I felt deeply ashamed before the hotel for letting such a disgraceful fight take place in this luxurious room. Watching high-end amenities and neatly folded hotel towels fly through the air, it was hard not to think that way.
“Guys, let’s talk it out!”
“N-No, don’t go near! You’ll get bitten too, hyung!”
The situation might have been a little better if there were only two idiots in the room. But seeingthat even Baek Kiryang and Woo Kangwon were being infected by their stupidity, I had no idea what to do to put an end to this ridiculous situation.
But at this moment, there was only one thing I was sure of.
‘Let’s close the door.’
This must never be shown to anyone else.
Just as I was thinking that, Lee Danbi, his face cold and expressionless, spoke to me at the perfect moment.
“Hyung, please close the door. It’s embarrassing.”
“Hyung, to be honest, part of the reason I talked to you is that I just can’t handle the other hyungs. Is our group really okay like this? The moment you were gone, hyung, our average intelligence suddenly … Ah, I’m sorry. That was a slip of the tongue.”
Then, Lee Danbi, ignoring the members who were rampaging like wild animals, covered his mouth and muttered like a madman. Picking up bits and pieces of what he was saying, I started to get a sense of why he had left behind the two fighting like crazy and gone to a convenience store instead.
In the end, it was my duty to resolve this situation before my youngest grew to despise his elders even more intensely.
“Ha…….”
The only problem was, I didn’t know what to do.
The reason I tried to keep the fights among Prism’s members under strict control was that I knew once they started fighting seriously, things could escalate beyond repair.
In Prism, where the average height was over 185 centimeters, once a proper fight broke out, it was actually considered a good outcome if it only ended with blood and broken bones. Even worse, those damned bastards would rather die than lose, and since they had never known defeat, if left alone, it would never end. They must have brought their old habits from the outside with them.
After dealing with those guys, watching this chicks war left me unsure where to even begin.
It was terrible in a whole different way.
‘Should I separate them for now?’
I stared at the two idiots with dead eyes, then mechanically moved my legs toward them before shoving them toward the bed. Do Yuda let out a faint, almost inaudible “Uwaa” as he tumbled over, and Zen, instinctively trying to catch him, tripped over his own feet and ended up falling right on top of him.
“…….”
“…….”
It was so simple that it felt almost pointless.
While I stared blankly at my hands with empty eyes, Woo Kangwon hurriedly rushed to the idiots, flailing his arms while crouching his bear-like body.
“Hey, guys, are you okay?”
“They’re fine. People don’t die from just this.”
Just as I was coldly dismissing that excessive worry, Zen, after giving me a slight bow, continued the fight by randomly pulling at Do Yuda’s mouth as he lay pinned beneath him.
“That sentence from earlier, say it again! I will overpower you with logic!”
“I-I said we should take him the mental health … department because he’s fallen into a cult or de-delusion. Why! Honestly, is there anything wrong with what I said?”
I was amazed that he was still talking so much even with fingers in his mouth.
Honestly, if I’d heard those words under normal circumstances, I might have been a little hurt. But … but seeing those two acting like complete idiots together, it wasn’t unreasonable to feel like everything was someone else’s problem. Even the worries and hesitations I had been holding onto until now started to feel stupid.
“There is. Leada is not part of a cult. Leada has a very strong ego that he would ignore even the words of God. The only thing he believes in is himself.”
In the midst of all this, Zen shook his head and cut Do Yuda off, spouting nonsense. Then, Do Yuda groaned, clutching his head as he couldn’t think of anything to refute Zen’s absurd statement. With a smug grin on his face, as if he’d already secured the victory, Zen held up his phone and carefully enunciated each syllable.
“So, I did some searching. Folk, re, li, gi, on. Or su, per, na, tu, ral, po, wer. But folk religion, it is when a person with weak energy gets possessed by a ghost. In conclusion, Leada has superpowers.”
It was an absurd statement—a nonsense too embarrassing to say anywhere else—but the fact that the latter was actually correct made it even more absurd.
“You foolish person, it’s humans like you who expose the Spider-Man’s identity and make everything go wrong.”
‘…My shoulders feel heavy.’
Was this the weight of a leader?
I felt like something had gone wrong.
I approached the two people who were still arguing noisily, and then quietly opened my mouth.
“Stop.”
The atmosphere instantly turned cold at the sound of my voice.
And then, the two faces, dotted with cold sweat, turned creakily, and after seeing my expression, they gasped and clamped their mouths shut.
“I told you before. Behave properly as if I was there even when I’m not.”
“…….”
“But what are you two doing right now?”
The two, their faces turning pale, ultimately clung to each other like a lifeline, their hands shaking with fear.
“Neck, threat to our lives.”
And yet, whenever a crisis actually hit, they always relied on each other before anyone else. I had no idea why they had been fighting so fiercely in the first place. As that thought crossed my mind and my expression softened slightly, the first to react was Do Yuda.
“Uhuhuhuhuuu.”
‘Well.’
As his tension eased, Do Yuda’s sadness seemed to explode, and he burst into tears, his face contorted in a way that wouldn’t look good on camera. Then, in a voice mixed with sobs, he shouted.
“My mom told me that if I ever saw a cult, I shouldn’t ask questions, shouldn’t argue, shouldn’t try to win, and should just run away! But I couldn’t just run away and leave Seungbeom-hyung behind! I don’t know what to do…….”
“That’s how everyone ends up getting caught.”
When Lee Danbi, who had been watching the situation from behind, responded rationally, Do Yuda’s face grew even more miserable as he burst into even heavier sobs.
“I’ll just keep my mouth shut.”
After checking on him, Lee Danbi calmly moved to Woo Kangwon’s side. When Do Yuda finally calmed down a bit, he sniffled into my sleeve and started pouring out all the words he had been holding back.
“Am I being completely clueless right now? Have I become the villain who suspects Spider-Man, just like Nagi Zen said? The one who reported the heroes to the police?”
“…He’s not wrong. Even if you put me in the hospital, nothing will change. Whether you believe it or not, the reality that I’m not Han Seungbeom won’t change.”
“Please don’t remind me of what I was desperately trying to forget. You clearly said it was a mistake earlier. I was trying to hold on to that!”
“I’m sorry, but that’s a lie.”
“Uhuhuhuhu…….”
There were quite a few times when I imagined the day I would reveal the truth to the Pantheion members. After all, I couldn’t stay in this body forever. I thought that explaining the truth, whether they could believe it or not, would be the least I could do, rather than just disappearing suddenly.
But the situation unfolding was quite different from what I had imagined, and it was a very embarrassing one.
“So which one is it? Folk religion or supernatural powers?”
“It’s closer to the latter … not me, but the owner of this body.”
“Oh.”
There was a guy who happily thought he was now Spider-Man’s friend, a guy who couldn’t logically refute the situation because he was an idiot, the guys who had just given up on thinking because they couldn’t handle it, and a guy who had no interest in anyone but me.
Looking at them, I couldn’t help but think, ‘Not everything turns out as dramatically as it does in movies and novels.’
“Then prove it. Even Spider-Man shows he can shoot webs.”
“I can’t do that. Ah, but it seems that if this body is damaged to near death, it eventually gets restored. Want to see?”
“…No.”
“Aside from that, I can eavesdrop on others, but I’m not sure if I can show you, since it works sometimes and doesn’t at other times.”
“That’s just too ridiculous … You’re not trying to trick me with random words, are you?”
“Well, I heard you practicing your self-composed song alone at home. But the melody line sounded similar to another song. It’s common to unconsciously follow the melody lines of famous songs, so you should be careful.”
“Giving me feedback in this situation is seriously the worst.”
As I quietly sat down beside the guys who were completely exhausted and sprawled out, a long silence followed.
And before long, Do Yuda calmly broke the silence, saying, “In the end, the hyung I’ve always known has been only you, from beginning to end, hyung.”
“I’m a fool, so I don’t really understand things like this. But I don’t want bad situations to happen because of me, and I don’t want to take on more responsibility. So, hyung, please tell me what I should do. I’ll go along with whatever you want, hyung.”
“…….”
“…And also, please stop eavesdropping on me. I have a right to privacy, you know. If you’re going to listen, at least pay me 500 won as a performance fee.”
“…That’s cheap.”
“That’s the acquaintance discount.”
***
After that, I had to endure being pestered by the members for quite a long time.
“Guess what I said.”
“…You said Seungbeom-hyung is a fool.”
“Whoaaa! That’s crazy! You’re right!”
“Get in here.”
“I was wrong, hyung.”
Luckily, I was able to use my eavesdropping ability, so we ended up playing a sort of ‘Guess What I Said‘ game. I got complimented on how great I was, but then about 40% of the time, I was attacked with naive questions like, “At this point, wouldn’t it be okay to just use a real bugging device?“
“I didn’t tell the members who I really am because I was afraid they might find me difficult to approach, but it seems like they’re trying to understand that I have circumstances I can’t talk about.”
After being bombarded with questions for a while, I returned to the room where Choi Jeokhyeon was and immediately woke him up to briefly tell him about the conversation I had with the Pantheion members.
“Really? So, you managed to wrap things up pretty well with the Pantheion members.”
At that, Choi Jeokhyeon crossed his legs and spoke, sounding somewhat disappointed.
“The seventeen-year-old Lee Danbi is acting so mature. Why is thirty-nine-year-old Choi Jeokhyeon in this state?”
When I told him in an annoyed voice to finally grow up, he looked up at me with his pretty features, blinking and blinking his eyes. His behavior was so blatantly artificial that it made me frown. I clicked my tongue in open disapproval, but Choi Jeokhyeon remained unfazed and simply flashed a bright smile.
“I can’t help it, Yutae-ya. That’s just how it is. The older you get, the more of a coward you become.”
“…….”
“It’s just that now that I realize how precious the things I have are and how painful it would be to lose them, I’ve become more defensive and blindly cling to them. It’s ironic how that very fear ends up making things go wrong instead…….”
As I quietly listened to his words, I scowled and gestured toward the bathroom.
“…Go wash your face. Stop whining like a sleepy kid.”
Choi Jeokhyeon stared at me blankly for a moment, as if he didn’t quite understand the word ‘whining like a sleepy kid‘1. After a brief pause, he slowly blinked and then nodded in response.
“Okay.”
It seemed like he had only just realized that he was tired.
As I clicked my tongue again, watching him walk into the bathroom with heavy steps, Choi Jeokhyeon’s phone lit up with another notification.
“Hey, you got a text.”
I glanced at it and called out to him from the bathroom. Choi Jeokhyeon peeked his head out, seemed to consider for a moment, then flashed a bright smile and said,
“Oh, you can look. It’s something I prepared as a gift for you anyway.”
‘…A gift?’
It was rather unnerving that the guy who had always kept everything hidden from me was now openly telling me to look. There wasn’t a single thing he had ever given me that had turned out well. Remembering that, I unconsciously swallowed my dry saliva and slowly reached out to pick up his phone.
I tapped on the notification for the received message and entered the password.
Then, what appeared on the phone screen was a photo.
‘…A photo?’
In the photo, there was a man, unconscious, with his arms and legs bound and his eyes covered with cloth.
At first, I thought it was a screenshot from a movie. That was because the person in the photo looked utterly battered, his skin discolored from what seemed like severe beatings.
“…F**k, what the hell is this.”
However, after carefully examining the face, which was hard to recognize with all the blood matted and stuck to it, I quickly realized it wasn’t some kind of staged photo.
“You crazy bastard!”
Because the person in the photo wasn’t an actor; it was the guy who hit me with a car that day.
You can support this translation through Buy Me a Coffee or Wishlist!
Translator’s Corner:
CJH: /thinking/ hmm should I tell Yutae? will he get angry again?
CJH: /rationalizing/ but he didn’t get angry when I said I wanted to kill KHW last time right?
CJH: Okay, you can look ^^
Idk the internet connection suddenly working when I turned it on this morning … NVM IT TURNED OFF AGAIN AFTER I TYPED THIS I’M SO DONEEEEEEEEEEEE IF ANYONE KNOW HOW TO FIX A WIFI DIE PROBLEM CONNECTED TO BIOS THAT SAID DRIVER POWER STATE FAILURE, PLEASE ENLIGHTEN ME T_T I tried to check on the updates but it said there’s no update so idk what else should I try …
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter