Sawon lifted Ji Hayeon by locking his arms around his thighs as-is.“Are you not letting go?!”“Yes. I’ll let you go.”Sawon threw the struggling Hayeon straight onto the bed. Of course Ji Hayeon thrashed. But Sawon was already used to restraining this kind of flailing.“Look at that temper. The way you thrash is just like Nine.”When Sawon muttered low, Nine poked his face out of the protector.“Eek!”As if scolding, Nine tossed a single bark of complaint.“No, no, I’m sorry. Get in, our cutie.”Sawon half-heartedly soothed Nine. Ji Hayeon refused to yield to either Nine’s scolding or Sawon’s pressure and kept struggling.“Hunter Gu Sawon!”“Yes.”Without a change of expression, Sawon seized both of Ji Hayeon’s wrists with one hand. Then he fixed the held hands up by the headboard. The room was dark, but a Grade-1 hunter’s eyesight captured the ward’s interior clearly. Pinned by him, Ji Hayeon’s cheeks were flushed as he panted. The eye corners, plump with aegyo-fat, were reddened too. Ji Hayeon couldn’t hide the resentment. Sawon climbed onto Ji Hayeon’s thighs and brought his other hand down to his own waist.“I don’t usually use this method…….”Clack.Metal struck; Sawon’s belt came loose. Ji Hayeon twisted his waist and resisted, but no matter how he strained, he couldn’t shake off Sawon on top of him. Before he knew it, his face had flushed red all the way to the tips of his ears. Looking at him like that, Sawon grinned.“You didn’t have any bad ideas, did you?”Ji Hayeon’s face turned into a burning sweet potato. With the belt fully unbucked, Sawon tied Ji Hayeon’s wrists and secured them to the bed frame.“Chief Ji, you turned out to be a lewd one. Did you really think I’d jump a sick person or something?”“……Untie this. Now.”Only after tying him did Sawon get off the bed. He dragged over the side chair, sat it tight by the bed, and leaned his upper body toward Ji Hayeon.“The Institute building’s been blacked out. The black sphere is sealed, and the building’s got a barrier up. It’ll be the same as yesterday. If the data got blown away, there’s nothing to be done; if any’s left, we can go fetch it later. I messed up a bit yesterday, sure, but the Central Bureau’s put protection of the Institute as first priority.”More precisely, that had been Director Kwon’s judgment.“…….”“So just behave until the overload settles. Go when you’ve recovered.”Ji Hayeon stared quietly at Sawon.Looks like it got through… or was that not enough explanation?“My classmate’s out on-site right now, okay? I’ll have them contact me first if anything happens.”Sawon kindly added an explanation. Ji Hayeon narrowed his eyes. He thought he was being glared at. But for some reason, the space between Ji Hayeon’s eyelids started to wet. His rims grew even redder. Sawon tilted his head.“Why. Still no?”“…….”“Or, are you hurt somewhere?”Did I tie it too tight.Sawon rose and checked near the bed frame. Ji Hayeon turned his head to the side.“……It’s not that. Just untie my hands.”“You’ll thrash.”“I won’t.”“Really?”“……Yeah.”“You’ll eat, too?”“…….”After a long silence, Ji Hayeon gave a small nod. Seeing that, the corner of Sawon’s mouth rose before he knew it. Once he undid the bindings, Ji Hayeon pressed a palm to the mattress and slowly raised his upper body. Sawon lowered the table and moved the patient meal onto it. When he lifted the lids, the porridge, filled to the brim, gave off a nutty smell.“Wow, you really didn’t take a single bite.”Clicking his tongue, Sawon personally put the spoon in Ji Hayeon’s hand. Ji Hayeon rolled the spoon between his fingers and stalled for a long while.“……But why did you really come here?”Sawon flopped into the chair and crossed his arms.“From today I’m your guard.”“……What?”“I’m now assigned to watch over Chief Researcher Ji Hayeon.”Holding the spoon, Ji Hayeon only stared straight into Sawon’s eyes.Unlike at the Institute yesterday, Ji Hayeon rather meekly accepted Sawon’s care. He quietly ate the cold porridge, calmly took the medicine, and went to bed without a word of complaint. When his even, soft breathing spread through the room, Sawon closed the hologram booklet he’d been reading. On the bed he turned to, Ji Hayeon slept curled like a shrimp. Both fists were drawn up close to his face.“Anyone would think you were a prisoner. Why are you sleeping like this. Is it cold?”Sawon rose slowly and pulled the blanket up to his neck. You’re a handful, dear customer. Sawon mouthed the words silently and sat back down. Careful not °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° to wake him, his movements were cautious. Propping his chin on his knee, Sawon stared holes into Ji Hayeon.“……Seen like this, there’s no other word but angel.”Sawon’s impression was subjective but also an objective judgment. His gaze slid down Ji Hayeon’s face from the forehead. A round, raised forehead and long, lifted eye-tails; thick lashes casting shadows in the moonlight; a small, pert nose and properly full lips; and even facial lines with no heavy bone development. Wherever you put him, Ji Hayeon had a face pretty enough to grab attention at a glance.“‘Watch,’ he says. You think a guard is assigned to ‘monitor’?”Even when he nitpicked Sawon’s words and snapped, the good looks didn’t fade. Of all the people Sawon had seen, Ji Hayeon’s face fit the word “pretty” best. Sawon reached a hand toward Ji Hayeon’s cheek. When he gently freed the hair stuck to the cheek, a faint groan sounded. Thankfully, Ji Hayeon didn’t wake and sank back into sleep as-is. But the more he examined that face, the more déjà vu he felt. It was a similar familiarity to what he felt facing Mok Geonho.This kid…… where have I seen him before?The Central Bureau and the Institute shared roots in that they handled Awakened, but there weren’t as many points of contact as one might think. Their relations weren’t exactly good, either. Still, it wasn’t like there was no exchange at all, so maybe they’d crossed paths during a mission. Or chatted while passing by. Or maybe he’d seen him in some document. Yet in Sawon’s memory, there was no Ji Hayeon from before the Institute incident.Sawon tilted his head.“……Weird. Why is he so familiar.”Maybe it was the stubbornness that resembled Nine. If not that, then maybe it was because he’d seen yesterday’s figure, like a wounded animal.‘……Get out.’The sight of him huddled in the bathroom came to mind.“Hm…….”As Sawon hummed low, the furball appeared before him. At some point, Nine had perched on the bed’s side frame. Nine looked at Ji Hayeon and cocked his head.“Eee?”As if he’d gone into Sawon’s heart and back, his little finger pointed at Ji Hayeon.“Shh. Don’t wake him.”Sawon pressed an index finger to his lips and quietly chided Nine. Rolling his black eyes, Nine watched Sawon’s mood, then climbed onto the bed. Snuggling close to Ji Hayeon, he patted the blanket just like Sawon had been doing. The body curled like a shrimp slowly loosened. Watching that, Sawon slowly reached out a hand as well. With his other hand still propping his chin, he gazed at Ji Hayeon and, together with Nine, gently patted over the blanket.***The role of a dedicated guard is to keep the protectee’s side. The mission is to protect from external threats or unfamiliar persons. In short, it means blocking negative factors from Ji Hayeon.“It’ll be fine. It’s a hospital.”A sealed-off ward would neither let Ji Hayeon out nor let others in. The moment he decided to accept the guard job, Sawon had a hunch. So, no free time for a while. Closing the ward door behind him, Sawon left it to the medic and headed up to the roof. It was the instant he opened the smoking room door in a corner of the roof.“Gu Sawon?”It was his classmate, Seo Hansu. Seo Hansu was also the vice leader of Mok Geonho’s team. Waving the hand holding a cigarette, he pointed to the empty spot beside him. Sawon walked there, slow.“Heard you got called to the Director’s office.”“Why is Mok Geonho’s mouth so damn loose.”Sawon took a cigarette from his breast and bit it.“What, you go in and out of the Director’s office like a bathroom, or what.”Knowing perfectly well why Sawon had been called in, Seo Hansu asked anyway. Sawon furrowed his brow and lit up.“Why are you here. Mok Geonho got wrung out by the Director and then headed on-site. You don’t know about joint responsibility?”“Hey. I deployed in the morning and just got back. These cracks have no manners. Popping off here and there at all hours—what a shitshow.”From both their mouths came cigarette smoke and sighs at the same time. Beyond joining the service in the same intake, there were many points in common—like being jerked around daily by cracks. Sucking in until his cheeks hollowed, Seo Hansu asked:“Hey. But they say among the Institute survivors, there’s someone from the same place as you.”“Same place?”Seo Hansu nodded with his eyes.Gu Sawon’s “place.” The place where he had been born and raised meant S9 District. S9 was a district where otherworldization progressed at an unprecedented speed. There wasn’t even time to evacuate people. Because of that, meeting someone from S9 was exceedingly rare, and rarer still to meet an Awakened from S9.“First I’ve heard of it.”Rarity aside, Sawon had never heard this story.Same district…… who are they talking about?

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