Give Me a Little Time
"W-wait. Ha-yeon. Are you crying?"
The words tumbled out of me, panicked and stupid.
"Nngh… hhk…"
The instant she realized I'd noticed, she tried to wipe her eyes and choke it down. But once the dam had broken, there was no easy way to hold it back.
"H-Ha-yeon. Please don't cry. Just—just give me a second."
She was fighting it with everything she had, but her tear ducts had clearly given out. The tears would not stop.
This isn't little Ha Yoo-jin. This isn't Na Seoyun. This isn't even Nam Eun-ju, who's been through hell. This is Joo Ha-yeon crying?
Is this even real?
"Snf—cough. Hhh… nngh, hhk…"
Joo Ha-yeon clamped a hand over her mouth, wiping at her face, trying desperately to swallow the sobs tearing out of her. If anything, the effort only made her look more pitiful.
I was genuinely at a loss. She wasn't simply crying—she was trying so hard to stop. I realized I needed to comfort her first.
Back in the first cycle, I usually discarded people who broke down and cried like this, unable to hold themselves together. I never thought I'd end up soothing someone through their tears.
I patted her back. I tried talking to her. I tried everything I could think of. In the end, nothing worked, so I pulled her into my arms and held her, rubbing her back while she cried.
A long time passed.
"Sniff…"
Eventually, the woman in my arms seemed to settle. She sat quietly against my chest, sniffling.
"…Feeling a little better?"
"……"
She was clearly mortified. Looking down at her silence, I figured I might as well just finish what I'd been trying to say.
"…The truth is, I'm not abandoning anyone. I'm not tired of the team. It's nothing like that."
I laid the groundwork first, just in case.
"…You're not… tired of us?"
"Of course not. Don't be ridiculous."
So she had been thinking that, after all. She stirred and lifted her head to look at my face. I felt something complicated—a little fond, a little exasperated.
Joo Ha-yeon just looked at me, saying nothing. She seemed to be checking whether I meant it.
"…It doesn't sound like a lie."
Her voice still carried a leftover tremor of tears. I gave her a look that asked why I'd even bother lying.
"If I were really sick of all of you and wanted to run, I'd just leave. Why would I need to lie about it?"
She shook her head instead of answering.
"…Then why? Why go this far to leave us again?"
"I'm not trying to leave you. It's just… I've been feeling stuck. And personally, I need time to train."
"Train…?"
"Yeah. Strength 60. I hit the cap a long time ago."
I held up my hand as I said it. I'd been wearing this thing for quite a while now, and my Strength had already reached 60 and completely stopped growing. Same with every other stat. I hadn't grown in a long time.
"Then why are you still…"
I gave a bitter smile. My silence was answer enough. Joo Ha-yeon's face shifted into something like dawning horror.
"…You've been wearing it on purpose? Because of me and Eun-ju?"
I said nothing.
That was all the confirmation she needed. The color drained from her face.
I had always been the party's mental pillar and its leader—and, at the same time, the strongest person in it. No matter how hard the others trained, no matter what inheritances they received or what skills they unlocked, I was still the strongest among them. The one none of them could even imagine beating.
In hunts, in spars, even when they all piled onto me at once, they couldn't do a thing about me. They went down, every last one of them. They were only spars, and the gap had clearly narrowed compared to before—enough that a sliver of hope had started to show—but it still felt like they had a long way to go.
And that growth of mine had stopped.
I was still the strongest. But everyone else was still growing. Even Na-yeon, who was clearly behind the rest of the party, had been improving in raw mana. I'd thought she was the slowest among us. That was what I'd believed.
Apparently not.
The one growing the least was me. And I told her it had been that way for a long time already.
Ha-yeon would know the feeling. The feeling of someone who used to be beneath you closing the gap, then overtaking you for good. Na Seoyun had shown her that once. Ha Yoo-jin had been showing her the same thing until recently. That terrifying climb, right on her heels.
And even so, I had always been standing above them. No matter how gifted they were, no matter how fiercely they surged upward, there I was. That was why, even when they received something, even when I gave up my own share, I still looked strong. I still looked like a good leader who never envied them. The party had accepted my generosity with a quiet sense of relief—and at the same time, they had clung hard to the wish that they would never have to leave my protection.
And now?
I had stopped growing. While they were still climbing. Everything I had poured into them without holding back had become the price of the leader's future—the future of the man who had built the fence around them.
The party knew, down to the bone, how much raw power mattered in the Tower. If they learned this, what would they feel?
Joo Ha-yeon opened her mouth in a faltering voice.
"I-I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Shin-hoo… We—we were so stupid… Wh-what have we even…"
Her pupils shook. Her arms trembled with anxiety. Her face had gone white. She looked like she was seeing her past self—and the rest of the party—taking whatever was given without a second thought.
I pulled her back into my arms.
"What are you sorry for? I gave you all of it because I wanted to."
…The truth is, it's because of that damn Saintess bitch.
"You don't need to say that. I'm still growing, technically."
"……"
She didn't answer. She must have seen through it—that I was only saying the words, that I'd essentially stopped. And she must have understood why I had come to her like this.
"I can't stay like this. Once the trainees come out, we have to build a faction. Within the next year, the trainees—including Han Ba-da—will be coming out. I can't be standing still when that happens."
She nodded, quietly.
She probably didn't want to agree. But now that she knew my growth had stopped, she couldn't refuse.
"There are orcs in the Empire."
"…I've heard."
We hadn't spent our time here cut off from the mercenaries. The party had picked up more information than I'd expected.
"I'm going to fight them. Raise my level."
"…If your level goes up…"
"The stats come with it. You know how it works. Once your level rises, your stats grow faster."
"…Yes."
For what might have been the first time, I lightly stroked Joo Ha-yeon's hair.
"I don't want to stop."
"…I understand. Anyone would feel that way."
"So I have to go. I'll come back stronger. I will come back. I promise. Just give me a little time."
She couldn't say a word. She seemed to be measuring how much agonizing it must have taken for me to say any of this out loud—a man admitting to the woman he loved that he wasn't enough, a leader's authority, the self-loathing of falling short.
It wasn't a problem without an answer. That was why I was doing this.
Joo Ha-yeon seemed, only then, to understand what my leaving actually meant. She stayed still in my arms for a long time. Then she wrapped her arms around me in return.
"…Seven months."
In the end, Joo Ha-yeon couldn't stop me.
"…Alright."
"If you're not back by then… I'll drop everything and come after you."
"Of course."
"You have to come back safe. You have to. No matter what. Absolutely."
"I will."
"Don't push yourself too far just because you want to get stronger…"
"I won't."
I never thought I'd end up in a tearjerker like this. The funny part was that it didn't feel all that bad. Even in the first cycle, no one had ever worried about me this much. It was an unfamiliar feeling—but not an unwelcome one.
Joo Ha-yeon carefully lifted her head and kissed me. We ended up spending that night in the same room as well.
"So why were you crying yesterday?"
"…That's what you're asking? Isn't not asking the polite thing to do?"
I shrugged.
"…I'd never seen you cry before. If someone in the party was going to shed tears, I figured it would be Seoyun or Eun-ju. I genuinely didn't see it coming."
Joo Ha-yeon thought for a moment, then let out a small, helpless laugh.
"…My family were devout believers."
"…What?"
"And I'd even sworn to stay a virgin until marriage… I actually broke up with my last boyfriend over it."
I must have looked a little startled. Premarital chastity?
"Th-then I… Is that all right?"
Seeing my face, Joo Ha-yeon smiled, a little wickedly.
"What's that look for? Don't tell me you're planning to skip out on taking responsibility."
I was thrown for a second. Then I answered without hesitation.
"I'll take responsibility."
All hail Agility.
My firm answer seemed to catch her off guard for a moment. Then a pleased smile spread across her face. What came out of her mouth, though, was sharp.
"You talk a good game for someone who openly said he'd see other women."
I gave a wry smile. I didn't have much of a defense on that front.
"It's fine. I already changed religions, so what does it matter?"
That was true enough. For someone from a devout household, she'd converted remarkably well. Plenty of priests had gone down clinging to the old faith to the bitter end. She was a genuinely good example.
"Anyway. The guy I broke up with over that told me he'd only ever planned to sleep with me a few times and dump me, because I was the kind of woman who made people sick of her. But…"
She looked at me with a faintly apologetic expression.
"I'd finally become your lover, and I thought we wouldn't have to be apart anymore… and then you suddenly said you were leaving. I started wondering if it was because of me…"
I didn't know whether to laugh or sigh. So she had a victim complex tucked away in there. She didn't look like the type on the surface, but it was there, quietly. If we hadn't gotten this close, I never would have known.
That aside.
Did I really look like that much of a piece of trash to her?
We'd already been together for more than half a year. We didn't share a room every night, but it was at least once a week. "A few times" had come and gone a long, long time ago. Apparently her idea of "a few times" operated on a completely different scale.
"…We should get up. As for the others…"
"I'll tell them. Don't step in."
She looked straight at me.
"You don't need to say anything like that. I'll handle it."
"…All right. I owe you again."
"After everything I've received from you? And besides—our party's leader has to stay strong. Always."
She clearly intended to hide the fact that I was leaving to get stronger. She'd dress it up as party business—that something had come up in the Empire for the sake of our future, that the work here was important too and it couldn't be helped.
"Will they buy that?"
"Leave it to me."
The face looking at me then was nothing like the one that had been crying the night before.
"All right. I'm counting on you."
"…You too, Shin-hoo…"
Her lips moved, forming something she didn't quite say. She looked like she was about to apologize again—like she still believed this was all because of them.
We left the room, and Joo Ha-yeon led the party out. In the meantime, I packed a large store of food, camping gear, and everything else I'd need, then went to find the lord.
When I told him I had to make a trip to the Empire, Lord Tophen looked unhappy about it. But once I said the party would be staying, and that Joo Ha-yeon would serve as sub-leader in my place, he nodded. My skill was the highest, yes—but the rest of them were all far beyond what this place called for anyway.
"Still a shame, though."
"I'm sorry. But if I don't go now, I don't think I'll get another chance."
Most of the urgent work here was already done. Once that knife-edge balance tipped, holding the line would be what mattered. My presence wasn't lacking on defense, but it counted for less than it did on the attack. There was only so much one person could do in a siege. It would be a different story if you were a powerhouse who broke the scale, but I wasn't quite that.
So Lord Tophen regretted it—and still couldn't stop me.
"May I ask what it's about?"
"Think of it as something related to the mercenaries."
"…Well. That does make it even harder to talk you out of it."
He wasn't wrong. Once I came back here for a while and finished the tutorial quest, I could move to the Labyrinth and meet them. Depending on how things looked, sending some of them straight up wouldn't be a bad choice either.
"Very well. Travel safely."
"Thank you."
After that, thanks to Joo Ha-yeon's words and my own orders, the party could no longer try to stop me. I had to spend about two more days with them.
"You have to give us at least that much time."
"…All right."
Even on the day I left, I could still feel the unease and the hurt coming off them. I only had to look at Joo Ha-yeon to know. She'd been reaching for me every day as if today were all we had left. Na Seoyun and Ha Yoo-jin hadn't left my side for a single hour, and Nam Eun-ju had actually stopped training for two full days just to spend the time with us. Na-yeon, who'd been the most anxious of late, was no different.
Only after that last stretch of time with them—under a send-off wet with tears—was I finally able to set out for the wetlands.