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[Today at 7:00 AM, the Sehwa Guild, which had been attempting to clear the Apocalypse SS+-Rank Gate ‘Eight-Headed Curse,’ escaped through the Gate stone after 12 hours and 20 minutes, drawing criticism from numerous guilds and the public. The Guild Master of Sehwa, Kang Ihwa, stated, ‘Thirty guild members were deployed, and we did our best to clear the Gate, but we could not defeat the boss even with two S-Rank hunters working together. We apologize for causing anxiety by claiming the clear rights and failing to succeed.’ The 22 surviving members, excluding the 8 who died during the assault, bowed their heads alongside him. In response, the Association has forbidden guilds from claiming exclusive rights to SS+-Rank Gates and has ordered that priority be given to Team Noah… Meanwhile, as this marks the third consecutive failure by a private guild to clear an SS+-Rank Gate, criticism is rising in various hunter-related communities, questioning if this is a result of Sa-yoon’s absence and arguing that the Association’s decision to oust him from Noah was premature.]

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In the four days since Sa-yoon’s disappearance, a total of three SS+-Rank Gates had opened, and not a single one had been cleared. The first of these Gates had eventually led to a saturation event, and Team Noah, still busy running around cleaning up the mess, had no time to participate in the newly opened Gates.

Amidst this, guilds that had been relatively obscure due to the overwhelming fame of Swallow and Noah were now recklessly claiming clear rights to make a name for themselves, creating a total mess on all fronts.

Some criticized the situation as a product of human greed. Others sneered that seeing Korea go down the drain like this made them feel the reality of the apocalypse. Still others expressed their anxiety, saying it felt like the end of the century. As these reactions spread through public opinion, it was only natural that negative articles began to fill the portal sites.

As the saying goes, you don’t notice someone’s presence until they’re gone. With each passing day that the faces of Team Noah grew more haggard, people began to look for Sa-yoon. Among them were those who criticized the ones who had rashly cursed Sa-yoon and protested for his expulsion. Others condemned the Association’s handling of the situation, arguing that instead of banishing a criminal, they should have captured him and forced him to work for free until he died. And then there were Sa-yoon’s fans, who had been holding their breath during the fierce blaze of protest and were now beginning to raise their heads again.

As a result, any mention of Sa-yoon on the internet would inevitably devolve into a battlefield of conflicting opinions. Exhausted by the cyberbullying that erupted day after day, some people left the communities altogether and turned away from public discourse.

It was, in short, a complete and utter mess. The funny thing was, this situation wasn’t limited to Korea.

On the day Sa-yoon disappeared, after the foreign hunters from the Unity Conference returned to their home countries, simultaneous Gate Breaks began in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Czech Republic. Not in one nation, but in three at once. Naturally, the leaders of each country were thrown into a panic and tried to gather their hunters, but with Apocalypse-level Gates pouring out as if to prove the Apocalypse System had been upgraded to phase 4, there were no hunters to spare.

In the end, those countries had to overcome the Gate Breaks on their own. The result was a combined total of one thousand hunter deaths across the three nations, with three hundred more falling into comas and two hundred left unable to continue their careers as hunters. That was just the damage to the hunters; the number of civilian deaths from the Gate Breaks exceeded one hundred thousand.

Every day felt like standing in the middle of a warzone.

People lost the luxury of spouting nonsense and began to desperately search for someone who would step up as a hero. But the hunter world, as it always had been, was suffering from a manpower shortage. Having now lost many of its most skilled hunters to the Gate Breaks, the global atmosphere inevitably sank into a deep gloom.

Some screamed that the end had come. More radical individuals formed violent groups, claiming the world was about to end anyway so they would do as they pleased, and went on terrorist sprees. In cities that had gone quiet as hunters left to clear Gates, what would have normally been gunshots and bomb blasts were now met with silence, and they were quickly transformed into desperate ruins.

This phenomenon was occurring successively all over the world. People began to search for a reason why their world had been turned upside down overnight, and their thoughts eventually arrived at the absence of Sa-yoon. It was he, after all, who had stopped the Gate Break in Korea so decisively that the damage had been virtually nonexistent. Now, faced with a true life-or-death crisis, a sense of dread that not just their countries but the entire world was on the brink of collapse, they began to search for the strongest.

Overseas, where public opinion of him was more positive than in Korea, task forces were already being formed to find Sa-yoon, and hashtag campaigns begging for his return were trending on social media. The small ripples had become a great wave that was beginning to shake the world, one country at a time.

And during this time, when everyone was struggling to escape the turbulent waters…

Sa-yoon, having just woken up, was gulping down water offered by Chan-hee before he could even say he was thirsty, staring at the boring blue water.

“How long did I sleep?”

“About nine hours, I think?”

“I’m living like a total bum.”

Sleeping for nine hours at a time. Even though he had chosen to escape into sleep out of sheer boredom, he wondered if he hadn’t been resting for too long. He looked down at Geon-joo, who was clinging to him, his hands and feet draped over his waist and legs. As he idly ruffled his curly hair, Yen, who had been watching, suddenly spoke.

“Hyung-nim. A thought just occurred to me.”

“What is it?”

“You and Geon-joo, you look like you’re on a honeymoon.”

“Pfft!”

The water he was drinking sprayed out like a fountain onto the blanket. They say there’s no cure for choking on water, and Sa-yoon, having sent it down the wrong pipe, began to cough violently. The commotion from above woke Geon-joo from his sweet slumber. Blink. He lifted his eyelids. Not seeing him, Sa-yoon turned to Yen with a horrified look.

“Yen.”

“Yeah?”

“Are you insane?”

Honeymoon, my ass. What kind of couple brings their entire guild and associates on their honeymoon?

He lowered his voice, telling him to get a grip, but Yen just shrugged and spun around in his chair to face him.

“Well, am I wrong? You sleep in the same bed. You’ve been resting for days. The pretty boy feeds you, gives you massages. Isn’t that basically a honeymoon?”

“If you want this vacation to be the last one you ever take before you die, keep talking.”

“Now, that would be a problem.”

The man, who had been grinning from ear to ear, wiped the expression from his face as if it had never been there. Sa-yoon glanced at him, hearing the soft click-clack of his mouse as he fiddled with his laptop, then looked down at Geon-joo.

“What, when did you wake up?”

“When you started coughing, hyung.”

“You could have at least made a sound.”

“I just opened my eyes. No need to make a fuss. More importantly, hyung.”

“What.”

“Are we getting married?”

“Cough!”

Dammit. This time he hadn’t even been drinking anything, but he choked on his own saliva. He let out a few coughs he couldn’t suppress. Chan-hee, who was watching TV nearby, made a silly comment like, “So even S-Ranks choke.” When the coughing finally subsided and the skin around his eyes was red, Sa-yoon looked at the man staring up at him with bright, clear eyes and responded with the same attitude he had shown Yen.

“Are you insane?”

“I heard you talking about a honeymoon.”

“Fuck. I should have covered your ears.”

Realizing he’d heard the nonsense, he belatedly tried to cover his ears, but Geon-joo turned over, resting his head on Sa-yoon’s lap and blinking slowly.

“We’re not getting married?”

“Why are you suddenly so fixated on this?”

“Just because. We have rings, so I figured we might as well just get married.”

He held up the finger with the pairing ring.

“At my age, you’d be getting a real catch, hyung.”

“Get your facts straight, pretty boy. With all my assets, who’s the catch here? If anyone’s catching anything, it’s you.”

“Is that so? Then let me be the one who catches you.”

“……”

He had clearly misspoken. As he clamped his mouth shut, Geon-joo started to whine, “You said you’d give me anything I wanted.” It was a rare display of something that was either childish pouting or a playful joke. Sa-yoon stared into his transparent black eyes, unable to read his true intentions, and sighed.

“What would change if we got married?”

“I heard somewhere that if you’re a married couple in this life, there’s a high chance you’ll be born with a connection in the next one, too.”

“Let’s just stick to this life. What’s the point of going to the next one when we won’t have our memories anyway?”

“…You’re the one who put the ring on my ring finger. Is it fair to be so evasive now?”

“What?”

“I was debating whether to say this or not, but back then, when you put the ring on my hand, why did you put it on my ring finger? That’s a proposal. You know that, right?”

He was suddenly bringing up a dusty old memory. Sa-yoon tried to recall the faint event and frowned. Proposal? Back then, he had just wanted to keep Han Geon-joo by his side and had put the ring on him like a handcuff. The reason it was the ring finger was because it was the one that caught his eye at that moment, and because, of his five fingers, it was the one Han Geon-joo had that was the prettiest. He swore there was no other ulterior motive. As he looked on, dumbfounded, Geon-joo placed his own hand over the one Sa-yoon had used to cover his ears and looked up at him coquettishly.

“I’m not saying we have to do it right now, but just think about it.”

For a moment, Sa-yoon was swayed by his persuasive face, but he quickly gathered his wits.

Marriage is out of the question. Leaving aside the fact that they were both men, making a promise to spend the rest of his life with someone when he could die at any moment was a deception. But if he said that out loud, the brat below him would throw a fit, yelling about why he had to say things like that. Pondering his options, Sa-yoon finally chose the best one.

The best way to evade a difficult question was to change the subject.

“I heard it feels different if you kiss with your ears covered.”

He touched his earlobe as he said it, and the man, who had been in the middle of a long speech about marriage, stopped talking. He rolled his eyes as if thinking, then let out a hollow laugh. It was a clear sign that he saw through the obvious attempt at changing the topic.

But it was only for a moment. In the end, he surrendered to his desires and asked, “Should we try?” It was a reply accompanied by a look that said, I know what you’re doing, but I’ll play along.

My life.

Clicking his tongue at the thought of how he ended up with such an insolent brat, Sa-yoon lowered his head. A hand wrapped around the back of his neck, changing their position. Just before their lips met, Geon-joo, who had wrapped his arms around Sa-yoon’s waist, shot a look around the room, telling everyone to look away. Jongsik and Chan-hee, who had been paying attention, wondering if they were about to fight again, cleared their throats and left the villa.

“Should we go catch something for breakfast?” “Let’s go fishing, Chan-hee.” As the two of them made their exit, Yen and Gyeongjin, who couldn’t leave as they still had work to do, reacted differently. Yen, for his part, was enjoying it.

“Ugh, here they go again. At it again.”

Gyeongjin, on the other hand, was groaning in agony while cursing.

The man, who had become an unwilling participant in his boss’s love story, let out a string of curses, berating the two of them. When his gaze finally, reluctantly, fell back to his documents, their lips met. Outside the window, the dawn was slowly breaking. The fifth day of their rest was beginning.