"Sihyun!"
The moment Sihyun came out of the Gate, he snapped his eyelids open at Sa Cheongrin’s urgent voice.
But before he could even turn his attention to Sa Cheongrin, he realized the situation was different from when they’d first arrived, and he couldn’t help knitting his brows slightly.
What is this now.
The people gathered in a dense swarm in the distance were raising their voices like they were interrogating someone they’d surrounded. The instant they saw someone coming out of the Gate, they all turned their heads at once and tried to rush over like a pack of dogs.
Sihyun pressed down the impatient urge to immediately check whether Taewoon had followed him out, and he pulled the hat he was wearing down even lower.
"What’s going on?"
"Sihyun! While we were inside, the Gate’s color changed. The bus driver was waiting here, saw it, and reported it. Did anything happen to you in there, by any chance?"
Sa Cheongrin’s voice faded the longer he spoke, and by the time he asked about the strange point, he was almost whispering.
He got it.
He’d been unconscious the whole time after entering the formation, so it would’ve been hard for him to properly answer what people were asking. But if he said he didn’t know, the disgrace Sihyun had tried to cover up would be exposed, so he’d probably panicked.
"Nothing happened. Seriously."
"I see…. Haah. Alright. Ah—and the team members all woke up and got on the bus, so please go wait there too, Sihyun."
"Okay."
After sending off Sa Cheongrin, who looked a little rushed, Sihyun sank into thought. If he had to name what was strange inside the Gate, honestly, there had been far too much.
A formation with a difficulty that didn’t fit F-rank, the Demon Cult background that existed only in his memories, and even those oddly low-level mud dolls.
But Sihyun bit his lip lightly, pretending not to notice the sense of wrongness he felt from Taewoon’s very existence.
{Taewoon.}
He was in a hurry.
Sihyun quickly shook the thoughts off and sent a voice transmission to Taewoon, who should’ve followed him out. But no answer came no matter how many times he called, and the tiny fear of What if he didn’t make it through the Gate? kept popping up, making Sihyun more and more impatient.
{Taewoon?!}
Acting like he was fine, Sihyun still raised his voice a little as he whipped his head around, because Taewoon’s voice just wouldn’t come.
"Yeon Taewoon!"
"I’m back here."
Only then did a warm sensation touch down on top of Sihyun’s hand. With that shared body heat, the heart that had been pounding erratically quickly settled down.
Sihyun let out heavy breaths in his mind, and as he finally felt Taewoon’s presence—something he hadn’t sensed even a grain of until now—he started seriously debating whether he should go into closed-door training the moment he got home.
"Please answer faster. You really scared me."
"I’m sorry…."
"No, no. Just don’t do it again. Now be careful and follow me."
"Yes, Master."
At Taewoon’s obedient reply, Sihyun gave a small smile and started walking toward the bus waiting in the distance.
Now, it felt like all he had to do was quietly go to the lodging and rest. But there was still one more obstacle left that was going to annoy Sihyun.
"Looks like you were dying to run off on your own again."
Freeze. As Sihyun put his foot on the steps leading up into the bus, those words came at him—twisted and waiting, like they’d been saving them up.
He truly didn’t understand it. He’d never once been told he looked like an easy target in his life, but somehow, even after getting beaten that badly, this guy kept picking fights with the same consistency. At this point, it was almost impressive.
"Are you talking to me right now?"
"Yeah. You. A team’s supposed to move together. Not have one guy running around on his own."
It was obvious. He probably couldn’t do anything inside the Gate, and then he saw Sihyun talking separately with Sa Cheongrin, the evaluator, and his stomach turned with jealousy. It was so predictable and childish that a sigh came out on its own.
Sihyun wanted to throw those exact words right back at Jang Myung-hoon, but something good had happened today, and he didn’t want to ruin his mood by getting mad over trash like this, so he answered in a low voice.
"Team play’s over. Let’s just go quietly. Or what—do you like me? Why are you so desperate to talk to me?"
"W-What??"
"Ah, my ears are gonna burst."
A few suppressed giggles came from somewhere, and then the inside of the bus filled up with Jang Myung-hoon’s shrieking.
Maybe Sihyun’s words felt that unfair to him. He sprang up and started stomping and thundering around like he was a gorilla in human form.
Sihyun let out a tired, heavy sigh and took the front seat he’d been sitting in on the way here. Being around kids made him feel like a kid too.
{Master. Should I kill that one?}
A husky voice spoke inside his head. The coldness already creeping into the tone made Sihyun stiffen for a moment, but he kept his eyes fixed forward like nothing was wrong.
{You can’t. Just hold it in a little.}
{Mm…. Understood.}
Taewoon, who usually answered right away, sent the voice transmission after a faint delay.
At that dissatisfied tone, Sihyun almost snapped back again that he absolutely could not kill him, but before he could even say it, the touch that landed on top of his hand made his shoulder twitch.
They hadn’t seen each other for two months, but it wasn’t like that was some incredibly long time.
Up until the moment Sihyun left, Taewoon had been the type to act like he couldn’t even step on his master’s shadow, observing every last scrap of manners—mannerless manners and mannerful manners alike. The way Taewoon’s attitude had shifted so abruptly made Sihyun feel a little awkward.
‘What’s gotten into him since earlier?’
Taewoon was around fifteen.
There was a time he’d grown like a baby bamboo shoot—shooting up so fast you only had to blink. It must’ve started around then. One day, out of nowhere, Taewoon said he would call him “Master.” Even though Sihyun told him it was fine, Taewoon sat him down anyway and forced himself through nine bows, then started being excessively formal.
Of course, even the slightest contact—something as small as patting him—was completely banned, and he rarely came near him at all, so Sihyun had to swallow down his own loneliness, thinking, Is this what it feels like to be a parent raising a teenager?
Still, later on, those strict rules loosened a bit, and a lot of that drill-instructor behavior faded away. Sihyun had gotten used to it quickly, too.
Yeah. That’s how it was—until now.
But watching Taewoon stick right beside him and refuse to let go, like he’d gone back to how he’d been not long after Sihyun first rescued him, Sihyun belatedly felt a little pity.
‘Did he have a really hard time while I was gone…?’
Sihyun gently clasped the hand resting softly on the back of his own hand, then glanced at the shadowed seat beside him, hidden behind the curtain.
Maybe because they were touching, he felt like he could faintly make out Taewoon’s outline.
Pretending to look out the window, Sihyun looked toward where Taewoon was, then slowly turned his eyes away, leaned on the armrest, propped his chin up, and covered his mouth.
He kept wanting to smile. But Taewoon looked like he hadn’t been living happily at all, so he should’ve been sad—and the moment he realized his own true feelings were a little happy instead, a thin wave of self-loathing rose up.
‘Still, it doesn’t look like he forgot me the second I left. I’ll just treat him better from now on.’
Either way, what happened had happened. And Sihyun hardened his resolve not to let this chance that had fallen into his lap go to waste.
***
"Alright. As you all know, because of a number of issues, it seems we don’t have time to give extended feedback. Everyone worked hard, so please rest well until the end of the training program."
Sa Cheongrin smiled brightly like he always did, smoothly glossed over the parts he didn’t know because he’d been passed out, and sent the students in.
Sihyun could see his feelings perfectly, so he smiled a little and pretended not to notice as he headed to the assigned lodging. Only after he closed the door to his room did he finally let all the tension drain out of him.
"Haah…. Why am I this tense over nothing…."
When Sihyun pressed a hand to his forehead and let out a deep sigh, he felt another person’s presence in the space that had always been only his.
And as if proving it wasn’t his imagination, pale arms suddenly shot out from behind him, wrapped around him, and pulled him in.
"Taewoon."
"Yes."
"...Can you let go?"
"No."
"Okay, thanks…. Huh?"
"I don’t want to."
Sihyun stared blankly ahead at Taewoon’s firm refusal—something he hadn’t heard since Taewoon was little and whining that he didn’t want to eat more, so long ago it was blurry.
And he became sure this kid had changed a bit.
‘Is this what it feels like when a kid you had in the palm of your hand suddenly goes off into the world and then starts rebelling because he thinks he’s grown now?’
He couldn’t define it perfectly, but it felt like it might be something like that.
‘Sigh…. Whatever. Just being able to keep him by my side is already a relief.’
Clearing his throat for no reason, Sihyun lightly patted the hands wrapped tight around his waist.
"By the way, Taewoon. You can’t kill people that easily here."
"...I don’t understand. Someone without ability dies early anyway. And someone like that one earlier isn’t even a civilian, and on top of that, he dishonored you, Master."
There was a thin layer of anger in the voice behind him. Taewoon seemed pretty furious. Sihyun shook his head slightly like it couldn’t be helped, then turned his head and looked up.
Red eyes were extremely close—eyes that glinted as they met his gaze without hesitation, like he was genuinely curious.
"That’s…. It’s just not allowed here, for now."
So—Jeong Sihyun from the past, who didn’t know the first thing about raising a kid and had only been addicted to cathartic revenge novels and overpowered games, ended up having a bad influence on Taewoon during the time Taewoon should’ve been learning ethics and social skills.
Sihyun felt guilty, like he’d built the wrong way of thinking into him.
"Haah…."
"I’m sorry."
Even then, at Sihyun’s small sigh, Taewoon drooped like a dog that had done something wrong and begged forgiveness without a single moment of hesitation.
And that only made Sihyun’s conscience stab into him like crazy.
"That’s…. It’s not your fault…. So, for now, how about we at least listen to what they have to say before killing them? This place is—well, it’s the kind of place where you can’t just kill people easily."
"...Is that so."
Of course, for that to be completely true, he’d literally seen people who were trying to kill each other the moment he’d come back to reality, but he quickly erased that from his mind and smiled brightly.
For education, a lie was sometimes necessary.
But a moment later, Sihyun felt a little stuck.
The hands around him had loosened enough that he was free to move, but seeing his big disciple still making that miserable face while fidgeting with his fingers made guilt swell up again.