Please Give Me A Kiss, Healer! Chapter 119

“I was on the Ahendel server too. I was a Healer.”

“Huh? Guild Master, you were a Healer?”

Even though they were characters in a game, the combination was completely unexpected.

Anyway, if they had been on the same server and in the same class, there was no way he wouldn’t have known <Mom’s Hand>.

Jiwoo straightened her shoulders and confidently spoke up.

“Ahem, Guild Master. Then you must know ‘Mom’s Hand,’ right?”

“…Mom’s Hand?”

“Yes. Mom’s Hand.”

Jiwoo grinned. She was ready to brag the moment Shin Woohyeok said, ‘Of course I know. Wasn’t he a famous Healer?’ She would immediately reply, ‘Yes, that was me.’

But Shin Woohyeok’s expression was strange.

“Mom’s Hand……. Yes, I know.”

His eyebrows twisted. Blue veins stood out on his tightly clenched fist.

‘W-what? Why is he reacting like that?’

It seemed like he didn’t just know the name.

Jiwoo looked back on Mom’s Hand’s short history.

<Mom’s Hand>, the number-one player on the server and the lord of the central area of the Ahendel server.

He was a famous person on the server, but he had never done anything cowardly. He played fairly enough to be proud even in front of the game operators.

‘But then again, you never know. It’s not like I had no enemies.’

Quite a few players were jealous of Mom’s Hand. There were guilds that competed against him, as well as a lord from the neighboring area who challenged him to sieges every time.

‘Could the Guild Master have been one of those people?’

Jiwoo decided to test Shin Woohyeok first.

“S-so you knew Mom’s Hand pretty well?”

“We were in the same guild.”

“Huh?”

Color returned to Jiwoo’s tense face.

“Same guild? Who in the same guild?”

“Pardon?”

“Your nickname! Your nickname!”

“Evergreen…”

“Oh my gosh! Evergreen! You were Evergreen, Guild Master? No way! This is crazy, absolutely crazy!”

Excited, Jiwoo grabbed Shin Woohyeok’s arm and bounced up and down. Flustered, he slowly opened his mouth.

“You know Evergreen?”

“Of course I do! That’s me, Guild Master!”

“I don’t understand what you mean…….”

“I’m Mom’s Hand! I’m Mom’s Hand!”

“…Hunter Do Jiwoo is Mom’s Hand?”

“Yes! I’m Mom’s Hand! Wow, what are the chances of this happening? Oh my gosh! Wooooow!”

Jiwoo shouted with a huge smile, like a puppy seeing snow for the first time. But Shin Woohyeok’s reaction was completely different from what she expected.

“…Hunter Do Jiwoo is Mom’s Hand.”

“Yes, I’m Mom’s Hand…, Guild Master?”

Jiwoo looked up at Shin Woohyeok with wide eyes.

He was rubbing his face with one hand. He looked both tired and angry.

After remaining silent for a long time, Shin Woohyeok finally forced out his words one by one.

“Then why, back then, did you suddenly disappear?”

“What?”

“How could you just disappear like that without saying a single word?”

How could you disappear? His voice dropped lower.

Flustered, Jiwoo fidgeted with her fingers.

‘Did I do something wrong?’

It was true that she had suddenly quit the game.

After her parents suddenly disappeared and she became responsible for her younger sibling, she hadn’t even had time to contact the people she knew.

But was that really something she should be questioned about like this?

Shin Woohyeok seemed to reach the same conclusion. He lowered his head and apologized.

“I’m sorry. I just vaguely thought that I wanted to meet you again someday……. But finding out that you had actually been nearby all this time, living an ordinary life like this…”

“Ah.”

Jiwoo thought she could understand how Shin Woohyeok felt. So that was what this was like. Like a friend who suddenly disappeared one day.

If you had worried about that friend for a long time, and then one day they suddenly appeared and shouted, ‘Surprise! I was here all along!’ And on top of that, they happily greeted you as if nothing had happened.

‘It could feel pretty empty.’

Jiwoo scratched the back of her neck. It had been a long time since she had quit the game. She was grateful to him for worrying about her for so long, but she also felt embarrassed.

There was a lot she wanted to talk about with Shin Woohyeok besides why she had suddenly disappeared.

“Oh my gosh, then are you still in contact with the old guild members?”

“Yes, though only occasionally. We also get together once a year.”

Unlike Jiwoo, who had completely lost contact with everyone after the server shut down, the other guild members had continued to keep in touch.

“We’re actually planning to get together again at the end of this year. Would you like to come with us, Hunter Do Jiwoo?”

“Can I really go?”

“Of course. Everyone wanted to see you. …Though perhaps not as much as I did.”

Jiwoo tilted her head.

As far as she remembered, she hadn’t been particularly close to ‘Evergreen,’ or Shin Woohyeok back then.

If anything, she had been closer to some of the other players.

Still, it felt awkward to openly ask, ‘Weren’t we not that close?’

‘I think there was one time, a long time ago, when we had a long conversation in the game.’

What was it about again?

Jiwoo looked at Shin Woohyeok’s back as he walked ahead. While she was thinking, her radio went off.

[Yoo Jaekyung, Cha Taepyeong. We’re moving to the central plaza.]

[Hunter Shin Ilguk and I are heading to the center too!]

It seemed the one-hour time limit they had agreed on was already almost up.

“Then shall we go too?”

Jiwoo nodded. Then she turned around and walked back toward where she had parted from her teammates.

Maybe because they walked without saying anything.

It wasn’t long before she could see the team members gathered in the plaza.

“There.”

“Hunter Do Jiwoo.”

They spoke at the same time. Jiwoo gave an awkward smile.

“You go first, Guild Master.”

“When today’s mission is over… could you spare me some time?”

“Some time?”

“There’s something I’ve wanted to talk to you about for a long time.”

His face was expressionless as usual, but she could tell from his trembling voice just how nervous he was.

“Yes, then after everything is over, we can…….”

Jiwoo was answering nervously too when, along with the sound of an explosion, the first firework rose into the dark sky.

“Wow…….”

Everyone gathered there looked up at the sky at the same time.

The mother and child holding candy in their hands, the group of students chatting away, and the couple who had been arguing about their relationship.

At that moment, everyone stopped whatever conversation they were having and looked at the brilliant display of lights blooming across the sky.

“It’s really pretty…….”

As one firework drew a picture in the sky and disappeared, another, even larger and more spectacular firework competed to decorate the sky.

Watching the magnificent sight, someone came to mind.

‘I wish Kangwoo could see this too.’

Jiwoo pouted.

It had already been several months since Kangwoo had said he was going away. He had never been out of contact for this long before. She had thought he would at least contact her to say he had arrived safely, but Kangwoo had disappeared as if he didn’t even exist in this world.

That was why Jiwoo could understand Shin Woohyeok’s feelings when he had expressed his disappointment earlier.

‘He’ll come back soon, right?’

Jiwoo let out a deep sigh. But even that sigh was immediately drowned out by the noise of the fireworks that followed.

Red, blue, green. Every time colorful lights spread across the sky, people gasped in amazement.

Some people filmed the scene with their phone cameras, while fathers gave their small children a piggyback ride so they could see.

But then, in an instant.

 

※Warning※

Some monsters who have taken a liking to you are sending a danger signal.

Leave the danger zone immediately.

Until Dungeon Break

00:01:00

 

“…Huh?”

Jiwoo couldn’t believe her eyes.

 

Analyzing danger signal…….

Estimated dungeon rank: S

A dungeon gate will activate within a 2 km radius.

Time remaining

00:00:50

 

An S-rank dungeon.

A 2-kilometer radius.

Within an area that covered most of Yeouido, she had only 50 seconds to escape.

Her ears rang loudly. Someone bumped into Jiwoo’s shoulder as they passed, but she couldn’t move at all.

“Hunter Do Jiwoo?”

“…Guild Master.”

Jiwoo’s finger pointed toward the sky.

The fireworks had died down, just before their final highlight.

When Shin Woohyeok followed Jiwoo’s finger and looked toward the sky, all the fireworks exploded at once, completing the festival of light.

The entire world became bright as if every light had been switched on, and then darkness returned.

…No, it should have returned.

Where the fireworks had disappeared, a sparkling light remained that hadn’t been there before.

At first, they thought it was an afterimage, but the light didn’t disappear even as time passed.

Instead, it grew larger, devouring the darkness around it.

By the time people noticed the change, everything was already over.

 

[S-rank dungeon gate is activating.]