IH Ch 32

Chapter 32

 

The older adults, who had their arms crossed or hands on their hips, raised their placards as if on cue. “Trash Journalists Out.” “Garbage Media, Return the Licensing Fees.” “Is this your office?” “Clean up your trash and stop drinking and smoking so much.” And so on.

[Get lost, garbage media that fabricate and slander Hunter Hwang Jae-i! Stop barging into homes at night and shoving cameras in people’s faces!!]

[Since when do hunters get criticized for exploring gates?! If you’ve got a problem with it, then you go solve the gate issue yourselves!!]

[You bastards! What, are you holding a ritual to say we should’ve all died waiting for the gate to fully open? If something like this happens in Seoul, are you going to wait until the gate’s fully open then too?!]

[Everyone! These people aren’t even reporting properly. They’re just getting drunk and throwing together half-assed articles! Absolute trash! Hunter Hwang Jae-i is being falsely accused!!]

With that final roar, the screen suddenly went black.

“……”

Hwang Jae-i, who had opened his eyes but still sat in a daze, muttered, “What the hell was that,” and shook his head lightly. But the scenes he had just seen continued to flicker before his eyes. The child confronting the reporter without backing down was surprisingly bold.

The last time I saw him, he was struggling to breathe with a respirator.

His eyebrows had lifted in genuine anger, and his voice had steadily grown louder. As he recalled the people standing around, waving placards in his defense, Hwang Jae-i instinctively curled his shoulders inward.

He felt strange. Unfamiliar—but not unpleasant. As he huddled in on himself, he subconsciously clutched something to his chest. A strange little sound escaped at that moment—kkup.

“……”

Only then did Jae-i realize he was lying on the sofa and that he wasn’t alone. The situation felt both unfamiliar and familiar at once. Still frozen, he flinched when the body in his arms stirred, and he looked up abruptly. And there was Dohwa, stiffly curled against him.

Jae-i was stunned motionless, unable to move even a twitch at the sight of the face right in front of him—so plainly visible that he wondered how he hadn’t realized sooner. As Jae-i held his breath, Dohwa, who had been silently staring back at him, slowly lowered his head and turned to look at the TV. The deliberate act of feigned distraction was so awkward that Jae-i clenched his jaw in frustration.

He quickly sat up and grabbed Dohwa by the shoulder. Just as he was about to push him away on impulse, Dohwa’s shoulder flinched. In that moment, Jae-i remembered—this guy wasn’t awakened. That meant he couldn’t use force recklessly. He hadn’t thought it through before and had shoved him hard, though thankfully Dohwa hadn’t been seriously injured.

Suddenly unsure, Jae-i glanced at Dohwa with a complex expression. But then his gaze shifted and froze on the TV, which had abruptly changed channels. A bespectacled reporter was pointing to the area where a gate had appeared. Recognizing it as a scene similar to one he had seen before, Jae-i’s expression immediately hardened. He reached out to turn off the TV—but then stopped.

“……What the hell is this.”

The once-immaculate living room floor was a complete disaster.

The table was littered with various plates and cups, empty milk cartons rolled around, and the floor was scattered with wrappers, plastic bags, snack packaging, and who knows what—possibly cookie crumbs or cream.

For Hwang Jae-i, who utterly loathed having anything fall onto the floor, it was a deeply distressing sight.

The fridge was about halfway empty.

He checked the inner shelves just in case—even the spot where he stored his favorite tart was empty. Closing his eyes against the onset of a faint headache, Jae-i turned around.

“……”

Not just the living room—now the kitchen was a mess too. Pots, bowls, and dishes were strewn all over, and the sink was cluttered beyond belief. Just from the looks of it, it was clear the other fridge had likely been emptied too.

Closing the fridge door, Jae-i pressed his thumb against his brow. He tried to calm himself and recall what had happened—but he couldn’t remember a thing. Which meant there was only one person who could tell him what sort of nonsense he might have gotten up to.

“Damn it……”

Jae-i slammed his head against the refrigerator.

This is insane. Still grimacing, he heard the ding-dong of the doorbell and muttered curses between clenched teeth. Who the hell was showing up right now? He was just about to react with his usual sharpness when he remembered the previous day. Ahn Yuna had come by, and there was a mess to clean up from the solo gate incident.

He really didn’t want to do anything, but the melodic chime rang out again, urging him to move.

Dohwa looked down at the fine, glittering chain shackled to his ankle. It was long enough that he could roam from the guest room to the kitchen and living room.

Lifting his gaze from the chain, Dohwa saw Hwang Jae-i putting on his sneakers with a grim face. Even as Dohwa stared, Jae-i pretended not to notice. After slowly straightening up, he turned around.

“Stay put.”

“……”

At the quiet warning, Dohwa’s round eyes looked up at Jae-i. Jae-i deliberately hardened his expression even further, and Dohwa asked,

“Can I clean?”

“……”

He had to leave two hours earlier than planned due to some last-minute preparations. If he’d had time, he might have done some tidying and run the vacuum, but he couldn’t, so now both the living room and kitchen were a wreck.

Leaving the house in that state was already stressful, and he also had to leave Dohwa behind. But with Ahn Yuna persistently calling and urging him to come down, he had no time to hesitate. In a rush, he had locked a shackle with an A+ grade strength chain around Dohwa’s ankle.

With that, there was no chance of escape. It meant one less thing to worry about. If Dohwa cleaned up while he was gone, all the better. He just had to nod, but instead, he remained rigid. When Dohwa began speaking again—“You know what those people on TV are really trying to do to you, right?”—Jae-i stiffened.

“…….”

“So why bother giving them what they want?”

“…….”

“If you’re pissed and annoyed, just ignore it. Or smile.”

Jae-i slowly closed his eyes and then opened them again. He looked at Dohwa, who was still standing there, and tilted his head. It was the kind of reaction that said, Did I just hear that right? Dohwa met his gaze squarely and said,

“You don’t care about those people.”

“…….”

“Don’t feed things you don’t care about.”

With that, Dohwa turned around. The delicate clink of the chain echoed as it trailed behind him. He picked up a stray bag in the hallway. Seeing that he was genuinely starting to clean, Jae-i was about to tell him to stop—but swallowed the words.

Don’t feed things you don’t care about.

Repeating Dohwa’s words in his head, Jae-i twisted his lips in annoyance. Who the hell was he to say something like that? With a dramatic turn, Jae-i stormed out of the house.

The heavy thud echoed through the wide, empty space, and Dohwa turned his head.

“……”

Left alone, the space felt even larger and emptier than usual. After scanning it slowly, he dropped what he was holding onto the living room floor with a thud. Then he picked up the remote, walked to the sofa, and turned on the TV. Hating loud noise, he muted the volume and flipped through channels.

None of it stood out as particularly interesting.

The outside world remained just as chaotic and noisy as ever. Everyone shouted their opinions, created a single target, and attacked it. There were plenty of people who deserved to be cursed at and condemned—but did it really have to be Hwang Jae-i?

Even now, everyone was tearing him apart for tackling the gate before it fully opened. Yet not a single line was written about the institutions that had failed to detect its emergence.

“……What good is it to send an alert after the gate fully opens?”

The alert should go out as soon as it appears. That’s how you minimize casualties and give people time to evacuate.

Turning off the TV, which he quickly lost interest in, Dohwa lifted his shackled foot. He stared at the long, thin chain for a moment, then flexed his ankle up and down. Watching the chain clink and sway, he let out a soft sigh.

“Still just a kid.”

Even if he pretended to be grown up, there was still a clumsy edge to him. Didn’t he even consider the possibility that Dohwa might break it and run? He was putting way too much faith in that single test result that said Dohwa wasn’t awakened. Shaking his head, he let out a quiet scoff.