S-Rank Healer Gets Kidnapped First Chapter 23

It was the seventh day of training.

As always, the brutal training continued. There was no mercy just because it was the final day.

Na Ye-ri unleashed a merciless barrage of attacks, as if she had forgotten that I was on her side.

BOOM!

“Cough! Cough!”

Once the thick cloud of dust cleared, Na Ye-ri spoke.

“Isn’t your barrier way too sturdy? It’s better than most tanks’. I’m going to break it today, no matter what!”

“What?!”

“Wahahaha!”

She gave me no time to be surprised before the next attack came flying at me.

Over the course of our training, I had come to realize something.

My training was merely a convenient excuse. In reality, Na Ye-ri was training herself.

Driven by a single obsession—to break through my shield—Na Ye-ri attacked relentlessly without giving me a moment to rest.

“How about this attack?!”

“Oh? You blocked that? Then how about this?!”

“Try this one too!”

The most difficult moments were when she attacked repeatedly without mercy, like a runaway colt that had slipped its reins.

“You said the goal was to make cracks appear in the shield.”

I faced Na Ye-ri’s incoming attack skill head-on.

I had seen the attack every day for an entire week, so it no longer frightened me.

But somehow, I had to make myself feel afraid when I saw it. Otherwise, the shield wouldn’t even get scratched.

I should’ve shown her the crack in my shield on the first day!

There was no point regretting it now.

Once you gained an understanding and moved on to the next stage, it was difficult to remember how you had handled the previous one.

My shield was the same.

Once I had completely mastered the mental training, it actually became more difficult to weaken my shield.

“I’m scared. So scared. That attack is really frightening me right now…”

I watched Na Ye-ri’s attack approach while repeatedly muttering to myself as if hypnotizing myself.

Then I suddenly realized that even the stance I had taken wasn’t one that someone who was afraid would naturally adopt.

Then maybe I should try dodging it poorly.

I thought about it for a while, but acted immediately.

I pretended to dodge with sluggish movements.

KRAAANG!

The attack passed just barely to my side.

Seeing it reminded me of the first day, when I had almost been pierced by one of her attacks, and my heart began pounding.

Crack. Crack.

“Finally!”

I signaled to Na Ye-ri that a crack had appeared in my shield.

“It worked?”

Na Ye-ri quickly approached and examined my shield from every angle.

She looks exhausted too. I really can’t understand why she gets this excited over a shield.

I reached out and straightened her disheveled hair.

“Only on the last day did I finally manage to crack it. Still, I feel relieved knowing I’ll be able to handle surprise attacks.”

“Forget surprise attacks. It feels like we’re going to be the ones collapsing first.”

“Yeon-hee, people only become stronger to survive when they feel like they’re about to die.”

Na Ye-ri immediately cut off my complaining.

So this is how the Baekyang Guild members have been training all this time?

Talking to her felt like talking to a wall.

Still, if I kept training like this, I felt like I would become stronger whether I wanted to or not.

I sat down on the floor and waited for her next instruction.

“Okay. Now turn off the Blessing.”

Although it had developed a few cracks, I canceled the still-functioning shield.

“Now cast it again.”

“Is this some kind of dog training?”

“Who makes a dog sit down for training? If we’re doing this, you need to stand up properly.”

That was such a Na Ye-ri thing to say.

When it came to training, she never went easy on anyone.

Around the second or third day, I had wondered if Na Ye-ri had some personal grudge against me, but by now I knew that this was simply her personality.

“This is the last one, so hurry up and let’s get this over with. I’m sick of this training room. I’m not coming back here for a while.”

I could wholeheartedly agree with that.

I had spent more than half of every day here for an entire week.

On top of that, we had used the room so brutally that it wouldn’t have been surprising if the walls—or even the ceiling—collapsed at any moment.

“Ugh. Look at all those bits of stone falling. Come on, staaart.”

“Okay.”

Unable to withstand her urging, I activated the Blessing again.

[Restoring the damaged ‘God’s Blessing’.]

[Time remaining until ‘God’s Blessing’ can be activated again: 2 seconds.]

A cooldown had been triggered.

When I was B-rank, my shield used to break easily under enemy attacks. It was practically like glass made of sugar.

Whenever that happened, I would repeatedly repair my cracked shield, to the point where I had grown sick of seeing that message.

Seeing it again after such a long time didn’t make it feel nostalgic in the slightest.

If anything, it only left me confused.

Perhaps because I had never seen it even once since becoming an S-rank healer, my brows naturally furrowed.

“I’m on cooldown.”

“Wahaha! What’s with that expression? You must’ve seen that all the time when you were B-rank.”

“…It’s not exactly a message I wanted to see.”

“So how many seconds?”

“Two seconds. It can activate again now.”

As soon as I finished speaking, a pristine shield appeared.

“Pretty fast.”

Back when I was B-rank, restoring my shield alone could take an entire day. Compared to that, two seconds could hardly even be called a cooldown.

Na Ye-ri carefully examined my shield before beginning to explain various things.

“It might only be two seconds because the damage is just a tiny crack. If it gets damaged more severely, the cooldown might become longer.”

“Okay.”

“You know how dangerous it is when you’re on cooldown, right? So even if you encounter a new kind of attack, don’t forget what you learned during this training.”

“Okay.”

“Keep practicing, too! A dealer’s attacks are stronger than a tank’s. Make sure it never breaks in one hit. If it shatters in a single blow, you’ll suffer internal injuries too.”

“…Internal injuries?”

“You haven’t experienced that yet? I guess you managed your shield pretty well even back when you were B-rank.”

Na Ye-ri continued, seemingly surprised.

“Sometimes, when the enemy’s attack power is overwhelmingly higher than the shield’s defensive power, the shield shatters completely. It happened to me once. I spent the entire day coughing up blood, having stomach pains, running a fever… It was a complete mess.”

“How did that happen…?”

Tank shields were specialized in protecting allies, so they had higher defensive stats than other shields.

And Na Ye-ri was a renowned tank. At present, she could probably be said to possess the shield with the highest defensive stats.

“Tanks draw a lot of aggro, and sometimes we have to take attacks from multiple enemies. So during training, Cha Seohae and Han Seong-woo attacked me at the same time… and that’s how it happened.”

I silently swallowed.

So there was a reason Na Ye-ri never held back during training.

Now I was going to end up in the same situation.

My suffering is only beginning.

All right. Since I’m doing this anyway, I might as well keep up as best I can. If I can manage this much, I won’t be a burden like I was before.

I silently reminded myself of my long-standing wish.

“Training’s over!”

Having succeeded in teaching me everything she knew within such a short period, Na Ye-ri looked remarkably relieved.

As she stretched both arms high above her head, she suddenly looked back at me.

“Your hell is starting now. You might even miss this past week of training with me.”

“Stop trying to scare me.”

When I glared at her, Na Ye-ri chuckled softly.

“I’m starting my own training now too. I wonder if I’ll be able to see you every day like this. I’ll sneak over whenever I have time.”

“You’ll just get caught by Cha Seohae if you sneak over.”

“That’s fine. He doesn’t say anything if it’s outside his jurisdiction.”

“Then whose eyes are you trying to avoid?”

“Han Seong-woo. Ugh. His class is way too good. I’ve known him for years, but even now, if he deliberately hides his presence, I still can’t find him.”

“So you two are constantly keeping an eye on each other.”

My words seemed to serve as an unexpected trigger.

Na Ye-ri began unloading all her pent-up complaints about Han Seong-woo, as though she had been waiting for an opportunity to get everything off her chest.

I had plenty of complaints about Han Seong-woo myself.

From the moment we first met, he had secretly followed me around all day under the pretense of being my bodyguard.

The two of us spent quite some time venting about everything we disliked about Han Seong-woo.

“Are you done?”

At that moment, the door opened and a familiar face appeared.

“They say if you talk about the tiger, it’ll appear. Well, look who’s here.”

Na Ye-ri greeted him with a brief wave.

Han Seong-woo waved back before slowly looking around the training room.

“Isn’t this the training room with the highest ceiling in the Baekyang Guild? You managed to turn it into this?”

“Of course.”

“You really tore it apart like you were hunting down a rat.”

He grimaced as though he couldn’t believe his eyes.

“You have to train with Yeon-hee yourself to understand. Do you know how sturdy her shield is? We only managed to crack it once after turning the place into this.”

“Really?”

Han Seong-woo looked at me in surprise.

When our eyes met, his gaze paused for a moment before curving mischievously.

“Hey, did you see that thing from a few days ago?”

He was asking Na Ye-ri, not me.

“Use an actual subject. What are you talking about?”

Na Ye-ri raised her voice, apparently annoyed by his roundabout way of speaking.

“The thing that said Cha Seohae got a girlfriend.”

“What?! Really?!”

It seemed completely unexpected. Na Ye-ri’s eyes widened in shock.

“…You heard that from some online community again, didn’t you?”

However, perhaps because they had discussed topics like this several times before, Na Ye-ri quickly regained her composure.

“You know I hate those people who hide behind anonymity and spread rumors, right? Don’t believe anything they say. I never once saw him contacting anyone while he was away in the provinces. I even introduced him to so many women because I thought maybe he’d become a decent human being if he actually dated someone. He’s got a decent face and figure, but he’s such a—”

“Calm down. Calm down.”

Han Seong-woo hurriedly cut her off, apparently anticipating what word would come next.

Only then did Na Ye-ri become aware of my presence and hurriedly shut her mouth.

Whenever she insults Cha Seohae and Han Seong-woo, she sounds less like a tank and more like a rapper.

I had understood everything, but I pretended not to know in order to change the subject.

“So who is she?”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t you come here to talk about that? Aren’t you curious who she is?”

I had even deliberately given him an opening to talk comfortably, yet somehow he wasn’t taking it.

I wondered if it might be someone I knew, but the only people I could think of were members of the Association’s first team and a few members of the Baekyang Guild.

“What? Why aren’t you saying anything? Come on, let’s find out who this mysterious girlfriend is.”

Han Seong-woo remained unusually silent for quite some time.

Na Ye-ri seemed to think it was finally a story worth hearing and became interested again.

Just as I began to get the feeling that she was about to lose her temper after waiting too long—

“Hostage.”

“Hm?”

“I’m asking who Cha Seohae’s girlfriend is, so why are you suddenly calling Yeon-hee? …Don’t tell me.”

The atmosphere suddenly became strange.

As Han Seong-woo and Na Ye-ri’s gazes turned toward me, I instinctively shook my head.

But despite my emphatic denial, Han Seong-woo pulled out his phone and showed us the keywords that were currently trending.

 

[Currently Trending Keywords]

#ChaSeohaeGirlfriend
#ㅊㅅㅎGirlfriend
#ChaSeohaeType
#IceCreamWoman

“Uh.”

After reading the final keyword, I could roughly guess what people had seen and misunderstood.

“This…”

“And this photo attached to the post is currently circulating online as evidence.”

I was about to hurriedly explain, but upon hearing that there was even photographic evidence, I became curious myself.

The three of us huddled around a single phone and read the post.

 

[Spotted: ㅊㅅㅎ at an ice cream shop near Baekyang (Photo included)]

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Saw him come to eat ice cream with a woman. Here’s the whole story in one go.
(Photo)

Upvotes: 130 / Downvotes: 4,444

 

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[Comments]

Anonymous 1: WTF, it’s real.

Anonymous 2: What did they eat? Please tell me.

└ OP: You can’t see what they ate from the angle.

└ Anonymous 6: I was sitting next to them. The woman was eating strawberry flavor. She seemed to like it. The entire tub was strawberry.

└ Anonymous 2: Ah—then that’s obviously not Cha Seohae’s choice.

Anonymous 3: Holy shit, if you go to Baekyang, can you actually get an ice cream date with Cha Seohae?

└ Anonymous 7: Try getting inside first, lol.

Anonymous 4: So has it been officially confirmed that they’re dating?

└ OP: It’s not officially confirmed…

Anonymous 5: You guys went crazy shipping Baekyang’s Na Ye-ri  and Han Seong-woo too, and it turned out to be nothing. Seriously, stop it already.

└ Anonymous 9: Nope, don’t wanna~

└ Anonymous 10: You’re the one who bumped your own post, lmao.

Anonymous 8: Dopamine ON.

---

 

“Ah! Why did you have to bring that story up again?!”

Apparently there had also been a rumor that Na Ye-ri and Han Seong-woo were dating.

When Na Ye-ri spotted the comment mentioning it, her expression darkened menacingly.

Han Seong-woo’s expression wasn’t much different from hers.

“Anyway, when was this taken? And since it was Cha Seohae, the photo must’ve spread really quickly. It must be a pain to get them all taken down.”

Na Ye-ri looked away from the phone and asked.

“It was after I finished training with you the other day…”

“Wow. But he didn’t buy me anything and only bought it for you?”

“Why would I buy you anything?”

“Why is she coming at me?”

Na Ye-ri glared at Han Seong-woo before calming herself down.

“Anyway, Yeon-hee, don’t go on there for a while. I got dragged into something like that once before, and I heard some truly awful things.”

I quietly listened to Na Ye-ri’s sincere advice.

But in the end, my curiosity got the better of me, and I cautiously asked,

“But are those two really not—”

“Yeon-hee, if you ask anything more, I think even I’m going to get angry.”

“……”

I chose to quietly shut my mouth.

It was probably best to keep it a secret that, before coming to Baekyang, I had briefly believed that rumor myself.