Please Give Me A Kiss, Healer! Chapter 49

Sha-shak, shak, sha-shak.

In front of the dark emergency exit, a cockroach—no, a tiny person—appeared.

Knocking on the emergency door on the 8th floor through the darkness, a voice was heard.

“Hunter Do Jiwoo, I’m here. You can just come in—”

“Password!”

“…Excuse me?”

“Oh come on, you’re supposed to ask for the password before saying my name!”

After a brief silence, the voice continued.

“State the password.”

“Spicy stir-fried squid!”

The door opened.

Shin Woohyuk, who had arrived at the emergency exit first, greeted Jiwoo.

“Do we really have to meet like we’re on some spy mission?”

“Of course! If people find out I’m close with the guild master for no reason, they’ll totally say I got in through connections.”

Even Shin Ilguk, a C-rank tanker, was suspected of getting hired because of his cousin.

Jiwoo, too, had received cold looks for becoming a full guild member as an E-rank healer without even going through probation.

But Shin Woohyuk seemed interested in something else entirely.

“Close… I see. So we were close.”

As he muttered, the stairwell lights turned on, reacting to their movement.

“G-Guild Master… what’s wrong with your face?”

She wasn’t trying to insult him.

Shin Woohyuk looked completely worn out, like someone who had just returned from the Amazon.

“What happened to you? You look terrible.”

“I went to deal with the gate that opened in Udo. The raid took longer than expected.”

The gate in Udo—that was a place Kangwoo had gone too.

‘But Kangwoo seemed fine?’

For having gone through a tough schedule, the difference was huge.

Jiwoo looked at Shin Woohyuk with concern. He looked like he might collapse any second.

‘I should at least heal him… oh, right. The guild master probably has a dedicated healer.’

I’ll use it on Kangwoo later instead.

He might be tired even if he doesn’t show it.

While Jiwoo was thinking something Shin Woohyuk would be hurt to hear—

“Hunter Do Jiwoo, please take this.”

“Huh? This is….”

“I should’ve given it to you earlier, but I never got the chance.”

What Shin Woohyuk was holding was a top-tier staff with a turquoise gem set in the center.

At its core was a large turquoise mana stone harvested from a high-rank dungeon.

The front was densely engraved with magical support rune formulas, clearly carved one by one by a master craftsman.

Weapons of this quality were nearly impossible to reserve, and the price alone was astronomical.

“W-why are you giving this to me…?”

“Didn’t your staff break because of me last time? Please accept it as an employment gift.”

Jiwoo waved her hands frantically.

“This is way too much. Mine was an old staff that could’ve broken anytime.”

It felt like the gold axe and silver axe story.

She had lost a rusty axe, but what came back was a sparkling diamond axe!

Jiwoo was a notorious penny-pincher who drooled even in her sleep if something was free.

She never turned down gifts—but this was too much.

Still, Shin Woohyuk didn’t back down easily.

“Compared to the price of my life, this is actually cheap. You saved me back then, Hunter Do Jiwoo.”

He firmly held the staff out toward her and emphasized,

“Please accept it. The price of my life.”

“No, why are you saying it like that again….”

Feeling awkward, Jiwoo glanced over the staff.

The mana stone reflecting a soft green light matched her eye color perfectly, as if it had been made just for her.

“Ahem. Then… I’ll accept it gratefully. Thank you.”

One refusal was enough.

After all, our country is known as the land of courtesy, right? From the second refusal on, it’s actually rude.

Jiwoo grabbed the staff faster than the speed of light and lightly swung it through the air.

Whirr—tap.

Like a magical girl’s wand.

‘Ohhh, it fits my hand perfectly!’

As expected, expensive weapons really are the best!

…But don’t smile too obviously. That’d make me look too materialistic.

Even as she tried to hold it in, the corners of Jiwoo’s mouth kept twitching.

Shin Woohyuk plopped down on the emergency stairway.

“Hunter, I heard you’re going on your first raid tomorrow. It’s the gate in eastern Gyeonggi, right?”

Jiwoo was slightly surprised.

Did the guild master even know the schedule of a relaxed team like Special Team 7?

And for a low-rank dungeon, at that?

“Guild Master, how did you know? I thought you were busy with business trips lately.”

Shin Woohyuk replied calmly.

“It’s a team that Hunter Do Jiwoo joined. I always keep an eye on it.”

Huh.

If someone else had heard that, their heart might have fluttered a little—but Jiwoo was different.

She knew very well what kind of person Shin Woohyuk was.

‘As expected, a model hunter.’

An ideal guild master who even checks on rookie guild members!

“Even if it’s a team you were temporarily assigned to while I was away, Hunter Do Jiwoo is still there now.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

Jiwoo nodded enthusiastically.

As Shin Woohyuk quietly watched her, his gaze dropped downward.

“But Ilguk says you want to stay with Special Team 7.”

“Yes.”

“……”

Shin Woohyuk’s straight eyebrows drooped.

Huh… is it just me?

Why does the guild master look disappointed?

As she tilted her head, Shin Woohyuk suddenly went straight to the point.

“I would like you to stay by my side, Hunter.”

“Pardon?”

Jiwoo was momentarily flustered by the earnest red eyes looking straight at her.

“Please join my direct team. No—if you prefer, I can join your team instead. As long as we can work together, anywhere is fine.”

‘…Oh. I see. That’s what he meant.’

Jiwoo stroked the staff.

She had known about Shin Woohyuk’s interest in her skills for a while now.

To him, she was a walking gate detector and a dungeon safe-zone maker.

‘Still, he really knows how to phrase things in a misleading way.’

Jiwoo was actually willing to join his team if he wanted.

No matter how much she dreamed of being a salary thief, taking such an expensive staff and then pretending nothing happened would be too much even for her conscience.

‘And a guild master’s direct team is a top-tier team. The hazard pay must be insane!’

She even had extra mouths to feed now.

With 235 of them, no amount of money was ever enough.

“Guild Master, would it be okay if I thought about it slowly for now? I haven’t even gotten to know my current teammates that well yet, and moving immediately feels a bit awkward. People are watching, too.”

“Yes. Then I’ll assume you’ll come to me later.”

Her answer seemed more than satisfactory. The corners of Shin Woohyuk’s lips lifted into a smile.

“Oh, by the way, did you finish the pre-raid meeting? It should’ve taken at least three days to review the materials.”

“The pre-raid meeting? …Yes, we did have it.”

If she said it took about ten minutes today, there’d be chaos, right?

For the peace of Special Team 7, Jiwoo decided to keep her mouth shut.

“With your abilities, you should be safe, but still, be careful. These days, lower-rank gates often mutate into higher-rank dungeons.”

“What? That only happens occasionally overseas, doesn’t it?”

“It hasn’t been officially announced yet, but it does happen in our country too, at a very low probability.”

Korea was no longer a completely safe zone when it came to gates.

Recently, high-rank gates had been appearing at an unusual frequency. Unidentified rifts were also continuing to form.

“If you hadn’t detected that A-rank gate in advance last time, Hunter Do Jiwoo, there would’ve been countless casualties.”

Shin Woohyuk said that Jiwoo should’ve received a medal for that, but regretted that her abilities couldn’t be made public.

When he mentioned the previous A-rank gate, someone came to Jiwoo’s mind.

“Guild Master, did that child we saved back then make it back safely?”

“Hm? Ah, Mina.”

Kim Mina.

The child who had been sucked into a gate after getting separated from her mother on the way to the bathroom.

Shin Woohyuk’s expression darkened.

“As far as I know, she’s currently hospitalized.”

“What?! How did that happen?”

“It seems staying inside the gate for too long affected her body. They suspect dungeon sickness, so she was transferred to a partner hospital.”

After that, it became the Association’s jurisdiction, so Shin Woohyuk hadn’t received any further updates.

At the unexpected news, Jiwoo’s shoulders felt heavy.

“Guild Master… do you happen to know which hospital she’s in?”