Unwelcome Gaze
I really hate this.
It was unbearable.
Seol Si-yun’s gaze toward me was extremely unpleasant.
To put it mildly, it was rude; in my terms, it was that childish, toy-like stare of a kid who had just discovered something amusing about me.
“You’re off today too?”
Seol Si-yun’s voice carried a faint thrill as he asked, his lips curved in a teasing smile while his eyes sparkled with excitement.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know. It’s annoying.”
“It was fun at Seoraksan.”
A jolt!
I couldn’t hide the killing intent bubbling up as the annoyance hit me. Just as I was about to open the door and step inside, Seol Si-yun’s words froze me in place.
Whooosh! Bang!!
I unleashed my mana magic to snatch Seol Si-yun and dragged him inside, slamming the door shut with a thunderous crash. Now was not the time to hide anything. I needed to figure out exactly how that bastard had figured me out right this instant.
“How did you know? Tell me now!”
Even as Cheon Seong’s killing intent—blending his own with the mana he’d been hiding at the academy—poured out like a curse, Seol Si-yun didn’t flinch with even a hint of fear. Instead, his face lit up with even more joy than before.
“If I tell you, will you be my friend?”
“Do you think this is a joke?”
Crack!
Cheon Seong’s mana flared with rising anger at the carefree grin on Seol Si-yun’s face. He released his grip, then hooked his fingers around Seol Si-yun’s slender neck, hoisting him up exactly as he had at Seoraksan.
If he knew I could teleport and use the Heavenly Demon Divine Art… that meant he knew my secret. And it also meant there might be others who knew it besides him.
“Tell me right now. How did you find out?”
“Will you be my friend?”
The air in the room grew heavy with the clash of mana and killing intent. Even as Seol Si-yun was choked and his life threatened in this stifling space, he asked again whether he could become my friend.
“Fucking hell! I’ll do whatever—friend, anything—now tell me! How the hell did you figure me out!”
I no longer cared about the annoyance. I had to discover the method Seol Si-yun used to uncover my true identity, no matter the cost.
For the sake of what came after, I had to.
Finally, Seol Si-yun’s face turned red, his breath caught in his throat at the promise of anything.
“You… showed me in detail. That’s how I knew.”
“Explain it so I can understand. What exactly? Was it special eyes or a unique ability? Tell me straight.”
“Then it’ll take a bit longer. You’re okay with that?”
“Doesn’t matter—tell me now!!”
Even as a thin sheen of sweat broke across Cheon Seong’s forehead from the pressure, Seol Si-yun wondered if this was the friend he wanted after all. Yet the desperation in Cheon Seong’s eyes made him smile anyway, glad to be friends, and began to speak about the world he saw.
The faces of everyone he looked at seemed like a broken TV screen, flickering with static. The amount of static differed from person to person. Even those who saw the most had a little static, but only Cheon Seong saw everything clearly, without a single glitch.
Thinking back to the battle at Seoraksan, where I had worn a mask, the height, build, and walking rhythm had all matched perfectly. That was how Seol Si-yun realized Cheon Seong was the man from Seoraksan wearing the mask.
Cheon Seong’s face darkened with a heavy shadow.
‘From what I heard, it’s not a unique ability. Unique abilities aren’t that irregular.’
Each unique ability follows its own rules.
For example, my Five Colors only lets me manipulate the mana of all colors; I alone can wield mana, and the rules for its density and quality are perfectly equal.
Yuna’s healing ability could mend others’ stamina but never her own, and those rules held for anyone. There were occasional unique abilities that seemed tied to luck, but each still had its own rules. I couldn’t find any such rule for someone who could hide their unique ability.
Whether strong or weak, male or female, every hidden person was different, and many details refused to fit any explanation tied solely to unique abilities.
First, there was the irregularity of the rules I mentioned earlier.
The people with static shared no common trait. Even the reason I alone seemed normal remained unexplained.
And a unique ability could not belong to two different people.
If a unique ability is a rule that shapes the world of the body, then two unique abilities would create two rules for one world. Those rules would fight each other, pushing and rejecting like the clash between mana and dark mana.
But since mana and dark mana cannot coexist, neither can unique abilities.
In simple terms, mana and dark mana are like heat and cold—mutually exclusive. Unique abilities are like life and death together.
That is the only reason I am saying this.
Seol Si-yun already had a unique ability, though I didn’t know exactly what it was. But the swordsmanship he used in the Seoraksan Dungeon had clearly contained that unique ability of his.
So Seol Si-yun’s eyes were not a unique ability but something individual… yet there are a few things similar.
“What about your bloodline?”
“Bloodline… do you mean racial traits? No, that’s definitely not it.”
“The judgment is mine, so hurry up and tell me.”
One of those things was exactly the racial trait Seol Si-yun mentioned—specific features passed down through a race.
Elves naturally had high mana affinity, mastery of bows and spirit arts, and sharp vision. Beastmen had strong basic strength and high regeneration. These traits appeared in rare cases where people had no visible changes but inherited abilities from another race.
To narrow the range and identify the ability, I asked Cheon Seong’s question. Seol Si-yun thought for a moment, then answered in a troubled tone.
“I… don’t know… My father is human, but I’ve never met my mother.”
“What? What kind of nonsense is that? Your mother was clearly—”
I knew Seol Si-yun’s father had a wife—Cheon Seong’s mother. Hearing that he had never met her stunned me for a second. Then Seol Si-yun’s next words cut me off, leaving my mind in total chaos.
“It’s fake. That person is fake.”
Seol Si-yun’s claim that his mother was fake. I couldn’t understand it at all.
Even though the future had changed slightly, there had been no huge shift—no death or remarriage of the wife of the master of the Baekdu Guild, the highest-ranked swordsmith in Korea.
I could tell it wasn’t a lie when I saw the clear, true light in his eyes, unlike his usual hazy gaze.
So what exactly was it? What had I missed?
A creeping sense of déjà vu began to crawl up my entire body the moment I heard Seol Si-yun’s words.
It was the same overwhelming feeling I had felt when I lost a great opportunity by falling for a spy’s deception during the war with the Celestials.
It seemed the events had already gone far more wrong than I realized.
***
“Haa… Since I understand now, you can go. There’s a lot of thinking to sort through—I’m busy.”
Every time I tried to finish organizing my thoughts, new events tore through everything I had laid out, flinging me deeper into a maze.
On top of that, the strongest problem was the chilling déjà vu creeping through my body like insects.
My instinct screamed that I could not afford to miss this.
It might be called an instinct, but when a person walks the line between life and death like it’s their own home, they gain a special ability.
That ability is intuition.
It is not the sixth sense of novels or games, but the raw, hyper-enhanced senses of the human body—especially a sixth sense for threats and death.
The line between life and death had been my home, and the more I crossed it, the stronger my intuition became for threats and death, helping me survive many times. No, thanks to my instinct, I had protected my companions.
Even if I couldn’t protect them until the very end, my instinct had helped me save them all those years.
That was why I trusted my instinct. And right now, it felt more connected to me than ever before.
A soft rustle.
I sat on the bed, lost in thought, when the mattress beside me dipped. I turned and saw a sky-blue head of soft, flowing hair.
“What are you doing?”
“Huh? What?”
Seol Si-yun looked at me with eyes full of concern, as if I had some problem.
“Stop standing there and get out quickly.”
“Um… I don’t want to.”
“What?”
Seol Si-yun’s refusal to leave made my headache throb even worse. I already had to sort through so many thoughts and my head was splitting.
Ha—
A deep, heavy sigh escaped Cheon Seong, lingering in the air.
“…Whatever you want, I’ll do it after. Just get out now.”
I knew exactly what Seol Si-yun wanted. Thinking about his personality and our first meeting, there was only one thing he could possibly ask for.
Even so, I decided it was more important to let him do it once, then finish today’s sorting.
“What do I want?”
“A spar, right? I’ll do it, so just go gently for now.”
I had thought Seol Si-yun would leave peacefully at this point, but he didn’t.
“That’s fine too… but I don’t need it now.”
“Haa… then what exactly do you want? Tell me right now and get out.”
If it wasn’t a spar, I had no idea what Seol Si-yun wanted. I knew nothing about him.
And I was already starting to get annoyed. I just wanted him to tell me and leave quickly.
My biggest stress factor today was this new change, which was on another level from before. My patience was fraying at the edges.
I waited for his answer, hoping he would at least show some consideration.
As if my wish had reached him, Seol Si-yun’s clear, refreshing sky-blue eyes shone as he spoke.
“Think of me as your friend.”