Please Give Me A Kiss, Healer! Chapter 128 - End of Season 1

Something was strange. There was no way a stray cat could actually communicate with her.

Jiwoo tilted her head and followed Nabi.

Nabi walked for quite a while. Whenever Jiwoo fell even a little behind, she would let out a long cry, almost as if she were getting annoyed.

By this point, Jiwoo was getting curious too.

What on earth did this bright yellow cat want?

Was she perhaps trying to show Jiwoo her kittens, like the cats she had seen on TV’s Kitty Farm? Was this one of those “grateful cats” stories?

Jiwoo’s question was answered soon enough.

Deep inside the alley Nabi had led her into. After wandering around in circles until she even lost her sense of direction, deep, deep inside the alley…

‘A gate?’

There was a gate.

A golden gate that shone brightly in every direction.

“Ugh……”

The moment Jiwoo saw the gate, a sharp pain throbbed on one side of her head. She staggered for a moment before grabbing the wall beside her and barely regaining her balance.

“What’s going on? Why am I suddenly like this? Have I been overworking myself lately?”

Once she got used to the sudden headache, Jiwoo examined the gate in front of her.

“What is this? Why is there a gate in a place this secluded?”

Jiwoo frowned. Even though unidentified gates had been appearing without warning more and more often, an alarm should have gone off within about five minutes.

‘But there wasn’t any alarm around here.’

Jiwoo stood at the edge of the gate, careful not to get sucked inside. Then she took a picture and sent it to the Emergency Disaster Response Team network.

She had absolutely no intention of entering the gate.

She stood at the edge, looking at the gate from this side and that, when—

“Huh? What’s happening all of a sudden?”

Light burst from the hourglass necklace around her neck.

The golden dust rose in a cloud and formed a Milky Way-like bridge all the way to the gate.

Without thinking, one name filled Jiwoo’s mind.

‘Kangwoo?’

Could this be a portal leading to Kangwoo?

Her heart began beating irregularly. Jiwoo stared blankly at the galaxy of light stretching through the air.

And then—

“…No. This can’t be it.”

Shaking her head, Jiwoo tightly squeezed the hourglass necklace in her palm.

How could she recklessly jump into a gate without even knowing where it led?

One year, two years, three years.

As the years passed, the young and fearless Do Jiwoo had disappeared, leaving behind Hunter Do Jiwoo, who was cautious and easily frightened.

She couldn’t jump into that gate, if only because of her responsibility toward her younger brother and the other members of her household.

But—

‘No. I can’t go.’

Even as she made that resolution over and over in her mind…

Jiwoo couldn’t let go of her lingering attachment and remained rooted to the spot.

Staring at the shimmering golden gate.

Biting her lips so hard they began to bleed, scratching the tips of her fingers against her palm until her nails were worn down.

She wanted to see Kangwoo.

She wanted to throw everything away and run to him.

Even without knowing for sure whether this was the place where Kangwoo was, she wanted to throw herself into it.

‘Did Kangwoo feel like this too?’

Had he overcome all these fears and come to find her?

Jiwoo lowered her head.

She wished she could summon even a quarter of the courage Kangwoo had shown.

But staring at the shimmering gate filled her with the uneasy feeling that once she entered, she might never be able to return.

‘It’s different from before. Heeseong has grown a lot too, and he’s become mature enough to live without me now.’

Even so, she couldn’t be certain that the glowing gate really led to Kangwoo.

‘Still, if the hourglass is reacting, then maybe Kangwoo is on the other side…’

Unable to make a decision, Jiwoo held her throbbing head.

She bit her tender lips.

She dragged her fingertips across her palm until they turned bright red.

And then—

Something small and flat slammed hard into her back.

─ Meow meow! Meow meow! (Meow Meow Punch!)

“Whoa?!”

Jiwoo lost her balance and pitched forward.

At the same time, the gate seemed to have been waiting for this moment. It burst into an even brighter light and sucked Jiwoo inside.

“What?! What is this?!”

I never said I was going!

I said I wasn’t goiiiiing!

Jiwoo’s scream echoed through the air.

Then, at some point, she disappeared without a sound along with the gate.

─ Meow meow, meow meow meow meow. Meow meow meow meow meow. (That’s what you get for taking care of me all this time, you stupid can-opener human. You’ll thank me later.)

By then, the moon and stars had risen high in the night sky.

Light paw prints were left across the white snow.

 

 

****

 

 

 

“Waste produced by God.”

“Trash falling from the sky.”

Never before had Jiwoo agreed so strongly with those words as she did now when looking at snow.

Jiwoo had briefly lost consciousness before waking up to a cold so intense that her entire body was freezing.

Her first thought after looking around was—

‘Frozen Kingdom?’

Snow stretched endlessly in every direction.

Ice crystals sparkled under the sunlight, while fluffy clouds hung over the peaks of a distant, towering ice mountain range.

After suddenly landing in the middle of an ice mountain range, Jiwoo slapped the snow beneath her and cursed.

“Nabi, you crazy cat!”

Who could have imagined it?

That she would be betrayed by a cat she had lovingly taken care of and sucked into a gate.

‘Oh, I’m such an idiot. I should’ve listened to Kangwoo!’

There were doppelgangers in this world, so why had she never considered that there might be doppel-cats too?!

But no matter how much she regretted it, it was already too late.

She didn’t know where she was, but once the sun went down, the already low temperature was bound to plummet even further.

If she wanted to survive in these icy mountains, she needed to keep moving.

If she weren’t an Awakened, or if she weren’t wearing the warm mountain jacket Oh Nara had given her, she would have frozen to death already.

‘First, I need to find somewhere to escape this freezing wind!’

Jiwoo moved forward, trembling all over.

As time passed, the snowstorm grew stronger.

To make matters worse, night fell and the temperature around her plummeted.

“Brr, it’s cold……”

White breath escaped between Jiwoo’s lips, which had turned blue.

Her sneakers sank deep into the white snow.

At some point, she lost all feeling in her hands and feet, and her head became hazy.

Her vision turned blurry, making it difficult to see ahead, and every breath she took felt like the freezing wind was tearing apart her lungs.

‘Am I going to die like this?’

Overcome with sudden fear, Jiwoo tried using her skills.

But just as it had been for the past few hours, the system showed no response.

Instead, a small tremor appeared in the previously silent ice mountains.

Rumble…

At first, the vibration was so faint that she could barely feel it.

But it gradually grew stronger.

Snow piled on the trees shook loose from the vibration and poured down, while birds hiding somewhere took flight and soared high into the sky.

“W-What is this?”

Her uneasy feeling soon became reality.

An avalanche.

Something she had only ever seen in movies rapidly grew in size from the high mountain peak and came crashing toward Jiwoo.

Jiwoo turned around and began running like crazy along the path she had just crossed.

But she was powerless against the overwhelming speed of nature rushing toward her.

The moment the white storm swallowed Jiwoo, the entire world turned white.

‘Help me!’

She instinctively opened her mouth to scream, but snow forced its way into her mouth, nose, eyes, and even her ears.

Jiwoo desperately struggled in the freezing snow, but the pressure bearing down on her grew stronger and stronger until she could barely breathe.

As her consciousness slowly faded in the cold, something broke through the snow and appeared, grabbing hold of Jiwoo.

When Jiwoo opened her eyes again, she was inside a cave with a warm campfire burning.

A thick blanket covered her body completely, and her body, which had been freezing cold, had grown warm.

‘…I survived.’

When she was buried in the snow, she had been certain she was going to die.

She had despaired, thinking she would be trapped in a coffin made of ice and disappear without anyone ever knowing.

‘Who on earth saved me?’

The moment she tried to sit up, her head spun.

Jiwoo barely steadied herself with one hand on the floor before slowly looking around.

Inside the cozy cave, her belongings had been laid out around the campfire.

Her phone and wallet, which she had kept inside her padded jacket, and…

‘Oh, my staff!’

The staff she had shrunk down and placed in her pocket was giving off a faint glow.

Just as Jiwoo reached out to pick up the staff from the floor, she sensed someone at the entrance of the cave.

“Hey, thank you so much!”

Jiwoo immediately stood up to greet her lifesaver.

Soon, someone’s silhouette appeared in the faint glow of the campfire.

And the moment her eyes met the person who appeared, Jiwoo’s heart dropped.

The man stood somewhere between being called a boy and being called a young man.

His sharp eyes and straight, angular nose gave him a cold appearance, while a faint blush colored his clear cheeks.

The only thing that was the same as in her memories was a pair of orange eyes that held the color of a sunset.

The youthful-looking man was wearing a high school uniform, and on his faded name tag were the three characters of the name she had longed for all this time.

[Seo Kangwoo].

 

 

<End of Season 1>