Being A Full-Time Employee C56

Chapter 56

When I woke up again, I was in our lodgings. It wasn’t like what I had feared—that I’d wake up confined in some white-walled isolation room. There was a needle in the back of my hand connected to an IV tube, but whether it had been fluid or some strange medication, the bottle was already empty. I pressed a hand to my throbbing forehead and sat up.
Even after pulling the needle out, I couldn’t find my balance for a while. I staggered toward the living room, steadying myself against the wall. Cold silence and a large box were waiting for me there.
Before checking what was inside the box, I needed to check on Chae Wonu. I had some guesses about his condition, but I needed to see with my own eyes.
“He probably isn’t here. Whenever people like me wake up like this, the ones they care about have already been taken away somewhere.”
The tension before opening his door was immense. My heart was pounding so fast my hands trembled. I braced myself for an empty bed and opened the door.
And there, to my surprise, was Chae Wonu.
“What the…”
My dizzy head instantly lost all strength. Unlike me, Wonu wasn’t hooked up to any IVs. I hurried over and placed a hand under his nose—his breath was faint but steady. He was neither dead nor hurt. At least, not on the outside.
The relief drained me, and I slid down to the floor. Wonu didn’t even stir, breathing evenly as he slept.
None of this made sense. The dungeon had been a death trap, and then we were shot with tranquilizers and dragged to the Bureau. Still, I was thankful we hadn’t been separated completely.
I left Wonu there and returned to the living room. Closing the door quietly, I finally opened the box. Inside was a Notice of Quarantine. The document explained that the disinfecting procedures had been done just in case we’d brought out contaminants or a virus, and asked for our understanding.
“Well, maybe ask for understanding before you do it.”
Further down, one line nearly stopped my heart: the dungeon’s internal smoke was believed to affect hunters. I quickly read the rest—after all, in Korean, the real meaning’s always at the end of the sentence.
The smoke was said to amplify hunters’ aggression and impulses. Because of this, separate isolation testing had been conducted for hunters and guides. Guides were found clear of any issues, while hunters had been sedated with heavy anesthetics to keep them calm—therefore, they wouldn’t wake until late at night. If they didn’t wake by morning, we were to contact the Bureau hospital. Lastly, there was a quarantine order: three days.
Three days inside our quarters. Not exactly difficult. I decided to think of it as a short vacation—time to rest until Wonu woke up.
After every deployment, some muscle soreness was expected, but this time it was worse. I crawled onto the sofa and lay back, groaning.
Blinking slowly, I thought about how another team would have to clear the dungeon since we hadn’t finished it. The longest recorded clearing time was three days—maybe by the time our quarantine ended, we’d hear that it was done.
It had been such a strange dungeon—I never wanted to experience one like that again. And even though I had slept so long, I let the coming wave of sleep drag me down once more.

During the quarantine, we lived lazily. Wonu slept a lot, and woke up often. Mostly, he’d wake when I’d been gone too long. But I couldn’t always stay with him. I told myself that someday I wouldn’t be able to be by his side constantly anyway, and slowly tried to keep a bit of distance.
On the last day of isolation, Wonu stumbled out of the bedroom before even an hour of his nap was over. It had been only fifty minutes since I’d left the bed. That was an improvement. I rested my book against my chest and watched him shuffle toward me like a zombie. The moment his weight collapsed fully onto me, I felt something inside settle.
“I had a nightmare,” he muttered, whining like a child. But that didn’t change the fact that he was a grown man—tall, broad, with solid bones that only made the contrast more amusing.
“What kind of dream?”
“About you… disappearing. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to.”
“You just did.”
“Pretend you didn’t hear.”
His skin was warm from sleep—childlike. But I wasn’t some pervert who preyed on kids. He was an adult, no question. I patted his shoulder, but my own hunger was making me impatient. I hadn’t eaten while waiting for him to wake.
“I’m hungry, Wonu.”
“Me too.”
Not that kind of hungry. I wasn’t sure we were talking about the same thing; he buried his face into my shoulder, his hand sneaking under my shirt. I pushed him away. His soft, sleep-swollen face scrunched with mild annoyance.
“It’s not that I mind, but let’s eat real food first.”
“What do you want to eat?”
“Hmm… how about tteokbokki?” (spicy Korean rice cakes)
Wonu reached across the coffee table for my phone, using it as if it were his own. Not that it mattered—I used his credit card like it was mine, which evened things out.
He had ordered delivery a few times now, so he was almost proficient with the app. After ordering tteokbokki, he lifted my shirt hem and slid his head beneath. When I tried to push him away again, I realized his strength was immense. Was this a power contest now?
“So, you’re really going to do it without asking?”
“I’m not. You said you’re hungry. You finish faster when you’re hungry. I just want to smell you.”
Ah, so it wasn’t a contest after all. My hand stopped resisting. With a beautiful, younger lover acting this way, how many people could really refuse? And with Wonu—it was a different conversation entirely.
“I missed you. It’s strange—I just slept half a day, but it feels like we’ve been apart for months. I missed you, Hyung.”
(“Hyung”*: a term used by a younger man to address an older brother or close male friend.)
I had only been waiting for about three hours. But honestly? It felt the same to me. Three hours had felt like three months. I ran my fingers through his hair as he held onto my waist as if he’d never let go.
The tteokbokki disappeared in minutes—almost not enough. After such intense battles and then days of sleep, our appetites were monstrous.
We ordered more, and between deliveries satisfied other needs as well. It was a primal rhythm: eat, release desire, eat again.
“The dungeon… is changing, isn’t it?” Wonu asked between bites of dakgangjeong (sweet, crispy fried chicken). Neither of us were scientists, but after everything we’d experienced, we could talk about it with some insight—maybe even better than the researchers.
“I heard the smoke amplified hunters’ impulses, but I didn’t really feel it. I think I was the same as usual.”
“Yeah, you were. But Park Seokho definitely lost control. The situation left him little choice, but still…”
I studied Wonu’s expression carefully. He was just as composed as inside the dungeon—quietly solid.
“He seemed confused about why he was even angry,” I said.
“Yeah. Seems that way.”
“But what’s odd is—if the smoke really triggered violent urges, then a hunter who lost his guide should’ve gone berserk faster. Yet that one held it off for quite a while.”
“What about this theory: what if it only reacts to threats—things capable of harming the dungeon or damaging its environment?”
That was a tempting hypothesis. Hunters on the verge of rampage often enter a kind of paralysis—a calm before the storm. If so, the dungeon itself might not perceive them as threats. But Seokho had been uncontrollably aggressive…
Even that theory didn’t explain why Wonu hadn’t been affected at all.
“Did you meet Hunter Park Seokho after you got out?” I asked.
“We were asleep most of the time. Just the usual disinfecting, blood tests, health scans, that sort of thing. Hyung, why aren’t you eating more? Eat.”
“Because it feels like you’re telling me that with ulterior motives.”
“I always have ulterior motives when it comes to you. So just eat.”
He really talked a lot these days. I opened my mouth in surprise, and he stuffed another piece of chicken into it with childish eagerness, grinning when my cheeks puffed out. I couldn’t help but laugh with him—if he was happy, I was too.
Since we couldn’t sleep after resting so much, we pushed the sofa aside and sprawled out on the living room floor. We watched movies, read books, napped and woke, over and over again.
That’s how we caught the morning alerts canceling all our assignments. Maybe the Bureau decided we needed rest after what we’d been through.
“They’re calling me to the lab for testing,” Wonu said.
So only the guide—me—got actual rest. Wonu resisted, clinging to me tightly like a child refusing school.
“Just go early, get it done first.”
“Should I?”
“Yeah. Better to get the pain over with early.”
“Is that really a saying?”
Wonu was getting better at both physical affection and social responses, but he still lacked common sense sometimes. I told him yes, it was a real saying, and stood up. While he changed clothes, I did the same. Even if he changed his mind on the way, I could at least see him off.
We brushed our teeth side by side and put on our shoes together.
“You know, it feels like we’re married,” he said, laughing softly.
I usually hated cheesy lines, but somehow his face made it bearable. He wasn’t asking for anything weird or perverse, just playing along in the moment.
“So, we were office lovers who ended up married, huh?”
It was such a simple line, yet Wonu looked moved almost to tears.