Chapter 92: The Doubling Whispers

“Ugh, my head…”

It felt as if someone had struck his head with an axe.

Roy groaned, clutching his forehead with the palm of his hand as he hesitated to get out of bed.

“I’m pretty sure yesterday…”

He remembered that the champagne Han Jihoo had prepared was so delicious that he brought out a new bottle and moved to a corner.

After that, whenever the glass emptied, he immediately refilled it and kept drinking without pause until the whole bottle was finished.

But after that, his memories abruptly stopped.

It was as if someone had snipped out a section with scissors.

“Why does my forehead hurt so much… Did someone hit me?”

This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.

Roy wasn’t a heavy drinker despite liking alcohol.

Because of that, whenever he attended drinking parties, his memories would invariably cut off at some point, and the next day brought not only a terrible headache but aching all over his body.

Since coming here, he hadn’t drunk at all, so this sensation was something he had long forgotten.

{Master, you’re finally coming to your senses!}

‘…Could you speak a little quieter?’

Even though his forehead was pressed against the bed, he felt dizzy as if someone was spinning his body around.

In that state, Earth cheerfully rattled his mind, making the dizziness even worse.

{Ugh, the smell of alcohol!}

‘You can’t even smell right now.’

Unless Earth was standing right next to Joel’s body, he shouldn’t be able to smell anything in his current condition.

Just hearing the voice, Roy imagined Earth pinching his nose and frowning deeply.

{Just looking at you, the alcohol smell is overwhelming! I knew it the moment you started blowing that bottle horn yesterday!}

Earth began scolding Roy like a couple married for ten years.

‘I was blowing a bottle horn?’

No.

Roy had consciously restrained himself from the urge to blow a bottle horn to honor the champagne, elegantly pouring it into his glass to drink.

He still vividly remembered the shock of the first sip. He had followed the proper etiquette fitting for such fine liquor.

{Your memory cut off cold, didn’t it?}

He couldn’t find words to refute that.

As Earth said, he didn’t remember when or how he got to his bedroom at all.

Just as Roy was struggling to recall his lost memories while clutching his head, there was a steady knock at the door.

***

“…Come in.”

His dry throat hurt as if it was tearing apart.

At that moment, a sudden urge to drink cold water swept over him.

“Roy hyung, are you okay? You’re not lying, right?”

Kim Chan entered, carrying a tray with a glass of water.

The moment Roy saw the water, his eyes lit up.

“Water! Ugh…!”

Excited, he lifted his head abruptly without thinking, only to collapse back onto the bed immediately.

“You really shouldn’t treat alcohol like an enemy you want to kill.”

Kim Chan rushed over and supported Roy.

Leaning back against the headboard with Kim Chan’s help, Roy looked at the glass with desperate eyes.

“Even a Hunter can’t beat a hangover. This is a hangover cure. It’s better than nothing, so drink it with the water.”

Roy’s younger sister Alyssa always brought water and herbal remedies for hangovers the day after Roy overdrank.

“Thanks, really.”

Maybe it was the lingering effect of the alcohol, but strangely Roy became sentimental.

Overwhelmed by emotion, he avoided Kim Chan’s gaze and reached out for the water first.

“…I feel like I’m going to live.”

As the cool water slid down his throat, the headache and dizziness seemed to fade.

Roy followed it by drinking the small bottle of hangover cure.

“All medicine, huh?”

“I don’t know what it tastes like. Jihoo hyung said it’s sweet like syrup.”

Kim Chan had never even touched alcohol, so of course, he hadn’t tasted any hangover cure.

“Does your forehead still hurt?”

“Now that you mention it… why do I feel like this? Could I have a fever?”

At Kim Chan’s question, Roy cautiously raised his hand.

He felt a raised bump in the palm of his hand.

“You don’t remember a thing from yesterday, do you?”

“…Yeah.”

He felt ashamed as the eldest brother.

Roy was embarrassed at how he’d lost control of himself the day before.

He knew his own limits.

Yesterday, he wasn’t in his right mind.

The moment he tasted the champagne, he had been utterly seduced by it.

“Hyung, you bumped your head on the table corner while running away from Doha hyung.”

“…“

Roy responded silently to the blunt and clear explanation.

What else was there to say? That one sentence contained the major blunders he had made yesterday.

“Jihoo hyung also said you hit your head on top and got a nosebleed.”

The exposé, which he thought was over, continued.

One incident alone was enough to make him blush, but now he was almost afraid to leave his room.

“What about the spirits…?”

Except for Earth’s voice ringing in his head when he opened his eyes, Roy realized the spirits who should have been around him were nowhere to be seen.

“They said Roy hyung gets really nasty when drunk. So he slept in another room last night. They’re having breakfast outside now.”

He felt a pang of unspoken betrayal.

Having a bad sleeping habit meant he just made a mess on the bed like it was his own home.

Roy’s room had plenty of space under the bed.

There was also a three-seater sofa by the window.

“Let’s get going. We have a schedule starting in two hours. After breakfast, we need to put recovery potion on your forehead. There wasn’t any at the dorm yesterday. Yonghyeon hyung said he’d bring some.”

“…Alright. I’ll shower and then come out.”

“Okay!”

He had gone to sleep without showering the night before.

Without looking in the mirror, he could guess how awful he looked.

Kim Chan left the tray and empty glass and Roy struggled to get out of bed.

The hangover cure seemed to be effective because his headache was fading faster than when he first woke up.

“Ridiculous, really.”

Looking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, Roy squeezed his eyes shut.

His eyes were puffy, and there were dried saliva marks around his mouth.

The pièce de résistance was the bump right in the middle of his forehead, swollen purple and blue.

“Get a grip.”

He repeated to himself that if he ever drank like yesterday again, he would be an animal, not a human.

***

“Sorry about yesterday. How’s your nose?”

“It was a fresh experience. I’ve never had a nosebleed in my life. I thought you were getting revenge for what happened before.”

Roy recalled his intense first meeting with Han Jihoo.

Although he’d seen his face before, the moment he recognized the name ‘Han Jihoo’ was when he found him dangling in a spider’s web like a tarantula.

“That’s not it.”

Although he did collide with Han Jihoo and caused a nosebleed, hitting him on the crown yesterday wasn’t intentional.

“Hyung, eat quickly and check this out.”

Kim Chan brought over a plate with toast, sausages, and scrambled eggs and set it in front of Roy.

“Thanks. What is it?”

As the hangover subsided, Roy’s hunger returned.

He picked up a sausage with his fork and glanced at the screen Kim Chan showed him.

“It seems like the government is controlling information about the Doubling Phenomenon. We were talking about this before you woke up.”

The Association and government had already gathered participants and asked them not to disclose anything about Doubling to family, friends, or acquaintances.

It was called a request but was practically a half-threat.

[What was that deleted post about?]

[Something called Doubling?]

[Doubling? What’s that? Something you eat?]

[See those comments above? The time the post and comments were uploaded? 20:01.]

[Deleted by admin.]

Then deleted at 20:02 immediately.

Of course, all comments below got wiped too.

“Isn’t something seriously going on? Don’t call it a conspiracy theory—I saw it live.”

What Kim Chan showed was a post from an online community.

“This will be deleted soon too. I’m searching, but as soon as something pops up, it gets deleted.”

They had expected as much.

The Doubling Phenomenon, as Earth had explained, was also happening here for the first time.

Humanity wouldn’t know the transcendent being that governs the Continent of As and the dimension that Earth belongs to plans to destroy both dimensions.

In fact, unless you were the one overseeing this place like Earth, it was difficult to even notice.

“Shouldn’t you not be searching this? They might check our phones.”

Roy thought of Ki Yonghyeon, who wasn’t present now.

He was someone the Association sent to monitor them.

It was likely the Association assigned someone to everyone involved in the Doubling Phenomenon.

“What if there are bugs in here?”

Just thinking about it made the dorm feel unsafe.

Just as Roy was about to ask Earth to check for suspicious devices,

“Don’t worry about that. I thoroughly checked before coming in, and I’ll keep checking regularly. To see if any strange devices get installed.”

Jihoo grabbed Roy’s arm just as he was about to stand and start searching the dorm.

“Anyway, we need to be careful in how we act.”

Kim Chan winked at Roy.

He still hadn’t told Kim Chan about Joel and was met with curiosity.

Moreover, their first meeting was far from ordinary, so Kim Chan suspected Doubling Phenomenon might be related to Roy.

The warning was for the team because they would be Roy’s companions moving forward.

“Eat first. We might not get a chance later with back-to-back schedules.”

Kim Chan patted Roy’s shoulder and poured orange juice into his glass.

“Beep beep~?” (Contractor, no appetite? Want me to eat for you?)

Ber, who was playing with Kim Jae-woo, suddenly flew over to Roy.

“I’m here. Recovery potion’s here.”

Just then, Ki Yonghyeon also entered the dorm, immediately handing Roy a recovery potion.

“Thanks.”

Roy quickly took it and applied it to his forehead.

Every time the members looked at his forehead, the twitching of his cheeks bothered him.

A chilling sensation spread from the center of his forehead.

“I thought the bump was cute.”

Jihoo spoke wistfully as the wound quickly faded.

Roy wanted to say something but remembered what he’d done to Jihoo yesterday and quietly set the recovery potion on the table.

“We’ll leave for the shop in an hour. Until then, feel free to rest.”

Ki Yonghyeon took out his tablet to check the schedule.

The screen was still black-dominated, resembling a plan for an assassination.