A smiling face and the longsword in his hand.
Fresh red blood splattered across those noble-looking, pure white ceremonial robes.
At that dissonance, Cha Seohu felt cold sweat run down his back.
“That’s one hell of a first impression.”
Forcing the corners of his mouth up, Cha Seohu calmly looked the Cult Leader over.
“So, after calling someone all the way out here... this empty basement space is the best you can show me? And those clothes covered in all that mess like some sloppy idiot? If that’s the case, I’m disappointed.”
Hearing the door close behind him, Cha Seohu sneered.
He could feel the Cult Leader’s gaze. The Cult Leader’s face, quietly fixed on Cha Seohu’s twisted smile and eyes, still held that same smile.
“This is exactly why I wanted to meet you.”
Speaking calmly despite Cha Seohu’s ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) provocation, the Cult Leader turned his body, which had been standing at a slant, fully toward him.
The large chandelier hanging from the ceiling shone brightly, illuminating the Cult Leader’s face clearly as they stood facing each other.
Neatly kept brown hair, and beneath it, light violet eyes.
His long eyelashes and drooping eyes gave him a gentle impression, and the faint smile lingering around his mouth created a soft atmosphere.
“Even in a situation where most people would have every reason to shrink back or be afraid, you don’t retreat.”
The Cult Leader smiled warmly.
The moment Cha Seohu felt that smiling face was a “warm smile,” goosebumps ran over his skin.
“...What kind of bullshit are you talking about?”
“Mr. Cha Seohu. I know you’re talking on purpose to buy time while you assess your surroundings.”
“......”
Cha Seohu had been hit right on the mark and could not answer for a moment.
As if he had expected that, the Cult Leader smiled faintly and gestured politely farther inside.
“It’s alright. You don’t have to be so wary, like a beast with its fur standing on end.”
At the phrase “a beast with its fur standing on end,” something twitched around Cha Seohu’s eyes. Before he could answer with a curse, the Cult Leader continued.
“The blood on my clothes and the sword I was holding... are for a different reason. The red-haired Hunter you’re looking for is perfectly fine. Follow me. You didn’t race all the way here just to look at my face and leave, did you?”
“Ha...”
An irritated breath burst out.
Letting out a hollow laugh, Cha Seohu slowly looked the Cult Leader up and down from head to toe.
The lowered tip of the sword, as if to show he had no intention of attacking. The bloodstains splattered over the blade and the white ceremonial robes. The large chandelier hanging in a room deep beneath an abandoned church.
None of it made any sense.
And in the middle of all that, the very existence of the Cult Leader, standing there looking at Cha Seohu with the most harmless and gentle smile of all, felt like the completed form of something utterly irrational.
Cha Seohu, who had been planning to pull out a weapon and rush him the moment the timing felt right, took a steady breath.
‘Not yet.’
Confirming Yoon Jeha’s condition came first, but no matter how much he thought about it, there was no way the Cult Leader would have welcomed him in such a defenseless state.
‘...I can’t sense the aura of an Awakener.’
That only confused him more.
The man before him was not an Awakener.
Just an ordinary person who could die without being able to resist even once if Cha Seohu, in his S-rank Dealer state, suddenly charged him and swung a blade.
But even knowing that, it was not easy to actually decide to attack.
That easygoing attitude. That soft expression. That fearless behavior, even in front of an S-rank Awakener.
Talking big over the phone was easy enough. Even keeping his expression controlled after meeting him face-to-face would not be strange, considering he was the leader of a cult.
But that reaction from his body was not something you could control consciously.
This was instinct. Just as prey naturally feared a predator, it was only natural for a non-Awakener to be aware of an S-rank Dealer.
After all, it was only natural to be afraid of someone who could snap your neck in the time it took to blink.
But there was no trace of that in the Cult Leader.
In the roughly five minutes since first meeting him in this room, Cha Seohu had taken in everything about him with S-rank senses.
The corners of his eyes when he smiled, his lips when he spoke, the gesture of his hand pointing inward, his gaze as he watched Cha Seohu approach.
In none of it could Cha Seohu find even the slightest sign that he was afraid.
‘That doll from the hotel incident? No, he’s alive. Then the only possibility left is... that he’s using an item to hide his aura, like the jewel Eun Woojeong had.’
There were no visible accessories on him. But that was not enough to relax. He could have hidden a necklace under his clothes, or it could have been some form of item that was not an accessory at all.
Finishing that thought, Cha Seohu slowly started walking straight toward the Cult Leader, who was standing there looking at him.
Then, in the same mocking voice as before, he said,
“We already came all the way down here, and now you want to move again? You invited a guest all the way out to a place like this, and your hospitality sucks.”
“Haha, I’m sorry. I really can’t make excuses for that part.”
When Cha Seohu started moving, the Cult Leader, once the distance between them had narrowed enough, turned fully around and began to lead the way.
He looked exactly like a host politely guiding a guest who had come to visit.
He walked with his back to Cha Seohu without the slightest trace of caution.
He was still holding that bloodstained sword in one hand, but the blade hung low and easy, almost dragging across the floor, so it did not feel threatening.
Even so, Cha Seohu did not let his guard down and followed after him, staying ready to draw a weapon at any moment.
Opposite the entrance he had come through, a long hallway stretched onward.
Unlike the inside of the church aboveground, which had been abandoned and left unmanaged for a long time, the hallway the two of them were walking through was spotless and white, brightly lit without a trace of darkness. It reminded him of a hospital corridor.
Only the footsteps of the Cult Leader and Cha Seohu echoed through the hallway.
After walking in silence for a short while, the Cult Leader spoke.
“I sincerely apologize for dragging you here in such a hurry and giving you a three-hour limit. I really did want to see you, and I didn’t want to miss such a perfect opportunity. And if I wanted to receive you properly, I had to invite you all the way here. Ah, though I suppose even that sounds like an excuse to you, Mr. Cha Seohu?”
The added question carried a light note of laughter.
A joke.
He was making a joke. At Cha Seohu. After taking Yoon Jeha hostage and calling him to a strange place.
For a moment, Cha Seohu clenched his teeth, then forced himself to relax.
“If I want you to focus on your conversation with me, I suppose I should let you meet the red-haired Hunter first, shouldn’t I?”
At last, the Cult Leader stopped in the endlessly long hallway. There was a door where he stopped.
He said he would let him meet her at the exact same moment they arrived at this door. Meaning he had deliberately timed those words for this spot.
“Here we are.”
The Cult Leader took hold of the handle of the pure white door, matching the hallway, and pushed it open.
The door opened smoothly without making a sound.
And at the sight revealed inside, Cha Seohu’s breath caught for an instant.
The first thing he saw was the same pure white walls as the hallway.
A room so excessively white and spotless it felt like it would drive someone mad if they stayed there even an hour.
And in the center of it, positioned at an angle so it could be seen the moment the door opened, was a coffin.
The coffin was made entirely of glass, every side transparent and clearly visible.
A woman sleeping amid lilies packed in so densely it was sickening.
It was Yoon Jeha.
Her complexion was so pale that Cha Seohu stiffened, thinking she was a corpse, but then he saw the faint rise and fall of her chest and let out a shaking breath.
Alive.
He did not know what had been done to her, but she was alive.
She was only asleep.
The moment he realized that, boiling rage and nausea surged all the way up his throat.
“...What are you doing?”
The words came out before his reason had even finished grasping the situation.
His eyes contorting, Cha Seohu turned to look at the Cult Leader beside him.
“What the fuck... did you do?”
Since opening the door, the Cult Leader had been staring not at the coffin, but only at Cha Seohu. The moment their eyes met, he smiled.
“You must be very shocked. But, Mr. Cha Seohu, look closely. Doesn’t she seem very comfortable?”
“What?”
“She is merely asleep. As if dead. No, to explain it more precisely... it is a sleep close to death, which is why she can wear such a peaceful expression.”
At that answer, so far beyond anything he had expected, Cha Seohu’s thoughts stopped for an instant.
The Cult Leader stepped closer to Cha Seohu, whose body had gone cold and rigid, and extended an arm. The blood-soaked white sleeve slid down, revealing his hand.
Without the slightest hesitation, he reached over and took Cha Seohu’s hand. At the eerie cold that pierced through his skin, Cha Seohu reflexively curled his fingertips.
“You really are very startled. But this is reality, Mr. Cha Seohu. Everyone wants to look away from it, and everyone wants to believe it is not true, but this is the truth.”
“......”
“If a sleep close to death is that peaceful, then how happy must actual death be? The pain, suffering, fear, despair we feel while living... none of that exists in death.”
Turning his head, the Cult Leader looked at Yoon Jeha sleeping inside the coffin and smiled as if delighted.
“Look closely at her. Isn’t she beautiful? Surrounded by white flowers, her red hair looks almost like blood. There is no anxiety or loneliness at all on that face with its eyes closed.”
The Cult Leader’s thumb slowly stroked the back of Cha Seohu’s hand.
“I heard she came all the way here looking for her younger brother. How painful that must have been for her. How lonely, how exhausting. But it’s alright now. In her dreams, she must have met her younger brother. The pain and the loneliness are over now.”

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