154 I Was a.s.signed (4)
“Have you come this late knowing that an uninvited visitor came to my room? Isn’t this against the contract? You’re really insincere.”
I voiced my dissatisfaction as I tried to make him let go of me, but he did not move like he always did. I thought he might force himself on me like the day the dungeon broke, but he did not yet feel like a threat. I just had some gooseb.u.mps I could ignore, having gotten used to them.
“It’s a shame that you think like that, I’ll take responsibility for my insincere att.i.tude and tell your brother what had happened here-“
“People can be late! Let’s put this in the past since nothing happened.”
I did not want Yoohyun to hear of this, especially about the deal the jellyfish offered me. I was going to hide the fact as long as Hyunjae Sung kept his mouth shut.
“Weren’t there many things that could not be put in the past as nothing happened?”
“You overheard them. I’ll ignore the invasion of privacy if you pretend not to have listened to us.”
“I told you before that I would wait a day after you went into hiding.”
Hyunjae Sung’s gaze went to where the jellyfish had been.
“Escaping like this does not count.”
“I’m not escaping.”
“Then what do you think this is, Yoojin? Trying to be a sacrifice?”
He must have overheard not only about the stone but also the contract. Had the jellyfish taken on the same form in front of Hyunjae Sung? I could not guess how much he had heard.
“I did not sign the contract and never had. I was going to negotiate a bit just in case.”
It was a shame to ignore him when the guy was interested in me, and it would be much better to get information and other things by acting as if I would sign. Also, making the contract would not be a bad choice if things went sour since we all did not need to die.
“What else are you curious about? Breeder? That’s common, and you must have heard about it at least once.”
Those born S cla.s.ses are rare and not breeders, but Hyunjae Sung would know about the breeder t.i.tle.
“I’m a bit special since I raised Yoohyun. I was going to tell you about the stone, and as you have heard, I can create a beast by combining mana stones. It had been that lizard Diarma’s skill.”
I told Hyunjae Sung I had been lucky to get the skill as I defeated him with system managers’ help. It was a relief that the jellyfish had spoken only things I could smooth over except for it taking on my brother’s form.
Hyunjae Sung seemed to know that the jellyfish had taken on Yoohyun’s shape when telling me to look elsewhere. However, I did not know whether he had guessed because of it calling me hyung or having seen it himself. Has Hyunjae Sung realized that Yoohyun was older? It would be difficult to connect it with my return even if he had seen the shape.
How should I answer if he asked me that question? Should I tell him that it was a vision of my younger brother getting older without awakening and that he looked like that because I wanted that future for him? I had been thinking things over when Hyunjae Sung took off my pajama top.
“What are you doing?”
He stared at the wound and placed his hand on it. Why was Hyunjae Sung touching it again when he had checked it before?
“It feels different from becoming stable.”
“It has nothing to do with you, whether it has changed.”
“To say it’s irrelevant with me…”
Despite not being able to clearly feel other people’s mana without the teacher skill with my current stats, I felt the mental move. However, I felt the sensations of mana on my wound moving as if it was investigating as I saw it with my own eyes.
The mana stone absorbed Hyunjae Sung’s mana as it overflowed a bit.
“It’s similar to mine. What happened?”
“It’s just your overinflated ego.”
I felt my body shudder a bit, and my mana decreased by a lot despite not using any skills. Has the stone used my own mana to swallow Hyunjae Sung’s mana? I continued speaking after drinking a potion.
“This is a combination of an SS cla.s.s dragonian stone and the Diarma stone of unspecified cla.s.s. Why are you touching a stone at least an SSS cla.s.s? I know that you’re powerful, but…”
“I’m only an S cla.s.s. I apologize for stepping over my boundaries.”
“Let go of me if you know so.”
He might claim ownership when knowing that his fragment had been used to glue things over in this stone, and I would never give one percent of this.
“If it was Diarma’s skill, that guy’s wound on his hand was the trace of having made a beast. Is your putting the stone in your chest because the skill becomes more effective as the stone is closer to the heart? You would have tried your best to succeed since the stones were of a cla.s.s you would not be able to get again.”
“Check your answers yourself as I wait in silence.”
I did not need to speak up and thought Hyunjae Sung must not have noticed Yoohyun’s form from the lack of questions. Hyunjae Sung turned me over, or lifted me over to be more exact. We were too close, but his gaze pierced through my back. I shuddered as he was behind my back with me unable to protect myself, and felt like the main character of a horror film that was being chased.
“It’s not here.”
His hand touched where the heart would be behind my back, and I instinctively gulped.
“Do you only need to put the stone in after cutting your body open?”
“You really think so?”
I replied like he was speaking nonsense, but come to think of it, it may be possible. My body had accepted the first stone without any problems, and it had been combining the second stone that had been the problem. I should have had to use the skill when putting in the second by force after the first and wondered if I would be able to refuse. What would happen if I put in one and rejected the second?
“While there are many S cla.s.s stones, it’s not worth it to put it here.”
The hand lightly pressing down on my back moved upwards to tap my shoulder.