“How admirable?”

A smile played on Hee Won’s lips as he rummaged through the pockets of the two men lying battered on the ground, poking them with his toe like he was going through trash. He hadn’t killed them?

His face showed a kind of pride as he checked the men’s condition and looked at his team members.

This is not normal.

Na Eun shook her head, thinking that all the heroes, including her friends and even that man, were somehow strange.

“Their legs are broken, but I think it’s because these bastards have weak leg bones to begin with.”

“I couldn’t control my strength well because of the alcohol.”

As Hee Won tried to grab one of the unconscious men by the collar and lift him like a sack, the man’s ankle twisted in a strange direction caught his eye.

Sun Jin quickly added an excuse from the side, and Seung Joo readily admitted her mistake.

Normally, they should have roughed them up a bit and then taken them to the police station or somewhere, but breaking their legs could be seen as excessive force by the center and get them in trouble.

However, Hee Won, as the team leader, simply smirked and let this series of incidents slide.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it.”

“……”

Seung Joo and Sun Jin stared blankly at Hee Won’s back as he casually took out his phone and tried to contact someone, without getting angry even once.

Though his personality wasn’t great and his private life was a mess, making him the number one person they didn’t want to get involved with, at times like this they felt he really was their team leader.

Perhaps because he himself had often acted rebelliously towards the center, whenever Seung Joo and Sun Jin caused such private incidents, Seo Hee Won was always the one to clean up after them.

He never tried to avoid taking responsibility for these kinds of things, always taking the blame himself and not fearing getting scolded directly by the center director.

Thanks to this, the two who often hid behind Hee Won when he got yelled at, though they didn’t want to admit it, felt a tiny bit of gratitude towards their team leader in moments like these.

Even today, though they had ended up bothering him again by calling him out when he was probably already on his way home after finishing drinking, hadn’t Seo Hee Won come running right away without showing any signs of displeasure?

Seung Joo and Sun Jin gazed blankly at Hee Won’s back as he talked on the phone with the center director, then met each other’s eyes.

As expected, the center director’s furious shouting could be heard faintly from Hee Won’s phone as he made his report.

[You crazy bastards! You should have roughed them up a bit and handed them over to the police, why did you beat them up yourselves! Why did you break their legs!]

Even as the center director yelled that they must be sick if they couldn’t go a single day without causing trouble, Hee Won just laughed leisurely in a gentle tone as if soothing a lover.

“K says he hit them lightly. These bastards must have brittle bones.”

[What did you say?]

The center director blew his top again at the completely unapologetic attitude.

Various colorful curses were heard a few times, and Hee Won placated his superior’s foul temper by agreeing with “Yes, yes” at appropriate times.

Finally, after about a minute of conversation, Hee Won hung up the phone.

He put the phone in his pocket and said nonchalantly:

“I’ll take care of this, so you two go home. Make sure to protect the involved civilian’s identity.”

He nodded his chin towards Na Eun, who was sitting quietly on a bench in the distance, swinging her legs.

She seemed to have not forgotten her position as a third party, and was just observing the situation without getting involved.

When Hee Won started the phone call, she had put in earphones in case there was something she shouldn’t hear.

Seung Joo and Sun Jin glanced at each other again, then shook their heads with the same opinion.

“We’ll take care of these bastards.”

“We just need to take them to the center for now, right?”

Realizing it was impossible to hand them over to the authorities directly since they had beaten them without even covering their faces, Seung Joo quickly ran over and picked up the two unconscious men like sacks of luggage in her arms.

“This is our mess. We should clean it up.”

To be precise, Seung Joo had acted alone, but if it hadn’t been her, Sun Jin would have stepped in, so it was as good as both of their mess. Sun Jin said as he took one of the two robbers from Seung Joo and slung him over his shoulder.

“You take Na Eun home.”

To be honest, neither of them wanted to leave those two alone, but their conscience pricked at the thought of making Seo Hee Won clean up after them again for such a reason.

Hee Won looked at Sun Jin with slightly surprised eyes, as if he seemed more mature than before. He shook his head.

It meant it was fine. But Sun Jin didn’t back down.

“You already get scolded every day for being disliked, we can take care of this ourselves. Don’t get yelled at by the center director over something trivial.”

The center director is really scary when he’s angry.

Sun Jin muttered gloomily. Behind him, Seung Joo approached with a robber tucked under one arm and said confidently:

“Don’t worry about us. We’ll just say we don’t remember well because we were drunk!”

I heard that in our country, they’ll let you off if you make that excuse! Seung Joo straightened her back with unfounded confidence. Hee Won looked down at her with a slightly hopeless feeling, then let out a small sigh.

The time they had spent as a team in the past told him that now, no matter what he did, those two wouldn’t listen to him.

[This is the timeline separator]

Why do you always crave ice cream when you drink?

Is there a scientific reason for it? On the way home, after getting out of the taxi she had taken again, Na Eun rummaged through the freezer at the convenience store and pondered deeply for a moment about the correlation between alcohol and ice cream, but came to no particular conclusion.

Putting aside her idle thoughts, she quickly grabbed her favorite strawberry flavored ice cream bar when she found it in the freezer outside the convenience store.

Since Seo Hee Won said he didn’t want any, she only needed to buy her own portion.

Still, feeling awkward about eating alone, she was about to turn her head towards Hee Won who was waiting behind her to ask again, when it happened.

Thwack. With a fairly impactful sound, Hee Won’s head jerked to the side. Oh my. Na Eun covered her mouth with her hand.

It was fortunate, if you could call it that, that there were no people on the street late at night.

A woman suddenly appearing out of nowhere and hitting a handsome man’s head with her handbag.

It would have been an interesting sight for passersby to glance at and enjoy.

Na Eun froze with the ice cream in her hand, startled, while Hee Won, who had been waiting behind to accompany Na Eun who suddenly wanted ice cream in the middle of the night, clicked his tongue in slight annoyance at the sudden blow to the back of his head.

He had noticed the woman running at him furiously as soon as she spotted him from the end of the alley, and after seeing the anger blazing in her eyes, he had decided to take one hit, but honestly he couldn’t shake off the feeling of irritation.

Moreover, it was worse because Yoon Na Eun was beside him. Somehow, whenever she was around, every situation turned out miserably for Hee Won.

“You bastard.”

“……”

After rubbing the back of his head where he’d been hit with the leather bag, Hee Won received the woman’s curse without reply.

Though he had already been cursed at via text message after storming out of the hotel room that day, it was understandable that she would be furious since he had called her out only to throw her away like that.

He smirked as he rubbed his head, which didn’t really hurt much.

“Feel better now?”

“I’ve dated a lot of men, but I’ve never met trash like you before. Don’t you have any manners towards your partner, you bastard!”

Hee Won’s gaze unconsciously drifted towards Na Eun, who was frozen holding the ice cream in the distance.

He didn’t mind the woman’s accusations, but he didn’t like that they were being heard by someone nearby.

There’s a kid here, watch your language. Clicking his tongue inwardly, Hee Won said:

“If you’re not done venting, want me to take a few more hits?”

“… Is that all you have to say to me?”

“Then what should I do for you?”

Hee Won lowered his voice.

Normally, he would have smiled slyly and slipped out of the situation like a snake, but right now, he was with an unexpected variable in his life.

More irritated, Hee Won gave up hiding his true feelings and approached the woman.

At a distance where their faces would touch if he took one more step, he bent down towards the woman who was much shorter than him and muttered.

To an onlooker, it might have looked like he was whispering tenderly in her ear.

“You knew that day that I didn’t call you to get back together.”

“……”

“I liked that you were moderately stupid, but it seems you were even dumber than I thought.”

Hee Won’s eyes were as cold as snow falling on a winter dawn as he mocked that he didn’t have a taste for idiots.

The woman bit her lip, newly hurt by that coldly indifferent face devoid of any warmth.

Seeing her trembling lips, Hee Won advised in a low voice again:

“Don’t cry. It’s even more annoying.”

Ah, I remember now. She cried when we broke up too.

Belatedly recalling the day he broke up with this woman, Hee Won let out a quiet sigh.

Comforting someone gets old after once or twice, and now it was nothing but bothersome.

He was going to ignore her and leave if she really cried, but fortunately, the woman gritted her teeth and composed herself, then spat out curses roughly again.

“You’re a bastard I can’t associate with.”

Delete my number. Don’t contact me again.

Warning that she would kill him if he contacted her one more time, the woman turned away first.

She hurriedly took a step or two, not wanting to reveal her hurt feelings. At that moment, something was suddenly held out beside her. The woman turned her head.

A short-haired woman with round eyes was holding something out to her with both hands.

It was the pouch that had fallen out of her bag when she hit Hee Won on the back of the head earlier.

“You dropped this…”

The woman narrowed her eyes as she glanced at Na Eun, who had been gathering and putting back the scattered cosmetics that had spilled out of the pouch on the ground while she was arguing with Hee Won.

The woman quietly took the neatly organized pouch that Na Eun handed her and put it in her bag, then asked:

“Are you dating that bastard?”