The Way of Life for a Terminal S-Class Hunter - C67
$67
Seo-heon wasn’t particularly keen on following Halo’s words, but he wasn’t in a position to be picky. After dismissing all the doctors, he left a message for Lee Hye, who was in the same hospital. Fortunately, Lee Hye hadn’t been discharged and wasn’t sleeping, so she quickly came to Woo-hyun’s room.
“Guild Leader?”
Lee Hye was shocked when she saw Seo-heon up close, who had looked fine from a distance. His disheveled hair and unfocused eyes were warning that something was dangerously wrong.
“Ah, you’ve come.”
The guild leader, known for being so sensitive that people said he knew who was coming before the guild elevator opened, was completely out of it.
“Could you check on Woo-hyun for a moment?”
His articulate speech pattern was normal. Nevertheless, Lee Hye somehow felt like Seo-heon was ‘pretending to be normal’. As a healer, she was sensitive to others’ conditions, and perhaps because of this, her instincts often sensed things before her reason did.
‘Ah, I see why he looks even stranger. He’s not smiling.’
Seo-heon usually smiled in most situations, and that smile would sometimes even kill others’ energy. But now, the smile had disappeared.
“Did something happen to Woo-hyun?”
To Lee Hye, Woo-hyun just seemed to be sleeping soundly. His wounds had almost healed, so it didn’t look like an emergency situation. Still, as if the guild leader’s anxiety had transferred to her, a floating worry arose.
“Is there anything you need to tell me?”
Lee Hye repeatedly opened and closed her mouth. Seo-heon waited without rushing her.
“Um… Guild Leader, Woo-hyun told me not to say anything, but I’m worried…”
“Yes. Please tell me.”
“Among Woo-hyun’s skills, there’s one that uses life force. When he mentioned it last time, he said he had 10 years left, so it shouldn’t be related to his current condition.”
Bang.
The table next to Seo-heon shattered. Lee Hye’s eyes widened as she looked back and forth between Seo-heon and the broken table. The guild leader, seemingly unaware of what he had done, asked mechanically.
“Could you explain that in more detail?”
‘The Guild Leader is subtly going crazy right now.’
Lee Hye quickly assessed the situation.
“Well, remember when I went on a combat mission with Woo-hyun a year or two ago? It was quite a big battle. You know my special skill, right? I can identify people with abnormal conditions. I discovered that Woo-hyun had an abnormal condition using that skill and asked him about it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
It was clear that if she said anything wrong, it wouldn’t end well. Lee Hye chose her words carefully to convince Seo-heon.
“Woo-hyun told me not to say anything under any circumstances. As you know, trust is necessary between a healer and a combat hunter, and to maintain that, it’s most important to keep secrets according to their wishes.”
Seo-heon knew this logically. However, there was an emotion he couldn’t control. It was an unfamiliar existence he had never felt before, except in matters related to Woo-hyun, making it even harder to rein in.
His vision turned red in an emotional whirlwind beyond imagination.
‘What I need to do now is not to get angry.’
Seo-heon forcibly awakened his reason.
‘Connecting their words, it means Woo-hyun now has less than 100 days of life force left due to a skill penalty-induced abnormal condition. So I need to judge what I can do here.’
His head throbbed.
‘So, for Woo-hyun… no, I need to slowly think about what methods there are to save Woo-hyun.’
His thoughts, coming sporadically, were full of holes as if eaten by insects.
‘Woo-hyun will die in 100 days.’
Cause and effect were cut off, and present and future became entangled. He couldn’t remember what Woo-hyun’s expression or voice was like yesterday. Information related to Woo-hyun became distant like memories from a far-off past.
“G-Guild Leader?”
“Ah, yes. I understand. Sorry for calling you. Can you check if he’s still in an abnormal condition?”
“Oh, of course.”
Lee Hye hurriedly used her skill. The red light indicating an abnormal condition was still present.
“It seems to be the same condition.”
“I see. That’s how it is.”
His words cut off again.
“Um, Guild Leader…?”
Lee Hye was starting to have an ominous feeling. But the atmosphere was not conducive to asking questions, so she just swallowed her queries back down.
“Alright. You can go now. Sorry for calling you.”
The guild leader, speaking mechanically, looked precarious.
“Yes, um… don’t overdo it.”
After Lee Hye left, Seo-heon was about to punch the wall but barely stopped himself. It was absolutely unacceptable to create more danger for the collapsed Woo-hyun by cracking the building when he couldn’t even control his strength now.
“Finally… Finally, you’re trying to die and leave me.”
There might have been several attempts, but none had been as close to death as this time. Seo-heon grasped his flickering vision.
‘That prophet earlier said “if left like this”. That means there’s a way to save him.’
It was a problem that couldn’t be solved by ordinary healers. And since it wasn’t a disease, it wasn’t a matter to discuss with doctors either.
‘It’s not related to a curse either.’
There were occasionally skills that came with penalties. These were often very high-level skills, and the only way to escape them was to not use them.
“There must be a way.”
Seo-heon gently stroked Woo-hyun’s face. Those words, tinged with bitterness, sounded like “there has to be”.
“Woo-hyun. You can’t die and leave me.”
The obsession and affection he had been busy hiding for 10 years poured out. But the vessel that should have contained it was shattered, leaving no space to receive it.
***
From that day on, rumors spread openly that the Ihwa Guild Leader was searching for a resurrection stone. Because he was famous for completely hiding his desires and never showing his true feelings even when he wanted something, the rumors spread farther and faster. Moreover, hadn’t there been that famous incident recently that turned the country upside down?
“But why is he looking for a resurrection stone so desperately? He didn’t even care when it first became a topic.”
“Is there someone whose life is in danger…”
While such conversations were taking place among people,
“By the way, Baek Woo-hyun was cleared of false charges, but he hasn’t appeared in public since then.”
“He didn’t even come when other guild members who conquered the dragon together held a press conference.”
“Kang Seo-heon didn’t appear there either.”
Talks about Woo-hyun also became a topic. However, the two never appeared in public together, and as Seo-heon, who was photographed at the airport a few times, looked increasingly gaunt as days passed, rumors only grew.
Eventually, a rumor quite close to the truth circulated that “he might be looking for a resurrection stone because of Baek Woo-hyun.” Seo-heon, who had just returned to the country, gathered his connections to collect information about resurrection stones, regardless of the rumors. And a week passed like that.
“The AD Guild in Spain has agreed to trade. But the price and conditions are absurd, is that okay?”
“It doesn’t matter. Tell them we agree without negotiation and to send it by the fastest method possible.”
“Couldn’t it be a lie?”
“It might be.”
Mi-yeon looked over her guild leader, who used to be a perfectionist. These days, he was maintaining a schedule that made her wonder if he even slept an hour a day. Moreover, yesterday she saw him spit out food he had just put in his mouth into a napkin after eating for the first time in two days. She had worked in this guild for a long time, but this was the first time she had seen Seo-heon fall apart like this.
‘No, I didn’t even know he was a person who could be this emotionally disturbed in the first place.’
Seo-heon had said that Woo-hyun was on a long vacation, but the information team staff had suspicions that something might have happened to him. Among them, Mi-yeon was certain that something had happened to Woo-hyun.
Bang.
“Seo-heon, let’s talk!”
Somehow breaking through the front blockade, Ho-jun opened the door and entered Seo-heon’s office. Regardless, Seo-heon held his throbbing head and didn’t even make eye contact with the other person.
“How could you do this?”
“I just tried to use you like you tried to use me. If that’s all you have to say, could you leave?”
His empty gaze fell on Ho-jun’s arm. A bracelet of the same design as the one Seo-heon had once bought for Woo-hyun caught his eye. When he first saw that bracelet, he had been angry for a moment but sneered, thinking Ho-jun was trying too hard. Now, it was extremely irritating.
Thud.
Seo-heon put down his pen with a sound and strode towards Ho-jun. Ho-jun, who had been shouting bravely just moments ago, now stepped back in fear. Seo-heon mercilessly grabbed Ho-jun’s trembling arm.
“W-what are you doing…”
“Didn’t you come here deliberately to upset me?”
He roughly removed the bracelet and threw it on the floor. Finally realizing what Seo-heon was talking about, Ho-jun started shouting again.
“This is because you broke your promise! You and your father, both obsessed with that nobody Baek Woo-hyun! You were supposed to care about me first, but you gave this to your friend. It’s your fault!”
It was a mistake not to have thought that he would vent his inferiority complex about Woo-hyun in this way.
“So you sneakily investigated and prepared the same thing. To show Baek Woo-hyun.”
“Is that important?”
Seo-heon was truly sick and tired of the Kwon family.