# Chapter 70.
“Somehow you only contacted me by text… How do you explain disappearing in the middle?”
Kang Dongha asked again. If Taesung’s story came up here, this sensitive and suspicious breed would once again consider betrayal. Rather than rambling on with explanations and giving him something to nitpick, it seemed better to just show his condition.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Lee Hwan abruptly pulled his belt and lifted his shirt, causing Kang Dongha to flinch and step back. However, upon seeing the bandages tightly wrapped around his abdomen, he raised his eyebrows with an ambiguous expression.
“…What’s this?”
“What do you mean, what? It’s the mark of nearly dying.”
“You were fine eavesdropping on the meeting, why suddenly…”
After saying that much, Kang Dongha sighed deeply as if he had foreseen what would come next. He seemed to understand already, but Lee Hwan had no intention of letting go of his advantage.
“My injury got worse from all the running lately… Ah, you know well, right? I got injured at Gate A-08, when someone placed something like a crazy fire lycanthrope right in the path…”
Kang Dongha made a face as if shuddering at hearing this story again. As if that episode was some kind of black history, whenever this topic came up, he would either grimace or become brazenly shameless.
“How long has that old injury been bothering you?”
With that unpleasant remark, the incident was more or less wrapped up. Perhaps because he was so surprised, Lee Hwan returned to the office and spent an hour with his heart pounding, ears perked up.
In any case, this gave him an opportunity to reconsider his reasons for staying with the Support Team from an objective perspective. The reason he insisted on going to work despite this precarious lifestyle was, of course, to infiltrate enemy territory and gather more information.
It certainly helped in various ways. He could check the team’s schedule and formulate various hypotheses, and the gossip that occasionally floated around whenever something happened wasn’t entirely useless either.
But now that his identity had been exposed, was it still worth the risk, considering the Kang Taesung factor?
As for the research wing, he could go in and out using Kang Dongha as an excuse even if he didn’t stay here. Dongha was also obtaining information about gates through his brother or the Attack Team. That meant his own work was still essentially limited to data investigation.
‘It would be a waste of my life if I don’t at least break even.’
There were still too many variables to reveal himself as an Awakened person. Moreover, if he wanted to stay at Naru, he would eventually have to join the Attack Team, where Taesung would be waiting with keen eyes.
So Lee Hwan needed to find things he could do while remaining here. For instance, gathering information from within as he was doing now, or comparing and analyzing gate exploration records and data to find anomalies that he hadn’t known about before his regression…
By the time these thoughts ran through his mind, it was already quitting time. As he sat at his desk past 6 o’clock for once, people leaving work eyed him curiously as they passed by. Normally, he would have tidied up his desk with precise and swift movements starting at 5:50, leaving exactly at the hour.
Lee Hwan deliberately ignored those glances and kept inputting meaningless numbers into a spreadsheet. His plan was to waste time here and then search the archives once all watching eyes had disappeared.
Though it was always open and not a place to hide secretly… a newcomer, especially Lee Hwan, staying there for too long might attract attention.
Throughout his work hours, Lee Hwan scanned gate data on his computer. His goal was to find gates that had suspicious management frequencies relative to their danger level or status, or gates being managed differently from the future.
Out of about 60 gates, he had narrowed it down to just eight. After further filtering out dead gates that didn’t exist in the future, five remained, including one that Lee Hwan had tried to consume but was stopped by Taesung.
All were aging gates that had been active for over 50 years. Because they weren’t highly important and didn’t show unusual reactions, records from more than 20 years ago were no longer on the server.
7:40 PM. Lee Hwan looked at his new phone that he’d hurriedly gone out and activated during lunch. The screen without even a background setting looked strangely unfamiliar.
‘When will I have time to download all the apps…’
He had already given up on the belongings he’d left at Taesung’s place. Anyway, the information on his previous phone consisted only of nutritionally void text messages exchanged with Kang Dongha and about a dozen moving animal images. Even if someone broke through all the security, they’d just end up looking at cute hamsters.
After the last person left the office, Lee Hwan stuffed his phone into his back pocket and quietly went out to the corridor to find the archives. Here, records that hadn’t yet been digitized were organized in paper form.
Most were government records from before gates were turned over to the private sector. They were recorded without missing a date, but unfortunately, they weren’t very detailed. Typical bureaucratic work.
‘This… is following the initially received routine without modification… And this was changed within 3-4 years?’
Perhaps he had expected too much. Three of the five gates on the list had sufficient reasons for their exploration or cleaning cycles. The remaining two were still suspicious – one was the gate Lee Hwan had tried to consume but was stopped by Taesung. The other strangely had cleaning scheduled once a year but exploration every 8 weeks.
Fortunately, both were assigned to Team 3, so if he could avoid Taesung’s eyes, he could examine them sequentially. Lee Hwan stretched widely, then groaned at the stiffness in his side as he plodded out of the archives.
* * *
Intense exercise was prohibited during the recovery period. Lee Hwan lay on his bed fiddling with his new phone during the boring evening hours.
After roughly connecting his accounts and exploring the functions, he finished the basic setup, but there was still considerable time left before bedtime.
[Kang Taesung]
Various images endlessly appeared when he searched the name out of habit and boredom. Kang Taesung captured near gates, Kang Taesung in news article photos, full-body shots, half-body shots, close-ups…
There were even ridiculous photoshopped images in abundance, enough to make one say that truly everything exists. However, Taesung wasn’t smiling in any of the photos.
In one picture that appeared to be taken secretly, his expression was somewhat relaxed, but in subsequent photos, his face froze coldly as he reached out his hand, getting closer and closer.
‘Almost like horror.’
Well, with that face approaching, it might not be entirely fear. Lee Hwan muttered as he rolled over on the bed.
Looking serious in front of cameras was similar even before the regression. Originally, he didn’t smile much outside his home unless he was with Lee Hwan. But back then, his face didn’t look this intimidating.
‘There’s a… fan site.’
Splitting his abundant free time to search various keywords, he even found a fan site that Taesung himself would probably never visit. Lee Hwan looked around at the board names and suddenly thought:
Perhaps there might be information about Taesung during this period that he wasn’t aware of. Celebrity fans were said to know everything about their idols’ families. If so, even if there wasn’t such personal information here, at least recent updates might be regularly posted.
‘Good for spying.’
Thinking it was fortunate, Lee Hwan clicked the link but immediately encountered an obstacle.
[This board is only readable by site members.]
‘Then I’ll register…’
[This board is only readable by regular members.]
Currently, user JooLeeHwanHwan is an associate member level.
“Oh, come on.”
He just wanted to read some posts, but there were more steps than expected. Though Naru would manage any harmful rumors that might damage Taesung’s image, so there shouldn’t be many malicious commenters, it was a more closed group than expected. After five useless attempts to see if there were posts that could be read without raising his level:
Lee Hwan finally surrendered and searched for the notice in red letters. The upgrade conditions were simpler than expected. Just an introduction post.
‘Uh… Nice to meet you… Looking forward to your support…’
Title: Hello. Nice to meet you.
I joined today.
Looking forward to your support.
Comments 0 ▼
Would this kind of tone be acceptable? Lee Hwan endured the awkwardness that washed over him and posted an introduction in the newcomers’ board.
However, contrary to what he’d been told about being upgraded after writing an introduction, his level remained at associate member. Wondering what was happening, he refreshed a few times and found a swift comment.
Comments 1 ▼
[YeomHwa] Upgrading is only possible 3 days after initial registration.
“You could have mentioned that earlier!”
Lee Hwan shouted in frustration as he pushed his phone aside. In the end, he had just wasted time. He had only wanted to read a mysterious post titled “220427 Pyeongtaek Eseong-i Sighting with Photos.”
Setting aside the strange nickname “Eseong-i,” that date would have been the day Lee Hwan swept through Gate C-17. Thinking about Taesung who might have been interested in his traces, he suddenly became curious about what Taesung looked like that day.
‘Don’t I know any hackers or something?’
Searching through his memories, he couldn’t find such connections either before or after his regression. In movies, protagonists could hack into government agencies with just one phone call. Yet he couldn’t even freely read a single post on his friend’s fan site.
‘You’ll regret this… I know quite a bit of information too.’
Lee Hwan grumbled as he picked up his tablet PC. He strongly felt like he’d been doing something pointless, so he needed to fill his time with something constructive.
Immunity, gates, monsters, and transformation… Reading and re-reading those tedious papers, Lee Hwan wondered: if Taesung had joined the TF meeting with bad intentions, what should he do?
‘He’s not that kind of person, though…’
World first, or Kang Taesung first? As this absurd proposition filled his head, Lee Hwan nibbled on his lip. Well. If they couldn’t prevent the apocalypse, both he and Kang Taesung would die anyway, but without him, a peaceful world didn’t seem that interesting either.
Lee Hwan put the tablet back on the nightstand and sighed deeply. Suddenly feeling drained, he didn’t want to do anything. He found a crumpled towel in the corner of the bed and, as always, rested his head on it, lying motionless for a long time.
Once, he believed that he knew Taesung better than anyone else. Lee Hwan desperately hoped that thought wasn’t entirely wrong.
