"……Honestly."
Yul pursed his lips as if he couldn't believe me, but he didn't push back any further.
Putting on a stern air, I straightened my clothes and turned to Han Jewoon.
"So how did you handle it? He must've had one hell of a load built up."
"How, he asks."
Han Jewoon shrugged.
"Just gave him a bit of a workout so he could spit it all out."
"A workout?"
"That's right."
Han Jewoon smirked, but Yul shot him a glare as if the phrasing rubbed him the wrong way.
Lip bitten hard, face set in frustration — looked like he'd been toyed with, start to finish.
"……."
Well, going toe-to-toe with the country's Rank One at all is a win.
I gave the back of Yul's head a light tap.
"Ah-ah. Unclench. You'd be dead if not for him. Say thank you."
"……."
"Come on."
At my prod Yul, reluctantly, opened his mouth.
"……Thanks."
I let out a short sigh, inwardly.
I need to add manners to the kids' curriculum when we get back….
Since Yul was standing there stiff as a board, I bowed my head to Han Jewoon in his place.
"Thank you. This time, really… I owe you my life."
"……."
"You just paid me back and it's already my turn again. How the hell am I supposed to settle a debt this big…."
I pressed my forehead in genuine bewilderment, and Han Jewoon chuckled and stepped closer.
"Then how about we get to a place where owing each other is no big deal?"
"……?"
Owing each other is no big deal?
His out-of-nowhere proposal had me blinking at him, blank.
"Yeah."
Han Jewoon smirked and gave my shoulder a light tap.
I looked back at him and answered, serious.
"You mean business partners? Or a formal guild alliance? Sure, the institute's technical expertise combined with your guild's muscle would create a synergy that…."
"Pffhaha!"
The moment I started ticking off terms, Han Jewoon clutched his stomach and burst out laughing.
"Oh, my — Director. What kind of life have you lived? A desert would be less dry than you."
"What? I'm being serious…."
"Who said anything about writing up a contract? Forget the stiff stuff — there are much simpler, better relationships in the world."
Han Jewoon put his laughter aside and looked at me, steady.
"The kind where asking for help isn't a hit to your pride but simply your right. Where trusting someone at your back isn't a debt — it's just trust."
"……."
"The kind where you don't have to run the numbers — where you can just give, however your heart moves, and never once feel it was wasted."
The playful glint was gone from his eyes; they had gone deep and steady.
"People usually call that 'friends.'"
I flinched and took a step back.
More than unfamiliar — it was a word that had never once existed in my life.
Not in my life as a kindergarten teacher, and not in this life here — I had never once been in a 'friend' relationship with anyone.
A TV left on because I couldn't stand the silence, a phone that only rang for work, dinners eaten alone.
That was my normal, day in and day out.
And it hadn't been any different here.
A friend, though. The word sat awkwardly in my mouth, like a foreign language I'd never studied, refusing to settle.
"With me…? You want to be friends with me?"
"Yeah."
"Why would you…?"
The question came out of pure curiosity, and Han Jewoon answered without hesitation, easy as anything.
"We've been to hell and back together more than once or twice, right? The number of times we've owed each other our lives and paid it back — we've lost count."
"……."
"That clears the bar for friends easily, don't you think?"
I stood there, dazed.
Friends…. A strange, ticklish feeling settled somewhere in my chest.
But before I could pick out an answer—
Bzzz— Bzz-zz—!
The device in Han Jewoon's pocket buzzed loudly.
"Tsk. Ruining the mood, right on cue."
Han Jewoon clicked his tongue and drew his brows together.
Click.
[Guild Master!!!!]
An eardrum-shattering shout, loud enough to punch through the receiver. Seo Jihyeok.
[Have you lost your mind for real?!! I turn my back for one second and you pull something like that!!!]
The voice was well and truly furious. Han Jewoon winced hard and quietly held the device farther from his ear.
"Why's our Jihyeok mad this time?"
[What do you mean, why?! I heard you forcibly stripped the mana-suppression field from the courthouse! The government's blowing up our lines with complaints!]
"Couldn't be helped. Otherwise someone would've died?"
[Then you should've just died!!!]
Plain insubordination, but Han Jewoon on the other end seemed unbothered.
[And yanking a key witness in the middle of a hearing right out in front of the press — what were you thinking?! Do you even have any idea what it's like out there right now?!]
"Hmm… nope, no idea."
[Turn on the news, right now! Watch it and then call me back!]
Click—!
Seo Jihyeok cut the call off roughly, as though he couldn't stand to say another word.
Only the dead beep of the disconnected line filled the still office.
"Ha, so cold. Our Jihyeok is such a chilly one."
Han Jewoon grinned and set the device down.
To think this was the boss the man had to serve under.
I sent Seo Jihyeok my silent condolences, picked up the remote, and switched on the enormous TV mounted on the wall.
Pop.
The black screen brightened, and a live news broadcast came on with an "Emergency Bulletin" banner running across it.
[…At present the courthouse is, quite literally, a scene of chaos.]
The courthouse in the picture had one wall wrecked beyond repair, black smoke pouring out.
[Due to the terror attack, the hearing is currently suspended, and Director Chae Junhyeok, who appeared as a witness, has vanished along with Bawi Guild Master Han Jewoon; he has been out of contact ever since.]
The anchor's grave voice filled the silence of the guild master's office.
[The government reports that suppression units were deployed immediately and that the remaining terrorists have been mopped up. No official announcement has yet been made, but eyewitnesses say the incident is highly likely to be the work of the radical terrorist group 'Awakened Liberation Front.']
"…"
[On to our next story. Public interest in the events of this hearing is running white-hot.]
Splashy captions came up across the screen — "Drama of a Reversal," "Where Does the Truth Lie."
[In particular, the revelation that Director Chae Junhyeok, who had been branded a child abuser, was in fact a 'secret auditor' dispatched to monitor the corruption inside the institute has turned online opinion completely on its head.]
[Let's take a look at footage shot by a citizen who was on the scene at the time.]
The picture cut, and a shaky camera angle zoomed in tight on me, eyes bloodshot.
["I said move!!!"]
A roar loud enough to blow the TV speakers.
In the footage, I was cradling Cha Yul and glaring at the camera as though I could swallow it whole, howling.
["The hearing? My life? Don't make me laugh."]
["If this child dies… the law means nothing to me, and neither does my life."]
["So shut your mouths and get out of my way."]
The clip ended, and the picture switched back to the studio.
[…Did you see that? Even in a hearing with his honor and his very life on the line, he was thinking only of the child's survival. The sincerity of 'secret auditor' Director Chae Junhyeok is striking a chord with the public and…]
Click.
I mashed the power button on the remote hard enough to break it, killing the screen.
"Ah…"
I covered my face with both hands and let my head drop.
I could feel my own hot flush blooming into my palms.
They actually put that on the news….
At the time my head had been so full of red I hadn't seen anything, sure — but that I'd end up watching it back as network news file footage, in slow-motion no less, I'd never dreamed of.
A humiliation for the ages, broadcast live to the entire country.
"Puhahahahaha!!!"
Beside me, Han Jewoon was making sounds like he was choking to death, slapping the armrest of the sofa with sharp cracks.
"Kh — hah! Ah, hahaha! Hey, Chae Junhyeok! You — you really —! Hah, my sides are gonna split!"
"Shudduh… seriously…"
I couldn't exactly sew his mouth shut.
I let out a heavy sigh and slid a sideways glance at Yul.
"……."
He was looking up at me with an expression it was hard to put a word to — something oddly, subtly complicated.
The tips of his ears had flushed red enough to burst, but his eyes were narrowed as though he was faintly angry, and at the same time his lips were twitching, as if he was fighting back a smile.
A face where embarrassment and confusion mixed with some overflowing thing I couldn't name.
That look was so bare-faced that I ended up snapping at him louder than I needed to, defensive.
"What are you staring at! I already said, back there! I was worried my expensive doll might get damaged!"
"……Did anyone say otherwise?"
"If it broke before I got my investment back, that'd be on me! Got it?!"
I turned my face away sharply and waved Han Jewoon off with a flick of my hand.
"Fine, fine. We're going, so you can have your laugh all you want by yourself."
"Puhaha! Yeah, get home safe. My friend, to whom neither the law nor his own life means anything."
"Shut up!"
I motioned for Yul to follow and stalked toward the elevator as if fleeing.
Han Jewoon's chuckling clung to my back like a phantom sound that wouldn't let go.
Ding—.
Even as the elevator doors slid shut, his laughter still didn't stop.
Please….
I banged my head against the closed door and prayed, desperate.
Please let that awful news be forgotten by the end of today.
Please let that footage never appear in front of me again.
But it didn't take a full day to realize what a hollow prayer that was.
"Director… you're back!"
Right after I got back to the institute.
The researchers, who should have been busy cleaning up the mess, stopped what they were doing all at once and turned to look at me.
The problem was the look in their eyes.
Those unbearable, moist-eyed gazes — awe and admiration mixed together, as though they were greeting some saint stepped straight out of a hagiography.
The Project R researchers in particular were dabbing at their eyes with handkerchiefs and sniffling.
Ah… they saw it.
The signal came through loud and clear.
Goosebumps rose all over me, and just as I was about to bolt for the Sunshine room, a familiar voice stopped me in my tracks.
"My life? Don' make me laugh!"
"If dis Bear-y dies… da law meanth nuffin to me, an' neifer does my life!"
Hayun.
Bear plushie half her size clutched dramatically in her arms, brows scrunched, she was doing her best impression of the me on TV.
In front of her, Suho — evidently cast as the villain — was inching backward, sheepish.
"I-I'm sorry!"
"So shuh your mouth and get outta my sight!"
"Squeeeee—!"
A perfect reenactment, and then the children's shrieking laughter rolling in after.
"……."
I staggered back to my office and thunked my forehead onto the desk.
Somebody save me….
Today was the day I learned that you could genuinely suffocate to death from embarrassment.
Of all things, of all things, that scene had to make the airwaves.
Aaaah….
The more I thought about my most shameful moment being mounted for posterity, the more a film of tears blurred my vision.
That was when it happened. The device in my pocket buzzed loudly.
Bzzz— bzzz—!
I checked the screen weakly, and froze.
[Chae Ganghyeon]
The moment those three characters registered, cold sweat rolled down my spine.
Damn it… of all times, now!
The live broadcast from the hearing was the problem.
The way I'd clutched Cha Yul and howled, the fury for the children's sake blazing straight out of my eyes — all of it beamed out across the whole country, unfiltered.
Chae Ganghyeon was a suspicious man. If he caught on that I'd let real, honest feeling grow toward the test-subject children?
He absolutely… can't find out.
I swallowed dry. The plan I'd drawn up just in case, before stepping into the hearing chamber, I ran through in my head once more.
"Haah…."
I took one deep breath. I wiped every trace of consternation off my face and pulled on the mask of the most arrogant, most insolent son in the world.
Tap.
The second I hit the answer button, I dumped an irritated voice out without a beat.
"What is it, Dad?! I'm swamped over here — what are you calling for?!!"
But contrary to what I'd braced for, the Chae Ganghyeon on the hologram looked… positively radiant with joy.
[Junhyeok!!!!]
An eardrum-splitting shout came booming out, loud enough to make the bulletproof glass of the office ring.
[Well done!!!]
"……What?"
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