There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL) novel Chapter 355

Chapter 355: Chapter 347. A Guardian Star

When he grabbed a bread knife and swung it to Han Joon’s neck, Radia was almost in a delirious rage.

They had been weaving dreams of making a guild together, a safe space for them, for Bassena, for Shin. It didn’t even matter if no one else became members. They worked on that promise right after they got their license, raiding dungeons so they had the qualifications for building one.

How many times had Radia talked about the future, and how many times had Joon promised that future? They still talked about it a week before Han Joon suddenly announced he would enter the military instead.

After three years of sweet talking, night after night of promise, that announcement uttered dryly and nonchalantly felt like an ultimate betrayal.

No one betrayed Radia Mallarc.

The strike, obviously, never intended to kill. Not even to harm, with Han Shin there. It was a declaration more than anything, that Han Joon had done something that would make Radia want to end his existence.

Still, when he stared at the blood splattered on his hand, Radia felt bile climbing up to his throat, choking him with burning pain as if a hot coal was lodged in his breathing system. His heart, for the first time, broke into a million pieces, and it broke even more when Joon refused to explain anything. For a week, he couldn’t do anything but fight the impulse to break the world in return.

For years, years--he was truly at odds with Han Joon. The love he had for the man turned into agonizing hatred.

Or so he thought.

In reality, he couldn’t. Every time he saw those black eyes with a hint of a twinkling star, he wanted to succumb. He wanted to ask why. He wanted to beg for the man to come back. Han Joon was his first love, his first worship, his first future.

But Radia Mallarc had his pride, and all the sweetness, the softness he gained when he was a lover evaporated when he was no longer one. So he treated his feelings with spite, and still...

Still, he waited.

It only took one cold touch to send the dying spark ablaze after nine years. But with no future to speak of, walls stood between them even as they touched each other again. Walls made of pride, anger, and pain that had been stretched for so long.

Hah...

What pride? What anger? What pain?

What had he been doing, when the love of his life, the man he had once hated with all his being and loved with all the cells in his body, threw away his youth to...

To keep him alive.

Once again, that burning sensation of a hot coal lodging in his throat assaulted him mercilessly.

"B-boss?" Masa scrambled to the summoner who suddenly doubled over with hands covering his mouth and clutching his throat, as if the man wanted to throw up and couldn’t breathe at the same time.

Perhaps he was.

Breathe...breathe!

Radia took a painful breath and forced his blurry eyes to focus. "The data...have you made a backup of it?"

"Y-yeah. I also made it so you don’t have to go through all the walls and decipher the code again," Masa gripped her sleeves--seeing Radia Mallarc like this made her quite shaken.

Wordlessly, Radia opened his palm, and Masa swiftly pulled out the black flash drive, putting it on Radia’s palm. She also took a small sealed box containing another flash drive, a chip, a disk, and an information capsule containing a copy of the flash drive’s content.

When Radia shoved the flash drive and the box inside his storage ring and stood up with a pale, grim face, Masa held his arm worriedly. "Uhh...are you well enough to go back on your own?"

"...I’m not driving," Radia replied quietly before walking out of the room. "I’ll settle your reward properly tomorrow."

"That’s not--"

Radia, however, couldn’t hear her anymore after he closed the door. But even if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to. He felt his ears ringing and his head throbbing. He couldn’t even manage to control his mana enough to call for a summon.

Thankfully, he had carved an automatic summoning array on his wrist, which was activated by sending just a wisp of his mana. The last thing he remembered was seeing Nyx materialize in front of him, and then he couldn’t remember much.

Which was something for someone with an eidetic memory.

When he came to his senses, he was already in his room, staring blankly at his commlink. What is it? What was he trying to do?

Radia had no idea. He felt lost. Just completely, utterly lost.

He knew he had to do something, because he realized what kind of dangers looming over Han Joon right now. He wanted to ask him why he had to do everything secretly, why he had never told him the truth, why, why, why...

But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if Joon wasn’t there to answer his question, so he knew he had to save the man first. His man. The man he didn’t even know the location was.