Free Web Novel“Here you are.”
Do Yehyun looked more tired than usual, but he didn’t look unwell.
“Did it go well?”
“Mm... yeah, it went well.”
Saying that, he smiled with a faint air of satisfaction. Guess today’s results were decent? The mood itself was calm, but if you looked closely you could feel that subtle lift underneath.
“Have you eaten?”
“I grabbed something simple after the clear. With the other hunters.”
“Yeah? Good.”
Then he said he was going to wash up and headed upstairs. Watching him go, Joo Seowon muttered to himself.
“He seems a little excited.”
“Must’ve had fun.”
“...A dungeon?” freewebnσvel.cøm
“There are plenty of people like that.”
You slog through a boring reality and then a scene out of a movie or game unfolds right in front of you—how could you not get a dopamine hit? The downside is that it’s not a character dying on screen; it’s actually me who dies.
With his face souring, Joo Seowon looked away again.
“They find dungeons fun? There really are a lot of crazy assholes.”
“You’re scared of them, though, right?”
“...You’re being a dick.”
I humored him just enough, and his expression curdled in real time. I let out a small laugh and leaned toward him.
“No need to be scared. What scares you the most?”
“...”
“Be honest, it’s not that you’re afraid of dying.”
“I hate that too.”
“If you’re afraid of dying, then you should only be afraid of high-rank dungeons.” freewёbnoνel.com
“...”
“Have you thought about it? What exactly you’re afraid of?”
He turned his eyes to the black TV screen. Nothing on it but his silhouette.
I watched him and added,
“Figure it out. And tell me.”
“Why would I?”
“I’ll help.”
“...I get more anxious when you offer to help.”
Trust, spectacularly shattered. I shrugged and stood up.
That night, Do Yehyun knocked on my door.
“Are you sleeping?”
I was already ready for bed when I opened it. He looked a little flushed as he stared at me.
“I used it for the first time today.”
“Used what?”
Instead of answering, he rolled up his sleeve and showed the tattoo stamped on his wrist. Of the four patterns the tattoo device printed—the one I’d given him when we went out to buy gear—one had been erased.
“You used the flame skill.”
“Yes.”
So the guy who went in with him had trash stats? What reason would a healer have to use a flame skill?
Trying to stay calm, he explained what had happened.
“I went in with two hunters. Hunter Yoo and Hunter Kim. Hunter Yoo was support... and Hunter Kim handled water, but the dungeon was a forest.”
“Mm.”
“So Hunter Kim said her skill and the dungeon weren’t a good match... that’s what she said. I was going to assist from the side, helping treat both of them.”
“You used this to ‘assist’?”
I brushed my thumb over the spot where the flame sigil had been. He trembled, but didn’t pull his wrist back, shaking his head.
“Then, unexpectedly... a beast rushed us, and in that situation, the only thing I could think of was that we needed a flame-type skill.”
“You used it to survive.”
“In the end it went well, so I’m glad.”
“Good use. You hurt?”
“Ah, a little... but I treated it right away. There was barely any pain.”
For someone utterly inexperienced with flame to use a disposable skill and feel “barely any pain”? I could bet my wrist on “the adrenaline kept him from feeling it, and he treated it only after he saw the visible wound.”
Reporting is a good habit, but I hadn’t expected him to report even this much. Cute of him.
I let go of his wrist, stepped back, and waved him inside.
“Want to come in?”
“Yes.”
He slipped in quickly, sat in the chair, and then went quiet again. Maybe replaying the dungeon moments.
“...It was different from last time. When I went to the quest-type dungeon with you, I was scared.”
“Maybe that’s experience stacking.”
“...I don’t know. It was just one time.”
Calling that money-dungeon “normal” would be a stretch given the variables. I studied him for a moment and said,
“Aren’t you a little too hyped?”
“...Huh?”
He didn’t even realize he was excited. Not like a dog after a walk. At my words, he looked puzzled, then leaned back and exhaled.
“Sorry.”
“No need to apologize to me.”
“Still...”
“Every time I say something, you apologize. You don’t have to.”
“...”
At that, he nodded like he understood. Huh. He’d changed a lot these past few months.
When I first picked him up off the street, he was wary of everything; now he comes back from a dungeon and gets excited.
“So you came to brag?”
“I wanted to tell you I’ve become... a little more useful.”
“Mm?”
“You said so from the start. To [N O V E L I G H T] raise my skills so I could help.”
I did. And he was steadily raising his abilities, becoming more and more useful.
He stared at me like he was thinking something over, then suddenly said,
“...I felt it today. Item help or not, the healing skills are getting usable, and you get hurt a lot, and you go to dangerous places... so I figured I could help.”
“Long-term investment paid off. Honestly, at this point it’s not even long-term.”
I agreed with him, but weirdly, he only went quieter, like something heavy was on his mind.
“Anything else you want to say?”
“...”
The flush from earlier—like a sugar high—vanished, and his face settled back into reality.
“Still... I thought it’d be nice if you didn’t get hurt.”
“After bragging your heart out, now this?”
“...Tell me when you go somewhere. Take me with you... please.”
“Okay.”
“When you go in and out of Gates, you have to call me.”
“Yeah.”
Even if he didn’t insist, of course I’d bring him along.
“That all you came to say?”
“That, and... I worried you might have gotten hurt when you went down to Busan.”
“Too bad. No injuries.”
“...That’s a good thing.”
I answered evenly, and got a scolding right back.
After that he lingered for quite a while. I fielded his not-very-interesting questions, and only after about an hour did I manage to kick him out of my room.
“...Then, good night.”
“Yeah. If you think you’ll have a nightmare, crawl in here.”
“...Don’t say that. You’ll hate it if I actually do.”
How’d he know?
I’ve never liked sleeping with someone else. Still, I asked shamelessly,
“Why would I hate sleeping next to you?”
“...”
“You don’t thrash in your sleep, so it’s fine. It’s scarier when you stand by the bed while I’m asleep. Just lie down next to me and wait.”
Well, that’s true too. Every time I came back from a dungeon, he tended to have a rough night. If he were the only one suffering, whatever; but he kept standing by the bed, making it hard for me, too.
He bit his lip, met my eyes, gave a short goodbye, and left.
“See you tomorrow.”
“Mm. Sleep well, Yehyun.”
“...You too.”
He really won’t crawl in tonight, right? I could let it slide for a day.
Thinking that, I closed the door. It was about time to sleep anyway... and starting tomorrow, I needed to hit Gates in earnest.
***
Do Yehyun stared at Seo Jehyun’s closed door, let out a long breath, and walked to his room.
Lately, every time he talked to Seo Jehyun, he felt like something was stuck in his chest.
No—lately? ...It’d been like that from the beginning.
He didn’t understand most of what Seo Jehyun did. And whatever his goal was, it wasn’t exactly important to him.
But when things he “really” couldn’t understand piled up, it was only natural to wonder what the hell he was thinking.
In that sense, when Seo Jehyun took him in, Yehyun had been curious what was going through his head—and just as anxious.
It wasn’t enough that he picked up a guy who didn’t even know how to use his skills properly and kept him alive; he casually slapped down a billion won to pay off his debts, and on top of that, his actions and words were strange as hell.
The most memorable was the day he went to the Infinite Guild’s office to settle Yehyun’s debt.
After throwing down with their members, Seo Jehyun said he was hungry and pulled into a fast-food place nearby to eat with Yehyun.
He still remembered every word of that conversation vividly. The line that stuck the most was this:
‘I’m sorry I haven’t produced results yet. I actually wanted to apologize, but I figured you wouldn’t like that...’
‘Don’t worry about it, Yehyun.’
‘...’
‘I’m a long-term investment specialist.’
He’d never heard anything so bizarre. Should he have felt burdened that someone valued him highly when he couldn’t do anything yet? Or should he have been offended at being treated like an object of value—talk of “investment” and all?
He couldn’t be sure exactly what to feel... but what was certain was that the emotion he felt then wasn’t all that bad.
No—it was a problem because he liked it.
