The mont the contribution notification popped up, Gu Hwiyeon—who had sohow already wriggled her way out of the dungeon—just stared blankly at Guru.
"Right. Hwiyeon-ah, are you okay?"
Gu Hwiyeon nodded with her mouth agape.
Guru tilted her head and examined her from side to side.
She looked a little out of it, which wasn’t exactly normal, but... it didn’t seem like she was hurt.
Maybe she was just surprised?
Guru giggled and held out her hand.
"Let’s go back now."
In an instance dungeon, if the boss is gone, it can’t hold its form—even without breaking the core.
Behind Guru, the small toy factory had already started collapsing.
She steadied her pounding heart and held Hwiyeon’s hand.
By the ti they stepped out of the dungeon, Hwiyeon’s face was flushed red.
“Th-thanks for today!”
"Huh? Mhm."
Guru was about to ask, “Wouwd it be okay if Gwuu said hi fwom tomowwow too?”
"A-a-a, bye! I’m gonna go now!"
Gu Hwiyeon blurted out a quick goodbye and bolted.
"Huh?"
Left alone, Guru blinked.
The next day, Hwiyeon’s bag had not one, but two Hyeonak rch keychains—a fox plush and a chick plush.
Guru didn’t notice it, but that was also the day Woojoo quietly began keeping tabs on Hwiyeon.
***
Amakusa Reiji walked around a small apartnt in his shoes, stirring up the place as if he owned it.
The apartnt’s owner had clearly left in a rush—clothes and papers were scattered everywhere.
Reiji skimd a few sheets of paper on top of a mahjong table and tossed them aside. The docunts fluttered to the ground.
["Ran off, huh."]
If it was her, odds were she already knew he was looking for her.
But why?
There was no real reason to avoid him.
Unless she had /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ a contract, she usually didn’t ddle with irrelevant people.
And truthfully, Reiji had no intention of laying a hand on her. He simply wanted to find out where one person had gone.
["Hmm."]
He tapped on the table a few tis, grabbed a few mahjong tiles, and rolled them in his hand.
["So she must’ve had so other reason to run...?"]
After a brief pause, Reiji began humming and plopped down on the sofa like it was his own place. He turned on the TV.
As he peeled off his brown leather gloves, he suddenly froze—an all-too-familiar face had filled the screen.
He smirked with mild surprise.
["Kazuki?"]
Across the screen, the news was covering the unexpected visit of the world’s only S-Rank crafting master—Amakusa Kazuki.
Now 27 years old, the man looked like a hulking wolf carved out of muscle.
An athlete’s body. Two-block haircut dyed gray. Ears stacked with piercings. Sharp canines. Tattoos that sprawled across his entire body—even his tongue flashed ink whenever he spoke.
“You grew up good.”
Not just saying that as his father—Kazuki had really matured well.
'But...'
Reiji tilted his head, studying his son’s face as if inspecting it.
'There’s no reason Kazuki should be in Korea, right?'
Especially given the current Japan-Korea relations.
It made no sense for one of Japan’s biggest figures—soone with control over export restrictions—to co to Korea instead of the ones groveling on the Korean side.
Reporters sward him with questions—perfectly tid, as if answering Reiji’s own doubts.
An interpreter, or maybe a manager, whispered a few things into Kazuki’s ear.
Kazuki lowered his sunglasses and grinned brightly.
His awkward pronunciation made him sound cute, but those gray, three-white eyes of his made him all the more threatening.
[]
Switching from Japanese to Korean with a sheepish look, he said:
The man who claid he ca to kill his dad—said it in the most playful tone, eyes wide and wild.
Click! Click!
The shutters fired faster and faster.
Kazuki paused, then stared directly into the caras.
A massive hand, tattoos inked down to each knuckle, rose to form a playful finger-heart by his cheek.
Amakusa Reiji burst into laughter.
["You got cute, didn’t you? Kazuki-chan."]
***
["I'm going to kill my dad." Amakusa's shocking statent! Was it just a Korean slip-up?]
[Amakusa’s representative: “He ant ‘papa’ not ‘pop-pop,’ and instead of ‘kill,’ it was ‘thrill.’”]
[Amakusa’s visit to Korea—Will this be a turning point in Japan-Korea relations?]
Of course the world exploded over the first-ever celebrity patricide declaration.
'What a fucking lunatic.'
Jurim skimd through the headlines with arms crossed and swiveled his chair to the side.
“My ears are burning.”
The man of the hour, Amakusa Kazuki, sat on the sofa in the guildmaster’s office, casually picking at his ear.
“On-jjang, soone’s talkin’ shit about .”
“That’d be .”
Kazuki smirked.
“On-jjang, you jokester.”
“You really think I’m joking with you?”
“I even like that side of you.”
Kazuki laughed it off and leaned back, arms spread across the couch and one leg crossed over the other.
'Why the hell is this bastard here.'
There’d been a ti Jurim considered contacting Kazuki to repair a glove, but this—this wasn’t what he had in mind.
“......”
Jurim clicked his tongue.
Just outside the guildmaster’s office, the news that Amakusa Kazuki had arrived had drawn a sea of employees pressing in like barnacles to peek inside.
The guy was already eye-catching with his thug aura and handso face, and now he’d just walked straight into Hyeonak after a bombshell press statent.
“Hey On-jjang. Where’s Gwuu? I wanna see Gwuu. Where Gwuu?”
Jurim pressed a hand to his forehead.
So it was because of Guru.
“She’s not here.”
“She at ho? I ca to see Gwuu.”
The fact that this guy was asking to see the daughter Jurim had adopted... Kazuki was practically wagging an invisible tail with longing.
Jurim visibly grimaced and scanned him from head to toe.
As if so back-alley punk could just waltz in saying he wanted to see Guru. Absolutely not.
He hadn’t looked this bad the last ti they t. More tattoos. More piercings. Even more skin showing.
“Ah—too stimulating for a baby?”
Kazuki glanced down. The tattoo on his thigh peeked through his ripped jeans.
“Gim a sec. I’ll change into a suit.”
He imdiately began stripping off his top.
As his ink-covered, muscled torso ca into view, Jurim fought back a curse.
Adding fucking lunatic to his ntal list of descriptors, he rubbed his face dry.
That steel-skinned bastard had no sha, even knowing all the eyes watching him.
Kazuki slipped on a button-down shirt and bead.
“On-jjang, do I wook pwetty now?”
Jurim leaned on his fist and curled one corner of his lip.
“Pretty enough to kill.”
“Ahaha!”
Even that death threat didn’t faze Kazuki, who humd while undoing his belt buckle.
'He’s really turning my office into a damn strip club.'
Just as the staff tried not to scream aloud, Jurim felt a small presence and stood up imdiately.
And at that exact mont—
“Uwaaaah—!”
Sfffssssssht!
Kazuki, mid-pants, was flung into a corner by a force and tangled up tightly in the curtain.
“......!”
He thrashed in protest, but before the room could buzz with whispers—
The guildmaster’s office doors swung open.
“Aa-ppa!”
It was Guru.
Jurim exhaled a quiet sigh of relief and smiled, reassured that Guru hadn’t caught a glimpse of Kazuki’s disgusting underwear.
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