I’m a Young God, Won’t You Raise Me?

Dominic’s words made my mind go blank.

…Take off his clothes? Why…?

I blinked, suddenly feeling a little foolish.

“Mr. Gunbam?”

I heard his voice, filled with confusion.

A moment later, as if he had finally understood the situation, he spoke again.

“I see. There are too many people here. Let’s go somewhere quiet.”

From that extraterrestrial slime’s perspective, everyone in Field Team 3 except Kwak Hanmuk didn’t even seem to count as beings with personalities.

Only then did he appear to realize that he had to take those “beings” into consideration.

Even so, even if we went somewhere quiet, I had no way of getting Kwak Hanmuk to take off his clothes.

As I thought about how to explain it to that Pudding Slime, I even considered whether I’d have to take Kwak Hanmuk to a public bathhouse.

‘But why the hell would he have to take off his clothes?’

Trying to understand an alien’s logic wasn’t easy at all.

While racking my brain over how to get him to take off his clothes without looking like a pervert, I followed Kwak Hanmuk, who was walking ahead of me.

The café on the building’s ground floor was quite crowded.

Dressed in Trial Response Agency uniforms, dozens of employees filled the place, while two baristas skillfully prepared drinks and served customers.

Kwak Hanmuk and I took our place at the end of the long line.

Surrounded by so many people, I somehow felt as though I had become an office worker too.

‘I guess coffee really is an essential item for every employee.’

As I enjoyed that strange feeling, the person standing in front of us turned around.

“……”

He suddenly took out his phone, pretended to answer a call, and hurried away.

I thought perhaps something urgent had come up.

But that was only the beginning.

The people in front of us started discreetly glancing back.

Then, one after another, they pretended to be busy and disappeared.

Within seconds, the café was completely empty.

“…?”

What had just happened?

While I looked around in complete bewilderment, Kwak Hanmuk continued walking as though nothing had happened.

I had no choice but to follow him.

He walked straight over to the pastry display and stared through the glass case with an extremely serious expression.

Since he looked so focused, I ended up standing beside him to look as well.

‘I don’t see anything unusual.’

The cakes looked delicious.

There were muffins, cookies, and all kinds of other sweets too.

“Haaa…”

Kwak Hanmuk let out a long sigh.

With a deeply furrowed brow, he asked me,

“How many should I buy?”

Apparently, he was having trouble deciding.

I gave a rather cautious answer.

“Um… wouldn’t two of each be fine?”

The moment I finished speaking, the other barista, who seemed to have been waiting for exactly that answer, immediately began pulling desserts out of the display at lightning speed.

Two of every single variety.

Kwak Hanmuk let out a resigned sigh.

“Ah… now what am I supposed to do? Since they’ve already taken them out, I’ll have to buy them.”

I knew Kwak Hanmuk ate quite a lot.

In Slay to Plate, he always ended up eating three servings by himself.

But that was only how much he ate when he was trying to keep up appearances.

When he showed his true self, it was far more impressive.

I watched in amazement as the mountain of desserts continued to grow.

Meanwhile, Kwak Hanmuk looked up at the drink menu and said something that left me utterly dumbfounded.

“Should I get an iced Americano…?”

I decided to encourage him.

“You should get something sweet instead.”

“Ha… if Chestnut says it that confidently, then I’ll have a large Strawberry Cream Frappuccino.”

So Captain Kwak really did love sweets.

Just as I was about to place my own order, he continued without pausing.

“Replace the milk with soy milk, add extra strawberries, double Java Chips, blend half and put the other half on top, lots of whipped cream, and add chocolate drizzle too.”

Despite that extremely long custom order, the barista entered it into the register as naturally as if she were completely used to it.

“And for Chestnut?”

“Ah, just a small iced Americano for me…”

Being called Chestnut in front of the barista made me feel a little embarrassed.

But since he was the one paying, I simply ordered my drink.

After paying, while we waited for the drinks to be prepared and the desserts to be packed, we sat across from each other at a small table.

Resting his chin on one hand, Kwak Hanmuk frowned.

“With the main building blown to pieces, the Special Operations Team office disappeared too. I’d even brought a game console.”

He complained that he had wanted to play a game with me, but everything had gone to waste.

He even said he planned to charge Pasung’s CEO Cha ten times the price of the console.

I never would have imagined the game console in the break room belonged to him.

Though, to be honest, playing against me wasn’t very fun.

I lost very rarely.

Unless we were on the same team, almost nobody liked playing against me.

As I recalled all that, my gaze eventually settled on his wrist.

Even outside a Trial, he was still wearing the blue cypress wood rosary.

“What is it, Chestnut?”

Noticing where I was looking, Kwak Hanmuk spoke.

Since the opportunity had presented itself, I decided to ask him directly.

“Captain Kwak. Do you always wear that rosary, even when you’re not using it?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why?”

Kwak Hanmuk wasn’t the kind of person who would deliberately disobey the Trial Response Agency’s rules.

If his superiors allowed him to keep an item equipped, there had to be a reason.

I wanted to learn the things the game had never shown me.

I wanted to get to know the real Kwak Hanmuk a little better.

At my question, his expression became completely serious.

Then he lowered his voice and said,

“It’s because I went to a Buddhist kindergarten.”

“……”

I had forgotten that, in situations like this, Kwak Hanmuk wasn’t someone who was easy to fool.

Having failed to get anything useful out of my question, I simply waited in silence for our drinks while he chuckled to himself.

When they handed us our packaged desserts, I realized it was an enormous amount.

“Do you always eat this much?”

“Don’t you?”

I thought perhaps today was a special occasion.

But Kwak Hanmuk immediately corrected me.

“Today I didn’t buy much. I’m on a diet.”

“Ah… Not much…?”

Considering his height, I thought perhaps he really did need that much fuel.

Even so, the weight I felt in both hands was still impressive.

As he headed toward the rooftop, Kwak Hanmuk casually remarked,

“Sometimes Lieutenant Colonel Je Hyuno and I each buy a whole cake. One cake per person.”

Naturally, that was anything but trivial to me.

“Lieutenant Colonel Je Hyuno?!”

Since he never ate anything inside Trials, I had always assumed he couldn’t even consume food because of the infection.

But apparently, that wasn’t the case.

I must have looked so shocked that Kwak Hanmuk burst out laughing.

“Next time, do you want to come eat something with Lieutenant Colonel Je Hyuno and me?”

“Yes…”

I was also incredibly curious to see his face without the gas mask.

I truly hoped they would invite me to one of those snack breaks with Kwak Hanmuk and Je Hyuno someday.

Just as he had said, the rooftop was completely empty.

Since the main building’s staff had temporarily relocated to the Gyeonggi Provincial Agency, the two organizations were sharing the facilities.

The fact that only Kwak Hanmuk and I, two newcomers, occupied the entire rooftop gave me a rather strange feeling.

Carrying that mountain of desserts, Kwak Hanmuk stared fixedly at one spot for several moments.

Then he changed direction and walked toward the area with the outdoor tables and chairs.

I looked toward the place he had been staring at.

‘Isn’t there just an ashtray?’

It struck me as odd for a moment, but I quickly stopped thinking about it as I focused on all the desserts in my hands.

I managed to carry them to the table without any accidents.

Then, while we ate an enormous assortment of cakes, cookies, and every kind of sweet imaginable, we began chatting leisurely about all sorts of trivial things.

Since I was curious about all the things I had never been able to discover in the game, I asked him many questions.

Kwak Hanmuk only answered the ones he felt like answering.

Even so, I ended up learning quite a few things.

Most of them were small and insignificant.

I learned that he loved sweets, that when he went down to Busan because of Three Worlds he regretted not being able to buy Daejeo salted tomatoes, that he had grown up in a very strict environment as a child, and even that his birthday was November 19.

When he finished swallowing the last cookie, he snatched my iced Americano and took a sip.

He handed the cup back to me, still damp with condensation.

Then he called my name.

“Goyo.”

“Yes, Captain Kwak.”

Even though he had called me, he remained silent for a long time.

He seemed unable to make up his mind to speak.

The sun was already beginning to set.

Bathed in that orange light, Kwak Hanmuk asked,

“You’ve got something you want to tell me, don’t you?”

I nodded.

But I couldn’t bring myself to begin either.

In the end, he was the one who broke the silence.

“What exactly are you?”

It was a question even I didn’t know the answer to.

Because I didn’t really know what I was myself.

Until not long ago, I had been completely certain who I was.

I was a failure.

And a coward who had run away.

But overnight, too many things had changed.

Since the end of the Developer’s final broadcast and my arrival at Happy Smile Factory, the quiet routine I had lived until then had turned into chaos.

The world that, for four years, had been confined to the inside of a tiny one-room apartment had suddenly expanded.

And in the process, I had lost myself as well.

At that point, I could no longer say with certainty whether I was a soldier of the Trial Response Agency or the Earth’s Young God.

But those were only my own thoughts.

For Kwak Hanmuk, I already had an explanation prepared.

“If I tell you this, you’ll probably want to send me straight to a psychiatric hospital.”

I carefully chose each word before continuing.

“I think I’m connected to the system…”

“The system that appears inside the Trials?”

“…Yes.”

“Wow.”

I couldn’t tell whether that was an exclamation of surprise or a sigh.

Kwak Hanmuk picked up my empty cup.

He took off the lid, poured the ice cubes into his mouth, and began crunching them loudly.

Only then did he speak again.

“The ability you used against the Fire Dragon? You summoned a system window. Guardian’s Blessing was one of your abilities too, wasn’t it?”

His gaze made it clear that I could forget about my ridiculous excuse that everything had been items.

And since I had no intention of lying anymore, I answered honestly.

“Yes. It’s an ability I obtained after connecting to the system.”

“And that slime?”

Kwak Hanmuk glanced toward my shoulder.

Dominic was sitting there, politely listening to our conversation while waiting for the moment I would finally make Kwak Hanmuk take off his clothes.

At that point, there was no longer any point pretending that no one could see him.

I answered calmly.

“That’s also related to the system’s abilities.”

“Goyo, tilt your head toward me for a moment.”

He beckoned me with his hand.

Without really understanding why, I obeyed.

Tap!

One of the beads from his rosary shot forward and struck me squarely on the forehead.

“Chestnut needs a good knock on the head.”

It hurt so much that my eyes nearly filled with tears.

“I’m sorry…”

I apologized immediately.

Kwak Hanmuk gave me two more knocks on the head before saying,

“A mere recruit dares to lie to a captain? Hm?”

After that, he even pinched my cheek.

Only then did he decide to forgive me for all those lies.

He accepted the existence of the Pudding Slime without overthinking it and continued asking questions.

“And what about the times your eyes turn golden?”

“Yes…”

“Was that because of it when you fought the Fire Dragon too?”

I didn’t remember very clearly the moment when I defeated Infernum.

But I answered yes.

“Ha… This is insane.”

Kwak Hanmuk covered his eyes with one hand for a few seconds.

Then he looked at me again.

“After the end of Slay to Plate, why were you the only one who came out late?”

Ever since Dead Zone Delivery, whenever we reached the moment just before the True Ending, everything around us disappeared.

I always ended up watching the ending completely alone alongside the NPCs.

Lieutenant Colonel Je Hyuno and the other captains had already chosen their rewards and exited the Trial the moment it was cleared.

But for some reason, I never appeared.

The exact same thing had happened during Three Worlds.

According to Kwak Hanmuk, just as Dosan Park was about to be completely destroyed, I appeared much later than everyone else.

After hearing that, I assumed it must have been because of Dominic.

But since I didn’t even remember it, I could only answer vaguely.

“To be honest, I don’t know either.”

Kwak Hanmuk stared at me for a long time without saying a single word.

As the silence stretched on, I began to grow nervous.

My mouth felt completely dry.

“You really don’t know?”

“No…”

While continuing to stare at me, he suddenly spoke.

“Chestnut, do you want me to tell you a secret too?”

I had no idea what he was about to say.

But I was curious and answered immediately.

“Yes.”

I thought perhaps he was going to tell me another story about having attended a Buddhist elementary school.

Instead, he reached for his belt.

Click.

He unbuckled it in one smooth motion.

Then he began unbuttoning the top of his uniform.

“What a capable subordinate. I didn’t even have to give him an order, and he already understood his master’s wishes perfectly, Mr. Gunbam.”

I opened both my eyes and my mouth as I stared at Kwak Hanmuk.

He carefully folded his uniform and placed it on the chair beside him.

He was wearing nothing but a tight black tank top underneath.

He looked down at me.

“What do you think, Goyo?”

“Look at the pattern engraved on his body.”

Dominic’s and Kwak Hanmuk’s voices overlapped.

A long time ago, I had seen online the scars left on people who survived being struck by lightning.

It looked exactly like that.

A deep blue, fractal-shaped mark, as though it depicted a bolt of lightning.

It began on his left shoulder.

Ran beneath his collarbone.

Crossed his chest.

And continued down to his left bicep.

“Inside that person, a god has been sealed.”

“What do you think? I’ve got quite a secret too, don’t I?”

Kwak Hanmuk smiled crookedly before asking again.

“Do you have something like that too?”

T/N:

This is an unofficial illustration, but at the same time official from a Korean artist I found on X, Kwak Hanmuk I thought it was really good so I decided to upload it ^^