The Way of Life for a Terminal S-Class Hunter - C110

Seo-heon was dreaming for the first time in a very long while. The dream had no context and was disconnected like a collection of short stories. The moment he first met Woo-hyun, their school days together, watching movies together, entering the dungeon… Even the timeline was a mess.

The only commonality in this nonsensical dream was that it always ended with Woo-hyun leaving or dying. Though he knew it was a dream early on, Seo-heon couldn’t escape this hellish illusion. But an even more terrible thing happened at the very end of the dream.

“Woo-hyun?”

Seo-heon was left alone in a place where he should have been with Woo-hyun. More precisely, it was as if Woo-hyun had been cut out of the past and disappeared, but to Seo-heon it was no different from being alone.

In that empty world, Seo-heon walked and walked. To find the one person who had meaning to him. How far had he gone? A huge light appeared before his eyes. He instinctively realized.

It was time to wake up.

Seo-heon’s mind awoke like that, but he couldn’t open his eyes. Though he intuitively knew Woo-hyun was beside him, he was afraid he might not be there if he opened his eyes. He thought this anxiety wouldn’t easily disappear.

‘Is he shaking his foot?’

There was a repetitive sound of lightly tapping the floor. Woo-hyun wasn’t the type to shake his leg when anxious. This made Seo-heon more uneasy, and he finally opened his eyes.

Woo-hyun hadn’t disappeared or died like in the dream. He was there, unmoving, which was a great comfort to Seo-heon.

“You didn’t leave?”

His memories were still jumbled. He couldn’t distinguish if the dream was real, or if being stabbed just now was real.

‘It doesn’t matter. Woo-hyun is here.’

He didn’t particularly want to find his sense of reality.

“How could I go anywhere with you lying here like this? Isn’t that why you pulled this stunt?”

Woo-hyun, on the other hand, was not like that. The moment he realized this, Seo-heon remembered why the situation had come to this by retracing the past.

‘He must think I was blackmailing him with self-harm.’

Thinking back, Seo-heon realized it would have seemed that way to Woo-hyun.

“No.”

That’s why he wanted to be clearer.

“I was gambling too. If you had resolved to abandon me, you would have thought I wouldn’t die from that level of injury and left me there. You’re the type to follow through once you decide something.”

Seo-heon deliberately paused his words. He wanted to give Woo-hyun time to process.

“Contrary to your expectations, I had no intention of getting treatment, so I would have died.”

“You really are the worst. You know that?”

The monster inside Seo-heon giggled. It felt like the day had finally come to hear those words from Woo-hyun. It wasn’t even shocking.

‘How did you end up with trash like this.’

He felt sorry for Woo-hyun who had been lenient when he should have pushed him away long ago, and disgusted with himself for not letting go despite knowing this.

“You realized that too late. You’re too kind.”

Seo-heon’s thoughts, waiting for the ensuing criticism, suddenly stopped. From the moment Woo-hyun started crying, time flowed very slowly like stretched tape. Watching him drop tears one by one like a pitiful child, Seo-heon felt like his heart was falling from a high place.

“Too kind? No. You treated me like an idiot.”

“What?”

Woo-hyun’s condition became increasingly precarious. His staggering appearance looked like he might collapse at any moment.

“You say you’ll die without me? Fine then, let’s die together.”

Seeing Woo-hyun shatter the glass window, Seo-heon’s mind went blank. It wasn’t normal for someone who hated causing harm to others to act like this. Blood flowed from Woo-hyun’s hand and neck as he held a glass shard to his throat.

‘Dangerous.’

Even more serious was Woo-hyun’s pale face. The two who had been running parallel lines now had completely broken, similar faces. Seo-heon jumped up from his seat, not considering his own wounds reopening, to stop Woo-hyun. In fact, watching Woo-hyun like this was more painful than such trivial matters.

“If you come any closer, I’ll really stab. Whether I stab you or myself. Let’s die together like you said.”

The image of Woo-hyun holding a sword on the snowy mountain overlapped with the current Woo-hyun. Suddenly, it flashed through Seo-heon’s mind that Woo-hyun might also be afraid.

‘What is making Woo-hyun afraid?’

Seo-heon realized the nature of the fear he had felt over the past few days. Only Woo-hyun’s disappearance and abandoning him made him afraid. Once he recognized this, he began to notice the state of others. Though he had been blocking his ears, immersed in his own emotions, there was one point Woo-hyun had found horrifying.

‘Woo-hyun has lived for too long with his life completely shaken without knowing anything.’

Woo-hyun had lived for too long without the right to choose. He needed to be respected and shown that he wouldn’t be manipulated. Seo-heon knelt and kissed Woo-hyun’s ankle. With a feeling of reverence.

“I acted as I pleased out of fear.”

He intended to show everything to Woo-hyun without hiding, including his ugly side. He wanted to convey that he had definitely handed over the choice to Woo-hyun. Seo-heon, clumsy with expression, didn’t know how to express this in proper words, and perhaps that’s why his body moved first. As he tried to lower his lips from Woo-hyun’s ankle to his foot, Woo-hyun stepped back in alarm.

“When you learned the truth, I was afraid you would leave me if you knew, and when I heard you were facing death, I was only obsessed with having to save you.”

Seo-heon noticed that he had frightened Woo-hyun again due to his lack of expression. Once Woo-hyun’s emotions became visible to him, the next part was easier.

“I’ve never been afraid of anything before, so I didn’t even know it was fear. Honestly, even now I’m just guessing it’s close to that emotion.”

Though he spoke at length, what he most desperately wanted to convey was simple.

“Live with me. I don’t care if my life is halved or whatever. I’ll die without you anyway.”

Woo-hyun’s face contorted again as if about to cry.

“I’m begging you for life.”

Seo-heon pleaded and begged from a low position.

“I won’t try to control your life. Instead, you control mine.”

Woo-hyun’s shoulders, which had been just listening, slumped down.

“You’re too extreme.”

With those words, the fragile atmosphere settled. Having heard what needed to be heard, his heart felt somewhat better.

“I’m not taking that hand.”

Dropping the glass shard, Woo-hyun declared he still needed more time.

“We can’t go back to how things were all at once. I can’t fully understand your way of thinking either.”

Seo-heon was used to waiting. If Woo-hyun’s future was waiting at the end, he thought he could wait another 10 years.

“But at least I won’t try to die. You hold my lifeline, and I hold yours. Let’s stop hiding our cards and have an equal relationship.”

Even as he heard those words, Seo-heon judged that an equal relationship was no longer possible. The scales had long tilted towards Woo-hyun.

“Okay. Let’s do that, Woo-hyun.”

Yet Seo-heon answered like this out of concern that Woo-hyun might feel burdened. He had to solve his own problems himself.

“Don’t just stay like that, get up.”

Just having Woo-hyun answer like this made Seo-heon feel he could breathe again.

Once deeply wounded, internal injuries don’t heal easily. Seeing Woo-hyun go to meet Ihan, anxiety rose in Seo-heon again. His stomach felt like it was being torn apart.

‘It’s not just because of jealousy.’

Seo-heon knew well that Woo-hyun, having made a difficult decision, wouldn’t change his mind so quickly. Yet he couldn’t stop the associations from forming.

‘What should I do if they leave together again?’

Sitting still, scenes of the two standing side by side, Woo-hyun’s back as he left abandoning him, flickered in his mind.

The bigger problem was that this symptom wasn’t limited to just seeing him with Ihan. When he held Woo-hyun’s hand to transfer life force, his heart beat wildly.

‘Why am I like this?’

Seo-heon deliberately focused on using the skill. But after the treatment ended, the symptoms worsened. Especially when a strange atmosphere settled with Woo-hyun, he felt nauseous like he might vomit.

‘Perhaps…’

As he probed his condition, something caught. On the day Woo-hyun left, they had been intimate. Even at their closest moment, Seo-heon couldn’t figure out Woo-hyun’s true intentions. Though his mind tried to pretend not to know, his body remembered everything.

His body, less sophisticated than his mind, created a causal relationship that he might grow distant again if he touched Woo-hyun. When in close contact with Woo-hyun, not just fear but physical pain struck. It was just like Pavlov’s dog.

“There’s nothing to come out, get some rest.”

He was anxious when too close and anxious when together. It was karma like no other.