The Promise I Couldn't Keep

Right after we came out of the EX-rank dungeon, thanks to the escaped citizens giving interviews left and right, I had somehow become a super rookie hunter.

It was thanks to them blocking the swarming reporters with their bodies that I could rest undisturbed on a bench in a nearby corner.

Finally….

I survived.

What a rough day, honestly.

I set my bag down on the bench and let out a long breath.

Let's just rest for a minute…. just a minute.

Lazily leaning my back against the bench, I barely managed to turn my eyes toward the white puppy plush doll. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠doll's black pupils were fixed on a candy shop far in the distance.

Right on cue, a bright voice rang out.

…Ah, right. I did promise to buy him snacks.

I remembered promising to buy Nabi snacks in exchange for telling me how to get out of the dungeon.

"Okay. I'll buy them."

A small laugh escaped me.

Yes, yes, I have to buy them.

Who knows — if I didn't, he might just make up a dungeon that never even existed and toss me right back in.

I nodded and let my body go slack.

"Let's rest for a little bit, then go straight to buy snacks."

A pleasant breeze was blowing. Forcing open my drowsily drooping eyes to look around….

I could see the people who'd been trapped in glass bottles inside the dungeon, running their hands over their swollen faces and bodies, wailing in dismay.

Seemed to be a side effect of the syrup.

"I look like I got stung by a whole beehive…."

"It's most likely a temporary phenomenon. If you can just bear with it for a week, you'll return to normal…."

The healers who'd been dispatched went around consoling the citizens, whose faces looked like they might burst into tears at any moment.

"Oh no! I have a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠competition tomorrow! A bodybuilding competition…."

"Well, what can you do? Honestly, you look your best right now. Hey, young man, confidence is everything in a competition!"

…Th-thank goodness.

Since they said it might be temporary.

Across from the puffed-up people, there were also those whose noses had stretched out like tree branches, touching them with sorrowful eyes.

-Oh, by the way, do those people's noses go back to normal?

The woman who'd been shouting about calling in every connection she had asked, as if only just remembering.

It definitely said the duration was one hour.

When I told her exactly what I remembered, the woman beamed and went around sharing the news with everyone else.

Even now, I could hear a few people who'd caught wind of it muttering things like, "Oh thank god. I was already looking up plastic surgeons."

"Good thing nobody was seriously hurt."

Just as relief washed over me and I felt every muscle in my body finally unwind….

"Teacher!"

Noah came over.

Somehow he'd already wiped away all his tears, and there he was, standing in front of the bench.

I brushed the tear stains from the corners of his eyes and asked,

"All done crying?"

"Yes!"

"You did so well today."

"At what?"

"Just… everything."

In The Fog, That Person, and not just at the theme park — even in the Candy Fiore dungeon, the boy never lost his signature innocence.

Not that Noah was deliberately forcing his cheerfulness, of course….

But I can't deny that it gave me strength.

Really, if it hadn't been for Noah, I probably would've started crying in that corner and stayed there for a good long while.

"You did well too, Teacher!"

"Hm? At what?"

"Everything! Today was so much fun!"

And with that, he pressed something gently into my hand.

"……?"

An orange liquid in a round glass bottle.

When I rolled it in my palm, it sloshed with a subtle, mysterious glow.

"What's this?"

"A potion I grabbed! I made it myself. It's a fatigue recovery potion — I copied my mom's recipe exactly. It's for you, Teacher! I already handed them out to everyone else, too."

"……!"

A potion?

Ah… now that I think about it, he did say he grabbed it when he ran away from home.

I recalled Noah's basic profile, listed on the very first page of the manual.

A fatigue recovery potion made by an A-rank alchemist, huh.

Regardless of the potion's grade, that's gotta be worth quite a bit.

On top of that, Kwon Haeseong had told me Noah was already being watched by the industry as an alchemy prodigy.

In a daze, I accepted it. Somewhere between exasperation and admiration — that feeling settled somewhere in between — and a faint smile crossed my face.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome!"

He answered and started to slip away, but I caught him again.

"Noah, you have to take this. It's a present."

The original plan had been to pick out something nice at the souvenir shop to give him….

Instead, I took the enormous green onion plush doll I'd set down beside my bag and tucked it into his arms.

Clutching a doll as big as he was, Noah blinked up at me with wide round eyes.

"……Oooh?"

"Happy birthday, Noah."

And then his eyes curved into happy little crescents.

With the green onion doll hugged tight against his chest, Noah bowed his head deep and headed back the way he'd come.

By the way….

I rolled the potion Noah had given me in my hand, examining it from every angle. Even to a clueless layman like me, it looked like it was on a completely different level from anything you could buy off the shelf.

Am I even allowed to accept something like this?

Should I just knock it all back in one gulp while I had it?

Or hold onto it for the next time I came down with a nasty cold?

My mind was leaning toward keeping it, and I was tucking the potion into my bag, when someone in a familiar getup strode briskly toward me from a distance.

"Team Leader Moon."

"Teacher."

Moon Chaeyoung plopped down naturally beside me and leaned her back against the bench with a thud.

"…Seriously, it's been a while since I've gotten this not-quite-heroic hero treatment."

No wonder she looked oddly worn out.

While I was being mobbed senseless by reporters, it seemed Moon Chaeyoung had been getting swarmed by her own share of them.

"Enjoying it is one way to go about it."

"Why don't we enjoy it together, then?"

Wow. Look at this mischievous woman.

"I'll pass. A certain incident taught me that superstardom does not suit my constitution."

Maybe because I'd spent several days as a freshly roasted potato after coming out of BOND's underground dungeon, this kind of attention was truly the last thing I wanted.

The rumor that the subject in question was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a male teacher at Bada Kindergarten had also spread with perfect accuracy, of course.

I heard that thanks to that rumor, a few employees who came to verify the facts had hounded Kwon Haeseong and Park Edeun relentlessly.

I somehow managed to dodge it, though….

"What a shame. If I could become a superstar alongside you, Teacher, I think I could manage well enough."

Please don't say things you don't mean.

Her eyes were as hollow as someone who'd pulled an all-nighter of overtime.

"…My apologies to you, Teacher, but since this is an EX-rank dungeon that appeared in Korea for the first time in a year, I'm afraid we'll have to conduct a situational investigation in interview format."

"…I expected as much."

I hadn't realized it myself, but this had turned out to be a far bigger scandal than I thought.

An EX-rank dungeon suddenly appearing after a year was shocking enough — but it had supposedly been cleared in mere hours.

On top of that, only a single hunter had been confirmed caught up in the dungeon, the vast majority of those trapped being ordinary citizens, meaning it had very nearly become "yet another disaster."

But since we'd all walked away unscathed, that was exactly why the fuss was even bigger.

"In cases this unusual, the Seoul Dungeon Management Center and the major hunter corporations all come running at once to investigate, but…."

"……"

Perhaps noticing how my face had gone pale, Moon Chaeyoung patted my shoulder.

"Thanks to someone's advice, I've decided to pull rank and leverage my connections to conduct a private investigation limited to you and Noah."

"Thank you…."

I'd just gained ten extra years of gratitude.

But then….

"The connections I can understand, but you have that much power, huh."

I wasn't being sarcastic — if she could talk down the Seoul Dungeon Center and rival hunter corporations alike, wasn't that genuinely impressive?

"Yes. Being a team leader at a mega-corporation like BOND may not put 1.5 billion won in my account, but it does buy me a certain amount of trust."

Ah. My condolences on the missing 1.5 billion won.

"Haha…."

"Anyway, what I'm trying to say is: don't worry too much. The only real mess is that the citizens who went into the dungeon with you are up in arms over their conflicting accounts of you. Otherwise, the situation's not half bad."

"Hearing that makes it impossible not to worry."

"I don't understand how the accounts could diverge this much myself…. One person says you handed out the jelly, and eating it made their nose grow long, which let them escape the dungeon's trial."

"……"

That would be one of the people who'd been dragged onto the platform and chosen as a believer.

"Another says forget the jelly — the dungeon, for whatever reason, suddenly started dropping blatant hints about making your nose grow. Ah, and apparently they saw you dancing passionately."

"……"

That would be one of the people who'd been below the platform, standing a bit away from me.

Also, that was not dancing. I was cheering.

"And…. I personally know that you were fidgeting around behind my back, doing something with great focus, and then one by one snatched up the people walking toward the platform and pressed something like jelly into their hands. And…. I also sensed that from that point on, the situation somehow got remarkably easier."

You saw all that and then calmly announced, 'Is this dungeon surprisingly lax?'

"But I actually think it worked out for the best."

"What could possibly be good about that?"

"If everyone's accounts had matched, your identity would've been all over the internet by now. Probably under a headline like Our Hidden Hero."

"…Wow."

Horrifying.

Don't. Don't you dare.

"But since nobody's stories line up like this, by now the reporters and the citizens who read about it must all be thinking the same thing."

"Which is?"

"Yes. Things like, 'The shock must have been too much for them.' 'Is that PTSD?' 'Ah, this one's going to be hard to verify.'"

"Oh…."

"And then the rumors about you will blaze up fiercely at first, then sink down like a pushed-back tide."

Well, they do say unreliable information struggles to hold the public's attention for long.

"Is that a good thing?"

"Better than me, at least, whose articles are already flying around everywhere as the sole A-rank awakener inside the dungeon?"

"…Fair point."

And with that, we both laughed lightly.

It felt like an awfully lighthearted atmosphere for two people who'd just come back from the dead….

Oh well.

I survived, so that's what counts. All that's left is to load up on snacks and candy on the way home and haul them back for Nabi.

I quietly rose from my seat, turning back to Moon Chaeyoung.

"Do I need to stay for the investigation before going home?"

"No. We'll schedule a separate session for you and Noah later, so feel free to head home. Ah — if you're feeling unwell, would you stop by the BOND Emergency Center on your way?"

"I appreciate the recommendation, but I'll decline. I'd like to go straight home and lie down in bed."

Moon Chaeyoung stood up, dusting off her hands, and pointed to a spot with her index finger.

"That's the back road of this theme park. It leads straight to the main gate. It's a route I'm quite fond of, personally."

"Thank you. I'll be heading off, the—"

Huh?

Something's wrong?

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"……"

My vision abruptly crumpled inward, and Moon Chaeyoung's face grew hard to see.

Was it because I'd stood up too suddenly? But… there was something at my nose.

I stood there in a daze for a moment, then ran my hand around my nose.

And out came a hot, red liquid.

Oh.

Blood.

"Teacher?"

A shrill ringing pierced my ears, and everything went muffled.

"Are you okay? Teach—!"

My vision began flooding black from the edges inward.

My body crumpled.

"Wait! Teacher—!"

In the last moments before my consciousness gave out, this is what came to mind.

Ah, right. The safety warnings.

"But I…."

"Teacher!"

"I… I still have to buy Nabi his snacks…."

And with that, I passed out.

Breaking my promise to my monster friend.