# Chapter 71
On days filled with worries, even sleep wasn’t easy to come by. If only he could move around until he collapsed from exhaustion, he might at least fall asleep like he was passing out. But it was still too early to be reckless with this body. If he wanted his body to last long, he needed to know when to take care of it.
‘If not home, then the company. If not me, then Kang Dongha. The purpose of suddenly lingering around… wanting to be friends… Am I supposed to believe that?’
Memories that kept severing his nerves. Lee Hwan covered his face with his hands like someone who didn’t want to open his eyes. Since leaving Taesung’s house, there was something that hadn’t left his mind. Before he woke up, what exactly had Taesung been thinking?
Before the regression, Taesung rarely showed emotional fluctuations, but when his mood occasionally changed, he had a habit of pressing his index finger with his thumb. Before the regression, Lee Hwan had always been quick to notice his mood by observing this.
That night, Taesung’s left hand resting on the sofa armrest before he pulled Lee Hwan to sit on the sofa was doing exactly that.
During the time Lee Hwan was asleep, Taesung must have suppressed his anger several times already. That must be why his tone was so calm. That was Lee Hwan’s guess. When he first realized his face had been discovered, he truly thought he was going to die.
Unfortunately, whenever he met Taesung, he always ended up either being burned or having his head cracked open. This time, he figured it wouldn’t be that severe, but something similar would happen.
However, contrary to his expectations, everything wrapped up smoothly as Taesung left the house. He did hear some hurtful words, but looking back, it was an unexpectedly bland ending considering he’d assumed the worst of the worst.
Afterward, he had been too busy to think about Taesung’s intentions. Going home, managing his wounds, dealing with Kang Dongha, going to work… Then finally, as he found some peace in the evening hours, that’s when the thought occurred to him.
Taesung had intended to let him go without resistance from the beginning. That’s why he was able to leave that house so peacefully.
Blink. He had dozed off and woken up. Gradually, the sound of birds became clearer in his ears. The hazily brightening sky and the humid, lukewarm air announced a summer morning. His legs felt rough, and looking down, he saw that the bed sheet had been pushed halfway to the floor due to his tossing and turning.
“Huu…”
As he pressed his eyes firmly and sat up, he heard his pillow fall to the floor with a thud. It seemed he had slept for about two hours after worrying all night. Although it was a bit early, he had been waiting just for daybreak and couldn’t wait any longer.
Lee Hwan slowly got up, checked his phone, and called Kang Dongha first. The faint dial tone spread throughout the quiet room.
Eventually, after about five rings, the call connected with a click, followed by an irritated voice.
“…Are you crazy?”
“No.”
“What time is it now?”
“6 o’clock.”
“6 AM is included in ‘after 10 PM.'”
“How can it be included when a day has passed? It’s not like you’re living a 36-hour day by yourself.”
“Haah… yaaaawn… Fine, fine… Just tell me what you want.”
A sigh and a yawn mixed together perfectly, as if he couldn’t be more bothered. The voice that followed was deeply imbued with resignation—or maybe Lee Hwan had misheard. He absentmindedly cleaned his other ear and got straight to the point without any pleasantries.
“Kang Taesung, is he busy these days? Too busy to interfere with Team 3’s field schedules and gate order one by one?”
“Are you asking me to get you out of a gate assignment again? I could try, but if that guy interferes, I’ll pretend I don’t know anything, just like last time.”
“You lack responsibility.”
“You wake me up at dawn with a phone call and you’re talking about responsibility?”
It’s not dawn, it’s morning. The sun rises earlier in summer. How can a young man sleep so much? The more you have to protect, the more diligent you should be…
Lee Hwan grumbled internally as he took a sip of water. He had tried to wait until the sun was high in the sky. But what could he do when he grew more anxious as time passed?
Since the reward cooldown was almost over anyway, Lee Hwan decided to offer Dongha a sweet reward before he got more irritated. Dongha was like litmus paper; his face color always changed immediately when profit turned to loss.
“I’ll give you a gift, so shut your mouth and open your ears. Before August ends, two death gates will appear at Naru, so they’ll probably bring in a new gate from Yeongwol.”
The irritated voice suddenly stopped at this unexpected explanation. A lightning-fast change of attitude that gave him goosebumps. As expected, he had an uncanny sense for profitable matters.
“I won’t say this twice, so record it. Individuals can’t buy gates anyway, so don’t bother probing around when the time comes. Just hand it over to the advance team.”
“…Hand it over?”
“The advance team, exploration teams 1 and 2 will all go through it, and the supporters will thoroughly examine it too. After it’s rated as low risk, it will eventually be assigned to exploration team 3.”
“I see… You’re explaining in detail this time?”
“Because otherwise your greed would ruin everything.”
A straight fastball right to the solar plexus. Dongha remained silent even at words that would normally have made him grumble. Judging by the brief sound of hands moving, he was probably hurriedly recording the call.
“At that time, form a separate personal team and apply for exploration under the research department. You’ll be in charge. Don’t hand it over to Team 3.”
“I don’t need to enter personally?”
“Don’t hang around getting in the way.”
“Hmm… I guess something useful for research will come out? Since it goes all the way to Team 3, it’s probably a hidden room that’s difficult to find… If even a personal team can explore it thoroughly, monster by-products aren’t the objective. Minerals? Plants? Whatever it is, it should help my position a bit.”
He was quick-witted, which made transactions convenient. When it came to profitable matters, he could understand two things when told just one, so explanations weren’t troublesome.
“There’s a plant. Just know that much.”
After closing his mouth firmly, a faint laugh came through the phone, as if he understood perfectly. This guy was just pouring out irritation… Lee Hwan suddenly felt his mood souring.
The plant to be found inside the Yeongwol gate wasn’t rare, but it was used as a raw material for base reagents mainly used in dungeon research. Because of this, it was always in short supply and traded at high prices.
That plant was growing wildly like a weed in the hidden 20,000 pyeong underground area of the Yeongwol gate. Tough, dense, and extremely fast-growing.
Knowing this, during the night of contemplation while recalling the clearly changed Taesung since the regression, Lee Hwan made that judgment regarding the reward to entice Dongha.
‘This much should be fine to leak.’
If the discovered plant had been a rare species or if the hidden room was something to be discovered in the distant future, he would have just pretended not to know and kept it hidden. However, this was content that Naru had announced around the end of the year before.
If Dongha followed his words exactly, it would take about three months until the gate was passed down to Team 3. The credit would just go to someone else, and the discovery date would be almost the same.
‘It’s a shame, but…’
In any case, this was something Lee Hwan couldn’t prevent or delay with his own power. Then why not throw this double-edged sword to Dongha and get what he wanted in return? Incidentally, if that guy’s range of activity in the research department increased, it would be easier for him to pick up crumbs too.
The gate information he had given after finding the first piece of causality was always like this. A double-edged sword handed over after careful consideration to avoid affecting the future somehow.
Nevertheless, something always changed because of him, so he should probably stop doing this soon…
“By the way, how do you manage to find these hidden rooms so precisely? They only appear once every few years, if at all.”
“Is that a compliment or sarcasm?”
“A compliment, of course.”
“I’ll explain the details later, so try to divert the two gates I’ll text you about. As for Kang Taesung… haah, I don’t care whether you provoke him or make him suffer.”
“I’ll have to do as you say.”
With that compliant answer, as if he knew nothing about trying to back out earlier, the call ended. Lee Hwan unconsciously recalled Taesung’s smiling face, then shook his head to clear his mind.
There was no need to cling to memories from before the regression anymore. He had clearly realized it from what happened at Taesung’s house. The Taesung who had lost his memories was so different from the past, and if so, he needed to change too.
He didn’t want to be waiting for death in a doomed world, nor did he want a world without him.
After tossing and turning all night, he now acknowledged that Taesung could plot schemes. Though unbelievable, he also realized that Taesung could be in league with the mastermind. So his relationship with Taesung had to be placed in a lower category than the world, or even mere gates and workplace.
If Taesung interfered with his path every step of the way during this process, sad as it might be, he planned to be equally annoying in return. This was all for that guy’s sake. Yes, of course it was.
Having reached that conclusion, Lee Hwan tried to brush away his melancholy and fell back onto the bed with a thud, burying himself in the blanket. Kang Taesung. As he mentally repeated that name, he suddenly felt a throbbing in his arm.
As that sensation traveled down his spine, his head tingled all over. Only then did sleep begin to come gently, making his night of tossing and turning worthwhile.
‘Work… should I sleep for an hour and then go?’
Just before falling asleep, the image of Taesung in the darkness floated into his fading mind and then disappeared. The hardened face that had come right before his eyes, the tip of the nose that seemed both close and far, the breath that had tickled his cheek…
“Huu…”
It was strange. Conflicts with Taesung made him incredibly depressed yet kept giving him the strength to get up and move around. Because it served as quite a good seasoning for this life he was living again involuntarily, sometimes even the anger that welled up while thinking of him was welcome.
‘Am I really crazy?’
His back felt chilly, and drowsiness gradually mixed into that peculiar emotion. Lee Hwan fell asleep quickly, making the seven or so hours of tossing and turning seem pointless.
