BRH 15

Concealing Moon Tae-yi’s eyes was no longer a viable option, as it had already been used. The first time could be dismissed as coincidence, but a second instance would surely arouse Moon Tae-yi’s suspicion of Ha Do-heon. It could even be misconstrued as knowing his ability.

Thus, Ha Do-heon was left with only one choice.

Thwack!

Ha Do-heon confidently braced his hand powerfully next to Moon Tae-yi’s head. He brought his face close enough to almost touch noses and asked in a low tone,

“Tae-yi-ssi, how about some milk? I happen to have received two.”

“……”

Unexpectedly, Moon Tae-yi was as silent as a clam. His eyes, wider than usual, were vacant. Perhaps because of this, the yellow tint that had been coloring his pupils had returned to black. Ha Do-heon seized the opportunity and groped around for the milk.

He was about to suggest they share one each when he heard heavy footsteps. Someone rushed over, flung open the ambulance door, and shouted,

“Moon Tae-yi, you son of a bitch! I heard you were going to burn this whole place down… Huh?”

The pot-bellied Hunter in his thirties furrowed his brow as he took in the scene inside the ambulance. He blinked, alternating his gaze between Moon Tae-yi and Ha Do-heon, then stopped Do-heon as if he were preventing a disaster.

“Hey… Mister, do you know who this guy is…? Once this bastard loses it, there’s no stopping him. Get out of here, quick.”

Ha Do-heon was inadvertently pulled away from Moon Tae-yi as the man hurriedly intervened. Glancing at the man, he seemed like a familiar face. Had he been on the news? He narrowed his eyes, studying the man’s affable features.

‘Huh?’

Someone was standing outside the ambulance, peering inside. His large frame made him look like a guilty, oversized dog, awkwardly hovering around. Do-heon craned his neck to get a better look at the man, and sighed as their eyes met.

The person lingering outside the ambulance was Song Woo-yeop. That is, the twenty-year-old rookie Hunter who had blocked Ha Do-heon’s path in the Boss Room, urging him to escape.

“Tae-yi-ssi, please stay here for a moment. I’ll be right back. I’ll be quick.”

After looking at the lingering Song Woo-yeop, Ha Do-heon asked for understanding and got out of the ambulance. Gwak Chan-uk, the pot-bellied man, or rather, the Taerang Guild Leader, stared at Do-heon with a dumbfounded expression before shaking Moon Tae-yi.

“Hey, hey. What the hell did you say to the Hunter Management Bureau that made them tremble like that? And you left the attack team behind and came out alone, you bastard! You could have at least said something to them, geez!”

Moon Tae-yi didn’t react to Gwak Chan-uk’s scolding. As Gwak Chan-uk stared at him, wondering why he was acting like this, Moon Tae-yi, leaning against the wall with a blank face, belatedly furrowed his brow slightly and smiled.

“I really can’t predict you…”

Moon Tae-yi, covering his mouth as if pressing his cheek, fiddled with his lips. We almost touched….

“What?”

Even when Gwak Chan-uk leaned in and asked again, Moon Tae-yi didn’t offer any further explanation. He turned his head, silently watching Ha Do-heon’s back as he spoke to someone outside the ambulance.

The man, slightly taller than Ha Do-heon, stood like a stone statue, nodding several times. He politely responded to Ha Do-heon’s words. Finally, Ha Do-heon patted the man’s shoulder a few times and handed him the milk and bread he was holding.

“Hunter Gwak Chan-uk.”

“Huh? Me?”

“Go get some milk and snacks. I want you to hurry back, because it’s for our Do-heon.”

Moon Tae-yi leaned back in the ambulance like a street thug, gesturing casually. His eyes were smiling, but the suffocating pressure was palpable. Gwak Chan-uk clicked his tongue and took out a photo from his pocket.

The photo was stiff, as if it had just been printed from a makeshift printer.

“Look at this first. The Hunter Management Bureau administrator took it from inside and wanted you to see it.”

“Oh… Okay.”

Moon Tae-yi took it and briefly glanced down at it. The printed photo contained an unimaginably large pit.

“……”

It was a gaping hole. The entire Boss Room seemed to have melted away. A half-broken spear was embedded in the pit, which was dozens of meters deep.

“The Hunter Management Bureau will schedule a meeting as soon as you clear the Rank 4 Dungeon. You know the reason for the summons, and that weapon over there? They’re going to extract fingerprints and DNA, but I don’t know if it’ll work. If you add today’s data, they’ll have a rough database, so keep that in mind. They’ll narrow it down to one suspected person.”

Gwak Chan-uk rummaged through his pockets as a habit, looking for a cigarette, but smacked his lips when he found them empty. Moon Tae-yi slowly rubbed the edge of the photo with his hand.

“It’s about time you stopped doing this.”

Gwak Chan-uk gestured sarcastically towards someone. It was Ha Do-heon, who was exchanging contact information with the man. Moon Tae-yi’s gaze shifted there. Unlike his sharp profile, his gentle eyes made it difficult to define Ha Do-heon.

With his indifferent face and neat demeanor, Ha Do-heon seemed like a disciplined Hunter, as rigid as a soldier, judging by his broad shoulders alone. However, Ha Do-heon had a habit of staring intently when looking at people. He had a boyish innocence. He was so pure and sometimes openly revealed his untainted emotions.

He seemed like a solid fruit on the outside, but if you pressed him with your hand, he would dent and cave in, revealing his tenderness and softness.

Moon Tae-yi had considered squeezing him violently according to his mood, but he shook his head with a dry laugh. There might be momentary amusement, but that wasn’t what he wanted.

It would be his loss if he broke. How could he ruin something he had just discovered? He was the type to enjoy looking at beautiful things for a long time, so he preferred to preserve them like a taxidermied specimen rather than crushing them.

Moon Tae-yi admitted that it all started with curiosity.

Three months ago.

The Taerang Guild received an unofficial request from the government.

The Hunter Management Bureau, a government agency, had created a database by compiling over 50 years of Dungeon clearing data. It included the personal information of Hunters by rank, as well as the size and environment of Dungeons, and information on Gate appearances.

The collection of data continues to this day, and the Hunter Management Bureau uses the information to measure the trends and ranks of Dungeon occurrences, and presents clearing requests to guilds accordingly.

Recently, however, there have been several cases where Dungeon clearing times have been abnormally shortened. The Hunter Management Bureau compared the histories of the Dungeons and Hunters, and discovered that certain Hunters overlapped.

Six Hunters were caught in the investigation network for their rapid clearing times and high survival rates.

The Taerang Guild investigated the six Hunters. In some cases, they dug up information on their relatives, even distant ones.

However, there was one Hunter in particular who seemed to have nothing to hide. That was B-Rank Hunter Ha Do-heon.

When Moon Tae-yi learned that Ha Do-heon was on the Hunter investigation network, he unexpectedly burst into a pleasant laugh for the first time in a long while. His laughter was so uncontrollable that Gwak Chan-uk stared at him with a dumbfounded expression.

-I didn’t expect to see you here… You’re still my type.

That was his first impression after seeing Ha Do-heon’s photo. Like someone who had been in love with someone for a long time, his dark eyes melted languidly.

The Hunter he had been assigned to investigate happened to be someone of his preferred type, whom Moon Tae-yi had been keeping an eye on. Ha Do-heon might not know it, but they had already crossed paths long ago. It was just that Do-heon didn’t remember it.

Since the state had legally permitted it, he investigated Ha Do-heon for a full two months. He didn’t hesitate to engage in actions that deviated from normal and conventional methods.

Stalking was one example. He knew everything from what Ha Do-heon liked and disliked, to the chopsticks and spoons in his house, his entire schedule, and what he had recently searched for. Moon Tae-yi had never let go of Ha Do-heon’s case for the past two months.

And now he was being told to give up on this… How unfortunate. He couldn’t do that.

The photo that Moon Tae-yi was holding began to burn from the edges. Ashes would normally form, but everything vanished without a trace.

As the photo disappeared, Moon Tae-yi habitually smiled with his eyes. Then, he gestured somewhere to Gwak Chan-uk, who was staring at him, and said,

“What are you doing? Go get the milk.”

Gwak Chan-uk let out a hollow laugh, wondering what kind of crazy bastard he was dealing with, and reluctantly got up.

“That damn milk. Tae-yi, huh? Just don’t forget that I’m older than you, okay? I’m in administration, you’re in the field! We’re equals, got it?”

As he watched the man’s back as he grumbled and went to find the milk, Moon Tae-yi erased his expression as soon as he was left alone.

His gaze shifted. As if the darkness of the deep sea was swallowing him, Moon Tae-yi’s gaze lingered on Ha Do-heon for a long time, gently rippling.

Ha Do-heon was currently burying his head on the round table, clutching his head. The sly bastards, completely unaware of his profound and delicate feelings, were gathered near the tablet, playing poker.

“Yes! Royal Straight Flush! I won!”

“Hey, you! Again! What kind of sorcery did you use?”

“What sorcery? This is online, so magic doesn’t work.”

“But how do you win every time?!”

“That’s because Mut’s head is a blockhead!”

“What, you little punk?”

Ha Do-heon squeezed his eyes shut, not even looking at the guys running around beside him.

Ha… Don’t those guys have any idea about the hardships of life?

“Stop it and sit down. We need to come up with a plan.”

“What plan? You said we’re running away before we get caught and experimented on, right?”