Delusive Fate

#028

When Ki Baek-woo, who had gone on a gate raid, began staying away from home much longer than usual. When I asked the center and was told that the gate had been closed for a long time already. When I casually asked about the inexplicable situation, Ki Baek-woo made excuses about the gate even then.

Had it been like that since then?

Thinking about it that way, everything that had been out of place started to fit together. I had deliberately tried not to think about Ki Baek-woo’s chilling change, but contrary to my will, the puzzle pieces suddenly fell into place.

Ki Baek-woo starting to avoid my eyes, Ki Baek-woo constantly getting lost in other thoughts, Ki Baek-woo increasingly not coming home even to the point of lying. Our disappearing conversations as Ki Baek-woo’s words drastically decreased, and even how he would fall into inexplicable guilt and suffer when I came home injured after acting so indifferently. All of it.

Ki Baek-woo has now come to think of someone else even when I’m right in front of him. He wanted to be with someone else while deceiving me with lies. That’s why he avoided my eyes, feeling guilty. I’ve now become a person outside his heart, so he’s become taciturn in front of me like he is with others. Then when I come home injured, only then does he feel sorry out of pity. Only then does he feel guilty for wanting someone else. Only then.

I kept hurting myself without even knowing this…

Not knowing that Ki Baek-woo was still trying to pretend he cared about me. Thinking that his last bit of conscience was still remaining affection. Like an idiot, I kept injuring myself and causing trouble for my teammates, trying to receive such a thing.

So foolishly.

I found myself so pathetic that this time I really laughed. Laughing out loud, I continued:

“It can’t be helped if work is busy. It’s not like you can control the gates, so what can you do? It’s okay, I didn’t really wait much knowing that.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. I just did my own things too.”

“That’s a relief then… I was worried about you a lot too.”

That’s a lie. I can see it now. The appearance of trying to worry about something he’s not really worried about at all. The effort to not find bothersome what is actually bothersome.

After carefully examining Ki Baek-woo’s face that had lost its sincerity, I lowered my head a little.

“I know that without you saying it. You don’t have to feel sorry for not visiting me in the hospital. You know that for me, the best thing is for you to return safely from the gates without getting hurt.”

“What do you mean filial duty? Hyung, stop pretending to be an old man again.”

“Baek-woo.”

“Yeah?”

“You must be tired, go wash up quickly. Let’s make something delicious to eat later. I’m hungry.”

“Okay… think about what you want to eat. I’ll make it for you.”

I lay back down on the bed and watched Ki Baek-woo’s back slowly moving away. Suddenly I felt like Alice in Wonderland. Is this the rabbit hole? The house, the bed I’m lying on, Ki Baek-woo leaving the room with that back I want to hug all day long. Everything is what I know, but it felt like strange things I had never seen before.

In an instant, we were casually telling each other nothing but lies.

The lifetime and very recent past where I firmly believed that even if everything else was a lie, only we two were truthful to each other, now felt like an illusion that had never existed. I just laughed this time too. It was the best I could do at that moment.

In the house where Ki Baek-woo didn’t come, I pushed the phone I had been staring at for days under my pillow.

[Anonymous] Seems like Hunter Ki broke up with that long-time C-rank?

One of our team members casually asked if his girlfriend was doing well, but he got all serious and said there’s nothing like that so mind your own business lol

Guess they broke up because of ‘that person’ lolol

Around that time, I became curious. About what kind of person I could become beyond this.

The young Ki Baek-woo had made me tenacious. I could still assert that in front of him, I was no less than a superhero, or rather, that I had tried my best to become one.

And Ki Baek-woo on the verge of adulthood had made me a person in love. Ki Baek-woo’s love made me euphoric. It was an addictive change.

In fact, I didn’t know what love was. Loving my parents or Ki Baek-woo wasn’t something to brag about as love. Because it was such a natural thing.

Others were the same. They said it was love when they loved something they didn’t need to love. When they lived for a complete stranger they had no reason to care about, that’s what they called love.

I didn’t know the difference between these two emotions. I wasn’t interested either. I was just consumed by the thought of wanting to live happily with Ki Baek-woo for a long, long time.

Very occasionally, during the times we wandered the streets, I had seen people willingly enduring sacrifices for their lovers. Even though they weren’t family, even though they weren’t in a relationship where they existed for each other like Ki Baek-woo and me. Reckless ones who willingly gave their lives for someone they had just met. Strange people who said very solemnly that it was either love or death. Bizarre ones who lived in ecstasy, holding hands with their lovers, embracing as if crushing bones, kissing as if gulping water.

I didn’t understand them. They definitely didn’t seem normal. So I ignored them. I must never become like them. Anyway, the purpose of my life was to survive together with Ki Baek-woo. For me, love was just an absolute bond towards Ki Baek-woo. So I would never fall into such abnormal emotions with someone else like they did.

But Ki Baek-woo begged me with a wet face to love him like them, and I obediently fell in love. Because Ki Baek-woo wanted me to.

The ‘such’ love that started then was an amazing emotion. The satisfaction it gave was tremendously powerful. It was something so fantastic it was almost desperate.

The emotion was so profound it was like the universe or the deep sea. The moment you stand before it, you’re completely overwhelmed, making something like me feel like a speck of dust. Something that makes you willingly worship its power that’s close to terror. Something that makes you endlessly pity those who don’t know it…

As soon as I fell in love with Ki Baek-woo, I felt the tiny gap between us being filled. I realized we had finally become complete. It was an absolutely flawless, surreally perfect sense of stability that dominated me like a drug.

Something that, once you know it, you can never go back to how it was before. Something that immediately destroys your body and mind if you don’t constantly consume it. That’s exactly what it meant when Ki Baek-woo made me a person in love.

And the adult Ki Baek-woo, as he had always done in the past, instantly changed me into yet another person.

Into a weak person who despairs, blames everything in the world, and a shameless human who doubts the person they love. And,

[Anonymous] Honestly, let’s not show off as a couple during raids

As hunters, let’s just focus on beating doom and destroying gate cores.

For hunters, dungeons are our workplace and labor site. Let’s focus.

This is absolutely not because I’m lonely and envious as a single person, but saying this to be professional.

Absolutely not saying this because I don’t have a partner, so no misunderstandings please thx

Comments

Anonymous Yesyes, you’re absolutely right, you’re not lonely or envious at all

Anonymous Tsk tsk, you lonely single person about to die of loneliness, what’s wrong?

Anonymous Is this about KBW and JYD?

└ Author When did I mention any names;

└ Anonymous I thought so lol I thought it was gossip about those two? But it’s true lol I saw KBW blowing on JYD’s eyes in the strategy meeting room last time; KBW’s gaze was seriously crazy; He kept touching his face after that too…;;; Dirty hunters focusing on dating without knowing the hardships of the analysis team… Focus on my PPT, damn it

└ Author As a fellow hunter, I’m sorry ㅜ Fighting, analysis team!

└ Anonymous You’re fine because you’re not a dirty hunter who’s dating

└ Author ?

Anonymous I saw them too;;;; We raided the A-rank gate that just opened together, and I thought the healer had no hands or feet; KBW was doing everything for them from protective gear to everything else lol I was really surprised when Mr. Ki suddenly knelt down in the dungeon, but it turned out he was tying Mr. Jung’s shoelaces, are you crazy ㅠㅜㅜㅠㅠ

└ Anonymous It’s still okay during raids because it’s chaotic, right? It’s S-rank terrible when waiting lol K Hunter’s body is just constantly facing J Healer, it’s like he only sees J Healer

[Anonymous] Is Hunter Ki Baek-woo Healer Jung Yi-dam’s magnet pet?

Or are they actually a one-plus-one set?

Why are they always together wherever they go these days…?

But when you ask if they’re dating, they say no, are we the fools here?

Comments

Anonymous Not dating? lol It looks like Hunter Ki started beekeeping with his eyes, honey is just dripping… lol It’s like “Will it fly away if I blow, will it break if I hold it?”

Anonymous lolol Who believes such gossip

Anonymous Interesting lol Two people who aren’t dating but have been caught kissing n times

└ Anonymous I wonder if it’s just kissing? lol

And, into a terribly stupid human who was the only one not knowing what everyone else already knew. Without realizing it, I had become a pathetic idiot who couldn’t see what was in front of me even with my eyes open. The adult Ki Baek-woo had degraded me into such a pitiful guy in an instant. It was futile.

Why didn’t I know?

Why did I only now realize what even people who had never exchanged a word with Ki Baek-woo all knew? How stupid had I been?

“In a loving relationship, you’re not supposed to doubt, right? You’re supposed to trust…”

I was confident that I knew everything about Ki Baek-woo. I didn’t even think to look deeply into Ki Baek-woo’s suddenly changed attitude, I just trusted him completely. Not realizing he was trying to distance himself from me, I even sincerely tried to accept Ki Baek-woo’s gradual changes. Adjusting myself to Ki Baek-woo’s changed attitude. I thought that’s what I should do.

Because that’s what you do when you’re in love. Because that’s what I thought…

I blinked slowly while mechanically scrolling down the phone screen. It was from the moment I returned to the cold house after witnessing the surreal scene in the central center’s hospital room. I couldn’t put down my phone. I was obsessively frequenting the center’s community that I usually wasn’t very interested in. It was idiotic, but I couldn’t help it.