Chapter 217

Do Yehyun’s reaction—standing there blankly in front of me—was so oddly calm that the words slipped out.

‘You said you like him?’

But you’re saying it’s fine if he gets hurt? I couldn’t understand it at all. This was definitely too strange to chalk up to a simple difference in perspective.

Still, staring at Do Yehyun as he just kept looking at me blankly, it started to feel weird to keep digging into it, too. Joo Seowon scrubbed his face hard with both hands and spoke slowly.

“Uh.... Sorry. I was being childish.”

“What about?”

“.......”

Of course, it looked like Do Yehyun didn’t even understand what “childish” meant.

Joo Seowon gave up on explaining the context of his apology and just nodded roughly. Do Yehyun continued, unfazed.

“Anyway, I figured hyungnim brought both hyung and me along for a reason.”

“You brought you to use you as a healer and brought me to use me as an information source. You brought us because you want to use us for what we’re good for?”

“I’m fine with that.”

Watching Do Yehyun toss out answers like that without a second of hesitation, Joo Seowon felt like he was about to burst inside. Seo Jehyun was Seo Jehyun, but this one was also a guy you couldn’t have a conversation with at all.

“You’re fine with it....”

When he repeated Do Yehyun’s words like he was talking to himself, Do Yehyun answered like it was obvious.

“Yes. I... want to be someone useful to hyung.”

“.......”

“I think, even if it’s just because it’s convenient, I want him to only look for me when he needs a healer.”

Convenient. Wasn’t that a word that suited a tool better than a person?

Seeing this bizarre obsession and loyalty, Joo Seowon ran out of things to say for a moment.

‘Even more than I thought....’

Was he always like this? Or had Seo Jehyun made him like this?

Either way, he seemed crazier than Seowon had expected.

“So I... don’t mind.”

At that last addition, Joo Seowon slowly nodded and stepped back.

When the hand that had been covering his neck the whole time finally moved away, the mark there naturally came into view.

He briefly wondered if Do Yehyun’s “I don’t mind” included even things like this, too, then shut the door. Something felt like it was boiling up inside him, but he didn’t have any justification to talk about it.

***

‘Fuck, this is mom-and-pop shop level.’

I leaned back in my chair, cursing out the SH Guild.

Considering I’d been absent without leave/unauthorized absence for a full two weeks, the punishment wasn’t that harsh. Which made sense—without Song Hwayoung, the inside of the guild had turned completely chaotic.

That didn’t mean the SH Guild’s system was useless trash. It seemed like the atmosphere was more that Song Hwayoung had gotten caught up in a fairly big Dungeon, so everyone was worried. Was it because she was a guild master who had a lot of trust?

‘It’s not like she died and came back out, either.’

For the record, Song Hwayoung had made it out of the Dungeon fine and was currently receiving treatment.

A few articles popped up spreading her injury level around to grab attention, but since Song Hwayoung’s side firmly stated there were no issues with her health, the public opinion died down fast.

Well, even if it wasn’t an S-rank Hunter, losing an A-rank Hunter was still something the country would feel pretty damn hard.

As for why her return to Korea was delayed if her condition was fine, it looked like they used negotiations with other guilds as the excuse. A follow-up article came out saying she was discussing compensation because of a Hunter from another guild directly involved with Song Hwayoung’s injury.

I also sent a personal check-in text.

Please recover quickly.

The reply came back simple.

Was being absent without leave/unauthorized absence fun?

After that, I didn’t bother replying so Song Hwayoung could focus on recovering. Meaning, I left her on read.

Despite how much trust the whole country placed in an A-rank Hunter, Song Hwayoung wasn’t “fine.” This injury wasn’t the kind that could be fixed just because time passed.

And that was exactly what you’d call a kind of flow.

After meeting a “god” in that Dungeon, there were a few things I realized, and one of them was this. It felt ridiculous to slap a grand word like fate on it, but things that were going to happen, happened. Like how I’d even pushed my rank up by making myself merge with a fiend beast.

Even now, I was still dealing with aftereffects. It was worse because I hadn’t reached a smooth agreement with the fiend beast bastard sharing my body. I was keeping my daily life going by holding back on using Skills and wearing a suppression orb, but it felt like I’d need to get things sorted out somehow before long.

Anyway, setting aside my body for now, what mattered was what was coming next.

Kwon Taehan shows up, right after Song Hwayoung dies.

The mana problem that formed in Song Hwayoung’s body keeps tormenting her, and within ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) a month, it drives her to death. Because she won’t be able to use her strength properly in the Dungeon she got tangled up in.

It really was a damn shame.

‘I got attached, in my own way.’

I meant it. Otherwise, why would I still be here, trying to at least wrap up the SH Guild properly?

It wasn’t just Song Hwayoung. Other flows were the same.

Ryu Taeyoung hadn’t contacted me again after that day. If I got time later, I’d probably carve out a bit, but my everyday life was busy, so it would be hard for the time being. In the middle of that, even Sung Uijae—who’d been clinging to Korea like his life depended on it—went back home for a while.

It was all moving in the direction I knew.

And separate from all of that “overall daily life,” I was currently holed up in the office dealing with “daily life.” I said there wasn’t severe punishment, not that there was no punishment at all.

For the record, the guy in charge of my punishment was Joo Seowon, sitting across from me.

“Do we have a rank difference? Didn’t know.”

When I looked at him crookedly, Joo Seowon snapped back.

“It’s not because I’m good. It’s because you’re bad. Honestly, if Hunters weren’t a special profession and appraisers weren’t rare, you would’ve been fired a long time ago.”

“If we’re being precise, I got scouted here and I’m the one who got you in, Seowon.... But you’re the one handling my punishment?”

“...What punishment. It’s just catching up on the backlog.”

I thought he’d tell me to write another written statement again, but what got dumped on me this time was appraising a massive pile of unappraised items.

After answering firmly, Seowon glanced at me again like he was reading the room and added,

“Two weeks’ worth piled up. Normally we would’ve outsourced the appraisal, but right now Song Hwayoung’s not here, so there’s no one who can approve the outside appraisal requests.”

“A horizontal company sucks in times like this. Should I suggest we switch to a vertical atmosphere? Like the military.”

“I was exempt.”

“Yeah, Seowon.... You think I don’t know?”

At first he’d stubbornly said he didn’t even want to join a guild, but once he got his foot in the door, he’d adapted pretty well. Maybe that was why he had so much to nag about.

I didn’t plan to complain. I wasn’t really suffering and using an appraisal Skill anyway—I was just reading the Status Window and fitting in the artifact knowledge I’d studied up to now.

‘When you look at stuff like this, the Status Window really is bullshit.’

It was just that there were a lot of unpleasant things tied to that Status Window. But if you only talked necessity, nothing beat this, no matter what Skill you compared it to.

I stopped looking at Seowon and did my work properly. Then, after diligently writing out appraisal reports on paper, I threw a question at Seowon, who was still hovering in my line of sight.

“Is hovering around in front of me part of my punishment, too?”

“.......”

“Seowon. Are you watching me?”

“...Hurry up.”

So prickly. I let Seowon’s urging go in one ear and out the other and kept writing calmly.

Around the time I’d finished about half the paperwork, I felt hungry. The moment I got up, thinking I should eat something, a question dropped out naturally.

“What are you doing?”

The Seowon who asked that was getting up, too, like it was a given that he’d follow me.

‘What’s wrong with him?’

Originally, the one with separation anxiety had been Do Yehyun, but after we got out of the Dungeon, it felt like the two of them had subtly switched.

Do Yehyun focused on his own work instead, while Joo Seowon was acting like a weird separation-anxiety-riddled bastard dog, exactly like this.

“I’m hungry. I have to eat, too.”

“Now?”

Watching Seowon like that, Kwon Taehan from the Dungeon suddenly came to mind.

‘Every one of them is coming down with separation anxiety.’

Was the reason Seowon always liked following Kwon Taehan because they shared little tendencies like this?

With my head tilted slightly, I asked,

“You trying to come with me?”

“Huh?”

“Are you hungry?”

“No.”

“Then why are you coming.”

“...You’re going alone?”

He even half-sat back down like he was watching my reaction, like he was being ridiculously cautious. Even though I didn’t think I’d ever acted in a way that would make him need to be.

“Seowon.”

On impulse, I called him.

When I turned fully toward him and took a step closer, Seowon’s gaze stuck to me.

“What.”

“Let’s go.”

When I tipped my head, Seowon got up without protest.

I briefly grabbed Seowon’s shoulder, then let go and led the way. None of the nearby restaurants really appealed to me, so we drove. It wasn’t like this place even had work hours, so there was nothing to feel awkward about.

“Should I drive?”

“How would you know where we’re going. Get in.”

“Where are we going?”

As Seowon climbed into the passenger seat, he looked at me anxiously.

‘What’s there to be anxious about. It’s not like I’m driving us to Jeju Island.’

I started the engine out of habit and headed for a restaurant, sinking into other thoughts for a moment.

In the end, Kwon Taehan’s repeated lives couldn’t help but take on similar patterns. He wasn’t the type to easily remove useless things. Even if something wasn’t needed, if he could keep it at his side, he’d keep it there and watch it to the end. Maybe that was why he needed so many trials and errors.

‘More accurately, it’s that “I” used that tendency of his.’

Just like when I witnessed a “deleted round,” the “Seo Jehyun” there felt like a different being from me. The flow of thought to the thoughts themselves had been as natural as if it was all me, but there’d been this odd sense of alienness.

I dug through my memory and recalled my conversation with Kwon Taehan.

‘Taehan. You want to die here?’

‘What?’

‘You looked like you’d lost your mind.’

‘.......’

‘You’ve been living off luck so far, so it feels like you’ve got multiple lives now, huh? Worrying about their lives to the point you’d go into a trash Dungeon alone like this....’

Why had I been so sarcastic about what Kwon Taehan said?

‘Why bother?’

Sure, the obligation I’d been assigned was directly tied to Kwon Taehan’s death, but that was about killing him, not saving him.

Even if it wasn’t that, there was no reason to stop a guy charging in yelling about saving the world. It looked stupid, but if that was the “duty” given to him, shouldn’t I be cheering him on?

Would I say something like that to Kwon Taehan now?

‘No way.’

Then, I heard a familiar voice.

“Seo Jehyun.”

Instead of answering Seowon’s call, I just tipped my chin, and I felt the gaze turned my way.

“Where the hell are we even going to eat....”

“Just think of it as a date.”

When I answered briefly, his mouth shut.

I looked at Seowon for a moment, then pulled up the corner of my lips.

Did the “me” back then want to control Kwon Taehan? My memories with Kwon Taehan weren’t clear enough to say for sure, but indirectly, it felt like I could understand it a little.

The end of the grace period was coming closer. It was more than enough time to sort out my thoughts.