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“What’s with the rush?”
“Just one thing, haah… Just one thing, and I’ll ask, Taeseongyeon-ssi.”
The pale sunlight tinged one of Taeseongyeon’s cheeks. Dokyeom stared at those eyes veiled in a strange hue and asked in a suppressed voice. His head ached for some reason.
“The hunters on the business trip to China.”
The faint smile vanished from Taeseongyeon’s lips. As he pressed his firm mouth shut, the atmosphere turned cynical.
“The life recognition devices… They all register as alive, right?”
It was a matter of timing. Knowing this alone would buy enough time to set plans without a hitch.
Dokyeom looked straight at Taeseongyeon, waiting for an answer. An unfamiliar silence lingered for a long while, and only when the shadows receded slightly did those sealed lips open.
But before a sound could emerge—
Drip—
With a crushing pain in his head, something splattered under his nose. He unconsciously wiped it with the back of his hand and saw blood.
“Han Dokyeom-ssi.”
A restrained voice brushed past his ear, and his body was grabbed and turned around in one go. When he realized the arm wrapped around his waist had tightened, Dokyeom found himself sitting on Taeseongyeon’s desk, cheeks held, facing him.
“Ah…”
“Lower your head.”
Over Taeseongyeon’s shoulder, he glimpsed Beom Yeonhu and Baek Jiun, looking bewildered and anxious. Taeseongyeon’s outer garment pressed under his nose, and a hand on the back of his neck pushed his head down.
Yet the metallic smell of blood didn’t stop.
…This is bad.
Haa—A sigh as faint as dying breath escaped.
Really bad. It seemed the worst had happened.
Fatigue washed over him like a wave again. Amidst the hazy thoughts, Dokyeom reached a conclusion he didn’t want to admit.
That the ‘aftereffects’ of
A troubling thought.
When he closed his eyes, his body crumbled. Thud—He felt Taeseongyeon’s firm shoulder touch his head. That was his last memory.
***
He had overlooked the price that comes with great power.
Having used the power of an S-rank with an E-rank body—there was no way he could endure it.
It was no different from cramming a rock into a frail poison container. If you keep pouring in more than it can hold, it’s bound to crack and shatter.
This was his body’s warning. He should consider himself lucky to have noticed early. Even if it felt too late.
When Dokyeon woke, the world was dyed in sunset glow. He seemed to have been sleeping nestled in a broad embrace, cheek pressed against someone’s firm shoulder. A familiar scent came from the jacket draped over his shoulder.
Like a cool skin scent.
When he moved his shoulder, a low voice dropped from above.
“Sleep a bit more.”
The husky voice seemed to whisper. Dokyeom blinked and lifted his head. Soon, his gaze met Taeseongyeon’s, who was resting his chin on his hand idly. His shadowed eyes hadn’t moved, as if watching all along.
“…What… It’s already sunset? How many hours passed?”
“Maybe about four hours.”
A sigh immediately rose. He had just been confirmed to have nosebleeds and fainted. Glancing down at his clothes, they still had dried, murky bloodstains.
“Then you could have laid me down, why did you make me sit like this?”
Taeseongyeon was silent for a moment. He just looked down at Dokyeom with his chin resting on his hand. His lips parted only when the setting sun vividly entered his eyes.
“Well, why did you bleed so much that you worried me so I couldn’t lay you down? What hurts so much?”
“You don’t know, Taeseongyeon-ssi, but E-ranks are always on the verge of death. Ah, forget it. Take your arm away so I can get up.”
As he tried to remove the arm around him, the arm suddenly slithered in like a snake and pulled Dokyeom’s back tightly. His ribs felt crushed, his breath cut off, and he coughed.
“Han Dokyeom-ssi.”
“Cough, ha…”
“I’d like you to listen quietly, but I’m not in the mood right now. Thanks to you.”
“Mood, what… Cocky, and open your mouth, cough…”
Dokyeom gasped, reached out, and pressed Taeseongyeon’s lower lip firmly. The lips, which seemed about to release a deflated laugh, slowly parted. In the dark mouth, black, intricate lines appeared.
The Devil’s Mark.
Dokyeom let out a sigh of disbelief. What he had seen in the snowy mountain was true. The mark glimpsed through the flurries was correct. And it was etched on the tongue. Taeseongyeon’s mark was embedded in the most hidden place, isolated from the outside.
But how had he concealed this?
When he had last checked in this same place, Taeseongyeon’s tongue clearly had no such mark. As far as Dokyeom knew, this was impossible.
Once a mark is placed, it takes root like a weed and never disappears. Neither the contracted hunter nor the superior who placed the mark could move or hide it.
Yet Taeseongyeon had somehow managed to conceal it.
In the snowy mountain, he had let it slide unavoidably, but now that the situation was clearer, things were different.
“Last time, when I personally opened your mouth to check, there was nothing. But today it’s there? Why did something that wasn’t there suddenly appear?”
“Dokyeom-ah, I said I’d close my eyes, didn’t I?”
His stomach churned.
The thoughts he had when he saw the mark on Taeseongyeon’s tongue in the snowy mountain—they had tormented his mind endlessly since that day. He kept wondering if the person he saw trembling in pain, half-asleep on the mountain where he got Dali, might have been Taeseongyeon.
“What, is it a skill? Or a superior’s ability? Then why did my superior—devil or angel—tell me that once a mark is placed, it can’t be hidden? If I could hide it, I would have done it long ago.”
His eyes, red from fatigue, stared straight at Taeseongyeon. The sunset receded like a low tide, and twilight slowly descended. Perhaps because of that, Taeseongyeon’s face was covered in deep, unreadable shadows.
“I don’t see why I should tell you that.”
Yeah, no reason.
Yet the existence of ‘Taeseongyeon,’ who kept popping up whenever he almost forgot, bothered him. Because he wasn’t this kind of character, because he had never added such a setting, it felt like a thorn stuck in his throat that couldn’t be ignored.
Why did ‘Taeseongyeon’ always feel like a lone burr?
For example, what happened in the snowy mountain. The way he appeared silently every night to show his face. Moving without a teleportation skill was nearly impossible, but Taeseongyeon came and went as if showing off.
Every time, no matter where Dokyeom was, he accurately found him and appeared late at night. Even bypassing Agon’s vigilance.
From afar, he seemed aligned with the others, but up close, he stood out, catching the eye.
So he couldn’t just let it pass. At least he needed to figure him out to prepare for a future where they might diverge.
“Enough. Tell me what you want. Ah, you said you don’t like using your body roughly. So what would you like? Still, you’re human, so you must want something. Let’s trade and get some answers. Who is that fine superior of yours?”
First, he needed to confirm if his superior was indeed ‘Gamigin,’ the devil sitting at the top of the fourth rank of the ‘Lemegeton.’
Taeseongyeon’s tightly shut lips didn’t move. He remained with his chin resting on his hand.
For a moment.
“…It seems you really want to play with me.”
Taeseongyeon murmured as if whispering. Low and husky.
Immediately after, without warning, a hand reached out. A hand grabbing his cheek slipped between Dokyeom’s lips. Dokyeom clenched his teeth to keep them from entering. Taeseongyeon’s fingertips tapped the corner of his mouth.
“Open your mouth. The one who started it should take responsibility, right?”
“Why? You said you didn’t like paying with your body.”
Dokyeom spoke through clenched teeth. Then, a hand pressed on his jaw, forcing his mouth open.
Yet he felt the hand slipping between his teeth was gentle. As gentle as the calmly resounding voice.
“Let me correct myself. Seems it works pretty well now.”
“Are you… ha… doing this to a man?”
He flinched as someone else’s fingertips pushed against his tongue. When he frowned, the hand holding his waist stroked his shoulder.
“I only do this to you.”
It was a thoughtless statement. It might be late to say such things now. After all they’ve been through, tangled even in mana, what did it matter if he was a man?
How did it come to this, ha.
Thinking with a muddled mind gave no answer. From the start, the medium of the ‘Mark’ and the mana exchange through it blurred the other’s gender.
Certainly not what Dokyeom had intended. Yet the ecosystem of this constructed world had rooted itself that way.
As if this act was natural, if not strange.
“Dokyeom-ssi, don’t bite. It’ll become a habit.”
As if to scratch an itch, Dokyeom bit Taeseongyeon’s hand hard. Watching quietly, Taeseongyeon, when the strength from the biter faded, shoved his hand deep into Dokyeom’s throat.
Immediately, Dokyeom coughed, shaking his shoulders.
“Ah, shit, cough… Why’d you put your hand… cough… that far…”
Their distance had shrunk so their breaths mingled. Even Taeseongyeon’s pupils were now blurry.
In that short distance, Taeseongyeon opened his mouth.
“Scratch it. A bit hard.”
Such heavy, chilling words.
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