NOVEL NEXT 47.
47.
Sehun’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Jian. Meanwhile, Jian examined Sehun’s nape and various parts of his upper body.
“You don’t have any. Then what on earth is this? I’ll have to do a thorough laundry of the bedding and disinfect it today.”
Jian, who had never even kissed, let alone had any sexual experience before or after the possession, didn’t notice at all what the marks on the skin were.
Although something felt odd, he dismissed it as unimportant since he had slept next to Sehun.
“What do you want for breakfast? I have radish and beef. Should I make you beef radish soup?”
Sehun sighed inaudibly as he watched Jian, his hair still a mess, looking inside the refrigerator.
Hoping that Jian would figure it out on his own was too much to ask. The marks he had left last night, unable to control his surging impulses, were dotted on Jian’s white neck.
“I like anything you make.”
Whether it was beef radish soup or anything else, it was clear he wouldn’t be able to taste the food properly in his current state. Seeing Jian with his marks on him made his lower abdomen tense.
Sehun walked past Jian to hide his swollen groin. Jian occasionally touched his nape while taking out the necessary ingredients from the refrigerator.
* * *
Though not severe, there were small marks about the size of a fingernail clustered together, so Jian put a large bandage over them and went to work at the cafe.
Hyunwoo, who looked unusually relaxed today, entered the cafe as the first customer. He asked in a puzzled voice about the bandage prominently placed on Jian’s neck.
“What happened to your neck?”
“Oh, I got some kind of rash.”
“You should apply a recovery potion.”
“If it doesn’t go down by today, I might have to.”
This kind of wound usually heals quickly in a few days. Although he now always keeps wound recovery potions in his inventory, it seemed wasteful to use them for such a minor injury.
While making the coffee Hyunwoo ordered, Jian also brewed his own. With no customers yet, he took two glasses with ice clinking inside and sat across from Hyunwoo.
“Is Hyunsu still debating where to go?”
“Yeah. He wants to go into Guild Management, but his grades are a bit borderline. He was whining about wanting to switch grades with Sehun. I heard Sehun got a perfect score this time. Is he some kind of monster?”
“Don’t call him a monster. And it’s still just an estimate, we’ll know for sure when the official SAT results are out.”
“There’s no way he messed up filling in the OMR card, right?”
“That’s true.”
Although he was relieved to hear he did well, he didn’t expect him to get everything right. Jian was the one who graded the answers Sehun had written on the back of his test admission ticket.
His heart pounded as the circles kept going on and on. He even shed a tear after completing the last circle.
“Won’t he be getting interview requests from everywhere soon? With that face and a perfect SAT score. It’s totally newsworthy.”
Jian was already a bit worried about Sehun drawing attention because of this. He was the type who occasionally received business cards from entertainment agencies just for walking down the street.
If this gets media coverage, it would cause a commotion, and Sehun wasn’t the type to enjoy attention, nor did Jian like it. Moreover, with people still targeting Sehun, it wasn’t wise to let him become known to more people than necessary.
“I’ll ask Sehun what he wants to do. If he’s okay with it, we’ll do it. If not, I’ll have to block everything at my level.”
“Right. Fame only brings headaches. And we still haven’t caught those guys.”
Hyunwoo nodded and put the straw in his mouth. Drinking the caffeine-laden coffee woke him up completely.
After the failed kidnapping attempt on Sehun, the whereabouts of Researcher Header were unknown. There had been no further approaches to Sehun since then.
Those who were captured chose to take their own lives while in custody, without revealing any crucial information. It was an unsatisfying result, like leaving the bathroom without properly cleaning up.
Afterward, Jian and Hyunwoo continued to search for the tiger mark with the Chinese character for “correct” (正) drawn on the forehead using the power of the dark web, but to no avail.
As the atmosphere grew heavy, Hyunwoo removed the straw from his mouth and lowered his voice slightly.
“We got a call from the U.S. yesterday.”
In fact, Hyunwoo’s visit to the cafe was partly to drink Jian’s coffee after a long time, but also because of the call from the pharmaceutical company.
“What kind of call?”
“They said the experiment is in its final stages, and they’re just waiting for the clinical trial results now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. So they want you to come to the U.S. once.”
Since Jian was an S-rank hunter, they seemed curious about whether the potion they developed would be effective on him as well. At first, the two debated whether to honestly disclose Jian’s rank.
S-rank hunters were beings that could influence national power, and Jian’s existence was so classified that only a few people in South Korea knew about it.
They decided to be honest in order to get definite help. The existence of an A-rank hunter wasn’t particularly meritorious to them. They provided the information after having a contract notarized, ensuring that Jian’s information wouldn’t be leaked elsewhere.
Thanks to this, Jian was hearing about the progress of the experiment almost in real-time through Hyunwoo.
“Take some time and go. Don’t worry about Sehun. I’ll take good care of him while you’re gone.”
With even Hyunwoo saying this, Jian’s heart leaned a bit more towards going to the U.S.
“I’ll think about it.”
“If you’re going to book a plane ticket, it’s better to do it early. Especially for first class.”
“I don’t need such a good seat.”
“The guild will cover it, so just accept it. You’re the only one who hasn’t taken any vacation benefits so far.”
Hyunwoo provided various benefits to guild members and supported airfare for one overseas trip a year.
Originally, they supported economy class tickets, but since Jian had never used it, he was thinking of upgrading him to first class.
“I’m still considering it. I was thinking of going together when Seonjun enters, but I keep worrying about Sehun. I want to be with him for the New Year too.”
“In your eyes, is Sehun still a little kid?”
“Probably will be for life, right? I’ve been watching him since he was this tall. You know too, right? How cute our Sehun was when he was little. He’s still cute now though.”
Hyunwoo wisely chose to keep quiet despite having many objections to his words as Jian gestured to his waist. Jian became a bit strange when it came to Sehun. He was completely devoted to him.
“Right. Keep clinging to that grown boy. I should get going now.”
Time flew by as they chatted over coffee. As Hyunwoo got up, Jian also cleared the table. Customers were starting to come in one by one.
After Hyunwoo left with a load of coffee for the guild members, Jian focused on his work as usual.
The only difference was that he occasionally touched his neck while working, providing service to regular customers as usual.
‘Surely it can’t be that…’
He pondered deeply about the shape of the wound he had seen in the mirror and suddenly reached a certain assumption.
The sensation of hair tickling under his chin and wet sounds kept coming back to his mind.
At the time, he had just brushed it off due to sleepiness, but now as those moments kept coming back, he felt uneasy.
Jian shook his head at the preposterous assumption. No matter how close they were, it was too strange for Sehun to leave such marks on him while half-asleep.
When he had a moment to catch his breath, he looked up plane tickets. After constantly worrying, it seemed better to just go quickly rather than wasting time like this.
The starting point of the original story was when the giant tower appeared. At that time, Gong and Su were described as being twenty years old, but there was no mention of them just turning twenty.
In other words, there was some time after they turned twenty.
‘Seonjun said he’s entering on December 31st.’
Every year when the year changed, he counted down to the New Year with Sehun. When he was young, he held him in his arms; from the moment he grew taller than him, they stood shoulder to shoulder.
He wanted to spend this New Year together especially, as it would be the year Sehun’s age changed to start with a different digit.
‘I guess going in together is too much. Should I go in around January 3rd?’
He thought it would be good to go with Seonjun because of the language, but it seemed difficult in many ways.
He set the date to January 3rd and looked up tickets. His pupils shook as if there was an earthquake at the unexpectedly enormous price.
If economy class was this expensive, how much would first class be?
Out of curiosity, he clicked on it, but quietly closed the window at the jaw-dropping price. Hyunwoo, who had willingly offered to support the airfare, suddenly seemed like a great person.
‘If it doesn’t work out, I should consider using teleport.’
At this price, it didn’t seem bad to add more money himself and use teleport. The approaching time of the original story meant that the day Sehun would awaken as a hunter was not far off.
Jian closed his eyes and exhaled shakily at the blood-soaked scenes described in the novel.
Even if many things had changed, Sehun’s abilities probably wouldn’t have. His heart still raced at the thought of those eyes, beautiful like the night sky, turning blood-red.
* * *
“You’ll sign the contract, right?”
Nod.
The real estate agent cleared his throat as he looked at the man who only moved his head instead of answering.
Although only his cool eyes were barely visible under the cap pulled low and the mask, the agent could tell that the man was much younger than himself.
‘Money is sin, sin indeed.’
With transaction volume approaching zero for the past three months, the real estate agent quickly shook off his unpleasant feelings and took out the contract.
The neighborhood, which had been devastated after an A-rank sudden dungeon opened nearby a year ago, had more empty houses than people. It was also known for poor security, with barely five transactions a year.
But now, after a long time, a customer who wanted to make a contract appeared, although he looked a bit suspicious. Fearing that he might change his mind and leave, the real estate agent lightly shook the paper and pen.
“Do you want to fill out the contract here? Or should we go to the office?”
The man silently held out his hand. Does he not have a tongue? While grumbling inwardly, the real estate agent clipped the contract to a clipboard and handed it over.