“Hey, where are we going right now?”
“I don’t know. Be quiet.”
Ji Kanghan walked silently ahead of us, and Ji Seongbin glanced at him furtively as we walked together in his wake.
We followed behind them, clutching our hands tightly as if we had committed some crime.
“Huh? This place…”
“What? Why are we going in here?”
Ji Kanghan and Ji Seongbin entered a house together, leaving us confused, but the Four Heavenly Kings seemed to recognize the place.
“Where is this?”
“This is Kanghan’s house.”
Kanghan’s house?
“That house is really nice.”
I stepped inside the oddly impressive home and watched Ji Kanghan and Ji Seongbin as they moved further inside.
“So, why were you two following me?”
“Uh… well…”
“Well….”
We didn’t even know how to explain or where to start, so our eyes darted around nervously.
Like me, who had only been reading their cues, I thought it’d be better to just be straightforward, so I honestly spilled the thoughts we’d had and how we ended up trailing him.
Hearing our story, Ji Kanghan made a bewildered face at a certain point, contorting his expression.
“You thought I liked guys?”
“Well, the scenes we saw were just so easy to misunderstand… but it was mostly coincidence that we saw you; we weren’t the ones who started following you first!”
“We just didn’t know you had a twin… we always thought you were an only child.”
“Sorry.”
When we finished talking, Kanghan laughed and went to dry his hands.
Ji Seongbin, who had seemed to have left during our talk, returned from the kitchen with a 1.5-liter bottle of water and set it down noisily in front of us.
“Drink.”
“Uh… thanks.”
Not daring to touch it at first, we each took a sip of the water, and Ji Seongbin sat down next to Kanghan.
Since everyone else was sitting on the living room floor, Seongbin sat there too, but seeing this, Kanghan anxiously tried to get him up.
“The floor is cold. Go sit on the sofa.”
That was the first time Maeng Se Ko had seen Kanghan act like that.
Ban Eunhyeol and Eun Bada, both shocked by the sight, couldn’t take their eyes off the two.
“I was actually going to tell you all—this is my twin.”
“A twin?”
“Same father, but different mothers. My mom wasn’t well, so after surgery in the U.S. when I was young, she stayed there, and I only recently came back.”
“Oh, so that’s why we didn’t know.”
“Now that you say it, he does kind of look like Kanghan.”
Jil, with dark blue hair and black pupils, hadn’t looked much like Kanghan at first, but looking closer, the profile seemed somewhat similar.
“But why didn’t you come to our school and went to Jangnam High School instead?”
Eun Bada asked, genuinely curious.
“He wanted to go to an all-boys school.”
While focusing on Kanghan’s story, my gaze accidentally shifted to Ji Seongbin, and at that moment, a certain genre from the story I had read flashed through my mind.
‘Could it be a cross-dressing male protagonist?’
No way.
If anything, the Four Heavenly Kings’ families never dabbled in different genres.
Even Yeon Hyeonggwang was just a younger brother figure, not a genre twist.
But just as I thought “No way,” Kanghan opened his mouth and shattered my thoughts.
“She’s a girl.”
“Pft—cough!”
“Hey, are you okay? Are you choking on water or something?”
After Kanghan’s bombshell, I started coughing, and Ban Eunhyeol brought some tissues from somewhere and carefully wiped my mouth.
“I got it.”
As I took the tissue from him, I glanced suspiciously at the friends giving us strange looks.
Then everyone quickly shifted their attention to Ji Seongbin and started bombarding questions.
“Is that even possible?”
“How can she go to an all-boys school? Won’t it get found out?”
“Wow, that sounds really interesting!”
Even among the protagonists in the Inso universe, cross-dressing females were rare.
Everyone was curious if it was really possible and how she got into an all-boys school.
“Well, maybe some fake documents?”
Ji Seongbin chuckled, as if amused by their surprise.
With my mouth hanging open like it might fall off, I studied Ji Seongbin’s face closely.
Of course, there are boys with delicate and pretty features, like Seongbin, but Seongbin looked so feminine in the boys’ school uniform that it was easy to mistake her for a girl.
Naturally, I assumed she was a boy since she went to an all-boys school, but it turned out she was a cross-dresser.
And she was Kanghan’s twin.
On top of that, their older brother was a siscon…
I had never even imagined the image of Kanghan doting on his younger sister and acting shy around her.
He was the one least fitting to that kind of dynamic among us.
‘Could it be the other siblings too?’
Suddenly, I wondered if the others I didn’t know about might also be part of this Inso family.
Ban Eunhyeol had already been to their house and knew their family situation to some extent, same with Yeon Hyeonggwang.
“But I don’t really know Eun Bada and Han Jibin well.”
We never really had time to talk about family matters, so I didn’t know much about Eun Bada or Han Jibin.
“Is your older brother famous? You said he thought attending Gamseong High would be exhausting, so he tried going with a cross-dressing disguise to an all-boys school for fun.”
“Yeah, it might be a hassle.”
“Ha-yeon is often annoyed because of her younger sibling too.”
“Her?”
When Eun Bada said this while looking at Yeon Ha-yeon, Ban Eunhyeol suddenly raised his voice as if he had overheard something.
“Who would bother Yeon Ha-yeon to get connected with Yeon Hyeonggwang?”
“Oh, is that so?”
“You’re not interested in me.”
“No! I’m very interested…!”
Playfully denying it with a hand wave, Eun Bada clapped and looked over at Ji Seongbin.
“She seems good at fighting. Then the younger sibling should be okay like Ha-yeon too, right?”
“If someone kept bothering my brother, I’d definitely catch and beat them up, so they wouldn’t keep bothering him as much.”
“… Are you a tough kid?”
Seeing Ji Seongbin say such harsh things without batting an eye, Eun Bada gave a nervous smile and asked cautiously.
“She wasn’t well, so she exercised a lot to get healthy. Now she’s probably stronger than other kids.”
Kanghan looked at his sister with honeyed eyes and proudly said so.
“I really can’t get used to this.”
“Me neither.”
Whispering to Ban Eunhyeol, I responded with empathy, then curiously observed Kanghan’s transformation.
“Seongbin, haven’t you awakened?”
Yeon Ha-yeon suddenly asked, looking very curious.
“I haven’t. Looking at my brother, I think it’s better to live without awakening.”
“Oh? Why?”
“It’s dangerous. Going into dungeons and having to kill those creepy monsters, getting hurt or even dying in fights.”
“Hmm, but someone like Kanghan probably won’t get hurt much.”
“Still, I don’t want my brother to go in there.”
Ji Seongbin’s firm answer made Kanghan frown deeply and try to comfort her, saying he’s fine and nothing dangerous would happen.
“The way those siblings are so close is really amazing. It’s fascinating.”
Yeon Ha-yeon looked at Kanghan and Ji Seongbin as if they were strange creatures.
Come to think of it, when Yeon Hyeonggwang first got caught in a sudden gate event, Yeon Ha-yeon was more confident than worried, saying their sister would come to save him.
And when Yeon Ha-yeon appeared, she greeted Kanghan happily, shouting “Boss!” and was very glad.
“They’re definitely different.”
Maybe Yeon Ha-yeon also saw their siblings with fascination, recalling similar past memories.
Even I, as an outsider, found it fascinating, but for siblings like Yeon Ha-yeon, it probably seemed especially so.
“Well, they’ve been apart for a long time. I just hope the sudden gates disappear soon, and those from other dimensions return quickly.”
At Ji Seongbin’s words, I had nothing to say and quietly remained silent.
***
Ban Eunhyeol, sitting beside me, gave my arm a gentle squeeze as if to tell me not to worry, then nodded.
“I really don’t want to get caught up in sudden gates or anything like that.”
Ji Seongbin, who had never experienced sudden gates or dungeon breaks, shuddered just thinking about it.
“Kanghan has to be diligent and watch over you! So that’s why he’s been following you around all this time?”
“Well, yeah.”
Han Jibin was happy to have guessed right.
“I’ll watch over you too, Seongbin! You’re my friend’s sibling! You guys will do the same, right?”
“Yeah? Yeah, because you’re Kanghan’s sibling. Of course.”
“If you’re with us, you’re safe.”
Kanghan nodded repeatedly in agreement.
He then subtly tried to persuade us to transfer to Gamseong High, but we gave him a thorough refusal.
Ji Seongbin decided to continue attending Jangnam High for the time being.
Later, she might transfer to Gamseong High, but she said she wouldn’t cross-dress then, so Jangnam High would be completely flipped upside down.
“This was really possible?”
I spun my pencil while sitting in my chair, looking at Kanghan in front of me with amazement.
“What are you staring at like that?”
Suddenly, Ban Eunhyeol pushed his face close to mine.
“Ah! Don’t scare me!”
“Heh, why? Surprised because I’m handsome?”
“Are you crazy?”
I turned serious and looked out the window instead, taking in the view of Jangnam High, visible from the high school district.
“Suddenly pushing your face in like that….”
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