I Became the Hidden Final Boss – Chapter 121

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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Xrecker
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My eyes met a pair that were devoid of focus. They were looking at me, yet it felt as if they weren’t. I couldn’t utter a single word. My limbs refused to move as if my whole body was bound, and though I opened my mouth to say something, no voice came out.

Yu-bin’s passionate red eyes were colder than a harsh winter. She just looked at me without saying a word.

“Ah…”

I opened my mouth to explain the situation, but I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t understand how this had happened, and there was nothing to explain. Dating all five members of a single team was clearly my fault, no matter how you looked at it.

I couldn’t meet Ha-yeong’s eyes, which were filled with disappointment, and Eun-ha had a sad look in her eyes. Su-a was angry, and Yu-ra was also looking at me with a mix of emotions.

Caught meeting all five of them in my black suit, my identity as a Spacetroe also revealed, there was nothing I could say. Was it because I was facing too many situations at once?

I should have at least apologized, but I couldn’t say anything. Their gazes were still fixed on me, and no sound came from their mouths. If only they would hit me, this silence would end, but as if they didn’t even feel it was worth it, there was not even a slight movement in their fingertips.

And the moment I took a step, the world went out. The sky turned dark, and the ground I was standing on seemed to collapse. As I fell into an unknown place, I just waited to reach the end in the empty silence where nothing existed.

“!!!”

It was then that I woke up from a deep sleep. The moment I felt I had hit the very bottom, my eyes opened, and I quickly sat up.

My whole body was covered in a cold sweat, and Eun-ha, who was sleeping next to me, was looking at me with a worried expression as I had suddenly shot up.

“Oppa, are you okay?”

“Huh? Oh, I’m fine. I just had a bad dream.”

It was a dream. The endless thoughts of how to avoid getting caught had kept me from sleeping for several nights, and in the end, I had even dreamed of my identity being revealed to all five of them.

“……Get some more sleep. I’m going to get some water.”

Perhaps because of the cold sweat, I felt a burning thirst. I told Eun-ha, who was still looking at me, to go back to sleep, and I got out of bed and went to the kitchen. I could only hear the sound of the water from the water purifier filling the cup, and my gaze turned to the window.

The dark early morning outside, with the darkness settled in, was extremely quiet. The sound of a car from a distance broke the silence of the dawn, but that sound also quickly disappeared.

What day is it today? With that thought, I checked the screen of my smartphone, which I had brought with me as I came out to the living room.

Friday. The shock of waking up from a nightmare had made me momentarily forget what day it was, what day of the week it was, and even what I had done during the day.

Yesterday, there had been a duel, and after suffering a defeat as usual, I had received a call from Eun-ha. After coming to her house, we had spent time together and had gone to bed.

It had been only three days since I had gone to the supermarket with Ha-yeong, and after that, I had spent the days meeting Su-a or Eun-ha.

“Haaah.”

A sigh of lament escaped my lips, and I gulped down the water in the cup, quenching my thirst. I came out to the living room, sat on the sofa, and was lost in thought for a moment. Someday, the moment would come when this situation would be revealed to all five of them.

It was a moment that could not be avoided, and even if they found out after we had broken up, the fact that the five of us had spent time together would not change. In the end, it would affect them in some way.

However, I was also worried about whether that moment would surely come. In a situation where I hadn’t yet found out for sure about the disappearance of the superhumans, there was a possibility of their powers disappearing, but the possibility of their deaths had not completely disappeared.

If the experiments on children before puberty were experiments to postpone their premature deaths, then the five members of Hunter Killer would also face a moment of death that was much faster than others.

For a living being, the end is a natural thing. However, if their lifespan was shortened by experiments and they were to meet a tragic death… I didn’t think I could accept it when that moment came.

Above all, they were the five people who had given me unconditional love, I who had lived indifferently to the emotion of love. What I had to do was to repay the feelings they had given me, and what I wished for was their happiness.

But if they were to face death just when a moment of happiness had come…….

“Ah.”

I let out a short sound and shook my head.

“Oppa, are you sure you’re not sick?”

Eun-ha, who must have been worried that I hadn’t returned to the room, came out of the master bedroom.

“I’m fine. I just have a lot on my mind.”

Eun-ha slowly came and sat next to me, and she rested her head on my shoulder as I was sitting there. I naturally put my arm around her shoulder and hugged her. Although she was clothed, I could feel our body heat as we were close, and the anxiety I had felt until a moment ago seemed to disappear a little.

“Is it because of work?”

“……Yeah.”

If you were to call it work, it was work. No matter what happened to our relationship, the fact that I was a member of Spacetroe would not change, and superficially, Spacetroe could be seen as thinking about superhumans.

“I can’t help you with anything, but if it’s too hard, please tell me. Just by talking about it, you can relieve some of the burden, can’t you?”

At her words of comfort, I felt sadness before I felt gratitude. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her, who was leaning against me, so I turned my gaze to the window.

She knew better than anyone that talking about something painful to someone could be a source of strength. That’s why she wanted me to tell her when I was having a hard time, but my story was something I couldn’t tell anyone in the world right now.

If it were a worry I could just vent, there would be no reason for me to be so troubled. It was something I couldn’t tell anyone and had to solve on my own, and since it was related to her life, who was worrying about me and comforting me, I couldn’t say anything.

“……Yeah. I’ll tell you when I’m feeling a little better.”

It was a promise I couldn’t keep. I was still looking out the window, and she looked up at me as my gaze was fixed on the window. At the feeling of her gaze, I turned my head, and the moment our eyes met, she smiled.

“Oppa, do you know what?”

“What is it?”

I asked her, who was opening the conversation with a meaningful prelude, and she spoke to me with a smile still on her face.

“I’m so happy these days.”

“…….”

I couldn’t bring myself to say anything after that. I could have answered her without relating it to my current situation, but I felt as if my reason had stopped me from saying anything.

“It’s not every day, but I still get to meet you like this, oppa. And we spend time together. I’m so happy that I wish we could live like this forever.”

She already felt happy just by being with me. Would the others be the same? When I was with the five women, who had different charms, I also felt happy.

When I met someone, I could feel their heart, and I could feel that there was no falsehood in the feelings they gave me. I couldn’t help but feel happy at the affection that I could clearly feel even when I was just sitting there.

If the others, except for her, were also like that, then they were already feeling happiness because of my existence. Then I had to protect their happiness now, somehow.

It wasn’t something I had to do out of duty, but it was something that was decided by my own choice, and because it was my choice, I didn’t want to break the current happiness of the five people even more.

However, the happier she felt being with me, the heavier my heart became.

“Oppa……how do you feel when you’re with me?”

As if she had a thought, she asked me in a small voice. A hint of anxiety was in her face, which had been full of smiles until a moment ago. Thinking that I shouldn’t show my anxiety in front of her, I smiled and kissed her moist lips, as she was staring at me.

“I’m happy to be with you too.”

It was sincere. It wasn’t just something I was saying to resolve the situation; I was genuinely happy when I was with her, so I conveyed my feelings to her.

Her anxiety disappeared in an instant, and she buried her face in my chest. She was still in my arms, as if she were listening to my heartbeat, and we were in the quiet dawn, holding each other and feeling each other’s body heat.

The next day, in the afternoon, I arrived at the arcade I always went to. Su-a was already inside, playing a game, and since it was a Friday afternoon, there were many people everywhere.

“How many rounds is this?”

I approached her, who was in the middle of ravaging her opponent while manipulating the joystick, and a short answer of “4 rounds” came back. I watched her silently, letting her finish the game she was concentrating on, and not long after, the word “Win” appeared on the screen, announcing her victory.

“You’re relentless.”

“Of course.”

Su-a stretched and stood up from her seat. The reason I had come to the arcade was not to play games. The destination was her house, and since she had finished her meeting early this morning and had come to the arcade to play a game for a while, I had come to pick her up.

“Want to play a game?”

“We’re going to get torn apart when we get home anyway. Why here?”

My defeat was as good as confirmed when we turned on the game at home. I was already used to losing repeatedly at the arcade, and because I was used to it, I wondered if I really had to lose here and then lose again at home.

“Did you eat?”

“Not yet.”

“Let’s eat and then go. I’m hungry.”

“Okay.”

I took her hand and we left the arcade. After deliberating on what to eat, we went into a Western restaurant that caught my eye and sat down. After ordering our respective dishes, we waited for the food to come out.

Then, suddenly, the thought that it might be easier to bring up a topic related to superhumans with her, who had been the first to tell me about the superhuman experiments, came to me, and I cautiously brought it up.

“By the way.”

Su-a, who had been watching a game video on her smartphone, lifted her head at my voice. Although she didn’t care about what others thought, I was still a little hesitant to bring up the topic of superhumans first. With a nervous heart, I swallowed and finally spoke.

“The members of the groups that superhumans belong to often change, but why do they change?”

I brought up the matter that had been troubling me the most recently, and she, who had been watching me quietly as I suddenly brought up the topic of superhumans, looked back at her smartphone screen. Did she find it suspicious? Even for her, was it awkward to talk about superhumans that someone else had brought up?

Just as I was thinking that, she opened her mouth as if it were nothing.

“I don’t know. Our team has been the same for 3 years, but when two people left 5 years ago, they said it was a personnel transfer.”

As she had said, 5 years ago, two of the five members of Hunter Killer had left, and two years after that, that is, 3 years ago, Yu-bin and Eun-ha had joined. At that time, I had no interest in the change of superhuman members.

I had only thought that a major revision of the strategy would be necessary since the members had changed, but I had never even thought about who left, who joined, and what the reason for such a replacement was.

“So they went somewhere else?”

“I guess so. But we didn’t really keep in touch, so I don’t know where they are or what they’re doing now.”

Seeing her speak so calmly, I was sure that she really didn’t know. If they had died and she knew that, she would have said so without hesitation. The death of someone you knew was sad, but the person named Han Su-a was not one to dwell on what had already happened and try to hide it.

“I see. You said you did some kind of experiment before, but what was that?”

I had hoped to hear something more, but her gaze, which had been on her smartphone, turned to me again. Even though I had done nothing wrong, my body flinched as her gaze was fixed on me.

“What a surprise. You’re the one bringing up the topic of superhumans.”

Since I had intentionally avoided the topic of superhumans, thinking it might provide a clue to my identity, it was not strange that she felt unfamiliar with my sudden talk of superhumans.

“I was just a little curious. It’s about my girlfriend.”

At the word “girlfriend,” her eyebrows twitched, and she was about to speak, but then she closed her mouth and frowned.

“I’ll tell you later.”

I couldn’t tell if she didn’t want to talk about the experiment or if she was reluctant to talk about it now because we were at a restaurant, but either way, since she didn’t want to talk about it now, I didn’t press her further.

“Okay.”

The food came out around that time, and after finishing our lunch, we left the restaurant.

“…….”

After leaving the restaurant, I stopped for a moment as I was about to walk to the subway station, holding her hand.

“What’s wrong?”

As I suddenly stopped walking, she looked at me, wondering what was wrong, and I gave a wry smile because of something that had just come to mind.

“I have to stop by somewhere for a moment, do you want to go to the station first?”

“We can go together, can’t we?”

“No, I’ll be done soon, so go to the station first.”

“…Okay, I understand.”

At my somewhat awkward response, she agreed for now and let go of my hand, heading for the station first. I ran quickly. I weaved through the people walking on the street and reached a secluded alley. There was no one in the alley.

“…….”

I quietly lowered my body and looked at the ground. There were fresh footprints on the dirt, and they were heading into the alley.

However, it wasn’t that they had been heading for the alley from the beginning, but that they had been staying in one place to see something outside the alley and had then hastily headed inside.

“What is it?”

The footprints disappeared after a short distance, but I was certain that the sense of unease I had felt when I met Ha-yeong a few days ago, and when I met Eun-ha yesterday, was not just because I was being sensitive.

“Who is it?”

Someone was watching me.

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