Dungeon Bakery Chapter 51

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Baek Seol opened the door with an apologetic expression. Seo Doha, who had been standing outside the bakery, slowly shook his head. The @-shaped glasses on his face glinted in the light.

“It’s all right. You must have had something to take care of.”

Baek Seol stepped aside to invite him in, and Seo Doha strode into the bakery.

“Ah, um. Y-yes. I had something to take care of, so I opened a little late. I meant to let you know in advance, but…… I didn’t realize it would take this long.”

She glanced at the clock. The small hand was pointing to three in the afternoon.

Ugh. She had told him in advance that she would be opening late, but opening at three in the afternoon was practically the same as saying she wasn’t going to run the shop at all.

Even though it was her own excuse, Baek Seol thought it was pretty terrible. She gave an awkward smile. Fortunately, Seo Doha seemed to believe her.

For a very brief moment, at least.

“Ah…… I see.”

His expression changed when he entered the bakery and stopped roughly in the middle of the room.

“May I ask what you had to take care of?”

“Pardon?”

“If you don’t mind me asking.”

Uh, wh-what was going on with him all of a sudden?

Baek Seol stared at Seo Doha’s @-shaped glasses as he turned around and looked down at her, feeling flustered.

“Wh-why?”

Without meaning to, she stammered a little. Her cheeks felt hot.

Damn it. I actually stammered like an idiot.

Whether she stammered or not, Seo Doha simply adjusted his @-shaped glasses slightly and gazed at her.

She couldn’t see his eyes clearly because of the glasses, but somehow, she could still feel their piercing gaze.

“Did you get hurt somewhere?”

“……?”

“I can smell blood……”

“Ah.”

The smell of blood.

Baek Seol remembered the Birdman vomiting up a mouthful of blood when she brought her into the bakery. It had happened right around where Seo Doha was standing.

The number-one Hunter’s sense of smell is…… seriously like a dog’s.

Baek Seol smiled brightly and spoke as though nothing had happened.

“Ah. I was handling a knife in the kitchen earlier, and I dropped it…… It grazed my thigh. I bled a little. That’s partly why opening the shop was delayed. Anyway, you have an amazing sense of smell! You can actually smell that?”

“Was it a deep cut?”

If she said she had cut herself somewhere visible, she had a feeling he would ask to see it. It was a good thing she had deliberately claimed it was her thigh, somewhere difficult to show him.

Seo Doha, who was asking whether the cut was deep, looked ready to lift her skirt at any moment.

He took a step closer, so Baek Seol backed away by the same distance and smiled awkwardly.

“It’s fine. It wasn’t a deep cut.”

“Still, the smell of blood is quite strong. This is the kind of smell you’d get from a deep cut. Otherwise, it would have to be from someone vomiting up a mouthful of blood……”

“No, I told you, that’s not it.”

He really does have a dog’s nose.

He even guessed that someone had vomited blood?

Baek Seol waved her hands quickly as if to reassure him, then hurried over to throw the windows and door wide open.

“It probably smells stronger because I haven’t aired the place out. I’m sorry. I’ll ventilate it right away.”

“……”

Seo Doha watched Baek Seol busily moving about. Then, as though he had accepted her explanation, he began helping her open the windows.

He was walking toward the window by the table when he suddenly stopped.

That was where the Birdman had been lying just moments ago.

Why? What is it now?!

Baek Seol secretly watched him as she opened the windows, feeling as though her insides were burning with anxiety.

Seo Doha probably knew that the Birdman had escaped from Dokjin Corporation’s research lab, too, didn’t he?

There was no way he hadn’t heard about it, with the news going on and on about it. But if he found out there was a Birdman here……

Seo Doha is a Hunter. He’ll try to eliminate her immediately.

Baek Seol had no way of stopping him, so she absolutely could not let him find out.

Seo Doha, who had been standing motionless in front of the table, slowly opened the window and spoke.

“Come to think of it, I heard you kept a bird. I didn’t see it today.”

He was holding a feather in his hand. Baek Seol nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw it, but after realizing it was one of Lucy’s feathers, she let out a long sigh of relief inwardly.

I thought it was a Birdman’s feather.

There had indeed been a few feathers still attached to the Birdman’s back.

At this rate, Baek Seol’s heart wasn’t going to survive if she stayed here with Seo Doha much longer. She needed to get him into the kitchen as soon as possible.

“Ah. I guess Grandpa Oh Juk-heon told you. Yes, I do keep a bird, but…… he’s sleeping upstairs on the second floor right now. I don’t usually bring him out into the bakery.”

“That’s a shame. I was curious.”

“If I get the chance, I’ll show him to you next time.”

Lucy probably wouldn’t want that, though.

Now that they had more or less finished greeting each other, she needed to get out of here.

Baek Seol smiled and pointed toward the kitchen with her index finger.

“Um, then, could you help me out now?”

Seo Doha silently followed her.

He was still holding Lucy’s feather, but…… well, that should be fine.

Standing in front of the Processing Workbench, Seo Doha gripped the lever with practiced ease and pulled it down. Every time he lowered it, Baek Seol hurriedly selected ingredients through the system window and discreetly placed them on the machine.

She set the processed ingredients on the floor as they came out.

“……I thought so before, too, but this really is a well-made machine.”

Seo Doha remarked casually. His free hand brushed against his @-shaped glasses before falling back to his side.

“Ahaha. Y-yes. I somehow ended up getting a good machine.”

Although Seo Doha had become a part-time worker here, he didn’t actually spend much time at the bakery. An hour at most, perhaps.

He would run the Processing Workbench a few times, sit at the table for a little while to eat a piece of bread, and then leave.

And the reason things had turned out that way was Baek Seol’s persistent efforts.

Every time he came, he tried to help with everything, starting with cleaning. But today, for some reason, he seemed ready to leave even though Baek Seol hadn’t stopped him.

“It’s a shame, but I have something to take care of afterward. I can only help you with this today.”

“Ah. Really? I’ve told you this before, but this is the only thing I want to ask you to do, junior. So don’t worry about anything else.”

Seo Doha gave a faint, bitter smile, bowed his head in farewell, and left the bakery.

Jingle. The bakery door opened and closed.

Baek Seol quickly parted the curtain a little to make sure Seo Doha was walking away. Then she turned the sign to ‘closed’ and firmly shut all the windows she had opened for ventilation.

“Th-that should be okay, right?”

She hadn’t let it show, but Baek Seol was extremely tense.

She had left the Birdman inside the Dungeon of Beginnings.

Even though Lucy, Gu-chil, and the others were with her…… she couldn’t help worrying that something might have happened in there.

Baek Seol hurriedly opened the brown door and entered the dungeon.

 

***

 

After leaving the bakery, Seo Doha strode away until he was some distance from it, then suddenly stopped.

He took something out of his pocket.

“……What happened here?”

In his hand was a feather stained with blood.

It looked different from the feather he had shown Baek Seol in the bakery a moment ago—the one that belonged to Lucy.

As Seo Doha gazed silently at the feather, a voice rang out inside his head.

—Something happened.

“Yeah. And this feather seems to be……”

—A Birdman’s feather. So there’s still one who hasn’t been captured by humans.

Seo Doha fell silent, then slowly removed his @-shaped glasses.

As his cool gaze swept over the surroundings, his figure gradually faded from view.

When he reappeared, he was standing where the Birdman had attacked Baek Seol earlier.

He bent down in the empty lot said to be the location of the Dungeon of Beginnings and ran his fingers through the soil.

Clear traces of blood remained on the ground.

“……Hoofprints.”

There were also hoofprints that had suddenly appeared nearby.

Seo Doha gazed at the marks for a moment before straightening up.

There was no doubt that a fight had taken place here.

“Fortunately, she doesn’t seem to be hurt.”

The story about cutting her thigh was probably a lie. It seemed that someone else, not her, had been bleeding.

“Did she bring an injured Birdman into the bakery? And where did she take it afterward……?”

Seo Doha murmured to himself.

“The second floor?”

It seemed she used the second floor as her home. Perhaps she had hurriedly taken the Birdman upstairs when he showed up.

Seo Doha narrowed his eyes as he looked at the bakery.

Not long after he left, all the windows had been shut.

Why did it feel as though they were like the walls Baek Seol had put up between them?

“……I have no intention of forcibly digging up something you want to keep hidden.”

Seo Doha murmured.

“But this place might get noisy before long.”

He lightly pointed his index finger at the soil, where the traces of the fight remained unmistakable.

Then something astonishing began to happen.

Whoooosh.

The bloodstains and hoofprints on the ground vanished without a trace.

It was as though time had been turned back.

“I’ll have to increase my part-time hours.”

Seo Doha murmured as he put his @-shaped glasses back on.

 

***

 

“Lucy! Are you okay?”

After entering the dungeon, Baek Seol hurriedly looked around.

She had specifically told them to stay near the entrance. Where had they gone?

Her eyes darted around as she searched for Lucy and the Birdman, then stopped at one spot.

Near the trunk of the enormous Yggdrasil.

“Lucy……!”

Baek Seol ran over, then looked at the scene before her in bewilderment.

Fortunately, the Birdman seemed to have made it into the dungeon without any further trouble.

Pal, whom she had summoned, was grazing peacefully some distance away, while Gu-chil bounced around near the Birdman, his pink body bobbing up and down.

However, the Birdman herself was in a terrible state.

“……!!”

She was hugging the trunk of the Yggdrasil with both arms, sobbing uncontrollably.

Her lips kept opening and closing, as though she were saying something.

But Baek Seol couldn’t hear a thing.

“What…… what is this?”

“‘I’ve finally come back. I’m home. Mother Yggdrasil.’”

When Baek Seol turned her head in confusion, she saw Lucy gazing quietly at the Birdman.

“Huh?”

“That’s what she’s saying, ppi. That Birdman, ppi.”