I Start with 13 Hidden Traits Chapter-11

Ch-11. **Kim Hana**

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Slurp!

I swallowed the hot Americano and looked at the woman sitting across from me.

Kim Seoyeon.

The long hair I remembered had somehow become a short bob.

Dressed up in a pink off-shoulder one-piece, she looked stunning.

A woman beautiful enough to make any man turn his head at least once.

She looked so youthful that it was hard to believe she was already twenty-nine.

If she had a boyfriend, he’d walk around with his shoulders raised in pride.

— *Oppa, you’re a good person, but… I’m sorry. I can’t keep dating someone with no future. I’m at the age where I should think about marriage now.*

— *All my friends are dating or marrying lawyers or big-company elites, but you… Haah. Just forget it. Let’s stop here.*

The words she left me with when we broke up echoed in my ears.

Five years. Long if long, short if short. The end of our relationship.

As soon as she announced the breakup, she blocked my number immediately.

As if she’d never been the one who begged to break things cleanly.

“Why did you suddenly want to meet?”

“I was just… passing by and saw your place. How have you been?”

What business would someone living in Jamsil have in Eunpyeong-gu?

Her workplace wasn’t anywhere around here, either.

*How have I been?*

Well, not great.

But it was strange.

I thought seeing her again would make my heart tremble like crazy, that I’d feel overwhelming longing—
but none of that happened.

Instead, my heart was calm, like a paper boat drifting on a peaceful lakeside.

*Is this Randolph’s influence…?*

Even without using the Fragment of the Broken Golden Scale, everything I had done as Randolph was etched into me.

Maybe that was why.

This sudden situation didn’t fluster me at all.

“Just okay. What about you?”

“Me? Same as always. Work, home, work, home. I’m dying.”

She was basically saying her hamster-wheel life was boring.

But I already knew her boredom wasn’t the reason she had come looking for me.

I had a good guess why.

Right after our breakup, she changed her profile picture. A cute couple photo with some stylish businessman.
But now, the picture was gone.

Honestly, it was ridiculous.

She dumped me for someone else, and now that something went wrong, she came crawling back.

I didn’t know whether to call it shameless or whether I really looked like that much of a pushover.

*Well… I was a pushover.*

I had dated her like I was willing to tear out my liver and gallbladder for her.

I had done it because I cared that much, but now—we weren’t anything.
I had absolutely no intention of repeating the past.

I stayed silent, wondering what she’d say next, and eventually Kim Seoyeon opened her mouth.

“Things were crazy after that incident. You were the first person I worried about, you know?”

“That incident?”

“‘Dimension War,’ obviously. The day monsters from another dimension attacked Earth! I seriously thought Marvel was filming something!”

She was talking about the day the Giant Mantis appeared.

Monsters from Pangaenia had appeared in reality, and people summoned to Pangaenia used the *Fragments of the Broken Golden Scale* to defeat them.

After that day, people began calling them “Dimension Warriors.”

Warriors from another dimension.

They apparently possessed human bodies to hunt monsters.

Dimension Warriors warned the world of incoming dangers and rose to instant stardom.

Surprisingly, almost no one mentioned Pangaenia directly.

*Well, yeah. The idea of another dimension feels more believable than a game turning real.*

People were always more frightened of the unknown than of a pre-existing game suddenly manifesting.

“You don’t look interested?”

“Can I go now?”

“…What?”

Her relaxed expression faltered with confusion.

“You’ve seen my face. That’s enough. It’s not like we’re on chummy terms and here for small talk.”

Without waiting for a reply, I got up.

If this had been the old me, I might have tried to hold on, begged her to try again.

Back then, our entire five-year relationship had a clear power imbalance.
I might have pleaded that I couldn’t end things with regrets.

But not anymore.

I had mountains of things to do.

I had no time to be dragged around by someone else.

“…Is this because of what I said at the end?”

“It’s not that. Does your current boyfriend know you’re meeting me?”

Did she really think deleting the profile photo would keep me from noticing?

Her SNS pictures with him were still up.

In other words—she was keeping me as a backup.

Testing the waters between me and that guy.

Or maybe she fought with him and came to me to recover a bit of broken pride.

Either way, it was the worst.

Her face hardened like stone at my bluntness, as if she hadn’t expected me to say it outright.

“That’s….”

“Ah! Stop following me already!”

“Hana-ssi, I swear, I’m not a bad guy!”

Then—

The café door burst open, and a woman rushed in, shouting. A middle-aged man chased right behind her.

“This is straight-up stalking! I’m going to report you to the police!”

“Please! Please just meet me once!”

“I really hate you!”

Everyone in the café turned their heads toward them.

Me too—but for a different reason.

Her face felt familiar, like I’d seen her once before.

Where was it?

At that moment, the man—the stalker—completely changed expressions.
The pleading vanished, replaced with contorted rage.

“You fucking bitch, you think you can get away with this…!”

“Ah!”

The stalker grabbed the woman by her hair.

She screamed, and the stalker sneered.

“See? Wouldn’t things be easier if you didn’t play hard to get? Do I really need to go this far?”

He had completely lost reason.

He glared around and shouted:

“What are you looking at, you bastards!? Enjoying the show?”

Everyone who met his eyes quickly looked away.

“Oppa, don’t get involved. Things are unstable enough lately… The police will handle it.”

She was right.

Someone must’ve already called. The police would arrive soon and subdue him.
There was no need for me to create trouble.

But then the woman being dragged by her hair met my eyes.

A desperate look—begging for help.

“Oppa?”

…
I couldn’t stay still.

Because I remembered who she was.

The woman who saved the child the day the Giant Mantis appeared.

“What do you want?”

“Stop.”

“You punk. Stop? You? Let go of me!”

I grabbed his shoulder, and the stalker’s expression twisted even further.

His eyes glinted with crazed malice.

“You laughing at me?”

But that malice… was almost cute to me now.

I had crossed the line between life and death countless times recently.

I had fought where swords and spears clashed and corpses piled up—without an ounce of fear.

I had survived impossible odds, and even instilled fear into soldiers.

How could I be afraid of an unarmed man with nothing but wild eyes?

Crack!

“Aaargh!”

I tightened my grip on his shoulder. The stalker screamed.

At this rate, I felt like I could crush the entire shoulder.

Even without using the golden fragments.

“Stop! Stop! Agh!”

The stalker writhed in pain.

*What kind of monster strength is this!?*

His body trembled uncontrollably.
Despite his scrawny frame, he couldn’t budge an inch.

His muscles felt like they were tearing apart, his bones on the verge of cracking.

This was not human strength.

“You going to stop?”

“Y-Yes! I’ll stop!”

I clicked my tongue softly.
*Should’ve listened the first time.*

“Gah!”

I let go, and he collapsed onto the floor pathetically.

The woman bowed her head to me.

“Th-Thank you.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes… Ah! Behind you!”

I turned just as the man lunged at me with a deployed MacGyver knife.

“Die!”

But of course, I already knew.

I stepped aside slightly and hooked his foot.

Thud!

He hit the floor head-first and instantly passed out.

*

*

 

Five minutes after everything ended, the police finally arrived.

“You’ll have to come to the station with us.”

As they tried to take me along, the woman—Kim Hana—stepped forward.

“He was just helping. I’m the one who called about the stalker.”

“Even so, there was an assault. So you must all come with us.”

“Assault? He had a knife. Was he supposed to just watch?”

“It’s standard procedure.”

“…I’m a reporter from CK Broadcasting. May I have your name and badge number?”

She handed them her card, and the officers’ expressions instantly turned annoyed.

CK was a major network. Top five in the country.
A single badly written article from one of their reporters could ruin someone’s career.

“Then… perhaps as a witness—”

“Go as a witness and risk getting tied in as a suspect? No thanks. I’ll go myself and handle it. Don’t drag in someone uninvolved.”

The stalker was a well-known cosmetic surgery clinic director.

With expensive lawyers, even trivial cases could be twisted into something big.

There was no way she was going to let the person who helped her get dragged into legal trouble.

The police blinked in surprise at her confidence.

*She doesn’t look like a reporter. More like an announcer…*

*Her personality is something else.*

Normally victims would cry or tremble in fear, yet she was calmly defending a man she’d just met.

It was rare, even for police.

Soon, people around them began murmuring.

“Isn’t that her? From YouTube the other day…?”

“Yeah, the guy who saved the kid from the monster? I think she was on TV too.”

“Didn’t she get a commendation?”

“Her name is Kim Hana too. It’s definitely her!”

The Dimension War incident had gone viral.

When monsters attacked across the world, it wasn’t just the Dimension Warriors who rose.

There were ordinary people who behaved heroically.

Kim Hana was one of them.

She had been taken by a monster while saving a child, and even afterward, she ran back to save the child and the mother.

Her video hit five million views almost immediately, she got officially hired by CK, and she received a commendation for heroic citizenry.

“…Understood. Then the caller may come alone.”

No one wanted trouble with someone like her.

The police had no choice but to comply.

Before leaving, Kim Hana pulled out another business card.

“Thank you so much today. Here’s my card.”

“That’s okay.”

“…Ah, is the woman with you your girlfriend?”

She pointed at Kim Seoyeon.

I smiled and shook my head immediately.

“Not at all. We’re nothing. I don’t have a business card.”

“In that case, can you write down your number?”

She took out a pen and a piece of paper and handed them to me.

I wrote my number without hesitation.

Not Randolph… but Park Hyunmyung, my real name.

“Park Hyunmyung? Nice name. I’m Kim Hana.”

“Yes. I saw your card.”

“I’ll contact you. If you’re free tomorrow, let’s grab coffee. Or a meal. My treat.”

“I won’t refuse.”

“Great. See you!”

She bowed again and left with the police escorting the stalker.

…She was like a whirlwind.

“Wow, amazing. She looks even better in real life.”

“She could be a celebrity instead of a reporter.”

“She kind of gives off Seol-yun vibes. No wonder she had a stalker.”

I listened to the murmurs of admiration and slowly turned around.

“…….”

There stood Kim Seoyeon—her expression colder than a winter storm—quietly staring at me.

 

 

 

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