Archive of Our Own

The Time Where You Belong

West Mapo-gu Dungeon

The most absurd dungeon completion requirement Lee Sayoung had ever encountered in his life was not killing the boss in a single strike, nor surviving for 72 hours without sleep.

This was worse than that.

Lee Sayoung stared at the system window floating lazily in the air before his face. He read the sentence once. Twice. Three times. Then he turned away, because reading it any more than that felt like an insult to his dignity.

West Mapo-gu Dungeon was not a popular dungeon. Located beneath an old bridge along the Han River in the Mapo area—its location was inconspicuous, its rank was not high, and there were no reports of dangerous monsters inside. What made it strange was that three hunter teams who had entered before came out empty-handed. Not because they had been defeated. Not because of injuries.

They came out because they didn't know what they were supposed to do.

No monsters. No puzzles. Nothing at all.

Sayoung had accepted this request not out of interest. Going to a low-rank dungeon was far easier than listening to a man named Jung Bin for two full hours.

A decision he now regretted.

The notification appeared exactly one second after he stepped through the gate. Sayoung stopped. He stared at his left hand—the hand that was usually darkened at the fingertips from the poison that flowed constantly beneath his skin. He tried to activate his ability. Just a little.

…Nothing?

It was as though something was blocking that channel from within, rendering it clean and hollow all the way to the tips of his fingers, which were no longer black. Sayoung stared at all ten fingers, now restored to their normal color for the first time in years.

It felt rather strange.

He didn't have time to dwell on it further, because the dungeon itself was stranger than he had imagined.

Before him was not a stone corridor. Not a dark room smelling of damp. Not an open plain teeming with monsters.

Before him was a street.

Asphalt. Utility poles with posters half-peeled away. A corner store with its light glowing warm yellow even though it was only seven in the morning. Low buildings pressed tightly together as though they had never heard of personal space. Electric cables stretching overhead like a giant tangle of thread.

This was clearly Seoul. But something was different from the Seoul he knew.

Sayoung looked at the nearest shop sign. A small calendar hung beneath a wall clock visible through the glass. He squinted, reading the month and year.

Twelve years ago…?

Lee Sayoung stood in the middle of Seoul's streets twelve years in the past, dressed in full black techwear complete with a shoulder harness, black leather gloves, and combat boots that weighed half a kilogram per side—while all around him people moved past in thin jackets and backpacks, faces that knew nothing yet of dungeons or rifts or systems.

He let out a long breath.

The most embarrassing dungeon to ever exist.

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Three minutes passed and Lee Sayoung was still standing in the same spot.

He didn't know where to go because the system window provided no information beyond a progress bar stuck at zero percent and a single sentence too vague to serve as any kind of guide. Make yourself memorable in the eyes of the target. Whose target? Where? How did the system measure memorability?

Oh. So he had to start walking first.

Fine.

Sayoung began walking without any clear destination, making his way through streets that were simultaneously unfamiliar and not. Seoul twelve years ago wasn't too different from the Seoul he knew. Only busier in a different way, noisier with a different kind of noise. No emergency sirens. No rift evacuation announcements. No uniformed hunters running among civilians.

Just a city living quietly.

Sayoung tucked both hands into his trouser pockets. The leather glove on his left hand felt strange without any poison that needed containing—he usually wore it to protect others from his skin, not for style. But removing it in public felt uncomfortable for different reasons.

He kept walking.

In front of a small convenience store, a middle-aged cashier peered at him through the glass display with an expression full of questions. Understandable. Not many people wandered around at half past seven in the morning looking the way Sayoung did in a residential neighborhood like this.

The notification appeared suddenly, making Sayoung stop right in front of the convenience store's door.

At the same moment, the sound of footsteps moving too fast for a situation that wasn't an emergency, a slightly winded breath, and—

Thud.

Something collided with the left side of his body at a speed sufficient to shift his shoulder two centimeters to the right.

Sayoung didn't move from his spot. But whoever had run into him was not so fortunate—they were shoved back two steps, nearly stumbling, one hand reflexively grabbing the nearest utility pole to steady themselves. The other hand still clutched a half-eaten piece of white bread that had somehow survived the collision.

One second of silence.

Sayoung looked down.

A boy in a high school uniform with the collar slightly crooked to the left. Black hair that hadn't quite been combed properly—or perhaps it had been, and had simply given up halfway. Shoes that were no longer very white. A single-strap backpack hanging off his right shoulder in a way that looked like it might fall at any moment.

His face—

Sayoung fell still.

His face was sharp. A defined jawline, fairly high cheekbones, thick but not coarse eyebrows. But amid all of that were a pair of cheeks that still held a faint roundness—a small detail he wouldn't have noticed had he not known that face far too well in a different version.

…Similar.

This was far too similar.

Those dark eyes looked at Sayoung. Then at the bread still in his hand. Then back at Sayoung.

"…Are you okay?"

He was the one who asked first. Not the one who apologized first, not the one who explained why he had been running so fast on a public street at half past seven in the morning—he was the one who asked first, in a tone so genuine it was as though Sayoung was the one who might actually have been more hurt by the collision.

Sayoung didn't answer for a full three seconds.

Three seconds that felt longer than they should have, because inside his head something unusual was occurring. A kind of juxtaposition he hadn't asked for—between the face before him now and that same face in a more grown version, with hair that was no longer black and eyes that held far too many things.

This was his Hyung.

And yet, at the same time, it wasn't.

"…Your bread."

That was what came out of Lee Sayoung's mouth after three seconds of thinking.

Cha Euijae—the young one, the sixteen-year-old, whose cheeks still held a faint roundness—stared at Sayoung with an uncomprehending expression for half a second. Then his gaze dropped to the bread in his hand. Then to the asphalt. Then—

"Huh? OH!"

The bread had fallen.

Exactly when it had fallen was unclear, but it had—perhaps during the collision, perhaps when he grabbed the pole, or perhaps when he was too busy worrying about the person he had run into. What was certain was that the slice of white bread was now lying on the asphalt in a rather unfortunate state.

"Oh no—ah, damn—"

Euijae glanced at his watch. His expression shifted from panic to more-panic. He looked at the bread on the ground once more with a brief look of pure regret, then looked at Sayoung.

"Sorry, thanks, bye~!"

And he ran.

He simply ran, his backpack bouncing against his back, his uniform fluttering, disappearing around the bend in the road in less than ten seconds.

Lee Sayoung was left alone in front of the convenience store. Beside him, the slice of white bread lay on the asphalt. Inside his head, there were still remnants of those three seconds. That face, that voice, the way he had asked, 'are you okay?' like someone who was simply used to worrying about others before himself.

The system window appeared again.

Three percent. From saying 'your bread.'

Sayoung stared at that number. Stared at the bend in the road where Euijae had disappeared. Stared at the sky, now fully bright.

This was going to take a long time.

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This dungeon had no rules regarding time—at least none that were written. Sayoung didn't know whether time here ran in parallel with the real world or not.

What he knew was that his progress bar was still at three percent and his target had just run off to school with a crooked uniform and no breakfast.

Sayoung bought a canned drink from the convenience store—the middle-aged cashier served him with a look that was trying to be neutral but wasn't succeeding all that well—then stood outside, drinking slowly, and thinking.

He couldn't get into the school. That was obvious.

But high school students came home from school.

So Sayoung did the only thing that made sense. He walked around the block at a leisurely pace, identified the location of the nearest school, and waited.

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At four in the afternoon, from behind the fence of an open basketball court beside the school complex, Sayoung found Euijae.

It wasn't hard to find him—his was the loudest voice.

"HEY! I ALREADY SAID THAT WAS IN! IT CLEARLY WENT IN!"

"IT DIDN'T GO IN, EUIJAE, YOU NEED YOUR EYES CHECKED—"

"MY EYES ARE PERFECT, WHAT NEEDS CHECKING IS YOUR JUDGMENT—"

On a basketball court with rings whose paint was peeling here and there, about six boys were arguing over whether the ball had gone in or not. Five of the six had reasonable perspectives. One of them—whose uniform was now more disheveled than in the morning, one of whose shoelaces had come undone without him noticing—was standing with both hands on his hips and an expression of total unwillingness to back down.

Cha Euijae, the young one, the sixteen-year-old, was debating with an enthusiasm entirely disproportionate to the matter of an afternoon basketball game.

Sayoung found a long wooden bench at the edge of the court and sat down. He didn't announce his presence. He simply sat, looked out at the court, and waited.

Euijae's friends spotted him first. Understandable. Not every day did someone with Sayoung's appearance sit calmly at the edge of a basketball court near a secondary school—black techwear, shoulder harness, leather gloves, a posture that was far too upright for someone who was supposedly relaxed. Two of them immediately pressed Euijae's arm, whispering something.

Euijae turned.

His eyes found Sayoung. One second passed. Then his expression shifted from wary-because-there's-a-stranger to something else entirely.

"HEY, YOU'RE THE ONE FROM THIS MORNING!"

He came running over. Not walking—running, directly, without hesitation, leaving his friends still standing with expressions caught somewhere between confusion and uncertainty as to whether this situation was safe.

Euijae stopped right in front of the bench, still slightly out of breath from playing basketball earlier. His hair was messy in a different way from the morning—more damp and tangled. There was a small red graze on the back of his hand, perhaps from a ball hit too hard or from the asphalt when he fell.

He looked Sayoung up and down in a way that was quite openly uninhibited.

"Who are you waiting for?"

"No one."

"A friend?"

"No one."

"A girlfriend? Boyfriend?"

"No one."

Euijae blinked. "Then what are you doing here?"

Sayoung looked at him briefly. "Sitting."

A silence of two seconds.

Then Euijae nodded with a deeply serious expression, as though he had just received a perfectly reasonable answer that required no further questioning. "…Oh. Okay?"

And he sat down beside Sayoung.

Just like that. Without being invited, without any additional pleasantries, without the safe distance people usually maintained when sitting beside a stranger. His backpack was set between his feet, his elbows rested on his knees, his head tilted slightly forward—the posture of someone resting and unbothered about whether it looked impolite.

His friends on the court eventually resumed playing after confirming that Euijae appeared to be in no danger.

"Have you been around here since this morning?"

"No."

"But you knew about this court?"

"Guess."

Euijae let out a small chuckle. A laugh that was more of a long breath that lifted at the end, not the loud laughter he had produced out on the court, but a smaller, lighter version. "Okay, I won't ask again."

They sat in silence for a few minutes. On the court, Euijae's friends had resumed playing, this time with a more serious score and somewhat quieter arguments.

Sayoung wasn't looking at the court. He was looking at Euijae.

Not in a way that was crass—he wasn't staring continuously like someone who had never seen a good-looking face. But occasionally, when Euijae turned toward the court, Sayoung took in his profile from the side. A straight nose. A chin that tapered slightly. Eyelashes long enough to be notable for a boy.

Each time he noticed those details, something in his chest felt like it had been grazed by the edge of something blunt—not sharp, not immediately painful, but enough to make him aware of its presence.

His Hyung.

Not his Hyung.

But who would certainly become his Hyung.

"Hey."

Sayoung blinked. "What?"

Euijae produced a sports drink bottle from his backpack—cap already open, contents already reduced by nearly half. He held it out toward Sayoung with the natural ease of someone offering something to a person they had known for years.

"Want some?"

Sayoung stared at the bottle. Stared at the part Euijae had already drunk from. Stared at Euijae.

"…No."

"Why not?"

"You've already drunk from it."

"So? I'm not sick."

"That's not the point—"

"Are you thirsty or not?"

Sayoung closed his mouth. Euijae continued holding the bottle out patiently, as though he had unlimited time to wait for an answer. His eyes looked at Sayoung with an expression that couldn't quite be called pushy but didn't leave much room to refuse—a blend of genuine sincerity and a complete unawareness of the concept of rejection.

"…No."

"Okay."

Euijae pulled the bottle back and drank from it himself. Not offended. Not awkward. As though the exchange had never taken place.

Sayoung looked ahead.

'Why is this person like this?'

Not a question with a specific answer. Just a kind of statement that formed on its own inside his head as he observed the way Euijae drank calmly beside him. The way he was simply there without needing to fill every silence, without needing to make sure the person beside him was comfortable or not, just there, like a presence that demanded nothing.

Most people around him—in the guild, at the bureau, everywhere—always brought something when they approached him. An agenda. Expectations. Fear they half-concealed. Even those who were sincere usually adjusted the way they spoke once they knew who he was.

This boy didn't know who he was. And the way he didn't know felt different from the way others didn't know.

"What's your name?"

Sayoung was slightly caught off guard—not by the question, but by the timing. At the very moment he was thinking about Euijae, Euijae asked.

"…Lee Sayoung."

"Oh." Euijae nodded. "I'm Cha Euijae. Second year." He pointed toward the school building beyond the fence. "University?"

"…Something like that."

"Hmm." Another nod, slower this time, as though processing the information. "Working?"

"That too."

"You're busy too, huh."

They sat in silence again. This time for longer—until the sun began to shift and the shadows of the court stretched eastward, until Euijae's friends started calling for him to come back for one last round.

Euijae stood, picked up his backpack, slung it over one shoulder. He glanced back at Sayoung once.

"See you again!"

He ran back to the court before Sayoung had the chance to respond.

Lee Sayoung watched his retreating back—the bouncing backpack, the steps moving too fast for a body that should have been worn out after over an hour of basketball. On the court, his friends welcomed him with shouts and Euijae dove straight back into the game as though he hadn't just spent twenty minutes sitting quietly beside a stranger.

The system window appeared silently at the edge of his vision.

Sayoung stared at that number. A fifteen percent increase just from sitting beside that boy and not saying much.

He didn't know how to feel about that.

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The trouble with this dungeon was that there were no clear markers of time.

Sayoung didn't know what time it was in the real world. His watch showed a time synced with the dungeon's internal time, which made it useless as a reference. His stomach began sending signals around six in the dungeon's evening, which he addressed by buying an onigiri from the same convenience store as this morning.

The middle-aged cashier asked nothing. He simply served Sayoung with an expression that had long since given up trying to understand the context of this particular customer.

Sayoung ate outside while standing, watching the road grow quiet as the day darkened. In his head, a calculation kept running—eighteen percent in one day, meaning approximately four more days at the same pace. But systems didn't operate on linear logic. There were likely certain thresholds that caused progress to rise faster, or slower, depending on the type of interaction.

He was mulling that over when something caught his attention.

From the far end of the road came a sound he had come to recognize quickly. Laughter too loud for a residential neighborhood at around seven in the evening. Sayoung turned his head.

At the mouth of the alley leading to a small PC café with dim lighting, Euijae was walking with one friend—a shorter boy with glasses and an expression that looked like someone long accustomed to the exhaustion of keeping up with the person beside him.

Euijae was the one who spotted Sayoung first.

His eyes widened for half a second—not with excessive surprise, more along the lines of, 'oh, so you're still here.' Then he waved. Not a small, polite wave—a full enthusiastic wave of unnecessary scale, as though making sure the person at the other end of the road could see him.

"SAYOUNG-SSI!"

His friend with the glasses immediately pulled Euijae's arm down. "Hey, you're so loud—"

"That's an acquaintance of mine." Euijae did not lower his volume significantly. He was already walking toward Sayoung. "Met this morning, met again this afternoon."

"…Two meetings and they're already an acquaintance?"

"Yes."

His friend studied Sayoung with a more cautious look. A reasonable look, given the black techwear, the overly upright posture, the face that appeared unfriendly even while expressing nothing in particular. From the perspective of a bespectacled high school boy, all of this could easily be read as 'mysterious dangerous adult.'

Euijae did not read the situation that way at all.

"Where are you going?" he asked Sayoung.

"Nowhere."

"Come with us, then."

The friend with the glasses exhaled quietly behind Euijae, with an expression that said 'I've given up,' without needing to open his mouth.

"Where to?"

Euijae pointed toward the PC café at the end of the alley. "Playing games. Can you play?"

Sayoung looked at the PC café. Its neon sign flickered once every few minutes as though it were dying. Through the glass, several silhouettes were visible, hunched before monitors.

He had no reason to go.

He also had no reason not to.

"…Sure."

Euijae smiled as though Sayoung had just delivered the most satisfying answer imaginable. Without further delay, he walked into the PC café with a confidence entirely unwarranted for someone who was about to lose repeatedly.

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The PC café was smaller than it looked from outside. Twenty computers packed into a space whose comfortable capacity was probably twelve, separated by thin partitions that offered no real privacy. The smell was a mixture of instant noodles, smoke that had long settled into the carpet, and an air conditioner set to far too cold.

Euijae immediately headed for two adjacent empty computers and claimed them—one for himself, one for his friend with the glasses. Then he looked at Sayoung, looked at the empty seat beside him, and patted it once.

"Come here."

Sayoung sat down.

The friend with the glasses turned out to be named Park Junho, information Sayoung gathered not from a proper introduction, but because Euijae had called him 'Junho' three times within the first two minutes. Junho gave Sayoung one glance with a look that hovered somewhere between wary and okay-he-seems-safe-enough, then focused on his monitor.

Euijae had already chosen a game without any discussion.

"Have you played this before?"

Sayoung glanced at his screen. A strategy game—not overly complex, but not simple either. Resource systems, units, base defense. "No."

"I'll teach you."

"No need."

Euijae had already begun explaining. Sayoung didn't listen to the explanation—not out of rudeness, but because he had already understood the mechanics from looking at the interface for thirty seconds. He opened his own game, selected the same mode, and began.

Five minutes later, Euijae lost the first round.

"Ah, damn—"

Junho made no comment. He had already lost before him.

Euijae turned to look at Sayoung's screen, which was still running, whose units were all still alive, whose base defenses hadn't been breached at a single point. Euijae's expression shifted in a way that was almost comical—from frustration to surprise to something resembling outright disbelief.

"…You said you'd never played this before."

"Yes."

"But you're winning?"

"Not finished yet."

"BUT YOU'RE WINNING ON YOUR WAY THROUGH."

Junho looked up from his screen. "Sayoung-ssi, do you play games a lot?"

"Never."

Two seconds of silence.

"NEVER?!" Euijae said it at a volume that made several people nearby turn to look.

Sayoung didn't answer. He focused on the screen and finished the round cleanly. When the screen displayed a victory message, he lifted his hands from the keyboard.

"That's how it's done."

Euijae stared at Sayoung's screen. Stared at his own screen, still displaying his defeat. Stared at Sayoung again.

"…Teach me."

"Didn't you say you were going to teach me?"

"The situation has changed."

Sayoung almost said no. But there was something in the way Euijae said it—not pleading, not wheedling, simply direct and clear, like someone who had no large ego about acknowledging that another person was better than him—that made Sayoung shift his chair slightly toward Euijae's monitor.

"Open it again."

Euijae opened a new round quickly.

Sayoung didn't touch his mouse or keyboard—he simply guided. Place this unit here, prioritize this resource first, don't open two fronts at once if you don't have enough units to cover both. Euijae listened seriously. Occasionally he nodded slowly, occasionally asked a single short question that was precisely on target.

Then lost again.

"…Ugh."

"You opened two fronts at the same time."

"But there were enough units—"

"Not enough. You were counting by numbers, not by positioning."

Euijae stared at the screen with an expression that was genuinely processing. Junho beside them had already given up playing and switched to something else in his browser.

Sayoung watched Euijae from the side as the boy stared at the screen with slightly furrowed brows—the expression of someone truly thinking something through, not pretending to. A small detail. But Sayoung noticed.

This was his Hyung.

The sentence returned, but this time with a different nuance. Not the startling confirmation it had been this morning. More like a fact that was slowly sinking in—that the person sitting beside him right now, who had just lost at the game twice and was trying to figure out where he had gone wrong, was the same person who would one day stand at rank one with hair that was no longer black and eyes that had seen far too many things they should never have had to see.

But right now he was sixteen and losing at a game and had no great ego about it.

Sayoung turned his gaze back ahead.

Cute.

Not something he said aloud. Just a word that surfaced somewhere in his mind before he could stop it.

In the third round, Euijae almost won. He lost in the final minute because one of his units, which he hadn't been paying attention to, had been nearly dead for some time.

"SO CLOSE—"

"Bottom-right unit."

"AH DAMN—"

Junho finally turned. "Want to head home?"

Euijae glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen. He let out a breath. "Okay."

The three of them left the PC café together—Junho first, Euijae following, Sayoung at the back. Outside, the night air was slightly cooler than it had been in the afternoon. Junho said his goodbyes first because his home was in a different direction, leaving Euijae and Sayoung in front of the alley.

Euijae stood beneath the streetlight, turning to face Sayoung.

"You live around here?"

"No."

"But you've been here since morning."

"Business."

Euijae nodded briefly. Then, with the same naturalness as earlier at the court—as though there was no distance that needed to be crossed first—he raised his hand slightly.

"Your name was Lee Sayoung, right?"

"Yes."

"I'm Cha Euijae." He said it again, as though the first introduction hadn't counted because it had happened in a different context. "Second year of high school. Turning seventeen next month."

Sayoung looked at him. "I know."

"How do you know?"

"…You said so earlier."

"Oh." Euijae laughed—a short, light laugh, carrying no weight at all. "Right." He lowered his hand. "If you still have business around here tomorrow, come find me."

Then he turned and walked home with the same careless gait as everything else he did. A little too fast, a little too heedless of his surroundings, yet somehow always managing not to collide with anything this time.

Lee Sayoung stood in front of the now-empty alley.

In his head, that face in two different versions, side by side without his asking.

The Hyung he knew had hair that was no longer black, tired eyes, heavy shoulders.

And this boy, who thirty minutes ago had lost at a game twice in a row and felt no shame in admitting it.

The system window appeared silently.

Sayoung stared at that number for a long time.

Thirty-five percent in just two days. The system was evidently counting something he couldn't calculate on his own. Not the number of interactions, not the duration of conversations, not how much he had spoken. Something else.

He didn't know what.

But he had a feeling that the next two days wouldn't be any easier than these two.

The night wind touched his face from the direction of the river, which wasn't visible from here but whose presence could be felt.

Sayoung tucked both hands in his pockets and walked in the opposite direction.

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Sayoung didn't follow Euijae the next day.

This was not stalking. He simply happened to know that a high school student with tutoring at three in the afternoon would usually leave school around four, and that if there were no plans with friends they would typically buy something from a convenience store before going home, and that the nearest convenience store to the school was the same one where they had first collided.

This was situational analysis. Entirely different.

Sayoung stood at a street corner with a canned drink in hand when Euijae came out of the convenience store carrying a small plastic bag and a piece of bread with a casualness entirely unbefitting of someone who had just finished six hours of school. He looked right. Then left. Then walked in the direction of the riverside park without any apparent sign of urgency.

Sayoung followed him at a distance he considered adequate.

This was not stalking.

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Han River Park in the afternoon had a different kind of bustle from the morning. More people, but none of them in a hurry. Couples cycling, children running on the grass, elderly people walking leisurely with their dogs. The sun had already begun its descent to the west, shifting the color of the river from a clear grey to something warmer.

Euijae sat at the edge of the concrete barrier, legs dangling below, eating his bread while gazing out at the river.

Sayoung approached from his direction.

Euijae heard the footsteps, or perhaps recognized their rhythm, because he didn't turn with a start. He simply shifted his position slightly to the left, making room to his right, then continued chewing as though there had always been an arrangement to meet here.

Sayoung sat down.

The Han River spread out before them. Wide, calm, reflecting an afternoon sky already going orange at its edges.

One minute passed in a silence that wasn't uncomfortable.

"What do you actually do for work?"

Euijae opened the conversation without any preamble, still chewing, still looking ahead. A casual way of asking, just curiosity spilling out naturally.

"…Hunter."

Euijae turned. "Huh? Hunter of what?"

"Dangerous things."

For two seconds Euijae stared at him with an expression deciding whether this answer was serious or not. Then he nodded once, slowly, with an expression that was suddenly very grown up.

"Cool."

Then he went back to eating his bread.

Sayoung looked at him. "That's your only reaction?"

"What should I say?"

"I don't know. Usually people ask more questions."

"Hmm." Euijae considered this while chewing. "But it seems like you don't like being asked too many questions."

Sayoung was silent.

"Right?"

"…That doesn't mean you can't ask."

"Okay." Euijae swallowed his bite. "Dangerous how?"

"Dangerous enough."

"Have you ever almost died?"

"A few times."

"Hm." Another nod. Then Euijae looked at him with eyes that narrowed slightly. "That's why you don't look afraid of anything."

Sayoung didn't answer that.

Euijae had already resumed eating. The conversation flowed after that in a peculiar way. Not because Sayoung had suddenly become more talkative, but because Euijae spoke enough for both of them without making Sayoung feel any need to fill the gaps.

"I still don't know what I want to study," Euijae said at some point, looking at the river. "Junho wants to do law, Minjae wants medicine. I don't have a picture yet." He shrugged lightly. "But it's fine, there's still more than a year."

"Aren't you worried?"

"Worried about what? I'll find my way eventually."

Sayoung watched his profile from the side. There was a different kind of confidence there. A confidence pointing toward a fundamental belief that everything would be alright, without needing to know exactly how.

"Naive," said Sayoung.

Euijae turned. "Hm?"

"You don't know what you want, but you're certain you'll find your way. Naive."

Euijae looked at him for two seconds. Then he snickered. "You sound like an old person."

"I'm twenty-four."

"Eight years older than me, but you talk like you're eighty years older." Euijae bit into his bread, smiling ahead. "I'm still not worried. When the time comes, I'll know."

Sayoung chose not to continue that argument.

The sun descended further. The surface of the river changed color slowly—from orange to pale gold to something that was almost red at the part nearest the horizon. People in the park began to thin out, but it wasn't empty. There was still the sound of bicycles passing, a small child laughing, a radio from a distant stall playing a song too faint to identify.

Euijae stopped talking at some point.

He fell quiet suddenly, looking at the river in a different way than before—calmer, deeper, as though there was something he was observing that wasn't visible on the surface.

"It would be nice, wouldn't it," he said at last. Softly. "To be able to keep looking at this river."

Not sadness, not a complaint. Just a statement from someone truly savoring something and wanting to say so.

"I like places that are busy but still peaceful like this." Euijae tilted his chin slightly toward the park behind them, the sounds that were present but not demanding attention. "It's like that here. Busy but not noisy."

Sayoung didn't respond.

But inside his head something moved slowly—like pieces finding their places one by one, without a sound.

The television always left on even when no one was watching.

The ASMR channel played every night before sleep.

The way his Hyung always chose to sit somewhere he could hear other people's sounds—restaurants that were busy enough, streets that weren't too quiet, park benches that were never quite silent.

Eight years inside a rift that held no sound beyond the sounds of battle. Eight years without crowds, without warmth, without small things like a radio from a stall too far away to identify the song.

And this boy—who was sitting beside him right now and saying, 'it would be nice to keep looking at this river,' in a tone so light, so unaware—was the same person who would one day lose all of that for a very long time.

Sayoung looked at the river.

Euijae smiled toward the river, knowing nothing.

The wind touched the surface of the water and created a small ripple that shimmered for one second before disappearing.

"Hey."

Sayoung blinked. "What?"

Euijae held out the last remaining piece, still half-wrapped in its plastic. "Want some?"

Sayoung looked at the bread. Looked at Euijae looking back at him with an expression that urged nothing.

This time he accepted it.

Euijae made no comment. He simply turned his face back to the river and opened his drink.

They sat there until the sky turned purple at the top and deep red at the horizon, not talking much but not feeling any need to. Beside Sayoung, Euijae occasionally murmured softly, commenting on a passing boat, naming a food he wanted to eat tomorrow, arguing with himself about whether he should buy new shoes or wait for a sale.

Sayoung listened to all of it without responding much.

The system window appeared when the day was almost fully dark.

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The idea of going to the secondhand bookshop was not Sayoung's.

Euijae was the one who mentioned it the following afternoon when they crossed paths in front of the convenience store, a coincidence that was beginning to feel less and less like one given its frequency.

"I'm going to a bookshop first," said Euijae. "Want to come?"

"What for?"

"Just browsing."

"Browsing through books without buying any?"

"Maybe buying. Not sure yet."

Sayoung looked at him. "You don't read."

Euijae turned quickly. "How do you know that?"

"Guess."

"…" Euijae narrowed his eyes for two seconds. Then he started walking. "I read. Sometimes. If the book is interesting." He didn't look back but his tone was inviting. "Coming or not?"

Sayoung followed.

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The secondhand bookshop was tucked away in a small alley near the Hongik area, the type of place with no large signage—just small lettering above a wooden door with paint cracked here and there. From outside it looked narrow. From inside it turned out to be even narrower.

Wooden shelves filled nearly every centimeter of the space, reaching nearly to the ceiling, arranged with just enough room for one person to pass between them—one person of average dimensions.

Sayoung walked in, stood upright, and immediately bumped the shelf on his right. Two books shifted. They didn't fall, but they shifted.

Euijae ahead of him turned with an expression torn between concern and suppressed laughter. "Careful, uncle."

"…I'm not an 'uncle'."

"Sorry, you just feel like one."

"Being eight years older doesn't mean—"

"Watch the left shelf too."

Sayoung turned his head. The left shelf was nearly touching his shoulder. He shifted two centimeters to the right, which brought his other shoulder nearly touching the shelf on that side. The passageway between the shelves had been made for humans of more… efficient proportions.

Euijae had already moved ahead with ease, making his way through the shelves like someone who had memorized the layout of this shop. His hand drifted over the spines of books casually. Not reading each title one by one—more sensing, like searching for something whose form he didn't know but would recognize once he found it.

Sayoung followed, his body continuously almost knocking into something at every turn.

"Do you come here often?" he asked.

"Fairly." Euijae stopped at one shelf, tilting his head to read the title of a book positioned at an angle. "The owner is kind. He won't mind if you look for a long time without buying."

"Have you ever not bought anything?"

"Almost never." Euijae picked up one book, flipped through its pages briefly, put it back. "But not because I buy everything I see. It's just that whenever I come here, there's usually one that fits."

"Fits how?"

Euijae looked at Sayoung with an expression weighing the answer. "I'm not sure. It just feels right."

Sayoung didn't ask further.

They moved through the shop at Euijae's pace. Slow, unhurried, occasionally stopping at one shelf longer than the others. Sayoung walked behind him, his body having to stoop slightly at certain points.

He knocked into a shelf three more times.

Euijae didn't comment directly, but every time the sound of shifting books was heard, there came from his direction a caught breath that was clearly not an ordinary breath.

"Did you just laugh?" said Sayoung.

"No I'm not."

"You're holding back laughter."

"I'm focused on reading book titles."

"There were no books in the direction you were just looking."

Euijae turned to the shelf before him. Indeed empty at that section. He cleared his throat. "…This shop is narrow."

"My body is too large."

"No, this shop is genuinely narrow—"

"…, …Euijae."

"…Okay maybe it's a little funny."

Sayoung looked at him. Euijae finally let that held breath go and chuckled softly—not the loud laughter he had produced on the court, but enough that the shop owner seated behind the cashier's desk looked up briefly before returning to his book.

"Sorry," said Euijae, not sounding particularly sorry. "But seriously, can you still walk? Is it too cramped?"

"I can."

"Okay." He had already turned back to the shelf. "Just a little longer."

Sayoung waited.

Euijae went through two more shelves, stopping, moving forward, stepping back, stopping again. At one point he crouched to look at the books on the lower shelf, and from that position his hand touched the spine of a thin book with a worn cover, its color so faded it was impossible to tell what it had originally been.

He took it. Read the title and the author's name. Flipped to the back, read a line or two of the synopsis. Then stood, turned to Sayoung, and held the book out without much preface.

"I think this fits you."

Sayoung accepted it. A book of poetry—thin, no more than a hundred pages, the cover folded at its corners from being opened too many times. The title was about things that endure even as time passes. The author's name was one he didn't recognize.

"Why?"

Euijae had already moved to another shelf. "I'm not sure. It just feels right."

The same answer as before. The same manner—direct, without excessive deliberation, based on something that couldn't be explained but was believed without hesitation.

Sayoung looked at the book for a moment. He opened it to a random page. One line landed in his eyes before he had even chosen to read it or not.

'Some things do not need to be remembered in order to remain.'

He closed the book.

He looked at Euijae, now four steps ahead, tilting his head to read the title of a book positioned at an angle, humming softly to a song whose tune was indistinct.

Sayoung brought the book to the cashier.

The shop owner—an elderly man with thick glasses and hair already full of silver—looked at the book, looked at Sayoung, then looked toward Euijae who was still browsing a shelf in the back. A small smile appeared on his face.

"Your younger sibling?"

Sayoung opened his mouth.

"No, a friend!"

Euijae called out from three shelves away, not looking up, still occupied with looking at another book. When exactly he had been listening to their conversation—or whether his hearing simply had an unreasonable range—was unclear.

The shop owner chuckled softly, named a price, accepted Sayoung's money.

Sayoung received his change and stared at the thin book in his hand.

Friend.

A word Euijae had said with the same naturalness as everything else he said—simply as it was. As though it were a fact that already existed and he was merely stating it.

Euijae finally emerged from behind a shelf with two books in hand. He placed them on the cashier's table, paying with exact change pulled from his jacket pocket in a way that showed the money had been prepared from home.

"You bought something?" Euijae glanced at the book in Sayoung's hand.

"Yes."

"That one is good." He picked up his own wrapped purchases. "The author isn't famous but the writing is beautiful. I read it in first year."

"You've already read this?"

"Yes. That's why I said it fits you."

Sayoung looked at him. Euijae had already stepped toward the door, pushed it open, and turned slightly with an expression that was waiting.

"Done?"

Sayoung stepped outside. Outside the narrow alley was brighter than inside. An afternoon sky still holding the last traces of light before darkening fully. Euijae walked beside him now, shopping bag in one hand, two new books inside whose tops peeked out slightly.

They walked in the direction of the main road without either of them having established a destination.

"Do you read poetry?" asked Euijae.

"Not usually."

"But you bought it?"

"You were the one who held it out."

"I held it out because it fits." Euijae glanced at him from the corner of his eye. "You bought it because you want to read it, right? Not because you felt bad about refusing?"

Sayoung didn't answer immediately.

Euijae waited.

"…Maybe both."

Euijae chuckled. He sounded like someone who had received a more honest answer than he'd expected and found it amusing in the best way.

"Okay." He looked ahead. "Tell me when you think it's good, after you read it."

"You won't remember asking."

"Who says?"

Euijae was still looking ahead, walking at a pace too leisurely for someone without a clear destination. His face offered no further explanation.

The system window appeared at the edge of Sayoung's vision, quiet as always.

Sayoung held the thin book slightly tighter in his hand, then looked out at the road that was beginning to light its lamps one by one, at the sky that had nearly finished changing color, at Euijae walking beside him humming that same song whose tune had never been clear since the first time he heard it.

Twelve percent left.

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That day, there were no plans.

Euijae was the one who messaged first. A number that had somehow found its way into Sayoung's contacts, possibly because Euijae had put it there himself at some point without mentioning it.

: sayoung-ssi want to go to the river? buying bread first

Sayoung stared at the message for three seconds.

: Okay.

Euijae was already at the riverside when Sayoung arrived. Sitting in the same spot as two days ago, legs dangling above the water, plastic bag in his lap. This time there was no uniform. A grey hoodie that was too large for him, sweatpants, the same shoes as yesterday.

He lifted his hand slightly when he saw Sayoung approaching.

Sayoung sat beside him without being invited—but no longer feeling like he needed to be.

Euijae took bread from the bag and held one out to Sayoung before being asked. Sayoung accepted it. They ate in silence—a silence already different from the silence on the first day, which had still held some distance within it.

The Han River was calmer than usual this afternoon. The wind not too strong, the sun descending at a leisurely pace, the color of the sky shifting from blue to yellow to orange to something that didn't have a specific name yet.

"I bought two," said Euijae while chewing. "Just a feeling."

"A feeling?"

"Yeah. Like yesterday. Sometimes I just know right away."

Sayoung looked at him briefly. "Feelings aren't always accurate."

"But you came."

Sayoung didn't answer that.

Euijae smiled toward the river.

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They talked and didn't talk in turns, with a rhythm that had formed on its own without anyone establishing the rules. Euijae talked about a small argument with Junho earlier that afternoon—about whose notebook had been put in whose place, which ended peacefully because it turned out both of them were wrong. Sayoung listened with one short comment at the end that made Euijae laugh.

"You said that but your expression didn't change at all."

"Does it have to?"

"If you want to look funny, yes."

"I wasn't trying to look funny."

"That's exactly what makes it funny." Euijae pointed at him with the last of his bread. "You're serious but the result is funny. That's harder to replicate than being intentional about it."

Sayoung considered whether that was a compliment or not, and decided the answer didn't matter.

The sun descended further. Their shadows stretched behind them, thin and long on the concrete. In the distance, a couple cycling, a man jogging with breathing far too heavy for his pace, two small children running on the grass calling names that were unclear.

Euijae fell quiet.

Sayoung glanced over.

Euijae was looking at the river with a calm expression. Savoring the sounds and the light and the wind that were there, in the way of someone who had not yet lost the ability to do that.

"Sayoung-ssi."

"What?"

Euijae didn't continue immediately. He looked at the river for two seconds first. "Are you going to come back here?"

A simple question. A light tone. But Sayoung knew exactly what it meant and what the right answer was.

"…No."

"Oh." Euijae nodded slowly, once. "That's a shame."

Then he smiled toward the river—a smile present because there was something he was grateful for, even though it was ending.

"But I'll remember you. You're a unique kind of person."

Sayoung looked at him for a long time.

Before him was Cha Euijae, sixteen years old, jacket too large, eating bread at the riverside like someone with nothing weighing on them to carry home.

Inside his head was his Hyung. Hair no longer black. Eyes holding too many things he had never spoken about directly. Shoulders long accustomed to bearing something alone until that posture had become part of the way he stood.

Two versions of the same person, side by side in a place neither of them should have existed together.

Sayoung opened his mouth.

Closed it again.

Opened it again.

"…If there ever comes a day when you feel alone—" He wasn't looking at Euijae. His eyes were on the river, on the surface of the water reflecting that orange sky. "Remember that there's someone who has been finding a way to bring you back. For a long time now."

Silence for several seconds.

Euijae didn't respond immediately. Sayoung almost thought the sentence hadn't landed well. Too abstract, too much context that wasn't there—until at the edge of his vision he saw Euijae nodding slowly.

"…Okay."

Then—in a way that was entirely true to him, with timing that couldn't be predicted—Euijae turned.

"Is that you?"

Sayoung stood.

"No."

"Then who?"

Sayoung was already standing—not because he was in a hurry, but because he knew. He could feel something shifting around him, like air pressure changing slowly, like something was moving toward its end.

"Someone more important than me."

Euijae was still looking up at him from below with an expression trying to determine whether that answer was serious or not. His eyes moved upward, reading Sayoung's face, which wasn't offering many clues.

"…You're so mysterious."

"Yes."

"You're always like that."

"Yes."

Euijae let out a small resigned, amused exhale. He turned back to the river, one hand propping his chin, one leg swaying gently.

"Get home safe, Sayoung-ssi."

White light came from every direction at once.

Sayoung closed his eyes.

The last sound he heard before everything vanished was the wind touching the surface of the river, and above it, very faintly, the sound of someone humming a song whose tune had never been clear from the very first time he heard it.

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Cold concrete beneath the Mapo Bridge.

That was the first thing Sayoung felt when his eyes opened. Real ground, hard, with a texture different from anything inside the dungeon. Above his head, the same old bridge as three days ago. Before him, the same Han River—but this time dark, its lights glowing orange on both banks, reflecting their glow on the surface of water that no longer held the color of a sunset.

It was already night.

His phone kept vibrating. Sayoung took it from his pocket, the screen full of notifications, most of them from the same number.

Seo Mingi: Where are you, Guild Leader? It's been 6 hours.
Seo Mingi: West Mapo-gu Dungeon has been closed by another team, you weren't inside?

Bae Wonwoo: Are you okay?

Sayoung ignored all of it.

He stood, sweeping his gaze across the river, now black and orange and still. In his hand there was something—he felt its weight before he saw it. A thin book with a worn cover, corners folded from being opened too many times.

He stared at the book.

Somehow it had come out with him. The system offered no explanation and Sayoung wasn't going to spend energy questioning the logic of a dungeon that had never been logical from the start.

His thumb traced the edge of the cover, its color long faded. Then, without fully planning it, his hand opened his contacts and selected a number.

First ring.

Second.

Third.

—What is it?

Cha Euijae's voice. A little confused—Sayoung could hear the sound of plates being moved in the background, probably clearing something at the restaurant.

"…Nothing."

A half-second of silence on the other end.

—Nothing but you're calling?

"What are you doing?"

—At the restaurant. Closing up soon.

The sound of plates again, closer this time.

—Why? Where are you? Seo Mingi contacted me earlier, apparently you—

"It's nothing."

—What do you mean nothing, he was half out of his mind—

"Hyung."

Euijae stopped mid-sentence.

—…Hm?

Sayoung opened his mouth. There was something he wanted to say. He didn't know exactly what shape it took, only that something was there—something that had been there since the white light came and carried him out. Something heavy but not uncomfortable. More like full.

"Hyung."

—Yes?

"…Never mind."

Three seconds of quiet.

—…Ha?

Sayoung ended the call.

He stood at the edge of that dark river—not in the exact same spot where he had sat inside the dungeon, but close enough. Around here. Facing roughly this direction, when he had watched Euijae smile toward the river and say, 'it would be nice to keep looking at this river,' in a tone too light for all the context Sayoung knew but he did not.

His phone vibrated again.

: ???
: hey?
: sayoung-ah, are you okay

Sayoung looked at those messages. Then put his phone back in his pocket without replying.

He looked at the river.

The thin book was still in his hand.

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Occasionally after that night—not often, and never something he would acknowledge even to himself—Sayoung saw it. Not in just any moment. Only in certain moments that arrived without warning and passed before he could fully hold onto them.

Like when his Hyung turned too quickly because he heard something from an unexpected direction, and his eyes squinted in that funny way, a puzzled expression he didn't bother hiding because he didn't feel any need to hide it.

Or when he laughed too hard at something that wasn't actually that funny, until he grew embarrassed himself and turned away with his ears slightly flushed.

Or when he offered something—food, a drink, anything—without waiting for permission first. Just held it out. Always had been like that, naturally.

In those moments, Sayoung glimpsed through the current face—through the hair that was no longer black and the eyes that already held too many things—someone who had eaten bread at the riverside in the late afternoon and known nothing about what was coming.

Sixteen years old. An oversized hoodie. Legs dangling above the water.

'But I'll remember you. You're a unique kind of person.'

Always, without fail, Sayoung looked away first.

Before his Hyung had the chance to catch the direction of his gaze. Before there was a question that needed answering. Before he had to explain something that had no explanation simple enough to be spoken aloud.

The thin book with the worn cover was now in the drawer of his desk in his room. Placed beneath a few guild documents so it wouldn't stand out too conspicuously. Sayoung didn't read it every day. Only sometimes, when the night was too quiet and the wind from outside sounded like the wind at the riverside.

One line he always opened to on the same page, whose top corner had folded slightly from being turned to too many times:

'Some things do not need to be remembered in order to remain.'

Sayoung closed the book.

Outside the window, Seoul at night was never truly silent.

That was enough.

Fin.