WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ I Returned as a God ◈

Chapter 54: One Misunderstanding Breeds Another (2)

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Once I started listening for it on purpose, there was no mistaking that voice. It was Yu Jihan's.

I hadn't been completely blind to the possibility that Kim Yuhan might be Yu Jihan, not since our clash at the Giant Ant Cavern.

The call with Park Siyu had nudged that suspicion too, but reasonable suspicion was still just suspicion. I had no hard proof.

I'd set the sword down, but a handful of questions still refused to leave my head.

Was this guy really the Yu Jihan I knew? How was he even out here? And if he really was the same person I'd seen in the cavern, why had he attacked me? The questions kept piling up.

Figuring I had nothing to lose, I opened the door.

The man standing outside, weight cocked onto one hip, made my eyes go round with genuine shock.

The Yu Jihan at my door was, without question, the Yu Jihan I knew.

The face, the build, all of it matched.

Except the air around him was a little different.

Sharper, maybe. Even back when we'd first met, I'd felt it, this guy carried an edge like he was permanently on guard.

Actually, that wasn't even what surprised me most.

"Huh. Normal-looking guy, aren't you."

My muttering made Jihan's jaw clench.

I'd said it to bait him.

Back at the cavern, the one who'd shown up as Kim Yuhan had long hair.

Mask, hat, the whole getup, it had made his face almost impossible to place.

Only two kinds of people would know that outfit had been ridiculous: a hunter who'd been there in person, or the man himself.

Judging by the scowl on his face, he clearly knew it too, at least a little.

Yeah. That fashion sense had definitely been a problem.

Through the narrow gap in the door, the two of us sized each other up.

I couldn't bring myself to open it all the way. My guard wasn't ready for that.

"Who are you?"

"Who am I."

"You weren't muttering to yourself without knowing who I was, were you?"

He shot the words right back at me.

Guess he wasn't completely oblivious.

For now, I figured I should nail down the name first, at least.

"Open the door."

An invisible tug-of-war started between me and Yu Jihan, him trying to force the door open, me trying to keep it shut.

From the outside it probably looked evenly matched. It wasn't, not even close.

He had one hand wedged through the gap, bracing against it, while I had both hands white-knuckled on the door.

Thank god he couldn't see inside.

"Your information disappeared from inside Aria Guild," he said.

His narrowed eyes flicked toward me as he tried to force the door wider.

Something about his tone suggested a realization clicking into place.

"Heard you got introduced to Park Siyu through Choi Suhyun. Guess that part's true."

He didn't confirm or deny that his own information had vanished from the guild records. Instead he let it slip that he knew just as much about me as I'd dug up about him through Park Siyu.

Sharp instincts, and a mind that moved fast to match.

"Open the door. Before I break it down."

Bold talk for someone who claimed he hadn't come here to fight.

"Sorry, but I've got no interest in talking to someone who won't even give his name."

My flat refusal finally made him back off, one step.

"Yu Jihan."

The name, dragged out of him against his will, sent my head spinning.

So this guy really was the same Yu Jihan from the tower.

When I didn't answer right away, he sneered.

"What, you want my height and weight too while you're at it?"

Like I care about any of that!

This guy, seriously.

I called through the gap in the door.

"You're really not here to fight, right?"

"A hunter under the protection of a top guild's representative, and some no-name hunter nobody can place, going at it in the middle of a residential neighborhood. Who do you think that blows back on if it turns into a scene? I don't know about you, but I'm not stupid enough to make enemies out of the people standing behind you."

Jihan yanked the door hard.

My whole body went with it.

He looked at the door hanging wide open and gave a small shrug.

Kicking off his shoes, he strolled in with his hands stuffed in his pockets, cool as anything.

He stood in the middle of the room, glancing around.

"Tell Park Siyu or Choi Suhyun to buy you a real place. Those two are loaded and you're stuck in a semi-basement studio?"

Sure enough, the first thing out of his mouth was a complaint about my apartment.

"I'm moving out, you know."

I'd just been too busy for it lately.

The second the expedition with Raon Guild wrapped up, I was gone for real.

No need to explain any of that to Yu Jihan, so I swallowed it down.

Jihan dragged the low table over and sat right down on the floor.

Anyone watching would've thought this was his place, not mine.

This guy.

Same face, same build as the Yu Jihan from the tower, but a completely different personality underneath.

The Yu Jihan I knew might've had a screw loose here and there, but he wasn't the type to walk around with a chip on his shoulder about the whole world!

"Guest's here. Not gonna offer some tea?"

He said it without even looking up from his phone, insufferably smug.

I grabbed an unopened 1L water bottle from the fridge and slammed it onto the table.

His mouth fell open at my little stunt.

"You for real right now?"

"If you're that thirsty, go grab a cup from the back yourself. Be grateful I even gave you water."

"Ugh, forget it."

Forget what!

I'm not forgetting anything.

I've still got plenty of questions I want answered.

Put the phone down already!

Between him barging in uninvited and now texting someone else right in front of me, my blood pressure was through the roof.

Was he testing me?

Maybe I should test him first.

I picked the sword back up off the floor, and Jihan pocketed his phone and raised both hands.

Damn him, uncannily good instincts, made it impossible to actually get mad.

With both his hands up like that, drawing the sword now would just make me the bad guy.

Keeping my grip on the sword, I asked, "What do you want?"

Asking how he'd found my address felt pointless.

If he'd already wiped his own records from inside Aria Guild and dug up the fact that I got in through Choi Suhyun, finding my home address would've been child's play.

And this was just a hunch, but the hacking hadn't been Yu Jihan's own work.

No way this guy would sit here texting his girlfriend with me standing right in front of him.

Someone with serious hacking skills had to be involved.

This is exactly why I keep telling him to lock things down better.

Park Siyu had sworn the guild's security was airtight, but the world didn't tend to work out that neatly.

What exactly connects the Yu Jihan in the tower to the guy standing in front of me right now?

Was this even the Yu Jihan I thought I knew, to begin with?

Jihan lowered his hand and pointed a finger at me.

"This is about the god you serve."

Right, he'd said something like that last time too.

After I took down the queen ant, this guy had jumped me.

Thinking back on it now, my stomach still ached from that hit.

Even with the sword in my grip, looking ready to cut him down on the spot, Yu Jihan didn't so much as blink.

That flat go-ahead-try-it look drained the fight right out of me, and I let my hand fall away from the sword, tension bleeding out.

Like he'd said, this really didn't seem like someone here to fight.

"What about the god I serve?"

"I already know your god isn't Vector. Idiot. If you're gonna lie, at least make it convincing."

Jihan casually cracked the cap on the water bottle sitting on the table and took a drink.

"Hey, you...!!"

Before I could stop him, half the bottle had already gone down his throat.

Watching the water bottle drain to half in seconds left me speechless.

You come from a desert or something?

Did you come to my house just to drink water?!

It was obviously there to be looked at, not touched.

He set the bottle down beside his knee and shot me a crooked look, like he genuinely didn't understand the problem. You gave it to me to drink, so I drank it, what's the issue?

I'd never met anyone this shameless.

I genuinely started to wonder if this was really the Yu Jihan I knew.

"I don't know how you ended up serving that thing, but drop it. Now."

That wasn't the sentence I'd expected out of him.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not here to fight, but I never said I wasn't willing to fight."

"Cut the wordplay and just explain what you mean."

"You know what this game actually means?"

Of course I knew.

The gods competed against each other for merit points up until the Day of Final Battle, and whichever god ended up with the most points claimed the Dimensional Ruler Authority. Those were the rules.

Not every hunter seemed to know this, but anyone close to a god, or sharp enough to piece it together, clearly knew.

I didn't answer right away.

The Yu Jihan in the tower and the one standing in front of me were the same person and not the same person, both at once.

Since I had no idea what he actually wanted, I couldn't afford to say anything carelessly.

Yu Jihan repeated himself like a machine grinding through the same line.

"Cut ties with it."

"Why, though?"

I kept pushing, unable to stand the frustration of not knowing.

A heavy shadow fell over Jihan's face.

"That thing is a god that should never be allowed to take part in this game."

"And if I say no, I'm not cutting ties with the god Soter?"

"I just told you. I never said I wasn't willing to fight. You still not getting that I'm not here to ask nicely?"

"So if I don't cut ties, you'll hit me again, like last time? If this isn't a request, is it a threat? Kind of a polite one for a threat, don't you think?"

"My goal is to kill his followers. And if I can take out the god Soter as a bonus, even better."

His words knocked the breath clean out of me.

"No matter what you say, I'm not cutting ties with the god Soter."

Cut ties? Even if I wanted to, I couldn't.

If I did what this guy wanted, that was basically him telling me to die.

"Wait, that's..."

Out of nowhere, a sword swept toward my throat.

I hit the ground rolling, barely dodging in time.

I scrambled up with the Sword of Sky and Earth in hand and staggered back.

Blood dripped from the spot the blade had grazed.

That bastard!

This wasn't a joke. He'd genuinely meant to kill me with that swing.

A second later and it would've been over.

The sword in Yu Jihan's hand was one I'd never seen before.

Definitely not the one I'd gifted him.

If this really was the same Yu Jihan who'd come out of the tower, then he'd have something no other hunter could possibly have.

An item inventory.

The fact that Yu Jihan stood there so composed despite showing up empty-handed was the proof of it.

If I hadn't already considered the possibility that he might be carrying an item inventory, that surprise attack could've finished me.

"Hey! You said you weren't here to fight!"

"You stick to your plans?"

"What the hell kind of nonsense is that."

"Plans. Like, what you're supposed to do today, that sort of thing."

"If it's on the schedule for today, then yeah, you do it."

Jihan took a step toward me, sword still in hand.

That's actually a nice-looking blade, though.

"A plan's usually something you make before things happen."

"Yeah, that's the whole point of a plan!"

"I don't make plans. No point, I never keep them anyway. Wanna know why?"

"What? Why!"

"Who knows what's gonna happen to me tomorrow. Why would I bother planning around that."

Jihan raised the sword high over his head.

This psychopathic son of a bitch!

So he really did come here to fight, after all!

Footnotes:

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