Chapter Text
The best Han Yoohyun could manage was a bare toleration. That word may be stretching it—seeing as how Yoohyun wouldn’t pass on a chance to evict each and every single person out of his older brother’s vicinity, but he’d somehow resisted the urge. It didn’t matter much anyhow when his living space was nothing more than that. A space to carry out his bodily imperatives while in the closest proximity possible to his brother. The other things taking up space inside these quarters were little more than impractical pieces of furniture to Yoohyun even if they seem to mean more to his older brother.
All it meant was that sometimes he had to fry two runny eggs alongside the four done over easy. Sometimes he had to brush off a lump of snoring orange fur off his desk before he could do some work. Sometimes he had to let soot-stained, exhausted teenage girls use his shoulder as a pillow.
And most of the time he would find meal-prepped dishes in the fridge. Three sets labeled with purple sticky notes designating each glass to Yoohyun, Yerim, and Yoojin.
That blacksmith made it a point to replenish these every week. Yoohyun would ordinarily ignore these and stick to his own food, but they kept showing up even if their recipient never ate them. Yoohyun suspected it was Yerim eating his portion as well and giving Yoo Myungwoo the impression that another should be made each week.
Considering the fact that Yoohyun had an appointment for lunch with his hyung later today, it would be ideal to finish his impending tasks for Hayeon at the earliest notice, so saving time on cooking would be convenient. Rather, skipping breakfast altogether seemed more efficient, but he was sure that Yoojin would be happy to hear that he had some of Yoo Myungwoo’s leftovers. It was good to eat something nutritious, so he could grow as much as his brother expected him to. Yoohyun was on decent track to become taller than that Seseong bastard, so skipping meals wasn’t in his interest anyhow.
With all considerations in mind, Yoohyun took one to his desk to eat while he worked.
He wasn’t expecting much, even if his own brother said that it was worth marrying the man over. After testing it for poison and curses and predictably coming up clean, he didn’t pay much attention to it after deeming it safe for consumption. Food was going to end up in his stomach or in the trash one way or another, and very few times would Yoohyun actually throw something safe and edible away. He’d only toss it if it didn’t sit well with his stomach, but such mundane problems never happened after he’d awakened as an S-class. But when he was a kid, Yoojin would often tell him not to eat junk food, fatty, or oily foods, so those types of things got tossed, too.
What was inside the box met every criteria, so it was acceptable to eat by all standards. Yoohyun’s mind was more attentive to different tasks such as organizing dungeon raids, sorting out production quotas, and monitoring Yoojin’s location in the corner of his eye. Today, he was meeting with Song Taewon about some other issue he’d been cagey about, but Yoohyun learned to conserve some of his anxieties for when Yoojin was really getting into trouble.
If he’d had it his way, then he would be sitting right between that Association rep and his older brother to know exactly what was happening, but Yoojin protested that kind of thing. Aside from the fact that it distressed Yoojin to have Yoohyun’s presence hovering at his shoulder, Yoojin would also say something like, “Don’t worry about me all the time. You’re only twenty! You should go out and have some fun at your age.”
There was no need for that when Yoohyun considered very little to be fun unless he was doing it with Yoojin. Even making breakfasts for that bottomless pit of a teenager was a little bit fun if Yoojin was helping him cook or at least just chuckling from across the island counter. Even so, the fact that Yoojin had this expectation for him to do things with no relation to his older brother seemed a bit unreasonable to Yoohyun. Especially with his vague hints about romantic relationships and families.
Of course, it would be trivial to fabricate. All Yoohyun needed was a woman willing to marry him and give him exactly one male child, so Yoojin could see a “mini Yoohyun-ie” in the distant future. It would be preferable if she didn’t ask much from him, but he could learn to live around her as he’d learned to live around a manticore juvenile using his scabbard as a chewstick. All Yoohyun really needed was for her to be able to help him present a picture of a happy married life as a father for his older brother’s satisfaction.
No more, no less.
His chopsticks clacked within the emptied tin. Yoohyun glanced at the remaining grains of rice sitting in the remaining smears of curry lying at the bottom. Giving the location tracker one last glance, he brought it to the kitchen.
He found the kitchen significantly warmer than when he’d left it, and there was that blacksmith stepping out of the heat-soaked space of his forge. Yoohyun stepped around him to get to the sink.
“Oh. Hello, Mr. Han.” He smiled and inclined his head.
“Hello,” Yoohyun offered politely, and he turned on the spray to hose off the rice. Seeing as how Yoojin seemed to favor this man, Yoohyun invoked his general principle of toleration and engaged the social rules.
With some trepidation, the blacksmith entered the kitchen with him. “Excuse me, I was thinking of baking some sweets to leave out. Do you mind if I use the kitchen right now?”
“Go ahead.” Yoohyun scrubbed the dish and rinsed it.
He quietly began clanking around behind Yoohyun, who placed the tin to dry on the kitchen rack and began putting away the rest of the kitchen equipment used this morning. It was presumably from the blacksmith’s meal prepping early in the morning—considering Yoohyun remembered a racket like that at about 5AM last night—but Yoohyun set about resetting the kitchen space anyway.
“Oh, Mr. Han, you can just leave those there! I always make sure to put them back after they dry, but I got carried away in the forge.” The blacksmith got in his way with another smile. People seemed to do that in front of him even though there was no amount of smiling that would induce Yoohyun to smile back. Unless it were for Yoojin.
“I see.” Yoohyun allowed the man to take the pan and stockpot from his hands.
He stepped around the blacksmith, mind already jumping ahead to requesting an update on that Seseong bastard’s location. These days Yoojin was attracting flies on a near daily basis.
“Um, Mr. Han!” The blacksmith set the cookware onto the counter.
Yoohyun stopped because it seemed polite even if unnecessary.
“Thank you for finishing one of my breakfast sets. To be honest, I didn’t think you were eating them.” He scratched the back of his neck and smiled again. He was a bit like Yoojin in that humble sociality of his—at least when it came to ordinary non-awakened people.
“I don’t. Yerim eats them.” Yoohyun would have turned and carried on with his day, but there were a few things missing to this social equation. Yoohyun wouldn’t care if he was failing some social tests, but he knew that when Yoojin found out he had some of Myungwoo’s cooking today, he would naturally inquire whether he thanked Myungwoo for cooking. Rather than risk his older brother’s annoyance, Yoohyun elected to look at the blacksmith. “Thank you for the meal.”
The blacksmith blinked. “No problem.”
Yoohyun left the kitchen without further difficulties. He often had these encounters with Yoo Myungwoo, whose irregular comings and goings out of the forge and into the kitchen would often overlap with Yoohyun’s own rare sleep schedule as an S-class that needed significantly less sleep than the average person. These encounters included the barest greetings and no further, but otherwise Yoohyun paid little attention to his existence. There was no need since he’d barely grown to C-rank, but he was simply a blacksmith who posed the least risk out of everyone stuck to his brother like parasites. Of course, Yoohyun would infinitely prefer Yoojin to have one less person taking up his hyung’s attention than one more.
But some things were necessary to keep his brother an acceptable mix of happy and safe even if Yoohyun would prefer the latter. Yoo Myungwoo’s items and friendship seemed necessary for that mix, so tolerating that man was therefore necessary to Yoohyun.
Nothing more, nothing less.
He came back to his desk and found that in the space of time that he’d been washing his dish, Yoojin had somehow moved several thousand feet away from his original location. Yoohyun frowned deeply. He’d finally managed to stick a tracker onto Yoojin, but it had barely been a day until Yoohyun had to call him about it.
Lifting the phone to his ear, Yoohyun waited with about as much patience as he could muster before Yoojin picked up after four rings. “ Heeey, Yoohyun! What—what’s up! ”
“Hyung. Can we do lunch two hours early? I have somewhere to be after that.” Yoohyun could hear chains rattling in the background. He should have called in that fucking confirmation earlier because, of course, that Sesong idiot had his hands on him now.
“ Oh! Um…. shut up— I-I think that I have something going on! Let’s do a rainche—ack! ” More struggling and attempts to quietly curse out that pest that was no doubt doing as he pleased with his older brother. Yoohyun was about to break his phone. “ RAINCHECK! Let’s raincheck that, okay, Yoohyun? ”
“You know what? How about the original time? Does that work?” He fired off an order to his subordinate to pinpoint where, exactly, these two were heading.
“ Can you fly fucking slower , you— ” A dull thump. “ I’m sure you’re busy, my wonderful, successful guildmaster brother! Why don’t we get lunch tomorrow? Or—or we can go out tonight! Yes, I should be able to get home tonight at 7PM all safe and sound. Hey —I said safe and sound! ”
“Are you with someone, Hyung?” Yoohyun tipped his head back. Tolerance. He could only fucking tolerate it if he knew what the hell to fucking tolerate. Every time he looked over at his older brother, that guildmaster always seemed to be standing next to him with a possessive hand on his shoulder. Even thinking about it gave him a headache, but he was extending the limit of his patience for Yoojin right now.
“ Ahaha, actually… I am… I’m sorry. It’s just that it came up quickly! ” Yoojin was laughing it all off as if Yoohyun weren’t on the verge of cracking his A-rank phone case. “ Listen, I’ll be home soon! I’ll make sure I’ll be home tonight no matter what right after this quick little errand. No need to—hey! ”
The phone jostled a bit, and Yoohyun’s ear was subjected to the misery of that grating voice.
“ Hello, young master. I do have your older brother well in hand, so do be assured that I will bring him home at the proper time. I swear on my reputation as a very reliable tour guide. ”
“Why the hell do you have him in the first place, you bastard?” No need for this toleration business when it came to this particularly troublesome pest. “Get your filthy hands off him before I come waste you.”
“ Oh, my. I’ll be sure to respect the curfew, so no need for the shovel talk, Mr. Han. Or are you recognizing me as an in-law already? ”
His phone case cracked, the shards dropping into his lap. “Are you out of your fucking mind? ”
“ GIVE ME THAT! ” There was an irritating snicker, and Yoojin was finally back on the phone. “ Okay, I’m sorry, Yoohyun! I know that we’re supposed to have lunch, but I promise, I’ll really kill that bastard if I’m not back before nine! I’ll tell you—agh, watch it—everything over dinner tonight! Love you! Bye! Okay, can you fucking STOP— ”
Yoohyun was already up and out of the door before his subordinate messaged him back with a text that they were confirmed to be heading to a C-rank dungeon in the area that Seseong had bid on at the last minute. The gate would be open for two days, so Yoohyun could theoretically break into the dungeon the second that it hit 7PM. While he would rather go there now to wrest away his older brother from the fucker who thought he could put his gloves all over him, Yoohyun figured that the Seseong bastard by now was well invested in keeping his brother safe for at least the twelve hours that he had him.
Tolerance . He needed to spare some of that damn word even for Sung Hyunjae, the kind of S-rank monster least deserving of it. That principle was barely keeping Yoohyun from bursting out of the door to drag his brother back home if only because if Yoojin really did come home as promised, Yoohyun could leverage their rainchecked lunchdate against him while remaining in his hyung’s good graces.
“Mr. Han?” The blacksmith was just finishing pouring some sort of chocolate mixture into a baking tin lined with parchment. “Is there something wrong?”
Yoohyun was stood, staring at the front door, overcoat yanked on and sword clutched in a white grip. He spared him a cutting glance. Out of courtesy. “No.”
Despite the man’s class falling far beneath Yoohyun’s, the only thing indicating fear was the rigidity in his brow and posture, but the blacksmith had a peculiar steel about him. He was even throwing his brownie pan into the oven while talking to an S-class. “Is Yoojin staying out late again?”
“Yes.” Yoohyun shrugged off his coat and started on his way back to his office.
“Ah, Mr. Han. Please wait a moment.”
The man, in an unusual feat of nerves, took his time untying his apron and stepping around the counter to speak to him. Not that it really mattered to Yoohyun all that much whether he was given the highest respect or spoken to as disrespectfully as Yerim sometimes did.
The man’s posture was still screaming fear in Yoohyun’s enraged presence, but to his credit, the blacksmith was even looking him in the eyes, a kind of fire burning in them. “I have a favor I would like to ask of you. Would you please hear out what I have to say, Mr. Han?”
Yoohyun turned, the sound of his shoes clacking on the tile invoking the slightest flinch. He was not the slightest bit interested in wasting his time entertaining personal favors, but Yoohyun was still on a leash called toleration. “What is it?”
The man pursed his lips even as a bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face under the pressure of Yoohyun’s growing impatience. He bowed his head forward, not because he was instinctually giving into Yoohyun’s rank but because he was humbling himself voluntarily. “I have in my workshop S-class ingots that I think requires your abilities to smith into the best items it can be. Of course… I’ll make sure to give it to you or Yoojin, whatever it is. Please consider lending me your help with this, Mr. Han.”
He studied the man. It was clear from the concise, ordered diction he was using that he’d rehearsed this speech. An item… if it could be useful for his brother, then it was worth considering. But Han Yoohyun was skeptical as this seemed out of place for a man who otherwise took care to remain on the edges of Yoohyun’s periphery. “Why are you asking me for help? Don’t you have that fire elemental in your forge?”
“Yes. Ismuar could work the metal, but I think… that it would be best if it was worked by someone like you.” He straightened again. For a man of C-class stats, he was remarkably resilient. It might be from exposure to that SS-class fire elemental. “Would you like to hear more in my forge?”
The blacksmith made a half turn, still not looking away from Yoohyun even as a golden lattice of light opened at his gesture, spilling out around his profile.
The offer raised suspicions. Yoo Myungwoo was, according to Yoohyun’s evaluations, a meek bug that posed the least amount of danger to Yoojin if only because he was about as wimpy as an F-ranker could get. The sort of mettle he was displaying now didn’t square with that if he was able to stand up to an S-class.
It warranted investigation, even if it meant stepping into the blacksmith’s very domain with little way out.
Yoohyun would simply burn the place down along with its owner if necessary. Therefore, he replied, “Alright.”
Yoo Myungwoo held out his hand with a hard gleam of determination in his eyes instead of a smile. This look of bracing himself for contact made much more sense to Yoohyun than nervous smiles.
He gave his hand.