Chapter 334

If they said they would forget it, would it actually be forgotten? I narrowed my eyes against the stinging sunlight and asked.

“Can you control your own mind too?”

“No.”

What? Then why had they asked?

“Then what exactly are you going to forget?”

“I was just saying it.”

As I simply stared at them for saying something so absurd, Im Haekyung sat down beside me and continued.

“Jehyun, I’m someone who knows how to be considerate.”

“Oh.”

“If I saw something you didn’t particularly want me to see, I’m also the kind of person who could forget it for you.”

“I don’t care.”

It had not been anything particularly significant anyway.

“Just remember it.”

“It must not have been much of a trauma. Though it did seem like it would be bad for someone’s emotional development. Was that perhaps the cause?”

“What do you mean?”

“Every result has a cause. But judging by the way you’re talking, it seems like you simply occurred naturally.”

After speaking coldly, Im Haekyung remained silent for a moment before getting back to their feet.

“It’s hot.”

“Yes, me too.”

Once the water had drained away, the space was practically no different from a desert. The enormous sun beating down harshly was enough to irritate me on its own.

I stared at the ground for a moment, then briefly removed the mana restraint I had been wearing around my wrist. After tossing it carelessly onto the ground, I placed my palm against the dry land and slowly began freezing the surface.

By the time I had created an ice sheet of a suitable size, I put the mana restraint back on and looked at Im Haekyung.

“Sit down.”

“How kind.”

Im Haekyung sat down beside me again, furrowed their brow, and asked,

“Do you have some secret surrounding your birth?”

“Yes.”

“I was surprised when a face I never expected appeared. I thought I had already dug through your past as thoroughly as possible.”

“You have impressive intelligence-gathering abilities.”

“Did they completely erase the information on their end? Or is there something you’re unable to talk about?”

Seeing them stare straight ahead and casually throw out one question after another, it seemed they had been wanting to ask me all of this for some time.

“If I had to choose, I suppose it’s closer to the latter.”

“So you really were from a chaebol family.”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t suit you....”

Im Haekyung added it in a mutter, then narrowed their eyes and contradicted their own words.

“Actually, perhaps it does suit you a little. The way you live without caring what other people think... and how reckless you are.”

“......?”

“You give off the impression of someone who always had something to fall back on.”

“I have contingencies.”

“Since when?”

“You’re my contingency, Guild Master.”

“Ha....”

Im Haekyung lowered their head with an irritated sigh. When I grinned, Im Haekyung also laughed quietly before their face suddenly hardened.

“That wouldn’t make me a contingency. It would make me a cleanup crew.”

“Don’t those mean roughly the same thing?”

“I was the one who stayed behind and erased all the CCTV footage on the day you knocked out the Chairman of the Hunter Association. Do you know what that means?”

“Ah, the CCTV. I hadn’t even thought of that.”

“It means I deal with the things you don’t even think of. I keep doing things I never should have needed to do.”

After saying that, Im Haekyung closed their mouth again.

'Then did they see everything?'

Judging by the talk about a chaebol family, it seemed they had at least been watching from the moment CEO Choi appeared.

Then again, Im Haekyung had always sensed that something about the world was wrong, so this much would probably be easy for them to accept.

I stared at the cracked earth left behind by the receding water and retraced my memories. Perhaps because I had never spent much time dwelling on the past, it felt like something from an incredibly long time ago.

'It might actually have been.'

After all, my life had continued repeating ever since I met Kwon Taehan.

“Jehyun.”

“Yes.”

“Do you feel attached to your family? Was that why it showed you those memories in an attempt to trigger your trauma?”

Had I felt attached to them? But rather than shocking, it had simply felt like an ordinary past.

“I don’t think I feel much attachment.”

“Judging by how unaffected you are, you don’t seem to consider it a trauma either.”

“But not everyone has trauma. Then are people without any particular trauma simply at peace?”

Come to think of it, why had Im Haekyung been watching my past instead of seeing their own trauma? I stared directly at Im Haekyung and asked,

“Didn’t you see your own past, Guild Master?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think it was my turn.”

Only then did Im Haekyung turn toward me and begin explaining in earnest.

“I think the structure of this Dungeon is broadly divided into day and night. All meaningful activity takes place at night, while the day merely forces us to endure and drags out the time. I can barely feel the flow of mana right now either.”

“Is that why the overall amount of mana felt so low?”

“That may be part of it.”

Im Haekyung readily agreed and continued explaining.

“At night, the water rises and the waves come. When the waves strike, you see a person’s past or trauma, just as you did earlier.”

“Were you merely an observer, Guild Master?”

“Yes.”

“You couldn’t interfere at all?”

“I think I could have. I simply didn’t try.”

I listened to Im Haekyung and nodded.

“Then what about escaping?”

“I think we’ll need more data, but after the waves come and the process repeats... it should become possible, wouldn’t you say? Mental-stimulation Dungeons always have an end, after all.”

“I understand. Then we simply need to try it once more?”

“Yes.”

Might as well.

I had never intended to leave after only trying it once or twice anyway. If I was going to beta-test it, I should test it properly before leaving.

“Then we’ll wait until night.”

It was not particularly difficult.

***

After the daytime, whose exact duration could not be measured, night arrived.

Im Haekyung frowned as they looked at the black water reflecting the moonlight. Even if it was possible to estimate the time roughly, it would probably not be especially useful. There was no guarantee that time flowed at the same rate inside and outside the Dungeon anyway.

It had been a very long time since Im Haekyung had spent an entire day doing nothing while the sunlight beat down harshly.

'Have I ever done nothing for this long?'

It did feel like a Dungeon that wasted an unnecessary amount of time, but Im Haekyung was not particularly bored. It also felt somewhat like a painful vacation.

Im Haekyung watched Seo Jehyun use the sea that induced trauma as though it were a water park.

During the previous ‘night,’ Im Haekyung had unexpectedly seen Seo Jehyun’s past.

In truth, it was not an entirely unexpected development. A Dungeon that stimulated personal trauma would inevitably have to call up events from the past.

Im Haekyung slowly retraced Seo Jehyun’s memories.

They had expected to find something unexpected, but they had not imagined that everything would deviate completely from their expectations from the very beginning. The son of Seongmu Group? Judging by the way the family treated him, adoption seemed slightly more likely, but if so, did they not resemble each other far too much?

'It was strange.'

Then was the ease with which he handled everything part of his natural disposition, or was it... his environment?

Because the past had been drawn out at random, the memories had been fragmented overall, but their contents were still understandable enough.

Im Haekyung tried to sharply distinguish between memories that could reasonably become ‘trauma’ and memories an ordinary person might simply brush aside. With the emotional threshold of an average person, would something like that remain as trauma?

'I don’t know what standard to use....'

Im Haekyung had felt this same strange sense of incongruity not long ago, when they had controlled Seo Jehyun’s mind at his request.

It was a sense of incongruity they had never once experienced while digging through anyone else’s mind. Even though the barrier had been subtly exposed, it had immediately manifested as a physical reaction.

Was it truly possible to seal off someone’s mind this intricately?

The moment Im Haekyung confirmed it, an unbearable certainty surged up alongside a strange exhilaration. A cataclysm whose cause no one knew, an uncertain future, and yet the certainty they had consistently felt about all of it from the very beginning.

It felt as though the pieces of a puzzle had suddenly fallen into place. It could even be called ecstasy.

Everything Seo Jehyun ‘could not speak about’ was the correct answer, and Im Haekyung became certain of that through the physical reactions that appeared immediately.

But was that all?

If what Seo Jehyun intended to do was close to the correct answer, Im Haekyung was perfectly willing to cooperate.

However, was Seo Jehyun cooperating with them?

That was an entirely separate matter.

Seo Jehyun, who dumped everything on Im Haekyung and freely tore through one place after another, acted like someone who truly wanted to cross that final line. As though he wanted to break the... solid wall Im Haekyung had built over all this time.

Their feelings about it were closer to displeasure, but it was tolerable.

'Until when?'

How should the standard be set? How far could Im Haekyung let things slide, and from what point would they need to cut him off?

From here onward, they were back at the beginning.

Im Haekyung lowered their gaze and noticed that the water now reached Seo Jehyun’s waist. The water level was visibly higher than it had been yesterday.

The past. Trauma. What did Seo Jehyun, who treated emotions that should at least be unpleasant even if they did not inspire outright fear as though they were nothing, truly fear?

Im Haekyung rose and approached Seo Jehyun. The water lightly struck the tips of their shoes.

“Jehyun.”

“.......”

“Would you like to go in alone?”

“Why?”

“So I can try intervening later.”

At that, Seo Jehyun twisted the corner of his mouth and narrowed his eyes.

“You don’t want to?”

“As if.”

Seo Jehyun adjusted his combat uniform and stepped backward, speaking lightly in a voice that contained not a trace of fear.

“Then come save me.”

The waves slowly began swelling from the direction of the distant lighthouse. Im Haekyung quietly watched the growing wave and smiled.

The scorching day with no escape from the sunlight and the freezing night that called forth trauma repeated endlessly. It felt like a strange vacation.