“……I see. So you really were the owner.”

The woman had a slightly regretful expression. It seemed she had grown quite attached to Mo Gyeon.

“Now go to your owner.”

“Whine, whimper. Whimper……”

Mo Gyeon cried pitifully. It was like a family being torn apart.

It really felt like Seok Hyeon was playing the villain, tearing the two of them apart.

“Goodbye, Choco……”

“Ah, ouch.”

Mo Gyeon was forcibly handed over to Seok Hyeon’s arms.

As soon as Seok Hyeon held him, he kept biting his hand. Blood flowed freely from the wounds inflicted by the sharp teeth.

“So where should we go now?”

“I’ll guide you!”

Doldol, who had been standing tensely beside them, moved. It was still amazing to see Doldol, who had been captured, speaking human language, Korean at that.

But really, a campsite?

Is this a joke?

* * *

The first thing in his consciousness was the dungeon. Dong Hwa couldn’t remember why he was here, who his family was, or what he did before.

“You, what are you? Where did you come from?”

A young man was looking down at him. His expression was one of bewilderment, as if seeing someone who had suddenly fallen from the sky.

“There was clearly nothing here before. Strange, very strange.”

His pale-colored eyes scanned Dong Hwa.

“Are you a native of this dungeon? But your skin isn’t gray, and your hair isn’t white.”

At that time, Tae Rim, who first discovered Dong Hwa, mistook him for a native of the Blue Starlight Valley. No wonder, as he was in a terrible state.

What he was wearing seemed to be clothes, but they were torn everywhere and worse than rags. His face was covered in something dark, either monster fluid or his own blood.

“……”

Above all, for a while, he didn’t respond at all when Tae Rim spoke to him, as if he couldn’t understand.

“Can’t you speak? Was there such a native here?”

Tae Rim tilted his head, but soon seemed to lose interest and turned away.

‘Survive somehow.’

“Please save me.”

“What?”

A voice was heard.

Dong Hwa suddenly grabbed Tae Rim’s clothes.

It wasn’t Tae Rim’s voice for sure. It felt like it was resonating from inside Dong Hwa’s body rather than being heard by his ears.

‘Somehow.’

“Ugh…… Aaargh!”

Suddenly, his head felt like it was about to split.

He had to hold onto this man in front of him. He mustn’t be separated from him.

This thought, without any reason or logic, repeated in his mind.

It felt like he should do as the owner of this unknown voice said.

“Save me, please save me!”

“What! What’s wrong with you! Who said they’re going to kill you?”

‘I ■■ go back and ■■■■….’

“Aaargh!”

“Have you lost your mind? Let go and talk!”

Tae Rim’s face seemed to split into multiple pieces. Again, an unknown voice tormented Dong Hwa.

“No. No……”

“Ah, really driving me crazy. Let’s talk after you let go of this, okay?”

Dong Hwa held onto Tae Rim as if he was holding onto a lifeline.

How much time had passed? The unknown voice and pain gradually disappeared.

“Let’s get out first. Once we’re out, you can get treatment or examination.”

Dong Hwa was finally able to leave the dungeon with Tae Rim’s help.

After leaving the dungeon, he underwent various examinations. There was nothing wrong with his health.

Tae Rim told the Association’s interrogators that Dong Hwa had appeared in front of him in the blink of an eye.

A person of unknown identity who suddenly appeared in the dungeon. Dong Hwa was treated as a potential threat for a while.

The Association, suspecting that Dong Hwa might be a monster in human form, conducted a rank test. The rank identifier used by the Association doesn’t work on monsters.

“What’s this?”

At first, when the identifier stuttered and took longer to load, people’s suspicions doubled.

In such cases, it’s either a monster or…

“No way……”

An S-rank or higher hunter.

Until now, only Hunter Jo In Young had experienced this phenomenon.

The alphabet on the electronic display spun rapidly and seemed to stop at SSS-rank. People’s pupils dilated for a moment.

But the S’s gradually decreased one by one.

Ding!

Eventually, it stopped at S-rank and the rank confirmation alert sounded.

The situation reversed, and Dong Hwa received love calls from numerous guilds. Even if it wasn’t SSS-rank, S-rank was still an incredible rank.

However, Dong Hwa asked to find Tae Rim and said he wanted to join Reconnaissance Team 7, to which Tae Rim belonged. The Association was puzzled but had no reason to refuse an S-rank hunter who came voluntarily.

Moreover, while it was proven that Dong Hwa was human, there were still many suspicious points. The Association planned to keep an eye on him from within to see if he was really a dangerous person.

After that, Dong Hwa stuck to Tae Rim like glue. Of course, this was Dong Hwa’s one-sided action.

He had an inexplicable feeling that being with him might help recover his memories.

Tae Rim also looked at Dong Hwa with suspicious eyes when he first joined Reconnaissance Team 7, but soon broke down his guard.

Dong Hwa was rather blunt, but he was good to Tae Rim anyway, and Tae Rim was the type who didn’t care about others’ opinions as long as someone was good to him.

The more he observed, far from being dangerous, Dong Hwa had simple and naive aspects that made him worry if he might be scammed somewhere.

Although he was an unknown guy, Tae Rim acknowledged his skills, which allowed them to become closer.

Then came the time when they participated in an expedition upon request for support from the Association’s attack team.

Originally, Reconnaissance Team 7 didn’t participate in expeditions, but Dong Hwa and Tae Rim often received support requests due to their high ranks.

“Hey. Aren’t you sleeping?”

As night fell deep, they looked for a shelter but couldn’t find one, so they were camping inside a cave. The attack team took turns standing guard to prepare for possible monster attacks.

It wasn’t Dong Hwa’s turn, but he was awake, so Tae Rim approached him curiously and asked.

“I can’t sleep.”

“Are you worried about being attacked?”

“That’s not it.”

“I’ll stand guard, so get some sleep. You don’t trust those bastards, right?”

The hunters currently on guard duty were recent rookie hunters.

‘That’s really not it……”

It wasn’t that he couldn’t sleep because he didn’t trust them.

The Blue Starlight Valley was unusually bright with planets hanging in the sky.

Dong Hwa already had trouble sleeping when entering dungeons due to heightened senses, and with it being so bright, he simply couldn’t fall asleep.

“Yes. I’ll sleep.”

But Tae Rim told him again to sleep, and Dong Hwa felt he should listen to Tae Rim, so he pretended to sleep.

“Hehe……”

“Why are you laughing?”

“Ah, you startled me. You weren’t asleep?”

“What’s that?”

Hearing laughter, he turned to see Tae Rim looking at his phone. It was an old device he didn’t usually use.

Tae Rim scratched his forehead with an expression of being caught and said:

“Ah…… My younger sister.”

“You have a younger sister?”

“……Yeah.”

He was uncharacteristically brief, seeming somewhat uncomfortable.

“Others don’t know, so don’t spread rumors.”

“Okay.”

Dong Hwa turned back and lay down, pretending not to have seen anything.

“……Do you want to see too? She’s really cute.”

“Can I?”

“Yeah. I’m showing you specially just for today.”

He seemed to want to show off despite trying to act nonchalant. Dong Hwa nodded and moved closer to Tae Rim.

—Waaah. Mom, don’t gooo.

On the screen was a little girl. She looked less than 10 years old.

She had big eyes and long hair. Only her bangs were cut short, revealing her round face well.

Her lacy dress, which she had put on neatly, was stained with her tears.

—Don’t leave me behiiiind. Don’t abandon meee. Waaaah.

Tears fell like chicken droppings. The mother’s face didn’t appear on the screen, but the hand wiping the child’s cheeks looked affectionate.

—Mom, should I not go?

—Ye-yes, sniff. Stay by my siiide.

—Then I won’t be able to pick these fruits anymore?

What the woman held was a fruit that only grows in dungeons. The child who had been crying profusely like a broken faucet suddenly stopped.

Her tear-filled eyes lit up brightly the moment she tasted the fruit.

—Is it delicious?

—Mm-hmm……

Her small mouth chewed. The child ate the fruit, getting juice all over her hands.

Was it just an illusion that she seemed to be spilling more than eating? Her cheeks puffed up like large inflated balloons.

“Look at how quickly she stops crying. It’s funny. Isn’t this cheating? We should have hired an actor.”

Tae Rim kept watching the video with a pleased smile.

“Is she your real sister?”

“Yeah. Why? Don’t we look alike? I heard we looked alike when we were young.”

Tae Rim had a mischievous impression when he smiled, but usually gave off a fierce vibe. His pointed right canine tooth added to that atmosphere.

But this little girl had an overall round impression. Was it because she was young? If there was anything similar, it was that they both had light pigmentation, with brownish tints in their hair and eyes.

“Now that her hair’s grown a bit, she doesn’t cry anymore. She doesn’t even ask which dungeon I’m going to. She doesn’t even get excited when I bring her something……”

Tae Rim seemed a bit hurt.

“When mom was around, she’d cry like this but then smile brightly. These days she just endures and holds it in. I feel like I haven’t been taking good care of my sister, and that always bothers me.”

I heard that Tae Rim’s mother was also a hunter. The Reconnaissance Team 7 they belonged to was created to find Tae Rim’s mother, Hunter Jo In Young.

Then this little girl must have lost her mother too.

“Isn’t it good that she doesn’t cry?”

“What did you hear from what I said? I’m saying she wants to cry but is holding it in, you know?”

“Crying means you’re sad, right? Is being sad better than holding it in?”

“Ah, why am I even talking to you about this.”

When Dong Hwa made an expression of not understanding, Tae Rim sighed as if giving up.

“Anyway, I guess I’m still not as reliable as mom. I want to make her smile again.”

“She seems to like that fruit, wouldn’t she smile if you brought it?”

“She says she doesn’t need it anymore. No, she says she doesn’t like it now. She told me not to bring it.”

“……”

“But she says looking at this once in a while gives her strength. Watching this makes me think I have to go back somehow.”

“Where to?”

“Home. Where family is. Don’t you feel that way when you think of family? Ah, you said you can’t remember.”

Tae Rim slapped his own mouth as if he had made a mistake.

Although they were colleagues who spent half the year together in dungeons, Tae Rim had a home to return to.

No, not just Tae Rim, but all the hunters here did. No matter what Dong Hwa did, he would never be able to fill that gap.

It didn’t matter if he couldn’t blend in with the group, but if this emptiness was because he had nowhere to return to, that was a problem.

If he appeared without reason, wouldn’t he disappear without reason too?

Dong Hwa was constantly plagued by groundless anxiety.

To create a place to return to, he needed to build bonds with people, but that was the hardest part for Dong Hwa.

It was because he had difficulty feeling emotions and thinking. As time passed, the fact that he was different from others became more apparent.

Even now, he understood wanting to make someone smile, but he couldn’t understand the implication of regretting that she wasn’t crying.

Aren’t tears shed when sad? Surely he doesn’t want his sister to be sad.

‘Survive somehow.’

It was only once, but that voice had been etched in Dong Hwa’s memory for a long time. That’s why Dong Hwa had lived until now.

But now he wanted to truly feel alive.

Not just a life of breathing and having blood flow through his body, but a warm feeling of sharing and understanding some emotion.

If he could do that, wouldn’t he have a place to return to, like the little girl searching for her mom, like Tae Rim worrying about the little girl?

Wouldn’t this emptiness be filled?

Wouldn’t he be able to not disappear?

“I’m sorry. I said something unnecessary. We’re your family, aren’t we—”

“Please give me this.”

As Dong Hwa’s expression darkened, Tae Rim hurriedly tried to apologize. But Dong Hwa suddenly cut him off.

“What?”

“This.”

Dong Hwa’s hand was pointing at the phone.

“Please give it to me.”

“This is an old device, so it might be slow, you know? You want this?”

“No, the person inside. Hyungnim, your sister.”

What he was pointing at wasn’t the phone. More precisely, it was the phone screen.

He was pointing at the little girl in the video.