Chapter 37: Clinging to the Hem of His Garment

Ah-sung nodded with his arms crossed.

Meanwhile, with a knock, General Manager Yoo-han entered, naturally placed coffee cups between them, and stood behind Ah-sung.

“Uncle, can’t you stop using General Manager Yoo-han’s skill for personal matters like this?”

At Eun-ru’s reproach, Ah-sung shrugged and picked up his coffee cup, while Yoo-han smiled lightly and replied.

“Can’t be helped.

It’s my job.”

General Manager Yoo Gun-han, a B-class Esper, possessed the skill ‘Clairvoyance,’ which allowed him to see up to 100 meters in radius, and ‘Clairaudience,’ which let him catch sounds from the same distance.

Since his skills weren’t suited for combat, he primarily handled office work and served as Ah-sung’s personal secretary.

It was perhaps natural that Yoo-han had come out as soon as Eun-ru entered the agency.

Because he had been watching.

Eun-ru wondered if it was even possible to live with such heightened senses all day long using a skill, but that was none of his concern.

“I wish you wouldn’t use that skill on me and Jin-yeop-ssi as much as possible.”

It was an unspoken pressure that he’d rather not have him come nearby and observe, but Yoo-han just smiled with his characteristically kind face.

“Finish what you were saying.

What changes if you announce you’re S-class?”

“I just want to be someone less pitiful to use.”

“…”

“Even if I announce I’m S-class, that person will probably still pity me.”

A bitter taste filled his mouth.

He wished Jin-yeop had treated him like he did during their first blind date.

In the end, Jin-yeop couldn’t become a harsh person.

It would have been much better if he had said he would use him.

For Eun-ru’s plan to dig into that sympathy, instill a sense of guilt in him, and ultimately prevent him from letting go, that would have been better.

“I told you.

It’s probably not a very good method.”

“I know, that’s why I’m admitting it.”

Eun-ru answered irritably.

It pissed him off, but he had no choice but to acknowledge it.

“He told me about his brother’s death.”

At those words, a deep furrow formed between Ah-sung’s brows.

He silently put down his coffee cup.

“And he cried.”

“…”

“If he was going to cry like that, he should have saved his own brother.

Why did he save someone like me and go through that hardship?”

Rage flared in his chest.

At the same time, Eun-ru recalled the dungeon raid videos of Jin-yeop he had obsessively watched while lying in bed, unable to move his limbs properly.

“I wished he was someone trapped in hypocrisy.

If I could just confront him, asking why he saved me and made me suffer like this, my heart wouldn’t feel this stifled.”

“…”

“That person never once looked for me.”

Jin-yeop had never once revealed the narrative of how he had awakened.

He just appeared one day and focused solely on raids, as if he wanted nothing else.

“If he sacrificed his brother to save someone, shouldn’t he have sought me out?”

“Esper Cha Jin-yeop isn’t that kind of person.”

“I know.

I know better than you do, Uncle.”

“…”

“Knowing doesn’t mean I can understand.

Why does he live like that?

I just can’t understand it.

If he had only come to find me, that person wouldn’t be living like he is now.”

Though there is no hierarchy in the weight of a life, if only he could have revealed that the person he saved was actually the nephew of Baekdu’s CEO and the fifth S-class to appear in Korea.

His choice would not have been one of sacrificing his brother, but could be packaged as a noble choice that saved another person.

Even if that fact tormented him, if others held him in high regard, it might have been a small comfort.

Especially if Cha Jin-yeop were someone trapped in hypocrisy.

Some compensation can also console a person.

An Esper who awakened to save his brother in the worst dungeon break in history, an Esper who saved another boy instead of his already deceased brother – that was a clear hero narrative.

“Alone, as if being punished.

What is this result of working like a dog?

Is getting cursed at by people his hobby?”

“…”

“At a time when even profitable dungeons aren’t being raided properly, he threw himself into it regardless, without caring about that stuff.

He didn’t even have a partner Guide until he married that bastard.

He just drifted in and out of that shitty Center, grinding down his body on the verge of runaway.”

“…”

“Then he met that f*cking bastard and set up house.

Damn it, how could I not go crazy?”

Eun-ru clenched his fist and unconsciously raised it, then, remembering Jin-yeop’s crying face, barely suppressed the urge to smash something.

Slowly lowering his hand, letting out a long breath as if to calm himself, Eun-ru muttered in a low voice.

“And yet, f*ck, who is he to pity…”

Anyway, Lee Eun-ru had lived.

He had survived that hell.

In the same time, the same space, Jin-yeop lost his brother, and Eun-ru lost his parents.

Left behind at the same time, both were branded with the guilt of having survived.

All his life, Eun-ru had resented Jin-yeop.

If he had died back then, he wouldn’t have had to go through painful rehabilitation.

In fact, something more painful than that existed.

It was the fact that his parents were dead, that one thing.

For a mere ten-year-old child, the fear of never seeing his parents again was greater than the declaration that he might never walk again after waking up.

It wasn’t hard to understand death.

Having returned alive from that hell, Eun-ru knew what death was.

So thinking of his parents who perished in that terror, he absolutely didn’t want to live.

So Lee Eun-ru, having returned alive from death at such a young age, repeatedly muttered not relief, but ‘I wish I had just died.’

“I thought that person should be responsible for me.”

“…”

“He made it so that I couldn’t even resent him.”

Eun-ru sneered.

It was true.

He had always watched him.

Struggling in pain, yet always, Lee Eun-ru had pursued Cha Jin-yeop.

He wanted to resent him, but that wasn’t all.

The sight of him holding Eun-ru and crying out his brother’s name repeatedly, screaming, remained vividly in his even fading memory.

He wondered how such a person was living.

Eun-ru had unconsciously thought that the only person who could truly understand him was Jin-yeop.

Seeing that person moving forward every day was sometimes hope.

The way he saved someone and took it for granted sometimes appeared as if he was accepting his fate.

As days passed, his feelings toward Jin-yeop reached a point where mere resentment couldn’t explain them.

The image of him looking straight ahead with clear eyes changed in various ways.

Eun-ru asked and asked again, towards Jin-yeop beyond the unresponsive monitor.

How are you living, no, how can you live?

Having removed such an important part of your life, how can you exist like that?

He wanted to find the answer.

So Eun-ru decided to walk.

The answers before him were all negative.

Hopeful, optimistic prospects were nowhere to be found, no matter how hard he looked.

But each time, Eun-ru thought of Jin-yeop.

That person stands on this world with both feet.

Even if that’s not a physical ground, he’s standing somewhere emotionally.

Eun-ru thought.

I want to stand somewhere too.

I want to walk proudly and ask him.

What kind of life have you lived?

What have you filled the void with?

Saving countless lives, saving people you didn’t even know, sacrificing yourself, what have you gained?

In the process, the only thing left for Lee Eun-ru was Cha Jin-yeop.

And then, around the time he could walk and run on his own, Eun-ru came to realize.

He didn’t need an answer.

Even if, in fact, he wasn’t standing on anything, precariously hanging onto life, he would cling to even the hem of his garment and survive. ‘Since you saved me, you must support me until the end of my life.’

But from up close, the man’s life was not one that anyone could cling to.

He was not a person with compassionate heart who could take in pitiful, miserable Eun-ru and let him live.

Cha Jin-yeop was nothing more than a man standing at the edge of a cliff, alternating which foot to step off with.

“Pathetic.

Truly pathetic.”

Eun-ru poured out the words like a spell, unclear who they were directed at.

“So.”

“…”

“When do you plan to reveal that you’re the child he saved instead of his brother?”

“I won’t tell.”

“…”

“The moment I say that, that person will fall off the cliff.”

If he knew that the child he saved was stepping into a pit of fire to save him, he would rather bite his tongue and die.

“Uncle, this time I’m going to save him.”

“…”

“Even if I don’t want to, just like that day when he ended up saving me.”

“…”

“I too will forcibly drag him up.

So he’ll know what it feels like.”

So that he would stand on the ground with his own feet, knowing what immense pain walking entails, and eventually have no choice but to run across the world.

“After that, he’ll have no choice.

In Cha Jin-yeop’s life, Lee Eun-ru will also become everything.”

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