Chapter 37
#37. Gate (2)
Choi Hye-na's childhood could not even be called happy as a matter of lip service.
Even though she was born the eldest daughter of the Seongbuk Choi clan, a prestigious family of mages, she was forced to lose her mother at the tender age of two.
Choi Tae-hyeon, Choi Hye-na's father, repeatedly wailed and fainted before his wife's corpse.
Choi Hye-na's mother, Choi Yeon-ju, had always been sickly.
She suffered from one minor illness after another, and even the doctors said she wouldn't live long.
Nevertheless, driven by the single-minded determination to bear the child of the man she loved, Choi Yeon-ju became pregnant with Hye-na despite everyone's opposition.
And when she safely gave birth to Hye-na ten months later, they were both happier than if they had gained the whole world.
But perhaps Heaven had not intended to allow them that happiness.
Immediately after giving birth, Choi Yeon-ju's condition worsened beyond control.
No matter how much money they spent on elixirs or how many outstanding priests they hired, her illness continued its relentless descent toward the worst possible outcome.
Before long, Choi Tae-hyeon lost his wife, and Choi Hye-na lost her mother.
After burying his wife in the cold earth, Choi Tae-hyeon seemed to give up on everything a parent should do and began wandering outside the house, leaving young Hye-na behind.
Hye-na had no way of knowing what he did while he was away.
Even on the rare occasions when he returned home, he never once gave his daughter a glance.
Starved for parental love, Hye-na could do nothing but despair at the cold attitude of her only remaining parent.
The small wound inflicted then only grew larger with each passing day.
It was only natural that Hye-na, abandoned by her parents, was raised by her grandparents and the servants of the clan.
Apart from when she was very young, Hye-na had never received affectionate words or touches from her parents, and yet she still loved her father.
Her grandfather and grandmother told her that her father was acting that way because his heart was hurting.
So she firmly believed that if she waited patiently, then someday, once his wounds had healed, her father would embrace her warmly with a bright smile.
Yet not a single smiling expression remained among the memories of Choi Tae-hyeon in Hye-na's mind.
Perhaps there had been one when she was a newborn, but all that remained now were tragic expressions of weeping, despair, and rage.
Time passed without Choi Tae-hyeon ever returning, and before she knew it, Hye-na had turned eight.
Then summer came.
That summer was unusually hot and gloomy.
Because one serious loss of life followed another, the news was always filled with grim reports, and the streets were perpetually shrouded in a melancholic atmosphere.
It was a summer when the undertakers, whose work was pouring in, were the only ones who could smile.
One night, torrential monsoon rain poured down without stopping, as if a hole had been torn in the sky.
The sound of the rain drowned out the cries of both cicadas and crickets. No, perhaps they were crying, but their voices were buried beneath the rain.
Near dawn, Hye-na woke up needing to use the bathroom and was walking down an empty hallway.
Still half-asleep, Hye-na wrinkled her nose at a strange stench unlike anything she had smelled before.
Then something wet touched her feet.
Rumble-
At that very moment, lightning struck and illuminated the dark hallway for an instant.
And Choi Hye-na saw a sight she could not believe.
-Kyaaak!!
She saw the bodies of the servants who had always been kind to her lying horribly murdered in the hallway, and her ‘father’ looking down at her from atop those corpses.
-Our Hye-na...
As a blood-smeared face and a hand filthy with flesh she did not want to identify reached toward her, Hye-na instinctively backed away.
-D-don't come!!
-My daughter, Daddy came to get you.
Hye-na trembled at the madness in his eyes, unable to tell what thoughts or emotions were mixed together in them.
He was not the father she had spent all that time yearning for.
Naturally, there was no way for a young Hye-na, trembling with terror, to escape from Choi Tae-hyeon.
It was a desperate moment. If he took just one more step, Hye-na would be helplessly caught by those grotesque hands.
-Hye-na!
Her grandmother, Choi Yeong-ok, appeared wreathed in crimson flames.
-You bastard! How dare you set foot in this place with those filthy feet!
Hye-na was bewildered by the anger beyond Choi Yeong-ok's distorted expression, an expression she had never once seen before.
At the same time, she felt relieved.
As far as she knew, her grandmother was truly strong.
-Tsk, even an old fox has to interfere.
Choi Yeong-ok had been a fifth-circle mage at the time, and with her arrival and the sound of people running toward them in the distance, Choi Tae-hyeon had no choice but to leave.
-Hye-na, someday this father will come find you again.
After leaving behind those words that would become a curse for Hye-na, Choi Tae-hyeon disappeared.
The incident ended with two unfortunate servants as its only victims, but Hye-na could never forget what happened that day.
The sight of the servants lying there covered in blood.
The sight of her father who had killed them.
The incomprehensible look in her father's eyes as he stared at her.
Even now, nearly thirteen years later, she still could not forget the memory of that day.
-...Dad.
Still far too young, Hye-na hugged the small teddy bear her mother had left behind as her final gift and wept.
Only a voice that could never reach him echoed hollowly.
“Sorry, but I'm not your dad.”
“...Huh?”
Awakened by a voice she should never have heard, Hye-na opened her eyes and found herself making eye contact with Kang Hyeon-woo, whose face was close enough for their lips to touch at any moment.
And so three seconds of silence passed.
“Kyaaah!!!”
Hye-na's scream rang out inside the cramped tent.
***
Amid the blaring sirens of police cars and the attention of the crowd gathering with excited murmurs,
a man standing inside the area surrounded by police tape tossed the half-smoked cigarette onto the ground.
“This is driving me crazy.”
Around 7:49 p.m., an isolated Gate had appeared, and after reviewing the CCTV footage, they had confirmed that two civilians had been swallowed up.
No, they were not ordinary civilians.
Both were mages registered with the Mage Tower, and one of them was even Choi Hye-na, the precious granddaughter of the Seongbuk Choi clan.
As a result, the police higher-ups were now in an uproar because Choi Yeong-ok, a sixth-circle mage from the Mage Tower, had appeared in the command room.
Yes, that Choi Yeong-ok—the one known as the mad fire mage.
If her granddaughter failed to come out safely, no one could predict what kind of havoc she would wreak.
Thanks to the higher-ups hounding them to solve the matter somehow, the investigator assigned to the case had become the shrimp whose back would break in a fight between whales.
If Choi Hye-na failed to come out of the Gate safely, he would probably be the first one to lose his job.
Even though Inspector Ko Min-seok had already smoked an entire pack, he still had to rack his brain over the problem.
“You've been working hard.”
Just then, appearing at the scene like salvation, was a man who seemed to belong to the World Hunter Association.
“Nice to meet you. I'm Yoo Seong-bin, head of Team 1 in charge of special Gates.”
“Ah, you've arrived.”
“Yes, traffic was terrible.”
Seeing Inspector Ko Min-seok being excessively deferential, Yoo Seong-bin had to suppress a snort of laughter.
Well, it wasn't hard to understand.
It was obvious that this man would be the one to take the fall for the incident.
“Um... Team Leader Yoo Seong-bin?”
“Yes? What is it?”
“What are you planning to do now?”
Inspector Ko Min-seok was desperate.
He had three children to support, and his wife could eat three packs of Neoguri in one sitting.
If he lost his job at a time like this, it was obvious that his family's future would be bleak.
“Well... we have to wait.”
“...What?”
“There's no way around it. We can't go in and rescue them until seven days have passed. Until then, this is the best we can do.”
If a single team showing up could solve the problem, isolated Gates would never have been called special Gates in the first place.
It had become a matter of praying for the best.
All they could do was pray that the two mages inside would survive for a week.
“Team Leader, the test results are in.”
“Really? What do they say?”
The employee who had been tasked with investigating the Gate's rank had a grim expression.
“...It's B-rank.”
***
Silence hung in the narrow cave between Kang Hyeon-woo and Choi Hye-na.
“...This is so unfair.”
Kang Hyeon-woo sat in front of the campfire, holding his slightly reddened cheek, while Choi Hye-na kept glancing at him uneasily.
“Th-then who told you to... hold me while I was naked...”
Hye-na had no choice but to cut herself off.
No matter how humiliating it had been, she could not keep criticizing him for something he had done to save her life when her conscience still had one sharp corner left.
Besides, once she remembered Kang Hyeon-woo's back as he had struggled through the snow while carrying her, her guilt over slapping him the instant she woke up began rising endlessly, like a stock with wings.
“Haa... I saved your life, and then you suddenly treated me like a sex offender and slapped me...”
“...”
“Tsk, I suppose I can't expect an apology from a commoner like you. You should be grateful you weren't beaten a few more times, you beggar.”
His tone was infuriating, but every single word was true, so she could not refute him.
Though the process had been indecent and humiliating, she had to admit that her attitude toward the person who had ultimately saved her life had been wrong.
Apologizing was obviously the right thing to do here.
“I-I'm...!!”
But Choi Hye-na had never apologized to anyone before.
Who would dare demand an apology from the sole heir of the Seongbuk Choi clan?
As a result, that simple sentence refused to come out, as if it were stuck in her throat.
However, she had been taught that repaying a kindness received as a member of the Seongbuk Choi clan was simply her duty as a human being, so she steeled herself again and resolved to offer a proper apology.
No, she only resolved to do so.
“Y-you crazy perverted bastard!! Even so, how could you strip a woman and hold her?!!”
“Uh, your boobs were amazing.”
“Kyaaahhhhhh!!!!”
Hye-na let out a shrill scream and charged at Kang Hyeon-woo, but there was no way she could beat him in a physical fight.
Instead, Hye-na was caught and ended up trapped in Kang Hyeon-woo's arms.
“A-again...!! You crazy perverted bastard!! Let go of me?!!”
Kang Hyeon-woo was not the sort of person to forgive such a petty rebellion.
After restraining her rebellion by pulling Hye-na into his arms, Kang Hyeon-woo wore an unconcerned expression.
“Don't act up and collapse again. If you do, I'll just throw you outside.”
“...J-just let go already.”
“What, are you afraid I'll touch your boobs again?”
“...Again?”
At that moment, Kang Hyeon-woo realized his mistake.
“You... how many times did you... while I was asleep...!!”
Kang Hyeon-woo quietly looked away and released Hye-na from his arms.
Seeing that, Hye-na wanted nothing more than to rip out every strand of that damned pervert's hair right then and there, but she endured it with superhuman patience.
It was the final respect she could show the person who had saved her life.
“...By the way, where did this tent and blanket come from?”
“A secret.”
He had no intention of telling Hye-na about the app when she was not even a matching partner.
Hye-na did not seem interested in asking further questions either, as she abruptly turned her head away.
It was unexpected.
Mages were all curiosity-crazed lunatics, so given Hye-na's personality, he had expected her to interrogate him persistently until the very end.
It was surprising that she was showing even the minimum amount of courtesy at a time like this. It wasn't as though they were still on formal terms.
‘By the way, she was talking strangely in her sleep earlier.’
The sight of Hye-na repeatedly calling for her father while shedding tears had been shocking.
He had thought she was a woman with as much mettle as Cheon Yeo-hwa.
Still, he could understand it.
Seeing Hye-na's face covered in cold sweat, as though she had been suffering through a terrible nightmare rather than an ordinary dream, had even given him a strange sense of kinship.
When I was young, there were times when my parents appeared in my dreams, shouting, and I would wake up.
Whenever that happened, the nun would comfort me and reassure me at my side throughout the night, allowing me to fall asleep peacefully.
I remembered how grateful I had been back then.
Come to think of it, I had intended to visit the nun when I returned to Earth, but it seemed I had forgotten all about it without realizing it.
I vowed to visit her as soon as I escaped from here.
‘Shall we eat soon.’
I wasn't sure exactly, but judging by how it felt, it should be morning outside.
While I had been holding Hye-na, I had also managed to sleep for a little while, and I had run like crazy through the snow yesterday, so I was fairly hungry.
I calculated how many more days we could last on the food remaining in my inventory.
Hmm, even if five more people joined us, it should easily last a week.
“You're going to eat, right?”
“I'm not eating!”
What a temper.
Was she acting like this because I had said I touched her breasts earlier?
Well, I couldn't force someone to eat when she said she wouldn't, so I decided to prepare only enough for myself for now.
This morning's meal was seafood ramen.
I put a small crab that had been marked down for clearance at the supermarket into boiling water along with the ramen seasoning and noodles.
Even with the lid closed, it took only a moment for the appetite-stimulating smell of ramen to fill the cave.
Aside from that, I had a lot to consider about what we should do next.
‘...First, I need to know what kind of monsters inhabit this Gate.’
Ideally, I wanted to hold out inside the cave for a week and then escape, but there was no way things would proceed that conveniently.
Even if the Gate boss stayed put to protect the core, the moment a mid-boss-class monster appeared, this place would be no different from a tiny prison with nowhere to retreat.
It was only right to scout the surrounding area, at the very least.
If I knew the Gate's rank, I wouldn't have to worry this much.
Grrr-
“Hmm?”
Just as my mind was filling with complicated thoughts, a familiar sound came from somewhere, and my gaze turned toward Choi Hye-na, who was sitting with her back to me.
I couldn't see her face, but her earlobes, as bright red as her hair, seemed to reveal her expression for her.
“Are you hungry?”
“...What are you talking about?”
“Quit being stubborn and come eat.”
If she collapsed from hunger later, I would have to carry her again.
Because then I might genuinely feel like giving her a Goryeo-style burial.
“So come eat.”
“...”
As Hye-na crawled over and sat down in front of the pot, her face was, predictably, so red that it looked ready to burst.
“...But where are the chopsticks?”
“Before that, I think we need to sort out what we're going to call each other.”
“What...?”
Looking at Hye-na, I suddenly remembered what had happened at the blind date.
How dare she ruin my precious first experience?
“Call me honey.”