Chapter 1485.1

It was definitely Yeon-Hee’s request for Hyun-Ah to personally inspect the new equipment that made sure she was there. The plan was purportedly to test it on the monsters emerging from the protruding gate and see how effective it was with her own eyes.

Yet, something she had never imagined was happening right in front of her.

“Lady Hyun-Ah. No, Princess Hyun-Ah.” Chris Marten corrected himself, replacing the title he had initially used for her with the one he had started calling her recently.

While he had called her princess occasionally before, hearing him address her that way made her heart flutter lately for some reason, which only irritated her more.

“Will you marry me?”

Now that she looked at him, his earlier act of kneeling as if he were injured seemed like a complete ruse.

He was kneeling before her with perfect form, holding out a ring as he looked up at her.

“Whew!!!”

“Wooooo!!!”

Applause erupted from all around them. Hyun-Ah stared blankly, unable to process what was happening. Regardless, he quietly waited for her.

She finally managed to say, “Chris... what is this...”

“It’s a proposal, Princess. We’ve known each other for quite a while now. Somewhere along the way, I became a man who can’t live without you. You know that. I barely even talk to other women anymore.”

No response.

“Will you marry me?”

He held the ring out a little closer.

The sound of applause from every direction made Hyun-Ah finally realize that the whole situation had been planned and set up ahead of time. She also realized that he had pretended to be injured.

Her face deeply flushed, she let out a sigh and lowered her head. She looked as though she were reluctantly giving in and accepting the ring.

The whole setup had been surprisingly elaborate and pushy. No one considered the possibility that she might refuse.

Hyun-Ah slowly extended her hand. Chris’s face lit up, thinking she was about to take the ring.

But then.

Slap!!!

Her hand lashed out like lightning, smacking him right across the cheek.

“Agh?!” He fell on his bottom and tumbled on the ground. Everyone just stared in astonishment.

Davey had his face in his hands. “Ugh. That idiot. What a temper...”

Chris, who had been slapped, stared up at her blankly, finally saying, “Hyun-Ah.”

“I thought you were seriously hurt! You crazy bastard!!” Her face bright red, she shouted furiously, then kicked him and sent him sprawling.

She then stormed off.

Still stunned, he muttered while lying on the ground, “Uh... What should I... what should I do now?”

The two C-rank Awakened who had helped him with the plan awkwardly helped him up.

“You should’ve done a better job of managing your image to start with,” one of them advised him.

The other added, “Honestly, it’s not really our place as C-rank nobodies to say this, but... I spent years preparing meticulously before I proposed to my wife.”

“I’m about to get married, too... No, I mean, why didn’t you go with a cool image from the start? What was that?”

“You traitors!” He trembled and shouted, this time at Davey, “You said she’d be a hundred percent on board!”

“Chris Marten, be honest. What the hell have you been doing to make Hyun-Ah think of you that way?”

“Grrr.”

As he slumped down again with a gloomy face, Davey walked over and nudged his side with his toe. He told Chris, “I’ll go feel her out, so why don’t you just clean up and get some sleep tonight. You’re not going to give up just because you got shot down once, are you?”

Chris didn’t know what to say.

“If you are, then I misjudged you.”

“If I was going to give up that easily, I wouldn’t have changed this much!” He brushed Davey off with a look of irritation. He turned to the others and said, “Thanks for the hard work, everyone. Dismissed!”

The field staff, researchers, Awakened, and various support personnel who had been watching nervously began cleaning up with disappointed expressions.

It made for quite the strange atmosphere.

* * *

Objectively speaking, Chris was a pretty stand-up and devoted guy. However, he hadn’t been like that his entire life.

“You son of a bitch, I’m pretty sure I made it clear that he’s a terrible playboy! Yet you pull some shit like that? That new equipment or whatever, and the monsters, that was all staged, wasn’t it?! You know, I thought those monsters looked more scared than debuffed from the start. Now that I think about it, that was your doing too, wasn’t it? Were the reporters in on it too?”

“They were just people pretending to be reporters.”

“Ugh. Seriously!”

As soon as Davey followed Hyun-Ah into their uncle's house, she picked up a small dumbbell she was holding and threw it.

It would’ve seriously injured a normal person, but Davey lightly snatched it, put it down next to him, and asked, “Are you sure about that?”

“About what?!”

“The playboy thing. I agree, he’s definitely a frivolous guy. But do you have any proof that he actually slept with a bunch of women? Don’t you think it’s strange that he’s had so few scandals?”

“Don’t know, don’t care! You squid!!!”

He really did like women, but nothing he had done recently seemed particularly problematic. If he were truly an irredeemable playboy, he would’ve been involved in some major scandals, but there were none to be found.

Davey even suspected that most of the rumors about him were lies.

“Enough!!”

“You’re just embarrassed, aren’t you?”

“Shut up! You vogelkop superb bird of paradise-looking bastard!!!”[1]

Judging by her flushed face, it seemed she wasn't as completely indifferent as she insisted.

Chris was an Awakened under contract with the Sacred Group, yet, unlike special cases like Kouna or those who’d devoted their entire lives to the group, it was pretty obvious that he’d joined solely because of Hyun-Ah.

“Has Chris Marten fully recovered from his illness?”

“They said it was a psychological issue. As a result, he doesn't really trust people that much.”

‘He doesn't trust people? He seemed pretty friendly though.’

“Anyway, I’m only going to date someone I can trust,” she insisted.

“And you can't trust Chris?”

“I can trust his skill and character, but marriage isn’t just about those things alone.”

“You materialistic bitch,” Davey playfully scolded.

Hearing that, she flipped the middle finger at him. She probably wanted to be especially careful with her decision, given her position. It seemed she was afraid that making a hasty choice could cause serious problems for the Sacred Group.

Of course, Davey understood her reasoning, but he still thought she was being a bit too cautious.

Leaving her behind, he went to go meet Chris, finding him in a bar located inside the Sacred Group’s headquarters.

He was drowning his sorrows with incredibly strong liquor.

He slurred quite a bit as he remarked, “Oooh? Yyyyou’re here.”

He definitely wasn't in good shape.

“You look awful,” Davey shot back before turning to the bartender. “Get me a drink, too.”

Chris giggled and buried his head on the table. “Haah. I should’ve been more careful. Does she really hate me that much...”

He was a man who usually laughed boisterously, so seeing him like that made Davey feel that he was genuinely heartbroken. He asked the man, “So, are you just going to give up?”

If he said he was giving up now, Davey wouldn't have anything more to say. In the end, he knew that relationships between a man and a woman ultimately came down to at least one side trying.

Yet, Chris lifted his head slightly and squinted at Davey. “Grand Duke, didn’t you say you married Grand Duchess Perserque because you loved her?”

“Yes...?”

“Kuh... What should I do... Grand Duke. Can’t you help me out? Maybe if she and I were stranded alone on some deserted island...”

“Chris, be a man and solve your own problems.” Davey grinned as he took a sip of his drink before continuing, “This might be the only marriage you ever have, y’know? Of course, getting married twice isn’t exactly ideal, but are you really going to leave even this up to someone else?”

Chris briefly raised his head, looking stunned. His eyes opened wide, and he shot up out of his seat. “Something just crossed my mind!”

He quickly ran off, and not long afterward, word came that Chris had shamelessly pursued Hyun-Ah only to be slapped again, making everyone chuckle.

* * *

The Sacred Group tended to secure the personal affairs of its Awakened, fixing any issues they ran into. As long as they didn't cause serious problems, their private lives were respected, and for Hyun-Ah, Chris Marten the American superhero was exactly that kind of person.

Of course, there were stories of him having a disease or whatever, but those weren't really important.

Despite that, the way he approached her with such a flirty, smooth attitude had been a bit overwhelming at first. She thought his excessive friendliness toward her was simply due to his naturally smooth personality.

“Haah.” She felt hot all over and threw herself into the pool, but the heat stayed. “Damn it... Seriously, why is this bothering me so much?”

Remembering the shocked look on his face after she’d slapped him, she started to worry about him.

Honestly, how frivolous a man he was didn't matter. She knew well enough that he was an Awakened who saved people, someone others called a hero. While Americans culturally favored heroes, the reason Chris alone was called a superhero wasn’t simply due to his Awakened abilities.

She could tell at a glance that he had put a lot of effort into the whole planned proposal.

On top of that, when the named entity charged at her...

“...That didn’t seem like acting. No, what am I even thinking?”

When she had been in danger, he had gone pale and rushed toward her without a second thought. She found it hard to believe that it had all been an act.

His way of proposing had certainly been charming, but it had also felt incredibly frivolous. He sure was a man who made her think a lot of things.

She couldn't help but wonder if everything he was doing was just some shallow attempt to make her fall for him. She knew firsthand that he wasn’t an evil person, but, regardless of whether a person was good or evil, there was always something about relationships between a man and a woman.

Especially since Hyun-Ah was somewhat conservative when it came to relationships with men, every instinct of hers was telling her to hit the brakes.

Davey had scoffed and told her that if she kept slamming on the brakes like that, she’d eventually break them and suddenly accelerate out of control, but she didn't see anything wrong with being cautious.

Finally, she sat on the edge of the pool and covered her face with both hands, letting out a frustrated groan. “Ughhh!!!”

While she had envied Davey and his relationship with his wives, but now that the whole Chris proposing in public thing had suddenly happened to her, it was giving her a headache.

“No. Get it together, Hyun-Ah,” she mumbled to herself. “The best way to deal with this is to find out for myself.”

Fortunately, Chris wasn't a complete stranger. They had worked closely together for a long time under the Sacred Group. She figured she could just treat him like usual while figuring out how he truly felt and where things stood between them.

She lightly shook the water from her body and dried herself with a towel, then suddenly paused while taking a shower.

“But how do I talk to him?”

She was overcome with the complicated, annoying feeling of finding it difficult to do something she wouldn’t normally even think about, simply because she was now conscious of it.

She couldn’t hide her bewilderment.

Her face flushed again, and she rested her head against the wall. “Ughhh!!!”

Of course, Chris was in the same boat.

It is said that once you become conscious of something, everything starts to look different. The subtle change in his demeanor after dropping his flirtatious act and getting serious with her made him seem like a completely different person.

Hyun-Ah banged her head against the wall again and muttered, “Right. Taking care of an Awakened under my management is part of my job.”

1. This bird is popular in Korea as a meme for its unique, cute, and funny appearance. While definitely used as an insult here, it's commonly admired in Korea for its cuteness. ☜