"He's making a big deal out of nothing. Just make sure he doesn't sue me."
"Is that all?"
Cheon Areum's gaze lifted from his hands at Yoon Seoyul's response. He was looking at him with a strange intensity—it made him uncomfortable. Had he always looked that way at Cheon Areum?
"That's all."
"....I heard you had to use your abilities in the dungeon. You'll be paid for your part in clearing the gate and saving Shin Jia."
"I didn't save her for money."
"I know."
".....?"
Cheon Areum's brows furrowed this time. Yoon Seoyul had always been kind-hearted and naive—too naive for his own good. Just because he had saved one of his guild members, he now trusted Cheon Areum without hesitation. It was this easy to win his trust, but it was just as easy to break this trust. He never forgave any characters in the book—much less Cheon Areum. If he had to break this trust in the future, he also wouldn't be forgiven.
"My hair tie? Did you see it?"
He had noticed strands of his hair falling across his face, clinging to the sweat on his skin. Brushing them back, he checked thoroughly—only to realize his hair tie was missing. Rian had tied his hair this morning with the same butterfly hair tie.
"I did not. Your hair was untied when you exited the gate. It must've fallen somewhere in the dungeon."
Pulling out the blood IV drip in one swift, practiced motion, Cheon Areum rose from the bed. Yoon Seoyul reached out instinctively, but his hand came too late—he couldn't stop him. Cheon Areum shoved past him. This was taking too long. Kim Ryung was already handling the discharge. There was no reason for him to stay any longer.
He had just grasped the door handle when the air around him stiffened, as if the room itself were holding its breath. Cheon Areum froze. It hit him in a wave: bloodlust. Not the kind born from anger or hate, but the refined, suffocating pressure of someone dangerous—someone trained to kill. His limbs wouldn't move. He recognized this—one of the main character's abilities. A passive suppression that paralyzed targets in the presence of intermediate danger.
"You know you're not allowed to use your abilities outside of gates."
"I told you to wait."
Today had dragged on endlessly, tiringly. Cheon Areum's head pounded with a dull, persistent throb. Yoon Seoyul stood close—too close—his fingers wrapped around Cheon Areum's wrist with a hold that was firm but not forceful. His gaze—still that same strange, unreadable look—lingered on the spot where the IV drip had recently been. He pressed gently against the small puncture mark.
"You're bleeding a lot."
"So what? You want me to get another blood transfusion?"
Cheon Areum wasn't weak. Even as an F-Class, he was still leagues above unawakened people. This much blood loss shouldn't affect him. No... he doubted if it would have affected even an unawakened civilian.
Yoon Seoyul might have appeared like someone who followed the law to the letter, but in truth, he always did whatever he wanted. He used his abilities outside of dungeons without hesitation, entered only the gates that suited him, and turned a blind eye to the rest. But no one could easily rebuke an S-Class hunter—especially not the guild master of one of the biggest guilds in South Korea. As long as his actions didn't directly harm them, people simply put up with his behavior—silently and obediently.
"You're an alpha, right? If you keep me here any longer, I'm going to release my pheromones and induce your rut."
The hand gripping his wrist flinched, and Yoon Seoyul dropped his arm instantly. In the original book, Yoon Seoyul had despised Cheon Areum's pheromone scent the most. He hadn't truly intended to induce a rut—only to intimidate him, to push him back with the scent he loathed. But even that plan unraveled with just the warning. The suffocating bloodlust in the atmosphere faded away at the same time, as if it had never been there.
***
Cheon Areum stared at the stairs with a long sigh before beginning to climb them. In the end, he'd awkwardly asked Kim Ryung to bring him a change of clothes and had his arm bandaged before leaving the hospital. The hospital wasn't exactly close to his apartment, but he chose to take a taxi home anyway—he didn't have the strength to deal with crowded public transportation, and he didn't want Rian to wait longer than he already did.
It was 11 p.m. when Cheon Areum finally stepped into his apartment. The place was dark and quiet—had Rian fallen asleep waiting for him? He closed the door gently behind him and slipped off his shoes, moving soundlessly. Activating his phone's torch, he tiptoed toward the bedroom, expecting to see Rian sprawled across the bed in his usual messy fashion.
"Rian?"
Cheon Areum checked the bathroom, peeked under the bed, and even opened the closet—Rian was nowhere to be seen.
"Rian!"
No answer came.
He hurriedly turned on all the lights. That's when his eyes landed on a small sticky note stuck to the refrigerator door. It seemed like it was written in a rush.
'At grandma's house'
"Haa...."
He had changed the entrance code just yesterday. There was no way Rian could've let her in—he wouldn't have. And yet, she had still taken him. Their supposed grandmother had managed to take Rian with her. Somehow.
"This is more difficult than I thought."
Cheon Areum sank to the floor in the middle of the vacant living room. Earlier, the apartment had simply felt empty—now it felt hollow, stripped of any warmth or life.
Where was their grandmother's house?
He would have to go and bring Rian back himself—there was no one else who would. As Cheon Areum rested his eyes, the day's events replayed in his mind. He should've turned Gunwoo down from the beginning. He'd been momentarily blinded by the promise of money. He needed it, desperately so. But this wasn't it.
He couldn't recall the exact time or date of Cheon Areum's second awakening—maybe it had never been clearly mentioned. What he did remember was the chaos that followed. It was around the period when a surge of S-Class gates swept across the country like a storm, pushing the already scarce number of S-Class hunters to their limits. So when news broke of another S-Class awakening, it didn't just make waves—it quaked the entire country. Cheon Areum didn't even have time to adjust. The moment his S-Class hunter card was issued, he was immediately dispatched to an S-Class gate.
Cheon Areum, unfamiliar with the overwhelming force of his new abilities, had lost control inside the gate. In the mayhem, one of the teammates—someone from Yoon Seoyul's guild—was killed by his hand. Whether it was on purpose or not didn't matter in the aftermath. That incident became the foundation of the reticent hostility between them. Yoon Seoyul couldn't prove it hadn't been an accident, and with the nation buried under the rising tide of S-Class gates, the government had no room to detain a newly awakened S-Class hunter. They needed every weapon they could get.
And he was terrifyingly a great one.
Ah. It was this same feeling...
Cheon Areum was surrounded by an inky, rising fog when he opened his eyes. He could feel it coursing through his veins—thicker, more potent than before. He unclenched his hand, and black energy gathered at his palm, swirling like smoke. When he clenched it, the energy vanished, only to surge back when he focused on that feeling again.
It hadn't been a coincidence. He hadn't suddenly overpowered Park Gunwoo in the moment.