength in that arm.
Of course, it wasn’t enough to shake off Taesung yet. Despite having his breath blocked by Lee Hwan’s ability, he still held Lee Hwan’s arm firmly without much panic, watching as Lee Hwan moved with a partially restored arm, not seeming particularly concerned about it.
It was a predicament. At this rate, he couldn’t escape. He had dragged it on too long. As expected, the caught forearm started to heat up.
‘No way. He’s going to burn his own hand too.’
Due to the nature of his ability, Taesung had some resistance to fire and heat, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t burn at all. Though a bit stronger and more durable, he was still unmistakably human with blood and flesh.
Unless he was truly insane, he wouldn’t burn his own hand just to torment someone else.
But what was this?
‘Huh…?’
The hand gripping his arm grew hotter and hotter… Taesung was briefly igniting fire with his own hand.
With a sizzling sound of burning flesh, Taesung’s hand and Lee Hwan’s caught arm turned red-hot.
“Aaaagh!”
Lee Hwan screamed and struck Taesung’s face several more times with force. Finally, Taesung’s lip split, and blood flowed red down his face. At that, his eyes, which had been watching Lee Hwan’s struggles while holding his breath, turned fierce again.
‘Oh no.’
“Guk!”
Taesung’s arm extended and grabbed Lee Hwan’s neck. His consciousness wavered as his windpipe was constricted.
The fingers gripping his neck turned white. The smaller body struggled beneath him. Lee Hwan raked the solid arm with his nails, but the grip only continued to squeeze his neck firmly.
“I thought you might have been caught by some weakness of Kang Dongha’s…”
“Ugh, gugh…”
“But it seems you went there voluntarily, kuk… of your own will?”
“Let… go.”
After barely spitting out those words, Lee Hwan’s lips trembled. Soon, all strength drained from him.
The hand pinning him down was quite hot. Looking at Taesung through hazy vision, Lee Hwan thought:
If he wanted to kill him or knock him out, he could simply twist his neck or smash his head. Why bother beating him up and ambiguously choking him, causing such pain?
As Lee Hwan’s mind grew increasingly foggy, the conversations he’d heard today began to swirl chaotically in his head.
Experiments. The report contents this bastard had recited earlier…
Didn’t he say Jade was a test subject from a similar case? Does that mean there had been such experiments on him before, and this time he was dragged somewhere again? Kang Taesung was furious about that and taking revenge like this…
As his throat constricted, his eyes naturally grew moist, and tears flowed down Lee Hwan’s earlobe. Taesung still held his neck with an expressionless face. Every time he saw that face, memories of the past flashed through Lee Hwan’s mind like a lantern slide.
