Thank You for Healing Everyone
"It'll be all right soon."
Nam Taejae believed the words, absolutely and completely.
And then, at last, he saw it.
Slowly, a new world unfurling itself above his eyes.
The cave, which had felt like a dreary, rain-soaked day, had transformed before he knew it. Every last detail of the scenery looked as though it had been molded from clay.
The orange glow of the lamps fixed to the walls, the darkness that had pressed in on all sides — seen through clay-tinted eyes, they were different now.
It wasn't frightening anymore.
Because it was a landscape he knew by heart.
The children's cartoon *Saedari's Daily Life*, the one his grandmother put on every morning at breakfast — a world where everything but the characters was made of clay. And this place was, truly, exactly like it.
I've fallen into Saedari's Daily Life!
Nam Taejae couldn't help the excitement bubbling up in him. Because this cartoon, starring the adorable cat character Saedari, contained none other than —
His own imaginary friend, Gudari!
And, astonishingly, there he really was.
"......Gu... dari? Gudari! You've gotten so big!"
Unlike the one he'd seen on TV, an enormous Gudari stood right in front of him!
W-wow...!
But it was too early to be amazed. Glancing around on reflex, Taejae nearly toppled over backward.
Dozens of button eyes, all gazing back at him.
Gudari... there are so many Gudaris!
Each one had a bandage wound around one eye and injuries scattered here and there, but they were all smiling brightly — Gudaris he had made himself, yet somehow different in shape from the one in the cartoon.
His real, true imaginary friend.
Nam Taejae felt his heart hammering in his chest — a feeling that couldn't even compare to the time he'd gone potato-digging in Gangwon Province with his grandmother. His brain fizzed and crackled at the sight before him, and he was too dazzled to collect himself when —
A sudden groan snapped him back to his senses.
"Hnnnnh......"
"Gudari, are you hurt?"
Looking closer, the Gudari seated before him seemed to have something wrong with his arm. Clay tears were streaming down from his button eyes, one after another.
"Oh dear... we can't have you in pain."
What should I do, what should I do?
I can't use my ability right now...
He was stamping his feet in frustration, his heart aching, when a low voice spoke up behind him.
"Doctor, it seems this Gudari's arm is hurt. Might you be able to treat him?"
He whipped his head around, and there — another Gudari. Though this one was wearing a familiar outfit and carrying a yellow bag.
"Ah, allow me to introduce myself. I am Nurse Gudari."
Oh... oh!
I'm the doctor!
And the one standing before him was his patient — a hurt, aching Gudari.
"Will he be all right, Doctor?"
As if under a spell, Taejae answered the nurse's question.
"Yeees......"
Then, without thinking, he reached out his hands to heal the wounded Gudari and —
"Ahh...!"
Somehow, time had slipped past, and now the Gudari was swinging his fully healed arm about, tears of joy streaming down his clay face as he spoke to him.
"Thank you..."
His ability had come back.
The time limit was exactly thirty minutes.
I played Taejae like a speed game, guiding him from one patient to the next.
"Please look over there too, Doctor!"
"Yes~ off we go~"
The survivors watched our strange game of hospital with sheer bewilderment. A child would be crying his eyes out, absorbed in treating a wound, then suddenly leap to his feet and address every person in sight as "Gudari."
The injured who'd been press-ganged into being Gudari had to pull themselves together and play along with Taejae's questions, half out of their wits.
"So, Gudari, where does it hurt?"
"M-my back hurts! I hit a rock and..."
"Oh dear, oh dear. You have to play carefully. How did you run into a rock, hm?"
"The rock... it just rolled up and hit me in the back."
"All by itself? You're not telling fibs, are you?"
The moment the Illusion Gun took effect, Taejae had become astonishingly energetic. Or rather, from the instant he had begun perceiving every person in the mine as his imaginary friend.
Listening quietly to Taejae, I gathered that to him, the people's wounds — the gashes and impact injuries — looked like a doll's stitching coming undone, its stuffing spilling out.
Well, better that than seeing the real thing with his own eyes, I suppose...
The leg of the man he'd just finished treating bore a gash, probably from something sharp, and through the split flesh, bone showed halfway through.
"Ugh......"
See that? It was the man's own wound, and even he went green at the sight of it.
And so Taejae treated the injured one by one with tireless spirit, until at last he stopped in front of the final "Gudari" — the one with the hurt back.
"......"
I swallowed a forced sigh and looked down at the man sitting on a chunk of rock, his back turned toward us.
A hunter of BOND's Product Development Evaluation Team — and the man who'd tried to drag Taejae away by the arm.
Lee Jooshin kept sneaking glances at my face.
Now's hardly the time to be watching me.
If he was going to watch anyone, it should have been Taejae.
Caught between my scorching stare and the sight of the boy treating his back, Lee Jooshin finally managed to speak.
"...It was me. I'm the one who said we should come here."
He wasn't saying it for Taejae's benefit, clearly. It was for mine.
"I told the others evacuating with me that we should head for the Section A mine. All the tunnels here are connected, you see."
Great, a backstory. What exactly am I supposed to do with it?
"On my way to work this morning, I got advance word that a healing-type hunter would be visiting the dungeon sometime before noon... Working backward from the timing, I figured you'd be in Section A, so I led everyone here."
Lee Jooshin clasped his hands together and bowed his head.
"...But I never imagined the healing hunter would be a child this young. Everyone was in pain and panicking, and..."
"......"
I let go of the face I'd been wearing — the one that looked like I was chewing on something sour — and shoved my fallen hair out of my eyes with an irritated flick.
Hah... Fine. Honestly, I could half understand where he was coming from.
A disaster had erupted without warning, and he'd led the wounded through it, determined somehow to survive, all the way to this place. And with him being the one who'd insisted on coming here, the weight of responsibility — and a desperation to match it — must have been crushing.
He got this far, and the thought that they might not get treatment after all made his judgment slip for a moment. Sure.
I understand. I understand, but...
"That doesn't excuse what you did, though — trying to drag a child off by force. I trust you know that."
"...I'm sorry."
Lee Jooshin kept his head lowered for a long while after that. By the time he raised it again, Taejae had finished the last treatment and was calling him over.
"Gudari, your back was hurt really badly. It must have hurt a lot, huh? But I fixed it all up, so you'll be okay now."
"......"
Taejae probably had no idea.
No idea what kind of person it was he'd just treated.
When Taejae smiled gently up at him through his puffy, swollen eyes, Lee Jooshin's face crumpled, and his voice came out soaked with tears he hadn't noticed falling.
"I'm sorry for grabbing your arm like that — for asking something like this of a child your age.... And..."
"...?"
"Thank you. You must have been scared out of your mind, and you still healed everyone."
Taejae looked up at Lee Jooshin with puzzled eyes.
And it wasn't just him. Every person Taejae had treated wore the same sheepish expression, and in the end each of them managed an apology or a word of thanks.
...If it had been me, I don't care how many pretty words they threw at me — I wouldn't have forgiven them that easily.
And yet.
This child broke into a radiant smile and answered without a single moment of hesitation.
"Okay."
Nam Taejae was no fool.
From the snippets of conversation drifting around him while he treated everyone, and from all the little things about the situation that didn't quite add up, he'd been able to piece together what was really going on.
At first he'd been having too much fun to notice, but...
All these countless Gudaris moving before his eyes were, in fact...
Not the real Gudari at all.
His imaginary friend, Gudari, didn't actually speak. In the first place, none of the characters in *Saedari's Daily Life* ever said a word.
But even knowing this, Nam Taejae wasn't the least bit disappointed.
Because the "Gudaris" of this world had spoken to him anyway.
— Thank you.
— Thank you, truly.
— I'm sorry, for putting this burden on you.
— As an adult... I am so, so sorry.
Just when he thought they were playing along perfectly in rhythm with him, their true feelings would slip out, unbidden. Nam Taejae caught every single one of them.
And with his remarkably sharp little head, he arrived at a conclusion soon enough.
The grown-ups in the cave turned into Gudari. Or else, they became visible as him.
And then, at the very end — after the treatment of the "Gudari" with the injured back was finished —
"I'm sorry for grabbing your arm like that — for asking something like this of a child your age.... And..."
"Thank you. You must have been scared out of your mind, and you still healed everyone."
The moment those words reached his ears, the illusion dissolved.
The Illusion Gun's promised thirty minutes had finally run their course.
Nam Taejae looked at the grown man standing there, one breath away from tears.
Steadily, carefully.
One by one, all those words of apology and gratitude had piled up, and together they comforted a loneliness that a seven-year-old boy had once swallowed in silence, all alone, long ago.
And so Nam Taejae could not refuse to forgive this man.
So he answered.
"Okay."
No longer to Gudari — but to Lee Jooshin.