The Maknae Who Finally Grew Up
They had been on the same raid team once, and like Jena, that little runt had trailed after him with particular devotion.
And now, somehow, that kid had become the guild leader of the country's third-ranked guild.
“I really did dote on him, though.”
Seo Jeongchan, the youngest member of Sung Jeyeon's raid team, had been the only minor among them. He'd even had his fair share of adorable quirks.
The habit of measuring his height against Jeyeon's face every single morning, for one.
“Noona, I think I got a little taller today, don't you?”
He'd ask with sleep still crusted in his eyes, straining up on the very tips of his toes as if that would make him look any bigger.
“Nope. Still tiny as ever.”
“Ugh, why won't I just grow? I go to bed early every single day.”
“It's fine. You've got a small, pretty face. You'll be popular once you clear the Tower.”
“What does that have to do with anything? I want to be taller than you, Noona.”
“Well, I don't know about Ki Taewon, but for you? I'd say the odds aren't great.”
And whenever Jeyeon needled him like that, Seo Jeongchan would puff up and sulk on the spot.
“My dad says he grew in the army. Just you watch. I'm going to end up way taller than you.”
Regrettably, right up until the day Jeyeon died, Seo Jeongchan had remained small.
And yet.
Sihyun's eyes widened slightly as she spotted the man leading his guild members out onto the stage.
“So he really was just a late bloomer.”
Seo Jeongchan stood now as a considerable giant. There was barely a trace left of the boy he'd once been, and the unhurried way he planted himself before his guild members carried a certain weight of command.
Sihyun let out an awkward little laugh.
Apparently ten years had been a long time. Long enough for the pipsqueak Seo Jeongchan to become a guild leader, and long enough for Ki Taewon to become a backstabbing son of a bitch.
Clicking her tongue, Sihyun wet her throat with a bottle of water left on the table.
Pointless sentiment. That was all it was.
“Still, he turned out fine.”
Seeing his face after so long and confirming that much was enough. As long as she lived as Lee Sihyun, she would never cross paths with Seo Jeongchan again.
With that brief reflection, she withdrew her gaze.
Just then, Seo Jeongchan stepped fully into the light atop the stage, and the chattering audience hall went quiet for a beat.
It was a face everyone had grown sick of seeing on their screens. A face plastered across every billboard in the country, one that came automatically trailed by the title of the most beautiful man in Korea.
But even those words couldn't capture the real thing. Up close, the man before them radiated the aura of a top-rank hunter on top of it all.
“……Wow.”
Someone in the crowd whispered that he looked like an angel.
The guild leaders who actually knew him, on the other hand, stiffened at the sight of his face.
What kind of whim dragged that lunatic out here this time?
No one embodied the saying “a devil wearing an angel's face” better than that man. And yet not a soul dared treat him carelessly. He was a healer who would keep anyone alive as long as they were still breathing, and the powerful of the world lined up by the thousands just to be treated by him.
While the guild leaders grimaced, he took his seat in a chair marked with a reserved sign.
The MC moved straight on to introducing the next guild.
“Ranked second in the nation—the other pillar of the mage world. Say hello to Sewol Guild!”
Steady applause followed. It was the reaction befitting a top-ranked guild, though it lacked the electric charge that Seo Jeongchan's entrance had stirred.
And then, at last.
“The undisputed number one guild in the nation! Led by hunter Ki Taewon—the holy land of mages and the hero of our era, Giwon Guild!”
The audience hall ignited in an instant. People hoisted their phones and flipped their cameras on in unison, and chants of Giwon's name erupted from every direction.
The one table in the room that had brightened at Seo Jeongchan's entrance—Seongyeon's—fell silent as if a switch had been flipped.
“Giwon Guild, please come forward!”
The door at the end of the runway opened to a swelling orchestral score.
Four figures emerged in black suits—the exact mirror image of Seongyeon's white uniforms.
“No way. Is that Ki Taewon?”
“Ki Taewon's here too?”
Voice after voice rang out, thick with anticipation.
But Sihyun needed only one glance at the lead man's shoulder line and stride to know for certain.
“Not Ki Taewon.”
The breath she'd been holding escaped on its own.
“……I was nervous? Why? Which outcome was I hoping for, anyway—running into Ki Taewon here, or not?”
Sihyun bit her lip for a moment, then turned her eyes back to the stage.
The man who came out in Ki Taewon's place, leading the guild members, was a face she'd never seen before.
A voice from the audience identified him.
“That's Vice Guild Leader Jung Wooseon.”
“Figures. Like Ki Taewon would ever show up somewhere like this.”
“I heard even the president has trouble getting a meeting with that man.”
Interest cooled visibly in the voices of the disappointed spectators.
Then someone spoke up.
“Well, I came to see Do Suho, anyway.”
Right on cue, the man at the very back of the line stepped into the bright lights.
Tall and striking in Giwon's black suit, he drew cheers from across the audience hall.
“It's Do Suho!”
“Whoa, he's even better-looking in person.”
The brief chill was gone, and the audience was boiling over again. The production crew reacted just as quickly.
“Get a close-up on Do Suho.”
Several cameras swung toward him in unison.
Do Suho's expression stiffened, just a little. But he didn't panic, didn't glance around in fluster, didn't break stride. For someone stepping onto a stage like this for the first time, he carried himself remarkably naturally.
The crowd brightened at the arrival of the rising star everyone had been waiting for.
All except one person.
Sihyun alone regarded him with a deeply dissatisfied face.
“……What is HE doing here?”
She hadn't expected Lee Sihyun's ex-boyfriend from the association days to be a contestant in this survival. And not just any contestant—one affiliated with Giwon, no less.
“Sewol is terrifying, and the world is small.”
Lesson after lesson today. Truly, a day of education.
Not that it was an inconvenience, exactly. Just a faintly unpleasant feeling.
She planned to crush every last contestant regardless of guild affiliation and take the championship. If anything, a Giwon alumnus simply meant she had even less reason to show him mercy.
Still, she couldn't help wondering how Lee Sihyun would feel about it.
“Wait—would she be so furious she'd open her eyes in the afterlife and claw her way back out?”
A chill ran down her spine, and Sihyun shuddered.
“Giwon Guild members, please take your seats.”
Do Suho's footsteps stopped dead as he came down off the runway.
His gaze turned toward Seongyeon's table.
Toward Sihyun, to be exact.
His eyebrows lifted slightly, and then out came a dismissive, disbelieving scoff of a laugh. The look on his face said, unbelievable.
“Excuse me? What's with you, punk.”
Sihyun wasn't about to lose, either—she tilted her chin up and glared right back.
A few seconds passed with the two of them locked in a staring contest. Aware of the eyes around them, Do Suho looked away first, but there was no way the three at Seongyeon's table had missed that brief exchange of hostility.
“What's with him?”
Jena asked first.
“He was looking at Sihyun just now, right?”
“Sihyun, do you know him?”
“Know him? Yeah, I'd say so.”
“How? Is he from your school?”
Sihyun hesitated a moment, then answered honestly.
“My ex-boyfriend.”
Lee Sihyun's, that is. She left that part out.
Seongyeon's table went dead quiet.
A few seconds later—
“Pfff—!”
Hoyeon sprayed out the water he'd been drinking.
“WHAT?”
“Your ex-boyfriend?!”
They shrieked loudly enough for the neighboring guilds to turn and look.
Sihyun stared at the three of them as if wondering what the fuss was about.
“Why are you being so loud?”
Anyone watching would have thought she was discussing someone else's love life entirely.
“You're about to spend a training camp with your ex and you're fine with that?”
“What would I not be fine with? We broke up. Besides, I dumped him because he was in the way of my schedule anyway.”
Hoyeon's jaw dropped.
“You dumped HIM?”
Jisu hurried to back Sihyun up.
“Hey, our Sihyun's a catch, you know. She's got nothing to be embarrassed about.”
Sihyun nodded along with complete sincerity.
“Right. He's short, sure, but his face grew on me—kind of cute the more I looked.”
Hoyeon turned to Jena, his mouth still hanging open. Jena wore a similar expression.
“……Sihyun.”
“What?”
“You have really, really high self-esteem.”
“I was just stating facts. Wasn't I, Jisu-unni?”
Even Jisu, who doted on Sihyun more than anyone, wavered for a moment.
“……Y-yeah. That's right.”
“So the guild introductions are all done, right? Don't we get a short break?”
Sihyun tapped lightly on the phone she'd left on the table. The screen lit up, showing the current time.
And below it was Do Suho. A photo of him sitting across a café table, looking down at his own phone.
“Oh, right. We broke up, so I should change this picture too.”
Three pairs of eyes snapped to the lock screen at the same instant.
Oblivious to all of it, Sihyun stared at the lock screen in thought.
“How did you change this thing again?”
Leaving a photo of your ex-boyfriend as your wallpaper felt somehow wrong. She considered asking Jena for help, but admitting she couldn't even change her own lock screen felt too embarrassing.
“I'd sound like some ancient relic.”
While Sihyun agonized over it, the three exchanged a quiet flurry of glances.
There was no way the person who'd done the dumping would still have a photo of her ex-boyfriend on her lock screen. And above all, the expression on Sihyun's face as she gazed at that picture, unable to look away, looked somewhere between wistful and aching.
“She never got over him.”
“She's just pretending to be okay.”
“She got dumped.”
A tender warmth tinged the looks they traded with one another.
The verdict was unanimous.
“Confirmed. She got dumped, alright.”