The Reason I Wasn't Told
The area in front of the 63 Building was packed with people, even though it was already night.
A red carpet had been rolled out before the main gate, and the crowd stood on either side of it like rows of trees.
Every pair of eyes was fixed on the side opposite the building.
They were waiting for the vehicles coming in from that direction.
The wait had gone on for quite a while, but no one looked tired.
If anything, the longer they waited, the more anticipation swelled in them, until the whole scene practically shimmered with excitement.
The camera operators filming the spectacle and the reporters explaining the situation wore much the same expressions.
The police keeping the crowd under control were no different.
They had come for work, but they, too, were brimming with excitement and heat.
"Ugh, I'm nervous…."
Ji Sang-wook let out a groan that was almost a sigh, then muttered under his breath.
Apparently his nerves were as bad as he said, because his legs were shaking.
He looked like he could barely stay on his feet, but this was no place to sit down, not with the crowd bustling all around him, so he reached out and rested a hand on the shoulder of the woman beside him.
Lee Si-hyeong, who was much shorter and had her shoulders tucked in, looked up at him.
With a worried expression, she asked, "A-are you okay?"
"Ugh, no…. I'm not okay. My heart feels like it's going to explode."
Ji Sang-wook clutched at his chest.
At the sight of that,
"Ah…."
Lee Si-hyeong gave a small exclamation.
Her cheeks reddened a little, too.
The flush on her face wasn't only because of the hot June weather.
It wasn't because the crowd had turned the whole place into a furnace, either.
"Are you okay?"
"Huh? Wh-what?"
"You hate crowded places, don't you?"
"Ah…. I-I'm okay. For now…."
For now.
In other words, she was saying it wouldn't stay okay once enough time passed.
Ji Sang-wook patted her shoulder twice, as if to encourage her.
"Thanks for coming with me today."
"Ah, no. I wanted to come, too."
She smiled as she said it.
Seeing that smile, Ji Sang-wook felt grateful.
She disliked crowded places, but she had still come along for a friend.
It was only natural to feel thankful.
Of course, that was a misunderstanding.
Lee Si-hyeong had not come just because Ji Sang-wook was a friend.
"I thought you might refuse, so I told your brother we'd go together, too…."
Ji Sang-wook shook his head back and forth.
The "brother" he meant was Do-woon.
He had texted Do-woon to ask whether he wanted to come watch with them.
Do-woon had replied, "Let's meet there if the situation works out," and then gone silent.
"He isn't answering calls or reading texts either…. Is he really that busy?"
"I'm relieved because of that, so…."
"Huh? What was that?"
"Ah, no! I didn't say anything!"
"Huh? I thought you said something."
He muttered as he tilted his head in confusion.
Lee Si-hyeong flashed a shameless smile, as if to say, When did I ever?.
Ji Sang-wook decided he must have misheard her.
So he asked a different question.
"But don't you have to film?"
"Film?"
"Yeah. It feels like it'd be good content for your channel."
Ji Sang-wook looked around.
Camera crews from the broadcast stations caught his eye.
Not only broadcast cameras, either.
There were also plenty of people filming with smartphones or small cameras.
Some were recording the moment so they could keep it, while others were streaming live online.
Ji Sang-wook had asked Lee Si-hyeong because of the latter.
She was the owner of Sitop TV, the channel that had uploaded videos criticizing Do-woon.
"Ah… yeah. It's okay. It doesn't fit my channel content."
"Your channel content… is that a problem?"
"Of course. If you stray from your main content, viewers leave."
"Still, they're S-class Hunters, aren't they? If you upload a video, the views would be huge."
"I don't want to upload videos of S-class Hunters just for the views."
"Oh. That's kind of cool…."
"……."
Of course, it was all a lie.
The reason she wasn't filming had nothing to do with not caring about views.
If that were truly the case, she never would have uploaded those Tower of Trials videos that trampled all over people's portrait rights in the first place.
The real reason she hadn't taken out her camera was something else entirely.
She didn't want to spend this moment working.
Beep! Beep!
From inside the handbag slung over her shoulder came a sound.
A smartphone notification.
Her cheeks slightly flushed, she took out her phone.
"J-just a second…."
"Yeah. Take your time."
As she checked the screen, her eyes widened.
Questions filled them.
And then those questions spilled from her mouth.
"Huh? Why is this person here…?"
Just as the question left her lips,
"Oh! It's here, it's here!"
"Ooh!"
"Who is it? Who's the first one here!"
The crowd erupted into cheers.
A limousine had entered toward the building.
The vehicle that hundreds of people had been waiting for, and waiting for, and waiting for, had finally arrived.
"Sang-wook. This…."
Because of that, her voice never reached Ji Sang-wook, who was standing right beside her.
Ji Sang-wook, just like everyone else, was so excited he shouted at the top of his lungs.
"They're here! Si-hyeong, they're finally here!"
He didn't just shout.
He grabbed Lee Si-hyeong by the shoulders and started shaking her hard.
Even though he was ignoring everything she said and shaking her body all on his own, she didn't feel annoyed.
Her face turned red the same way it had when she'd seen Ji Sang-wook clutching his chest.
Trying to get a grip on herself, she shook her head vigorously.
"Who? Who's here?"
She was short.
Buried in the crowd, she couldn't see well.
Lee Si-hyeong narrowed her eyes and tried to make out who was getting out.
"Uh… hang on. The car's still pulling in…."
"Yeah."
The limousine stopped at the end of the red carpet.
A man standing there walked over and opened the door.
The first person to step out was Li Lianzhe.
"Ooh! It's Li Lianzhe! China's Li Lianzhe!"
Just as Ji Sang-wook shouted, the people around them recognized the face that had emerged and broke into cheers.
The older people were even more excited than the younger ones, bouncing on their feet.
It was much the same as when Minister Han Min-hyeon had been more worked up than Do-woon or Jo Joo-hyun while welcoming Li Lianzhe at the airport.
"……!"
Li Lianzhe widened his eyes as if surprised, then slowly looked around.
Liu Yiho, who got out next, also looked a little dazed, clearly thrown off.
Neither of them had expected a crowd of several hundred people to be waiting.
More accustomed to this sort of scene, Li Lianzhe quickly raised a hand and waved.
That drew another roar of welcome, this time dominated by middle-aged voices.
Amid the cheering crowd,
"……Huh?"
Ji Sang-wook froze in confusion.
He had stopped mid-cheer, right where he stood.
He had spotted Do-woon getting out of the limousine.
Do-woon came out after the minister and Jo Joo-hyun.
"D-Do-woon, hyung?!""Ah… you didn't know?"
"What? You knew?"
"No, I didn't."
"……?"
He was talking like he had known?
Ji Sang-wook looked at Lee Si-hyeong with that expression.
She lifted her smartphone to show him.
It was what she'd been trying to show him earlier.
"I knew because of this."
"What's that?"
"Just look."
An internet news article was open on the screen.
It covered the Korean welcoming party meeting Li Lianzhe's group at the airport.
There were three members in the welcoming party.
And the man standing on the far right, with a short ponytail, was a face Ji Sang-wook knew very well.
Baek Do-woon.
Unlike usual, he was standing there dressed neatly and sharply.
"Gah…!"
Ji Sang-wook reached out and grabbed the smartphone.
Lee Si-hyeong's hand, which had been holding the phone, naturally overlapped his.
Her face reddened again.
"You didn't even tell me anything… ah!"
Ji Sang-wook was muttering to himself when he realized it.
What Do-woon had meant in that text message.
He had definitely replied, Let's meet there if the situation works out.
"So that's why you weren't answering these past few days! You didn't say anything because you were doing this today!"
The very moment Sang-wook came to his realization,
"Oh."
He heard Do-woon's voice in his ear.
It was a voice he absolutely should not have been able to hear physically.
The distance between them was huge, and the crowd around them was buzzing too loudly.
And yet, Do-woon's "Oh" still reached Sang-wook's ears.
That was probably because their eyes had met perfectly.
"Hyung…."
"Heh."
For the same reason, he also heard Do-woon let out an amused laugh.
Why had he sounded amused like that?
No matter how Ji Sang-wook thought about it, he couldn't tell.
He was too flustered to understand his own position.
He was standing there with Lee Si-hyeong's hand still tightly in his grip.
Strictly speaking, it was the smartphone in her hand he was holding, but from a distance it looked exactly like a couple holding hands.
"You should've told me!"
Ji Sang-wook shouted in that exact pose.
Do-woon smirked and walked past him.
He had to follow Li Lianzhe.
Left behind in spirit, though not physically, Ji Sang-wook poured out his grievance to Lee Si-hyeong beside him.
"Man, seriously. What a terrible hyung. Right?"
"Mm-hm. Yeah…."
Her voice had gone slightly quieter than before.
Ji Sang-wook tilted his head, then noticed it.
His own two hands, gripping both of Lee Si-hyeong's hands tight.
He hurriedly let go.
"Ah, sorry…! Did that hurt?"
"Uh, I, no. It was ni—"
She stopped herself, then shook her head vigorously.
She wanted to smack herself in the mouth, but held it in.
Ji Sang-wook tilted his head, wondering what was wrong with her.
Then he snapped his head around to look at Li Lianzhe.
He wanted to keep that S-class Hunter in his sight for as long as possible.
Baek Do-woon….
Lee Si-hyeong, on the other hand, was looking at Do-woon.
She didn't like him.
She had hated him ever since the Tower of Trials, when he had pelted Ji Sang-wook with stones.
The reason she'd uploaded that slanderous video was to get revenge for him.
But one day, Ji Sang-wook had shown up in a miserable state and told her that he and Do-woon had made up.
It had looked less like reconciliation than like he'd been beaten black and blue, but she hadn't asked what had happened between them.
If he really had been beaten, she worried it might hit his pride.
Still, it didn't take long for her to realize her guess had been wrong.
Starting that day, Ji Sang-wook kept bringing Do-woon up again and again, always launching into, "You know, hyung said…" and talking about him nonstop.
"Ah…."
A sigh slipped out of Ji Sang-wook's mouth.
He wasn't the only one.
Everyone standing nearby was disappointed.
Li Lianzhe had waved once, then gone inside the building.
He looked over at Lee Si-hyeong.
"Wow. My heart really about dropped out of my chest just now."
"It did?"
"Yeah. I really didn't expect Do-woon hyung to come out there. That was a total, 'Why is my brother coming out from there?' moment."
"Haha, yeah, I can see that."
"I think he just wanted to tease me…. You saw it, right? The way he smiled when our eyes met."
"Mm-hm. I saw it. He seems like a mean person."
"W-what, no, he's not mean…."
Ji Sang-wook waved his hands in a panic.
He hadn't expected her to say "mean person."
"Another car's coming in!"
"Ooh!"
"Who is it? Who is it this time!"
The crowd grew noisy again.
A black limousine, the same kind Li Lianzhe had arrived in, glided smoothly toward the building.
It soon stopped in front of the red carpet.
People, now brimming with anticipation over who would get out, pressed their lips shut.
Only the sound of camera shutters kept ringing out without pause….
As before, the man standing at the end of the red carpet walked over and opened the door.
When the door opened, Maksim Smirnov stepped out.
Right after him came Lee Tae-cheon.
Then a thunderclap of cheers erupted.
The cheers were made up almost entirely of women's voices.
It made sense, with one handsome man standing next to another handsome man.
It wasn't entirely only women cheering, though.
"Tae-cheon hyuuuung!"
A man's voice rang out, too.
A B-class Hunter who had made the Hallasan Gate in Jeju his main hunting ground simply because he was a fan of Lee Tae-cheon.
Ji Sang-wook's voice.
That made Lee Si-hyeong the only woman in this place who was glaring at Lee Tae-cheon.
Of course, in her heart she was cursing Ji Sang-wook.
Ji Sang-wook, you idiot….