CHAPTER 44……………………………………………
My common sense said handcuffs were meant to be worn by one person alone. But Kang Kwon-hu, who seemed to operate outside common sense, shook his head.
“Of course. You wanted to chain me next to Woojin, didn’t you?”
He had said something similar before, but his tone had shifted in a strange way. Hearing it made my mouth feel sour. Whether I was confused or not, before I could stop him he snapped a pair of handcuffs onto one of his wrists and held out the other to me.
“W-why?” I stammered.
“You should wear one too, Woojin. For fairness.”
Wouldn’t it be easier to just not bother being “fair”?
The large hand that suddenly grabbed my wrist was big and rough, unlike his good looks. Given where he’d come from, maybe it was to be expected, but the mismatch still felt jarring. Maybe because I was oddly conscious of it, heat flushed up from the wrist he held.
“It’s so white.”
Kang Kwon-hu’s fingers traveled up my wrist to my knuckles. The small room was so quiet that I could hear the faint sound of his skin brushing mine. My sensitivity spiked and a tiny electric thrill ran wherever he touched.
“The protruding bones are round, and the fingers are long.”
Baek Woo-jin’s hands were pretty, in contrast to his masculine face — I felt oddly off-balance thinking that maybe Kang Kwon-hu felt the same.
Clack.
The click of the handcuffs releasing was, thankfully, the signal that pulled me out of my thoughts. I jerked my arm back and freed it from his hand before the cuffs could close on my wrist.
“Let’s be rational. How are we supposed to fight like this? Are we going to wander around holding hands like kids?” I said.
“Hmm… I imagined it. It’s not so bad.” He muttered, then, failing to keep his expression neutral and frowning, he forced my wrist back and finished fastening the handcuffs. He moved so quickly I couldn’t dodge or run.
“Wait—”
“Just see how it looks first.”
He said that and, handcuffed together, began to back away from me. I tensed expecting my body to follow, but the chain stretched longer and became semi-transparent.
“If you go more than a meter away it’ll re-solidify and react again.”
So this item was less a restraint and more like a way to prevent getting separated. If he’d told me that beforehand I wouldn’t have reacted so nervously; feeling a little awkward, I scratched my head.
“This isn’t bad.”
I voiced my honest impression while checking the cuff that stretched like it was both there and not there. Kang Kwon-hu, who had been moving his wrist a couple of times, paused.
“You mean that?”
He’d suggested this, and now that I accepted, he picked a fight over it.
‘What a strange personality.’
“Of course. From now on, stay right next to me and don’t get away. So I can protect you.”
I’d said it to mean “don’t sabotage me by self-destructing,” but Kang Kwon-hu’s smile twitched oddly. It didn’t look displeased; rather, like a scientist who just discovered something strange and unsettling.
‘I can’t tell if he likes it or hates it.’
“Everything about you reacts so oddly from one to ten that you’re unpredictable.”
That was something I could’ve said.
“Let’s stop by the second floor, then go up to the roof. From above we’ll be able to see roughly how people are moving.”
Earlier I’d been worried he might vanish while we were searching, but now I trusted the handcuffs and walked briskly.
“The second floor’s empty too.”
“Looks like it.”
Kang Kwon-hu answered with a small yawn. A theory popped into my head: from the moment he entered this house his senses might have already picked up whether enemies were present.
“You knew there was nobody here, right?”
I asked almost confidently. I felt resentful about wasting time running around, so the question slipped out as a complaint. If this had been just yesterday I wouldn’t have dared ask such bold things, but since Kang Kwon-hu had been casually revealing his inner thoughts, I found myself adding remarks.
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you didn’t ask.”
That was a perfectly fair excuse.
“If you find anyone from the roof, let me know.”
There was nothing to do about what had already happened. I had to survive with this uncooperative man, one way or another.
“Okay.”
Creak.
A breeze greeted us as soon as we opened the roof door. I hadn’t expected much from a third-floor roof, but each floor had high ceilings so the view was wide.
[Hiding time will end soon! 5, 4, 3, 2, 1]
Shiri started the countdown at that exact moment.
“Can you see anyone hiding nearby?” I pressed my body to the floor and peered down, but the bushes obscured who might be where. I asked Kang Kwon-hu instead, who had excellent search skills and intuition.
“If we only call out nearby, two people at three o’clock, ten meters; five people at twelve o’clock, five meters. And someone very close who’s about to go on the offensive.”
Bang—crash.
The person Kang Kwon-hu had called “about to go on the offensive” didn’t wait long to show himself.
“Hahaha. Come out, all of you, you bastards!”
His voice was so loud it could’ve had a megaphone; the sound was like an explosion.
‘That one’s obviously a strength class.’
It might be a hasty generalization to say loudly and simply that people like that are always “strength classes,” but in two out of three cases it held. Not all strength classes are dumb, but a lot of the dumb ones are strength classes.
“They’re noisy.”
There was a pause between his words as if he were weighing whether it would be faster to tear the guy’s throat open or to shove a gun in his mouth.
“On the bright side, some snipers’ positions will be revealed.”
There was no reason to stop someone who was openly becoming a target, so I quietly took my sword out of my inventory.
“Stand behind me.”
I motioned for Kang Kwon-hu, who was still standing upright without lowering his body.
‘I guess even if I’d been the king while hiding, I would’ve been pretty scary in my own way.’
Everyone was targeting me; if Kang Kwon-hu had stayed stubbornly uncooperative like before, I might’ve been eliminated in an instant.
“Are you really going to protect me?” I asked earnestly; I didn’t care if he scoffed and called me role-playing.
“You said it yourself earlier. Stop asking and just come behind me.”
I expected him to resist more, but he obediently stood behind me. The cold metal of the cuffs warmed a little, probably from our body heat.
“Let’s watch how things unfold for now.”
A bulky man about two meters tall was pushing through the grass. One of the snipers in the direction the giant was heading, trembling, opened fire. Three shots came in quick succession, and the strength-focused man waved his hand and caught the incoming bullets.
“Is that all?” He seemed unimpressed.
Those were surely skill-enhanced bullets, but against raw force they were embarrassingly powerless.
“Are you nearby?” One sniper who tried to flee was grabbed by the big man. Perhaps the attacker had used a body-enlargement skill — his hand was abnormally huge. The sniper dangled by the head like a pitiable human caught by a barbaric monster.
“Judging by how confidently he’s moving, he’s probably a knight, right?”
There would be others, like me, waiting quietly without attacking because our judgment was the same.
“Ugh!”
The big man suddenly screamed and flung the person he was holding as if in pain.
“What’s going on?” I peered more closely and saw thin, needle-like things stuck into the man’s body. They were so thin they would’ve been hard to notice if thrown quickly. I thought it was reckless for someone baiting others to reveal their position like that — the attacker must’ve had a lot of nerve.
[The first king has already been eliminated! The leader of the Carnivore Guild has been eliminated!]
An unexpected announcement crackled over the speakers.
‘Ah… the simple stupidity of strength classes surpasses imagination.’
I imagined how frustrated the knight who had been with that fallen king must be. I felt a small, dry sympathy for that unknown knight who’d probably had it worse than I did.
“Does the knight who was with that king get eliminated too? So does that mean there are four people left around here?”
While scanning below, the people at three o’clock moved close enough to be visible to my naked eye, and I saw them throw something.
‘Maybe?’
You shouldn’t think about these things and act on them. Whether grenades, bombs, or bullets, anything like that had to be dodged no matter what.
“Come here!”
