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Chapter Text

Sung Jin-Woo's eyes crack open, crusted with frustration, tears, and a millennium of years that don't belong to him ("I am you," his own face spoke back to him, but Jin-Woo knew better than that; the Shadow Monarch hadn't morphed into a being like him, but rather, the essence of Sung Jin-Woo and all his humanity had melted down to sculpt itself into the ruler instead. The Shadow Monarch offered his life, and as equal exchange, Sung Jin-Woo gave himself up-).

"I. What the fuck."

Sung Jin-Woo blinks, and looks up. The Ice Elf is glaring back at him, something malicious, humiliated, and thoroughly offended contorting its crunched face into murderous intent.

It takes him a moment to reorganize his thoughts and his timeline after uh- flinging his soul out of the mortal coil for a quick nap, and remember that he got stabbed.

He replays that thought.

Wait-

This motherfucker stabbed-

"You stabbed me," he says, sounding mildly affronted, and thoroughly accusatory. 

The elf looks at him, flustered with obvious anger, which Jin-Woo feels like it's unwarranted, since he was the one who ended up doing some HGTV unintentional house searching in the middle of goddamn purgatory.

The Sovereign screams, and distracted by Jin-Woo's presence, it (they? do deities have the same common human genders? Does Jin-Woo even care about its gender-?) instantly get decked in the face by Beru's foot.

Jin-Woo whistles. 

Clean move.

His anger dissipates slightly from the satisfying kick.

He peers over to see his soldiers instantly crush the Sovereign's chest like every single ab is a square on a Dance Dance Revolution pad. The elf howls, a terrible scream that shreds their throat and viciously punctures the corners of Jin-Woo's eyes. For a moment, a visual, acid-trip representation of one of those McDonalds Troll Doll toys overlaps over the face of the Sovereign of Frost. 

"You- a human, I KILLED you-" snarls the Sovereign of Frost, froth sloshing between their teeth stained with iron and spite, and with terrifying might, begins to heave his remaining soldiers off of their body. "I KILLED YOU-"

"Yeah, you did," he echoes firmly, because that's kinda the whole point as to why he's profoundly pissed at the moment. "No shit-"

"How dare you defy death by my hand?"

Jin-Woo stares, stricken by the actual audacity of this airfried corndog of dryer lint. 

This is also when he realizes that there's no way they're going to talk it out- then again, the Sovereign did just use his clavicle as a temporary knife block, so talking it out is no longer just a pussy move, but a stupid one. 

At this understanding, he instantly blanks out all of the Sovereign's complaints into static, background elevator music, as he's wholly disinterested in the Doofenshmirtz monologue about to commence. 

And if Jin-Woo hasn't encountered the Shadow Monarch (and something empty sits in the rotten and warm cavity of his ribcage. He's never going to see him again-), he probably would've committed deicide at this moment solely on the basis that for creatures that have the wit of an Elmer's gluestick, they have way too big of a god complex.

Sung Jin-Woo flips the ice elf off, unsure and uncaring if he's interrupting their vent voicemail, because:

1. fuck that. they're the type of people to complain about you in a long-ass email and CC their entire friend group so that they'll have the minimal, bar-line effectiveness of drugstore two-in-one shampoo. 
2. everything flooding between the gated teeth of the elf still sounds like the Mii plaza music echoing in the darkness of the Windows 98 Screensaver. Jin-Woo, quite frankly, has way bigger problems than playing customer service at this moment. Jin-Woo just died, entered a DIY eighth circle of hell like he's Coraline in her Other Mother's world, and realized that the only person who could understand him (a person who's cut from the same hide as he was, like Eve to her Adam, locked out of a peaceful land-) also just dipped out of the act of living. Jin-Woo is frankly too tired and too ticked off to try and comprehend anything composed of more than two syllables and one breath. 

He then sees the elf pause for a moment as they tear through another one of his shadow bears. Seeing the blatant destruction of his property, Jin-Woo rather reluctantly refocuses his attention onto the elf. 

"You think you can climb into godhood? You, a human? I'll finish the job properly so you understand the differenc-" 

Jin-Woo instantly disconnects him from his mental Google translate so that the elf continues screaming in Minecraft enchantment table font. To be fair, even when he was properly listening to the elf, he still couldn't understand them. This is a waste of time.

"Oh. Unexpected." A sudden and jarringly familiar voice says next to him in what's clearly Korean, and Jin-Woo chokes, head snapping over to see a jarringly familiar face staring back at him through the mist.

It's his face, but rather than something frosty and white filtering through netted irises, wisps of cotton and lavender curl from the Shadow Monarch's (Jin-Woo's) eyes like acid.

"I- what the fuck." Sung Jin-Woo echoes the ice elf's greeting from moments ago. 

The Sovereign of Frost's disgust has crumpled in on itself, eyes wide and something akin to trepidation lining the wrinkles of shock carved into their face.

Another Sung Jin-Woo stares blankly at both of them.

"I thought you were going to sleep. Forever. Hibernation, you said." Jin-Woo finally says lamely when nobody else said anything. Even he can sense the guilty and selfish accusatory undertone in his voice. Then again, he thought the only person who could potentially be his confidant was going to disappear. Jin-Woo can't trust anyone but himself, and maybe it's justly pretentious, or maybe it's this insecure sense of paranoia, but what he knows for sure is that it's-

It's somewhat lonely.

Ashborn was enough of Jin-Woo for him to feel comfortable interacting with, and too individual for Jin-Woo to feel like he's just talking to a hollow reflection.

"I thought I'd never see you again." Jin-Woo rasps, and his biceps cramp at the obvious clip in his tone, the way it croaks something vulnerable. 

"...Me too." The ice elf says tersely. 

Both Sung Jin-Woos stare at them, and the Sovereign of Frost averts their eyes. 

The Shadow Monarch makes a face, focusing on Jin-Woo once again, but the sudden fixation stirs a sense of wariness and anxiety in the dredges of his nerves.

"...you're not wearing clothes." Jin-Woo's eyes snap back up. And it's his body, and the surrounding public is shrouded with the aftermaths of a blizzard, fight, and he hopes to god the other citizens had a braincell of self-preserveration and had ran-

Because if not, then the Jin-Woo is going to have to live with the development that his (their?) body just traumatized a random passerby with intense public indecency. 

Ashborn shrugs, seemingly indifferent to being the prime example of being an overall public nuisance. "This entire place looks like an inverted gas chamber, and you're mad at me for being naked?"

"Public indecency!" Jin-Woo retorts.

"Public disturbance," the fucking Sovereign of Frost inputs helpfully.

Ashborn, looking doubly (triply, technically) betrayed by the two of them, scowls, and a sudden wave of black from his feet begins to hug his figure, looking almost like a man wearing a wetsuit. "It's not like I have clothes to make." He holds out a hand. "Give me your sweatshirt." Jin-Woo blinks, and looks over, making unwarranted eye contact with the Sovereign of Frost who looks equally astral projected out of the mortal realm of reality.

Hesitantly, Jin-Woo unzips his shredded and bloodied sweatshirt, and hands it over to Ashborn, who knots it around his waist. "See. Now I won't be helicoptering your schlong by accident while fighting."

Jin-Woo's entire neural processing centers commit a sudden simultaneous triggerwave of cellular apoptosis, as his entire mental sanity has been flung by a discobobulus in Archaic Greece through all seven stages of grief.

"I'm so speechless, yet I have so much to say," is all he can properly enunciate, having so much to ask, yet having no solid belief that the answers will be worth knowing.

"You sound offended." Ashborn murmurs, with an earnest tone of interest; like a child being introduced to a new concept.

"I'm not." He lies. He totally is. Life is a joke and Sung Jin-Woo's the punchline: he's getting damn tired of the world scripting the entire event of things like this is a remake of a Shakespearean play but in a KDrama format.

Even the ice elf is standing aside, letting them have their stereotypical reunited moment as if they literally haven't seen each other five minutes ago (minutes? how does time flow for either of them, anyways?). 

To be fair, they're probably patiently waiting aside solely because Beru is currently trying to play Cat's Cradles with their limbs.

"Hey." And now the Shadow Monarch, a refined character with a stagnant will and composure of every old Asian grandpa in those white people martial arts movie, begins to whine.

Jin-Woo genuinely doesn't know how to react.

"I thought I was going to die off too." Ashborn clicks his tongue, a sneer warping his typically unexpressive face. "You think I want to be here? I thought I was going to finally dump t-" he pauses, eyes rattling on Jin-Woo, and their grimace tightens, "...pass the responsibilities of my powers off onto a respectable inheritor-" Jin-Woo begins to revise his entire perception of the Monarch by this point, "and instead I get fucking dragged back into work? What am I? A corporate slave? What the hell? Life is such a pyramid scam-"

The rest of his complaints begin to filter out into nothing more than the Android phone alarm as Jin-Woo feels a headache crack across his nose cartilage. 

He's literally indestructible. He could probably dilute his blood and sell it as a vaccine. 

But he's getting a raring headache, because every overpowered and ambitious interdimensional-terrorist he's encountered so far either has the mental mouth of a prepubescent teenager who grew up in an Overwatch server, or the sarcastic sanity of a listless middle-aged minimum wage laborer who has nothing more to lose except for their will to live. Jin-Woo actually feels like he's watching a political debate between two presidential candidates for America, if anything.

Jin-Woo wants to go home. 

He can't even feel happy that the source of his insane depression, which was the loss of the only being to truly understand him, has essentially disappeared (and how interesting is that; to feel so content with the ambiguity of emotions in his quotidien lifestyle, to suddenly feel the drastic, overwhelming sense of loss-).

"...it really is you." The Ice Elf's voice is faint and thin, their pale pallor ashening into something muddy and sick. "It-"

"You-" Ashborn points a finger boredly at the Sovereign of Frost. "I already know you're scum. But really? You tried to kill my child?"

Jin-Woo takes a moment to realize his implication.

"Are you calling me your child?" He doesn't even know if he was just affronted. Should he feel insulted?

He looks at the genuine anger contorting the Shadow Monarch's countenance (and is this how others see him when he gets pissed?).

Seeing how serious he is, he decides to feel insulted.

"I thought I was you?" Jin-Woo pitches hesitantly. And the caution in his tone feels foreign. While he's always been used to laying low as his mindset has been operationally conditioned to be one of an E-rank after so many years, he hasn't consciously tiptoed across the field in a long time (eons ago). After the public knew of him, he never needed to decipher the atmosphere and go with the flow; for months, it was everyone else who watched themselves around him, rather than vice versa. Even when he first talked to Ashborn, he justified his brutish straightfowardness due to his wariness against the unknown. 

Now, the Shadow Monarch is berating them like a drunken grandpa, and he feels like the one kid who's trying to explain to their angry old man why rubbing alcohol cannot be a suitable substitute for soju.

"You're basically my child." Ashborn flippantly gestures. "I what? Raised you? Watched over your growth? Gave you my resources and advice? Molded you into a younger adaptation of myself for the sake of inheriting my work, legacy, company? I nurtured you, right?" Jin-Woo thinks about the countless times he nearly died underneath the parenting of the Shadow Monarch and the System's joint-custody relationship. He squints at the Shadow Monarch's bold statement. "I totally qualify to be your dad."

Jin-Woo feels mildly offended. Just because his real dad went the absent-father route, doesn't mean the Shadow Monarch's overcompensating involvement in his life wasn't damaging, as well. His dad might have given him mental and financial trauma, but at least he didn't forcefully evolve him through unconsented monsterhood. 

"And then I hear someone is bullying my produ- child!" The Shadow Monarch gestures towards the Sovereign of Frost currently pinned to the sidewalk by the murky swamp of shadows coagulated over their feet. And Jin-Woo takes a moment to realise that those aren't his physical shadows. His shadows can't properly touch the Sovereign of Frost, and Beru only had pot shots.

He whirls around. Iron is standing to the side, and rest are guarding them from the public's blurry view, or-

He pauses.

He sees a mass of shadows and tar playing Go Fish in the background.

"Oh. That was because of me." Ashborn mutters, and Jin-Woo blinks, startled, and sees that the Monarch is carefully observing him. "They probably see us as one soul, so feeling my nonchalant mood, they interpreted it as a dismissal with your consent." He pauses, eyes flitting over to Jin-Woo who's glaring at him. "Hey. I have no will to nanny an entire army- don't worry. I won't play with your toys."

Jin-Woo stares, glaciers melting in the pits of his stomach. He doesn't like that there's another person in command of his people. Doesn't like people touching his things.

And right now, Ashborn has a personality that Jin-Woo simply is contrary and often antagonistic with; yet- 

He finds himself shrugging off his apology, indicating that it's whatever. For some reason, he finds himself vaguely okay with the Ashborn, someone who's an extension of him with little maintenance. One soul.

He hears a groan, and looks back over his shoulder, to see shadows dribbling from thick, licorice ropes webbed across the elf's shoulders. 

Stunned by the fact that the Sovereign of Frost can't even tremble in those livewires, Jin-Woo stares a bit closer. He then realizes the shadows are slowly encasing him. 

And Jin-Woo, always a sucker for strength and greedy for godhood (an untouchable place and status where everything in his heavenly eden is safe from things below-), is instantly raptured by the odd skill. To the side, The Monarch snorts. 

The tarlike substance hardening across the elf like instant cement seems to leak from underneath the heels of Ashborn. "See, don't need an army," he gestures to his feet, and Jin-Woo's lips knot into a firm line, unwilling to express outright admiration. 

"Traitor." The Sovereign of Frost leers, something similar to raspberry Kool-Aid splattering out of it gaping maw. "You've grown weak, lost sight of what's important for selfish, arrogant and lesser beings who can't fight for themse-" 

"Shameless." The Shadow Sovereign barks, steamrolling over the elf's bitching. "You're still pissed after you bullied my child?" The Shadow Monarch glowers at the ice elf, and Jin-Woo glances at him exasperatedly, distraught by the Monarch's sense of shame that could rival Yoo Jin-Ho's. 

Now, Jin-Woo noticed something was off about Ashborn the moment he Urban Dictionaried the word 'dick' with zero hesitation.

But now, now-

Ashborn holds the same atmosphere, the same wavelength. But he feels- different. Younger. Human, in an Earth-like sense. Jin-Woo supposes that doesn't really matter, as long as Ashborn is still the same entity (Jin-Woo was wrong. He will later come to regret this, when he realizes that Ashborn might as well be a second-hand, overpowered Yoo Jin-Ho). 

"Your lack of respect for deities leagues above you is pitiful and ignorant," Asborn murmurs, his profound words twisted into a scorning that reminds Jin-Woo of the temperamental grandma who lives downstairs who wields a normal broom that is somehow still capable of hurting Jin-Woo despite his Achilles'-like defenses. 

The ice elf is silent, terror etched into every twitch of its facial muscle, their nerves and dimples crackling like a livewire.

Jin-Woo wonders if Go Gun-Hee expressed fear in front of the elf.

And while he understands the concept of fear, the desperation and struggle against inhabitants above you-

He sincerely hopes the elf never had the satisfaction of seeing Go Gun Hee's expressions (emotions are intimate, something that things like the Sovereign of Frost and himself aren't worthy of witnessing-) the way that he is to them right now. 

Jin-Woo does have to credit the elf's faith, however; they haven't once ran away like their companion, and they have yet to dissolve into empty apologies or shameless bargains.

Not like it matters.

To Jin-Woo, the credit is nothing more than a glob of spit in an oil puddle.

Then, something thrums his ear, and his drowsy mind attempts to focus (and is he slacking off? He just had his chest carved into like a cheeseblock, maybe he's still stuck in the fog clouding the River Styx. Not like that's okay; for real- he has to get his shit together before someone else decides to debone his spine like a Jenga tower).  

A slither of tongues cradle his left ear: 'we caught the other sovereign.' He inwardly smiles. 

Igris is pretty damn efficient.

He looks over, and see Beru standing to the side, after dying a multitude of times to the Sovereign. Even Jin-Woo's mana tank drained just from reviving him. He should reward his shadows some more. Maybe Jin-Woo will let Bery watch one historical drama with the terrifying vigor of every American public highschool theater kid watching Hamilton in Broadway. As a treat.

Or maybe a real treat. Like a Scooby-snack. Can his shadows even taste things? What would they eat? Crackers?

He suddenly feels like he's been slacking as an underpaid dogwalker over his hundreds of shadow soldiers.

He digs out his phone, still unfamiliar to the touchscreen of a smartphone, and fumbles to Google if ants like sour candies. He waits for the search to pop up (and the load is slow. He looks at the low data bars, and glares at the Frost Elf who's currently having a loud and charged argument with the Monarch. Dickhead probably kicked down the nearest cell tower like it's a stack of Legoes while on his rampage). As the search page doesn't pop up, he fiddles with his other apps out of impatience, only to glance at one of the few conversations in his messenger app. 

"I- what are you doing? Already on your phone after you died? See. This is why you got stabbed. Because you're always on your phone."

Sung Jin-Woo blinks, looking up from his screen to find Ashborn boredly at him, an arm looped around the shoulders of a decapitated ice elf. Huh.

Something sick and sloshy stirs the nausea in his stomach.

He wanted to be the one to deliver the final blow.

Then, he thinks about how the Sovereign of Shadows is him, and the blood pulsating behind his eyes slowly simmer down.

He can't blame the man for beheading him. While the Frost Sovereign was losing it, Jin-Woo felt nothing but a gradual build of annoyance from the cognitive hotline looped between him and Ashborn. "Oh. I'm messaging Yoo Jin-Ho that we don't need his sister anymore." He waves his phone. "You'll be our third member."

Shadow Monarch tilts his head. 

Then, looking Sung Jin-Woo in the eyes, he tilts the horror-stricken head in his hands in the same angle as his own.

The corner of Sung Jin-Woo's eyes crinkle in disgust at the modern, Romanized circa 2022 AD of a golden retriever with its ball between their claws. 

"...you know who Yoo Jin-Ho is, right?" He pockets his phone, and begins to stretch, his joints splintering like Rice Krispies. 

"Of course. I laid dormant throughout your memories. I unwillingly lived vicariously through you, like an audience trapped in a movie theater." A pause. Then: "if your life was a movie, you'd have a thirteen percent on Rotten Tomatoes."

"I'm leaving you on your own if you continue acting like this." Monarch narrows his eyes, and Jin-Woo holds up his phone. "You might have my memories, but I'm the one who has Google maps."

The Shadow Monarch falls quiet.

"...a fifteen percent." 

"I thought you'd be happy now that I'm here with you." Sung Jin-Woo ignores him, busy somersaulting over an entire crowd of phones plashing his way, pretending like he's not trying to hide a doppleganger underneath his tattered jacket that he tied over his head like a Babooshka.

Hearing a literal Monarch griping beside him while Jin-Woo is trying to make his escape away from the chaotic crime scene (graveyard), with a whole stunt double just trailing beside him like he's not the reason why Jin-Woo's entire concept of reality is imploding in on itself like a Texas Instrument calculator boiled in a pot of hot vinegar-

He almost wants to snap that he was happy that the Shadow Monarch didn't just settle into dormancy to hibernate like the dodo birds and dinosaurs do, until he realized that Ashborn is a genuine agent of chaos, and by the unbreakable transitive property, that forces Jin-Woo to be an agent of chaos as well. 

"You were elated when you saw me with a physical form in your world. Confused. A bit shocked," Ashborn relays his observation with an impassive tone, swerving as a reporter staggers towards Jin-Woo.

Jin-Woo effortlessly dodges her, vaguely humoured that she nearly ran into someone who might as well be Sung Jin-Woo's edgy middle-school persona that was personified into a sentient player like a Sims avatar that had gained free will and Self Awareness.

A Monarch. A monarch who is effortlessly more powerful than Jin-Woo, who might as well be Sung Jin-Woo but with a personality disorder (though, in complete fairness, Jin-Woo from the sidelines can say with absolute confidence that every peak hunter he's encountered so far has only proven his unscientific theory that one's strength has a inverse relationship with their mental health. Seriously. Almost all of of them lie on the range of 'vaguely psychopathic' where all genial smiling politicians bed, to 'the criminally insane' where he's surprised the government continues to offer them TV show interviews instead of catalogues of nearby psychiatric hospitals.

Of course, there are many emotionally established people who don't have the moral decision making skills of a lampshade, but all of them happen to have the MBTI personality type of 'PTSD,' so by this point it's really just picking your poison). 

"You were sad, before." Ashborn confidently claims as Jin-Woo decides to instantly dip, ditching the rowdy surroundings as he allows a shadow to engulf his being and transfer him to a nearby rooftop, his lungs deflating and ribcage shuddering from the coldness of the Abyss webbing between his fingers, swarming through his every membrane.

He opens his stinging eyes, and finds himself standing on a rooftop, surrounded by three other shadows who blink at him expectantly. He looks down, and sees a deck of cards. 

"Hello." Well. He picks up the deck, and seats himself between Tank and a shadow mage. Might as well play in his shadow's place outta compensation for ruining their turn. 

Then, he feels the shadows around him tense, and he himself stiffens by the familiar sensation of trepidation, and whirls around.

"You're happy to see me."

He stares.

"Did you track my shadows?" He finally asks, staring at Ashborn with stupid incredulousness. No shit. He's literally christened the 'Shadow Monarch'. It's not like the man's powers are going to be tracking down chairs or drawing perfect circles. 

"No. Our souls are entwined, so you're like a hotspot in my cognitive bunkers." Ashborn responds indifferently, tapping his forehead.

"...anything can be a hotspot when there's nothing else in the room." Jin-Woo says casually, as he shuffles his cards. "I bet if I rap your cranium, it'll echo."

Two marbled eyes sweep across their little circle.

"Says the guy who's losing at Go Fish." And before Jin-Woo can protest that he just arrived, Ashborn is already nudging aside his crossed legs with his own. "Let me play." The Monarch intrudes with ease.

Jin-Woo's almost shocked by how he instantly shuffled aside to let him sit, and only freezes after realising how oddly amicable his reactions are.

"Hello," Ashborn greets the surrounding shadows, and an eruption of whispers inflate the quiet air.

At this, Jin-Woo flinches (and when was the last time he flinched in this new era of his lifetime-). He frowns. The strange sense of excitement and something almost warm and grateful lining his gut, is not his. That reaction, that recoil- was not his.

This fire smogging his lungs is different from the frostbite of anger that often chokes his feelings and pollute his brain: this heat is kin to the glowing warmth he felt when his mom woke up (and he's insanely upset, almost scared, by the way that this current emotion feels more like an bonfire inferno, hotter and fuzzier than the feeling of when his mom woke up, the person he was waiting for years-). 

Jin-Woo exhales a cloud of intense emotions that seem to sizzle on his tongue, and he almost wants to scold the rest of his hundreds of shadows, at Beru specifically, as their excitement had aroused his adrenaline, while their intense thoughts and hisses of anticipation had swarmed his head like a cloud of flies.

He feels dizzy by the sudden onslaught of emotions.

At least none of them seem afraid or surprised by Ashborn's appearance; Sung Jin-Woo doesn't think he can handle an intense onslaught of stress. 

It's surprising. He doesn't remember the last time he felt this thrum of excitement; it differs from the adrenaline of a hunt, of scrabbling after monsters with his life teetering on the line. 

It's something warm and goopy and slow (so slow in comparison to everything, but it doesn't feel tedious- if anything, Jin-Woo wants it to last-), and he feels viscerally uncomfortable by this feeling (and for a moment- it almost feels friendly; like home). Emotions are practically artifacts and fossils after the system appeared in his life- a gradual decay that he didn't realize until Jin-Ah asked why he hasn't laughed recently, or when the granny who lived in the apartment room below him asked if someone was bullying him and if she had to Broom Beat their ass. When he said no, she asked if someone died. He said no. What was he going to say? That it was him who was buried six feet under, in a double-room dungeon that encased his character like a coffin?).

"Oo. Emotions are intense, right?" A molten voice drags him back out, and he looks at his own face. As always, it's stony, but there's a wrinkle underneath his eye- an indication of concern. 

He doesn't think he makes that expression when he's worried- no, he knows he doesn't. That's not me. And for a moment, the face staring back at him, doesn't look that much like Sung Jin-Woo's face anymore. 

It looks warped, almost.

He takes closes his eyes.

He swallows, the danger of this scalding his throat in a lump of lava.

And maybe it's nerves, maybe it's Maybelline, but he blurts out, eyes hesitantly threading open: "I guess I am happy." He admits truthfully, and Ashborn inclines his head, a smug twitch flitting across the corners of his mouth, and creasing the folds near his lashline. 

And Jin-Woo was sad when he thought the Monarch was going to disappear. It was wholly self-centered, though. He was more disappointed than upset that the only person who could potentially relate to him, who already knows enough to understand, was just. Peacing out of life.

However, for the very-much-not-dead Ashborn to be sitting knee-to-knee next to him, amongst a gambling party of shadow soldiers (and he faintly notes that Iron, who had tagged in, is currently gnawing on one of the cards), in the mortal realm, feels almost unlawful.

He's pretty damn sure this is violating something. Intergalaxial laws, heavenly tablets, Newton's Fourth law, whatever law-

There's something here that feels like an insidious brand of illegal immigration going down right here.

Jin-Woo then thinks about how they're technically a gang of mass murderers. 

He purses his lips at that thought. Coincidentally, he decides to let this existential, pseudo-identity crisis go. 

Next to him, blissfully unstressed for a man who was Beybladed headfirst into a Butterfly-effected tornado, Ashborn is arching his back as he loudly pops his spine. "Haven't felt like I had a body in a while." He glances at Jin-Woo. "Don't ask me how I suddenly physically manifested a replica body of yours, because I don't know."

"You don't know a lot of things. I used to think your kind were omnipotent," especially since they seemed to be the top apex predator, right underneath Teletubbies and god. 

"I feel like that you just insulted me."

"Absolutely not."

"...you were a lot nicer when we first met."

"You were a lot more normal when we first met." Jin-Woo instantly retorts. He has a sudden thought as he reminisces over the past couple hours of meeting this man, who acts like all of his neural organelles had been centrifuged into slush. "Are you a shadow? It'd explain your body and its unique properties," Jin-Woo theorizes, as he places down a card. To the side, he watches as Tank sweat as they glance back at their deck. Clearly, not having regular dexterous hands, is really shaking up their game.

"No. I'm not like your shadows. I am completely independent of your powers, but our bloodline will always tie us together. I'm...I guess I think I'm a companion? In complete fairness, I don't really have an answer for you at all. I just know that it exists because you physically do, too."  

Sung Jin-Woo mulls over that.

"Oh. So like a dog." He snaps his fingers.

"I- what."

"Yeah. You know. Like a pet? Loyal. Family." A little shit. "Acts on their own. Leashed to their owner at all times."

The Shadow Monarch doesn't say anything. 

Sung Jin-Woo glances up from his deck, and catches his blank gaze. "What?" He asks curiously.

"Nothing. Just thinking that you're a lot ruder than I thought you were. Very blunt."

Sung Jin-Woo squints at that accusatory and completely false statement. "You're a lot less composed than I thought you were."

"I blame that on your personality mixing with mine," the Monarch replies loftily.

Sung Jin-Woo scoffs, as he plucks a card out of a trembling shadow's deck, before glancing back at him. "And where do you think my sudden bluntness came from?"

The Shadow Monarch scowls.

Jin-Woo stares curiously at the multitude of colours and scents that contort his own face. He hasn't made those expressions before (or at least, not when he filled out into his role as a S-Ranked Hunter). 

It's odd, almost alien to see them in front of him.

For a moment, he feels childishly compelled to mimic the Monarch's facial expressions.

"You know what. Let's just leave it at that we're the same people. That way, we won't start blaming even the way we eat on each other." 

"Fine. We're the same." Jin-Woo agrees affirmatively.

He places down his card.

"Except in terms of wit," he whispers, and reflexively recoils a bare foot comes slamming down against his shoulderblades. 

They are not the same.

"...stop calling me dad, I am not your dad-" Sung Il-Hwan remarks with spiritual determination that should be federally illegal for a man who's halfway dead.

Ashborn glances at him indifferently. "...is this what humans call 'tough love'?"

"No! I am literally not your da-"

"I heard of this. Authoritarian parenting style. A lot of commands, little elaboration, and calloused shows of affection." A pause. "Or perhaps this is just the Asian parenting style-" 

Sung Jin-Woo stares at the Muttering Monarch with mild disbelief. "Dude. He's literally dying." He gestures with a strangled noise.

The Shadow Monarch tilts his head, meeting his slumped dad's gaze.

"I see." He finally says. He doesn't say anything more. Then, "I'll take care of him." The Monarch casually promises Sung Il-Hwan, and Jin-Woo has a sinking and annoyed suspicion that it's about him, but then he sees the way that his father's eyes cloud just slightly, as if he's letting the coldness of death drag him down. He stops feeling annoyed.

"Watch over him, since I can't do it anymore." Il-Hwan rasps, and the Monarch doesn't say anything, just watches with unsettlingly still eyes.

Jin-Woo finds himself frustrating, for withholding the biting remark of- you never even done it in the first place. 

"Jin-Woo, I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you-" his father croaks, unashamed of spilling out his sticky guts and saccharine apologies out in front of a third party. Jin-Woo's mouth twists. His father is so pathetic. Then again, Jin-Woo knows firsthand that people whose souls are about to be snatched by god working overtime, don't really get to be picky about their last words.

Jin-Woo accepts the clammy grasp of his father's hand, and he stares at his father's horrendously scarred knuckles that engulf his unblemished ones.

Oh.

He's holding his dad's hands.

Something pathetically hopeful squirms into the capillaries of his eyes (because the fact that he's holding his father's hands is miraculous within itself; a dream viewed as impossible less than just a couple months ago. So is it really that pathetic stupid of him to hope for a little more? For a couple weeks of life? For him to come ho-). The parasite festering on the surface of his scleras invoke tears and something dangerously desperate in his gaze. He quickly glances down, his trembling lashes shuttering over his line of vision, hoping his father doesn't see the glimmer.

And he's unable to look at the seeking gaze glittering in the sunken sockets of his father, of Sung Il-Hwan (and he should just give in, should grit his teeth and look because his dad is dying and Jin-Woo can't even meet his gaze; it's not even that big of a deal, and Jin-Woo knows he'll regret not gathering his guts and just giving into what his father wants- 

he's dying, and Sung Jin-Woo can't even bring himself to simply look at him.

But didn't Jin-Woo do enough? Jin-Woo held back his resentment; didn't Jin-Woo hold back that retort just seconds ago? His anger, his condescending glare at how pathetic and cowardly his father is for spilling this all now when Jin-Woo is the unvoluntary dumping ground for his littered remarks and unwanted pleas-

He says he has it the hardest, but this man is dying before his son he hasn't been able to see in years, with no idea if his son will even view him as a father.

Something in Jin-Woon clots and gurgles-)-

"Jin-Woo, I should've done more. I watched over you, I wanted to protect you, I just want you to know I love you-"

"I know." He says firmly, his voice unexpectedly cold and even he winces, lips bolting shut so that he doesn't say anything more that'd just screw things even farther. His eyes rattle in their sockets, spasming to the side, looking everywhere but at the hot and cold grip on his hand, at the person staring steadily at his countenance.

"I'm sorry."

And Jin-Woo doesn't want an apology- he wants his fucking dad but how can he tell him that? How can he-

What the fuck is he doing here. Jin-Woo has not felt emotions this intense even before his personality evaporated, leaving dredges of the apathetic Shadow Monarch.

He chokes, and something slimy and gross and nauseating bloats his lungs, and short-circuits his stuttering breath. 

He should respond. At least-

Let him know that he probably loves him too. Or definitely cares about him.

He should say something. 

(he doesn't)

"Are you angry?"

A sudden voice that's so steadfast, radiating clarity and independence while Jin-Woo's emotions are whipped into unidentifiable mush, slices through the foam. Jin-Woo suddenly wants that voice to tell him it'll be okay (because it feels reliable, and Jin-Woo has never felt that from others ever since the moment he was weak to the moment he became strong).

Instead, he locates the source of the voice. And Jin-Woo, even with a misty filter gridding his vision, carefully observes the casual nonchalance his own face (and it's not him, it doesn't even look like him, how dare it-). The Shadow Monarch tilts his (his?) face, waiting for an answer. 

Jin-Woo doesn't wipe away the hot tears that remain starchy and disgusting and gross on his cheeks, and he doesn't know if he should dodge or lean in as his absent father does it for him. 

Yeah.

He watches as his father evaporates into pixals, data, something of warped genes and code of Mother Nature with no interpretation.

He feels sad. He thinks. 

And through the link of his entwined soul with Ashborn-

He senses curiosity. And it feels perverse, troubling given that this is about Sung Jin-Woo and his interaction with his dead dad, and the earnest and pure intrigue invades the the grief simmering in the divots of Jin-Woo's lungs, diluting every strong feeling that feels like Sung Jin-Woo circa Shadow Monarch. 

And perhaps sensing his disdain, the Ashborn looks away, but Jin-Woo feels his feelings of third-party interest crash into him like a tidal wave, and he nearly goes under and marinates in the apathy (but then he thinks about his dad who he couldn't look at up until the last minute, and the overwhelming tundra of sadness that feels like a long-last friend for him, freezes over the lake).

He exhales, and it's not like the Monarch's lilting hum; it's something wracked and grossly fragile, and he feels simultaneously ashamed and relieved and he doesn't know why and doesn't care to figure out why. 

They're definitely not the same person.

"Bro-"

 Yoo Jin-Ho's expression freezes.

"Thanks for the ride," Jin-Woo says tonelessly, sliding into the backseat of his van with practiced ease, deciding to forgo shotgun due to his newest companion. With equal familiarity, the Monarch scoots in next to Jin-Woo.

"Bro...and bro...." a pause. "Bro without pants?"

Immediately, a blanket of ink wraps around Ashborn's body.

"...did you just latex yourself on command?" 

"He kinda just got a body." Jin-Woo clears his throat. "He hadn't bought clothes yet." Jin-Woo attempts to explain, feeling the need to defend this involuntary flasher given that this is Jin-Woo's body that's being paraded about. 

"Second time getting a body, really," the Monarch mumbles, crossing his legs, Jin-Woo's jacket creasing around his hips. Jin-Woo wrinkles his nose.

Jin-Ho continues staring, and slowly, shifting forward, he reaches for his shiftstick, eyes never leaving the rear view mirror.

"...so aren't you going to elaborate?" Jin-Ho asks, and the car jolts as it backs up.

"Oh." Right. Having a sudden clone of yourself appearing out of absolutely nowhere after dying on live television, is probably distressing for others on most days. "This is Ashborn." He introduces.

Jin-Ho twists his body over from the driver's seat, and just going off of the exasperation on his face, Jin-Woo realizes he has failed to elaborate.

"...as a nickname." He clarifies, figuring that 'Ashborn' sounds like the edgy name given for a middle schooler's Sonic the Hedgehog OC made out of Crayola washable markers that was posted on DeviantArt. 

Jin-Ho looks even less reassured by Jin-Woo's careful consideration.

Realizing that they're going to murder someone on the highway at this rate, he leans over to the front seat, and with restrained strength, lightly flicks Jin-Ho on the forehead.

Jin-Ho's head smacks hard against his cushioned driver's seat.

Jin-Ho sputters, mouth finally catching up with his thoughts. "ohmygodtherearetwojinwoosinmycarrightnow. Am I dying? Am I going to die? I think I'm being punished-"

"Hey. I thought you liked m- us," Ashborn snaps from the back.

"He's me." Jin-Woo finally settles with, deciding it'd only unnerve Jin-Ho more if he realized there really was what someone might consider a separate Sung Jin-Woo who's stronger than the Lite version, running around with his own free will. "Just. Two different bodies. But me. Don't worry about it." 

"I'm his long-lost brother."

Jin-Woo scoffs at the Ashborn's obvious lie, only to freeze as he sees Jin-Ho nod slowly, understanding laxing his facial muscles.

"Oh! Jin-Woo, you have a twin?"

"No."

"Yes."

Jin-Woo falls silent, and whips his head over his shoulder.

The Monarch shrugs. "What else are you going to say about my existence? What? Disprove that I'm not your identical twin?"

Jin-Woo flips him off.

"Hi! I'm Jin-Ho! I view Jin-Woo as my older brother, I hope we can get along! And your name is-"

"Start driving before I flip this vehicle like a tortoise."

"Hey! C'mon! Jin-Woo, you never told me you had a BROTHER-"

"I did." Jin-Woo says with zero processed forethought, since all he wants to do is shut Jin-Ho up before this spirals even farther because the damn Monarch, a battle leader and war criminal with the cunningness, leadership abilities, and individual strength of a demigod, is a fucking enabler and agent of chaos who has zero compassion for Sung Jin-Woo's, his literal other-half's, mental stability. "Didn't we establish that you were my brother?"

And he doesn't even bother looking at Jin-Ho's face as he collapses into the backseat, glowering darkly at the Ashborn's twisted grin. 

Fucker.

Dumbass.

'I can feel your resentment even without touching you,' a thought crams into his brain.

And he doesn't really understand the mechanics of this whole telepathy thing, but he doesn't understand a lot of things past the fact that he wants to peel the Monarch's neck open like a limp stick of string cheese. 

'Resentment? You're such a mess. It's bloodlust, get it right.' 

He looks over, to see Jin-Ho staring at him with terrifyingly large and ocular eyes, expression flickering with something wild and intense.

Being severely allergic to any form emotional interaction, he crowds himself into the corner of his seat, back hunching defensively. "...why aren't you driving?" Jin-Woo asks stonily. "Take us to the association- I already texted Woo Jin-Chul that we'll meet him there."

"Yes, of course, Hyung-nim!"

"...why the 'nim'-"

"You know that I seriously consider you as family right? I'll never leave your side-"

"Step on it before I Uber my way over." He would've instantly swapped places with a shadow he attached to Woo Jin-Chul's back, if not for the fact that he kinda wanted to see Jin-Ho.

Especially since he knew that the kid at one point probably genuinely thought he had died. 

He doesn't exactly get it, the kid's attachment to him (or at least, he didn't earlier. Now, maybe because he just had a test trial with death, but Jin-Woo somewhat has a clearer understanding of where he emotionally stands with Jin-Ho and vice-versa), but he figures it'd be pretty severe to hear that someone you believe to have loved had just died.

And to Jin-Woo, he's never felt a stronger love than the one he had (has) for his family.

Maybe a few friendships had overlapped into this emotional ravine, given that he cared enough to ask Jin-Ho to pick him up.

"Of course! Dude, I'm really-" and suddenly, the exuberantly explosive voice filters out into something drier, a bit more deadpanned, and a lot less like the Jin-Ho he knows.

Something anxious (and when does he feel anxious-) causes his joints to ache, his bones to grind. He senses the heavy atmosphere, and he doesn't know what to do. 

He looks over, and to his surprise, he instinctively knows that the heaviness of his emotions, the substantial depth of it, involves Ashborn too, who's peering at Jin-Ho through the rearview mirror, surprisingly quiet for once.

"I thought you died." Jin-Ho states what Jin-Woo had assumed.

"I know." He says simply. Then, something in him tells him that's not an appropriate answer, no matter how reassuring Jin-Woo himself might think it is.

'tell him we're sorry.'

"...sorry. We- I wasn't careful." He finishes stiffly. He hasn't apologized for anything in a long time, and it feels awkward and disharmonious as it clatters and fights its way out of his mouth.

Jin-Ho's eyes are still fixed on the road (thank god), and the boy answers with almost uncharacteristic matureness: "caution? Anything you do is by default the most cautious setting of them all! Don't apologize. It's seriously not your fault, and it's not like you can do anything about it now. But just. You know. We would've missed you. Not because you're the saviour of the world. I'm sure your brother can understand-"

He can't.

'I can't,' and at that unspoken statement, Jin-Woo looks over at Ashborn whose expression hasn't changed once. 

Then-

'Well. I once couldn't.'

Jin-Woo waits for a continuum, but it doesn't come.

"-ike. If the world ends, the world ends. Might as well live long enough to see it, amiright? So just. We want to stay with you as long as possible." Jin-Ho finishes, calmly entering another lane, and for a minute-

Jin-Woo feels like he and Jin-Ho had a role reversal; he doesn't feel like the older brother at the moment, the one who indulges in his younger brother with advice and companionship.

he doesn't like this feeling. He feels lost.

'me too. let's kill him'.

Absolutely not.

'i was joking-'

"Jin-Woo? Sorry, was that too much? Did I overstep?"

He blinks, and looks up. Jin-Ho's eyes are fluttering upwards, clearly trying to read Jin-Woo's attitude. Anxiety etches deep on his face, as if afraid about Jin-Woo's reaction to his heart-felt emotions. 

Jin-Woo doesn't know what to say. He apologized. That's all he knows what to do, because he knows he can't make promises, can't offer anything much more than that.

(all of a sudden, he feels like he understands his dad a bit more. he also feels a bit bad, for his unbridled resentment upon hearing his dad offer apologies that were simultaneously earnest and hollow all at once. he feels worse, knowing his father will never know anything but that)

"I'll try." He says the second best thing. "I don't plan on leaving you guys anytime soon, either."

Jin-Ho smiles.

For some reason, Jin-Woo's lips almost twitch to as wide as his.

"...I can't believe I thought the amount of Sung Jin-Woos were going to hit 'zero' after I thought you died, but instead, you broke the Law of Conservation of Matter, and came back with two of yourselves," Woo Jin-Chul doesn't snap often.

But he just verbally did, and quite honestly, he thinks he mentally did long before today, as well. 

Sung Jin-woo looks at him dryly (the Sung Jin-woo without inky shadows hollowing out the contours of his face. Though, Woo Jin-Chul can't even tell if this rather parasitic characteristic would serve to tell him if this was the Sung Jin-woo he knew, or the Sung Jin-Woo who decided to meoisis out of it own body like a full-grown baby-). "No. I technically did die-" Jin-Woo corrects.

"That is not reassuring."

"Oh. You know what is reassuring? You saying that." Jin-Woo compliments earnestly, probably because Jin-Chul is one of the few people who doesn't want to see him get hit by a car. Jin-Chul closes his eyes behind his sunglasses, as if that could stave off the impeding migraine drilling through his sinuses. 

Jin-chul arcs a twitching brow, and reluctantly, opens his eyes.

To his disdain, both (2x, deux, er, double, t w o) Sung Jin-Woos stare back at him blankly. "Then." He begins, words like molasses as his brain is currently thinking at the pace of a waterboarded infant. "What you are trying to tell me is that thing-" Jin-Chul punctuates his snippy attitude with a gesture of his hand. The Other Sung Jin-woo who looks like a melting wax sculpture composed of tar and Tokyo sewage sludge stares down at his quivering pointer finger. And it even has the same deadpannedness as the twinning man sitting right next to him. Yet, perhaps due to the past couple months of staring at Sung Jin-Woo's face while trying to figure out if his temper is on the range of 'faint bloodlust' to 'serial killer with the moral compass of a microwaved potato,' Jin-Chul can instantly tell that this Other Jin-Woo is vaguely ticked off. 

In other words, Jin-Chul who is acquainted with Jin-Woo, but not acquainted with Other Jin-Woo, will probably end up hanging from the ceiling with his entrails as an aesthetic noose.

Jin-Chul slowly lowers his accusatory finger. 

Before the man can pull a Prometheus on him, Jin-Chul rephrases his sentence: "you're trying to tell me that your identical brother who looks less human than one would expect a human to appear as-"

"You guys have a furry as a hunter. He is literally a steroid-jacked Wolverine-"

"Is your brother?" Jin-Chul answers faintly, any motivation he has within him to learn the secrets of the world, Sung Jin-Woo, and capitalism, dying out at the faint and deep-rooted understanding that he's too tired for this and that he can't take another shot of espresso or else he's actually going to experience kidney failure at the young age of thirty-six. 

"More like his dad, really," the Rip-Off Jin-Woo answers reassuringly.

Jin-Chul stares at him, feeling not at all reassured. He looks at Jin-Woo, as if just through the stress cracking his capillaries, he could convey the question as to why is this questionably clothed flasher wearing his face, is calling himself his dad?

"Kind of? He's like. He's like a second me?" Jin-Woo finally tries to answer. "He looks like me." He says, as if that holds any empirical explanation within his words.

And Woo Jin-Chul doesn't know how to tell Sung Jin-Woo that just because a dripping sculpture carved out of dirtied slush is wearing his face, that doesn't mean they really look alike at all. "He looks like if someone tried to draw you based on a scientific textbook definition of you as a physical being." Jin-Chul corrects him, syllables dribbling like syrup and thoughts festering in his rotten brain cavity like maggots.

"You think you're sooooo funny with your quirky little commentary. Go back to narrate a false story on Tumblr, you dickhead." Other Sung Jin-Woo sneers.

Jin-Chul stares. Then- "how do you know what Tumblr is-" Koreans don't even really use Tumblr-

See, Jin-Chul's having a moment. And he still hasn't gotten his shit together from a couple hours ago, when he was a hormonal wreck due to seeing a young man die (and he knew that young man. Not only was he the peak of earth's humanity, but Jin-Chul knew him, knew his family situation, dug through his background like an obsessed stalker because that's what most government officials do- and when he saw Jin-Woo collapse like a puppet with snapped strings, he realized he was what? A decade younger than Jin-Chul? A child in his eyes-?). 

Maybe he's just sensitive. He's been in this line of work for over a decade. A seasoned professional.

He didn't even cry when he heard the news of Go Gun-Hee (he didn't even think about him as a person. Jin-Chul simply thought about the space that man had left behind, and how desperately humanity has to try and fill it up before something else floods in). 

But right now, he's thinking about how Boss must've felt in his last moments. And how now, employees won't have water-cooler talks with their cool CEO-superior about the new Mr. Donut flavor that had recently came out. Or how the office will no longer carry the underlying menthol scent that old people always carry, whether the mintiness comes from cigarettes or Altoids. 

He doesn't think it's even selfish, that he's thinking about missing Boss for who he was to him, as if Gun-Hee's mentorship and companionship with Jin-Chul means anything compared to Gun-Hee's relationship with humanity itself (but Jin-Chul knows that his boss would be the first to say that personal relationships are the reason why the protection of their manmade society even matters, in the first place). He doesn't think it's selfish, either, for feeling insanely lost and devastated at the prospect of losing him, regardless of how Jin-Woo's loss would impact mankind.  

And on a normal day, Jin-Chul wouldn't act so unprofessional- least of all towards Sung Jin-Woo out all people.

However, for some reason, Sung Jin-Woo feels rather personable today; less aloof, more grounded in the mortal realm. Maybe dying does that to you. 

Maybe seeing your greatest murderous idol with the fate of the world on his shoulders dying, does that to you. 

The man (boy) even joked to him earlier. 

It simultaneously unnerved and relieved him of a pressure he didn't even know he was carrying.

He wishes Gun-Hee was here to see it. He would have been very happy to talk to this side of Jin-Wo.

Instead, Jin-Chul clears his throat. "You ever watched Spiderman? Yeah. He looks like a Walmart salesrack version of Venom," Jin-Chul smothers his emotional turmoil with a monotonous statement, while pointing at the Downgraded Jin-Woo (because nobody could compare to the original-). Other Jin-Woo's fingers are melting into black tentacles because that's just a normal thing apparently.

"He was not this rude in our previous memories," Other Jin-Woo murmurs with a drawl that feels wrong coming out of the stoic Sung Jin-Woo's mouth, eyes lazily flitting up at him. 

Jin-Chul's lungs contract. His eyes are as frosty and cloudy as Jin-Woo's, but there's something sharper in his pupils than his, something that smells like ozone and battery acid, and it instantly warms Jin-Chul's metaboilsm and flushes his legs with blood to stagger up and run-

"It's because of you." Jin-Woo responds to his clone with equal indifference. "He was never rude towards me in general. Meaning you, must be the problem™."

Jin-Chul feels just vaguely faint, as god sledgehammers him in the face with two temperamental twenty-year-olds with god-complexes and the strength to back it up, ready to square dance in Go Gun-Hee's (Woo Jin-Chul's) office. 

"We are the same person-"

"Absolutely not. I refuse." 

And Jin-Chul didn't even know Jin-Woo, a man who nobody would even want to argue with, much less a man who would care enough to verbally duke it out with a random being in the first place, could bristle like a teenager who's getting relentlessly annoyed by their sibling.

"You two, calm down, don't worry, you're both mass murderers and terrifying figures on the mortal realm," he finally intervenes, trying to placate the two, hoping his years of tedious and involuntary social experiences will pull through, and that his ambiguous but arguably positive relationship with Jin-Woo will offer him some sort of diplomatic immunity between these two monstrous existences who could invert his kneecap like a toy suction cup. "Stop arguing," he says, well aware his voice sounds more pleading by the end of his statement. 

"He started it." Jin-Woo shrugs stiffly.

Woo Jin-Chul stares. And never thought he'd be hearing such an infamously middleschooler phrase coming from Sung Jin-Woo, who argues with his fist and has the emotional repression of every functional being in society who lost all the light in their eyes after their freshmen year in college. 

"I- right." And maybe Other Jin-woo really is his long-lost twin brother who got reunited today after a tragic strike of death like this is a recycled Disney movie plot (but with an Asian character who isn't the hacker sidekick for once, because even billion-dollar industries realize that they have to work on their PR).

After all, they certainly argue like they're brothers.

And at first, Jin-Chul really didn't believe the two were siblings. Actually, when he watched as two Sung Jin-Woos barged into his office like his room is Best Buy and they're Americans during Black Friday, he thought Other Jin-Woo was a monster of some sort. He certainly appeared more like a two-dimensional entity, given his distorted figure that never seems to look right no matter how hard you try and decipher his appearance, with tendrils curling around his slim nape like ivy, squirming out from underneath his sleeves and pantcuffs like paint water. He barely looked three-dimensional, with how black and depthless the inkiness that shrouded him was. 

Sure, this implies that Jin-Woo encountered a monster that looked just like him (and quite honestly, Jin-Woo himself is practically a monster by their standards, so seeing an emofied version of him doesn't even scare Jin-Chul anymore. It's like two immortalized cryptids cancel each other out like factors in a KFC foodchain out in the American midwest, leaving him feeling vaguely empty and a bit hollow inside), but he feels like there comes a time in life when he needs to stop questioning things.

He watches as Other Jin-Woo puts a fist straight through his desk like a paper holepuncher as Original Jin-Woo tries to perform a lobotomy on his skull with Woo Jin-Chul's crappy Binc pen.

Woo Jin-Chul slowly closes his eyes.

He opens them, and once again, they're unfortunately still there, fiddling with the items on his desk with the subconscious twitchiness of a young adult who probably slams back an entire Gatorade bottle of Five Hour Energy to last them through their internship shift. Except rather than twirling a pen or snapping a binderclip, they're strategically dismantling his entire desk like it's a hands-on Ikea display room. 

He sighs.

Is this what it's like to have kids?

He inwardly stiffens.

He would've never had that thought just yesterday. If anything, to him, Sung Jin-Woo was his superior- still is his superior. A boss-like figure, intangible and someone he should never overstep his boundaries with (and Jin-Woo seems to set clear boundaries between him and others, just by his one-track mind that focuses on the pressure of living rather than the relief of it).

However, Jin-Woo he-

He doesn't know if Jin-Woo feels different because the Other Jin-Woo is indirectly exposing a part of him that Jin-Chul has never witnessed before, or if it's because he just died the other day. And while this kid's revival should be concrete reassurance, it just makes Jin-Chul feel worse. Because how long will that immortality last? And Jin-Woo is not the type to rely on luck, so what if this happens the next time? What ex-machina will drag him back into the mortal realm the way that Jin-Woo does with his soldiers?

For a guilty moment, Jin-Chul wants to label his shift of perspective on the idea that maybe, he's realizing that Jin-Woo feels more human, brought down to earth from Jin-Chul's deictic pedestal he situated him upon. He thought he was different- that he was one of the few people in Korea (on Earth, really-) to see Jin-Woo as just a man. 

Seems not. 

If so, then he's really shameful.

"So. Why are you two here?" Jin-Chul interrupts both his internal conflict as well as the Sung Jin-Woos' outward conflict. The two tear away from their bickering, disgruntedly turning to Jin-Chul.

Totally what it's like to have kids, he realizes with an inward grimace.

"You knew we could transport between shadows. So you're just easy to teleport to." Jin-Woo finally explains. Great. So Jin-Chul is not only a convenient janitor for his messes, he's also their favorite teleportation pole. "Also. So far, you've taken everything I've thrown at you in stride," he adds calmly, sounding rather unbothered for a man who straight-up admitted that he knew that he's an entire carwreck of a giftbag for anyone to deal with. 

So he knew, and he still let Woo Jin-Chul roleplay underpaid nann like this is an average damage-control job, almost like they're playing house. 

He mentally exhales once again, the sigh ricocheting out of his ears as his brain continues to melt out of them like vanilla ice cream. "It's easier to just accept things as they are and go with the flow," he replies with resigned acceptance.  He really can't be bothered to tango with an existential crisis or god's own mutinous child in the form of Sung Jin-Woo who breaks into his office every now and then with a duplicated version of himself.

"Oh. In that case, since you're so open. He's really a sovereign who decided to commit deictic treason through the sole reason that he likes me a lot." Sung Jin-Woo confides casually.

"Don't flatter yourself." Other Jin-Woo immediately retaliates before Jin-Chul can properly digest the rotten meal that Jin-Woo spoonfed him with little regards for his physical or mental health. "I just got tired of politics, and babysitting a kid to explore powers too large for any mortal and distinctly human worlds to handle like they're nothing more than a Tamagochi egg, sounds a lot more fun than convincing bigshots with the ethical comprehension skills of a toaster strudel to not commit genocide."

"I'm terrified by how in-tune you are with mortal modern pop culture."

"I study you and your surroundings and I hear everything your soldiers hear. Also, your orc is a plethora of information since they're stuck with Jin-Ah. Now, she's an entire Wikipedia of today's pop culture- anyways, basically, if Beru can speak like every old man from those romance KDramas your mom likes to watch, then I can listen to Jin-Ah at three in the morning, surf through random fifteen-second YouTube videos from two-thousand-and-seven, in three-sixty pixel quality that appear in her recommended." A pause. "Besides, you're the same thing, aren't you? You're sooo obsessed wih American references because if Jin-Ah, too! Don't act like you aren't- I was literally you for the past year-"

Woo Jin-Chul, in the midst of Sung Jin-Woo² domestic political argument that could determine the fate of the building and quite possibly the entire western region of South Korean in the next .02 seconds, is desperately trying to reboot his failing frontal lobes. 

Jin-Woo just straight-up confided in him that he shimmied his way into a destructive deity's graces and is now bringing him into South Korea for sightseeing, in spite of the fact that his dance partner is certainly on Earth's No-Fly list, all because Jin-Woo is apparently good company. 

Go Gun-Hee,,, and given that the heavens had taken away his boss right before the introduction of this B-rated antihero movie plottwist, as if salvaging him from the shitshow of the secrets spilled here like this is either a western church's confession booth or the backroom of a brothel (not like the distinction matters given that the two are vaguely synonymous in some scenarios), he wonders if maybe God is good.

God should've taken him out with a stroke too, if he's left playing damage control with this convoluted, and morally bankrupt backstory that feels like the missing epilogue of the Holy Bible-

"You're. You. You are a sovereign. Like the ice elf?" He attempts to verbally organize the dump of information that Jin-Woo basically shat out on his desk and left it there for him to clean (suddenly, he understands Adam White's innate frustration whenever he encounters Jin-Woo).

"Yeah. Why?" Other Jin-Woo hums nonchalantly, jaw at a lax incline.

His voice is steely, though.

Not like Jin-Chul minds. Besides, he's not discriminatory, especially when it comes to facing intimidating hotshots. Jin-Chul doesn't really feel anything knowing that this thing, wearing Sung Jin-Woo's reassuring face (the hope of humanity: an overgrown boy who argues with his own shadow-), is of the same species as the monster that murdered Go Gun-Hee.

Maybe it's because Sung Jin-Woo clearly likes this monster, which to him, is good enough. Because Jin-Woo clearly liked Go Gun-Hee; and that is enough to convince Jin-Chul that Go Gun-Hee's murderer couldn't have colluded with Jin-Woo², or else Jin-Woo would've tried to dismember him like Mr. Potato Head. 

Besides-

This.

This inclusion in his life, feels good for Jin-Woo.

Jin-Woo doesn't express emotions that aren't volatile. His acts of affection are nonexistent, and sometimes, Woo Jin-Chul wonders if Jin-Woo even has time to care about the positives in life. Or, more likely and concerningly, if he even innately feels complicated, personal emotions outside of his realm of responsibility. 

But he also saw the way Sung Jin-Woo cradles every word from Jin-Ah's mouth in his calloused hands, the way stress grips his jaw and dislocates his gaze when Go Gun-Hee expressed vulnerability to age (and no matter how great, strong, or clever someone is, you can't outsmart sickness, you can't outlast time-). Jin-Chul noticed the way his eyes crinkle whenever Yoo Jin-Ho grimaces.

Sung Jin-Woo does not (maybe even can not) smile when you do, but he'll always frown alongside with you. 

(And maybe it's because from what Jin-Chul has noticed, Jin-Woo's concern is almost a variant of his anger; equally intense and overwhelming, and it sharpens his gaze the way bloodlust does)

Today, he watched as Sung Jin-Woo's lips straighten into a twitching line, as the sovereign in front of him, wearing Sung Jin-Woo's face, gave a wicked smile gated with shrapnel teeth that's plaqued with amusement and something complacent, like a cat playing with its toy.

He wonders when Sung Jin-Woo will smile like that, too.

"Sovereign," he addresses when Sung Jin-Woo squared make eye contact, looking like they're furiously discussing something with just their glares.

And honestly, knowing Jin-Woo who keeps yanking out random OP skills like his entire existence is the mysterious Mickey Mouse ke-Tool that always conveniently shows up for the most terrifyingly specific situations, he probably is shittalking about the situation right in front of Woo Jin-Chul's oblivious presence.

"So you're not his shadow?"

"If anything, he might as well be mine." Deep-Fried Jin-Woo shrugs, ignoring the way that Jin-Woo's cold glower reflects displeasure and a cocky sense of challenge. 

"...he's...my benefactor." Jin-Woo elaborates hesitantly, and Jin-Chul doesn't know if that they're not aware that everything they're answering him with are just leaving him with more questions, or if they simply couldn't care about his crippling mental state at the moment.

He glances at the Cryptic Variant of Jin-Woo. He catches his smirk. 

Yeah. Okay. At least he definitely knows and doesn't care.

In comparison to him, the original Jin-Woo could be compartmentalized as a niche archetype of a himbo. 

"Yeah. I provided and raised him, gave him everything he needed and overcompensated as well-" Other Jin-Woo reaffirms. Then: "you could I say I was his sugar daddy."

Woo Jin-Chul instantly calculates the property damage fees that Sung Jin-Woo (2x) could make if they decided to go for each others' jugular right now. Realizing that the astronomical sum already surpasses this district and their four neighbouring ones' net price, Jin-Chul impulsively decides to play Jesus and throw himself in between them as a potential sacrifice for the greater good. "Great!" He claps his hands loudly, physically stepping between the two while knowing damn well that either one of them could play his ribcage like a BC artifact of the first glockenspiel if they so desired- "other than the fact that I tend to be tightlipped and have zero real friends to even gossip to if I even wanted to, is there another reason why you're here? Because if not, you should head home. Your sister and mom must be worried about you...and Mr. Sovereign after seeing the news." 

Sung Jin-Woo's face uncharacteristically scrunches up. And not with unbridled resentment, or thirst for revenge, or just the usual hormonal emotion that every young adult with the unresolved and irrational weight of the world's future and fate on their shoulders would inevitably develop-

But rather, it scrunches with something that reminds him of concern. But Jin-Chul has seen concern on Jin-Woo, and it looks nothing this soft, nothing this laidback. Jin-Woo looks concerned as if the entire world will collapse if he doesn't urgently fix something wrong within the next hour. His concern, even for family members and friends, fall along the same lane. 

Probably because he only ever appears concerned when he's signaled that their lives are in immediate danger. 

This type of concern, which is concern out of empathy, rather than a concern out of a problem, is foreign. Jin-Chul wasn't even aware Jin-Woo has never shown this type of emotion- at least to him- until now, when the sudden strangeness of it all struck him stupid. 

"The other reason why we chose to came here is because we don't know what to do about him." Jin-Woo informs. 

"You what."

"Him." He points to the Sovereign who is probably on par with Sung Jin-Woo (if not stronger), talking to him like he's a stray dog he picked up off the streets.

He stares at the Sovereign who's now shredding through Woo Jin-Chul's armchair like the threads are made out of Twizzlers.

He promptly believes that Sung Jin-Woo's attitude is warranted.

"I mean. Hide him in your shadows?" Jin-Chul offers lamely, being rather out-of-sync with powers that meddle in the abyss and the dead. After all, if Jin-Woo doesn't have an idea, then who else would?

"Absolutely not. Listen, I will hang out with the barracks of my army and treat them as individuals with their own worth- but if I'm going to be here, I'm staying here. Outside of the mosh pit. I'm too old to be partying hard with a bunch of toddlers." The Sovereign instantly rebukes, with a finalizing tone.

Jin-Chul doesn't know how to respond. He doesn't know how old Sovereigns are, or their history and lore, but all he knows is that they're old enough to view creatures like the humanoid ant that follows Jin-Woo around like a sentient Roomba, as a baby. 

Jin-Woo scowls, but doesn't sound surprised nor defeated, just-

Jin-Chul does a doubletake.

He's sulking.

The world's strongest and overpowered hunter who could pinch someone's stomach and instantly trigger kidney failure, is pouting in his chair. 

Then again, he is being stalked by a pseudo-deity with a perpetual need for attention.

"...Right. Okay. Well. Just ask him to change his appearance-" Jin-Chul suggests stupidly, knowing full-well they probably scoured through these ideas before him. 

"Can't. This is my appearance. This is my body- it's not something artificial," the Sovereign drones, as he rhythmically pinches Woo Jin-Chul's stapler, creating a shower of bent staples across of Woo Jin-Chul's desk. "I'm made out of organic material, too, just not like the cells that you see on earth." Wow. Every biologist's wet dream. The Sovereign continues to punch his stapler. 

To the side, Sung Jin-Woo is staring at his wasteful act with a scandalized expression.

Okay. So they're both useless. Jin-Chul claps his hands. "In that case...." the two of them look at him, Jin-Woo with an anticipatory gaze that feels mismatched with his calm countenance, and Other Jin-Woo with unnerving curiosity (and it feels vandalizing, for some reason).

He's pretty sure that Other Jin-Woo hasn't blinked in the past seven minutes since he invaded Woo Jin-Chul's space and immediately established dominance by breaking his window after trying to helicopter Jin-Woo out of the twenty-seventh floor by his ankle.

Fortunately, Korea's S-Rank Hunter Sung Jin-Woo did not get flung out of Woo Jin-Chul's window, while unfortunately, Woo Jin-Chul needs a new window.

Woo Jin-Chul smiles genially. "Sung Jin-Woo, I'll prepare a fake birth certificate."

He watches as Other Jin-Woo lose it so hard that he breaks his metal desk that could withstand even Go Gun-Hee's rage like it's nothing more than the flat edge of a crowbar, while Jin-Woo himself chokes so violently that he nearly upchucks his entire meal over his own shoes.

"Trust me, this'll work."

"Half of your plans involve my half-assed instinctive self-preservation skills duped by Mother Nature over the evolution of my semi-suicidal personality." Jin-Woo deadpans. "Don't involve ou- my family with your fatalistic strategies revolved around your moral composition of a boiled egg." The 'S' in the 'S-Hunter' might stand for suicidal at least 75% of the time (to be fair: this unofficial statistic applies to Jin-Woo mostly because he's been spoiled reckless by his independent resistance against fatality since he has the immortality of a 3310 Nokia phone), but that doesn't mean he's going to drag the rest of his family down with his questionable enticement towards death. 

"...are you sure you want this name?" Woo Jin-Chul looks up from the information that the Shadow Monarch inputted, stunting their conversation short. 

"Of course." Jin-Woo looks at it, and makes a face. It's still exponentially more normal and less embarrassing than having publically call what people deem to be a human, 'Ashborn.' Anything is better than that. 

"...with this last name?" Jin-Chul says, something pleading in his tone.

Ashborn gives him a look. "Do I look indecisive?"

At this, Woo Jin-Chul wordlessly gathers the papers without a voice of disapproval. When he neatly stacks them together, he nods, "well. Whatever. No matter how unbelievable these come out as, as long as you look like Jin-Woo, you can do whatever you want with or without ID. Give me an hour- no, less than an hour, and you'll be a South Korean citizen. Just. Don't get into a fight with anyone. We'll sacrifice you for Jin-Woo any day," he warns, smiling wanly at the Ashborn, but Jin-Woo's eyebrows pinch together at the iciness in Jin-Chul's tone. 

However, Ashborn doesn't appear bothered by Jin-Chul's odd tone, and instead, glances at him curiously, before shrugging. "The only person who can even play with me for more than a couple seconds is him." Ashborn jerks a finger at Jin-Woo, and he scowls at the sudden spotlight of attention. "Which is why he should keep me around him at all times-" he leans close, only for Jin-Woo to clamp a large hand over his face, shoving him aside. 

"I am not bringing you home with me."

"Why? You want tomorrow's headlines to be about how the world's strongest hunter has been found crashing in the back parking lot of those sketchy McDonalds, kicking it back with the drug dealers who curb there?"

"I just hate your plan-"

"I think it'll work."

Jin-Woo huffs.

"I am not gaslighting my family into believing they had a second twin brother this whole time and forgot about him for the past twenty-something years-"

"...so you're telling me that I had a second twin brother this whole time and forgot about him for the past twenty-something years?" Jin-Ah summarizes with the efficiency of a Cliffnotes editor.

"Yeah."

She looks vaguely put-off by this revelation.

Jin-Ah looks him in the eye. "Shadow clone jitsu is a real skill?"

Jin-Woo looks into the distance, the traumatic events of today flashing before his eyes like he nearly (had) died, with only his last couple memories being of his own body speaking like a kid who has the personality of backwashed Listerine poured into an empty Monster energy can. So basically, he just sped-run through all seven circles of hell except all his memories are stuck on 'violence'.

He finally makes eye contact with Jin-Ah once more, and she must've seen something in his gaze, because she judgmentally arches a brow even though he hasn't said anything yet. "I wish all of this was just a skill." He says hollowly.

If possible, she looks even more concerned. 

To the side, the Ashborn (or, according to the birth certificate that Woo Jin-Chul whipped up with the speed of an underground information broker, 'Sung Qin Yu'), waves politely, before facing Sung Jin-Woo. "You really couldn't act a little better in front of our baby sister?" And honestly, that should've ticked him off.

He huffs out a disgruntled noise of amusement, and Ashborn smirks at this, with the self-pleased demeanor of a child who's gotten a reaction it wanted. Attention, sugar, any of that. 

A bit like Beru, if Beru gained the independency of a person realizing it's reality is just a stimulation.

"Anyways. Jin-Ah." 'Sung Qin Yu' clears his throat. "I got lost in the system since I was a kid-" 

"Abandoned." Sung Jin-Woo corrects. "Put up for adoption."

"Stop trying to discredit my likability."

Sung Jin-Woo gazes at him innocently. "Why would I ever do that when you're doing it perfectly fine on your own?"

"Anyways, here's my birth certificate," Ashborn hums proudly, handing over the one that they personalized like arts n' craft.

Sung Jin-Ah hasn't spoken a word, yet, she still accepts the paper with unfaltering calmness.

Sung Jin-Woo already knows that her lack of reaction is simply due to the sudden circulation of 'what the fuck' clogging up his bloodstream.

She stares at the certificate for a long time.

Finally: "why is his name written in Hanja but his last name Korean?"

"Different languages?" Jin-Woo just rephrases the truth of her question.

"??? Why is his first name Chinese?" 

"...international adoption."

"My name is Qin Yu," Ashborn adds approvingly.

She Looks at Him. 

"Isn't 'Qin Yu' just 'Jin-Woo' in Hanja but put through Google translate eight tim-"

"No." Ashborn instantly says, like the absolute Liar he is.

Jin-Woo wonders how he's gotten to this point, where he's lying to his family that an overlord of a ripoff Starwars galaxial army is currently his identical brother, and not his benefactor into otherworldly success, if success was measured by how quickly he could play Jigsaw with the earth's continents like everything's nothing more than puzzle pieces in his hands.

"Oh hey mom." Jin-Woo hears his own voice say even though he hasn't said anything within these past few minutes, and his head snaps up, and he sees his mom standing by the doorway, hand loosely gripping an iron skillet that nearly clangs against the floor as she staggers forward. He tenses. She looks at them.

"Hey. Son." She finally responds, smile plastered on her face. "Sons." She finally rephrases when neither of them greet her back.

She looks at them for a terrifyingly long moment.

Finally, she turns to Jin-Ah, who has an equally hollow gaze, who mutely hands over the slip in her hand.

All three children fall silent as their mother take a look at the birth certificate that's been falsified by Woo Jin-Chul and the whole-ass South Korean government for Sung Jin-Woo like this is a high school project except every individual is actually pulling their weight instead. 

"I gave birth to a second son who's a twin?" Park Kyung-Hye says with mild disbelief. "Mmm. Yeah. No. I feel I would remember this."

"I have an older brother who's a twin?" Jin-Ah finally echoes, sounding more astonished than troubled.

They're taking it better than I thought they would. A voice slithers into his cranium, and it melts so easily over the flat of his skull, that for a moment, as those words were echoed in his voice, Jin-Woo genuinely thought he was thinking them.

He replies after gathering himself: well. Mom probably seen weirder things in life. He doesn't specify, knowing full well that the other half of him would know the vibes he's indicating towards. After all, his mom one day woke up, and decided to slip into something more comfortable than her pajamas: a coma. 

So yeah. This is probably the least of her worries after waking up to years later in the future, while finding out that her adult-child-son-thing is currently playing cornerstone in earth's human society.

'And Jin-Ah? Honestly. Since the other day when we- I caught her gambling Mahjong with Igris and the others with my savings bank, I think she's rather resistant to the abnormal by this point.'

A baritone hum of agreement combs through his brain, weaving itself deep in his mind.

Is it really me?

Ashborn's presence feels like home (because the only one he could ever find solace in was himself, anyways).

He looks at the Shadow Sovereign (Ashborn. Sung Jin-Woo. Qin Yu. Himself?), and finds him staring back at him.

They smirk in unison.

"You know." Kyung Hye finally says slowly. "I'm pretty sure I only had one kid. Like. I'm very sure that I only gave birth to one son." She looks at them dead in the eyes. "I know. It's crazy. But wow. It's almost like I only did give birth to one son."

"You did. Don't worry," Ashborn consoles.

Kyung Hye in fact, does not appear reassured by this statement.

Jin-Woo decides to step in. "Really. It'll work out. Woo Jin-Chul is currently composing a fake backstory and ID for him so he can pass as my twin. He can also take care of himself. He can break every international law, including all of the universal conceptual laws the way I do, and nobody can tell him no." 

Kyung Hye, if possible, looks even more distraught by this revelation. 

Ashborn, clearly thinking it's his turn to reassure her, begins with, "you could say that Jin-Woo technically gave birth to me, or vice versa-"

"I did not."

"Oh. Like when plants asexually reproduce?" Jin-Ah snaps her fingers, looking very pleased by her conclusion.

"No. Absolutely not-"

"Exactly like that-" Ashborn illegally says in unison with Jin-Woo's automatic rejection.

Jin-Ah looks at Jin-Woo with a strange gaze, and Jin-Woo's foot cramps instinctively, as he can instantly sense that she's silently judging him again. "You know. One of you is already enough," she finally says with a displeased tone.

Ashborn appears affronted by this statement.

"This isn't even a 'there can only be one Jin-Woo' situation, since I took up another name," Ashborn gripes, an arm clamping around Jin-Woo's shoulders like a headlock.

"Mm...Jin-Woo. Is he your friend?" Kyung-Hye inquires, eyeing his arm warily, appearing discomforted by the charismatic smile Ashborn flashes towards her. "Your friend who looks exactly like you and is currently dripping tar all of my carpet?" Her voice borderlines mild displeasure at her last statement.

Immediately, all of Ashborn's shadows vacuum back up into his body, leaving their carpet spotless.

Kyung Hye's browline skyrocket up at this, and for a moment, she appears contemplatively impressed. No, mom, please. And he knows that look. It's the same look she gives to the sellers at the day markets when she's close to paying a clearly higher price than the produce that she's buying off of them. Except right now he's the scammy seller, and Ashborn is the defective produce. "So, Jin-Woo, he's your friend?" She repeats her question, sounding exponentially less stressed than the first time she interrogated him.

"No." He has standards, after all. Actually, his only real friend (if not closer? It's not like he has experience to compare their relationship to, after all) is probably Yoo Jin-Ho.  

He thinks about Yoo Jin-Ho.

So maybe he doesn't have standards.

"Oh. In that case, he checks out. Don't worry ma. If he acts up, Jin-Woo will take full responsibility," Jin-Ah automatically snorts, immediately shaking out of her stupor, terrifying Jin-Woo with her sudden flip in demeanor.

"What?" Jin-Woo asks tersely, as he tries to escape from Ashborn grasp.

"He's totally not human for one." Jin-Ah says tonelessly. "I really don't know why you tried to convince otherwise." And Jin-Woo, startled by this observation, glances at him. And he's always been shrouded by shadows, soldiers' fingers brushing against his ankles as if groping for a cape, large paws and claws corseting his waist like a chestplate anytime he walks into a building full of hunters.

So looking at Ashborn, who mirrors that sense of self-confidence through the way that black swirls around his knuckles, curling around his joints like earthworms and centipedes, Jin-Woo thinks that he doesn't seem that different.

Then, he realizes: it's pretty hard for most people past his family to view him as a human. Meaning even if Ashborn is an alternate font of his typed description, to everyone else, by transitive property, since Jin-Woo is a beast in their eyes, so is Ashborn. 

But Jin-Ah? Who sees him as her brother?

"How can you tell?" He finally asks, too curious to ignore this. Ashborn however, doesn't appear phased by her declaration, as if he wasn't even expecting to pass as a demihuman or demigod. 

Jin-Ah makes a face. "What human doesn't have a shadow?"

"Oh. I forgot Earth had those," Ashborn blinks, now invested in the conversation. They watch as ink seeps from the soles of his dusty bare feet like blood, gushing over the ratty Hello Kitty slippers that Jin-Woo decked at him before entering the house. The ink pools around him like a puddle, before manipulating itself to reflect a humanoid shape. "There!"

Silence.

The shadow blinks. 

"Shadows don't have eyes." Jin-Ah notes.

The two headlights of white poked in the shadow's existence, are suddenly flooded with the same black that makes the rest of its body. 

"Yeah. So as I said, definitely not human." Jin-Ah continues with her unwavering tone. "I'd be more concerned if he was, to be honest." She stretches midway through her sentence, popping her back. She looks bored of this conversation. 

"You'd trust a monster more than a human?"

"You want me to trust a human who looks exactly like you?" Jin-Ah scowls. "Besides. There's another and bigger reason why I trust him: you're pretty straightforward. You trust him enough to bring him in, and to treat him like that in front of your family. He really can't be that bad." Then, more thoughtfully. "He kinda acts like you when you were still an E-rank, but with the confidence and snark that you have now," and there's something thick and murky in her tone, and for some reason, it's unreadable to Jin-Woo.

He suddenly feels very bad, and he doesn't know why.

Something dry and spearmint brushes against his wrist, and he realizes it's Ashborn's fingers.

He retracts his arm.

"Anyways. I trust him. He has good vibes. But if he's really that bad, you'd probably crack his sternum over your leg like a lotus root."

"He is that bad." He thinks about Qin Yu's real personality. He doesn't know if it's substantially worse than his previous, regal and composed appearance. 

"See? Straightforward," Jin-Ah snorts, scratching her neck. "Anyways. Qin Yu. I'm Jin-Ah-"

"I know everything about you already." Qin Yu says simply, holding up a hand.

She blinks, stunned, and Jin-Woo's suddenly concerned that Qin Yu's statement would sound odd or unsettling. But rather than appearing disconcerted, Jin-Ah simply looks at him, as if waiting for his explanation.

He doesn't have one. How does he vaguely summarize the existence of something like The Shadow Monarch in a short coherent sentence that doesn't need substantial comprehension of one's lore of the universe and themselves like this is a fantasy manhwa?

And something must show on his face, probably something akin to stress, because she shrugs nonchalantly, glancing back at Ashborn with casual intrigue. "Well. Qin Yu. I don't really know what you are or why out of everyone's face, you chose someone like Jin-Woo's-"

"I'm not that bad looking."

"No, but you look like someone filled your brain cavity with instant cement from Walmart."

And at that, she leaves, padding over to the living room before digging through the sofa mattresses to retrieve the remote. 

Jin-Woo hesitantly glances at his mom, who's still staring at the falsified birth certificate, expression unreadable.

She finally looks up, and for some reason, Jin-Woo's palm itches at the fact that he can't decipher her Look™ (and when did that happen? When he didn't feel the need to read people anymore, since his existence itself felt like a cheatcode to any forms of socialization to get what he wanted? But what does strength do when it's against his mom?). 

She glances at them judgmentally.

"Isn't Qin Yu just a phonetically translated version of your name, Jin-Woo?"

"...so you're telling me you had a long-lost identical twin with zero background information, who just conveniently showed up, deus ex-machina, after you sent the entire world and news outlets into a cardiac arrest because you played dead like a possum." 

Jin-Woo hums. "Does it sound believable?"

Jin-Chul looks up, and at the alleged Shadow Monarch wearing Sung Jin-Woo's face, with half of his femur currently melting into an oily puddle of shadows.

He pauses. Then, "honestly. The fact that he has that indescribable Lovecraftian demeanor while remaining fully capable of conducting societally acceptable interactions unlike yo- some people of no specific niche, makes him thoroughly convincing as your blood relative, even without the 'identical face' card."

"Yeah." Jin-Woo says firmly, with too much confidence in this half-assed plan Ashborn made while delirious on humanity. "So. None of my family members believed it."

"Not surprised."

"But they went along with it. They didn't even really question me, at all." Surprising, but not at all surprising. Jin-Ah learned from a young age to not question half of the shit her older brother, who was also a minor not that long ago, was doing for money. He drilled that into her, since knowledge is a legal liability, and it's also just plain annoying to have to talk to his younger sister for longer than ten minutes. Meanwhile, his mom, for all her cleverness, wit, and adaptability, cannot just know what happened in the past five years. He changed, Jin-Ah has changed, the world has changed, and only she hasn't.  And everything has changed in a significant and unrecognizable manner. To her, having a monster-twin spawn out of her (un)familiar son is probably just as random as her son suddenly becoming an S-Rank hunter who has the entire government in his pocket. Like. If there's any point in her life to learn about the most bizarre and unexplainable phenomenas of the world, it's probably right now when she already has no semblance of mankind's conventions and norms to compare them against. The moon could blow up right now and he could just tell her that this was just another Tuesday for them, and she'd just have to take it because like, how crazy is that compared to everything else she just kinda had to accept on a random weekday that she was forced into consciousness? 

"Really? No questions at all?" Jin-Chul sounds doubtful. 

"They did question why we picked Ashborn's legal name."

And Woo Jin-Chul, being the kind person he is, does not call them out on the fact that he was the one who did try to stop Qin Yu from picking those characters for his name.

"What about Jin-Ho?" Jin-Chul inquires, dunking an entire can of Redbull into the coffee machine to brew his third cup of black coffee. "He's your closest friend, right?"

Jin-Woo, figuring that he's an A-rank Hunter, will probably metabolize his drink with all the questionable substances he stirred into it in less than twelve minutes.

"Only friend," Jin-Woo shakes his head.

Jin-Chul raises a brow at this.

"Oh. And you, I guess. I'm friendly with you." Are they friends? Probably not. Friends hangout, play games, do all that stuff. "So I guess you're my friend."

He's never had a chance to do 'friendship' stuff, even before becoming a Hunter, so he might as well create his own qualifications for being friends.

Qualification 1: they have to compare to the standard of Yoo Jin-Ho, which Jin-Woo thinks that due to Jin-Ho's...unique...character, it'll be pretty hard to fulfill. 

Jin-Chul clears his throat, and he looks oddly flushed by this statement. Wondering if he did something wrong, Jin-Woo adds: "I mean. If you don't. Mind."His tone staccatos, uncertain as to what this atmosphere is. To the side, Ashborn is scoffing. "We like you as much as we like Jin-Ho," he can tell, just by Ashborn's emotions pulsating next to his heart.

Jin-Chul chokes even harder. 

Jin-Woo stares, a bit lost, overall helpless. "Was I always like this?" Ashborn mumbles, staring at him. "Geez. If all my subordinates saw me like this..." Jin-Woo doesn't quite get it, but he knows for a fucking-fact that he just got backhanded. He glowers.

"I. Thank you, Sung Jin-Woo," Jin-Chul finally says, voice stabilized and eyes fixated on his laptop. He's still flustered red from nearly dying on his coffee, though. "Thank you too, Qin Yu," he nods towards him, and Ashborn looks away, face stony, but the tips of his fingers feel warm, and he knows Ashborn is discretely pleased. "So. Jin-Ho knows about your situation?"

"Oh. He directly met me," Ashborn chirrups rather happily, and Jin-Woo sees the way that Jin-Chul jolts in his seat, eyes flitting up quickly before averting, clearly momentarily distracted by the fact that it's Jin-Woo's face who's gurgling hyena laughs these past ten minutes, that it's Jin-Woo's voice that's crooning out ideas and humming out stories.

And honestly, Jin-Woo thinks it's not that bad of scenario, being a witness of this carwreck of a shitshow. 

If anything, he's the one suffering here, while everyone else is just an audience member to this circus act. If Jin-Woo is the clown, and earth is the circus, then god must be the ringmaster.

As if sensing his simmering irritation, Ashborn flashes a smile in his direction, before winking.

Jin-Woo and Jin-Chul stare at him judgmentally. 

"I can't tell if you're disgusted or enranged by my existence." Ashborn comments happily at their directed gazes.

"Distraught," Jin-Chul blurts honestly with zero regards for his sense of self-restraint by this point. Jin-Woo has noticed that these past two days, Jin-Chul had utterly gathered the ripped mental filter he lodged in his throat, and tossed it out the balcony of his room. 

Either he's spiralling, or he's frankly just stopped giving a shit about keeping on the downlow now that he's the boss. 

Whichever scenario it is, Jin-Woo relates to both. 

"I just didn't image the Shadow Monarch would be like this." Jin-Woo mumbles almost sardonically, allowing one of his shadow ants to manifest underneath the meeting room's large coffee table. He lets it nibble on his fingers.

And he hasn't noticed before, but-

They're kind of cute.

His soldiers. Their individuality is admirable in a way, and while he felt distant, detached from their loyalty and unique presences, for some reason-

He's starting to notice.

"What do you mean?" Ashborn yawns, stretching over the table, before flopping over it. Suddenly, tendrils of shadows curve out of his spine like excavated ribs, forming a blanket of exoskeletons over his body as a makeshift cocoon blanket. Jin-Chul glances up from his papers, and looks torn as to whether or not he should treat him the way he would treat Jin-Woo. Jin-Woo can tell, because Jin-Chul has the expression that Adam White always makes whenever he's forced to spontaneously take up damage control due to Jin-Woo's unreasonably sporadic impulses. 

"Mm...it feels like Jin-Woo is more of a monarch than you are, if that makes sense," Jin-Chul finally admits with obvious hesitance, though, his voice doesn't sound apologetic at all. 

The threads mummifying Jin-Chul right at the table snap near the head, exposing Ashborn's eyes and mouth. "Yeah. That's because I gave myself up for him." He answers simply, and Jin-Chul doesn't appear confused nor judgmental of this. Rather, he makes a noise of acknowledgement, with an appropriate amount of fixation as he glances up from his laptop. 

"So if you think about it, as alchemy, necromancy, all those genres would say, Pythagorean's Fourth Theory: equivalent exchange."

"That doesn't sound right." Jin-Chul immediately says.

"See. That sounds wrong, but I don't know enough about STEM or, on the other end of the scientific and logical spectrum, necromancy, to dispute it." Jin-Woo mutters agreeably.

"Meaning the personality and characteristic I'm adopting and sandpapering down to my own, is mostly from what Jin-Woo used to be like." Ashborn concludes.

Woo Jin Chul this time, does lose it over his laptop, a strangled noise erupting from the pits of his cough.

Meanwhile, Jin-Woo's mind blanks out.

"I- no way. I was not like that, I would've notic-"

"Did you even notice you were gradually becoming like me? The change is so vast, yet, the sensation is so natural." Jin-Woo falls quiet at the sound of Ashborn's soft explanation, his sudden steadfast tone that clips from his previous lilting one pinching Jin-Woo's nerves, the deadpannedness tensing his organs. "Call it brainwashing, but remember, we're two sides of the same coin. Now that I'm here with most of your old personality, eventually, we'll balance each other out, and we'll develop in similar yet different fashions. You might've not noticed this, but you're gradually becoming more like your old self." 

Jin-Woo frowns at this.

"You don't believe me?" Ashborn smothers a snort beneath his hand, and the sound of it would be almost leery to anyone but him. It just sounds sad. A bit scared. A bit mocking, because how dense would you have to be to not notice (or on the flipside, the darker explanation that Jin-Woo doesn't want to think about: how strong is this manipulative force that he doesn't even notice this)? "Well. That just proves my point. Anyways." His voice softens, just for him. "It's not scary. And don't think about it as some larger force controlling you or changing you- people change on their own all the time without realizing. The concept of evolution and peoples' free will interact...and eventually people change. It's not scary to feel certain things. Changes." 

"...you're rather in-tune with the human species, given your history and identity." He mutters, unwilling and unable to disguise the acid corroding any gratefulness in his tone.

"Of course." Ashborn says casually, unbothered by Jin-Woo's obvious frustration. "Because right now, my identity is in-sync with yours, specifically with the dormant emotional characteristics you had before you encountered the system. I learned and felt things because of you." He confesses casually.

Jin-Woo glances up at the mention, but Jin-Chul is clacking away at his keyboard, having quickly regained composure in just seconds.

Well, even though he's definitely listening in since there's no way he can't even given the proximity between them, Jin-Chul isn't the type to gossip.

"Anyways." Ashborn yawns. "I want to try sleeping as a human."

"You're totally not a human."

"I'm human enough. I want to try dreaming."

"You've never dreamt?"

"My kind does not dream. We only have one sense of dimensional reality, and it's one where we change things. Dreams and their world, is something fascinating to me. Goodnight."

"It's eight in the morning."

Ashborn ignores him, and his shadows engulf him like a flaming pile of shit. 

Jin-Woo stares at the blob once more, and turns to Jin-Chul. "I think we shouldn't clear out the building. Just let them see, they'll see Ashb- Qin Yu at one point." Earlier, before they went off-topic, they were talking about the Association and how Jin-Woo wanted Ashborn to register as a Hunter.

Jin-Chul suggested clearing out the testing center to give them space, but Jin-Woo doesn't see the point in that. It's inevitable that people will catch a glimpse of two Jin-Woos just running wild, especially now that Jin-Woo has concluded that Ashborn has the impulsive self-restraint of a fratboy teenager (so maybe he was onto something when he said he was a lot like the younger version of Jin-Woo). And it doesn't help that Ashborn doesn't listen to no god but Himself. 

And Jin-Woo is kinda assuming that Ashborn is going to stick by him. 

(He doesn't-

He doesn't know for how long. Maybe for as long as Jin-Woo himself lives. Or maybe Ashborn will continue living past him, because in the end, Jin-Woo is composed of flesh and bones (and he's definitely not a human anymore, but all species have their own limits). He'll die one day, and he doesn't know where they'll both end up by then.)

So, to make life easier, might as well register Ashborn as a Hunter. With the Hunters swarming Jin-Woo almost all the time, they'll eventually learn about Ashborn. And Jin-Woo is ecstatic over the idea of having a third member of his guild who's as functional as he himself is, if not more.

"True. And it's not like anyone's going to question or try and stop someone like you, especially if there's another person who looks exactly like you." Jin-Chul says, though, he still appears grim by the idea of dealing with the sudden exposure of a second Jin-Woo wandering around this planet. 

"And I'll immediately register him underneath Ahjin." Jin-Chul reaffirms. "You sure you don't want to give a public announcement about Qin Yu? Everyone wants to hear from you, especially after people claimed you died only to come back again. It's only been less than a day since you pulled a Jesus and revived, you know-"

He shakes his head, and Jin-Chul sighs, but it doesn't sound disappointed. Rather, he looks vaguely humoured by Jin-Woo's firm denial. 

"You've been sighing a lot." Jin-Woo comments.

"You guys are stressful."

"Mm." He doesn't even deny it. 

Jin-Chul grimaces, tucking his shades on the top of his greasy hair, revealing sallow and decayed eyebags. "Also, Thomas Andre has been asking about you." ...Thomas? Right. He should also try and visit the other white boy too, the one called Lennart. "I think...he might've seen the Monarch given that he was at the scene. And Liu Zhigang keeps asking about your personal address once more."

"Liu Zhigang?" He cocks a brow. He's only really talked to him once, and he felt eccentric, steadfast, a bit shameless. But overall, Jin-Woo walked away from him feeling as if he's quite likeable. 

He glances at the black cocoon slouched beside him, because Ashborn, a cryptid who probably spurred the lore of midwest Mothman, feels parallel to Liu Zhigang's character. "Why?"

"When we asked him, all he mentioned was something about a present."

He cocks a brow at this. "I see." Is Liu Zhigang in Korea? Probably not. 

He hopes they'll cross paths soon, though.

"Anyw-"

The door to the empty conference room slams open, and both of them turn to the door.

A secretary bustles in, not at all noticing Jin-Woo or the lumpy black trash-bag slouched right next to him. "Sir! Sorry for intruding, but a very powerful figure has visited. It's Choi Jung-In!" 

A fanboy, then.

"Choi Jung-In?" Jin-Woo repeats, startled. He has a good impression of him.

The secretary glances over, clearly surprised by the intrusion, only to freeze.

They make eye contact.

"Hello." Jin-Woo greets, because his mom raised him with manners.

The secretary's eyes tip back, before he impressively manhandles his fleeting consciousness and performs an awkward bow. "Sorry! I- you're- oh god, I'm so sorry for interrupting! You guys must be holding an important meeting-"

"Actually." Jin-Woo cuts in. The secretary immediately shuts up. Jin-Woo has a idea. "We were." The secretary ashens. Jin-Woo leans forward, fingers interlaced on the table. "Do you think Sung Qin Yu is a bad name?"

The secretary blinks.

Silence pervades, once more.

"I....it's interesting?" He looks at Jin-Chul, looking very stressed by today's turn of events. Jin-Chul however, out-stresses the man just by appearance alone, and is clearly immune to the employee's unspoken cries for guidance. 

"Give me your honest opinion," Jin-Woo insists exasperated.

The secretary emits a gargled noise like he shoved his vocal chords into the sink's trash disposal. "It's... it's weird...sir."

"I'm younger than you."

"It's weird, young master."

Sensing that this conversation is absolutely going nowhere, Jin-Woo looks pleadingly at Jin-Chul, who now looks exponentially more pressured by not one, but two glares for help spotlighting him. Jin-Chul just waves his hand, capturing the secretary's attention. "Serve to whatever Choi Jong-In asks for-"

"He wants to see you." The young man answers, suddenly flipping into a state of sudden professionalism, pale visage constructing into one of seriousness. Ooh. Of course there would never be anyone incompetent underneath the late Gun-Hee's hires. 

"Oh." Jin-Chul looks at Jin-Woo. He shrugs. Jin-Chul must be busy, and he is more or less here just because Jin-Chul has a more solid view on things unlike other people who know about Ashborn's existence. In other words: he's just here to vent about his current state of life.

"Send him in." Jin-Chul demands, and the secretary leaves. Jin-Chul turns to him, looking vaguely amused.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Jin-Woo scowls.

Before he can question if he can still consider him a friend if he pulls interrogation tactics on him, the door swings open once more. 

"Woo Ji- Sung Jin-Woo?" Choi Jong-In blinks, startled, before his shoulders lax. "Oh. I'm glad to see you're okay," and something earnest crumples on his face, and Jin-Woo shifts, and the ant beneath the table screeches.

Choi Jong-In does a doubletake, the relief on his face immediately tensing up.

"It's...she's friendly," Jin-Woo clears his throat, tapping the ant on the head. "Sorry for interrupting."

Choi Jong-In looks at him, clearly startled by his statement, and Jin-Woo subconsciously flickers his eyes to the side, having already developed a habit to share eye-contact with Ashborn ever since he started latching against him like an overgrown tumor. 

"Oh. What's in that trashbag?" Choi Jong-In asks conversationally, catching his gaze. 

"My brother."

Woo Jin-Chul, for the third time today, sputters on his drink.

Chapter Text

"Let's go on a walk."

Ashborn, to Sung Jin-Woo's gradual realization, is much like a terrifyingly intelligent Saint Bernard. Or like a five-year-old child.

After all, Ashborn certainly proceeds with the recklessly bloodthirsty ambitions of one (and whether Jin-Woo is referring to kids or to dogs, will be another deep dark internalized secret he'll take to his deathbed, right next to Ashborn's existence). 

This personal belief has been clearly proven because Ashborn, who hasn't even regained his Saiyan form and is lounging around Jin-Woo like a disorientated pet Roomba, has somehow still managed to retain his over 9000+ power impact just through his mere presence alone. Within his six hours of existence, he had almost deboned Jin-Ah's ring finger while playing cards, has re-renovated their bathroom by deplumbing the whole wall to fish out a stray rat, and he has nearly killed three people (though, Jin-Woo supposes that ethically, all three murder charges could be shaved in the court of law. After all, Choi Jung-In and Jin Woo-Chul nearly had a stroke upon their own accord, and the Sovereign of Frost's rather blunt execution is just financial reimbursement for being an overall public nuisance, with their head as interest for accumulating this debt over time). 

Ashborn had also nearly upchucked up his (their??) mom's crispy rice that came out entirely intact, because apparently, he's forgotten how to digest foods, and probably doesn't even have a proper digestive system in the first place. 

Yet another one of his ambiguous trait that fits within the overlap between children and dogs.

And yeah, the comparison between Ashborn, an ex-monarch-now-undefined creature who's hacked his way past the Universal Law of Conservation and uses his own cheatcode-self to surpass the evolutionary need to take a shit, and a five-year-old child, is somewhat of a reach. Jin-Woo had to manifest some WatchMojo logic to even fit them within the same Venn diagram. 

But the thing is, while Jin-Woo would love to Bob-the-Build a whole new biological schema for Ashborn, he really doesn't know how to define Ashborn past 'pet-like creature with the omnipotency of god and egocentricism of every toddler' (a quality that feels contradictory to his natural leadership demeanor).

None of them, including Jin-Ah who has acclimated rather well to this parasite who treats their house like a transmigrated Sims creator, has figured out if Ashborn can be remotely defined as...really anything that can be found on earth or in any neighbouring galaxies. Ashborn isn't a ruler or monarch anymore (maybe? Ashborn doesn't seem to know, either), even less so in comparison to Jin-Woo himself, but he's certainly not a human, or any entity that can be found in the dungeons. 

But-

"I want to go outside."

No matter how unsettling undefinably Eldritch he believes Ashborn is, Jin-Woo guiltlessly boils Ashborn down to nothing more than an overly spoiled Great Dane, or an evil-rooted child wielding a Razor scooter. 

"We just went, and we'll be heading out soon for your Hunter's evaluation," he retorts, before shoving aside Ashborn's limp body that's flopped on his bed. "You just got back from meeting Woo-Chul and Jin-Ho. Didn't you have enough fun?" Oh god. He sounds like his mom refusing to let Jin-Ah leave the house, because she already had fun the other day with Han Song-I.

He's morphing into a middle-aged single Korean-mom juggling an incorrigible monster (or synonymously, a teenager) in his hands. 

"Yeah, and those two are exactly like how I expected them to be," Ashborn replies tonelessly, but he doesn't sound dissatisfied with this result. "But Jin-Ah told me about a mall."

"You've been alive before when you didn't live vicariously through me. You've probably experienced public entertainment spaces before," he deadpans, sitting on the edge of his bed, cringing as Ashborn immediately uses his lap as a footrest. 

Now that's just disrespectful.

"I was alive during an entire revolution. As a leader," Ashborn says with a hint of griping in his tone, sounding like a college student who had to lead a group of random classmates who have varying degrees of work ethic and different levels of depression. "I'm not as shameless as you are. I couldn't just call armistice because I wanted to try foodcourt fries." Ashborn retaliates rather indignantly. "As a kid, I just stayed indoors."

Huh. Child Ashborn. He's inclined to believe that's a concept that only exists in the multiverse theory. 

Jin-Woo shrugs. "Well. I can reassure you that you're not missing out." He consoles, not wanting to waste his time to walk Ashborn like an overwhelming toddler who needs to wear a leash backpack. "Why would a mall interest you in the first place?" 

Ashborn glances at him, looking pretty unimpressed. "As if you're not interested either."

A pause.

And Jin-Woo had felt insignificant intrigue towards the mall, since the last time he went was when he was a high schooler and his mom had a stable job. But his curiosity towards something like a random mall feels so nonsensical- so minute in the grand scheme of things, of the plot blanketing his existence and weighing him down into a pit of waterlogged cotton. And yet Ashborn is here, telling him that the minor feeling of foolish interest is valuable enough to enable time-wasting. 

"There's no point in going." He exclaims, sounding more factual than defensive. 

Ashborn fixes him with an unimpressed gaze.

"...but we can still go," Jin-Woo relents, realizing with cold dissonance that Ashborn will probably just skip out on his own, since he has the irresponsible indifference of a monarch who has no concept of subserviency and no respect for rules other than his own. "We can go after the Hunter's reevaluation." To his annoyance, Ashborn doesn't seem particularly cheerful or grateful by his compromise, simply nonchalant, as if he had expected this outcome. 

"You sound offended when I'm literally telling you to take a paid vacation." Ashborn casually observes when Jin-Woo doesn't say anything else. 

"I'd rather be paid in skills or weapons," he retorts. Because it's not like Jin-Woo is the type to short himself of rewards, he's actually rather greedy for them. It's just that wanting to see a mall was nothing more than a fleeting sense of curiosity towards the average citizen's life; it's not really something he finds serious enough to pursue, unlike a new shadow soldier or something more pragmatic. 

"There was no point in going to an amusement park either, especially when sitting on a roller coaster would only feel like you were placed in a rocking cradle," Ashborn grunts. "Yet you still went."

"Yeah, because I could hang out with Chae Hae-In," someone who was worth spending priceless minutes on when the world [he] was running out of time-

As if knowing his line of thought (and he probably does), Ashborn stares at him with an unreadable expression. For a moment, it looks pitying, and in the next, it appears more leery than anything else. "Technically, your net worth is incomparable- much higher than anyone elses' value, including Chae Hae-In," then with mocking innocence and falsified confusion, "so are you saying you're not worth spending a few seconds on, or even a sliver of intrigue over?"

"It's my choice whether or not I want to spare time on me." He replies pointedly. He's never felt bothered or irritated by Ashborn, but he doesn't know what else this odd soreness he's feeling can be chalked up to (and what is it? He can't identify it even when it's cracking his skin like a rash, puffing his throat and itching his mind-).

Ashborn snorts. "If that's the case, then bring someone worth time spending on." A mulling beat of silence. "Like Jin-Ho."

Jin-Woo blinks at this, positively startled.

"What?" He narrows his eyes, an ominous premonition rattling his bones.

"Yeah, I mean. Isn't he your friend?"

"No- I- not that" he gestures impatiently with obvious frustration, "I meant towards you mentioning Jin-Ho as someone worth spending on." 

Ashborn Looks™ at him with an expression that feels too aligned with the one his mom would give him whenever he asked her if she would really miss Jin-Ah if he decided to teleport his dumbass sibling to the middle of 43°35′N 39°43′E Sochi, Russia, for bribing her classmates with another candid photo of him just for a single corndog.

"Jin-Woo," Ashborn begins with the tolerant tone of a monarch who's a blink away from conducting public execution of the entire commoner class. "You have in total, three friends. And that's the amount when rounded. One of them is your part-time babysitter who has an enemies-to-lovers relationship with working overtime, and the other already went on an amusement park ride with you. And Jin-Ho, being the zero-point-five who was rounded up to a single friend-" and even Jin-Woo, who was the one to roast Jin-Ho first, started feeling bad for the subject who isn't even here to defend himself, "is your only other option." And Ashborn appears blank while rattling all the statistics as to why Jin-Woo has poor social skills, and any emotion in his tone is nothing short but blurry, but given his personality, Jin-Woo knows he's being mocked.

"First off," Jin-Woo begins. "I'm not even going to dignify your accusatory tone about my social contacts with a response." Ashborn, whose face hasn't even changed, somehow looks infinitely smugger than he did .0001 seconds before. 

Jin-Woo quells his impulsive and lively sense of murderous rage. And yeah, he used to always get angry (anger was like. One of the few emotions he felt on most days, whoops-), but he's starting to realize he's never truly felt 'annoyance' in this manner before. This is a type of frustration that only Jin-Ah can provoke out of him when she tries to sell his bathwater like the raging opportunistic Etsy shop owner she is, but Ashborn is doing this like irritating Jin-Woo (or really, making Jin-Woo emotional in any form) is easier than breathing (and it probably is, since Ashborn doesn't even breathe-). 

"Secondly, another option you overlooked, is to just not go in the first place," Jin-Woo deadpans, "and thirdly, even if he's point-zero-five, why Jin-Ho?" And no, he is not using Jin-Ho as a scapegoat to escape acknowledging the weird elevator-ride of mush and fungi rolling in his stomach by this conversation (because after all of Ashborn's weird, profound perspectives on 'emotions' and 'feelings' that he unnecessarily unloaded onto him while at Woo-Chul's, Jin-Woo finds himself guarded against even the slightest inclination of introspection).

Ashborn stares at him as if he's stupid. "Because Jin-Ho's loaded."

Right.

Jin-Ho's dad unlocked his bank account after Jin-Woo saved him. 

"We have money, too." He argues instead, feeling like he'll lose something if he gives in a second time in a row today. He glares at Ashborn once more. He truly does spoil Ashborn- there's no other way to put it, given how he hasn't tried to square up against him after all his bullshit (mentally beating him up doesn't count, because Jin-Woo does that to everyone on a good day). 

Ashborn yawns, even though Jin-Woo knows that he can pull all-nighters with the vigor and instinctive ease of every premed student. He can't tell if Ashborn is purposefully or unconsciously imitating human actions, and for some reason, this observation feels less disconcerting than it should. How strange, seeing Ashborn do something as living as yawning. "Yeah? And?" Ashborn clicks his mouth shut. "It always feels good when it's someone else paying." Jin-Woo opens his mouth, only for Ashborn to talk over him, "this stingy feeling that resonates within me was definitely a part of your old personality, not mine," he adds sharply, as if aware of Jin-Woo's unspoken complaint, and Jin-Woo closes his mouth, lowering his brow into a glower. "Besides, Jin-Ah keeps bringing your half-point friend up-"

"Stop fraternizing with Jin-Ah." Jin-Ah, an unfilial child, has already ganged up with Ashborn against him (him; her own biological brother. Sure, he initially thought it'd be fine if they got along- better than fine, even. 

That was, until they locked themselves in Jin-Ah's room for the past three hours, probably drawing up plans to dominate the Specific Ocean and one of Jupiter's twelve moons or some shit. And while Jin-Woo knows that his sister is a shameless schemer who would love to curbstomp a good population of people underneath her heel, he was more concerned about Ashborn, who actually has the ability to Thanos-snap half of Korea into a swampy mess of shadows.

Therefore, with the fire department on speed-dial, he ended up kicking down Jin-Ah's bedroom door in spite of her flowery 'do-not-disturb' sign, only to find the two and Beru, his loyal general, watching their fourth Barbie movie dubbed in poor French with German and Korean subtitles on some illegal streaming site.

That's when he decided that they were awful influences on each other and on Beru who was already questionably off-the-rocker, and therefore, for the sake of his waning mental stability, they shouldn't be allowed to intermingle).

"Hey," Ashborn knocks him back into reality from where he's still curled on Jin-Woo's bed like a nuked piece of limp shrimp. "I'm just saying, Jin-Ah was very curious because Jin-Ho was the first guy you've mentioned almost in a friendly manner. Especially since you were a loner."

"I am not a loner-"

"More than half of your satanic posse are imaginary friends- they don't count, you vixen."

Jin-Woo chokes.

A pause.

Then: "I'm telling Igris that you called him imaginary." He wisely chooses to ignore a specific chunk of what Ashborn just said, in a futile effort to stabilize his crumbling mental composure. 

Unfortunately, Ashborn doesn't appear remotely bothered by his threat, and instead, rolls onto his back to stare dully at his dusty ceiling fan. "Igris might be your righthand at the moment, but I taught him to bring the heads back first. I was his first owner," he explains loftily. No wonder Igris plays fetch with cadavers' heads: his ex-boss had the personality of a dog from the European Gravettian period. "I raised him into being a perfect soldier. He'll never turn on me in spite of his loyalty to you." A muted lilac eye swivels to him. "He's like my version of Jin-Ho."

Jin-Woo takes a moment to gather his remaining patience, and if it's by silently but furiously praying to a god that he doesn't believe in, nobody but him will know.

"Okay, first," he finally starts with a strained tone. "Humans usually can't independently multitask with each eye, so do not stare at me with one eye when the other one is looking in another direction." 

Ashborn, seemingly dedicated to cosplaying as the fleshy homosapien he is, creaks his other eye from the ceiling fan to face Jin-Woo, its gaze finally parallel to the direction of his right eye. 

"And to let you know, Igris is ours, so you can't really compare him like he's not one of mine," he reasons. "You also really can't say he's like Jin-Ho. Jin-Ho is...he's more like Iron than Igris." And yeah, Jin-Ho is like the peak-evolutionary phase of a golden retriever, but comparing a domesticated dog who'd try and chew its own tail to an overgrown stray wolf, produces two very different images.

"I don't see how anything you just said matters-"

"You brought this weird comparison up in the first place-"

"-as it does nothing but avoid the original topic of this conversation," Ashborn rebukes desolately, and they both ignore the wailing from the corner of the room where a puddle of shadows are stewing underneath his computer wires. Iron cries all the time even without their outright insults, after all. 

"The topic at hand is about my amount of friends that you seem so fixated on."

"The topic at hand is about my mall trip." Ashborn firmly shakes his head. Jin-Woo inwardly scowls, even more so when Ashborn smiles at his contorted countenance. "I'm sure you won't mind spoiling Jin-Ho," he says flippantly. "Or me," Ashborn casually gets to the point after seeing Jin-Woo's unimpressed appearance.

He scoffs. And knowing Jin-Ho, he'd immediately jump at the idea of actually doing something actually normal with Jin-Woo for once, and he hates that he isn't entirely against indulging in Jin-Ho's weird, touch-starved, daddy-issues demeanor, because then that means Ashborn was right (as always). 

"I'm not babysitting two children." And he knows he's now just making up excuses. 

"Jin-Ho is not a kid." Ashborn automatically retaliates.

Jin-Woo scoffs. "What do you mean he's no-" he freezes. 

He pauses.

"Wait." His eyebrows crinkle. 

Actually-

How old is-

"Jin-Ho is not a kid," Ashborn looks at him incredulously. "We legally drank with him."

"He isn't a child," Jin-Woo echoes with a ghastly tone, genuinely taken back by the development of his understanding of who he always viewed as a teenager. "Oh my god," he's always subconsciously treated Jin-Ho like a sales-rack product of Jin-Ah. 

"Wait until you remember that most people take you as a young adult in his prime." Ashborn snorts, over his initial shock, before pausing, seemingly musing over something. "Well," he continues with a lighter tone. "At least they used to. Now they probably just see you as a century-old monster."

"Stop projecting," Jin-Woo remarks, even though he knows he's right. It's not like he finds a problem with appearing like one, anyways. 

"Yeah. So this all works out," Ashborn immediately takes a crack at the presented opportunity to force Jin-Woo into supervising a malltrip like the world probably isn't going to deflate like a chainsmoker's right lung at any point. "See. Jin-Ho is an adult, and you're...you're you. You guys can take care of yourselves at a mall trip. Besides, Jin-Ah can watch herself." He raps the side of his skull. "It's me you have to look over," he summarizes bluntly.

"So you know that you're the problem child, you just don't care."

"Of course."

Jin-Woo stares at his own deadpanned expression staring listlessly back up at him, before squinting in judgment.

"Hey. This is your personality too," Ashborn responds liltingly to Jin-Woo's unspoken disdain. "Though, due to my influence, you have a more mature energy to your character setting- like a reliable older sibling while I'm like the energetic younger child," he commends, as if he's not directly complimenting himself. "That added with the fact that you're the galaxy's most favourable single youth, it really builds character and your image- I definitely chose the right host for my powers." He gives a thumbs-up to finish off his abrupt and out-of-nowhere praise, though, Jin-Woo has a feeling it was given because Ashborn can sense the violent irritation rippling off of Jin-Woo's figure. 

"You didn't even choose me in the first place- you just got lucky."

"Wrong." He answers factually. "You got lucky with me," Ashborn points to himself.

Jin-Woo doesn't deny this. 

"And now you're extraordinarily overpowered, and due to my personal influences, you now have that entire 'stoic and icy' demeanor that high school girls love in the asshole male lead who shows affection to only kittens on rainy days." Hearing this, Jin-Woo decides to never let Jin-Ah introduce to Ashborn another drama (or Barbie movie, which is arguably the same thing). Ashborn looks at him contemplatively. "Or, to his family such as his younger sister."

"I don't date, so I'll just stay as a single older brother." Is all he can muster against Ashborn's nonsensical string of bullshit. 

Ashborn rolls his eyes at that. "See. Exactly. As Barbie in A Mermaid Tale always said-"

Jin-Woo vocalizes a series of question marks.

"'What makes you different just might be your greatest strength'." Ashborn finishes sagely. "Your coldness and lack of obvious intimacy-" and Jin-Woo knows he's getting slandered at the moment, "helped sell and commercialize the public's image of you. People always crave the unattainable." 

Jin-Woo, not one to be speechless, makes a noise of absolute emptiness in his trash disposal of his throat. Not only is Ashborn incorrigible, but Jin-Woo himself is also completely lost the direction of this conversation. It wasn't even a gradual turn of events- Ashborn just decided to single-handedly derail the entire train of thought with zero consideration for Jin-Woo's remaining sanity.  "Are you saying that my greatest strength is being a bachelor?" Is the only sentence he can make out of all of Ashborn's casual bullshittery. 

"I don't know why you're embarrassed to use the term 'honeytrap'."

"I'm disowning you."

"Be careful, because 'friendship is the true treasure'-"

"What-"

"Are Barbie's wise words," Ashborn finishes tranquilly, "spoken at her stay in the Diamond Castle during the year two-thousand-and-eight."

Jin-Woo considers ditching Ashborn in the middle of Russia as well.

"I'm just saying," Ashborn says, noting Jin-Woo's obvious displeasure. "Barbie movies are pretty good in the same way that two-thousand-and-three Veggie Tales animation was pretty hardcore for its time. Even Beru enjoyed watching them." He responds to Jin-Woo's silent suffering, as if that's at all helping his case. "He really likes how Barbie, the overpowered Mary Sue of a main character who's enjoyable, empowered, and usually out to save the world, always has a supremely loyal and animalistic subordinate tailing her shadow all the time."

Jin-Woo pinches his nosebridge so hard, that he's pretty sure he cleared his sinuses faster than swallowing a mayonnaise dollop of Vaporrub could. 

"If I say yes to bringing Jin-ho and Jin-Ah, will you shut up?" He croaks.

Ashborn glances at him, startled. "Oh, you thought you had a choice?" He inquires, sounding genuinely surprised by this development of things. 

"...was I always this much of a brat?"

"You still are, Barbie," Ashborn quips fluidly, and Jin-Woo's face curls in disdain by the casual nickname. "I just retained your emotional capacity to verbally show it rather than beating someone to a pulp first."

Jin-Ah feels like she entered an alternate reality.

Or that she died, and is currently sitting in what may not be hell, but is certainly the juxtaposition of heaven.

She cranks up the volume of Netflix, as if that could possibly drown out the scuffling and loud footsteps coming suspiciously from their bedroom hallway. 

Then, she hears a slam. 

She blinks blankly as Jin-Woo's bedroom door rams open.

She makes unwilling eye contact with Qin Yu, who's staggering over the doorframe with a frenzied grin, with his fake twin immediately showing up behind him, eyes flashing first-degree murderous intent, anime flashbacks, and Anti-Freeze blue.

Her eyes shutter, and she curls up tighter on the living room sofa as the floor begins rattling due to her brother(s'?) catfight. Once again, she raises the drama volume. 

"Ma!" She shouts over Qin Yu's cackling pleas and Jin-Woo's silent but equally loud bloodlust. "They're trying to deconstruct our building's infrastructure again!" At least last time their damage was contained within their bathroom, and Jin-Woo dialed in an efficient plumber to solve it before their floor ends up like the shallow end of a YMCA swimming pool. 

However, this is the living room, where there's a side balcony opening up twenty-one meters above concrete. 

"Mom!" She shouts again as Jin-Woo tries to effectively crack Qin Yu's skull open like a water chestnut. 

To her disappointment, her mom doesn't come saving the day as the world's last-line of defense (a title that Jin-Ah truly believes in, given that she's probably the only one who can wrangle the world's only sentient war machine with a single whack of her wooden spoon).

For a lady who slipped into a coma for the past couple years, she still manages to fearlessly initiate unshakably deep naps every afternoon. Jin-Ah thinks it's both impressive as well as terrifying.

"Yeah. First-degree murder is ille-gal-" Qin Yu's complaints crack with a clean pitch of tone, as Jin-Woo took advantage of Jin-Ah's distracting presence to try and invert Qin Yu's kneecaps with his heel. 

Qin Yu staggers over to Jin-Ah's side, much to her displeasure, and seats himself above of her, bottom perched on the couch frame. Clearly, he's using her as a disposable meat shield.

Honestly- 

She feels kind of betrayed. She thought they bonded after absolutely wrecking her overheated laptop by running movies on 2x speed via 123movies, a site with enough "hot girls in your area" ads for her to create a Tinder profile out of. 

However, used to traitors, especially ones that wear that specific face, she simply rolls her eyes, and land them on the main character of her Netflix drama. 

God, what she'd trade Jin-Woo and all the consequences of his existence (aka: Qin Yu) just for Yang Yang to become her older brother.

"Hey. Even just attempted homicide is a felony offense in multiple countries!" Qin Yu squawks from behind her, drowning out the show's dialogue. 

And rage must be hereditary, because suddenly she understands Jin-Woo's slaughterous demeanor.

Jin-Woo falls quiet, domineering figure overflowing with homicidal intent, his towering build blocking Jin-Ah's view of the television.

(Jin-Ah scowls.

Not for the first time, she wishes to be a single child.

Not for the first time, she plots how to make that happen.)

"As if I am not the law," Jin-Woo replies to Qin Yu's rationale.

A pause of silence, a minute of quiet respect for Qin Yu's inevitable death at the alleged and cryptically unproven age of 24.

Jin-Ah instinctively ducks out of the way as soon as Jin-Woo lunges over her, and her eyes flashes back to the television, bristling.

Dammit.

She missed the climax. She glares over her shoulder, at Jin-Woo who's straddling Qin Yu's thighs, the whole couch pillow planted right onto Qin Yu's face. Not a regular pillow, but the whole couch pillow that's bigger than two Jin-Woo's placed side-by-side.

Jin-Woo emits a wet noise in the pits of his chest, looking genuinely disappointed that Qin Yu doesn't seem to need air to breathe, given that he's currently trying to overtake Jin-Woo with ropes of shadows construed of melted licorice, undeterred by the fact that his face is being smushed by a downsized mattress. 

"Both of you." She snaps, and Qin Yu's struggling halts, hands still fisted on Jin-Woo's collar, and Jin-Woo lazily glances over from where he's DIY'ing every countries' illegal torture methods right on their living room floor. 

She narrows her eyes. "I'm waking up mom."

"Oh. This place is packed." Ashborn whistles, shifting his cheap, Angry Birds sunglasses that Jin-Ah gifted him. For a guy who got told off by his fake mom, he seems rather chipper. Jin-Woo scowls, thinking about how after Jin-Ah immediately took shelter in the master bedroom, she had consequentially woken up their mom as well as Jin-Woo's forgotten sense of fear.

At this recollection, he glares even harder at Ashborn, who appears unbothered by Jin-Woo's obvious disdain. "You know, we look suspicious," Ashborn comments curiously, tugging on his pair of jeans that Jin-Woo had (because someone like Ashborn, doesn't deserve the luxurious sensation of sweatpants).  

"Only because we look bland in comparison," Jin-Woo gestures to the entire lobby full of hunters. "Everyone here still looks tamer than a single NYC sidewalk," he explains, readjusting his surgical mouth mask. And even though their disguises are shoddy, their appearances aren't that distinct; even they were sharpened by off-brand godhood, they still lie within the diverse range of East Asian features.

So while they're handsome in terms of typical beauty standards, they lack anything truly individual that sets them a part from any other masked stranger on the street. And now that they're in a horde full of people dressed like Zelda NPC villagers, they almost look like lost pizza delivery boys at Comic Con. Sure, there are many hunters who aren't cosplaying like Genshin Impact characters, but even the most Nike'd out teenager wearing neon green White Boy™ winter shorts has a chestplate peeking out from under his one-stitch T-shirt. 

Because while unlicensed hunters aren't allowed to carry around specialized weapons in public, no one's going to card someone over clothing articles like they're the American public school system (how could they, when they know that all Hunters discreetly wear steel clothes even while off-duty, because their jobs had conditioned them to constantly go overkill with safety measures?). 

"Number four-ninety-two." The receptionist calls, and a hunter with a mohawk leaning against the wall swaggers upright, and walks to the nearest available scanner. 

"Jin-Chul registered you as four-ninety-three, right?" Jin-Woo rounds to Ashborn. "So you're next," he informs, nudging Ashborn's knee with his own. The two of them are huddled close near the walls, avoiding the taken chairs and the swarm of people lounging about.

"Think I can get an A-rank?" Ashborn asks. And if it was anyone else who had said that, it'd sound like A-Rank was a barely unachievable goal of theirs. However, it's Ashborn: a confident-sounding Ashborn. And Jin-Woo knows that Ashborn isn't asking if he could even reach A-Rank, and rather, if Ashborn can control his flow of mana to hit a specific rank he wanted. 

Arrogant bastard. Humans crave for the power of just an A-Rank, of a high score, while Ashborn, who's already seen it all, treats the entire system like a game.

He's unable to suppress a smirk. Well. It's not like he doesn't feel the same way, as well. 

"Yeah, sure," Jin-Woo finally responds to Ashborn's playful inquiry, thinking about how Ashborn unscrewed the frost elf's head like a cork opener, while Thomas Andres, a S-Rank, couldn't even get close. 

Ashborn snorts. "It feels like our positions switched. When we first started, it was me being the source of our power, and you being the parasite-"

"It was a symbiotic relationship since I played the role of a vessel." He retaliates, while staring in offended™ due to Ashborn's insurmountable audacity. 

"And now, you're the host of this commensalism relationship," he finishes, tone pink with nostalgia, as if he didn't just backhand Jin-Woo. 

"I noted your difference in describing the two of us."  Jin-Woo sneers.

"So. During evaluation, at most I should get a high rank since you were an S-Rank while you were leeching off of me," Ashborn hums, before his face twitches grimly. "Wow. That'll be annoying," he says decisively. "Ranks, fame, clout-"

"Please don't use the term 'clout' ever again-"

"Are all useless when I can just leech them off of you," he nods towards Jin-Woo, and Jin-Woo rolls his eyes. "Let's make a bet to see if I can cheat my way around the instrument," a smirk. "I'll try for the B-Rank."

Jin-Woo makes a face. "No. With the mana you have, there's no way you'll be able to hide it enough past high S-Ranks." Even with Ashborn's capabilities, he doubts Ashborn can hide his massive ocean of mana. Honestly, he wonders if the machinery will measure Ashborn's entire existence as a blob of mana (because Ashborn isn't like a human who contains mana; if anything, he seems to be made of it, given his form that flutters like absences of colours and the black wisps that often curl off his shoulders like ventilated smoke). 

"It'd be a lot easier if I was an E-Rank like you once were," Ashborn proclaims, sounding utterly lackluster, clearly unstressed about whatever result he gets. "All I got was your personality but no perks."

"My personality is a perk-"

"Anyways. I'll at least aim for B-Rank," Ashborn casually steamrolls over Jin-Woo's complaints, like he's not broaching the impossible concept of precise mana control that most mortal mages would deem impossible. 

"If it's a bet, then I want a reward for when I win," Jin-Woo hums, nudging his face next to Ashborn's, and Ashborn narrows his eyes, clearly aware that even he'll have trouble compressing his mana to a low rank. 

"I'll stop quoting Barbie movies." Ashborn finally offers. 

"You have to never call me 'Barbie'." He tacks on sternly, lungs itching with embarrassment for even asking this. The things he do for his mental health.

"Now that's too far, especially for a challenge that's essentially impossible."

"Your fault for bringing this up in the first place."

Ashborn flicks Jin-Woo's forehead, looking ready to bury his pointer finger straight through his frontal lobe, when a sudden crackle interrupts their ping-pong bickering. 

"Four-ninety-three, Associate Six is available," the receptionist shouts, their voice easily picked by a hunter's ears. 

Jin-Woo grins. "Go E-rank, go." Ashborn promptly flips him off, before peering over the shoulders of others, and edging his way to his appropriate station. 

After observing Ashborn squeeze his way into the right aisle, he laxes against the wall, and begins to fiddle with his phone to stave off his boredom. He pulls up the Kakao groupchat between his family.

Hesitantly, he makes a new group with the same people, and after a moment of unease, adds Jin-ho this time.

Immediately, his sister sends the first message into the groupchat: 

> notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests: what

> jinwoo: wdym what

> notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests: ??? you're actually insufferable

Jin-Woo smirks.

> yoo jin-ho: ??

> Park Kyung-Hye: Oh, who's this?

> yoo jin-ho: im yoo jinho?

> Park Kyung-Hye: Are you Jin-Woo's friend that he talks about all the time?

> yoo jin-ho: jinwoo talks about me all the time? 🥺

> jinwoo: it's unfortunate that only my mom would ever listen to my complaining. you use that emoji again, and i'll holepunch your skull to the size of its eyes. 

> yoo jin-ho: :(((( >:(

> Park Kyung-Hye: Jin-Woo! No!!!

Jin-Woo doesn't know how to feel about his mom talking to him like an exasperated owner with a naughty pet. 

> jinwoo: by the way, i made this groupchat because qin yu wants to go to the mall this afternoon and told me to invite jinho. mom, you're free, right?

> Park Kyung-Hye: As long as we return home before dinner. We haven't done a family outing in such a long time! And I would love to meet your friend, Jinwoo!

> yoo jin-ho: !!! :) i look forward to meeting you too, tysm for inviting me! jinwoo has been very kind to me and talked many good things about yall!

> notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests: i literally do not believe that. 

Jin-Woo wonders how Jin-Ho will feel if he learned that he was invited as a compromise chip between him and Ashborn.

> yoo jin-ho: haha. jinwoo just likes to tease me

> notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests: its okay. just say bully.

> yoo jin-ho: haha, hyung just likes to show his affection differently!

Jin-Woo inwardly laughs at that blatant lie.

Meanwhile, his sister outwardly laughs at Jin-Ho's blatant lie:

> notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests: LMAO

> yoo jin-ho: also, who's qinyu? is he your brother? the twin? is. is he chinese?

Jin-Woo wonders if it's okay to let Jin-Ho continue to believe that Ashborn really is a biological twin. He then decides that he honestly can't be bothered to correct him.

> yoo jin-ho: is qin yu not added to this groupchat?

> jinwoo: he doesn't have a phone.

> yoo jin-ho: ???hUH??s.// how?

> notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests: love how jinwoo only replies to one out of the four questions you asked. oppa, youre the type to fail those csat quesions that have more than one part in them.

Jin-Woo scowls at his sister's message. Therefore, he chooses to ignore it, and reply to Jin-Ho instead, as a more mature version of just blocking her.

> jinwoo: he only really came into existence yesterday.

> yoo jin-ho: ???

> notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests: oh. so jinho is one of those Tumblr users who type like they're having a chronic longterm stroke

> yoo jin-ho: ,,,i want to ask if this is jinah, the namer of our guild, but your user sounds like a threat

> notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests: it is.

Immediately, a plethora of messages lags the entire app. He squints, and scrolls through the current of messaging of just Jin-Ah and Jin-Ho verbally battling to the death.

Then: notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests changed groupchat's name to 'Sung Squad + Jinho'

> yoo jin-ho: what am I. A third wheel?

> notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests: no. you're that one guy who shows up at family holiday dinners with zero invitation and we all think you're the friend of some other family member, but at the end of the day when we ask who you are, nobody has an answer.

> yoo jin-ho: am i getting bullied? bc if so, then you're definitely jinwoo's sister. 

> notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests: absolutely not. im hazing you to see if you're worth oppa's time, you sung simp.

And it seems like his mom is no longer on her phone to see Jin-Ah's attitude, because Jin-Ah continues typing with reckless abandon and zero fear of their wooden kitchen spoon. 

> notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests: lol. 

> yoo jin-ho: your brutal bluntness tells me that you really are blood-related with him. 

A surprising pinch of rest happens between the two children's rapid machine-gun paced messaging.

And, because Jin-Ah woke up today and chose violence:

> notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests: i guess your stupid earnestness makes you worth being his friend

Jin-Woo rolls his eyes at the twos' disgruntled connection of relatively mutual disdain for each other.

His phone suddenly buzzes in his hands, and he realizes his sister sent him a private message through Kakao.  

He reluctantly opens it.

> notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests: he's funny. teasing him is like teasing you, except i dont live in fear of starving

He squints. 

> sung jinwoo: lol.

> sung jinwoo: you're not getting dinner tonight

He sees indication of his sister about to reply, and before he can instantly block her, he hears a chorus of uproar erupt around him, and he glances up, vaguely alarmed. 

"An S-rank?" Various shouts along the same line explode from the surmountable population around them. 

It can't be.

He still foolishly clings onto the hope of a lowkey Sung Qin Yu that's one of Korea's many E-Ranks.  

"Which aisle?"

More than a dozen people answer at once: "Six!"

Goddammit.

And to his horror, he sees a very familiar build near the faraway aisle where everyone's staring at, being led away. Clearly, the workers are going to evaluate if Ashborn truly counts as a S-Rank.

He inwardly sighs, and shuffles closer to the wall, being ignored by the mass of people who are exploding with commentary and excited tones, all synchronously leaning towards Ashborn who's lazily strolling to the backroom of the HQ. 

Jin-Woo opens his phone, but finds himself staring blankly at the screen, unable to think of anything but the inevitable onslaught of public attention. He's already inwardly dreading when he has to deal with press. No shade or judgment towards those hardworking reporters, but he's usually five seconds from rearranging the nearest cameraman's guts like their skeletal configuration is an ethnic woman's spice rack. 

Suddenly, his phone buzzes in his hand, and he glances down to find Jin-Ho tagging him in the groupchat.

> yoo jin-ho: i just heard a rumor that there's a new s-rank in korea! @sung jin-woo, why do i think it's qin yu? is he a hunter?

> notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests: ah. love that there are reporters camped outside of our street again, even though we literally have nothing to do with an unsourced rumor. @jinwoo stop by familymart, they restocked the icecream every sunday

And wow. News travel fast.

> jin-woo: how should i know. also, where'd you hear this rumor? also, no icecream for you. ik u gave songil random pictures of me again.

> yoo jin-ho: sorry for associating literally any outstanding hunter news with something you did without notifying literally anyone >:(. 

> notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests: jinwoo. this is why people hate the rich.

Jin-Woo, while completely ignoring his sister in favour of reading Jin-Ho's message, has a wise and overwhelming premonition that Jin-Ho shouldn't get close with Jin-Chul, or else they'll most definitely bond over Jin-Woo's spontaneous and semi-suicidal behaviourisms.

> yoo jin-ho: song il? the girl we went to dungeons with? bro. why dont i get your photos?

> notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests: you know her?

> jin-woo: irrelevant. both of you. tell me how this rumour is spreading.

He can already sense the oncoming migraine from dealing with media, because he sure as hell can't let Ashborn do that on his own, not to mention, when he looks exactly like him. 

> yoo jin-ho: it's bc there's a popular mukbang streamer who's getting evaluated today, and she was streaming to all her viewers of her in the lobby. you can see people losing it in the background over an s-rank lol, so the news is traveling super fast bc of her fanbase

It's literally been less than literally a minute since the announcement of a potential S-rank. Honestly, that's some impressive networking.

He shifts his other hand out of his pocket, to type another message.

> jin-woo: jinho, be prepared to register our newest Ahjin member.

> yoo jin-ho: dw, i prepped for this hours ago, after having to fight with soohyun as to why she cant stay as the third member of ahjin

Jin-Woo raises a brow at this. 

> jin-woo: does she rlly wanna stay that bad? 

Sure, he originally told Jin-Ho they were going to replace his cousin, but that's because he didn't think it'd matter that much to someone who was being nothing more than a permanent benchwarmer. He figured might as well drop her in that case just to make their lineup cleaner.

> yoo jin-ho: enough to bang on my door to have a talk about it not over text

He pauses, tapping his phone against his masked chin. Wasn't Soo-Hyun a movie star? Actress? Or something whose livelihood was closely tied with the media?

He smirks, and reinvents his plans. 

> sung jin-woo: how does soohyun feel about being the unofficial PR manager of our guild? 

It's not like Jinah needs PR at all, not when Jin-Woo is the face of it. However, he doesn't mind making unofficial or useless roles for his guild. After all, he doesn't really care if Soo-Hyun stays or not. (1): kicking her out feels like too much work if she's willing to throw a fuss over it; he's seen her personality before, and she fears zero backlash from even god themself. And (2): Jin-Ho genuinely likes and gets along with her, so if Jin-Ho wants her to stay, he doesn't mind, especially when Jin-Ho is the vice president of Ahjin.

After seconds of silence, Jin-Ho finally sends a response.

> yoo jin-ho: are you trying to get out of dealing with press? i knew it. this DOES have something to do wtih qinyu doesnt it? you liar. ik ur trying to dump adult stuff onto jinchul, and this is just you being evil again, isn't it?

Another pregnant pause.

> yoo jin-ho: soohyun says yes, and she said that having the most marginal tie w/you is the best thing that's ever happened to her. fr. she needs to expand her social circle.

Jin-Woo doesn't bother responding to that, and instead, laughs. 

"S...another S-rank-" the assistant chokes, and glances over at the masked figure who's still slouched, still undeterred by the results of his evaluation. "Oh my god." She's witnessing history, witnessing a rise of a star-

Park Chaewon swallows, and glances up from the measurements, while making eye contact with her manager who's staring at the youthful figure with awe. Holy shit.

Immediately, her senses tingle and her curiosity and investment instinct peaks like she's a Redditor ready to exploit GameStop to pull a middlefinger against Wall Street. 

She's one of the first people to know about this newest Hot Pocket of clout. Chaewon should immediately try and build connections.

At first, she treated Qin Yu as any other Hunter, one that probably lied around C to B rank, or, if they're lucky, at A-Rank. But either way, she didn't anticipate much from Qin Yu, past thinking that he was rather odd for a nondescript hunter. Because one: what the fuck is his name. Two: he's dressed like a GoGirlsGame avatar with his Angry Bird branded glasses and normal outfit that feels severely out of place amongst the other Hunters.

Chaewon assumed that if he lacked equipment, he's probably not a high-status or money-making Hunter. Or, he's one of those second-generation rich kids who treats Hunting as a hobby, given that this man is currently wearing Adidas slides like he's at YMCA or at his dad's private rooftop pool. 

So to her, Qin Yu had little impression past his odd atmosphere and strangely nonchalant attitude. 

Then, their instruments couldn't measure Qin Yu's rank. 

That's when she really took a good look at the nondescript young adult, who swaggered up to them, dressed like a middle-class fifty-year-old man at a Korean barbecue cookout. 

And just now, Qin Yu measured up to be a S-Rank.

A S-Rank.

Suddenly, Qin Yu's odd and almost egotistical sangfroid feels less like one spun from inexperience or arrogance, but rather, from his self-confidence and capabilities. 

Chaewon clears her throat, ready to make a lasting impression on Qin Yu (S-rank, she could get in touch with a S-Rank). And Qin Yu looks young, and she's sure he's an unknown gem, given that if he wasn't, she would've recalled such a memorable name. Meaning he must've been a nobody before this, a type of person that's easy for someone like Chaewon, who's dealt with a multitude of circles, to befriend and offer a guiding hand through something as overwhelming as fame and press. "Congratulations, sir-" 

"So this is all?" This Sung Qin Yu intervenes, voice cracking throatily. 

Chaewon blinks, startled and put-off, and glances over at Manager Lee, who appears equally distraught by Qin Yu's lack of reaction and brutally indifferent demeanor. Qin Yu turns to them when neither of them answered. 

"Sorry, was there anything else?" He asks innocently, and he-

His initially absent demeanor feels nothing but lofty now that they know he's a high-ranking Hunter, but he doesn't sound rude or condescending, just- 

Distracted.

He keeps glancing back towards the hallway that they entered from, and unlike most high-ranking Hunters (and he's not even high ranking, he's S-Rank-), he doesn't appear stressed or excited, ready to capture the attention and looks of other envious Hunters. Rather, he looks like he's being pressed for time like a college student who has calculated to do their entire four-page essay 49 minutes before it's due, while continuing to procrastinate by doing all of their errands first in spite of their approaching deadline for a false sense of productivity to justify their lack of worth ethic. 

"Yes, this is the only test and we'll prepare your license." Manager Lee interrupts, stepping in with a large smile.

Chaeown inwardly snarls at Manager Lee's sharkish grin; clearly he also sees the potential in the naivety of a boy who had just entered adulthood. "Park Chaewon," she stiffens over being called out, "go prepare his card."

She smiles.

She wants to peel off her stocking, fill it up with rocks, and beat her superior to death with it.

It's obvious that he wants to get Qin Yu alone. Chaewon is the same, but Manager Lee is viciously clingy when it comes to power- can't he let a poor corporate slave have her life-changing opportunities? Not for the first time throughout her career, Chaewon, who has instincts honed through five years of retail, contemplates Murder™. 

However, unwilling to lose her job due to personal feelings (she doesn't even get sick days, so they probably won't cut her slack for manslaughter), she shoves aside her internal, evil monologue, and clicks away in her heels after giving both men a quick bow.

Chaewon lightly closes the door behind her without slamming it shut the way she wants to do with Manager Lee's jaw, and makes her way to her desk. Quickly, she begins to pull up Qin Yu's information on her work computer.

Protected by the cast of her screen, she scowls as she fills out the draft for a license, her eyes darting back to the backroom where Qin Yu and Manager Lee must be waiting. Whatever. Chaewon is positive she can still get Qin Yu's number- she just has to play nice and pocket herself in Qin Yu's good graces. 

Sighing as she saves the information she just typed up, she impatiently rushes back to the backroom door, ankle rolling in her heels. She loudly creaks open the door, capturing the attention of Manager Lee who smiles grimly at her reappearance.

She gives a refreshing smile while mentally disintegrating Manager Lee's teeth for breakfast, and Qin Yu looks at her, unreadable given his face mask and-

And really odd Angry Birds sunglasses.

"Anyways," Manager Lee clears his throat. "You have my number-" bastard. At this, Chaewon glances at Qin Yu, a fresh hunk of meat, and instantly scolds herself for not having her own floral print card like a desperate small business owner, "so call me soon, so that I can make sure you meet up with many high-ranking Hunters," Qin Yu glances at them, and without saying anything, Chaewon already knows that Mr. Lee has captured Qin Yu's attention.

No shit.

Hunters are basically justifiably morally bankrupt celebrities; who doesn't want to auction off their autograph on Craigslist?

Smug about Qin Yu's acknowledgment, Manager Lee continues, "this way, you can easily and quickly come in contact with others of your caliber." Inwardly, Chaewon scoffs. Qin Yu being an obvious newbie, wouldn't know that the high-rankers would rush to find him, rather than the opposite way around; Manager Lee is just trying to worm his way into their circle. "I'll network you around. I'll show you the ropes- I may be a retired Hunter, but I still know my way around how things are done, especially in a political sense! I have reaches with many individuals, especially being the manager of the Hunter licensing." 

Qin Yu tilts his head. "Would they not find me first?"

Chaewon smirks at Qin Yu's innocent inquiry; looks like he's not that stupid. 

Sure, the less Qin Yu knows the better it is for her, but she's willing to sacrifice the easy mode of things if it means seeing her manager get shat on. 

After all, she has a printed photo of Manager Lee's face on the dartboard above her bed, so even the smallest inclination against him is a sign of a good and morally righteous character.

However, Manager Lee shakes his head. "They once would've, but after Hunter Sung Jin-Woo's appearance, even S-Ranks, while they're still sought out for, are held to even higher standards. I can't guarantee that other S-rankers or high guild members will try and seek you out- you'll have lower S-Ranks or A-Rank leaders trying to find you, instead."

Chaewon huffs, humour filtering out from her nose. Lower S-Ranks, my ass. Even the lowest S-Rank is a Category 1 Natural Disaster in their own right, and really, there's no solidified concept of a 'Lower S-Rank,' it's really just all S-Ranks with Hunter Sung Jin-Woo being the sole differentiation between them, since he's his own league.

She knows that Manager Lee is well aware that guild members will do anything to get the next S-Rank in their hands, even if they're nothing against Hunter Sung Jin-Woo. Because Hunter Sung Jin-Woo has his own guild, and doesn't even want to expand it because he doesn't need extras when he can main DPS and support all on his own. Meaning he purposefully isolated himself from the competition within the guild's social circle, leaving the original supply and demand relationship between guilds and S-Ranks as it originally was. And Manager Lee should know this- he's just purposefully downplaying the value of an S-Rank to hook Qin Yu under his belt.

"Huh." Qin Yu sounds almost contemplative, and Manager Lee looks at him with warm pride, and Chaewon wants to out her boss' bullshit out of mild pity for Qin Yu, and out of total spite for Manager Lee in general.  "Do you know Jin-Woo?" Qin Yu inquires, sounding interested for the first time in this conversation.

Manager freezes a bit, and Chaewon's mental narrative backpedals for a moment. 

"Well. Hunter Sung Jin-Woo, as you may have heard, is more of a lone wolf. He doesn't get involved with many Hunters in general," Manager Lee finally chuckles, once realizing that Qin Yu doesn't seem to pick on either of their obvious discomfort and unspoken scorn. 

Chaewon, deciding to put herself in a kind and good mentoring light, smiles nicely at Qin Yu, "be careful of mentioning Hunter Sung Jin-Woo so informally. Or of any Hunter, to be exact. But especially with him. You may be a S-Rank, but Hunter Sung Jin-Woo is a very special case." And maybe Qin Yu does have a bigger ego than she initially thought, if he's immediately talking about people out of their league without honorifics. Inwardly, her evaluation of Qin Yu has fallen; just because he's an S-Rank, he thinks he can refer to Sung Jin-Woo so easily?

However, Chaewon is sure Qin Yu isn't a bad kid; just a bit ignorant of the way the world works. Besides, he doesn't seem impressed by Manager Lee's offers (though, Chaewon is sure that it's only outwardly for appearances' sake. Who wouldn't be tempted by the promise of connections, even if they did know better? She's seen him flatter A-Ranks into sharing their contacts with him). 

Qin Yu doesn't say anything in response to her advice, and Chaewon mentally sighs, knowing that his ego is going to bite him back in the ass at one point. "Anyways, Hunter Sung Qin-Yu, please come to the front so we can take a picture of you for your license." Qin Yu nods, and Chaewon steps back out of the room, and leads him towards her desk, straightening her posture when she notices other secretaries glancing up in curiosity towards him, who had earlier stirred up a ruckus.

She gestures for him to sit at the chair on the opposite side of her own, as she slides into her seat. "Okay. You have to take off your accessories," she informs, shaking her mouse to wake up the computer. She tilts the camera that's attached to the PC. "That means no glasses, large accessories, hats, or anything that obscures your face. If you normally wear prescription glasses, keep them on." Chaewon recites dully. She tears her eyes away from the screen, and turn on the lights behind the computer. 

"Okay, stare at this black dot-" her eyes flit up from her screen to glance at Hunter Qin Yu's positioning. 

Chaewon freezes.

She stares for a very Long™ Second. 

What the absolute shit, my guy.

"...Hunter Sung Jin-Woo?" She finally chokes, eyes darting about the face staring at her, words buried underneath the chatter of the background. Because what the absolute fuck. That's-

She can't even comprehend-

Hunter Sung Jin-Woo looks up from the chair upon her words. "Hm?" He hums. 

She stares. "😃❗️❓ ❓❓"

He takes a moment. "...me?" He points to himself, and she doesn't even know how to respond because is he dicking with her? She's being dicked with because who the hell else-

"No. I'm his brother," the person in front of her casually corrects her previous squeak, eyes flitting to the camera.

"????"

Chaewon's entire cognitive processing center commits cellular apoptosis, exploding every single thought within their five mile radius.

Finally: 

"You're Hunter Sung Jin-Woo's brother?" She chokes. And he looks exactly like Jin-Woo. Forget brothers, that's a clone. A spiritual apparition of Mary and Jesus Christ's blessing amongst humanity, a carved Archaic sculpture of the world's most precious individ-

What the shit. 

Qin Yu nods shortly, seemingly unbothered by Chaewon's silent screech and very sudden and unwarranted religious epiphany.

Because. Because he- that- it looks exactly like Sung Jin-Woo, that Chaewon genuinely thought it was him, who snuck his way back to retest or- or something-

A twin hadn't even crossed her mind-

Then:

"...so. Are you going to take a picture?" Qin Yu finally asks when she just stares at him, flabberghasted and absolutely thrown out of orbit like a character who was introduced to the system outside of the stimulation of reality as they know it.  "Or..."

"Yes, yes- yes?" She chokes, clearing her throat, and glances at the computer, eyes rattling and cursor shaking on the screen as she pinches her mouse hard. She swallows, and thinks about every single thought she had for Qin Yu earlier.

Oh fuck.

Her organs shrivel in shame, as nausea clogs her entire nervous system. 

Holy shit. I just nearly ended my whole career. Thank God she didn't outwardly show her feelings (and she's finding that for an atheist, she's been praying a fuckton within the past ten minutes). It makes so much sense, giving context to Qin Yu's demeanor, behaviour, and attitude towards them. 

She quietly takes the picture, her previous plan of gaining a momentum of friendly interaction with Korea's newest S-Rank, faltering from her dampening confidence. 

Sung Jin-Woo's brother. Sung isn't an uncommon surname, so she didn't think much about it, especially when his first name was more eyecatching than the characters before it, but, oh my god.

"Okay, Hunter Sung Qin Yu," she rasps, throat sore because god fucking deplumbed her soul from the pits of her heart. She listlessly prints out Qin Yu's license, and their environment's loud chattering drowns out the pervasive awkwardness that Chaewon's sure only she's feeling. In front of her, sits a replica of Sung Jin-Woo (and oh my god, Qin Yu is also a S-Rank. Suddenly, him being a S-Rank feels less momentous, less of an outstanding and grand achievement in comparison to being the Sung Jin-Woo's twin brother-), who is currently picking at his nails. "Here's your license!" She croaks, snatching up the slip of paper that jets out of the groaning machine.

He blinks. "Is the license not in a card?" He curiously tilts his head, staring at his black and white picture. 

A newbie. So he is still a newbie- or maybe a bit...well...uneducated? "We'll mail you the card in less than two business days," she says, masking her confusion (because even if you don't know anything about the Hunter's system, wouldn't it be expected that government licensed cards wouldn't be printed on the spot?). "This is just a temporary one that lets you immediately enter dungeons without a card." 

"Oh. I see," he accepts the paper, stuffing it into his pocket without a second glance. "Is there anything else?"

"Uh. No sir," she answers wanly, eyes darting over him.

"Sir? But I'm younger than you?" 

She looks at him, and at his crystal expression and cocked head. "...you have to be playing with me." She blurts with zero forethought. No matter how innocent that expression is, there's no way he's not comprehending that he microwaved the last atom composing her walnut brain at this moment. He has to know how close she is to losing it at this moment, and if he doesn't, well, then no wonder he chose a brawns over brains job. 

He smiles at this, bright, beaming, and she's never seen Hunter Sung Jin-Woo smile but if this is what it should look like-

Illegal. Feels like she's held at gunpoint, or infected by radioactive waste. His smile is an absolute biohazard against humanity with common side effects being visual impairment.

"I don't understand what you mean?"

Liar. She just knows. She can tell, she can sense it (really: you meet all kinds of people in retail, even shiteating fuckers like these-). 

However, being the survivalist that preserved her way through nightshifts at Lotte Mart and clawed her way to a job that doesn't pay her the barline of South Korea's labor rights, she smiles brightly in turn. "Sorry, that was inappropriate of me, please excuse me my unprofessional behaviour," she bows slightly, but Qin Yu simply smiles even wider at that, as if aware of her thought process.

Fucker. 

She can't believe she thought this guy was naive.

"I ask you to forgive me," she finishes politely.

"No." He instantly says. 

"I-" she stares, absolutely taken back.

She stares.

He stares back.

"Fair enough." She listlessly replies.

"Okay." Qin Yu continues like he didn't just strangle all societally acceptable mannerisms with absolutely zero regards for neither South Korea's status quo or her remaining will to live. "Will that be all?" He chirps, perching his carnival-esque glasses back onto his head. 

And Chaewon hesitates as she sees him stand up from his chair. "Well." She clears her throat, out of sheer impulsive: "I'm sure you don't need guidance or anything, but if...would you..." and suddenly, she feels extremely foolish for trying to offer her help (because he has Hunter Sung Jin-Woo, who might as well be a whole social circle, a whole ecosystem, the cornerstone of an entire network on his own). Qin Yu, who's snapping back on his mask and shades, isn't even sparing her a second glance.

Shit. She should've kept their mouth shut. Or at least, should've-

I'm literally never talking again, what the shit my dude. 

"Would you like my number?" She weakly finishes her statement, fully regretting opening her mouth in the first place. 

Qin Yu looks up, readjusting his surgical mask. "I don't have a phone."

Her bloodstream slows into molten lava, and she nearly collapses on her desk.

Holy shit, he's actually so rude- Or at least, it's extremely embarrassing to be turned down in such a fashion. This little shit. He had to have inputted a phone number- there literally is a number in the database underneath his information, literally a number.

If he didn't want anything to do with her, he could've just said so instead of giving an humiliatingly obvious excuse. How could he not have a phone? She refuses to accept the fact that someone who talks like every American TikTok influencer doesn't have a phone.

However, she holds her tongue, and nods with a plastered smile. "Well. Thank you for your services, Hunter Sung Qin Yu," she raises her voice, and this time, she's loud enough for the people right beside them, focused on forming their own licenses, to fall quiet. "I'm glad that Korea has an ELEVENTH S-RANKED HUNTER," she charmingly smiles, as if she didn't just splatter Qin Yu with blood for all the dogs to tear him apart.

Qin Yu however, to her annoyance, doesn't seem deterred by the sudden and deadpanned silence around them, and instead, chuckles, and for a moment, her own brain enters anaphylactic shock as it stupidly inserts the recollection of his smile in correspondence to his carefree laugh. Her brain is literally committing unintentional suicide via stupidity.

"Of course, thank you for the card," Qin Yu says cheerfully, knocking his glasses farther up his sloped nose, walking away from the desk.

Ah shit. She continues grinning at the retreating back.

I'm turning in my retirement form.

"Korea's Eleventh S-Ranked Hunter." 

Even though that one sentence was shouted from the opposing corner of the lobby-

It was loud enough for any Hunter worth their penny to hear without even trying. 

Dammit.

And he doesn't know what Qin Yu did to piss someone off enough to blast all their attention onto him, but Jin-Woo immediately senses danger. He glances up from his phone, and freezes.

There's a very familiar figure fighting its way towards him, crowded by people watching him quietly, and he sees other people glance around at the subject of attention coming their way, clearly trying to find the source of the man's interest. 

Jin-Woo, with great displeasure, has enough self-awareness to know that it's him. He! He is the source of this asshole's interest.

Grimly, he takes a step back, and Ashborn strides forward. "You-" He begins accusingly, unsure as to what he'll even say next. For some reason, he feels wholly betrayed by this sudden influx of public attention, even though it's not even Ashborn's fault.

"We're going down together," Ashborn hisses, though, his voice is clearly caught by everyone around them. After all, even the lower ranking Hunters would be able to capture their conversation from less than a mile away. 

He lied. All of this Ashborn's fault.

Jin-Woo can already hear the dull topic of whether or not he, the newest S-Rank's friend, is going to go up and test.

Is this how Jin-Chul feels? He thinks about all the times he used Jin-Chul as a scapegoat for the press just to avoid directly talking to the people.

"Sir! Sir-!" he hears associates from aside clearly trying to stop Ashborn, doing that thing where they try and stall them for as long as possible until the nearby Hunters and even biased associates can call over guild leaders to net the newest S-rank.

"You promised to be an F-rank," he mocks accusingly, cringing as Ashborn reaches for his wrist.

"And what? Leave you alone at the top? You'd be lonely." He yanks back, but Ashborn holds on fast, clearly determined to drag him into his mess. 

Definitely how Jin-Chul feels.

For a moment, he contemplates feeling bad for Jin-Chul.

He then realizes that if he wants to sympathize with his ex-bodyguard, that means admitting that he's definitely the main variable as to why that man is going to go out early with a chronic heart condition, and decides to just not go through all that, and spare himself the self-reflection.

"Anyways. I bet you're happy that I'm acknowledged on the same level of you," Ashborn chirps.

Jin-Woo clicks his tongue, stiffening by his odd words and by the fact that they're arguing in public.

"You lost the bet," he remarks with falsified casualness, repressing the heat scraping the walls of his throat and irritating his tongue.

Ashborn's lilting tone however, sounds very earnest, and very complacent, and therefore, sounding extremely guiltless despite being the source of all of Jin-Woo's problems today. Bastard. "Mhm. So. What do you want? I'll give you anything except for dropping the Barbie title." 

Jin-Woo frowns at this. 

"Hunter Qin Yu!" A boisterous voice interrupts their conversation, and Jin-Woo glances over, eyes glazing over with vague familiarity. He squints. Where has he... "I see you have a friend?"

"Ah." Ashborn says.

A pause.

"Right. It's...you..." He points, and Jin-Woo chokes upon the old man's faltering smile as Qin Yu struggles to recall his name. "...from earlier!" He attempts to salvage the conversation, which as expected, makes it worse. 

"Manager Lee Dong-Ik!" The man chuckles good-naturedly, and Jin-Woo nearly snaps his fingers. Right. Him! The guy. That one. That guy. Right. He remembers that manager- he had approached Jin-Woo himself after his own test as well. "Of course, you seemed to have gathered a lot of attention, huh?" He glances around them.

"An accident," Ashborn says apologetically.

"Like you," Jin-Woo immediately and abruptly mutters with little forethought.

Ashborn's grip on his wrist tightens, and Jin-Woo has half the mind to detangle his entire nervous system right in public.

"Well. You must be Hunter Qin Yu's friend-" he turns to Jin-Woo.

"Absolutely not." He immediately refutes, wholly offended by this slander.

"You-" Ashborn gasps, affronted.

"Ah, so definitely friends," Lee Dong-Ik nods with an almost understanding tone, when Jin-Woo is very sure he's misreading something, since he knows that he must be radiating homicidal intent at the moment. "Anyways, Hunter Qin Yu, would you like to discuss farther with us about your future and career path. If okay with you, I'd like to retrieve your number from the database to keep in contact-"

"You have a number?" Jin-Woo swivels his head over in astonishment.

"Lmao? No?" Ashborn looks at him like he's dumb.

Jin-Woo hates that this alien lifeform who's old enough to be the missing link of the Homo Sapien race, is currently verbalizing 'lmao' like it's a typical word that can be used in spoken language. 

"Wait, but then. What?" Jin-Woo processes his answer.

"I had Jin-Chul's," Ashborn says flippantly, explaining the unspoken inquiry.

Ah. It seems like exploiting Jin-Chul's existence is not limited to just him.

"Excuse me?" A cough captures both of their attentions. It's the Manager. The Manager who Jin-Woo already forgotten the name of. Again. "Hunter Qin Yu? Do you have an answer? Don't worry, I'm sure you'll be very pleased with my list of conn-"

"Oh. I'm good," Ashborn refutes with artificial politeness, and the Manager freezes. "I already got my meal ticket," he shakes Jin-Woo's limp wrist, and Jin-Woo narrows his eyes, shoulders flinching up to his ears. He yanks his hand behind his back, only to stare in disappointment as Ashborn unfastens his grip with ease, thus maneuvering around any sudden unbalance, as if he was expecting Jin-Woo's move. 

"Stop screwing around," he responds darkly.

Ashborn laughs, and it sounds like windchimes and echoes of mockery that feels in line with every circus soundtrack available on Spotify. "Jin-Woo-"

He scowls. "Way to blow our cover." He flares, ignoring the way the people around them go mute upon the sound of his name. Jin-Woo isn't an uncommon name, but his identity itself is, meaning anyone is going to automatically think of S-Rank Hunter Sung Jin-Woo upon hearing it even if it feels out of context. "You have a thing for the dramatics, don't you," and it should've came out accusatory-

It doesn't.

It comes out playful, and everyone can hear it, even without the pervasive silence that had cursed the masses. If Jin-Woo gave a shit about what others' thought, he might've felt slightly embarrassed. 

However, he doesn't give a shit about what others think- the only person he here he cares about is Ashborn, and he can feel Ashborn's smug satisfaction tickle his fingers, because the bastard clearly thinks that riling Jin-Woo up is an Olympic sport, a challenge that's worthy of praise. 

"You can act all emo as much as you want-" and Ashborn tucks his stupid, Angry Birds glasses into his hair, and yanks off his mask-

Their surroundings are screaming once again, the volume and hysteria a sudden and jarring contrast to the hollow silence just seconds before, but the atmosphere feels different than before-

"But that only makes me look better," Ashborn laughs, as if sensing Jin-Woo's flare of muddled emotions. 

And before Ashborn tarnishes his reputation as an obnoxious asshole with his face (and Christ, last time it was him with his naked body and why does Ashborn always do this), Jin-Woo jerkily yanks off his matching red Elmo sunglasses he got out of a Happy Meal's box five years ago, and also unhooks the mask around his mouth because he refuses to be outdone by even his own self-

He's not one for the theatrics as much as Ashborn wants to believe, but he certainly won't lose in a game concerning it. 

And there's someone who's trying to grab for him, before being swept up by a new wave of Hunters who are shouting over themselves-

(and everyone's so loud, and Jin-Woo would glare at them if not for his attention being captured by Ashborn's humoured grin that makes him feel ill because it almost looks familiar, when he used to tease Jin-Ah and joked with Lee Ju-Hee about whether or not he'll make it out alive next time-)

"Dumbass." Jin-Woo rasps, ignoring the way that people are now holding up cameras because now there are two of him just standing in the inconspicuous corner of the lobby, bubbled in their own atmosphere that feels serene in contrast to the loud and erratic atmosphere of everyone outside of their personal party of just two.  

(and this feels right, almost. that nobody but ashborn can match his tempo, standing casually in the lobby of a world that feels unoriginal and distant)

"Yeah. And? Now that people know that we're related- technically and biologically, what guild is going to want to rope me into theirs?" Ashborn's eyes crinkle in a friendly manner (and Jin-Woo doesn't feel envious of the easy manner he's able to do it with; he instead feels almost relaxed that at least one of them can).

"...Hunter Sung Jin-Woo?" The bland manager murmurs faintly, staring at them with an ashen expression and trembling pupils that seem to rattle his sockets. "You-" he chokes, and his pale pallor suddenly flushes with confusion and vague fear. Jin-Woo frowns, mildly confused by his strange reaction.

However, Jin-Woo doesn't have time for him, since his attention, mental stability, and goddamn rising blood pressure are all in the tight grip of Ashborn's existence. Ashborn, whose eyes are smiling and fixed solely on him. "I'm always by your side." Ashborn says.

That last statement-

It-

Jin-Woo's throat spasms, suddenly and inexplicably dry of moisture, and he has to look away, his eyes blistering from the flames in Ashborn's eyes, from the intense sunshine of his voice. His lashes tremble, shading his gaze before Ashborn's soul scrambles his brains and deep-fries the whites of his eyes. 

he's not alone, and with a second presence that feels not like himself, that stands at the top of the world and can actually understand where he comes from, validating his existence in this world, suddenly flips a switch in him.

a sudden sense of acknowledgment that holy shit, i exist, i am a real thing and people know that-

"Haha. It's strange, isn't it?" Ashborn replies even though Jin-Woo hasn't said anything. His laugh sounds flat like sweet carbonated drinks, and there's something dull in his tone, something not necessarily tired, but definitely hollow. Ashborn leans close, blocking others from listening in as he whispers in chilling deadpan directly into Jin-Woo's ear, in parody of a giggling friend gossiping baseless rumors and candied secrets. "We realize through our isolating responsibilities of how two-dimensional humanity and time is, and we pretentiously yet rightfully so think that it's all pointless. That humans and emotions are so temporary and so flimsy, unworthy of our protection because of how fleeting they are."

"I don't think that," he grits. Then: "you don't think that," and he knows so, but for some reason, he's anxious (and when has he felt anxious), that Ashborn will say otherwise.

Ashborn hums nonchalantly. "You don't think it, you don't want to believe in it, but you know it's true. You know that your societies are cardboard cutouts, that the architecture and homes are just card towers and building blocks." Jin-Woo swallows down the bile and anger. "But then there's something magical and indescribable of being a social creature, of how much moments matter to you even if they are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But from people like us, in the end, up until we experience it, we don't value them, we see them as senseless and unreasonable." A pause. "This feeling, this feeling right now of living in the moment, it's important for people like us, who often forget why meaningless things are worth salvaging and protecting. Because we know the world at its worst, and we know it's not worth saving, so we need to find a reason to anchor us to humanity." 

And Jin-Woo's skin shivers from the weirdness of being in reality (because he's always felt out-of-touch, displaced in the momentum of this reality's time; so now, feeling like he's a tangible and real concept, like he's truly a part of the slow turn of humanity, overstimulates his senses, frying his nerves with something he doesn't recognize-).  

Ashborn suddenly chuckles, leaning away from his ear.

This time, the laugh sounds a bit lighter, less heavy as something ironically fills up the insatiable vacancy. 

"Isn't it fun? Feeling like you're real and on the same level of everyone else even if you wonder how long it'll stay that way?"

Jin-Woo's fingers are freezing, a stark and unnatural contrast to Ashborn's earlier feelings that had heated them up like torches. 

"I- Hunter Sung Jin-Woo!" A shout nearby captures his attention by how high its voice is. He lazily glances over, a drag that contrasts the fact that each breath rattles his lungs like maracas. He see a teenager who can't be older than Jin-Ah. "You have a brother?"

"No." Jin-Woo instantly and coldly shuts that down.

"Yes." Ashborn says. 

They look at each other. "Didn't we already resolve this?" Ashborn squints.

"Didn't we already have this argument?" Jin-Woo mutters in unspoken agreement.

Everyone's watching them, with hiccuped breaths and slithering of whispers.

"They're totally brothers. Look. They look like they want to kill each other and god Sung Jin-Woo's brother looks at him the same way my sister does whenever she barges into my room to just stare at me, before leaving without closing the door. Never thought I'd understand the feelings of Hunter Sung Jin-Woo out of all people."

"How does the highest celebrity even hide a whole-ass brother?"

"How does the highest celebrity not hide just a brother? I know we've all heard of Demi Lovato and Poot-"

"Haha! Yes, this is really happening LIVE, looks like today was my lucky day to witness such a thing- oh, thank you viewer two-five-kitten-eight, for your donation-"

"...are we on a hidden camera show?"

"We're not brothers," Jin-Woo immediately denies, and he knows that Ashborn is just going along with the story that he's his twin, but something about calling Ashborn his brother feels-

It feels like he's giving into something. Again. He's not used to playing to others' tune, and he's done nothing but harmonize with Ashborn this entire day. He glares at Ashborn's curling grin, and knows that if he starts playing along at a pace that Ashborn himself had set, it'll only widen that smile. 

For some reason, that pisses him off. 

"He's just shy," Ashborn informs the young teenager who's staring at him with starry eyes, automatically raptured by Ashborn's acknowledgment and easy-going expression. He's also already slinging an arm around Jin-Woo, and Jin-Woo bristles, already drained with shuddering lashes and an impeding migraine due to his earlier revelation of getting fucking clocked in the temples with self-actualization. 

The teenager looks at him suspiciously, then at Jin-Woo who's about to pull a Cain and bash his brother's head in with a very big rock from their backyard. "...he doesn't look shy." She admits bluntly, with an impressive amount of guts that Jin-Woo barely encounters given his unapproachable demeanor. 

"Well, listen." Ashborn chuckles. "Everyone says Jin-Woo is a scary and rude asshole," he croons.

Silence.

"And?" The teenager blurts with impatient curiosity.

"Oh." Ashborn blinks. "No, that was it."  Jin-Woo scowls, and clearly sensing his innate fight-or-fight response, Ashborn laughs, and Jin-Woo, realizing he's getting goddamn played right now, wants to go home. "It's just hilarious! Look. He's so easily embarrassed, but everyone thinks he has the emotional sensitivity of a pineapple, which isn't wrong, per say-"

"It's hard not to be embarrassed, when it's you who's my brother."

"Rude," Ashborn scoffs, tightening his grip in a way that to any outsider it'd look like a friendly squeeze, but to Jin-Woo who's the target of his amusement, it feels like he's trying to remold him into a broomstick. He clicks his tongue, and turns back to the teenager who giving them what's almost a strange expression. Or at least, one that Jin-Woo can't exactly decipher. "Be my fan, instead." Ashborn says seriously.

"What's this about having fans in the first place?" Jin-Woo leers, finally ducking out of Ashborn's grasp, flipping him off from a distance.

"Look. Isn't he such a bad role model?" Ashborn gestures to Jin-Woo, and for some reason, the kid is now staring at them with a softer gaze. She's giggling.

Sung Jin-Woo, world's highest S-Rank Hunter, is being giggled at. 

Jin-Woo, above glaring at a kid but certainly not above glaring at a thousand-year-old man, glowers at Ashborn with a gaze that sends the closest ring of onlookers taking a step back. 

"Jin-Woo, I know that you're an awkward outcast, but that look you're giving is inappr-"

"Wrong. I'm wholly aware of what I'm doing right now," he deadpans.

"Oh." A pause. Then, a revision of his words: "Jin-Woo, I know that you're an asshole-"

"Only to you." And maybe to like. A quarter of humanity, but he compensates through keeping them safe against every episodic monster of the week. Meanwhile, he'd probably sell Ashborn for a sip of water if things get rough "Kid," he rounds to the teenager, who flinches, and immediately takes a step closer to Ashborn. Jin-Woo fights off a frown. While he's well aware that most people stay on their toes around him (and if anything, he often relishes in their distance), for some reason, this doesn't please him.

Especially since the teenager instinctively chose Ashborn as a save-point.

He waits for Ashborn to teasingly point it out, but he doesn't for some reason. Instead, Ashborn is glancing at him with obvious-

Pity. 

That-

That kind of makes him a bit angry (more upset), and he doesn't doubt that Ashborn wouldn't know this, and yet Ashborn is staring at him with a familiar stubbornness and sticky, gross pity that he used to give to Ju-Hee whenever they ran another dungeon. 

"Don't listen to him," Jin-Woo tells the teenager in what he deems to be his nice voice (in other words: vöîd of any emotions so that he doesn't accidentally unleash a fraction of his extreme bloodlust that he's accumulated against Ashborn since the moment of his tangible existence), "trust me, he's way worse than I could ever be," and Jin-Woo doesn't whine, especially not in a crowd of people who are filming his every word, but slander is a direct violation of his civil rights, and he'll personally deliver federal punishment against Ashborn just for it. "I might be a bit mean, but he's just annoying."

"Bitch."

"Bastard."

The two of them instantly fall mute, now simply glaring at each other in sync. 

Silence falls amongst everyone else around them, too. 

Then, a mutter in the back that's somehow heard by everyone in the giant lobby due to the cloud of bated breath: "yeah, no fucking shit they're brothers- who else would call Hunter Sung Jin-Woo, in the face, a 'bitch'?" 

Now, the eruption of chattering and shouting around them returns, but it sounds different. There's less curiosity and more excitement, and he can see associates staring at them helplessly, many of them plugging their ears and wincing as they shout into the landline phones, clearly contacting higher-ups or guild connections.

"They're buying it," Ashborn hums, walking over to him, rapping a knuckle against his skull.

Jin-Woo contemplates crushing his finger into powdery instant cement, before deciding against it. 

"It's almost like we look the same." He shakes off Ashborn's grip, disgusted, before taking a step closer to the front doors, ignoring the way that everyone scatters to pave him a path. "It'd be weirder if they didn't buy it."

"I've literally stopped trying to keep my body together after exposing myself," Ashborn deadpans, gesturing to his feet, where each footprint leaves a temporary stain of black, before dispersing into blackened smog. 

"Yeah, and half of the people here have a tail or an inextinguishable element decorating them like a Teen Titans character," Jin-Woo shrugs, jostling slightly as Ashborn tries to holepunch his foot with the angle of his heel, and he quickly retracts back into himself as he sees the people around them harshly recoil away from him. 

Ashborn raises an eyebrow at the crowd's chainwaved character. "Hm. I guess as a Ruler this would've been a typical response," he mutters, leaning close to his ear so that even the nearest Hunters can't pick on his words through the chattering of the lobby. "Back then I felt fine about it, actually expected it." He leans away this time, clearly unbothered if everyone else hears his next words: "but you just look like a first generation wallet boy living off daddy's money."

Jin-Woo rolls his eyes, before making a face, remembering this morning's sugar-daddy conversation that he would love to permanently trash from his mental hardware system. 

"We have the same dad." He finally replies, knowing that everyone's attention would fester on his words, only to come to the obvious conclusion that they're most definitely identical twins, despite their outwardly different demeanors. Because Ashborn, next to Jin-Woo who's apparently 'emotionally repressed' (and if it wasn't Jin-Ah who said those words, he would've emotionally repressed her skull-), looks radiant. His countenance is charged with a wicked smile and electrifying need for challenge, and standing next to him, Jin-Woo can smell battery acid leaking between his teeth and ozone humidifying his eyes.

It's easy.

It's really easy, being the way that he is around Ashborn. 

He didn't even know he would be so different around him, in comparison to others.

"That's literally not what you said the other day."

"That was dad disowning you." He rephrases those events.

"That hurt." He rolls his eyes. "Now, mall?" Ashborn perks up, having the attention span of a two-week old pepperoni slice. "Are we going to the mall?"

"What are you? A dog asking for a walk?"

"What are you? A person who doesn't keep his promises?"

Jin-Woo purses his lips. "I swear you were lying to me about being my old personality. I was not this annoying."

"Hm. You were more reserved back then." Ashborn concludes with a seriousness that Jin-Woo wasn't expecting from light bickering. "You were always a determined and stubborn fool who never had a defeatist attitude that most would've had in your position. But back then, you were more empathetic. Also, a bit shyer, like you now, but- hm, no. I guess you're more isolated than shy-"

"I'm not shy." He scoffs at the hilarious remark. Shy? Maybe he was a bit more paranoid as an E-Rank, certainly more lowkey. But shy people don't quietly think that people are idiots while in dungeons, and shy people don't grab onto teammates to yank them away from oncoming danger without a second thought. 

"And you were certainly a lot more emotionally vicious and intense," Ashborn continues, ignoring Jin-Woo's defensive rebuttal. "You were easily angered, resentful, sad, and happy, while now you're less...you're very muted. You can't recognize my personality right now, but you were always emotionally motivated, it's just that you never had the confidence to be obvious about it the way I am. I'm sure that if you were able to grow up in an environment where you were able to focus on yourself and not on responsibilities, with just some confidence, you would've had this sarcastic and witty personality that I don now."

"God, I'm glad I never ended up like you," he instantly replies, shoving open the front doors of the association, stepping out into the bright and sunny Korean day filtering through the clouds.

He turns around, to see Ashborn, snapping his face mask like it's a slingshot. 

"...are you trying to console me so that I'll bring you to the mall?" Jin-Woo realizes, as he thinks about how odd this conversation feels, as well as how strange Ashborn sounds. He sounds almost comforting and nice, which is most definitely not a prominent trait of either of them. 

"...is it working?"

Jin-Woo rolls his eyes, while digging out his phone to check his newly made groupchat to see if they've reached a verdict about the mall plan. However, he freezes as he sees the amount of notifications clogging up his lock screen. 

20 missed calls from Director Woo Jin-Chul (mobile, work number)

43 missed calls, 22 unread messages from Jin-Chul (mobile, personal nanny number)

Kakao: 98 new messages from notsungjinwoossisterstopsendingmefriendrequests, 259 new messages from Sung Squad + Jinho, 45 new mes...

302 unopened emails in total, 56 new ones from Korea Dail...

iMessage: 12 unread messages

"Hey." Ashborn's face is peering over his shoulder, and Jin-Woo blinks, uncharacteristically startled by this. "I want a phone. Buy me a phone."

He makes an amused face at Ashborn's naivety. Does he think he's stupid? "And let you have unlimited access to the internet with no parental supervision? Absolutely not."

"...Hunter Sung Jin-Woo made headlines today, as well."

Thomas Andre blinks, eyes batting up from where he's incapacitated in the creaky hospital bed that barely fits his size.

However, hearing the news (or really, just any mention of Sung Jin-Woo), melts away his longterm temper tantrum of being bedridden.

"Of course!" He heartily roars in response to Laura. "Why wouldn't he be, after defeating that bastard bitc-"

"It's not for that," Laura replies shortly.

Thomas glances up, the artificial hospital lights glaring bright, and to the side, the small German(?) guy, hunched in his seat, looks up out of curiosity.

"Oh, what'd he do?" Thomas immediately asks, always curious about the Sung Jin-Woo Agenda. "Shut down dungeons forever? Finally come out with the truth of being an offbrand Cthulhu lifeform? Invent reusable toilet paper? Cool down the earth's atmosphere? Regurgitate Zeus on planet earth-"

"It's his brother."

Thomas freezes, and glances at Laura who stares calmly in response, and Lennan's (Lemon? Lennar? Ah whatever-) mouth puckers out of smothered amusement. And Mr. Lemon never smiles- if anything, he just silently sits there with clammy palms. Meaning Thomas must be missing out on something if the stiff-faced Limpard looks entertained (because Thomas is learning to not overlook the odd ones, or the ones who appear useless. Honestly, Lennard always looks pathetically nervous and out-of-place, but he had displayed a respectable and inhumane amount of guts when he stepped into the fray against the ice elf, even when things were plummeting into the shitter. It was entertainingly and stupidly courageous, watching his foolish act that still felt good in spite of the despairing desperation it held. Thomas' view on what he should respect has been expanding every since his cultural reset via the monstrous persona of Sung Jin-Woo).

"...brother?" Thomas echoes Laura's statement. And he's pulled all the files on Sung Jin-Woo that he could legally and illegally find. He figured out about even his dad (and that day, he saw two figures in the frosty blizzard of the elf. Someone kneeling by Jin-Woo, and for a moment, he almost thought it was another Sung Jin-Woo given his sharp facial features and feral glare. But the figure was too broad, and his hair too long, and instead of looking like Jin-Woo, he looked like a certain man wanted by the government).

But a-

"A brother?" He echoes. "I thought he had a cute little sis." Maybe it was a cute little brother?

"His brother is certainly cute to many of Jin-Woo's fanclubs," Lennal mutters in perfected English. "Pretty hard not to, when they have the same face." And over the past couple days of forced cohabitation (in the sense that they're both under Jin-Woo's charge, and they've both crashed at the same offered building due to such), Leotard has eased up in Thomas' presence, enough to even joke in front of him. 

Thomas's heavy browline crinkles at that, still reeling from this sudden and incomprehensible drop of information. "He has a brother?"

"Identical twin," Laura clarifies, while absolutely not clarifying anything at all. "Remember? You said you saw two people in the mist? It was his brother."

"No, I-" He doesn't stammer, but there's-

He was not-

If Thomas hadn't earlier ripped out the wires of his heart monitor, he's pretty sure it would pick up on an oncoming stroke. "You fucking serious? Listen, Jin-Woo has done some batshit crazy things-"

"Him having a brother is something that even the average Korean citizen can do," Laura confides reassuringly.

"A brother? Where the fuck did he get a brother?" He chokes. How does someone just find an identical brother?

A pause.

Laura looks at him quietly.

Then: "so when a fertilized egg spli-"

"Laura do not test me." 

She promptly shuts up.

"He's an S-Rank, too." Lemon casually adds, delivering the final bullet to the head (and Thomas is very sure that Lentil is very aware of how painfully whiplashing his next words were-)

"What the fuck. Of course he's going to be a S-rank if he's his blood-related twin brother," he scoffs, automatically associating literally any Abracadabra bullshit pulled straight out of Jin-Woo's asshole as nothing more than expected. "Him having an S-rank brother is truthfully and rationally less unexpected than him having an identical twin brother in the first place."

Another settlement of silence.

"Statistically, no-"

"Laura, shut up."

Laura shuts up.

Instead, he leans back into his bed, and it groans loudly underneath his weight.

He closes his eyes.

In spite of his flabberghasted tone-

He's-

Holy shit.

A grin splits across his face like a deep and dark ravine, the eyes behind his lids illuminating something ambitious and enthralled.

The world with two Sung Jin-Woos?

"Hey. Laura. How strong is the other brat?"

"We don't know anything about his powers, just his rank."

Just his rank. And there's an hierarchy even amongst S-ranks, and Jin-Woo is the most prominent example of that, his display of power even drilling it into the heads of the average citizens who have no knowledge on the technicalities, that the title 'S-Rank' is nothing more than a flimsy umbrella term for the immeasurable.

Jin-Woo is abnormal; to even compare him to another S-Rank when he's so severely out of everyone elses' league is vaguely blasphemous, and definitely foolish. 

So it's only common sense of Thomas Andre to believe there'll be no one else quite like him.

Then Jin-Woo, that bastard, literally proves this wrong, in the most ironically normal yet utterly out-of-pocket way possible. A twin.

And if it's Jin-Woo's identical twin-

He nearly laughs, and his blood flushes to the boiling point, gurgling from his dizzying brain to his numb toes. 

His eyes crack open, glittering like geodes in their set sockets. 

"Fuck. Laura. I don't give a shit what you say anymore. Discharged me-" and he sees the way that this time, she doesn't refuse, clearly knowing that when it's anything concerning Sung Jin-Woo, he'll drop everything and go. "You-" he points to Lebanon who stares at him like a particularly unsettled cat. "C'mon. We have a pal to visit."

"....someone's thinking of us. I can feel it," Jin-Woo mutters, shuddering, glancing at his phone. Ten minutes, that was the amount of time Jin-Ah asked for before they pick up Jin-Ho to head to the mall. 

Ashborn glances up from where he's glancing curiously at one of the neighbourhood stray cats who's batting his pant hems. "Oh. It's probably Jin-Chul." He shrugs.

Jin-Woo blinks, and glances at the overwhelming amount of unread messages from their acquaintance friend. He reads the most recent ones.

> Jin-Chul (personal nanny number): Why am I getting calls from various guilds offering their services for Qin Yu

> Jin-Chul (personal nanny number): Jinwoo

> Jin-Chul (personal nanny number): Jinwoo.

> Jin-Chul (personal nanny number): I swear to god. Jinwoo. Why did Qin Yu use my personal number? Why did you give him my personal number?

> Jin-Chul (personal nanny number): Jinwoo.

> Jin-Chul (personal nanny number): Why are you doing this to me

> Jin-Chul (personal nanny number): Did I do something wrong?

> Jin-Chul (personal nanny number): Why am I also getting emails from them. Jinwoo. 

> Jin-Chul (personal nanny number): Jinwoo.

Jin-Woo stares. He then silently looks up, and at Ashborn who's now stroking the cat with a precocious expression and hesitant hand. 

He clears his throat.

Ashborn looks up, lips thinned. "I'm taking this cat."

"Do not bring the cat."

"I'm taking the cat."

"Anything you adopt, will end up in joint-custody with me, and I don't want to take care of a cat."

"Just kill it and revive it then? Shadows don't take up resources, after all," Ashborn suggests, picking from under their arms. 

"I'm not wasting space to have a three-dimensional Tamagotchi animal on call, Ashborn," he deadpans.

"I'm taking the cat alive, then." 

Jin-Woo, backburnering that mildly worrying conversation for later, glances at his phone that's still open on Jin-Chul's desperate cries of despair that went unheard. "Do you hate Jin-Chul? Why would you use his personal number?" Because he knows that Ashborn has memorized Jin-Chul's work phone through their shared memories. 

Jin-Chul scoffs. "He looked at me like he didn't trust you with me, and I took that personally." Jin-Woo squints at this, unsure how to interpret this unexpected response.

"This...isn't jealousy, right?" He asks doubtfully. 

"You wish," Ashborn scoffs, holding the cat up to his face, unflinching even as the cat bats at his chin. "If anything, I'm pleased by his defensiveness, even if it's unnecessary against me. After all, it's good that he's protective of you. He is a good friend." He says casually. "But, I don't like my capabilities being questioned." 

"...so you invaded this busy chairman's personal life because you were being petty."

"Yeah." He answers automatically with terrifying remorselessness, cradling the calico in his arm.

Jin-Woo closes his eyes. 

He opens them, and to his disappointment, Ashborn is still there, fiddling with the fat cat's tail. "We're not bringing the cat, we have to go to the mall that you wanted to visit in less than ten minutes," he snaps, and Ashborn reluctantly sets down the feline, though, knowing Ashborn, tomorrow morning he's going to find a cat sitting on top of his fridge if he doesn't keep an eye on him.

Or, he'll wake up and find a pair of headlight eyes staring back at him, floating in the shadowy body of a feline-shaped silhouette sitting at the end of his bed. 

"Okay. Yeah. Give me a moment." And he looks up from the park bench he's seated at, and sees a Family Mart right across of the road. "Wait right here." He commands Ashborn, knowing full well that the child will absolutely not wait right here if he so feels like it.

Woo Jin-Chul is losing his mind.

Kind of.

"...please, my heart just nearly gave out," he rasps, eyes bulging and pale hand over his heart.

Sung Jin-Woo, who had left all his messages on 'Read 6:48pm,' just showed up behind him while he was trying to sort through the Association's employment finances.

"Oh. Sorry," Jin-Woo apologizes, sounding utterly unapologetic while doing so. His eyes are dully skirting around Jin-Chul's empty office. He's dressed normally, and doesn't smell like sulfur or some other distinctly damp dungeon smell. And rather than having a dagger in one hand and a glock or something in the other, he's tightly clutching a plastic Family Mart bag. Meaning it's probably not an emergency that he's here for. 

Jin-Chul frowns at this (like, good for the world that another Alienated Mother Disaster isn't on Earth, but still-), unable to detect an obvious reason as to why this kid would suddenly warp into his office like the absolute lunatic he is, especially since he isn't explaining his sudden appearance at all. 

Finally, Jin-Woo's eyes dance to Jin-Chul, and his face twists into a difficult expression, and at that, Jin-Chul sobers slightly, rebounding quickly from his initial shock.

Jin-Woo often appears indifferent, tense, or wary.

But not exactly...complicated. 

Like he looks constipated at the moment, and Jin-Chul doesn't know if he actually is, or if something horrible is happening at the moment.

The fact that his morally grey and extremely stress-inducing falsified twin isn't anywhere to be seen, worries him as well.

Falsified twin.

Falsified twin who was a Monarch.

And Jin-Chul nearly stands up as dread swills in the pits of his intestine, hypotheses drying the walls of his throat. He didn't care about the Monarch's identity or background, but he knew that Jin-Woo liked and trusted the Monarch, and he had softened at the Monarch (and if he had let Jin-Woo down, after Jin-Woo became even the slightest bit emotionally invested in him, Jin-Chul will personally hunt him down for sport).

"Here." Jin-Woo's short and strained voice was tense enough to cut through Jin-Chul's clutter of thoughts.

Jin-Woo upheaves the grocery bag over his desk, and Jin-Chul recoils as multiple boxes and bags of candy and instant coffee brands scatter across his keyboard and knock into his papers.

He stares, stunned into listlessness.

Then, he regains his composure, and quickly, swivels around in his seat-

Only to see the last moments of an inky silhouette melt into the floor.

For a long second, he simply gazes at his polished hardwood floor, before slowly turning back to face his desk.

He picks up one of the shiny packages of candy. 

It's coffee flavoured. 

Choi Jong-In nearly unplugs his desk's landline and toss it out of his closed, fourth floor window for the twelfth time.

For the twelfth time, he steadily decides against doing so last minute, because he's not a twelve-year-old Minecraft streamer with anger issues. 

"...you okay?" His secretary asks kindly. 

He thinks about earlier today when Sung Jin-Woo told him it was his brother sitting in the black bag next to him, and he just accepted it as an undeniable quirk of the world's strongest Hunter. After all, there is literally no Hunter out there who isn't eccentric in the head; pretty hard not to, when they're basically publicly glorified and legally protected hitmen. 

Then, he received five backed up calls, and another damn ten of his guild building's secretaries are held up, all carrying one news:

Sung Jin-Woo appeared at the Hunter's Evaluation Lobby, with an identical twin, who was ranked as an S-rank as well. 

"No. I'm going to retire into the Persian mountains and become a bat herder," he finally replies to the secretary's careful inquiry.

"...do you want an Aspirin?"

"...ancient Persian. Alongside Cyrus the Great. I'm going to unite both north and south Korea the way Cyrus united the diverse cultures and ethnic groups living amongst the regional lands of Achaemenids."

"We also have Ibuprofen, as well."

"Please leave." 

His secretary, that traitor, looks immensely relieved about being chased out of his office.

Jong-In reels through today's events.

He nearly screams.

He thinks about when he just accepted that he called an oversized trashbag his brother, but-

oh my god I called his brother a trashbag. I called, Hunter Sung Jin-Woo's brother, a trashbag. 

His lungs inflate with blood, regrets, and twenty-seven-years of hollow self-despair, and he considers flinging himself out of his guild's sixteenth-floor office window.

A ping from his work phone cuts through his internal spiral of a midlife crisis at the age of 27. 

He opens his phone, and realizes the notification is about the groupchat between him, Baek-Yoon, and Lim Tae-Gyun. It was created since Baek-Yoon felt too lazy to directly and individually message them of his TBD mortality status after engaging in an argument with his mom, and felt the need to let them know that none of them were invited to his funeral.

That asshole.

There's only one new message in the overly barren groupchat, underneath a familiar contact name. 

> Overrated Simba: so he had a brother. lol remember when jongin first met jinwoo, and wanted to take him in like he's a caring, older brother figure

> Overrated Simba: he wanted to be that hyung-nim so bad

Jong-In furiously taps a response (and he should just leave this groupchat or mute it the way Cha Hae-In instantly had the moment he dragged her into it to back him up in an argument between him and Baek-Yoon). 

> Choi Jong-In: Okay, Red Gate.

> Lim Tae-Gyun: so you're telling me, none of us knew that Sung Jin-Woo had an IDENTICAL BROTHER this whole time, and it wasn't in any of his public files that everyone already knew even in his information that was collected when he was an E-rank.

A pause.

And this-

Choi Jong-In was shaken over this, as well.

> Overrated Simba: tbh, Jin-Woo has pulled weirder and nonsensical shit straight out of his ass with zero hesitation in the most convenient moments. him having an identical brother, despite feeling like the strangest and most unexpected thing ever, is probably the most realistic plottwist he's swerved us into.

Choi Jong-In closes the groupchat, ignoring the way that the brickhead and Lim Tae-Gyun continue speculating (and it's weird, how technically they should have badblood between them, but they're on rather friendly terms given their history), and hesitantly, opens Kakao. 

He has Jin-Woo's Kakao because Jin-Woo, despite being the most independent and capable being of the world (as a fact), still messages him every other week to ask him questions like he's a personalized and exclusive Yahoo! Answer page.

He finds their dms, ignoring their most previous message from almost two weeks ago, of Jin-Woo asking him if brown Listerine (apparently a variation of the mouthwash brand that can literally kill lice and clean rust) is an efficient substitute for baking soda.

Squirming a bit, he finally steels himself with the resolve of a guild leader, and texts Jin-Woo: I heard you got a brother?

He rereads that sentence, deconstructs it, and picks out every thing wrong with its vibes. He then decides that Jin-Woo, global/neighbourhood Lovecraftian spawn, probably won't even pick up on it, nor have the right to judge it. 

However, he still stiffens when he sees the 'delivered' underneath the message blink to 'received', with absolutely no indication of an answer from the other party. About to put his phone down in decisive defeat (because if Hunter Sung Jin-Woo doesn't want to answer his first text then Hunter Sung Jin-Woo won't answer a second text from him), a sudden notification appears on the top of the screen.

imessage: xxx-xxx-xxx added you into a chat with Baek Yoon-Ho, Thomas Andre, Cha Hae-In, five others...

Curious, especially since he recognizes a few of the added numbers, he opens it. 

And there's only one message in the entire chat:

> xxx-xxx-xxx: yeah i have a brother. stop overloading jinchul with your secretaries- if this keeps up, even the mental instability you'll instill in him can't be balanced out by all the therapy sessions he can buy with his overtime pay

> xxx-xxx-xxx has left the chat.

He takes a moment, and slowly, closes his eyes. 

He opens them, and to his disgust, there's already an entire block of texts from other numbers that actually are saved in his contacts.

> Thomas Andre: that was jinwoo, was that jinwoo?

Already having deduced that, Choi Jong-In immediately saves Jin-Woo's number. He knew he gave Sung Jin-Woo his card, so it's not weird that the Hunter had his work number, but Jin-Woo never gave a card in return. Therefore, Jong-In doesn't have any information to contact his him, past the simple widespread email and landline number attached to Ahjin's empty and rather blank website that looked like it was made on Microsoft Paint. And this phone number isn't that one, meaning it's very possible that this is Jin-Woo's personal mobile number.

> Cha Hae-In: Excuse me ^^ but are you the American S-rank? 

Right. Thomas Andre's name is in English, and Jong-In easily recognized it, since a couple years ago during one of the previous Hunter gatherings, a ginger woman that had followed Andre around, had given him a card with a number that he eventually saved on his and Hae-In's phone. Hae-In probably can't read his name, and rather, deduced it was him since it was in English.

Thomas Andre: Yes. I read and type a little Korean. 

And Andre always gave off the impression of a man whose wit lied in instincts and battle capabilities- not in general academic knowledge. Admittedly, it's impressive that he picked up Korean in just the few months he's met Jin-Woo.

Another apparently saved contact pops up underneath Andre's response.

> Liu Zhigang: ??? 什麽？你們是誰？??? 

Then, a string of Chinese characters slough through the screen after the Liu Zhigang's first message. Oh. And he recognizes this number, too. 

Amused by this odd assortment of people, Jong-In doesn't immediately leave this group. 

Thomas Andre added xxx-xxx-xxx to the groupchat

The new invitee immediately starts typing, and Jong-In can see bubbles from their number. Finally: "this is Adam White, I am here to act as a translator. In clean summary, Liu Zhigang wants to know how a group of Koreans are able to find his number even if it's international, and he wants to know who is daring enough to add him into a random groupchat because he will, in verbatim, challenge your ancestors."

Fair enough. Liu Zhigang probably thinks this is one of those spammed scam calls, like the ones where people get voice mails from the IRS asking about their social security number. 

Mr. White continues typing, but this time, it takes many minutes. 

Finally, he only sends a single sentence: "and he also might kill your entire family if no one answers him in less than two minutes." 

Jong-In raises his eyebrows. 

Then again, it'd be stranger if someone like Liu Zhigang bothered to play civil with them. Actually, he wouldn't be surprised if Mr. White's politically cushioned and courteously short summary of Liu Zhigang's insults, actually refers to more than 2/3rds of the entire body paragraph of Liu Zhigang's long vent message that can be clicked on to open to its full extent.

Mr. White sends a new message, but this time, in Chinese, probably to communicate with Liu Zhigang.

Jong-In sighs as he sees even more messages pop on screen, many of them not in Korean either.

Recognizing many of the numbers as previously saved contacts, he finds no reason to remain in this chat, and leaves the group. 

"...sir?"

He looks up, and its the receptionist that he redirected the recent flow of phone calls onto. She looks like roadkill. 

She also looks like she wants to personally run him over with a tractor, and parallel park over his legs.  

Given the workload he dumped onto her, fair enough. 

"If there are more phone calls from the Association that aren't directly from the higher-ups, then ignore them." He sighs, feeling slightly guilty upon seeing her scrunched expression.

"Okay." She observes him a bit longer, before hesitantly asking, "...would you like a cup of coffee?" 

He lifts his hands from where they're resting over his forehead, and tiredly slips off his glasses.

"I would like, to retire."

"Sorry sir, but you can not." She says, professionally infusing an appropriate amount of pity into her tone, when he knows for a fact that she's probably inwardly laughing her ass off in the pits of her cobwebbed brain.

Working in this field tends to set your neural circuitry on fire like someone tried to flush eight molotov cocktails down a port-a-potty. 

Jong-In raises an eyebrow, and glances between his fingers splayed over his vision. "Why do I feel like every time Hunter Sung Jin-Woo makes news, it always has to be in the most inconceivably unexpected way possible? Why can't it be something normal like, he overtakes another red gate on his own, or that he saves the world from being engulfed by monsters again?"

"That's actually abnormal within itself, much more abnormal than having a brother," she states the obvious. "Maybe it's normalized since it's him, but everything he's doing is considered unachievable by mortal standards. It's only strange that he's doing something that should be considered normal, such as having a twin, yet, he still manages to do it in the most impossible manner ever."

"Exactly." He cleans his lenses, and slides back on his glasses. "Hunter Sung Jin-Woo pulling heroic exploits is expected, because him having the main protagonist halo of every Shonen jump main character is only just a personality trait by this point," Jong-In analyses calmly, as if it doesn't feel like his liver is currently decaying from high levels of stress and caffeine. "However, he woke up, and decided to choose violence by single-handedly obliterating the news network and everyone's day by having a twin brother. Like...who does he think he is?"

"He is Sung Jin-Woo." She says, because they both know his name is self-explanatory within itself, its own justification towards most things that the man himself has done. 

He impatiently waves away her answer. "Irrelevant. I truly don't understand how he sets a new norm through being unexplainably enigmatic, and somehow, still has enough internalized entropy to break his own incomprehensible standards."

"Sir. You're now just describing a cryptid."

"Is that not what he is?" He throws his hands up, exasperated.

Jin-Woo is a constant source of entertainment, for sure, and yet, the fact that he's Jin-Woo is utterly tiring to try and understand.  

"Haha." She laughs almost mechanically, echoing the emptiness that he certainly feels as well. "Hunter Sung Jin-Woo is definitely an interesting one."

Choi Jong-In nods absent-mindedly, when he suddenly recalls this morning's events again.

He wants to scream.

"That's it. I'm quitting."

"Sir, no-"

"He has a brother?"

"Boss. Please stop spamming what could possibly be Hunter Sung Jin-Woo's personal number with random photos."

Liu Zhigang ignores his secretary in favour of muttering under his breath and sending another picture of a windmill he saw. "You seem desperate." They add, albeit, a bit more critical. Liu Zhigang glances up with a sharp gaze, and they don't even flinch from underneath his presence.

"Desperate?" He echoes. He then laughs. "Who isn't, when it comes to a Hunter like Sung Jin-Woo?" His lips curl cattishly, eyes narrowing. "And now he has a doppelgänger? I knew it. The strong are always eccentric and amusing-"

"I can reassure you that you're definitely Exhibit A of that."

"Bitch."

"Also. Even weak people have twins. You may not know this, but identical twins are due to a split of the ovum-"

"I'm deducting your paycheck as well as your lifespan," he retorts casually.

A pause.

"No sir, I meant that you're only the epitome for the 'amusing' aspect, while otherwise, you're definitely the most mentally sane person I've encountered and had the honour of serving. And you're so smart, so of course you already know about basic high school biology one-o'-one." They automatically ramble with their typical deadpanned tone. 

Secretary Wei An doesn't even look ashamed, that gold-digging bastard.

Whatever. They're the only secretary who does not give shit about Zhigang's temper. Or more accurately, they quite literally do not give a shit about him at all, as long as he has the monetary fee to shut them up. Liu Zhigang doesn't mind being tolerant towards them if it means getting the officials off his back. 

"You shouldn't judge me. If you had Hunter Sung's number, I bet you would spam him," Liu Zhigang rebukes confidently. Being viewed as irritating is still better than being ignored, in Zhigang's honest belief. 

"Sir, I'll only be dedicated to you for as long as our contract upholds." Wei An says with the firmness of a card tower. "And Hunter Sung is the only person who I'd ever betray you for."

"That's only because he's probably richer than me." 

They don't deny it.

If not for the fact that Wei An is terrifyingly loyal to Liu Zhigang's savings account, Liu Zhigang probably would've fired them and then fought the government officials (again) for trying to plant a damn babysitter for national visits on him (again). 

Well.

He liked Wei An enough since their first encounter. That time, Wei An scolded him for beating up another Hunter during those damn gatherings, and Liu Zhigang, who's allergic to demands and ready to beat them down- realized that they were the first secretary to say it to his face with an absolute look of indifference, rather than one composed out of fear, patronizing pretentiousness, or annoyance.

Wei An's only interest in the world being financial gains is simple, transactional, and easy for Liu Zhigang to negotiate with since that means he can bribe them to stop breathing down his neck whenever they're on nannying duty for the damn officials who know they can't keep him under wraps. And Wei An, who's meant to be one of the government dog's lapping at his ankles, was immediately loyal to him, because Liu Zhigang can irrevocably pay them more than the government would be willing to. And keeping them by his side gets the officials out of his business and out of his email's spam inbox.

"We're going to South Korea." He settles on, standing up. 

Wei An looks at him with wide eyes.

"We're not going to Kangwon to fuel your gambling habit."

They immediately lose interest in this turn of events. 

He hums, and glances at his phone and at a certain groupchat full of assholes that he initially didn't recognize. Sung Jin-Woo.

Well.

"I needed to give him something, anyways," he says, almost satisfactory.

"...it's rigged."

Jin-Woo raises an eyebrow at the extremely firm statement that Ashborn has given.

"Maybe you're just bad," Jin-Ho bluntly remarks with obviously little forethought, only to shut his mouth as Ashborn crunches the claw machine's handle like it's a Pepsi can.

"...yeah...you can't do that," Jin-Ah says disapprovingly. "Qin Yu, your penchant for property damage is frankly, quite concerning." Clearly, she's still pissed over the fact that for over a period of five hours today, she had to walk to the nearest convenience store to use their public toilets if she ever felt the need to go.

Personally, not his problem. It was Ashborn who had wrecked their own house's bathroom (again).

Jin-Woo glances at Ashborn, almost smugly. 

As if sensing his pleasure, Ashborn turns to him with a bright and calculatively passive expression (and Jin-Woo grimaces. Damn. While he had more guts and perseverance than other E-Ranks back when he was one, he still had to reign in his naturally stubborn personality. Seeing Ashborn play up his old acting habits stirs an unpleasant feeling of shame within him). "Hyung, why don't you give this a shot?"

"First off, don't call me 'hyung' when you're way older than me you shameless grandpa-"

"Oh, Qin Yu, you're the older twin?" Jin-Ho peers over his gaudy metal glasses that he deemed were appropriate as a 'disguise' against the 'paparazzi,' as if all of them look like any other inconspicuous family as long as Jin-Woo, Jin-Ho, and Ashborn wear a normal mouth mask like they all shared the common cold. 

"He's like a couple centuries old monarch in comparison to me," Jin-Woo elaborates.

"You don't call me 'hyung' though, so someone has to step up," Ashborn retorts. "You speak so informally to me in spite of acknowledging me as your older? Disrespectful-"

"If we don't respect oppa in this house, why would respect Qin Yu?" Jin-Ah snarks. Jin-Woo watches her carefully, before turning to Ashborn. And it's weird, how his sister and Ashborn interact so familiarly despite having known each other for a few hours, yet, she doesn't treat Ashborn like an older brother.

For one, she's much sweeter towards Jin-Woo, but he's also pretty sure it's because she knows he has power over their house's internet connection services, so there's that. 

But he can tell that she doesn't see Ashborn as a brother, and he knows that his mom doesn't see Ashborn as a son, either, which is more understandable. 

Then again, he guesses it's because they don't understand Ashborn the way he does (but to be fair: they don't really understand him the way that Ashborn could). 

Jin-Ho however, who's seemed to have reached the logical conclusion that Jin-Ah's bullying is nothing short of familial affection, doesn't seem to notice the distance that his mom and sister has to Ashborn. 

"Stop arguing you guys," Kyung-Hye titters, and all of them immediately shut up. It's not like his mom is scary, if anything, she's nothing short of overly gentle to the point of being a pushover-

But they also did just watch her fish more than twelve stuffed animals out of the claw machine with ease, while the rest of them, three of them being superpowered humans with the dexterity and reflexes that could counter demigods, were unable to retrieve a single plushie in comparison.

None of them are willing to test her after witnessing her debut as the world's first legal cheatcode.

"Go play another game, you guys are wasting all our tickets on this one," she nods, and reluctantly, they back away from the claw machines that they've been hoarding for the past ten minutes.

The crowd surrounding them boos at this, but many of them nod respectfully towards Kyung-Hye.

Now, Jin-Woo doesn't know when they gathered an audience, but it started after Jin-Woo and Ashborn, with terrifying synchronization, wrecked all of the shooter games. And many of the shooter games required teamwork and cooperation- so while it's not a strange that a hunter would be able to completely obliterate a game on their own, it's uncommon to see two random citizens being able to do so.

And when they began to demolish all the normal Japanese tempo games, and then the western ones such as DDR, that's when people started filming them (and the mall...Jin-Woo, halfway through another dumb choreography game meant for kids with Ashborn, couldn't help but wonder what their synchronization would like in the dungeons, if it's already this exhilarating just playing a slow and annoyingly tedious game with him). 

Jin-Ho also proven himself to have terrifying luck, when after Jin-Woo and Ashborn set all the records underneath the name 'sung' chosen out of indifference, they moved onto all the gambling games.

This is what captured the crowds.

Because most of them suspected that Ashborn and Jin-Woo were simply low-ranking Hunters dicking around and having too much time (in fact, he's heard many people whisper to one another if they're slacking off, if they should be out and saving the world, but Jin-Woo, quite frankly, is unexpectedly having too much fun to really care-). So it's only expected that they should be able to keep up with reflex games, even if a sense of tempo and pacing is a honed skill they must have as well. 

However, luck-

Now luck is arguably a skill as well, but even Jin-Woo started feeling nauseas after he watched Jin-Ho, that bastard, run the gambling ticket machine dry like a capitalist on America's Wall Street. 

Jin-Ah on the other hand, seemed to sync too well with Jin-Ho on this part. While Ashborn and Jin-Woo functioned as one well-oiled machine, their similarities aligning to a T, Jin-Ho and Jin-Ah were the most volatile pair whose misgivings ricocheted off each other like their last orientated braincell to produce a terrifyingly coherent thought. 

Because Jin-Ho's luck worked into his favour, but it was Jin-Ah, always the opportunist, who calculated within all the 'chance' games how to get the most out of all the tickets, out of all the coins being sweeped up in the machine. 

While Jin-Ho's overpowered luck was enviable, Jin-Ah's overheated schemes and directions given to Jin-Ho were nothing but scary. 

But it was his mom that the audience stayed for. 

The way that the middle-aged woman who was standing at the side, carrying the group of four's bags and prizes, stepped in when all of them were finally caught on one game, the bane of every arcade player's existence, the claw-machine, and effortlessly won them a plushie-

And then another-

And then another-

That sent the crowd wild.

The way that their pile of stuffed animals grew with each consecutive win, reaping rewards for all the tickets spent on that single machine, had not only impressed onlookers, but the rest of them as well. 

Jin-Woo scoffs, flipping a stuffed animal in his hand as he watches a gaggle of teenagers approach his mom, probably to ask her to help win them prizes as well.

"Here," he nudges a boy passing by who flinches at his acknowledgment, and hands him a stuffed tiger. His mom's large, hotpink sunbag that he's being forced to carry is already overflowing with prizes that all five of them won, and they still need to cash in all their points from the shooting games at the counter.

"You know, we can all match," Jin-Ah comments, ignoring a guy who's tapping on her shoulder, tugging at five ugly keychains that she and Jin-Ho pulled from another gambling game. 

"...they're disgusting," Ashborn comments listlessly after glaring away the intruder who's trying to capture the attention of an unbothered Jin-Ah. "The cat one is mine."

"Awe, they're kinda cute, besides, isn't it sentimental?" Jin-Ho croons, accepting a patchworked dog, cradling it carefully in his hands, before clipping it to his house keys.

"No," Jin-Woo flatly denies, picking up one of the Frankenstein'd animals within her hands, and wrinkles his nose at it. "What company would make something so unmarketable?" He mutters, holding up to eye-level. What is it? A bird? He stuffs it into the pockets of his jacket. 

He'll later attach it to his lanyard with his car keys.

"It's ugly," he mutters.

"You're still keeping it, dumbass," Jin-Ah pouts, while attaching the remaining horse onto the mic hole of her phone case. She turns around, to retrieve their mom who is currently appeasing her cult following by playing their rounds on the claw machine.

"Your mom is badass," Jin-Ho comments.

"Of course," he says.

"She is Jin-Woo's mom," Ashborn says agreeably.

Jin-Ho looks at him.

Neither of them elaborate.

"Guys, I want to try McDonald's Teriyaki burger," Jin-Ah chirps, tugging their mom back through the sea of teenagers who are mourning the loss of their carrier, and Jin-Woo gives a wry smile as he sees the way the nearby overworked employee, nearly buckle in relief at the sight of them finally leaving.

After all, they've probably severely tipped the balance of incoming profits and outgoing cash flow, especially due to Kyung-Hye.

He walks up to the employee. "Where's the ticket counter? We'd like to cash in our points now," he beams, and he watches as the employee's face flattens into one of absolute devastation.

'you're such a bastard' a voice tickles his ear.

'you're rubbing off on me,' he thinks back smugly.

"...I mean. We already bought five variations of everything with our points," Jin-Ah sounds genuinely distressed, insensitively so given that the employee behind the counter literally looks five seconds away from an emotional breakdown.

To be fair, they still have almost a third of their points left, after splurging the rest of it on almost half of their products.

"...do you guys want five more crossbows?" Jin-Ah turns to them with a frenzied expression.

"The three of us can literally get in-real-life crossbows if we really wanted to," Jin-Ho says almost apologetically, waving around the sunction-cup arrow in his hands, looking almost apologetic. "Listen, we can just. Not get anything."

Jin-Ah turns a nasty gaze onto him. "We're not a wasteful family," she hisses, hackles risen, and turns back to the cashier who had only ashened upon her proclamation.

Well, Jin-Woo can't blame her for acting like a hunter-gatherer jacked up on sugar.

She's never had the luxury of spending to the point of having leftover money, especially not on accessories or useless products, and she's never really been to an arcade before.

Therefore, he quietly slips on the three sparkly rubber bangles that she had handed to all of them.

"Eventually, these will cut-off my circulation," Kyung-Hye comments rather good-naturedly, her thin wrists decorated with almost seven of them on each arm. 

"I feel like I'm back at the Hunter's evaluation wearing a bunch of random accessories," Ashborn sighs, as he ducks, allowing Jin-Ah to place a seventh glow-stick necklace around his neck.

"You look like a walking highlighter," Jin-Ho comments, snickering at the sight of all the glowstick accessories he's wearing on almost all of his appendages. "Oh geez, you have to let me take a picture of you later," he snorts.

Ashborn, who has easily familiarized himself with Jin-Ho, both of them sharing shit-eating personalities, simply flips him off. 

"Yeah, we're going to have to donate a lot of these, aren't we," Jin-Woo whispers to his mom, the bag he's carrying for her crammed with even more plushies, popular anime and pop culture figurines, and now, nonsensical toys. 

Well, he muses. It's probably good to donate these toys to centers that'll distribute them to the more disadvantaged, rather than just leaving them to collect dust in an arcade that'll probably never fall short of breaking even past today.

"Mm," his mom makes a noise of affirmation, glancing sympathetically at the cashier who passes over twelve packets of Sillybandz with trembling hands. 

Jin-Ah turns around once more. "Hey, look," she holds up another plushie, and this time, Jin-Woo blinks, staring at it for a second longer.

Ashborn however, is automatically reaching for it. "...Igris?" He says, shock colouring his tone. He carefully cradles it in his melting, candlewax fingers, pumping it a couple times with childlike intrigue. 

"Mhm, they apparently have large stocks of oppa's shadows," she comments, and Jin-Woo, dissecting her sentence, automatically glances up to the cashier, who literally choked on her statement, their large and widened eyes now darting over to them with such speed that Jin-Woo sees aftermath images of their pupils. 

Jin-Ah, hearing their strangled cough that sounds akin to a barfing cat, seems to notice her slip-up. 

"Oh. Uh. You don't think that he's Sung Jin-Woo, huh?" She scoffs with unbeatable scorn. "By 'oppa', I was using it as a general term," she says, but the cashier only glances at them skeptically.

Their physical performance while playing the games is either of a hardcore gamer with peak physical condition and intense stamina given how many movement games they've consecutively played, or of a Hunter just casually fooling around. While a normal person could play as well as they had (because these games were made for normal citizens, so obviously they wouldn't be considered extremely difficult for them), it's really the amount of games they've played that points to them being either athletes, or Hunters. 

And then there's the fact that Sung Jin-Woo is all over the news for having a twin, and that right now, he's standing next to a person who even with a mask, looks exactly like him. 

"Anyways, you have more of these?" She points to the shadow soldier plushie in Ashborn's grip, seemingly unbothered to let Ashborn cling onto it for now.

"...will you at least leave more than half of the stock behind?" The cashier croaks, eyes still stickered in Jin-Woo's direction.

Jin-Ah beams. "That's up to your stock amount to decide!"

And even Jin-Woo winces as he sees the way the cashier's eyes nearly roll up to their head.

"...we've reached headlines, again." Jin-Woo realizes, as he skims through Jin-Chul's entire wall of text that's been Grammarly'd enough times to sound professional, even though the undertone of exasperation and sleep-deprivation is obvious enough for Jin-Woo to intuitively sense. 

"In what way?" Jin-Ah asks dully as she continues scrolling through her Twitter feed, dipping a fry into the container of sauce without even looking.

"Jin-Ah, don't put your feet onto your seat in public," Kyung-Hye scolds, batting Jin-Ah's bare knees with a hand.

She doesn't even look up from the screen, but still lowers her sandaled feet onto the ground. 

"Uh. Something about Twitter showing videos of us in the arcade, and people speculated at first we were like D-rank Hunters with nothing to do," he points to him and Ashborn, "but when they figured that we were twins, they thought of us instead," especially since Ashborn is a hot topic at the moment.

"Oh, I saw that," Jin-Ho hums with obvious pride. "Many people can easily tell it's you when you guys show off. Videos of all of us are all over Twitter, including of me!" He chirrups. "Though, many people are wondering who Park Eomeonim is, though," he glances at Kyung-Hye, who simply laughs at that. Jin-Woo's eyes linger at her half-eaten food. 

He should probably make something softer for her for dinner.

"Ha, people are all wondering who I am." Jin-Ah says boredly, sounding thoroughly lackluster upon the prospect of fame. She scoffs derisively. "Song-I is saying that my own classmates are giving my identity away," she sneers. "Watch as I never talk to them in the halls again, how dare they snitch on me?" She grumbles, and angrily tears apart her burger. "And they know that Jin-Woo is my brother. Or at least the people I'm close to do, but I bet it'll get out all over school now."

"People are focusing on us," Jin-Woo mumbles, his nerves tingling, and all of his shadows whispering underneath them like the earth is their personal graveyard. 

Though, given that his shadows are currently arguing over who's the best historical period drama actor, it ruins the entire vibe.

"It's pretty hard not to," Ashborn says flatly, peering at Jin-Woo through overly large shades that Jin-Ah perched on his face, still lit up like a Christmas tree, looking as if someone had upchucked Pepsi Bismol and every urinated highlighter fluid out there, all over his body. 

"No, it's just you they're staring at," Jin-Ho muses, looking very pleased after getting multiple pictures of Ashborn's newest fit, creating a photoshoot in the men's bathroom that Jin-Woo was forced into after he was trying to wash his hands because he took a piss. "Nobody's approaching us, though."

At this, Ashborn glances at Jin-Woo with an almost amused look. "This is what scary guard dog priviledges give us."

Jin-Woo scowls.

"Hey, Qin Yu?" Jin-Ho addresses while munching on a fry. "Can I post a picture of you?"

"Absolutely," Ashborn says with the gleefulness of a shithead.

"Send me your pictures of them, please," Kyung-Hye adds.

Jin-Ho however, laughs, humour glancing in his gaze at Jin-Woo's disdain. "Of course, Park Eomeonim!"

Jin-Woo squints at Ashborn.

And Ashborn has proven himself to be an awful influence on not just Jin-Ah, but clearly, also on Jin-Ho.

"You guys should make a social media. Almost all high-ranked hunters have one, to not only foster a sense of closeness with average citizens, but also due to PR," Jin-Ho slyly suggests, probably bringing it up only now due to Ashborn, since he knows that Jin-Woo would've rejected this idea.

"...Liu Zhigang never had one," Jin-Woo says stiffly.

Jin-Ho looks at him like he's dumb, a look that's only been growing even more confident and prevalent these days, "most hunters do this because they need the PR for their guild. Liu Zhigang doesn't need to because the Chinese government loves to blow his existence up everywhere with or without his permission, and because he doesn't have a guild."

"We get enough PR because of my presence alone," Jin-Woo deadpans.

"Braggart," Jin-Ah mutters around where she's gnawing her drink's straw flat.

"Yeah, because you're literally the coolest person alive," Jin-Ho says, still using his 'are-you-dumb' tone." Kyung-Hye makes a noise of agreement at this. 

"Simp," Jin-Ah takes a slurp of her soda this time.

"But you have so much attention on you, it'll definitely be good for you to have a social media account." When Jin-Woo's steady gaze doesn't waver, Jin-Ho adds: "also, Soo-Hyun really wants this. Gives her a sense of purpose in this guild," he squeaks.

Ah, so this is the reason why.

Jin-Ho definitely has a softspot for his older cousin, and Jin-Woo, while he doesn't care much about her, cares about Jin-Ho to at least to a certain extent.

"She's really good at this! She's an actress after all, so she'll do a great job-" Jin-Ho begins to ramble, voice wavering with uncertainty.

"Yeah, fine, do whatever," Jin-Woo interrupts, annoyed by his bumbling.

Jin-Ho's mouth snaps shut, and he stares at him. 

"...you're not joking with me, are you?"

"Do I joke?" 

"No sir!"

"Stop it." Jin-Woo sighs, dunking a chicken nugget within his sauce. "Don't put anything too much on there, and leave my family out of this," he adds with a steady glare, unwilling to let the public engage with his family (and he's always been careful with what's his, has never liked it when people overstepped their boundaries and try and worm their dirty fingers into what he considered precious-). 

"What?" Jin-Ah's head jerks up from her phone for the first time since this conversation. "No! Include me. That way my classmates will stop trying to talk to reporters and sell a story about me because of how obscure I am," Jin-Ah intervenes.

"They've been what-" Jin-Woo barks, mind reeling.

"Oi, stop. It's not as serious as you think it is. It's just when kids wanna hop on clout, that's all," Jin-Ah rudely dismisses his steeping concern and irritation, "if you at least put my name and face out there, reporters will stop trying to stir some weird backstory for me," she mumbles. 

"Oh...I don't know. I don't want to put you out there when you're so young," Kyung-Hye frowns at this. "Besides, Korean society isn't kind to girls-"

"Though, leaving her in the dark when people know Jin-Woo has a sister, probably isn't the best since most reporters will want to try and write as much unknown news about Jin-Woo as possible. Besides, putting her face out there, nobody would try and dig dirt on her or judge her when she's Jin-Woo's sister," Jin-Ho reasons lightly.

Kyung-Hye hesitates, and her eyes dart to Jin-Woo, who blinks.

He shrugs. He doesn't know. 

Personally, he wants to lock away his family-

But.

The idea of presenting his family as his, as a prominent entity to his life, sounds appealing as well. He likes it. Likes presenting them to others who'll then perceive them as untouchable underneath his name.

"Up to you," he ultimately leaves it up to Jin-Ah.

"Yeah. I want to. At least a picture of me with Jin-Woo." A pause. "Or Qin Yu," she adds offhandedly, probably to stave off any skepticism from Jin-Ho's behalf, even though Jin-Woo himself doesn't really care however Jin-Ho perceives Ashborn's relationship with the rest of his family.

"Mm. Okay, I'm already talking to Soo-Hyun about it," Jin-Ho says, beaming, looking genuinely excited. And Jin-Ho always liked fame, which is fine, but, Jin-Woo has a feeling he's more giddy about pleasing his cousin, rather than the potential positive attention they'll get. "Anymore requests?"

"I don't want personal life to be on there." Jin-Ah says, before inclining her head. "Though, you can probably put our address out there and nobody would dare to touch it," she mutters. "But still, all pictures are of us in public spaces- none of private ones," she establishes, and Jin-Woo nods approvingly at this. If she hadn't suggested this, he would've.

"I just want to see all the posts before the public does," Jin-Woo shrugs.

"If Jin-Ah is going to be featured...I'd feel a lot better if I was too," Kyung-Hye inputs hesitantly.

Jin-Ho gives a consoling smile at this. "Sure, I'll let Soo-Hyun know-"

"And what about you?" Jin-Woo asks curiously.

Jin-Ho blinks, startled. "Um. I'll probably send her the pictures thems-"

"No," Jin-Woo interrupts impatiently. "I meant aren't you going to show up in the photos, too?"

Jin-Ho pauses, appearing almost stunned.

Jin-Woo reels at that, confused by his confusion.

"If you don't want to, it's fi-"

"No, I mean! Yes!" Jin-Ho blurts unceremoniously, and Jin-Woo recoils, startled.

To the side, he hears Ashborn cackle, and he reflexively glares at him.

"Really, a fanboy," he hears Jin-Ah mumble, staring at him, at Jin-Woo, pitifully, as if he's the victim of something.

"It's just that I thought." Jin-Ho clears his throat, syllables garbled as they're flushed down his thorax. "I just. Well. You want me on there?" Jin-Ho finishes meekly. 

Jin-Woo blinks. "I mean. I thought you said hunters did PR for their guilds? So wouldn't you by default be on there?" He muses, almost entertained by Jin-Ho's denseness. "I mean we only have four members-"

At this, Jin-Ho's flush dies a little, as his face freezes. "OH. Yeah. That's. Yeah."

To the side, Jin-Ah's narrowed eyes are sliding between them, before she loudly proclaims with a frustrated sigh, "oi, Jin-Woo." He rounds to her, surprised by her intervention. "You personally want Jin-Ho on there, right? Even if I can't understand why, you do, don't you? Not just as a business tactic?"

To the side, Jin-Ho is sputtering, but Jin-Woo nods, "yeah?" If it was just for a business tactic, then the rest of his family wouldn't be a part of the plan in the first place. Personally, he just wants to selfishly exploit this to memoralize what's important to him; to preserve the little things on this fleeting planet spinning as a dot in the ever-expanding space, that mean anything to him (and he thinks of Ashborn's words, of what Ashborn said- his fingers were frozen-). "He's basically a family friend, isn't he?"

The dying noise returns from Jin-Ho's side.

Woo Jin-Chul's eyebrows remain pinned to his hairline as he scrolls through the account. 

He opens his phone, and sends a text to Jin-Woo, having a feeling it'll remain unread like the rest of his previous messages. 

> woo jinchul: you made an ig?

And there's nothing wrong with that, there's really nothing wrong with Jin-Woo in general.

However, Jin-Chul, who's meant to be the chairman of the Korean Hunter's Association, has spent more than a third of his work hours doing nothing but supervising Sung Jin-Woo's absolute mess. Sure, he's passed most of the phone calls from politicians, the President, and mayors onto an efficient secretary because he can't be bothered, but somehow, he's been trapped in a four-hour argument with foreign guild leaders who wanted to contact Sung Jin-Woo through him. He attended the online meeting, believing it would be nothing more than a discussion over the market of resources and products from the dungeons underneath the Association, before realizing it was nothing more than a Sung Jin-Woo fanclub who thought that as the young and new chairman (and he's not young, he aged like twenty years because of Sung Jin-Woo-), he'd be easy to manipulate with. 

Jin-Chul doesn't know why he's still playing body guard for Jin-Woo even as a chairman, but he supposes some things never change.

He glances at the IG account. He doesn't have social media, but he knows how important it is.

He blearily glances over at the emails the secretary forwarded to him, most of them being large businesses and even other guilds who wanted to get in contact with Ahjin's social media platforms, many of them even requesting potential job offers in PR marketing. 

He calls his secretary through the office landline.

"...Woo Jin-Chul-nim?" 

"Yes, hello, I was just calling because I got your emails about this Instagram account," he licks his chapped lips, "why is the Association receiving emails about this in the first place?" Ahjin has nothing to do with the Association in the first place. Even though his amicable relationship with Jin-Woo isn't secretive to the public eye, most people wouldn't connect the Association itself to Ahjin, at least, not officially.

"You don't know?"

"Ahjin and the Association has no connection, but since you're known as Ahjin's Chief, people tend to assoc-"

"I'm known as what?"

Static and keyboard clacks swim through his emptied brain as the secretary pauses. "...on the Ahjin site, Hunter Sung Jin-Woo has placed your work email as the guild's emergency contact information."

He pauses.

"He did WHAT now?"

"...an account."

"A what?" Choi Jong-In scrunches his nose, intensely focused on his game.

"The Ahjin Guild created an account." Chae Hae-In repeats faintly.

Jong-In's fingers flutter to a halt.

He then swivels his chair away from his open tab of Club Penguin, and stares directly into his teammates' eyes. 

A pause.

Then:

"They what now."

"They have a social media account."

He stares incredulously at her face. Hae-In is neither the type to lie, nor procure sensitive and very important information without double-checking.

"You're telling me, that Ahjin, which is led by Sung Jin-Woo," he weaves his fingers together over his pursed mouth. "Who asked me the other day how properly restart Siri-"

"He did what now?" Son Ki-Hoon, who up until now, had remained respectfully quiet in the corner of the Hunters' lounge, stirring his ketchup into a styrofoam cup of melted ice cream like the absolute abomination he is.

"-has a social media account?" He says lowly. "Verified?" He tacks on without waiting for a response, even though he already knows the answer. Hunters have multiple fan-accounts all over various platforms, either to support or even pretend to be them, but most hunters have their own social media account, or at least participate in some form of PR through a shared guild account if they're high-ranking enough.

Sung Jin-Woo is one of the few, next to Liu Zhigang who's probably being the newest cryptid in the Shunan forest, who doesn't bother with social media.

"Yes." Hae-In, very the righteous woman, replies without hesitation to a question that's so obvious, that it might as well be hypothetical. "Um. Everyone is talking about it."

"Not surprised."

"Oh knew it," Son Ki-Hoon is yelping in the background, surrounded by his own squad who are gathered around his laptop propped on a table. Reminded of their presence, Jong-In glances at his watch: Squadron B should leave in fifteen minutes to reach to their assigned gate. "So he and his brother were the ones who ransacked that one Lotte World," he mutters.

Hae-In is staring at her own screen with a complicated expression. "...there's a photo with Jin-Woo and that actress," she's now gnawing on her bottom lip, and Jong-In gives her a vaguely exasperated, mostly pitiful expression at this. 

"You mean Yoo Soo-Hyun?" They've all done extensive research on Ahjin after all. "She's just his teammate."

Hae-In however, doesn't look very consoled by his apathetic tone. 

"May I see?" He asks, a bit kinder this time, taking sympathy of her crush on Jin-Woo. After all, while the entire world has an infatuation with Jin-Woo, it's pretty hard to have a crush on his personality in Jong-In's opinion. However, Hae-In still had one, which, if he had less empathy for mankind and for his life, would tell her is an amazing feat within itself.

She silently hands over her phone.

Jong-In scrolls through it. The account is simply labeled 'Ahjin', which is terrifying since that implies nobody took that name before now, with a verified mark beside it. 

The account is racking up over a million followers already, and to Jong-In's surprise, it's actually following three accounts.

He clicks on the list.

- jin_ahhhhh

- Y00Jin0

- yoojinhee ✓

He blinks.

The account itself, coincidentally only has three photos as well. 

The first one was posted only four hours ago, an unprofessional, laidback photo that seems like a selfie in Yoo Jin-Ho's hand, with Jin-Woo and Jin-Ho's cousin in the office background. While the cousin herself looks beaming, sipping a coke, Jin-Woo's unfocused figure in the background, was poorly copy pasted a second time, right next to him. Probably to acknoweldge his 'twin.' Most likely, they didn't have a new photo of Ahjin with Qin Yu, and decided to just play around.

He huffs at this, unable to repress the twitch of a creeping smile. 

The caption simply says: 'hello.'

Jong-In snorts at it, and then at the overblowing comment section that's already hit up to a terrifying amount of comments.

Ahjin's second photo is a blurry photo, one with a dim background highlighted with neon rings and splatters of colour-filtered lights, and the post itself is actually a slide, holding multiple photos of the same setting. It's clearly an arcade, one reminiscent of offbranded Chuck E Cheese rather than of a Lotte World, dusty and greasy through the screen, but the figures peering back at the camera, glossy from the flash, are refreshingly happy. 

There's a girl, one that Jong-In knows to be Jin-Woo's younger sister with a lowkey life, next to a flashily masked Yoo Jin-Ho, surrounded a bulbous table with bright buttons and fluorescent LEDs, both wearing equally devilish and delighted smirks. 

Another is of Jin-Woo and another lanky figure barely obscured by his own, both blotted into the background with a mask and cap, aiming plastic guns at a bright screen in front of them, illuminating the cheering faces in the background and reflecting off of the glinting, neon and hollow teeth of onlookers. 

And the last one, shows-

He stares, surprised by this one. It's a middle-aged lady, with a kind expression, one that he's seen in reports from the associations and his guild files on Sung Jin-Woo's family.

It's Jin-Woo's mother, a lady who he hasn't bothered to memorize the name of, surrounded by dozens of stuffed animals, with a frenzied employee behind her, staring nervously at her hand that's clutched around a knob of something.

That's the end of the second post's slide of pictures, and the caption is simply: 'choose your player:'.

"Why are these captions so dry?" He says disapprovingly.

"It's Sung Jin-Woo," Hae-In replies, because she may have a crush, but she's definitely not blinded by love; anyone can tell that Jin-Woo has the personality of a eraser cap. "Or at least, it's the owner of the account who's mimicking his voice," she scratches her hairline, and Jong-In has a feeling the second theory is much more plausible, because any person with a decent amount of EQ would never let Jin-Woo take the wheel in social marketing. 

He silently moves onto the most recent post- recent being less than an hour ago.

"So this is what Qin Yu looks like," he whistles.

"It's almost like they're twins, Jong-In," Hae-In says flatly from above.

He ignores her.

"He looks. Different," he comments. Qin Yu is still donning his hat, but this time, wearing flashy glasses with plastic flowers melded to its limbs, and posing with dozens of glowstick necklaces and bracelets decorating his neck and wrists. His mask is pulled down to his neck, revealing a bright and almost mischievous smile, with teeth that's so white, that they're as flourescent and hollow as his cheap, Dollar Store glowsticks.

"It's because he's. Well. He seems more carefree, doesn't he?"

"Are you saying Hunter Sung Jin-Woo isn't?" He scoffs. How can he not be, when nothing can get in his way?

Hae-In doesn't respond, and so he glances up, surprised by her silence, only to falter upon meeting her inquisitive, almost critical gaze. "Are you saying he is?" And she sounds genuinely confused, as if she can't imagine why he would say that.

He blinks, taken back by her expression, and glances at Qin Yu. Most of Qin Yu's face is obscured by the mask, but Jong-In can easily overlap Sung Jin-Woo's face over his. And it's the way that his eyes, peering over his ugly sunglasses perched on the tip of his covered nose, that gives him a hint as to what's different between the two twins. Jin-Woo's eyes, deep and dimensioned with blues, are hefty in their own right.

But Qin Yu's eyes almost look misty, a pale lavender, the Milky Way's newest Gas Giant held in the trenches of Qin Yu's crinkled eyes.

He thinks about when he last saw Jin-Woo: unbothered and untouchable.

Qin Yu looks equally carefree, but he looks-

Personable.

"I want to meet Qin Yu," he immediately blurts.

"I'm sure most do."

"No like." He blinks, glancing at the face. And he's a professional, yet- "he just looks-" interesting, "nice," he settles on. Before he can try and elaborate, he sees the time on her phone. "Son Ki-Hoon, prepare your team." He shouts without glancing at the man in the corner. 

"Yes sir-" he hears shuffling from behind him, and he hands Hae-In back her phone, and turns back to his computer, and pulls up the monthly dungeon schedule, searching up for locations that were marked for the Ahjin Guild.

"...Jong-In?"

"Yes, Hae-In?" He asks, scrolling down the excel sheet.

"Were you playing Clu-"

"Chae Hae-In, ask Son Ki-Hoon if he needs an extra hand."

"...I can still see the tab op-"

"Do you want me to pull up your search history through our internet provider's Wi-Fi plan?"

"I'll go help out Son Ki-Hoon, goodbye leader!"

"...You're telling me that Liu Zhigang is on his way here and wants to meet Hunter Sung Jin-Woo?" Woo Jin-Chul says hoarsely, face collapsing against his hands, his palms burrowing into his sunken eyes. Before Liu Zhigang's personal secretary can say anything else, he rasps: "I'll send a car for you at the airport to take you to one of the Association's free rooms." Better to make things simple, knowing Liu Zhigang's infamous temper. He disconnects the call after hearing the secretary's response, and tiredly slams the landline back into socket.

"That's hilarious." Qin Yu finally breaks the silence with a serrated grin, shifting in one of Jin-Chul's office chairs to better position the shadow ant in his lap. 

"Who doesn't want to meet Hyung-nim?" Jin-Ho reasons, feeding a chip to the ant (and Jin-Chul didn't even know they could eat).

"Oh. Can I have his autograph?" Sung Jin-Ah asks from where she's petting the ant as well as winning her nth round of cards against the other shadow soldiers seated around Jin-Chul's coffee table.

"You just want to sell it," Jin-Woo sneers, readjusting the twenty-two stuffed animals that he brought in from absolutely nowhere, now perched on all of Jin-Chul's office's window sills.

Jin-Ah, having the same blunt attitude of her brother, doesn't even appear remotely ashamed by this, and shrugs. "Of course. That's what I've done with all your empty shampoo bottles."

"You did wha-"

"You guys...." Jin-Chul swallows a moan. And he was suffering through an entire wave of reports from his secretary, as well as paperwork from managing so many other Hunters, that at first, when four children out of nowhere (or really, two adults, one teenager, and one humanoid alien from outerspace and possibly outerdimension) had crawled out of his shadow, he really just thought God was signaling him through hallucinations spawned out of sleep-deprivation that it was just his time to go.

Then, Jin-Woo unceremoniously dumped bags of treats in his office, and Qin Yu with all his glowsticks became a personal nightlight in his room full of natural light, and he just had to accept that Jin-Woo clearly sees him as a convenient pitstop.

At least Jin-Ah and even Jin-Ho looked vaguely embarrassed for barging in. 

Though, their initial hesitation has easily melted away. Even Jin-Ah, who's never met him before, is using his coffee machine without bothering with permission.

Maybe it's because they simply know he'd unreasonably tolerate them for an insurmountable amount of time- teenagers often can smell weakness, after all.

But he's not doing all this because he has a particularly soft spot for Jin-Woo, a Hunter he basically watched evolve into the person he is today, no matter what Go Gun-Hee had said. He doesn't have anything other than professional amicability with Jin-Ho and Jin-Woo (even if Jin-Woo considered him a friend and Jin-Ho is lounging around his office like a junior more than a coworker), and the fondness he holds for them is nothing but expected from a person who's watched them grow. 

He looks at Jin-Ah and Jin-Ho ravaging through a bag of scallion chips.

Should I stash snacks here more often?

"Hey, Jin-Chul," Jin-Woo calls out, and he tears his eyes away to face the boy who's casually ruining the world and every social media platform with every little thing he does with zero regards for Jin-Chul's mental stability or overtime hours. 

"Yes?" He breathes, shuffling his papers.

"Do I have only three friends?"

Jin-Chul jerks so hard that he crumples this month's financial reports.

To the side, Jin-Ah is howling, nearly scattering her entire deck of cards across the table, twisting in her seat to stare at her brother with bugged eyes.

"You have three friends?" Jin-Ho blurts with terribly genuine shock.

"Two-point-five, if we're to be precise," Qin Yu corrects with large eyes and a calm smile.

Jin-Chul, who's been in dungeons with Jin-Woo, knows that it's the exact same smile Jin-Woo himself makes when he's about to Uno Reverse the dungeon population of enemies vs himself. 

"Um. I suppose in total shouldn't you have four?" He replies carefully, seeing the stoic seriousness in Jin-Woo's gaze, as well as the surprisingly insufferable amusement in Qin Yu's. "You called me a friend right?" His throat swells as he chokes those words out, and he has to physically beat back a sense of endearing embarrassment with nothing more than sheer willpower, "and the others here amount to three." 

"Yeah, wait, why aren't you considered my friend?" Jin-Woo accuses Ashborn.

Ashborn gives him a look. "Sugar daddy," is his only word of reply.

Jin-Ah looks at them, disgusted.

Jin-Woo's pointed expression, if possible, hardens even more. "At the very least, Jin-Ah is my friend, too." 

"No she isn't." Ashborn immediately retorts, not even bringing up the "she's your sister" card, and instead, going straight for the jugular, which inexplicably, is a lot more offensive than if he brought up the 'sibling bond' accusation.

Jin-Chul watches as his entire hardwood floor gets dyed in black from the monarch's rising tension, and as Jin-Woo himself pulls a knife out of absolutely nowhere as one just does.

To the side, Jin-Ho is now pulling out a camera to film this, while Jin-Ah looks more or less annoyed by the overlooming threat of the possible annihilation of South Korea that's currently displaced five steps away from her. 

"Please don't destroy my office." Is all he can say as the sudden appearance of five more soldiers in his room nearly knocks over his coffee pot. 

Jin-Woo, because he's such a good and considerate kid in spite of literally everything else he's done today, waves away the appearance of those soldiers who didn't even look prepared to fight, and instead, seemed much more interested in the game of Poker that Jin-Ah is dealing with their comrades.

"Also, Jin-Woo, why is my work email on your guild site contact information?" He asks dryly, glancing up from his desktop.

Jin-Woo freezes, while Qin Yu looks at him, probably curious as to how he easily dismantled Jin-Woo's bloodthirsty focus with a single question.

"...you're a very efficient worker, Jin-Chul," Jin-Woo nods humbly.

"Are you trying to exploit me-"

"I'm just letting the public know that you're one of my people even if you're not a member of my guild," Jin-Woo shrugs passively, tone carefully nonchalant, eyes skirting past him, staring at a teddy bear who's benched on Jin-Chul's air vent. Jin-Chul raises an eyebrow at this, while Jin-Ah stares at her brother with a startled if not judgmental gaze. Jin-Woo then turns to Jin-Chul with a devious smirk, eyes crinkling into smiles. "Just delete any email that goes your way, I don't care about them, and I already have enough money to keep the guild afloat without sponsorship or given opportunities."

"This is why you have two-point-five friends," Qin Yu says indifferently.

"What are you? A dog who pees on their owner to scare away other mutts?" Jin-Ah leers.

Jin-Chul on the other hand, stares at Jin-Woo who appears perfectly unconcerned about his questionable shows of friendship. 

He thinks about when Jin-Woo warped into his office through his shadow, and dropped an entire handful of coffee candies onto his desk, like the absolute magpie he is. 

Jin-Woo's not unkind, but he's certainly not...friendly nor social either; he's not the type to go out of his way to do such nonsensical things. And he's pretty sure that this entire email fiasco, didn't exist until today, or else he would've been swamped with emails for the past couple months.

So what changed?

Jin-Woo seems the same if not a bit louder, a bit more unhinged in terms of composure, a bit more affectionate even if his methods of showing it are unconventional and questionably inappropriate, and that's-

That's all because of-

He glances over at Qin Yu who has an arm wrapped around that one knight shadow soldier that Jin-Chul sees often with Jin-Woo, with an arrogantly curved grin and affectionate eyes, directed at Jin-Woo.

Jin-Woo, who's made more expressions in the past day than Jin-Chul has seen him make in the past couple months.

Oh. He thinks about the monarch's hypothesis about their bleeding personalities, and then about the email and the candies that are now currently sitting in the cabinet of his desk. Jin-Woo's actions are clumsy and dense, and while Jin-Chul has a feeling they're meant to be affectionate, they're more...subconsciously possessive than anything. But it's very different from before, when he showed defensive anger and sharp protectiveness and nothing more. 

It's almost cute. It reminds Jin-Chul of his niece when she was really young, and would beat back other children for wanting his attention, and would try and monopolize his affection with caps she found on the ground and sea glasses she took home with sandy socks.

He watches as Jin-Woo loudly gives away all of Jin-Ah's cards to the rest of his shadow soldiers and to Jin-Ho, while the girl herself angrily smacks him with the empty bag of chips, while Qin Yu and the shadow knight are in the corner whispering to each other like childhood friends. 

He inwardly smiles.

And he doesn't doubt that in weeks or maybe a month, Jin-Woo will remove his email off of his site on his own, if he continues growing with Qin Yu by his side.

"I don't need sleep."

"Yeah. I know. That's why I'm saying you should go patrol the streets."

"You have an entire army that's already doing that for you."

"Don't you want to hang with Igris?"

"Igris is already by my side at all times." Ashborn responds, standing upside down from Jin-Woo's bedroom ceiling.

And it's true. Jin-Woo can sense his shadows, and this whole day, Igris has only ever positioned himself right behind of Ashborn like an artificial shadow. Not like Jin-Woo minds- Igris still listens to his quiet demands, his mutterings, even while clinging onto Ashborn. He doesn't know if the two had talked without him knowing, if they've reconnected while Jin-Woo was busied, but he unexpectedly finds himself not minding.

Not like it's within his right to intervene on the redevelopment of their relationship in the first place. 

"Also. I'm sure you can sense it to, but Liu Zhigang has arrived in Korea around an hour ago," Ashborn yawns like the perfect imitation of a human that he is, unaware of Jin-Woo's careful speculations of Ashborn's timetable.

Jin-Woo has noticed- the shadow he slapped onto Liu Zhigang during their first meeting has informed him of this already. "Should we go visit him?" Ashborn suggests.

"It's nighttime."

"It's not like you need lots of sleep, and I don't even have to." 

"You're just bored."

"I'm going to go visit Ant-hony and see what Liu Zhigang is up to," Ashborn informs stubbornly, not even asking permission, but rather, telling Jin-Woo, and Jin-Woo stiffens. He can't let Ashborn run around without supervision. See, Ashborn can wreck havoc in the same manner that Jin-Woo knows he'd do himself on a daily basis, because all variations of Jin-Woo, no matter if it's with or without Ashborn's influence, has the suicidal susceptibility for every impulsive and off-the-rocker plan.

Which kinda suggests that him being there as a nanny won't do much because he'll probably end up being nothing more than an enabler for Ashborn's spontaneous behaviour, but still. 

"Stop naming my ants," is all he can say. "And really? Ant-hony?"

"You named your ant Beru!" Ashborn scoffs, though, he's leaping down next to Jin-Woo right now, as if knowing that if Jin-Woo isn't stripping out of his day clothes and is instead bickering with him, that means he's already willing to give into whatever he wants to do. "They're at Kangwon right now, according to the shadow. They're..."

"Gambling," Jin-Woo finishes with a curious tone, intercepting the message as well. At first he didn't care about what Liu Zhigang was doing- he's met him once, and while he had a good impression of the hunter, it's not like they're acquaintances the way he was with Thomas Andre.

Jin-Woo likes him enough to talk to him, but he'd never never use his own time to seek him out. 

But gambling? Now, he knew Liu Zhigang was the world's first personified Wild Card, but hearing that he was gambling feels severely out of character. 

"Have you ever gambled?" Ashborn asks.

"No." Jin-Woo admits, tugging on a fresh pair of socks, somewhat disgruntled at the realization that he once again, is easily giving into whatever Ashborn wants. Then again, it's not like Ashborn ever does anything that he figured Jin-Woo wouldn't be slightly interested in, such as the mall. 

"Well, it'll be fine. I mean. You share Jin-Ah's genes, you'll probably be good at gambling," Ashborn shrugs insouciantly, kicking on Jin-Woo's Adidas sandals that are becoming nothing more than his signature wear by this point. "I've never gambled since that wasn't really leadership behaviour, but, I'm sure with the two of us, we'll be great at it."

"Being good at gambling isn't a flex."

"Only if you're boring," Ashborn scoffs. "Anyways. I wanna know what Liu Zhigang is doing there," he hums, lips twitching. "After all, you like him, don't you?"

Jin-Woo falters, staring at him with wide eyes. "I don't dislike him?" And when he was younger, when he was an E-Rank, of course he admired Liu Zhigang. It was more envy than admiration, but still: two sides of the same coin. And after actually meeting him, months later and more confident in his own abilities, he felt respect for him, and found his brutally straightforward attitude refreshing, and almost friendly, if anything. Sure, Liu Zhigang was nothing but arrogantly eccentric in a way that surprisingly doesn't bother Jin-Woo, and seemed more or less amused by Jin-Woo in a way that doesn't feel pretentious or patronizing, despite his attitude.

But something about Ashborn's tone feels sly.

"You would trust him to have your back, huh?"

"This feels like a trap," he scoffs, while carefully listening to Anthony (such a dumb name) inform him that right now, Liu Zhigang is locked in a large bathroom stall, not even using it, but rather, sitting on the closed toilet seat to play Candy Crush on his phone. 

"I'm just saying, if you're so sensitive about your amount of friends, here's a chance to expand them."

"I don't need more friends, I'm very happy with the ones I have." 

"Liu Zhigang seems like the type of person to match your energy in a way that the others can't." He says. "Kind of like Thomas Andre, but Thomas feels more like a simp, while Liu Zhigang...he...well, I have to meet him first, but his personality feels compatible," and for a moment, Ashborn seems to stumble, a strange expression crossing his face. "He kind of feels like me."

"You've met him once, and that was through my interaction with him."

"Yeah. And I can tell. He's." 

And for a moment, Jin-Woo's fingers nearly scald, and he flinches, surprised, glancing at the tips of his fingers. It's only when the sudden stroke in pulse melts away into room temperature, does he realize it felt more like frostbite than a burn. 

"He's a good match for you in the way I am, and I know his personality is accordant with mine as long as we're acknowledged as strong by him." He's now following Jin-Woo out of their bedroom and into the dark hallway, past the light seeping out from underneath Jin-Ah's closed door. Tossing over Jin-Woo's sneakers from the front door, he continues, "if I'm no longer here, I think I'd feel safe if someone like him was close with you. He doesn't seem like the type to limit your personality or try and appease you, and instead, redirect your energy and character into doing something fun."

Jin-Woo nearly drops his sneakers as he digests the implications of Ashborn's statement.

"I don't accept that," he finally says stonily, carefully tying his laces with precise movements, doing it quickly to cancel out the tremors of his freezing fingers. "He's not you, and I don't want a replacement."

"I'm not replacing myself," Ashborn makes a scorned face. "I'm way too good to be replaced." Jin-Woo rolls his eyes. "I just want Liu Zhigang as our friend in general." Ashborn says lightly, as if he finds no problem with what he just said when Jin-Woo himself feels his own foundation of-

Of whatever the comforting weight in his chest was, crumple upon Ashborn's unspoken theory of his departure. 

"Don't leave me." He says it more like a demand than as a request, and he knows it's selfish, and he knows it's childish, but Jin-Woo is never the type to kindly ask, he's the type of person to accept whatever someone gives him and forcefully take the rest- "you can't go."

"Not your choice, and you can't stop me anyways," and Ashborn, who has just as much pride as him, responds apathetically with no fear, but rather, slight irritation, to Jin-Woo's command. "C'mon. Hurry up, we don't know how long Liu Zhigang is going to stay in Kangwon."

Jin-Woo quietly knots his other shoelace, and stand up. He senses Ashborn's stare fixed on him, but maybe out of pettiness or anger or childish misery, he refuses to make eye contact with him.

But still, without him saying anything, he swaps places with the shadow by Zhigang's feet, knowing that for now, Ashborn, as always, will follow him.