It was a moment Yoo Areum had played out in her head a thousand times.

  Sunlight falling just right. Her long hair catching the breeze. Her tailored outfit hugged her curves in all the places that screamed, I’m rich, beautiful, and incredibly important.

  She strode up to Lee Aseok with the confidence of someone who had never stood in a queue, never heard the word “no,” and never been ignored for longer than three seconds.

  Her hand extended gracefully, waiting for a handshake.

  Aseok didn’t stop walking.

  Didn’t blink.

  Didn’t acknowledge her existence in the slightest.

  He simply veered to the side with a deadpan expression, stepping around her like she was an oddly shaped tree or a pothole on the road.

  Yoo Areum was left standing mid-gesture, hand still hovering in the air, a smile frozen on her face.

  For a full two seconds, no one said anything.

  Even the wind felt awkward.

  Park Taegun quietly sipped his coffee. Seo MinHyun studied the sky. Mu Yichen pretended he hadn’t noticed anything at all.

  Only He Ziqin had the decency to look up and mouth, “I warned you.”

  Yoo Areum slowly turned around, red blooming at the tips of her ears.

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

  She was Yoo Areum. Her name trended on social media with zero effort. She’d had magazine spreads, interviews, a closet bigger than most apartments, and a bank account that didn’t blink when she spent ten million won on a purse.

  And yet here she was.

  Ignored like a potted plant in a furniture showroom.

  He didn't even flinch. Didn’t even look surprised to see me.

  She forced herself to laugh lightly, brushing her hair behind her ear. “He must not have heard me,” she said.

  Everyone kept looking at Lee Aseok’s retreating figure.

  Seo MinHyun cleared his throat awkwardly and took a small step forward, as if to try and salvage the situation. But before he could open his mouth…

  “Don’t,” Ziqin said without looking up from his tablet.

  MinHyun paused. “Why not?”

  Ziqin clicked his pen once. “Let her process this.”

  Areum slowly turned back to them. “Is he… always like that?”

  Mu Yichen nodded. “Yes.”

  “No exceptions?”

  “Not even for the President,” said Taegun.

  Yoo Areum’s lips parted in disbelief. “But I’m—”

  “Yoo Areum. We know,” said MinHyun quickly.

  She glanced at the husky, who was now lying on his back, legs in the air, as Aseok absentmindedly scratched his belly.

  They looked like a man and his soul beast. Both emotionally unavailable. Both wildly intimidating. Both are too pretty for anyone’s comfort.

  Areum crossed her arms. “He could have said something.”

  Ziqin offered helpfully, “That was his version of saying something.”

  “That was him ignoring me.”

  “Exactly.”

  Areum scowled. “Well, I’m not going to give up just because I didn’t get a handshake. I’ve made CEOs grovel. I’ve had movie stars chase me.”

  MinHyun whispered, “None of them were Lee Aseok.”

  As Areum stood there in brewing frustration, her eyes caught something near the car.

  Someone else was still standing by the open door, half-hidden behind the vehicle like a cat who wandered into a lion’s den.

  Yoo Eunsae.

  Her younger sister.

  Dressed plainly, hands clasped nervously in front of her, and eyes wide as she watched everything unfold like a deer watching a car crash in slow motion.

  Eunsae had been quiet the entire time. She wasn’t used to being dragged into things like this. Her older sister handled everything, talking, posing, dominating rooms with a single smirk.

  Eunsae had always been the one trailing behind, notebook in hand, heart in her throat.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  But now even she looked concerned.

  Areum exhaled sharply, shoulders stiff. “He must not have heard of me”

  Lee Aseok hadn’t just recognized her.

  He remembered everything.

  In his past life, Yoo Areum had been part of the final team that entered the Hell Gate.

  She was the team’s healer.

  Self-important. Difficult. Always late.

  She and Mu Yichen had announced their engagement just before the operation. A confusing, chaotic time when no one had the clarity for romance, least of all him.

  He never found out how or why Yichen betrayed him.

  The Hell Gate had been chaotic.

  Lee Aseok still remembered the blood that soaked the broken marble beneath his feet. The weight of betrayal is heavier than the death he felt.

  He remembered Mu Yichen’s cold silence.

  He died before knowing everything.

  Before learning why.

  He only knew that while he fought and bled at the heart of the Hell Gate, no one came for him.

  He died there, turned into dust.

  And then, he was back.

  Seven years earlier, with his memories, his scars, and a new power.

  A skill that allowed him to absorb dungeon cores, and sense aura like it was a second language.

  He had no use for the past now. No time for the web of people who once surrounded him, smiling with friendly faces and sharpening knives behind his back.

  With all the memories, all the pain… and the chance to do it differently.

  As the unwelcome memories crept in, Lee Aseok blinked once and looked up.

  Pudding let out a low grunt and pawed at his lap.

  He scratched behind the dog’s ear and glanced back toward the car.

  Yoo Areum had turned away, still fuming.

  But the other one, the quiet one, was still there.

  Eunsae.

  She noticed him looking and immediately lowered her gaze.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  Not in recognition, not with emotion.

  Just a flicker of curiosity.

  Unlike her sister, Yoo Eunsae had barely made a dent in his memory during the first life.

  And that’s when he noticed her.

  A woman standing quietly beside the black car. Unlike Yoo Areum, who glowed like an LED billboard, this one seemed almost hidden by the breeze.

  Her short dark hair barely brushed her jawline, and her hands were nervously fidgeting with her sleeves.

  She wore no makeup, no designer branding. Her presence was as muted as the sky before rainfall.

  But her aura.

  It was green.

  Soft and pulsing, like nature itself, and far more complex than it looked.

  It wasn’t blinding like Yoo Areum’s green blaze that screamed, I’m powerful and I know it. No, this one was subtle. Healing. Warm.

  Useful.

  Seo MinHyun, who had already seen where Aseok’s gaze landed, let out a breath like a man bracing for impact.

  “Wait, wait. Lee Aseok, I was about to explain..”

  But before MinHyun could finish his sentence, Aseok was already walking toward the car.

  Straight past Yoo Areum.

  She blinked.

  Then blinked again, like a celebrity waiting for applause that never came.

  “Uh… Aseok-ssi?” she called out, tone sharpening. “I believe we haven’t properly..”

  Ignored.

  He walked past her so cleanly it was as if gravity didn’t apply to her existence.

  He stopped in front of the short-haired woman, head tilting slightly.

  “Name. Rank. Skill.”

  Yoo Eunsae’s brain short-circuited.

  For the first time in her life, someone had walked past her sister without even a nod..and then spoken directly to her.

  And not just anyone.

  Lee Aseok.

  The man who cleared S-rank gates like he was doing laundry.

  The man who made guild leaders and government officials sweat through their shirts.

  The man whose husky refused to acknowledge anyone unless it was for food.

  Yoo Eunsae, very calmly, panicked internally.

  “...Me?”

  Aseok said nothing.

  Just stared at her.

  Those reddish-brown eyes, unreadable and steady, like he could see past skin and straight into her soul.

  His face didn’t twitch. His expression didn’t change. He simply waited.

  Yoo Eunsae had been through her fair share of strange days.

  Like the time her high school lab partner set their entire plant biology project on fire trying to "speed up photosynthesis" with a heat lamp.

  Or when her sister, Yoo Areum, brought home a unicorn-shaped hover car just because the showroom attendant said it was "limited edition."

  But this? This was new.

  The hero. The real, actual, terrifyingly powerful, emotionally-unavailable, often-misunderstood, socially-impossible Lee Aseok had walked right past her sister—the Yoo Areum—and stopped in front of her instead.

  And now he was staring at her like she was an uncut gem. A rare resource. An... edible mushroom he just discovered in a survival dungeon.

  His voice, deep and flat like the calm before a dungeon quake, repeated:

  “Name. Rank. Skill.”

  Yoo Eunsae opened her mouth.

  Then closed it.

  Then opened it again.

  Nothing came out.

  Her throat had apparently decided to file for retirement.

  Seo MinHyun, ever the socially unfiltered one, jumped in with what he assumed was helpful clarification.

  “No, no, Aseok-ssi. Not that one,” he said, gesturing vaguely. “The one who awakened as an S-rank healer is the one with long hair, standing next to her. Yoo Areum.”

  Yoo Areum flicked her hair with the grace of a shampoo commercial.

  She even tilted her chin up slightly, preparing for the belated attention and praise she was certain would follow.

  But Lee Aseok didn’t blink.

  Didn’t turn.

  Didn’t acknowledge Seo MinHyun’s input.

  He just looked at Yoo Eunsae again.

  Same neutral expression. Same unreadable reddish-brown eyes.

  “Name. Rank. Skill,” he repeated, like an NPC dialogue prompt with no skip button.

  Yoo Eunsae, unsure whether she was in a dream or a survival test, swallowed dryly.

  “Y-Yoo Eunsae,” she said.

  Her voice cracked like a preteen on karaoke night.

  “B-rank… supportive class. Plant-based skill. I, um… make plants grow.”

  There was a silence that followed.

  The kind of silence that made you wonder if you just accidentally declared yourself the dumbest person in the room.

  Mu Yichen squinted, trying to remember if any high-tier combat team had ever included a gardening enthusiast.

  Park Taegun raised an eyebrow so high it nearly left his face.

  Seo MinHyun whispered, “...That’s it?”

  Kang Juwon, whose expression never changed regardless of the apocalypse, looked as if he just smelled something mildly disappointing.

  He Ziqin quietly opened his notebook and jotted: “Yoo Eunsae – Green thumb. Probably harmless.”

  Yoo Areum crossed her arms and scoffed loudly. “Exactly. See? Useless. She’s only good for interior decorating.”

  Eunsae flinched.

  She had expected this day to be all about her sister. She’d prepared mentally to be overlooked, to smile politely while Yoo Areum dazzled the nation’s strongest team.

  But this was different.

  This… was public execution by comparison.

  She peeked up at Lee Aseok, ready to be dismissed and erased.

  But instead—

  He smirked.

  It was faint. Barely there.

  But it was real.

  Lee Aseok’s lips curved in a slow, terrifying grin.

  The type of expression that should have come with a red flashing warning:

  “DANGER: Someone’s life is about to get extremely difficult.”

  Yoo Eunsae blinked.

  Lee Aseok’s smirks had the emotional warmth of a guillotine in winter. It didn’t convey joy. It conveyed inevitability.

  Mu Yichen's face tensed. He recognized that smirk. Too well.

  Park Taegun shifted back half a step, instinctively.

  Seo MinHyun let out a nervous laugh that died halfway through his throat.

  Even Pudding, Lee Aseok’s oversized husky, looked at Eunsae with… was that pity?

  He Ziqin closed his notebook with a sigh and said under his breath, “Oh no.”

  Then Aseok said it.

  The curse word.

  The word no one wanted to hear from him.

  “Useful.”

  One word.

  Just that.

  But it echoed across the group like a goddamn prophecy.

  Everyone immediately turned to Yoo Eunsae with identical expressions of sympathy.

  Author Note:

  Thank you for reading and for screaming in the comments—your suffering is my fuel.

  Every “OH MY GOD ASEOK STOP” gives me the strength to write the next disaster.

  Mon ? Wed ? Fri

  (Yes, I too question my life choices.)

  If you want early chapters, extra chaos, or just want to support my addiction to writing unhinged characters:

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  And if you enjoy this story even a little,

  please leave a review or rating—it helps summon new victims readers. ??