Chapter 129: When the Storm Pauses

Getting into the center wasn’t easy, but together with Jaeyul, we made it inside safely.

Of course, it wasn’t just us—everyone who arrived at the center must have gone through the same struggle.

Perhaps because a gate that was clearly no ordinary one had appeared, a huge number of people had gathered around the center.

They were probably here simply because they thought the area around the center would be safe, but if the situation worsened, there was no telling when people might lose their reason and surge inside.

To prevent accidents, entry and exit to the center were under complete lockdown.

“Wow… it’s way bigger than I expected…? At this size, it has to be dozens of times larger than that SS-rank gate that appeared recently.”

Our team hadn’t received a direct combat order yet, but we were instructed to monitor the real-time close-up footage being sent by dozens of drones.

That practically meant our team would be assigned to handle ‘X’s gate.

Since we were a team made up of the strongest agents in the country, there was no way we wouldn’t be involved in the operation somehow.

“Are we really… going to have to go in there? Honestly, I don’t feel confident.”

Even teammates who had been through countless battles seemed hesitant when faced with a gate of such overwhelming scale.

As the drones drew closer to the gate, it felt as though the vivid red color deepened even further.

Naturally, if there were any way to pass this off to someone else, they’d want to.

“A gate’s size doesn’t always correspond directly to its difficulty, but at that scale, I don’t know if even all the top special agents in our country—or other countries—could clear it. No one’s going to volunteer as a scout, that’s for sure.”

Jaeyul was right.

When an SS-rank gate had appeared before, not a single agent who entered as a scout had returned alive.

With that precedent, no one would step forward this time either.

Unless it was an order bordering on a threat.

It was definitely a dangerous situation, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it wasn’t something to worry about that much.

To be honest, if you considered only ‘X’s gate itself, it wasn’t that dangerous.

Unlike other gate breaks where hordes of monsters poured out, the problem wasn’t the gate—it was ‘X’s appearance.

And that was exactly why I was worried too.

I still couldn’t understand how this had happened.

Jaeyul, whom I’d naturally believed to be ‘X,’ was sitting beside me with a grave expression.

Yet the gate that Jaeyul was supposed to emerge from had formed in the sky.

What was even stranger was the timing.

I’d been so shocked by the gate’s appearance that I hadn’t thought about it properly, but originally, ‘X’s gate wasn’t supposed to appear until several months later.

At that time, I would have been twenty-seven.

Had the future changed completely because of the actions I’d taken after returning to the past?

Was the disaster called ‘X’ a role that someone else would take on if it wasn’t Jaeyul…?

My thoughts grew tangled with countless possibilities.

Then, just then, I felt warmth envelop the back of the hand resting on my thigh.

“We need to come up with some kind of plan too. If we go in without any preparation, we might really just die for nothing……”

The team members were having a serious discussion, but I couldn’t focus at all.

Not because my mind was full of thoughts, but because of the unfamiliar touch.

I’d wondered why Jaeyul had sat next to me, and then he went and grabbed my hand under the table.

With his large hand, he either held mine completely or laced our fingers together.

I’d never imagined we’d be secretly flirting like this at work, right in front of everyone.

I’d always absolutely hated office romances, yet here I was.

I really didn’t know why he was so reckless about everything.

Well… it wasn’t like I disliked it.

The warmth starting from the back of my hand crept up to my chest, making it itch.

To think I could feel emotions like this even in a moment where everyone’s lives were on the line.

Maybe it was because of the warmth he was giving me, but the crisis didn’t feel all that hopeless.

It was like the whole world had been covered with a pink-tinted filter.

In any case, it was a completely unfamiliar feeling—one I’d never experienced in my life.

“I’m going to meet with the regional director for a moment, so everyone stay here and don’t leave the center.”

At the sudden alert, Jaeyul let go of my hand, checked his phone, and hurriedly stood up.

Ah… what a shame.

As soon as the warmth disappeared, the air felt chilly all at once.

Still, I was in a good mood.

At this point, we were basically dating, right?

Where should we hold the wedding, and how many kids should we have…?

One might be too few, but two might be exhausting.

Wait, do people even have weddings these days…?

This was a first across both my lives, so I really wanted to do it….

We hadn’t properly defined our relationship yet, but… whatever.

“Hey, want to eat jjamppong for lunch today?”

“I’m not really feeling it.”

“No way! If you don’t eat it, delivery won’t work! I really want to eat the jjamppong from here today…!”

Song Jihan’s whining began.

He came in holding a Chinese food pamphlet that was hard to find these days and started throwing a tantrum.

Looking at the obviously exaggerated pictures and insisting he wanted to eat that—what a mess.

Judging by how he was only trying to persuade me, Park Bomyeong and Yoo Eden must have already caved.

“…Fine. Let’s get sweet-and-sour pork too. I’ll pay.”

“What? That expensive thing? Why? You’re not preparing to smuggle it overseas or something, right?”

Even when I was generously offering to buy expensive food, I still had to hear this.

Well… I guess that was just how my usual behavior made me look.

I was just trying to express how light and buoyant I felt by opening my wallet—he could’ve just accepted it.

“Don’t talk nonsense. By the way, who’s watching the drone feed right now?”

“I’m picking lunch with you, Eden and Bomyeong are over there playing a game, so… uh…?”

“Don’t tell me no one’s watching it?”

Oh no.

No one was watching the screen we were supposed to monitor.

But honestly, that couldn’t be helped.

Staring at an unchanging screen for over ten hours was exhausting.

Your eyes naturally closed, and drowsiness washed over you.

‘X’ or whatever—I just wanted to sleep.

I felt like he’d shown up much faster in the past, but this time, I didn’t know why he was taking his time.

Whether he came out or not, once he did, Jaeyul and I could leave work, go home, and continue the conversation we’d left unfinished earlier….

Honestly, I felt like storming over to the gate, grabbing him by the hair, and dragging him out myself.

“Even if it’s boring, let’s focus a bit longer. If a gate break happens, it’ll be a disaster.”

Having lived several more years—no, quite a long time longer than them—I stepped up and urged the team on.

A gate break was inevitable, but even I didn’t know what kind of being would appear from it.

The team members erased their annoyed expressions and gathered in front of the monitors.

After watching them for a moment, I took out my phone and sent Jaeyul a message.

[We’re having jjamppong for lunch—what are you eating? (curious)]

What was I doing while everyone else was staring their eyes out at the screen?

Even if the world was about to end, I still had to make sure my kid ate properly.

I couldn’t stand the thought of him working on an empty stomach.

I told you to eat something good for your health.
Wait a bit. I’ll order something separately for you.

As if he’d been waiting, his reply came quickly.

Normally, I would’ve told him not to make a fuss and that I’d eat anything, but right now, I didn’t want to.

I wanted to wait, heart pounding, for whatever food Jaeyul would send.

Because everything he did was… out of affection for me.

Just thinking about it made my grin stretch ear to ear.

“Why are you smiling like you’ve lost your mind?”

So Bomyeong had been looking at me instead of the screen.

I quickly pressed my lips together, acting as if I hadn’t been smiling at all.

“You’ve been smiling nonstop since yesterday when we got to the center. I thought life must’ve been really hard on you, but you’re still like this.”

It really seemed impossible to hide that feeling.

Even dense Bomyeong had noticed.

You’ll understand later when you start dating too.

You’ll think, ‘Ah, so that’s why Sehyun-hyung was smiling back then!’

I was about to brush it off as nothing when I noticed something strange.

“…Isn’t that getting smaller…?”

The gate shown by multiple drones seemed to be changing.

It wasn’t entirely clear, but it looked as if the gate was gradually shrinking, as though it were retreating into the distance.

“It really does look like it’s shrinking. What the hell—do we need to get ready to deploy? It hasn’t even been around that long. Don’t tell me it’s about to explode?”

‘X’ still hadn’t come out.

Yet the gate was shrinking as if it were disappearing.

At first, we weren’t sure, but in an instant, it became undeniably smaller.

None of us had ever seen a phenomenon like this before, so the team hurriedly prepared to deploy while keeping their eyes fixed on the screen.

There was a chance it could explode as its abnormal size collapsed.

To confirm whether the footage was accurate, we ran to the window.

The gate had been so massive that it was visible at a glance from anywhere in the habitable zone, so any change should be visible to the naked eye.

“No way it’s really just… disappearing?”

The drone footage was accurate.

The gate floating in the sky was rapidly shrinking, like a balloon losing air.

From fist-sized to palm-sized, then down to the size of a couple of fingers.

For a moment, something that looked like a cloud passed in front of it, and when the gate reappeared, it was no bigger than a fingernail.

Soon after, the red glow vanished completely from the sky.

Like a mirage, it disappeared in an instant.

“That makes no sense…. There’s no way it could just vanish like that…!”

It was an incomprehensible phenomenon.

The subjugation hadn’t ended, nor had a gate break occurred.

And on top of that, ‘X,’ who should have emerged by now, never appeared.

I sank into thought, trying to find an answer I could accept.

The most plausible explanation was that because Jaeyul—the one who was supposed to become ‘X’—was here, an empty gate had appeared instead.

As that hypothesis formed in my mind, my heart began to race.

Maybe, in this life, there wouldn’t be anyone who would drive the world to ruin.

Maybe I’d be able to fully enjoy the happiness I’d never gotten to in my past life, here with Jaeyul.

It wasn’t a delusion.

If ‘X’ didn’t exist, it was a future entirely within reach.

📚 Also on NHV Novels

A 90-Year-Old Ace Agent Retires to Become a Mom in a Gacha Game

another worldGender BenderOriginal

Read Now →
Not interested