Please Give Me A Kiss, Healer! Chapter 57

“Mmhm? I’m okaygh, thoguh( I’m okay though).”

“Really?”

“Thall eat wellth( Thank you for the food).”

Jiwoo quickly stuffed a pack of hardtack into her backpack.

After taking a gulp of water, she asked,

“But Ilguk, why are you looking at me like that?”

“Pardon?”

“I don’t know… Since earlier, you’ve been staring like you’re at a zoo meerkat or something.”

No, not that—something more…

“Right! Like you’re looking at an Australian quokka!”

“A quokka?”

“Yeah, you know, the animal you get fined for touching. That exact look.”

“Ah…”

Shin Ilguk lowered his head and apologized.

“Sorry. I was just amazed that you could fit that much hardtack into your mouth…”

“Oh, that’s understandable! It’s not common to eat twelve hardtacks in under a minute.”

Jiwoo drained the last of the water bottle into her mouth.

Then she held both hands out in front of her—very politely.

“…?”

“Please.”

“Uh? Please what…?”

“The viewing fee. You watched the hardtack show, so you need to pay.”

And just like that, Shin Ilguk lost two more packs of hardtack to Jiwoo.

A small revenge for the beef argument earlier.

Strangely enough, Shin Ilguk didn’t seem upset at all about losing them.

If anything, he looked happy handing them over.

‘…What, is he into that sort of thing?’

Getting hit, getting robbed, that kind of stuff?

Are tankers just built like that?

Just as a very wrong prejudice was forming in Jiwoo’s head—

A golden notification window appeared in midair.

System

A potential guest has been registered to 〈Our Home〉.

“…?”

Jiwoo sucked in a sharp breath.

What does that mean? Registered? A candidate?

The owner of 〈Our Home〉 is right here—what candidate?!

There was only one person who could have caused this.

Do Heeseong.

My middle-school-syndrome-at-its-peak little brother is plotting something behind my back!

Jiwoo’s face turned pale as she jumped to her feet.

“Hunter Do Jiwoo? What’s wrong all of a sudden?”

“Uh, um… well, uh…”

After stammering for a while, Jiwoo squeezed her eyes shut.

Then—

“I REALLY need to use the bathroom!!”

“The bathroom?”

“Yes! I’ll go outside and be right back!!”

Jiwoo kicked aside her sleeping bag and bolted.

Shin Ilguk also stood up to follow.

“Hunter, it might be dangerous to go alone. I’ll come with—”

“No! Don’t!”

Go together? Absolutely not!

At Jiwoo’s fierce reaction, Shin Ilguk froze.

“I don’t mean anything strange. In a dungeon, you never know what might happen, so—”

“No! I held it in too long, so it’ll smell really bad! I’ll call if it’s dangerous, so don’t follow me!!”

Jiwoo dashed out of the campsite.

Thankfully, the emergency-poop declaration worked—no one followed her.

Once hidden in the bushes, Jiwoo immediately used her skill.

A short while later, in front of 〈Our Home〉 in the safe zone.

─ H-Heeseonghh, aren’t we gonna get in trouble if we get caughtaaa?!

“It’s fine. Noona doesn’t know.”

─ If Jiuu finds out, she’s gonna freak ouuuut!!

“I said it’s fine! As long as you, Dodongsik, keep your mouth shut, no one will know!”

Heeseong glared.

Then he went back to moving his hands busily again…

‘Huh? Why does the back of my head feel prickly?’

Heeseong slowly turned his head.

And saw it.

A wild beast charging straight at him.

“DO HEESEONG, WHAT DID YOU DO THIS TIME?!”

“…N-noona?!”

─ J-Jiiuuk!

The wild Jiwoo had appeared. The little creatures hurriedly covered whatever was behind them.

“W-why is my sister here?! You said you were on a business trip for days!!”

“Your sister is still on that business trip, you punk! What are you hiding? Hand it over, now!”

“N-no! You can’t!”

He tried desperately to block her view, but it was too late.

Pressing down on Heeseong’s shoulder, Jiwoo checked what he was hiding behind his back.

Peep, peep.

“…What is this?”

What appeared before Jiwoo were baby birds that hadn’t even opened their eyes yet.

Their soft, round bellies rose and fell with each tiny breath.

“C-cute! They’re like little dandelion fluff balls……”

Jiwoo covered her mouth, completely melting.

The baby birds, covered in fluffy white down, were sleeping curled up in a basket.

But then something strange caught her eye.

These little creatures had one feature that normal birds should never have.

Small, round horns on their heads!

Which meant—

“Heeseong. Aren’t these monsters?”

“Huh? U-yeah… probably.”

“Where did you get them?”

Jiwoo’s voice dropped half an octave.

“Uh, well…”

“Don’t tell me you went outside the safe zone?”

“No, noona! It’s not that—”

“Did you take the portal into a dungeon?! Are you crazy? Out of your mind?! Completely nuts?!”

Her anger rose in a smooth gradient.

Jiwoo smacked Heeseong’s back—smack, smack.

“You little brat, you little brat! Are you sane?! I told you the portal is only for going back and forth to the apartment! Do you know how dangerous dungeons are?! Crawling in there like that!”

Each swing of her hand made a whooshing sound through the air.

Heeseong, getting hit, yelled,

“Ow! It hurts!! It’s not like that! Just listen to me!”

“How is it not like that?! Then where did you pick these up?!”

“I didn’t go into a dungeon! I found them near the boundary of the safe zone!”

“…The boundary?”

Jiwoo froze at the unexpected answer.

Heeseong sniffled and rubbed his back.

“Yes! Seriously! You never let people finish talking. I was curious how far the area expanded this time, so I went to check.”

The safe zone had originally been surrounded by tall cliffs.

If you walked about thirty minutes from 〈Our Home〉, you reached the valley where the Antmen lived, and if you followed the valley farther down, there was a plain.

The vast plain that had expanded when they accepted the Antmen.

Jiwoo hadn’t had time to check it out yet.

“You’ve been busy lately, so I asked the Antmen. We need to know what’s around our place, right? Yesterday, they gave me a map.”

Dodongsik, who had been quietly shrinking beside them, held out a wooden board.

─ Thith it. Gamm124 gave it.

Simple symbols were carved into the wooden board.

 

 

The house-shaped mark was 〈Our Home〉.

The wavy lines above it meant the valley.

The sprout beside it represented the plain.

And the slanted lines on the plain were…

“Is this the boundary marker?”

“Yeah. When I went there, it was blocked by a semi-transparent barrier from that point on.”

Not long ago, a semi-transparent barrier had appeared at the ant nest as well.

The Antmen said they could no longer go back and forth to the land they used to travel through because of that barrier.

And now, at the far end of the wide plain—the boundary of the safe zone—the same kind of barrier existed.

‘As I thought, the safe zone is definitely connected to a specific dungeon.’

Jiwoo examined the wooden board seriously.

“But listen, noona. Beyond here, there’s a huge forest. Just at a glance, it looked like thousands of pyeong.”

“How would you know that?”

“…I stepped past the boundary for a bit while bringing the birds back. J-just for a moment, really.”

“You said the boundary was blocked.”

“I have a portal, remember— agh! Noona, that really hurts!”

After earning another smack on the back, Heeseong pointed at the symbol on the slanted lines. Around it, tree drawings were densely packed.

“You said it yourself. The system said we need more guests like the Antmen. So if we get more guests later, doesn’t that mean the area might expand all the way to that forest?”

It made sense.

They didn’t know how big the new guests would be, but it would be troublesome if their area overlapped with the Antmen’s territory.

Heeseong nudged Jiwoo cautiously.

“You never know—maybe these guys could be those guests! So noona, let’s try raising these birds.”

But Jiwoo answered without even a moment of hesitation.

“No.”

“Huh?”

“No, I said no.”

“Why? You like animals too, noona.”

Heeseong’s eyes were full of pure confusion.

The siblings, Jiwoo and Heeseong, had loved animals since they were young.

Back when their parents were still alive, they often went to the zoo.

They’d even written ‘zookeeper’ as their dream job at school.

“Why exactly can’t we?”

“Heeseong, how are we supposed to raise animals with our situation? When I go to work, who’s going to take care of them?”

“I will!”

“Have you ever raised birds before? No.”

“Well, I could look it up online—”

“What would you even search? ‘What do animal-type monsters eat?’ Are you going to advertise, ‘I raise monsters’? And what if their staple food is human flesh?”

Of course, that was unlikely—but Jiwoo exaggerated on purpose.

The scare tactic worked. Heeseong flinched.

“…But then, what about dungeon sickness?”