Free Web NovelLee Hyunmook, who had instantly awakened from sleep and rescued Yohan from Yoon Seungryong’s grasp, brushed over the back of Yohan’s neck where he’d been grabbed. After confirming there was nothing wrong, he greeted him casually.
“How’s your body?” fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
“I-I’m fine. I guess because I just woke up after sleeping well... But, um, Yoon Seungryong is awake now...”
“Mm, so he is.”
Without even glancing at Yoon Seungryong, who was rolling across the living room floor, Hyunmook focused solely on confirming that Yohan’s body was unharmed. Seungryong, having just barely escaped the skull-splitting pain, only let out groans as he crawled along the floor.
“Ugh... damn it, I... I know now this isn’t a dream or a hallucination... fuck... my head...”
Still giving Seungryong not a shred of attention, Hyunmook walked to the kitchen. He reignited the burner and began stir-frying the ham Yohan had been cooking. Seungryong, clutching his head and groaning, stared blankly at him. He sniffed the air, then muttered.
“What the hell? Why has it been smelling so good for a while now...?”
Yohan glanced at Seungryong while scooping out three bowls of white rice and opening a can of kimchi to place on the table. He added leftover grilled pork from yesterday, ssamjang with vegetables, cucumber and carrot sticks arranged neatly on plates, making for a rather lavish spread. Once the ham-and-onion stir-fry was finished, Hyunmook placed the frying pan directly on the table and nodded toward Seungryong.
“Come eat first.”
Seungryong staggered over and sat down. He looked at the food on the table once, then at Hyunmook and Yohan, blankly mumbling.
“Have I finally died and gone to heaven? No, it’s a hallucination, it has to be. There’s no way a scene this good is real, fuck. That bastard of a team leader must’ve killed me and now I’m in heaven.”
Never mind that he’d just called Hyunmook a bastard — Yohan felt sorry for him, seeing how he couldn’t believe reality.
“You must be hungry. Please, go ahead and eat.”
Honestly, if Yohan ate that mountain of samgyeopsal alone, he’d be full for a month, but apparently Seungryong wasn’t like that. His hand trembled as he picked up the spoon. He first put a bite of warm rice into his mouth. After chewing a few times, his eyes widened, and he wolfed it down.
But the second spoonful he took was painfully slow to chew. It reminded Yohan of the first time he’d served his emergency rations to Hyunmook — savoring the rare moment for as long as possible.
Without a word, Seungryong dipped crisp cucumber into ssamjang, put kimchi on rice, and took big spoonfuls of the ham-and-onion stir-fry. After finishing one bowl, he spoke in a pitiful tone.
“C-could I have... just one more bowl? Please...”
Feeling a deep sympathy, Yohan scraped together the remaining rice into a heaping portion. This time, Seungryong devoured it without restraint, even opening a can of fruit cocktail for dessert. Only after licking every last bit from the dishes did he close his eyes, silently savoring the aftertaste like someone waking from a blissful dream. He let out a long sigh, then asked.
“So this isn’t a dream or hallucination...? ...Team leader. What the hell happened?”
“How much do you remember?”
When Hyunmook asked, Seungryong frowned, making him look even rougher and more threatening. Come to think of it, he was still stark naked — but neither Hyunmook nor Seungryong seemed to care in the slightest. Only Yohan quietly suffered on the inside.
“Maybe... thirty years ago? No, fifty? ...Eighty? I think I was brawling with you like crazy and then got buried in the ground... My back was bent backwards and I suffered for a long time...”
Yohan thought he’d misheard. Bent backwards? That had to be an exaggeration. Hyunmook calmly offered a correction.
“You must’ve had it rough, if you mistake something from three months ago for something so long ago. You’re even recalling things that didn’t happen.”
“No... you’re saying it was three months ago? No way. It really feels like thirty years. And my back really was bent backwards.”
At Hyunmook’s firm denial, Seungryong looked bewildered, then shook his head.
“Anyway, that’s not the point. Who’s this kid? And why are you and I perfectly fine? Did we... escape from the Abyss? Were we rescued?”
As he spoke, his excitement rose and his breathing quickened — he must not have seen the Abyss’s signature dark red sky outside the balcony window yet.
“No. Look outside.”
Flinching, he turned his head. Upon seeing the dim, writhing sky, Seungryong’s face went blank.
“...Ah. Yeah, of course. No way that would happen.”
His tone slowed instantly, his demeanor deflating like a punctured balloon. Hyunmook continued speaking, indifferent to his mood.
“This is Yang Yohan. Fell into the Abyss not long ago, and recently Awakened as a purifier. He can treat contamination.”
“What kind of bullshit is that? Even if you’ve lost your mind, that’s going too far.”
Shaking his head, Seungryong gave a sharp laugh. The sound was bitter and cutting.
“No fucking way something that good could happen in this shithole. Not even outside the Abyss does something like that happen.”
His eyes reddened rapidly as he clutched his head, muttering.
“Bullshit, fuck, fuck, purification? Curing contamination? Don’t fuck with me. If that existed, I wouldn’t have spent all that time in the pit drinking filthy water just to survive. Drinking, eating, drinking, eating, and still starving...”
Now fully overtaken by madness, Seungryong began muttering quickly. While Yohan froze in fear, Hyunmook calmly clenched his fist and approached. Raising it high, he was about to strike when Yohan instinctively blocked him.
“W-wait! He’s sick! Hitting his head might make it worse.”
“Yohan. When something’s broken, you fix it by hitting it.”
Hyunmook delivered this absurd line with confidence, but Yohan stood his ground, shaking his head. Then he hurriedly scattered light toward Seungryong. He had little left after purifying him yesterday, but poured in what he could.
Seungryong stopped twisting his ears and looked up. His dazed face suggested he was truly seeing Yohan for the first time.
“Oh... but... you really have an ability...? This feels so good...”
He gazed in rapture at the fragments of white light Yohan emitted, cupping them in his ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) hands before they absorbed into his body. His eyelids trembled as his eyes closed involuntarily. As he leaned toward Yohan, something heavy came flying toward him. Smack!
“Argh!”
The punch to the crown of Seungryong’s head made Yohan yelp in surprise. Hyunmook scooped Yohan up and set him down on a distant sofa.
“Better keep your distance, Yohan.”
Then, approaching Seungryong — who was rolling on the floor clutching his head — Hyunmook spoke in a gentle voice.
“If you don’t get your head straight right now, I can give you all the time you need to calm down. You like crawling underground, don’t you? How about under this yard? Want to be buried for a week?”
The quiet tone belied the deadly threat. Detecting danger, Seungryong scrambled up and knelt. Keeping his gaze lowered, he spoke respectfully for the first time.
“N-no, sir...”
Even while groaning in pain, he didn’t raise his head. Yohan’s pupils trembled — the Hyunmook he’d seen in documentaries was a mild-tempered team leader respected and trusted by his members. He couldn’t tell if this was how he’d always been, or if the Abyss had made him like this.
With Seungryong completely cowed, Hyunmook went to wash the dishes. While the sound of clinking came from the sink, a shrunken Yohan quietly handed Seungryong a chocolate bar — a precious item freshly restocked from the market.
“Uh... uh...”
Seungryong blinked in disbelief at the chocolate bar in his hands. He unwrapped it and let it melt in his mouth, silently sorting through the situation before speaking.
“...So is it really okay to leave him like this?”
Hyunmook, who had been listening to Yohan’s suggestion about checking nearby fruit trees, glanced over. Seungryong eyed Yohan with concern, seeing him as far too soft and harmless for someone who had fallen into the Abyss so recently.
“If he really is a purifier, that means it’s his first Awakening — so he must be a high-tier Awakener... But shouldn’t we put him somewhere safer?”
“Is there any safe place in the Abyss?”
Hyunmook gave a dry laugh, as if to say what a stupid thing to suggest, then nodded toward Seungryong.
“That’s why I brought you along. You just happened to be nearby.”
“Ah...”
Fiddling with the empty chocolate wrapper, Seungryong chuckled to himself.
“Good thing I was the closest to the team leader.”
He soon turned his attention back to Yohan, grinning as he approached. Having been on the receiving end earlier, Yohan instinctively edged back.
“So your name’s Yohan? Yang Yohan?”
“Yes, Mr. Yoon Seungryong...”
“Hey, don’t be so formal with the ‘Mr. Yoon Seungryong.’ Call me hyung. Let’s get along from now on. That meal earlier was really good. Thanks. ...It’s been so long since I could act like a normal person...”
Though his manner was as pushy as a thug shaking someone down, the thanks in his voice carried genuine sincerity. The “acting like a normal person” part was an oddly unsettling phrase, but Yohan didn’t want to ruin the mood, so he smiled — and finally said what he’d been wanting to since earlier.
“But please... even just underwear is fine, could you put on some clothes...”
