But no one… no one asked if he was okay.

  No one asked if he was tired.

  And through it all, the one person who made it bearable, Mu Yichen, had stood beside him with warmth in his words, until even that faded into cold silence.

  The last thing he remembered from that life, more than the blood, more than the battlefield, more than the searing pain of death, was Mu Yichen turning away first.

  And that, more than anything, had broken him.

  He hadn’t even asked for help when death was seconds away.

  Not because he was brave.

  But because he wanted it to end.

  In his final moments, as the sky split open and his chest was torn through, Lee Aseok had felt peace.

  Not because he thought he could win.

  But because he knew, he wouldn’t return.

  He wasn’t a hero.

  He was just a broken human.

  One who had screamed for warmth from the world and got frostbite in return.

  Now, in this life, even breathing felt like a betrayal.

  He didn’t want revenge.

  He didn’t want redemption.

  He didn’t want anything.

  Lee Aseok gently closed his shirt, covering the golden mark again.

  He let himself fall backward onto the futon, eyes half-lidded, staring at the cracked ceiling above.

  If they were going to stay here, so be it.

  The door creaked open. Mu Yichen and Seo MinHyun were still there.

  Of course.

  They had been standing outside the whole time, as if the tension of their earlier encounter hadn’t been enough.

  Lee Aseok gave them one slow glance before walking past.

  His steps were light. His presence is even lighter.

  Seo MinHyun’s eyes briefly widened when he saw him. Freshly showered, hair loosely tied, skin clear and delicate, he looked like he had just stepped out of a dream. Or a painting.

  “…What’s the point of looking that good if your brain’s clearly broken?” Seo MinHyun muttered, clicking his tongue.

  As expected, he was ignored.

  Mu Yichen, however, didn’t speak. His gaze was deep, focused. His usual gentle smile had faded slightly. Instead, he watched Lee Aseok with quiet observation, as if trying to unravel a puzzle with too many missing pieces.

  Lee Aseok said nothing. He entered the kitchen and began preparing something with ease, like the two people behind him weren’t even there.

  The quiet sound of rice being washed, vegetables being sliced, the clink of utensils, it filled the silence in the room more naturally than words ever could.

  There was something strange about the scene. Something deeply out of place.

  Lee Aseok, who clearly had no desire to live or die, who had tens of billions in the bank, who owned the entire west zone, who just tried to jump off a building, was now casually making dinner in a kitchen lit by one flickering bulb.

  Mu Yichen and Seo MinHyun remained still, standing at the threshold like unwelcome guests.

  It wasn’t that they were unwelcome.

  It was that he simply… didn’t care.

  Not about them. Not about what they said. Not about what they thought.

  And somehow, that cold indifference struck deeper than hostility.

  Seo MinHyun, who always demanded attention, looked baffled. For once, he didn’t know what to say. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, glancing at Mu Yichen out of the corner of his eye.

  Mu Yichen remained quiet. His fingers twitched faintly at his sides.

  They had come here to investigate abnormalities. Instead, they had walked into something far stranger.

  Not a threat.

  But a boy who had locked his heart behind layers so thick, even his voice had forgotten how to climb out.

  Mu Yichen’s lips parted, as if to say something, but no words came.

  In the kitchen, Lee Aseok flipped a small pan of eggs, completely unbothered.

  The rain outside had slowed to a drizzle.

  Inside, the silence pressed on.

  Mu Yichen and Seo MinHyun had lived lives of polished silverware, tailored uniforms, and velvet-gloved servants since the day they were born.

  Raised in the highest circles of the Hunter Association and elite guilds, they had dined with ministers, walked through crystal corridors, and commanded battalions of awakened soldiers by the time most children were learning to write their names.

  But never in their lives… never… had they been ignored like this.

  Not in the presence of a man who looked like he could barely hold up a spoon.

  Lee Aseok moved in the kitchen with quiet ease. The soft sounds of sizzling oil, the clink of plates, and the subtle fragrance of sesame and soy wafted into the dusty living room.

  Steam rose gently from the rice bowl in his hands as he walked back, not toward the two sitting awkwardly at the edge of a cracked couch, but directly to the spot he had claimed earlier: the other, slightly sunken sofa beneath the flickering TV.

  The clatter of his bowl against the table was the only signal he gave. He turned on the TV and flipped to a cartoon channel, bright colors and cheerful music filled the dim room, and began eating.

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  Without sparing them even a single glance.

  Seo MinHyun swallowed hard.

  Or rather… gulped.

  It was involuntary. The aroma was rich and comforting in a way he wasn’t used to. Not fancy or flashy, but warm. Real.

  His stomach betrayed him first. A loud, unmistakable grrrrrk echoed from his abdomen.

  Mu Yichen turned his head slightly, expression unreadable.

  Seo MinHyun flushed and looked away. “Shut up,” he muttered to his own stomach, then glanced again at Lee Aseok.

  Still no reaction.

  None.

  As if they weren’t even there.

  “Oi,” Seo MinHyun finally snapped, folding his arms with a scowl. “In this kind of situation, you should at least offer us food. That’s basic human decency.”

  No response.

  Lee Aseok scooped another bite of rice into his mouth, chewing slowly as the cartoon character on screen tripped over their own feet with a loud boing.

  Seo MinHyun stared. “He’s actually ignoring me…”

  Mu Yichen, unusually quiet, sighed and lowered himself into the couch beside Seo MinHyun.

  He didn’t speak, but his eyes remained fixed on the surreal scene in front of him, a long-haired youth, who had leapt off a building less than an hour ago, now eating warm rice while watching cartoons as if none of it had ever happened.

  No matter how they looked at it, it was absurd.

  Utterly messed up.

  And yet… strangely grounded.

  After finishing the last of his meal, Lee Aseok stood, walked to the corner, picked up a worn blanket from the armrest, and came back. He gently turned the volume down on the cartoon, tucked the edge of the blanket under his chin, curled slightly on the sofa,

  And fell asleep.

  Just like that.

  As if the world had nothing more to take from him, and he had nothing left to give.

  Seo MinHyun looked at Mu Yichen, eyes wide, and whispered, “He’s broken. Like really broken.”

  Mu Yichen didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the sleeping figure.

  Not with pity.

  But with a kind of distant ache he didn’t understand yet.

  The moment the long-haired figure pulled the blanket over himself and fell asleep, cartoon playing softly in the background , a strange silence settled in the room.

  Mu Yichen and Seo MinHyun remained still, watching the fragile form curled on the couch.

  He looked peaceful.

  Too peaceful.

  As if the chaos of the world had finally stopped for him or maybe as if he had stopped expecting anything from it altogether.

  Seo MinHyun crossed his arms. “So… what now?” he asked, his voice a bit too loud against the quiet static hum of the rain outside. “We came here to investigate the gate patterns, and all we got was a half-mad pretty boy with a death wish.”

  Mu Yichen didn’t answer right away. His gaze lingered on the sleeping youth a moment longer before he silently got to his feet.

  Seo MinHyun blinked. “Oi?”

  Mu Yichen walked past him and toward the ruined entrance door, the one Seo MinHyun had blown open earlier with the grace of a drunken rhino.

  Seo MinHyun followed with a sigh, kicking at the wet floor on the way. “Why’re you going over..”

  “I’m fixing the door,” Mu Yichen said softly.

  Seo MinHyun opened his mouth to argue. It was an instinct. “Why should I..” he stopped mid-sentence.

  Because in that moment, he remembered the empty voice.

  “I don’t like humans. I find them repulsive.”

  He remembered the vacant eyes, the soaked figure standing under the rain, staring at the shattered door with the kind of silence that hurt to hear.

  Seo MinHyun grit his teeth. He didn’t even know why he was mad, or who he was mad at, the rain, the world, that weird long-haired guy… himself?

  Whatever it was, it made him throw off his coat and roll up his sleeves.

  “Ugh, fine.”

  With a flick of his fingers, a complex magic circle spun under the entrance.

  Glowing sigils danced into the air, and the broken fragments of wood and metal floated back into place. The pieces mended, fastened, and sealed themselves until the door looked brand new again, not even a scratch remained.

  Mu Yichen watched the door quietly, then nodded.

  Seo MinHyun, arms crossed, turned toward him again. “So, now what? What’re we even gonna report back to HQ? ‘Gate activity is low because some guy's sleeping through it’?”

  Mu Yichen finally responded, his voice as composed as ever. “We won’t report anything yet.”

  Seo MinHyun stared. “Huh?”

  Mu Yichen pulled out his phone and dialed a number. It rang only once before it was answered.

  “This is Mu Yichen,” he said. “I’m sending you coordinates. Assign a team to keep watch. Quietly. Don’t engage. Just make sure the resident of this building is safe. And make absolutely sure…” he paused, eyes flicking back toward the closed door inside, “he doesn’t do anything reckless.”

  “…Yes, Young Master.”

  He hung up and slid the phone back into his pocket. Then, with the quiet confidence of someone who always got his way, he turned and began walking off into the rain.

  Seo MinHyun jogged a few steps to catch up. “Hey, hold on. That’s it? You’re just gonna leave like that?”

  “We’ve done enough damage today.”

  “…You’re being weird. This isn’t like you.”

  Mu Yichen didn’t respond immediately. His gaze was distant, his shoes echoing against the soaked pavement as they walked away from the building.

  Seo MinHyun watched him carefully, frowning.

  For all his arrogance and bluster, Seo MinHyun wasn’t stupid. Something had changed in Mu Yichen’s eyes, something hard to name.

  And it was all because of one quiet, broken, long-haired boy who hadn’t even bothered to look them in the eye.

  “…Tch,” Seo MinHyun clicked his tongue and shoved his hands into his pockets. “That guy better not turn out to be some psycho serial killer or something. If you’re going this far just ‘cause he’s pretty, I swear I’ll drag you to therapy myself.”

  Still no response.

  Only the sound of footsteps fading into the rain.

  And behind them, on the couch inside the building, the cartoon kept playing.

  Softly, gently.

  Like the world hadn’t changed at all.

  The rain had stopped.

  By the time Mu Yichen and Seo MinHyun walked off, the clouds had begun to part, leaving only puddles reflecting the flickering streetlamps of the West Zone. A sleek, black car rolled to a halt near the curb.

  They both got in silently.

  The vehicle pulled away.

  Seo MinHyun leaned back in the leather seat, glancing out the window. His reflection stared back at him, hair still damp, brow furrowed, thoughts restless.

  It wasn’t until he walked into his own luxury high-rise later, and the staff and residents greeted him with polite bows and flattering glances, that he finally exhaled.

  “Finally. Someone around here knows how to treat me.”

  People turned to look, because he was Seo MinHyun, the youngest S-rank hunter in the country, handsome, rich, and infamous for his arrogance.

  Their eyes on him soothed his nerves like warm tea.

  He smirked.

  But it didn’t last.

  Back in his penthouse, surrounded by everything expensive and elegant, Seo MinHyun slumped on the velvet couch and rubbed his temple.

  That guy.

  That idiot.

  That beautiful lunatic with long hair and dead eyes.

  He clicked his tongue and threw a pillow at the wall. “Tch. Who the hell just jumps off a building like that?”

  Meanwhile, in the quietest part of the city, Mu Yichen sat on the edge of his bed, fresh from the shower, his silver hair slightly damp, sticking to his pale forehead. He wore a simple robe, but even in that, he carried a quiet elegance.

  He wasn’t reading. He wasn’t watching anything.

  He was just… thinking.

  And no matter how much he tried, the same image kept surfacing in his mind ,

  That figure with hair like shadowed silk.

  That voice, hoarse from disuse, saying, “I don’t like humans.”

  Mu Yichen sighed, pressing his palm lightly against his chest.

  His heart had felt strange since earlier.

  Unsettled. Tight.

  He reached for his phone and made a call.

  “Yichen-nim,” came a respectful voice from the other side.

  “I want a complete report on someone,” Mu Yichen said softly, leaning back. “Name’s Lee Aseok. Age… probably eighteen or nineteen. Lives in the West Zone.”

  A pause.

  “A civilian?”

  Mu Yichen’s eyes narrowed slightly.

  “Just find out. Everything. Quietly.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  After the call ended, Mu Yichen looked at the night sky through his large window. The stars shimmered above the dark skyline, cold and distant.

  He closed his eyes.

  “Lee Aseok… what are you hiding?”

  Far away, in the same quiet building the two had left behind, Lee Aseok stirred.

  His eyes opened slowly, eyelashes fluttering under the dim glow of the still-playing cartoon.

  He sat up wordlessly, a blanket slipping off his shoulders.

  The couch creaked beneath him.

  The TV was still on, low and cheerful, utterly unfitting the heaviness in the room.

  Lee Aseok blinked once.

  Then again.

  He looked around.

  No one.

  No arrogant hunter yelling.

  No silent nobleman watching him like he was a puzzle.

  He remained still for several long moments, as if trying to confirm it wasn’t a dream.

  Only after that did he exhale softly and reach up to brush his hair from his eyes.

  Then, wordlessly, he closed his eyes and expanded his senses.

  The quiet hum of the zone came to him.

  The empty streets.

  The flickering lights.

  And… movement.

  He focused.

  About fifty meters to the west, he sensed three people setting up surveillance equipment. Silent, precise.

  Another pair lingered on a rooftop, pretending to smoke but scanning the surroundings.

  His eyes narrowed slightly.

  So they left people behind.

  They were skilled, not amateurs. Definitely trained.

  But to Lee Aseok, who had lived in this hellish zone for over a year, they stood out like red paint on white snow.

  He leaned back against the couch again.

  His head tilted toward the window, where moonlight was seeping in.

  “You left a leash behind, Mu Yichen…” he thought without emotion.

  But he didn’t feel angry.

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