Chapter 208
Chapter 208
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 208
Chapter Title: Kairos (3)
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The voice carried so many emotions that I couldn't bring myself to doubt his true feelings.
I could tell just from looking into his eyes.
"You."
I turned my head to the left and rasped.
He grinned at my blazing gaze.
"Have you been well?"
There were mountains of things I wanted to ask.
But I voiced the one I wanted to say the most.
Kairos gripped my hand tightly.
"As you can see."
He replied, then bowed his head and pressed his forehead to the back of my hand.
He stayed like that for a long time without moving. His forehead felt cool against my feverish skin. In the room, only Milk's whimpering filled the air—wee-oo, wee-oo.
"As you can see..."
It was a long while before he answered.
"I've been well."
He showed no sign of lifting his head.
I let out a hollow chuckle and nagged him.
"Why are you being so cringey? Get up."
Kairos obeyed me.
He straightened up and gently placed my hand back on the bed.
His gaze drilled down again. Standing by the bed, Kairos stared into my eyes with an inscrutable expression.
I observed him just as steadily, without looking away.
The silence bloomed from it being far too long since we'd last met.
The moment I opened my mouth, so did Kairos.
"F1?"
"I was going to go find you."
We both stopped at the same time.
I grinned and jerked my chin.
"Finish what you were saying. Let's hear it."
The man grinned back.
Only then did I see the old him—the refreshing smile, the sparkling eyes, the easygoing vibe born from his optimistic nature.
Kairos scooped up Milk, who was circling at his feet, with his right hand and set her down on the bed.
"It's a long and complicated story. Can you handle it? You still have a fever."
"I'm fine now."
"You don't look it. How about we eat dinner so you can take your medicine, and you listen then?"
"Dinner?"
Already that time?
Milk wriggled over and plopped down on my arm. With my free right hand, I stroked the back of her head and wiped her face.
"What time is it? My phone..."
The red-haired man handed me my phone while saying it was 7 p.m.
How many hours did I sleep?
Clicking my tongue, I turned on the screen—and freaked out the moment I saw it.
"What the hell?"
I bolted upright.
"134 missed calls?!"
"Ah, there were so many calls coming in that I answered them and let them know how you were doing. They were worried. I told them I had you and everything was fine."
"Who?"
My stomach turned cold.
Kairos tilted his head.
"I don't know the name. Check it. It was a guy."
It was Lee Ho.
The second I checked the call log, I let out a sigh of relief. Thank God it wasn't Ricardo, Kudo, or Yoon.
Of course, there were mountains of messages from them piled up. I put off opening them for later. I didn't have the guts right now.
Lee Ho must have let them know where I was, so I'd have to grovel and apologize later.
I set the phone down and stroked Milk.
All the while, I didn't take my eyes off Kairos.
"I want to hear it now, cough, cough!"
"I'll bring the egg porridge right away, so wait. Don't move."
If it's right away, sure.
I tickled Milk's ears and watched my fellow clansman's retreating back.
Only now did the space around me come into focus. I was in a second-floor room with high ceilings and no furnishings, so I couldn't tell if it was a guest room or a bedroom.
Probably Kairos's house.
He must have made a ton of money, so living in a place this spacious wasn't strange...
Kairos paused on the stairs and turned back to me.
"You're not going anywhere, right?"
"Kairos."
His anxious question drew a hollow chuckle from me.
"I'm the one who found you, not the other way around. Where would I even go?"
He laughed at my raspy reply.
It was a laugh filled purely with joy. Seeing it left me stunned and a little sad. I hadn't recognized him earlier. And though I didn't know why he hadn't come looking for me until now, it was clear he'd been waiting for me a long time.
I'd made him wait too long.
I thought, gazing at Milk as she climbed onto my thigh and looked up at me.
Far too long, to the point of exhaustion.
He really did come right back.
White steam rose gently from the egg porridge. He was clearly going to clamp his mouth shut and not say a word until I ate. He was the type with his own peculiar stubbornness.
So I obediently took the porridge and even swallowed the medicine.
In the meantime, my clansman dragged a chair over beside the bed and never took his eyes off me.
His gaze was so intense that a laugh bubbled out.
"If you're gonna stare holes through me, why didn't you come find me sooner?"
"Captain."
Back when I was Knight Commander, he called me by name, "sir," or "Knight Commander." After coming to Earth, it was by name, "sir," or "Captain."
"Have your memories all come back?"
I set down the spoon.
I took in his vivid orange eyes once more.
"Now they have."
I smiled faintly.
"You knew. Were you watching over me? Is that why you didn't come?"
"At first, yeah. We decided among ourselves it was best that way. We thought it'd be better to wait until you sorted out the confusion."
So I'd made them wait a whole year longer.
"And it wasn't easy to approach you. But I never planned to wait this long. Even if your memories hadn't fully returned, I was going to come see your face."
"And?"
The answer didn't come right away.
Kairos lowered his eyelids.
He hesitated, struggling to continue. Something had definitely gone wrong. This guy didn't wear such a troubled look for just anything.
As long as nothing had happened to the others...
I suppressed the creeping dread and quietly urged him on.
"Tell me everything. Please."
I didn't think he'd hide the truth to the end.
No matter how grim reality was, he was the type who wouldn't turn away from it. He'd hesitate, but ultimately tell me everything.
Kairos slowly raised his lowered eyelids.
"Most of those who didn't receive immortality blended into human society without issue."
The beast tamer didn't get straight to the problem.
Instead, he started with the recent status of our clansmen.
He was using good news as a buffer, it seemed. I didn't interrupt.
He told me that most of what I'd hoped for had come true. Those who didn't fight. Our clansmen who chose ordinary lives without immortality had continued their previous existences safely. Many had even lost their sense of clan identity now.
I absorbed the information, weighed down by heavy emotions.
"There are hybrids too. Most don't even know they are."
The things that needed hiding were excessive strength, superior recovery beyond humans, and heightened senses.
Hiding that much wasn't too hard, he said.
By the third generation, some were even born without those heightened senses.
"So in the end, you were right."
Kairos looked up and grinned.
"We succeeded in blending in. Their happiness after that? That's not something you could control. Happiness is something each person has to make for themselves, right?"
I chuckled lowly.
It was sound logic. Sound, but it hinted at the problem that had arisen.
"Blending in wasn't easy, was it?"
And it was inevitable that I'd feel guilty about it.
"In a place with no roots... Some probably never adjusted their whole lives."
"With so many people, lifestyles vary. As you can see, I'm doing great."
"Did a lot of our clansmen struggle?"
Not just one or two, so that's why he couldn't come right away?
He seemed to grasp the point of my question. Kairos gazed at me with a complicated expression.
"No. In absolute numbers, absolutely not. Most blended into Earth life so well that contact was lost."
"That's a real relief..."
Something inside me unclenched.
I couldn't pinpoint exactly what, but one of the things weighing on me was gone. Something I'd never even noticed was there. But it'd been pressing down on me for so long.
Though something new had piled on top.
"So what's the problem?"
I asked, still hardly believing the man before my eyes was real.
"Get to the point, Kairos. Please."
"You don't need to ask me nicely."
The beast tamer looked me straight in the eye.
"Just demand it."
"Fine, then. Get to the point."
"Life's hardships can sometimes twist a person in strange ways."
He'd regained his composure and cut straight to the chase.
His voice held no pity or sympathy—just resolve.
"Resentment easily turns to rage. The core issue is that we haven't found the one who broke that way. To be fair, he held it together until you returned with your memories lost. But it was hard for him to accept that you'd come back, completely forgotten the past, and become a Black Badger."
"Name?"
Even as I asked, I had a guess who this twisted one might be.
But I asked for confirmation.
Kairos didn't look away, but he clenched his fist.
I waited quietly.
Until he uttered the familiar name—the exact one I'd suspected.
"You."
Yeah.
I figured as much.
"He vanished. That's why we couldn't find him. Trained as an assassin, he's dangerous and twisted now, so we worried about provoking him if we searched rashly. We agreed to capture him first, then come get you. ...Pathetic, I know."
"No. Tell me the details. You was fine until I came back?"
"He was our leader for a long time. While you were gone, You looked after every single one of us, making sure we blended into Earth. He did well for ages. That's why we realized too late that the role was eating him alive."
"The article was the trigger."
The article about saving Porden.
That article must have set him off.
I thought of the strategist I remembered and gave a bitter smile.
The emperor's young advisor.
After coming to Earth, we'd grown close fast. When eliminating the hardline elders, You helped me immensely. We holed up in secret rooms, plotting ways to take them down, our next moves, the ones after.
He was brilliant. And he loved our clansmen deeply.
That heavy love must have turned into an equally heavy sense of responsibility, crushing him.
I let my gaze drift into space.
"No wonder he snapped. Decades in that role, feeling our clansmen's misery as his own, struggling to survive. Then the guy who vanished returns, blissfully forgetting everything to become a Black Badger."
"Hilde."
My name was called.
Thinking how strange it was to hear it in that voice, I turned my head. Kairos was standing by the bed again.
I fiddled with Milk's ear and smiled faintly.
Even for him, what a complicated expression.
"Why."
Kairos didn't move for a long moment.
I smirked. I was about to tease him—gonna kneel? Don't bother—because he looked ready to drop to his knees and grab my hand any second.
But he didn't kneel.
He didn't kneel, but suddenly his cheeks grew wet.
"Hey."
What the hell.
I jolted upright in shock.
"Why are you crying?"
Why are *you* crying?
I'd never seen this guy cry in my life...
Does he even cry? Can he?
The guy whose mind seemed tougher than titanium?
The one who always flashed that bright smile and waved it off?
I was so flustered, words failed me.
As my hand hovered uncertainly, Kairos spoke without even lowering his head, tears streaming down.
"We were doing well."
His orange eyes welled with tears.
"Thanks to you, we were doing well."
Thank you. That's what Kairos said.
Thank you.