The night life outside the villa was quiet—too quiet.
Iseul stood quietly outside, elbows resting on the railing, staring into the city lights.
Her mind was gearing.
She kept thinking back to the fragments of her dreams she had while unconscious.
She had lied earlier when she had told the others that she didn't remember what happened.
When she looked at Haewon earlier after everything, a flash of her image — being surrounded and half-eaten by mutated animals — was still clear in her mind.
She remembered how she had asked her gift to help her save Haewon, all of it.
Iseul was hoping that by pretending not to remember it was the best way not to be confronted.
She panicked, only wanting, needing to save her friend.
Though Iseul didn't know the extent of her gift's traits, she had yet to explore them all.
Despite that, she was worried for many other reasons.
This world wasn't so easy-going for those of different kinds of odd gifts.
Iseul herself felt like she was losing her mind.
She knew how sensitive things ran on this moon planet.
In the Domination world in general sense.
When things happen here, it causes the whole planet to be on high alert and on stir.
The last thing she needed right now was any unwanted attention. She sat there, stamped and colored, flashing lights for everyone to see.
What was she going to do now? What about her siblings?
She didn't have time to worry about other problems.
She already had 99 on constant hold.
She didn't need another burden to worry about or to have paranoia of looking over her shoulder every single second.
Though it wasn't a bad thing to be a mutated gifter, she understood that things right now were a lot more dangerous for someone such as herself with such a unique gift and no control.
Someone can report her, and she will be investigated by The Gifter Commission Disciplinary Guild (TGCDG).
She'd encountered them before when she was very young; they came for her father and mother once to investigate something that had gone down while deployed.
Normally, they wouldn't have had the jurisdiction or clearance to do it due to the fact that they were military soldiers who were on a mission and not military police, and her mother explained this.
The investigating sergeant at the time did not take kindly to that and already had a junky attitude.
They were all taken away to a facility where they ran tests on her father, her mother and even her and her two younger brothers Hanseul and Chang, who were only two and one years old at the time.
Her mother and father had been beaten up and tortured, questioned by some scientist trying to prove that they had dangerous gifts to society that they were hiding, and that multiple people had reported them.
When they still could not find anything or prove their theories, as her parents weren't particularly high gifters or anything particularly special about their gifts in general,
Even Iseul at the time felt it was weird: her father was a low C-rank weaponer gifter and her mother a high D-rank illusion conjurer gifter.
The sergeant that was on the case at the time investigating her father and mother had targeted Iseul and her two younger siblings. She'll never forget it, nor the sergeant.
The whole case was dismissed due to absurd allegations in premeditated harassment and the sergeant lost his ranking, but still continued to harass her family after a few years.
He had even come to the funeral just to clarify and mock her about if they actually died, if she had fled a fake death in the Comostia world.
He told her that her father and mother had been suspects of his investigation for a while since they had first fled Main World and moved to Scrapper Moon.
Her parents aren't so innocent as they seemed, he waved laughing, saying that he wished her the best of nothing for her and her siblings.
She felt angered and humiliated for her parents.
At that time, she didn't want to listen to anything that the man that had a few loose screws and gears in his head had to say.
She had just lost her parents and she didn't want to soil, or anyone else to soil, their name.
She didn't know her parents were originally from Main World, but she had always suspected they weren't originally from Scrapper Moon as they never really seemed to have the mannerisms of those born and raised like the locals.
She did not care about any of that matter, as they were still her parents who loved her, raised her with care.
She had never really thought about it much until it was pointed out to her later on when she got really heated about something and the accent she picked up from years of being around her parents had come out a little.
In the way that he had laughed and said that it was justice, as dangerous gifters like them shouldn't reproduce or exist.
She had to avoid any attention at every cost.
She had to protect her family, and to do that she had to protect herself.
Iseul knew that better than anybody.
———
Inside, her friends weren't calm at all.
Their voices came in bursts — whispering, hissing, stopping, then rising again.
"She doesn't remember every detail, right?" Chang-min whispered harshly.
"I don't think so," Choon-hee replied.
She bit her nails nervously.
"When she woke up, she asked what had happened; it was an empty slot."
Ji-ho rubbed his temples.
"That's what scares me. If she doesn't know what she did, what happens when it happens again?"
Chul-jun crossed his arms, jaw tight.
"Are we really going to hide it from her? She deserves to know the truth."
Joon-seok glanced toward the balcony.
The sliding door reflected Iseul's silhouette, unmoving against the light.
"She's been through enough already. You saw what it cost her."
"Cost?" Chang-min shot back.
"She literally used her own blood to create new flesh. For someone else! That's not a normal gift anymore, Joon-seok — that's something else."
"Doesn't matter," Ji-ho said, voice steady. "It's still her."
"I totally agree," Chul-jun said, nodding firmly. "She's not fragile. She's an adult now. Some paths are heavier for certain people because they can carry more weight. That's just how it is."
They all fell silent.