I never thought that secretly closing the gates would be discovered like this.
Ban Eun-hyeol looked at Dana with a conflicted expression before finally speaking.
“And what about you?”
He calmly avoided giving a direct answer.
“Uh… I just saw the gate, thought it might be better to close it, so I came in.”
Dana, clearly flustered, babbled as she tried to explain why she was here.
As someone who was usually terrible at lying, her hastily made-up excuse was utterly pathetic.
“You just came in because you saw it?”
“W-well, is that not okay? Why are you here then?”
Trying to awkwardly excuse herself, Dana quickly changed the subject and asked again, raising her wide eyes as if urging him to spill everything.
“I…”
Ban Eun-hyeol hesitated, unsure of what to say, and trailed off when he caught the unease in Dana’s eyes.
She must have sensed the decrease in gate occurrences recently and immediately guessed that he had been secretly closing the gates all along.
She looked deep in thought, seemingly trying hard to piece together the reason behind his secret gate closures.
Ban Eun-hyeol debated whether he should honestly tell her that he knew her true identity or, like Dana, pretend ignorance and let it slide.
‘Maybe it’s better to just lay it all out than leave this awkwardness hanging between us.’
How on earth should he explain this? How should they both accept the situation?
Lost in their own troubled thoughts, their gazes met in midair.
Kiieek—
The two silent figures turned their eyes at the same time toward the cry of a monster.
They silently agreed to deal with the more urgent matter first before continuing their conversation. Without a word, they rapidly took care of the monsters.
The more Ban Eun-hyeol watched Dana wildly unleash unfamiliar skills and indiscriminately attack, the deeper his worries grew.
‘How did I hide this until now, only to be caught like this? This is driving me insane.’
Dana looked eager to hear Ban Eun-hyeol’s explanation as they finished off most of the monsters.
Only the boss monster remained.
Thud—
The boss monster fell with a loud crash, and Dana landed perfectly on the ground, her light brown hair fluttering in the wind.
Tucking the stray strands behind her ear, she looked at Ban Eun-hyeol.
“Now, you can tell me, right?”
Her voice was calm, quite a contrast from the panicked tone earlier.
Swallowing dryly, Ban Eun-hyeol sighed as he watched the surrounding scenery slowly change.
‘It’s better to tell her everything.’
He thought back to the moment he had gifted her the mask — that was practically admitting he already knew her identity.
He recalled the uneasy looks Dana had given him whenever her true self was mentioned.
She had probably guessed it too.
That he had figured out who she really was.
To explain everything to the extent Dana wanted, he would have to confess when he had started doubting her and when exactly he had uncovered her identity.
They moved to a place where no one could overhear their conversation.
On a dark night when the moonlight was hidden by clouds, the two of them soared high into the sky on Vishap’s back, hiding their bodies in the shadows.
They sat facing each other awkwardly.
‘Where do I even start?’
Ban Eun-hyeol quickly ran through his memories.
The time an S-rank gate incident occurred, when they were caught in an unexpected gate at the café, the strange signs at the Gwanaksan gate, when Dana first awakened while killing monsters in the principal’s office…
At first, specific incidents came to mind, but as he continued, he recalled Dana’s changed behavior in everyday life.
Though she pretended to give up her obsessive affection, seemingly resigned to his disdain, her personality was oddly different from before, along with her unusual actions and tone here and there, and…
“Incineration site.”
Ban Eun-hyeol’s word brought a questioning look to Dana’s face.
“I started getting suspicious from the incineration site. At that time, I never thought you were an outsider from another dimension.”
He began speaking calmly.
“You remember when Shin Sena’s group dragged you to the incineration site, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Shin Sena kept saying weird stuff about ghosts haunting the incineration site for a while.”
Dana suddenly raised her lowered eyes, sensing something.
When Shin Sena called Dana to the incineration site and threatened her using magic, traces of the spirit she had summoned still faintly lingered there.
Ban Eun-hyeol, who had passed by the incineration site late while going to school, only noticed after everything was over.
He faintly sensed the power of hellfire used by the spirit.
“Since you made a contract with the Fire Spirit King, wouldn’t you be sensitive to fire energy?”
“So what did you figure out?”
“At the time, I didn’t even think about spirits like that. I just thought someone used a skill here. Then, when I looked up, you were the only one walking down the corridor.”
Usually, he wouldn’t have thought much or cared, nor connected the magic left at the incineration site with Dana.
But the way she walked down the corridor — lighthearted and cheerful — felt suspicious.
Would it be strange to say that?
“Do you know how you were before the vacation?”
Dana pressed her lips tightly shut. She must have been recalling how she was before the break.
“If Shin Sena’s group dragged you to the incineration site, you wouldn’t be able to walk so brightly. No one was in the corridor back then, so you wouldn’t have noticed, but I could see the corridor from the incineration site.”
“I never thought you’d be suspicious about something like that.”
“You… or rather, how do I say this? How much of a nuisance you’ve been to me, the trouble you caused. Every time something happened, I saw you slouch your shoulders timidly more than once. Even if I didn’t want to see it, I saw it.”
He clicked his tongue with a look of genuine exasperation.
Even Dana, who had kept a serious expression throughout, chuckled in agreement.
Seeing that, Ban Eun-hyeol relaxed a little and continued more comfortably.
“I knew you were different after the vacation started, compared to before, but after watching you for a while, I started to suspect something. Honestly, when people’s personalities change like that, we all suspected possession.”
“So, you suspected I was a possessed outsider from another dimension?”
“Well, a bit. It seemed like you were trying to hide the fact you had awakened, so isn’t that suspicious?”
“That’s not the only reason you were sure I was a dimensional traveler.”
“No.”
Ban Eun-hyeol warmed the surroundings with a skill, just in case Dana felt cold, and began explaining step by step.
After the first seed of suspicion sprouted at the incineration site, he kept a close eye on her.
Observing her tone, behavior, and expressions, he noticed unusual signs.
But just for those reasons alone, he couldn’t be certain that she was a dimensional outsider possessing this world.
He also thought it was ridiculous to care so much over someone he simply disliked before.
Moreover, it seemed like he was the only one paying attention to Dana’s changes.
Even Nabi, who was relatively close to her, didn’t seem to notice.
Maybe he was just being overly sensitive about nothing.
But his instincts told him something was off.
It was around then that—
“When you caught that monster that popped out of the dungeon break in front of the principal’s office, that’s when you first revealed you were an Awakened. You hid it because your nickname was embarrassing? Would I believe that?”
“That’s the only reason I could think of at the moment.”
“My suspicion almost died down, but it was too unsettling to just let it go.”
The next was Gwanaksan.
When he received the message about a danger detected at the gate and arrived there, just as he was about to enter, a status window popped up in front of him.
Seeing that, he immediately turned back, heading to the Hunter Association instead.
He wondered what that meant and decided to check the gate himself.
That’s when he found Dana inside the dungeon.
“I wondered why you were there, but then I thought, maybe you’re the Phantom Thief Hunter. So I decided to leave you alone for now.”
“I couldn’t bring anything to your guild back then, so you would have thought I wasn’t the Phantom Thief Hunter, right?”
“Exactly. I stopped suspecting you for that.”
But the status window mentioning the dimensional outsider popping up while Dana was alone inside the gate still bothered him.
She wasn’t the Phantom Thief Hunter, but she sneaked into the gate alone, secretly closed it, and tried to hide it.
She even had a scratch on the back of her hand but blamed it on a bookshelf.
There was no way that scratch was from a bookshelf—it was definitely from a monster’s claw.
What really confirmed Ban Eun-hyeol’s certainty that Dana was a dimensional outsider was when they met Cha Yoo-hwan at the café and got caught in the unexpected gate together.
“Hey, did you hear… back then?”
Listening quietly to Ban Eun-hyeol, Dana flinched and asked,
“That I can go back and live in my original body, not this small, weak one?”
Repeating her words, Ban Eun-hyeol saw her close her eyes tightly and sigh as she pressed her forehead.
There was no way to deny it—it was the kind of statement that would convince anyone that Dana was a dimensional outsider.
Until then, Ban Eun-hyeol had tried to convince himself she might not be one.
Without solid evidence, he had blamed himself for suspecting her just on a hunch.
The closer he got to her, the more uncomfortable his heart felt.
But when it became certain that she was a dimensional outsider, he felt an immense sense of relief, as if released from a cramped, suffocating space.
To him, Dana was still Dana.
Being a dimensional outsider didn’t change anything.
If anything, seeing how much she struggled to hide her identity made him care for her even more and spend more time simply watching her.
After finishing such an earth-shattering story with a nonchalant expression, he glanced at Dana’s face and added as if it was nothing.
“I don’t care what your true identity is.”
Dana’s eyes widened at his casual remark.
That was something he had wanted to say for a long time.
But to someone like Dana, who tried so hard to keep her identity hidden, he couldn’t say it recklessly.
He planned to wait until she chose to reveal herself before saying it.
‘I never thought it would come to this.’
Ban Eun-hyeol took in the sights below—the apartment where Dana lived, his own house, and their school.
These were the places that held the most precious memories of his not-so-long life.
Turning his gaze back to Dana, he spoke with a noticeably trembling voice.
“So… can’t you stay here with me?”
He didn’t want to lose Dana, the one who first made his heart respond to someone.