S-Rank Healer Gets Kidnapped First Chapter 29

The item inside seemed small compared to the size of the shopping bag, because all I could see from where I stood was empty space.

‘What on earth is it…?’

Unable to bring myself to approach him right away, we remained locked in this strange standoff.

Although I often spent time with Childeuk, Na Ye-ri, and Han Seong-woo, I had never asked any of them for anything. That made it even harder to accept some mysterious item from him.

“Ha… This isn’t how I meant to give it to you.”

Perhaps unused to this kind of atmosphere, Cha Seohae covered his eyes with one hand.

But he didn’t seem inclined to drag things out. Despite looking awkward, he held the shopping bag out right in front of me.

“Here.”

His clumsy gesture made me instinctively take the shopping bag.

“…Thank you.”

Whatever it was.

Seeing how unusually embarrassed he looked made me curious about what exactly he was trying to give me.

If it were something meant to encourage me to focus on my work, there was no reason for Cha Seohae to be this flustered.

So I was racking my brain, wondering if there was something special about today, when—

“You don’t have to thank me. I’m giving it to you because I’m sorry.”

“Huh?”

For a moment, I had been trying to figure it out, but his next words scattered my train of thought.

‘Sorry?’

I thought back over everything that had happened between Cha Seohae and me recently.

All I could remember was training. Training where I got cut here and there, scraped up, and faced bullets flying straight at me. Training, and more training.

“…Are you finally admitting that your training methods are terrifying?”

“What are you talking about? There’s nothing wrong with the training.”

Just a moment ago, he had seemed unusually conscious of my reaction, but then he gave me the same shameless answer as always, leaving me speechless.

“Then what are you sorry for?”

“Open it.”

Until I received it, I had only felt uneasy about the package. But now that it was in my hands, I was curious.

I carefully unwrapped it.

Inside the box was—

“It’s a doll. …A doll?”

A cute beige teddy bear.

As I repeated the word doll in my mind, I suddenly remembered something.

“You can’t let yourself be swayed every time that happens. You might as well suffer beforehand. You can tell me about it. If you don’t trust me, I’ll even buy you a doll. Tell the doll.”

Na Ye-ri must have told him about what happened yesterday.

Once I put those pieces together, I could roughly guess what had happened.

Worried about me, who was still not safe from the Association’s threats, it seemed Cha Seohae had tried to help me forgive him for what he had done.

As I silently fiddled with the teddy bear, Cha Seohae spoke.

“In this line of work, people tend to act first and think about the consequences later, so… Ah, no. That’s not what I meant.”

Perhaps he felt he was rambling, because Cha Seohae fell silent again and carefully chose his words.

A few minutes passed.

“I’m sorry.”

What came from between Cha Seohae’s lips was a straightforward apology, accompanied by a tense breath.

It was only a simple sentence, but perhaps because he offered it without any embellishment or excuses, it seemed to show his sincerity even more clearly.

I had been too busy being thrown into training day after day to properly adjust to Baekyang, so even I had almost completely forgotten about what happened that day. I never expected him to apologize.

And yet, hearing his apology made something inside me loosen.

The hand holding the teddy bear tingled.

“Saying I was going to send you back once things with the Association were settled peacefully, or that I’d never let you get caught up in anything dangerous… None of that justifies what I did. Either way, you must have been scared.”

He looked extremely nervous, as if he wasn’t used to apologizing.

Even after he finished speaking, he couldn’t keep still. He touched his forehead, ran a hand through his hair, and fidgeted constantly. Anyone could see how uncomfortable he was with the awkwardness.

Then, at last, he managed to meet my eyes.

“I mean it. I’m sorry.”

Unlike the man who had been fidgeting so much, his eyes—blue as a winter sky—were unwavering.

Perhaps because he looked so sincere and awkward, I suddenly felt like playing a joke that had nothing to do with the situation.

“What if I can’t forgive you?”

“Huh?”

“Then what are you going to do?”

I asked while slowly stroking the teddy bear.

“Ah…”

He must have been thinking only about the recent days we had gotten along. Otherwise, there was no way he would give a hollow laugh just because I refused to forgive him.

“Hm?”

When I pressed him for an answer, his eyes trembled slightly.

But after closing his eyes deeply once and opening them again, the hesitation disappeared.

He leaned his lower body against the large desk.

“Wow. Yeah. What should I do?”

His surprise didn’t last long.

Perhaps he had only humored my joke for a moment. Cha Seohae quickly regained his composure.

“This is why people who catch on quickly are troublesome.”

“Didn’t I stay surprised for quite a while?”

I wanted to tell him it had been far too short, but that would have sounded childish.

When I said nothing, Cha Seohae lightly wet his lips before asking,

“…Or do you really not forgive me?”

At his cautious question, my hand stopped stroking the teddy bear.

Back then, coming to Baekyang had been the best choice I could have made.

Even now, thinking about what my life would have been like if I had remained at the Association was horrifying. In a way, Cha Seohae had given me a turning point.

And that wasn’t all.

Excited by the feeling that I finally had a safe shelter, I had even boldly hinted to the Association President that I had become an S-rank.

Yet I was planning to use these people for my own purposes anyway. So the whole matter of apologies and forgiveness felt awkward to me.

As I thought about it, I suddenly realized that I had never received a proper apology since becoming a Hunter.

When I was at the Association, even when something hurt me deeply, I had to pretend it didn’t bother me. People around me acted as though such things were only natural, and I was often the one blamed for them.

Perhaps that was why someone apologizing to me now felt so unfamiliar.

Maybe my feelings showed on my face, because Cha Seohae’s expression softened considerably.

“But for someone who wanted a doll so badly, your reaction is pretty underwhelming.”

“I wanted a doll? Did Na Ye-ri say that?”

“Ah, yeah.”

Perhaps he had assumed I didn’t know Na Ye-ri had helped him, so Cha Seohae answered without thinking.

I muttered incredulously,

“How did she tell you? She was the one who said she’d buy me a doll.”

“Did she want one herself?”

“No. Ye-ri didn’t want one. I think she just wanted to make it obvious that she was concerned about me.”

It was easy enough to figure out Na Ye-ri’s intentions.

“But she did give me some advice. I also chose this because I thought you might need something like this.”

“Why would I need it?”

“Until you completely leave the Association, you won’t be able to move around freely.”

“To use it as someone to talk to?”

“Do you think you could?”

“Do you think I could?”

I didn’t know what was so amusing about their meaningless exchange, but Cha Seohae let out a short laugh.

When he shook his head, his bangs swayed softly.

Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him, illuminating his figure. Perhaps that was why his smile seemed almost like something out of a painting.

I slowly took in his striking features, more than enough to steal anyone’s breath away, before suddenly coming to my senses and shaking my head.

“By the way, what did you mean when you said you were going to completely cut ties with the Association?”

I had been momentarily distracted, but this seemed like a natural enough change of subject.

Fortunately, I hadn’t blurted out anything strange.

Cha Seohae tilted his head slightly at my question.

“Actually, since you neither resigned from the Association nor were you kicked out, we haven’t been able to put you on the guild roster yet.”

“Really?”

“You might say you don’t care as long as we can piss off the Association, but they could bring up the law. Considering how many ugly incidents there have been involving healers, the laws concerning them are probably going to be extremely strict.”

“Ah!”

I swallowed a gasp at the practical problem I hadn’t considered.

Cha Seohae was right.

There had been quite a few incidents where tanks and damage dealers caused trouble trying to claim a healer regardless of the healer’s wishes.

That was why the legal restrictions surrounding disputes between groups over Hunters—especially healers—were so strong and strict.

In my case, they probably hadn’t filed a lawsuit immediately because they were worried that putting me in court would not only expose the Association’s actions but might also cause me to side with Baekyang.

“If we follow the law right away, it’ll take a long time before you can officially leave. And there’s no way the Association will sit quietly during that time. I can’t exactly say the outcome would be good.”

Instead of giving me vague reassurance that everything would work out, he first pointed out the cold reality of the situation. That was very much like Cha Seohae.

Whatever happened, it would be best to avoid doing anything that could give the Association an excuse to act.

“They might have excluded this option from their methods of bringing you back because it’s too obvious.”

…If he put it that way, didn’t that make me someone who had provoked them without even thinking of such an obvious fact?

Feeling strangely guilty, I twisted his words.

Perhaps because I was annoyed, I unconsciously narrowed my eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that. If you have a problem, say it.”

“I don’t have a problem. I was just thinking that my future master is quite knowledgeable.”

“Don’t be sarcastic.”

Cha Seohae merely raised one corner of his mouth crookedly, as though the remark hadn’t affected him at all.

“So if I want to become an official member of the guild, I have to leave the Association first?”

“Exactly.”

After hearing him go on and on about being official, I realized I wasn’t even an official guild member yet.

‘Na Ye-ri and Han Seong-woo must have known about this. Why didn’t they tell me?’

I knew they weren’t obligated to, but embarrassed by the fact that I had only realized it now, I twisted the teddy bear’s nose.

“It’s going to hurt.”

What a pointless joke.

I let Cha Seohae’s out-of-place joke go in one ear and out the other as I sank into thought.

‘Is there some excuse I can use to get out of the Association?’

I was slowly recalling the contract I had signed when I joined the Association when—

“Ah!”

It had been a long time, so I couldn’t remember every clause. But I could still clearly recall the clauses I had found strange when I signed the contract.

“Did you think of something?”

Cha Seohae asked in a hopeful tone.

“There’s a clause the Association put in my contract that might be useful.”

In other words, you could say it was the Association’s own karma coming back to bite them.

The Association rarely let Hunters go willingly. To them, Hunters were both power and influence. The only time they would let a Hunter go was when that Hunter failed to properly carry out a mission.

The Association liked to avoid trouble. That was why they showed no mercy toward Hunters who failed to complete their assigned duties properly.

Their method was simple.

The more important the mission, the higher the reward they offered to attract attention.

They advertised enormous bonuses for successful completion, making sure everyone would be tempted.

But if they failed—

‘They took away their position.’

To an outsider who didn’t know the circumstances, it would look as though the Hunter had left out of guilt after failing such an important mission.

Realistically, how many people would actually leave the Association after failing a single mission?

But the Association made it possible.

They would deliberately give the Hunter another chance to make up for the failure, using that opportunity to place even more pressure on them.

Even back-alley thugs probably had stronger bonds of loyalty than this. They really were good at managing their image.

Some of the people assigned to these missions were forcibly expelled, and in more severe cases, some even died.

The former happened when someone rebelled, saying they couldn’t do it and refusing to comply. The latter happened when someone learned important classified information.

The Association took meticulous measures to ensure no one would suspect that it had been involved in their deaths.

Most of those people were disposed of at the scene so that it looked as though they had died during combat.

The reason I knew all of this was surprisingly simple.

The Association entrusted the task of disposing of those people to Team 1, making sure their targets were too frightened to even think about rebelling.