Translator: Min, Editors: Spade, Roki
Proofreader: Sapphire
It was 3:00 am when Yisun woke up.
He didn’t feel quite awake yet, so he just laid in bed blankly. The caregiver may have come in once to check on him, but his memory of it was a little hazy. He blinked slowly, then, feeling a burning thirst in his throat, got up.
Although he had used his hidden ability, the penalty was not as severe as before since he only partially restored the building. However, he still had a fever and headache, causing him to stumble a few times on the way to the kitchen. The caregiver wasn’t around, and there was no sign of her returning.
“Haa…”
After finally pouring himself a glass of water from the water dispenser, Yisun staggered and leaned against the table. The feeling of cold marble against his arms helped him slowly regain his senses. He stayed like that for a while, and with a regretful sigh, started looking for his phone.
At that moment, Sa Hyeon appeared in front of him.
“Yisun-ssi.”
At the sound of his voice, Yisun’s gaze shifted to him a beat slower. The corners of his eyes were slightly wet, either from the fever he was suffering from, or because he’d collapsed from crying, yet his pale brown irises were eerily dry. The contrast was jarring, like water pooling on a wilted plant. That’s how his glassy eyes usually looked, lifeless—or rather, as if they had been preserved after death.
Yisun blinked slowly in that state, then spoke in a hushed voice.
“…I’m sorry.”
At that apology, Sa Hyeon’s expression softened slightly. He stared at Yisun wordlessly for a moment, then leaned closer and asked, “What were you doing?”
“…Ah, I just woke up, and I’m looking for my phone now to check the situation outside, but I don’t know where it is…”
Yisun mumbled and moved towards the light switch. Only the dim kitchen light was on, so the whole house was dark. As he began to move to switch on the living room’s lights, Sa Hyeon’s gaze behind him changed, and suddenly there was a thud. It was the sound a phone made when hitting the ground.
Yisun froze and turned his head back to look at Sa Hyeon, who had his usual smile on his face.
“It’s not there.”
“…I haven’t even said anything yet.”
“I said it’s not there.”
“…….”
For a moment, Yisun looked dumbfounded. It was dark in the house, so Sa Hyeon must have used his powers to blast the phone somewhere. He had heard the sound of it falling, but with his head hurting he couldn’t pinpoint its exact location. ‘It shouldn’t be broken’ he thought vaguely, and eventually lost the energy to think about it, so he roughly stretched out.
Yisun collapsed on the couch with a sigh. Sa Hyeon stepped in front of him. Even though the house was already dark, the distinct shadow falling in front of him was clear for Yisun to see. After staring into the added darkness, Yisun calmly asked a question.
“Did Crusade go in?”
“They plan to enter at 6:00 am. It is currently 3:00 am.”
Sa Hyeon looked down at Yisun, who was asking questions in a fairly calm voice, and soon explained the current situation: Crusade would enter first, but there was a high probability that they would fail. Then,he briefly explained the reasoning behind that. Yisun listened silently, then bowed his head deeply and apologized.
“……I’m sorry. It’s, I mean, it’s because I suddenly lost it and acted strange… we failed because of me…”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“Saying it was sudden is a bit of a stretch. You’ve been living with corpses for a year, so we can’t really call your behavior an accident.”
“…”
“Qfii, la’r cba atja P’w yijwlcu sbe, P’w pera rajalcu atf ojmar. Ktf qfgmfcajuf bo Tlrec-rrl’r fggjalm yftjnlbg lc mbcaglyealcu ab atf gjlv’r ojliegf lrc’a atja tlut, rb atfgf’r cb cffv ab offi bnfgis gfrqbcrlyif. Pa lr ifrr atjc 20% lo sbe kjca ab ub ys atf cewyfgr,” Vj Lsfbc rajafv wbcbabcberis, byrfgnlcu Tlrec’r mbcvlalbc. Lf kjr mifjgis gecclcu j ofnfg, yea vfrqlaf tlr rkfjas tjlg, tf ilrafcfv lcafcais.
“We’re considering re-entering, but based on Yisun-ssi’s condition, I don’t think you should participate. We don’t know how long this penalty will last, and we don’t want you getting another one.”
“I, I can go.”
“Who knows, we’ll talk about that later.”
Yisun’s expression turned grim at the dry answer. His face was pale, and it looked as if his heart was sinking. He was probably worried that if he didn’t participate in clearing the third dungeon, he wouldn’t be able to earn his friend a Nullification.
Sa Hyeon didn’t bother to answer and soothe his anxiety; he just pulled out a potion and handed it to him.
“Drink.”
Yisun looked like he had more he wanted to say, but faced with Sa Hyeon’s fixed stare, he could only take the potion and drink it. It looked different from the usual recovery potion, and it tasted much more bitter. The pungent bitterness penetrated through even his headache-induced daze, his face crumpling slightly.
He covered the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand and made a complicated expression. Sa Hyeon quietly observed him, then moved to the kitchen and back with a satisfied expression. He had used his shadow powers to fetch water.
In fact, what Sa Hyeon had given Yisun was not just a recovery potion, but a sleeping potion. If he drank it, he would pass out for at least 12 hours and up to a day. It was meant to stop the stubborn Yisun from dragging himself to the meeting.
Besides, it had only been a few hours since his unstable outburst, so it was better to let him sleep. When he returned with the water, as intended, Yisun looked much less focused.
Unaware of Sa Hyeon’s intentions, Yisun barely opened his eyes and took the water from him. He felt strangely drowsy and unfocused, almost losing his grip on the cup as he drank. Watching dazedly as Sa Hyeon supported the glass from below, Yisun muttered, “……I was wondering, can I ask you a question?”
“You do realize that already counts as a question, right?”
“When you just, like, move through the shadows, how do you do that?”
Sa Hyeon’s expression became subtle at the unexpected words. But Yisun was really serious and began to ramble on, saying that it was a question he’d held for a long time.
“While we were training, you could go through glass windows and stuff… So it doesn’t matter if there’s an obstacle in front of you, as long as there’s darkness beyond it within your sight?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much it, but what’s with the sudden curiosity?”
“You analyze my abilities all the time, so why can’t I ask you?”
Yisun furrowed his eyebrows, feeling mildly aggrieved, but even that expression quickly dissipated. Sa Hyeon stared down at him and briefly wondered if the potion contained alcohol. But he’d checked the ingredients before bringing it with him, so it couldn’t be. Was it just drowsiness? His black eyes swept over Yisun, checking his condition.
“Does it matter how far away it is? Or can you move as long as there’s darkness or shadows you can see?”
“Yes. I didn’t expect Yisun-ssi to be such an inquisitive person…”
“Then would it be possible from here, all the way there?”
Yisun raised his hand and pointed to the veranda. Living in a penthouse, he had a pretty good view of the city, and the building he was pointing to was probably the furthest away he could see.
When Sa Hyeon didn’t respond for a moment to gauge the distance, Yisun took the silence as a confirmation, and briefly lamented.
“That’s a total scam…”
“…….”
“Can you move using a telescope? Go from here straight to Yongin? Is that why you just suddenly appeared in front of me?”
“….Yisun-ssi. How about you go to sleep now?”
“If you look through a telescope, wow, you can even teleport to the moon?”
“Ha.”
In the end, Sa Hyeon laughed in disbelief. Even though he was an S-class, he couldn’t travel that far. He had to split the distance up a few times. He tried to give Yisun a rough estimate of the distance, but his ramblings were too ridiculous. Sa Hyeon looked down at him in disbelief and said, “Yisun-ssi, it seems the tremendous amount of sleepless nights is catching up to you.”
“It’s your fraudulent teleportation ability that’s tremendous.”
“Haa…”
Letting out something that was half a laugh and half a sigh, Sa Hyeon put his hand to his forehead. His head didn’t hurt at all when he was analyzing the failure factors in the conference room, but now he was feeling a little helpless. It wasn’t all that bad; in fact, it was almost funny.
Eventually, Sa Hyeon sat down next to Yisun and leaned him against the head of the sofa. The idea was to get him to fall asleep and then move him, but Yisun’s questions were already coming at a slower pace. He was obviously drifting off to sleep, yet deliberately trying to think of something else.
“So, if you look through the telescope, can you go to foreign countries?”
“It’d be a crime if I did that, Yisun-ssi.”
“…….”
Yisun’s expression became strange at the exasperated tone. He looked at Sa Hyeon wordlessly for a moment, as if he simply didn’t understand his words. They stared at each other for a while before Sa Hyeon finally spoke.
“If an S-class Hunter from one country enters another country without going through any formalities first, they’re considered a threat, so the laws concerning this are pretty strict… Well, I’ve been to other countries as a dispatch when they requested our cooperation.”
“…Really? …I’m envious…”
“Do you want to go abroad?”
“I once went on a graduation trip with my friends… a long time ago.”
Sa Hyeon led Yisun to lean back against the sofa as he murmured in a hazy tone. The couch was very wide and big enough to lie down on, but Yisun was very stubborn and avoided doing so altogether. Eventually, Sa Hyeon decided to bide his time and listen to what Yisun said next to him.
“Eight years ago… I had just graduated from middle school, so all my friends and I went to Seoul for a graduation trip. We lived in Yongin, so going to Seoul couldn’t be considered traveling, but it took a long time, so it was a trip. Anyway, it was thrilling at the time. Everyone was excited yet pretending they were not…”
As he spoke, Yisun laughed occasionally while reminiscing. His gaze was blurred, barely able to picture the place. The moment he had heard “eight years ago,” Sa Hyeon guessed what event had occurred.
“Our middle school graduation trip was in Seoul, so we talked about traveling abroad once we graduated from high school. But then the Yongin dungeon explosion happened…”
For a moment, Yisun’s voice trailed off. He leaned his head against the table, still, as if something was squeezing his throat, and then he swallowed hard and talked about something else. He changed the subject, not wanting to talk about the First Great Dungeon, or the loss of his parents.
“When I was twenty, I took the awakening test and was evaluated as an S-class Restorer. They then told me things like, ‘If it’s like this then we can really go abroad’ or, ‘When we graduate from high school, we can actually go together…’… So we made a list of countries to go to…”
“Do you still remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. And then I remember that the… guild came to visit, and while we were all sitting in the living room talking, they barged in. Seriously… those fucking bastards…”
Sa Hyeon stared at him quietly. Yisun was usually quiet and soft-spoken, so whenever he deliberately used harsh words, there was always an air of awkwardness that accompanied it, a sense of incongruity that was completely out of character for him. But there was also a sense of anger, frustration, and bitterness that was clearly felt when he forced himself to use those words.
“Really…”
Yisun covered his face with his hands, silent, as if he couldn’t finish, as if there were too many things he wanted to say but couldn’t get them out, as if there were too many terrible emotions tangled up in them. His lips, visible beneath his hand, twitched a few times, then clamped shut.
As he watched him, Sa Hyeon felt a subtle sense of frustration… It was a plain and simple fatigue. He’d never had to soothe anyone’s feelings before, so the current situation was frustrating, precisely because he couldn’t predict or understand Yisun’s fluctuating emotions.
He felt a little sorry for Yisun who dwelled on a faraway past, but then realized that his frustration was because all of Yisun’s problems were outside of his control. If he disliked someone so much that he had a problem using his current abilities, he could deal with that person;if money was an issue, it was even easier. But Yisun’s problems weren’t of that sort.
Sa Hyeon hated situations he couldn’t control. He frowned slightly, then spoke calmly.
“Almost all of the people from the Honshin Guild who tried to sell you a fraudulent contract have been swept up in the Second Great Dungeon and died. Do you want me to find the Honshin members who weren’t there and deal with them? Even if the Honshin Guild is disbanded now, they should be easy to find.”
“….”
“You don’t want revenge, do you? Are you worried about missing your chance to get into the third dungeon and use Nullification on one of your friends? Then if you do something other than the seven dungeons raid for me in the future, and I promised that I would nullify them… Would you stop crying now if I said I’d give you another chance?”
Sa Hyeon’s tone wasn’t sarcastic at all, but as he went on, Yisun felt a growing sense of discomfort… From the moment Sa Hyeon uttered the word “friend,” Yisun looked at him in disbelief. Although no tears were streaming down his cheeks, the reddened corners of his eyes and wet eyelashes revealed what he had covered with his hand a moment ago.
If anything, Sa Hyeon’s words made the tears disappear, and Yisun gave him an incredulous look. Sa Hyeon looked even more frustrated when he said, “I don’t know what to do when you cry, Yisun-ssi.”
Yisun froze at the words. At first, he was surprised that an expression like “I don’t know” was coming out of Sa Hyeon’s mouth, but then he objected to his words.
“I only cried once.”
“Just now.”
“…….”
“And when you cried last time, an entire temple was destroyed because you couldn’t maintain your hidden ability. So if you’re going to do something that has such a big impact on your surroundings, then at least come up with a backup plan.”
Listening to Sa Hyeon’s words, Yisun became increasingly resigned. For a moment, he almost forgot that this was the kind of person Sa Hyeon was, and started talking about his past without realizing it. Suddenly, he was overwhelmed with drowsiness, and realized he hadn’t been thinking straight all along.
Feeling very tired, he finally leaned his head back on the sofa and closed his eyes, and only then did he stop talking. Sa Hyeon was probably still telling him that if the building collapsed again in the fourth dungeon, the Chord Hunters would have to decide how to respond, and so he should give a signal if he was going to cry, or at least say something about how to deal with his behavior. Yisun barely paid attention to him.
However, when he pursed his lips as if preparing to say something else, Sa Hyeon covered his eyes with his hand.
“……What are you doing?”
“Close your eyes and go to sleep. Now.”
The calm yet firm tone of his voice stunned Yisun, but he didn’t have the strength to push his hand away. And so, with the weight of Sa Hyeon’s hand on his face, he felt as if he would fall asleep at any moment. Even though the hand felt lukewarm on his feverish face, the tepid warmth of his touch tugged at his heartstrings for a moment.
Yisun felt weak and afraid in the face of everything alive, and in the end, he muttered somewhat impulsively in his hazy mind.
“… Please don’t die,” his voice was so faint it seemed to break. “If you don’t die in front of me, that’s the… backup plan.”
Yisun left it at that, and Sa Hyeon stared at him. He didn’t know about the other Hunters, but Sa Hyeon was strangely reminded of the man who had tried to save him in the third dungeon, and so he spoke slowly.
“Yisun-ssi, S-classes don’t die easily.”
S-class Hunters were far more resistant to damage than other Hunters. In addition, their survival instincts made them more tenacious and resilient in critical situations. Despite the risks and dangers of being a Hunter, there were very few S-class deaths in the world so far. An S-class wouldn’t die even by mistake.
Since all of this was too much for the drowsy Yisun to take in, Sa Hyeon slowly moved his hand away and quietly whispered that S-classes couldn’t die. It was a gentle, comforting tone, as if he were soothing a child throwing a tantrum.
Yisun smiled self-deprecatingly at the words.
Aww 🥰🥺
Thank you for the high quality translations Min ❤️ Hope you’re taking care of yourself, and we appreciate your updates!
Awww Liliii ur too sweet, tysm for your lovely comment ~🥺💞
🥲
( つ◠ω•́)つ🍪
Thank you so much for the translation ❤️
Thank you sm for reading ( ◠‿◠ )🌸💞
I like this chapter so much
Thank you for your translation 💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚
Aww I’m soo happy u liked it ( つ•̀ω•́)つ🌸
OH MY GOSHHHH AGAGAGAGAHAGHAHAHA I NEED MORE 😩😫😫
THANK YOU TRANSLATOR TEHHEEHEH
THANK YOU ( つ•̀‿•́)つ~💞🌸
Thanks for the chapter ❤️❤️
Thank you for reaading~<3🌸🐤
Thank you for the Translation!
This is quite sweet but so sad.
Thank you for reaading~<3🌸🐤 and yes ㅠㅡㅠ about time for more sweetnesss and less angst please (who am I kidding)
Thank you for the translation !
Thank you for reaading~<3🌸🐤
What a tender an quiet moment, so emotional 🥺 thank you so much for the translation!❤️❤️❤️
this man is the greenest red flag.
thanks for translating!!!!