My Assigned Hunters Climb the Tower - Chapter 13

========== CHAPTER 13 ==========

Lee Seong-ha, who had a severe germaphobia that only he denied, rolled up his sleeves as if he couldn’t stand the chaos before his eyes. Without waiting for anyone’s answer, he started cleaning up the trash immediately. Seeing this, Kwon Do-geun reached out in a panic to stop him.

“E, excuse me!”

Before his cracked voice could reach him, Go Gyeol quietly blocked his path.

“Let’s talk, you and I.”

Go Gyeol’s gaze, which had been searching for a place to sit, landed on the dusty floor. Instead of frowning, he offered options in a calm voice.

“Shall we go outside and talk? Or would you like to wait here until this place is cleaned up?”

Their gazes collided in mid-air. At Go Gyeol’s unwavering gaze, the cowering Kwon Do-geun hesitated and gave a small nod. Just as he was about to ask again, unable to tell if he meant to go out or wait, a voice as quiet as a mosquito was heard.

“…I’ll wait.”

Go Gyeol sighed softly, crossed his arms, and watched Lee Seong-ha bustling around the room. Like a fish in water, he was running around everywhere, removing old grime and trash as if possessed. If his goal hadn’t been to leave the secular world, a ridiculous thought crossed his mind that he could have succeeded as a professional cleaner even if he retired from being a hunter with that kind of passion. That was when it happened.

“Aren’t you going to talk?”

Lee Seong-ha, who had been focused on cleaning, asked as if it were strange.

“There’s nowhere to sit and talk.”

“Ah. Got it.”

Lee Seong-ha nodded and instantly created a space for the two of them to sit. He wiped his sweat and said.

“There, talk here. I’ll finish cleaning.”

“Yeah.”

Go Gyeol sat down first in the clean space, which was like a small island provided by Lee Seong-ha. Then, Kwon Do-geun reluctantly sat down in front of him, as if kneeling. His hunched shoulders and head bowed as if to touch the ground looked like the posture of a sinner waiting for the blame and reprimand that would soon pour down.

“Kwon Do-geun-ssi.”

At the call, his shoulders flinched. Go Gyeol stared straight at him and cut to the chase.

“Let me say this in advance. I know that you, Kwon Do-geun-ssi, have dyslexia.”

In an instant, Kwon Do-geun’s head, which had been buried in the ground, snapped up. His bloodless, pale face and eyes that had grown large enough to burst at any moment revealed his shock. Go Gyeol didn’t stop and drove the wedge in.

“So, I also know how unfair the false accusation of everything known to the world was to you.”

At those words, a transparent film began to well up in Kwon Do-geun’s wide-open eyes. Tears that he couldn’t control fell, carving paths down his dirty cheeks. Despite his miserable appearance, his face, sorrowful and pitiful like a wounded beast, looked like a scene from a movie.

“H, how… did you….”

The voice was almost a groan. However, the spark of hope was too faint. The weight of despair crushing him was too immense. The light in his eyes, which had sparkled with surprise, instantly sank back into deep darkness, and his head dropped powerlessly to the floor. As if all his reactions from just a moment ago were a fleeting illusion, he became an empty shell again.

Go Gyeol let out a dry sigh of frustration. He asked point-blank.

“Kwon Do-geun-ssi, are you planning to die?”

His shoulders flinched sensitively, but there was no answer. Silence was sometimes the most certain affirmation.

“Dying doesn’t solve everything.”

Go Gyeol tried to persuade him logically, but his words just hit a firmly closed wall and shattered.

“…….”

Kwon Do-geun still didn’t move.

“Kwon Do-geun-ssi.”

Just as Go Gyeol was frowning and urging him, seeing him hanging lifelessly like a doll with its batteries removed, Lee Seong-ha, who had been quietly cleaning in the corner while listening to their conversation with his ears, quietly put down his broom. The small noise he made shook the heavy tension in the room.

“Hey. I’ll talk to him. You go outside for a bit.”

When Go Gyeol looked at him with a puzzled expression, Lee Seong-ha habitually made the sign of the cross on his chest.

“You know I’m a former priest. From confession to suicide prevention counseling. It was my field of expertise.”

There was a strange confidence in his voice. Go Gyeol sighed deeply once more and stood up. He had to admit that now, when Kwon Do-geun had no will to talk, whatever he said would be useless.

Above all, Go Gyeol himself was only good at analysis and talking based on it. He wasn’t confident in persuasion.

“Alright. Finish cleaning first….”

“No. Just get out.”

Lee Seong-ha cut him off firmly.

“Conversations like this need to be just between two people. Trust me.”

To Go Gyeol, who was still sending a suspicious look, Lee Seong-ha playfully winked. Only then did Go Gyeol, as if resigned, move his steps toward the door.

Once the door closed and only the two of them were left in the room, Lee Seong-ha quietly approached and sat in front of Kwon Do-geun.

And then he took his hand. A hand so cold that he could feel the chill piercing his skin. Lee Seong-ha could feel the tension tightening his whole body. He closed his eyes quietly and made the sign of the cross once more. And with the quietest and most peaceful voice in the world, he began to pray. His prayer was neither a question nor persuasion. It was just a warm comfort offered for a broken soul, while holding his cold hand.

Drip, drip.

One drop, then another.

Hot liquid fell onto the back of Lee Seong-ha’s hand. It was Kwon Do-geun’s tears. From Lee Seong-ha’s hand that held him, a warmth he had forgotten spread very slowly, but clearly, through his blood vessels. A prayer that someone was offering solely for him. As the comfort he had longed for so much, but thought he could never dare to have, approached right before his eyes, paradoxically, the dam of tears he had locked tightly burst open.

After finishing the prayer, Lee Seong-ha held the hand of Kwon Do-geun, who was silently shaking his shoulders and only shedding tears, a little tighter. His voice was not the booming voice of a preacher, but closer to the quiet whisper of someone who had walked the same path.

“There is a saying that God only gives trials that one can endure. However, I do not believe that.”

Kwon Do-geun’s sobbing stopped for a moment.

“Just as the weight of pain felt by each person is different, the strength to endure trials must also be different for everyone. But there is one important thing that people don’t know.”

At those words, Kwon Do-geun lifted his head very slowly, with great difficulty, as if he were hanging a heavy piece of iron. His empty eyes, where hope had vanished, turned toward Lee Seong-ha.

“The trials given by God are never meant to be endured alone. This is also the reason why humans can share their hearts with other humans. To endure together, to overcome together. That is the true will of God.”

‘Together….’

That word echoed within Kwon Do-geun’s shaking eyes. Endure the trials together, overcome them together. The words circled in his head and then became sharp fragments that pierced his heart.

Heh. A scoff burst out from between his dry lips. It was closer to the sound of broken glass cracking than a laugh.

Together? Who on earth was by his side?

When the first report broke, he remembered the contacts that poured in like hellfire. Behind the concern coated as sweetly as honey, ugly curiosity gleamed, enjoying watching his downfall. They weren’t asking how he was. They just wanted to see for themselves how miserably he had collapsed. They must have toasted, using his misfortune as a snack.

He had known for a long time that the entertainment industry was a cruel stage where one had to step on others to rise. He had even felt disillusioned watching the tragedies of others. But watching from behind a screen and becoming the protagonist of that tragedy himself was a pain on a completely different level. It felt like being endlessly plunged into an abyss, a bottomless pit with no end in sight.

There was no time given to handle it. The lips that used to whisper “I love you” to him spewed curses, the hands that sent cheers turned into sharp pointing fingers, and the eyes of envy were all filled with contempt and ridicule.

And in the very front row of all those traitors stood the person who was more precious to him than anyone else.

His mother, Jeon Mi-gyeong.

The woman who hadn’t even contacted him once after divorcing when he was two years old. But when his brother died in an unexpected accident, she appeared before him as if by fate. He didn’t lower his guard at first toward her, who shed tears saying she would cherish him now, in place of his dead brother. But as the maternal love he had desperately longed for throughout his empty childhood seeped into the dry ground, at some point, his suspicion and guard melted away like snow.

He trusted and entrusted everything to her, who filled the void of his entire life. He even showed her all of his most vulnerable flesh. And at that very moment, his mother pushed her son off a cliff in the most cruel way in the world.

“It’s okay.”

As if past memories were digging in with sharp claws, pain clouded Kwon Do-geun’s face. Not missing that moment, Lee Seong-ha gently patted his hand. There was no coercive force. Just quietly, slowly. With a delicate touch, as if applying ointment to a wound, the pain that had been stirred up again slowly subsided like a receding wave.

“It will be hard to trust someone again. And you’ll be afraid, too. But, think about it once more. Is there really… not a single person who endures with you?”

Lee Seong-ha didn’t stop patting his hand. He didn’t rush him. He just waited silently so that he could fish out the truth from the fragments of confusing memories.

How much time had passed? A long while later, Kwon Do-geun’s head turned very slowly toward one place.

The place his gaze landed was the only corner that was organized in this space of despair, which was reminiscent of a junkyard.