In the end, Suhyang did not trust Yoon Taehee.

Yoon Taehee was surrounded in the blink of an eye. Looking at the white masks encircling him, he read Suhyang’s fear in the sharpened points of the swords aimed at him.

The straw figures attacked all at once.

Yoon Taehee parried the swords flying at him from every direction, then drove them back in a single burst.

Again and again, he cut down the straw figures in front of him.

As time passed, Yoon Taehee’s movements gradually slowed. The medicinal water from the Purification Unit, which had served as a temporary painkiller, had already lost its effect. The pain was growing worse.

Since it was clear they were being controlled by a spell, he had to either break the spell itself or attack the caster, Suhyang, in order to get rid of them. But with the straw figures standing before him like a wall, it was impossible to approach her. On top of that, Yoon Taehee was still suffering from the aftermath of the backlash, making it difficult for him to channel spiritual force the way he normally did.

No matter how he looked at it, the shadow of defeat was deepening.

Yoon Taehee assessed the situation with a cold expression.

Their numbers kept increasing, and he was reaching his limit. The white faces before him were like a flock of crows waiting for him to collapse from exhaustion. If his focus slipped for even a moment here, there would be no next scene.

Yoon Taehee staggered and tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword.

At that moment—

“Chief!”

A voice came flying in from somewhere. Yoon Taehee’s eyes widened as he turned his head. In the distance, his team members were running toward him.

It was every member of Team 1 except the Chief and the probationary Naja.

Kang Ibin had been right when she said the team members would come for him.

“What is this...”

Suhyang clicked her tongue at the unexpected reinforcements.

Her face darkened with clear displeasure, the kind that had not been there before.

This was outside her expectations. She had not thought he would gather fellow Naja. The situation was turning out worse than she had anticipated. Sensing danger, Suhyang drew out even more straw figures.

“Chief, are you all right?”

“We’re not too late, are we?”

The members of Team 1, who had fought through the crowd in the corridor to get here, immediately fell into formation the moment they found Yoon Taehee standing alone. Just as they did whenever they went into the field together, the team members took up defensive positions against the straw figures to support Yoon Taehee.

“Wait, these things are here too?”

“What the hell is going on?”

“Seriously, this is driving me insane.”

The team members scratched their heads and vented their frustration as they looked at the straw figures.

The straw figures before them were similar to the ones they had encountered on the way here, but not quite the same. The straw figures in the corridor had simply fallen apart when cut down, then regenerated into their original form after some time. The ones here, however, not only restored themselves, but new straw figures sprouted from the piles of straw that fell from the original bodies.

Since the number of straw figures was increasing like bamboo shoots after rain, they would inevitably be driven into a corner the longer this went on.

Even if they broke through the personal guard and reached the director, in his current physical condition he would not be able to reclaim the wooden tag and the mask. Yoon Taehee swung his sword to push the straw figures as far back as he could, then drove the blade deep into [N O V E L I G H T] the ground.

As he struggled to keep his balance, his vision gradually blurred.

They knew nothing. He did not know what they thought they could do by coming all the way here.

In the haze of his vision, Yoon Taehee suddenly thought—

A cynical person was a frightened person.

In that sense, Yoon Taehee and Suhyang were somewhat alike.

The difference was that Yoon Taehee had Jaegyeom. If he had not met Jaegyeom, he would have lived as a human being much like Suhyang. After meeting Jaegyeom, Yoon Taehee had learned how much power one person’s gaze, one person’s touch, and every trivial moment given by another person could have over his life.

The first person to knock on his door and step inside had been Jaegyeom, but after him came Seok Juryeon, his team members, and countless others, flooding in all at once.

At this rate, he could not help but be swept away by the waves.

And only those unafraid of being swept away by waves could enjoy the vast ocean with their whole body.

Trusting someone, or a heart that leaned on someone—perhaps something like loyalty. Perhaps that was the human heart. Even if it meant being hurt and betrayed. Perhaps living meant continuously repeating those failures.

In that sense, Suhyang was a very wise and clever person.

And at that moment, Yoon Taehee thought of the boy.

From Suhyang’s perspective, Jaegyeom would be a foolish human being who, despite being betrayed and abandoned by the teacher he had loved, had once again ended up giving his heart to someone else.

He suddenly missed the boy.

He missed the beautiful, strong boy who pretended not to care about anything in the world, who seemed like a mass of cynicism, and yet kept repeating the mistake of eventually giving his affection.

Then a sword slipped through a gap and grazed Yoon Taehee’s shoulder.

“Ugh!”

Yoon Taehee groaned and dropped to one knee.

“Chief!”

Pyo Jiho cried out in alarm, but Yoon Taehee was clutching his shoulder, seemingly without even the chance to dodge. The straw figures did not miss that opening and thrust a sword forward as if to pierce Yoon Taehee’s throat at any moment.

That was when it happened.

THWACK—

A stone flew in from somewhere. The stone, imbued with spiritual force, broke the sword and ricocheted away. It embedded itself in a tree. The director, who had been watching the scene, flinched and turned her head.

As if they had received some kind of signal, the personal guard suddenly stopped moving.

“W-What!”

The flustered team members stopped moving as well.

At the sudden stone flying in out of nowhere, the team members all turned their gazes toward the tree where it had lodged. But the tree with the stone embedded in it began to turn black and wither in an instant.

It died.

Yoon Taehee, sitting with one knee bent and his face twisted as he coughed, slowly widened his eyes.

While everyone’s eyes were fixed on the stone lodged in the tree—

“Who do you think you’re touching...”

A voice came from somewhere.

The eyes of everyone staring at the dead tree shifted at once. As they looked toward the source of the voice, their gazes stopped in one place.

Someone was standing on top of a tall tree.

Thanks to the bright moonlight, his face was easy to recognize.

Kang Ibin’s lips trembled.

“...Jaegyeom?”

The boy who looked exactly like Jaegyeom was holding a bow, surrounded by spiritual force that looked like red mist. Standing atop the tree, the boy raised the bow and drew the string back to his jaw.

The arrow was aimed at Suhyang.

The moment his eyes met the boy’s from afar, Suhyang jerked her body back. The arrow, wrapped in red spiritual force, narrowly grazed past her. The shot that missed her pierced a nearby straw figure.

The straw figure struck by the arrow seemed to turn black, just like the tree from a moment ago, before crumbling away. The spell placed on the straw figure had been broken all at once.

Suhyang’s face hardened fiercely.

“......”

The team members were all staring blankly at Jaegyeom, speechless.

It was definitely their youngest.

But he looked like a completely different person. The boy who took half a day just to write a report, who seemed ignorant of the ways of the world, was wrapped in an enormous amount of spiritual force and firing arrows from all the way over there.

“W-What is this...”

The team members stared at the boy in disbelief. The person before them was undoubtedly Jaegyeom. Since he was Chief Yoon’s personally chosen successor, they had known he was an exceptional talent, but this made no sense.

Then they felt a presence behind them.

Their shock at Jaegyeom’s appearance lasted only a moment. Sensing something strange, the team members hurriedly turned around. It was a reflexive movement. They thought they might be attacked from behind.

But what they saw as soon as they turned was unexpected.

A horse was floating in the air about a meter above the ground.

The fact that a horse was floating in the sky was surprising enough, but there was someone sitting on that horse.

A child, and—

“J-J-J-Jeong, Jeong, Jeongju.”

A celebrity.

Go Junhyung, recognizing the familiar face, murmured without realizing it.

Then the flying horse hovering in the air landed on the ground.

The celebrity and the child dismounted without hesitation. The team members flinched and stepped back. As soon as the small child’s feet touched the ground, he immediately ran toward Yoon Taehee.

The team members stared blankly at the child before them.

The child spoke urgently to Yoon Taehee.

“Young Master Yoon! Are you all right?”

...Young Master Yoon?

It was an extremely old-fashioned form of address.

No matter how they looked at it, it was not something a child would say.

Then the child reached out toward Yoon Taehee. A shower of white light poured down from his hand.

The wound on Yoon Taehee’s shoulder began to heal in an instant.

The team members stood there speechless, watching the scene.

They could not understand what on earth was happening.

It was a sight they could not believe even with their own eyes.

“W-What is that...?”