Being A Full-Time Employee C65

Chapter 65

Wonu blew a soft breath. Smoke curled upward. My chest felt uncomfortably tight; I stood, thinking to turn on the light. Somewhere along the way, the room had warmed.

“Hyung. Don’t go.”

“….”

“You don’t have to turn it on.”

“Not going to have cake?”

“In a bit.”

“….”

“Or maybe in between.”

His grip on my wrist wasn’t especially strong, yet I sank back down slowly. In the darkness, I felt Wonu’s lips coming closer.

I closed my eyes and placed my hands on his shoulders. Even for a hunter like him—who healed quickly and well—there were scars. My fingers traced them, and I tried to stop myself from wondering how old he’d been when each appeared.

We leaned together. The carpet under us had been a rash purchase—a little odd, since I’d never increased my belongings after the dungeon break. I’d always kept baggage to a minimum, ready to leave anytime. But in the time without Wonu, clutter had grown. Still, the carpet wasn’t useless—it was soft and warm.

“It was a limit test,” he said. “They set extreme conditions to see how long we could endure.”

I reached into the air, and he caught my hand in his own. I could guess exactly which “test” he meant—the day Wonu had earned the label of hunter killer. At fourteen.

“They planned for a week; if we did well, maybe ten days. But because of me, it ended in four.”

“Did they think you were going to die?”

“I was fine. But the other hunters weren’t. Some hallucinated. Others lost control over their abilities, like… what’s it called when water drips everywhere—”

“Leakage?”

“Yes. They were leaking power. The guiding drugs back then were unstable, with severe rebound effects. Actually, testing that was part of the purpose, too.”

“What about you? You take those drugs?”

“I was just sleeping in a tree. I can go about three days without food or water pretty easily.”

That… didn’t sound remotely human. Hunger, maybe—but thirst? Still, for Wonu, I believed it. Human limits seemed to apply differently to him.

It was still deep winter morning, the sky utterly black. If not for the pale flashes of his fingers, it was almost as if my own hand existed in another space entirely. His hands were large and beautiful—hands that looked fit to handle flowers instead of blood. Yet blood was all they’d ever held.

“Feels like it was some kind of group madness,” he murmured. “I didn’t get it then, but… anyway, I guess they thought I was the easiest target. I don’t know what exactly they planned to do to me, and I don’t think they did either—but I fought back.”

“….”

“That’s all.”

There was little guilt in his tone. Maybe he’d only recognized it as wrong because others had persistently condemned him. He probably hadn’t wanted to tell me because other people’s criticism had made him see it as shameful.

I pulled him closer, pushing one leg between his until we were tangled like vine and tree.

“You didn’t have to tell me.”

“But you knew, right? Didn’t you want to know?”

“Honestly, yes. I wanted to hear it from you. But I realized asking outright was wrong, so I slunk around like a rat and dug it up.”

“From Team Leader Kang?”

“Yeah. You mad?”

“No. I don’t like you asking him, but… I couldn’t hide it forever. If I’d heard it from someone else, I’d probably still be in detention right now.”

When I glanced back, he was smiling sweetly—though the glint in his eyes was anything but. I smiled awkwardly. He was a little broken, too—not that hunters weren’t all a bit mad.

“By the way, is Park Seokho okay?”

“Why do you care about him?”

Even his sulky voice didn’t make me feel sorry. Knowing Wonu’s history, it was clear—few were more veteran than him. He was practically the Bureau’s living history.

“It’s not him I’m caring about—just worried you’ll get a permanent black mark.”

He snorted, changing the subject, his hand sliding down to my chest, right over the spot that had been pierced. His palm circled it gently. The memory of the pain itself wasn’t vivid—only the excruciating treatment after. I grimaced, and he lightened his touch.

“Does it hurt?” he asked softly.

“No. Honestly, it didn’t hurt when I got it—only during the rapid healing.”

“That hurts a lot. They say they based it on cauterizing a cut or stab wound.”

“Christ. The whole Bureau’s full of sadists.”

He gave a vague smile, and my mind flickered to his relentless persistence in bed. Yeah, he was a sadist too.

“I was scared,” he murmured.

I felt his fingertips circle the scar again, hovering just above my skin, teasing and careful, and the sound of his voice in my ear drew out a quiet, sweet breath from me.

“I was scared I’d hurt you… that I might kill you.”

“Technically, that was Seokho’s fault, not yours.”

“…Hyung. That was my mistake.”

“Still—he’s the one who set it in motion. Don’t think like that.”

He draped an arm across my chest, leaning his cheek on my shoulder. My hand rose naturally to stroke his hair. I didn’t know what went on inside that head—and maybe I never would—but I hoped he’d keep his thoughts simple, like when we’d first met. I didn’t want him suddenly maturing just because he’d had one more birthday.

“I’m scared I’ll hurt you—anytime,” he said.

“You think I’m that easy to hurt? I’m a pro.”

“Pros die easily too, Hyung.”

The unspoken “by my hand” hung between us. It wasn’t exaggeration. Wonu was stronger than any hunter I’d seen, and the more finely honed his skill, the farther it could expand. I didn’t even know the limits—and that sometimes thrilled and frightened me in equal measure.

“I have the power to kill you, and that terrifies me.”

“….”

“Until now, I wasn’t afraid of anything…”

I knew what he meant. I’d been afraid of plenty, but I’d never had anything I didn’t want to lose. Having something to lose meant looking back—and looking back left openings. It made me think more, hesitate—and in the end, act. In ways I never would have otherwise.

“Now, every day I’m scared. I used to have fun in dungeons like a kid in a playground. Now I know they’re battlefields. I understand things I never could before—like I’d been hearing foreign words all my life and now they suddenly make sense.”

Every word was a confession. I took his hand and placed it over my heart. He could feel it beating.

“Feel that?” I whispered, eyes closing. Honestly, though my mind was still turning over everything, sleep was starting to pull at me. We’d wandered the cold, tangled together, listened to his low, pleasing voice. It was natural I’d be drowsy—and his skin still carried the sweet scent of shared cake.

“The necklace you gave me let me start again once after stopping. So what’s there to be afraid of?”

I yawned through the end of the sentence. He didn’t answer. Maybe I’d brushed it off too easily—but I wanted him to do the same.

“Hyung. Do you know how much I—”

I never heard the rest. Sleep grabbed me hard, pulling me under.

I dreamed of the day a dungeon broke open. Not the kind I’d grown numb to over the years, but the first.

That day, I was leaving school early. I’d been feeling sick since morning—chills that by lunchtime had spiked into a fever so high I couldn’t sit upright. Even without permission from the nurse, my homeroom teacher wrote me a leave slip. My vision doubled as I accepted it.

When I bent to bow in thanks, he stopped me in horror.
“If you try that, you’ll smash your head on the floor. Just go.”

It was an old school, with stone floors. If he hadn’t stopped me, maybe I’d have gone down—and been carried unconscious to a hospital. Still, it wouldn’t have changed what was coming.

My parents ran a restaurant. Except for rare days off, they never left it. Mondays were their rest days; after my brother and I started school, they went out together on those days.

But that Monday, they were home. My mother said they’d had a bad feeling, hearing their eldest was unwell, and decided to wait.

Was the tragedy my fault?

Even knowing it was a dream, my eyes filled. And I couldn’t stop them. The story rushed on toward the ending I already knew, unstoppable.