Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Lee Seong-ha stood in the room for a long while, then trudged out into the living room. Dropping heavily onto the sofa, he let out an exhausted sigh.

“Um… have you… had dinner?”

Kang Hoon asked in a voice as small as a mosquito. Only then did Lee Seong-ha feel the emptiness ringing inside his stomach. He merely tilted his head and looked at Kang Hoon. His voice was curt, but his force had softened a little compared to before.

“Is there anything in the fridge?”

“No.”

Lee Seong-ha squeezed his eyes shut.

“Damn Go Gyeol… and damn my life.”

Because of Go Gyeol, that cursed friend of his, his path as a clergyman had ended, and he had ultimately returned to the path of a Hunter.

Though he had never dreamed that the beginning of that path would be a life of making meals for some high school brat.

---

Meanwhile, at that time, the cold light of a screen cast a chilly glow over Go Gyeol’s face.

[Mission: Recruit ‘Kang Ji-hyun,’ the Witch with S-Grade potential.]

[Reward: ???]

[Failure Penalty: ‘System’ trust decreases.]

Deep fatigue settled in his eyes as he stared at the Mission window.

It had already been three days. Potential or whatever else aside, the pressure brought by those three syllables of that name was more suffocating than clearing most Dungeons.

Go Gyeol turned his gaze to the investigation reports scattered messily across his desk. He vividly remembered stuffing the entire Hunter Association database into his head before his Regression. In those memories, “Kang Ji-hyun” could be defined in a single phrase.

A time bomb.

She was the same “Witch” class as Kang Hoon, but her Traits were specialized not in combat magic, but in “alchemy” and “offensive magic.”

Lethal attack power based on powerful Potions and poisons. Looking at her abilities alone, it would be normal for anyone to be desperate to recruit her to their team.

But Kang Ji-hyun was different. Rather than using her abilities to help people, she more often enjoyed using them to ruin those who offended her. Around her laboratory, grudges and curses never ceased, and rumors were rampant about people whose lives had been ruined by side effects after drinking the Potions she made.

In the end, she died. When Korea was boiling over with Gates and everyone’s attention was focused on the Tower, she was murdered by someone.

The culprit was never identified to the end. Go Gyeol thought that unsolved case might have been an inevitable result. She had far more enemies than allies, and among those enemies were bitter foes vicious enough to aim for her life.

“Kang Hoon? Is he coming straight here after school?”

“Yeah. Why? Is there something you’re going to make Hoon do?”

Lee Seong-ha asked, his eyes round.

“No.”

Along with the short answer, something flew through the air. Lee Seong-ha instinctively reached out and caught the object that had come flying. What he caught in his hand was the familiar feel of a car key. When he looked at Go Gyeol with an expression asking why he had thrown this, too, Go Gyeol’s resolved eyes pierced straight through him.

“Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“To recruit Kang Ji-hyun.”

There was no point sitting at a desk and agonizing over it any longer. She was someone he would have to bring in anyway.

If she was a time bomb, then he had to either disarm her before she exploded, or drag her along while holding the safety pin in his own hand. For the first time in three days, a faint flame burned in Go Gyeol’s eyes. The unsolved case called “Kang Ji-hyun,” which no one had managed to solve before his Regression, was now something he had to face himself.

---

The moment the car door opened, a suffocatingly dense scent of roses surged over them like a wave. The fragrance was so thick it almost felt sticky, like liquid. Lee Seong-ha drew in a startled breath without realizing it, but Go Gyeol frowned as if he was used to it.

At the end of his gaze lay a rose garden beyond a low stone wall, its end impossible to measure.

Red, white, yellow, and even blue and black roses that seemed as though they could not exist in reality. Every color bloomed violently, each flaunting its own perfect shape. At that ostentatious beauty, Go Gyeol murmured inwardly.

“Her taste hasn’t changed.”

“Wow… this is where Kang Ji-hyun lives? It’s like a princess’s garden from a fairy tale. Isn’t it too pretty for a Witch to live here?”

At Lee Seong-ha’s voice, mixed with admiration and doubt, Go Gyeol answered coldly.

“Never say that word ‘Witch’ in front of Kang Ji-hyun.”

“Come on, I’m not an idiot. Do you think I’d say it openly in front of her?”

Lee Seong-ha smiled faintly and shrugged. Despite his light attitude, Go Gyeol’s expression did not relax.

“Let’s go.”

With those brief words, Go Gyeol placed his hand on the simple sliding door leading into the garden. Unlike its heavy-looking appearance, the door slid open smoothly and soundlessly at his touch.

It was the moment he took his first step inside.

At the corner of his vision, a rainbow-colored flash appeared as if bursting into being. It was a small bird, tiny as a hummingbird, but each feather scattered light like a prism. The bird floated in front of the two men as if stopping in place, and a clear yet somehow sharp voice rang directly inside their heads.

[Oh. Your name is supposedly Go Gyeol, “noble and pure,” so what brings someone whose character is filthy, unlike that name, all the way here?]

At the sudden personal attack, Lee Seong-ha’s mouth fell open. His flustered gaze hurriedly moved between Go Gyeol and the small bird. Meanwhile, Go Gyeol let out a deep sigh like a man who had given up on everything. His face said this was far from the first time he had received such treatment.

“I came because I have something to say. May I come in?”

He stated his business as though arguing with the bird was not worth the effort.

Instead of answering, the small bird stared fixedly at Go Gyeol with its tiny black eyes. Its gaze felt like a blade. A suffocating silence flowed, as if even the buzzing of bees and the sound of rose petals brushing in the wind had stopped.

Lee Seong-ha was just opening his mouth, unable to endure the awkward atmosphere and about to say something.

Click.

A sharp sound broke the silence.

The sound came from a small cottage in the middle of the rose garden, surrounded by countless flowers. Soon, the old wooden door opened by itself, very slowly.

Then a languid, deep voice, different from the bird’s, rang across the entire garden.

[Come in.]

It sounded less like permission and more like an order that could not be defied. Go Gyeol moved toward the open door without hesitation. Lee Seong-ha, following behind him, swallowed hard and tried to hide the feeling that he was truly entering a “Witch’s house.”

The rose scent that had seemed ready to suffocate the garden vanished as though it had been a lie the moment they crossed the threshold of the cottage. As if they had entered another dimension, the inside was a quiet, scentless space with no smell at all. In the center of the modest interior stood an old wooden table, and on top of it, two teacups were sending up wisps of white steam as though they had just been poured. Everything was proof that she had been waiting for them.

Without the slightest hesitation, Go Gyeol familiarly pulled out a chair and sat down. Seeing that, Lee Seong-ha also relaxed and dropped into the seat opposite him. Unable to hold back his curiosity, he picked up a teacup and brought it to the tip of his nose.

“Hm, I thought it’d be rose tea. Surprisingly, it’s green tea?”

Then a languid voice flowed out from the deepest darkness of the cottage.

“There’s no need to drink the scent that already comes from me. Isn’t that right, Go Gyeol? It’s been a while.”

The owner of the voice walked out of the shadows and revealed herself in the light.

She was beautiful enough to stop one’s breath. A black silk dress with a deep neckline that revealed the curves of her body as they were, black wavy hair pouring down like a waterfall, and an enchanting face that completed it all.

In particular, the small red mole beneath her eye was like the finishing touch that brought a painting to life.

Kang Ji-hyun. She sat gracefully across from Go Gyeol and crossed her legs. Every movement of hers seemed to make even the air take her side.

“So, did you come to date me again?”

“Cough! Kh, keh!”

At the nuclear-bomb-level question without warning, Lee Seong-ha, who had been about to drink his tea, choked on it completely. As he coughed violently with his face bright red, Go Gyeol took a neatly folded handkerchief from his pocket and held it out without the slightest change in expression. His gaze remained fixed only on Kang Ji-hyun.

“You still haven’t abandoned that thought?”

“Is it such a wrong desire to want the most excellent man as the father of my child?”

When Kang Ji-hyun waved her slender fingers through the air, a new teacup appeared before her as if it had been there from the beginning. She lifted the cup to her lips and stared through Go Gyeol.

“Sorry, but I want to date someone I love.”

At Go Gyeol’s answer, Kang Ji-hyun laughed as if she found it absurd. She slowly traced her face and body with her fingers as she spoke.

“This face, this body. Is there a single part lacking enough to make it hard to love?”

“Your head.”

It was a single word that flew in and struck like a blade.

At those words, a clear crack appeared on Kang Ji-hyun’s beautiful face.

“Tch.”

She turned her head sharply away, displeased.

In that instant, the air in the office froze like the Siberian plains.

Lee Seong-ha almost spat out the coffee he had been drinking without realizing it. The discussion about guild cooperation that had been going back and forth until moments ago was nowhere to be found. Between Go Gyeol and Kang Ji-hyun, there was only a taut tension, as though World War III was on the verge of breaking out.

“What the hell is this shitty atmosphere? Her head? What about her head?”

Lee Seong-ha desperately moved only his eyes. He was Go Gyeol’s childhood friend, stuck with him since the Sprout Class in kindergarten. Apart from sleeping hours, they had shared nearly everything, and he even knew what Go Gyeol had eaten for dinner yesterday. That same Go Gyeol was now wearing an expression Lee Seong-ha had never seen before in his life. Unlike his usual coldness, it was a face mixed with something terribly personal.

Kang Ji-hyun on the opposite side was the same. Her composure as the Republic of Korea’s top Witch Hunter had vanished, and she was bristling as though she might grab an ex-husband by the collar.

This was not a business dispute between guilds. Lee Seong-ha’s “best-friend radar” was ringing an alarm like mad.

“Wait. No way… right? Him? That bastard Go Gyeol?”

Lee Seong-ha’s mind tangled complicatedly. A workaholic who categorized women as nothing more than Friend A, B, and C. His friend, whom he had firmly believed had no dating cells at all? With that Kang Ji-hyun? It was a combination he had never even imagined. If that was true, then he was about to feel betrayed by decades of friendship.

He could not endure this suffocating silence or the possibility of betrayal. Lee Seong-ha had to confirm it. He barely cleared his throat and asked with the most innocent face possible, as though he knew nothing at all.

“Um… by any chance… while I didn’t know… did something happen between you two? For example… did you date…?”