Chapter 32
Terminally Ill, but It's Okay — Episode 32
A blessedly ordinary week was passing by.
Tuesday was History Department practical training.
Wednesday was Sorcery Track classes.
This week was mostly theory, so my body had it easy and my mind stayed at ease—one comfortable stretch after another.
Thanks to that, my routine gradually settled into place.
I woke early in the morning and headed to the fitness training room, and once lectures ended I returned to the dorm and went all in on Samjaegong.
If things had kept going like this, I couldn't have asked for more. But on Thursday, during Monster Studies, a stone dropped into the placid lake of my routine.
I'd arrived a little early and was just about to enter the lecture hall.
"What the hell, why are you already out of the hospital?"
"Already? Alreadyyy? Hey, I was lying there for over a week, you know?"
From a distance, I heard a voice that was quite familiar by now.
I had a pretty good idea who it was, and when I opened the door, sure enough—
Cheon Seo-yoon.
Back from the hospital, Cheon Seo-yoon was running wild through the lecture hall like a fish back in water.
Could returning really feel that good?
Figuring all the energy she'd bottled up had exploded at once, I headed for the back seats as always.
"Oh? Hey, hold on."
But Cheon Seo-yoon, who'd been chattering away excitedly, came scurrying after me and spoke up.
"Uh, um. Park Ha-yul. You doing okay?"
"Looks like you came back today. I'm fine. You?"
"Me? I'm good too. I spent a whole week doing nothing but resting."
There was still some awkwardness, but considering our old relationship, this was a huge step forward.
Having a normal conversation was practically a first for us.
"Ahem... Anyway, thanks for saving me."
Cheon Seo-yoon rubbed the bridge of her nose sheepishly and spun around in a hurry.
I acted nonchalant too, but for some reason I felt restless.
Energetic as she was, she hated putting herself in embarrassing situations—and she'd been the one to reach out first.
She must have agonized over it and worked up her courage.
Considering the quests ahead, this wasn't a bad relationship to have.
Of course, Yoo So-young's shadow still hung over Cheon Seo-yoon, but......
......Anyway.
The moment I sat in the back, I checked my phone first.
I'd thought the acceptance text from the painting club would be arriving soon, but today there was still dead silence.
"Did I not get in?"
Nah, no way......
With Jeong Ae-ri's eye, she wouldn't have failed to notice.
...Or had my skills actually gotten rusty?
While I was frowning over that untimely worry—
"I'm set on the field study club too. I've actually got somewhere to stop by during free time that day."
"Where?"
"The auction house."
"The auction house? That one being held at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts?"
The other side was buzzing too, apparently deep in club talk.
"Oh, you knew about it?"
"Yeah, it was on the news. They said they're running a bunch of events to commemorate the Sain Sword exhibition. The auction was one of them, I think?"
"Whoa, so if we go there, we can see the Sain Sword?"
Cheon Seo-yoon was doing a fine job promoting the club to Baek Sa-young and Lee Dae-ho.
This was what brought the major characters together, and it was also what inevitably dragged them into an incident.
The so-called auction house bombing incident.
The villains were Demonkin, and they carried out a terrorist attack on the auction house to steal the displayed Sain Sword.
They planted bombs on the auction items and detonated them to lure the Sain Sword's security personnel toward the auction house.
The moment the auction house descended into chaos, they launched their planned diversion.
One team took the auction house civilians hostage while the other went after the Sain Sword.
But if a plan went exactly as planned, would it even be a plan?
There were always variables, and in that sense, those bastards were spectacularly unlucky.
Because, as it happened, Cheon Seo-yoon was at the auction house as a bidder, and Baek Sa-young's group had tagged along to watch.
True to their role as champions of justice, they immediately intervened.
They fought brilliantly, subdued the Demonkin, and protected the civilians, so the bastards' plan to steal the Sain Sword ultimately fell apart.
The death toll was about five or six, including those caught in the initial explosion?
There were casualties, but considering the scale of the incident, it ended about as fortunately as anyone could have hoped.
"But what are you trying to buy?"
"Just something. It's an item I've had my eye on for a while, and it happened to come up for sale."
"Oh, so after all that diligent saving, you've finally decided to spend. What is it?"
"Secret."
"Hey, why even ask? One look and it's obvious. What would she buy besides Armaments or defensive gear?"
"Wanna die?"
When Lee Dae-ho cut in with a smirk, Cheon Seo-yoon snatched his head in a quick motion.
She really had made a full recovery.
Anyway, there wasn't really a place for me in this episode.
I just had to enter the auction house and lend a hand.
I was about to stop worrying about it and practice Samjaegong when it happened.
[Some settings have been changed to increase difficulty.]
[The item set to explode has been changed to the 'Lorelei Necklace.']
[Main Quest #5]
[Objective: Stop the auction house terrorist attack
[Reward: +20 days to Remaining Time, 35 SP provided]
What?
"That's what Cheon Seo-yoon......"
Startled, I shot up from my seat.
* * *
"This course is called Monster Studies for short. But it leaves out the most important word: analysis. That's why I write it as Monster Studies, but call it Monster Analysis."
Lee Taek-jin's voice scraped at my ears, and in the air, a virtual human-body diagram he'd made long ago glared down with both arms spread wide.
But I couldn't focus on any of it, just chewing over the same words.
"The exploding item changed......"
It was so absurd that I kept letting out hollow laughs without realizing it.
Only one thing had changed, but the difficulty had skyrocketed beyond comparison with before.
"......4885."
The bastard had made a cunning move.
One wrong move now, and Cheon Seo-yoon could die.
This was no longer just a matter of stopping the terrorist attack.
The man who won the bomb-rigged item in the original—the Demon Soldiers' longsword—was proof of that.
The moment he touched it to inspect the item, he took a direct hit from a powerful explosion and burned away without a trace.
Even though he was an Awakener, not an ordinary person, he was engulfed by the fire that erupted without warning and couldn't put up any resistance.
That was because the bomb itself was a special bomb derived from a Demonkin's traits.
But would Cheon Seo-yoon be any different?
Her becoming one of the World Setting's strongest was a matter of the distant future, not now.
If she was caught in the explosion, she'd be taken out before she knew it.
So what choice did I have?
"I have no choice but to stop it."
She was an essential presence in the episodes to come.
As the original author, I had to do it if I didn't want to lose my weapon—knowledge of the future.
"......Then how?"
I'd decided what needed to be done. Now it was time to figure out how.
I rubbed my temples and ran through various solutions.
First, the best option was to make her give up on the Lorelei Necklace herself.
But that wasn't as easy as it sounded.
Because the necklace's original owner was actually Cheon Seo-yoon......
And it wasn't just any ordinary item—it was a seventh-birthday present from her dead father.
The Lorelei Necklace was one of the few belongings Cheon Seo-yoon had been forced to sell for money after her father's death, even as she refused every bit of help from the Cheon Family.
So there was no way she'd give it up voluntarily.
The reason she'd scraped together money so desperately—scholarships and all—was to recover those items.
"Or else......"
I considered coming clean, but soon gave up on that too.
Its odds of success were just as slim.
There was no way she'd actually listen.
She'd just think it was the rambling of a lunatic.
In that context, warning the organizers about the terrorist attack was also pointless.
......In the end.
No matter how much I thought about it, there was only one answer.
"I just have to buy it myself......"
And then secretly destroy it.
It was an explosive that underwent a polymerization reaction with a Demonkin's Demonic Energy on contact, so there was no other way to disarm it.
It was a shame since it was a gift from her dead father, and I knew there'd be no real excuse if Cheon Seo-yoon ever found out......
But it couldn't be helped.
I couldn't give up Cheon Seo-yoon's life or the episodes that would unfold with her at the center.
With identity checks that strict, I couldn't use a human-skin mask.
I had to participate as Park Ha-yul himself, but winning the bid should not be difficult as long as I had enough money.
I knew Cheon Seo-yoon's financial situation inside and out.
She'd faithfully saved every scholarship she'd received since middle school, so altogether she had roughly 150 million won?
I remembered the winning bid in the original being around that range too.
So with about 200 million won, I'd probably be able to outbid Cheon Seo-yoon......
Would I have that much?
Back when I was Lee Do-hyeon, that would've been an enormous sum, but now I was basically in the position of a third-generation chaebol heir.
"Well, true......"
Even the house alone was ridiculous in size.
A penthouse with a full view of the Han River.
And wasn't the interior packed with expensive display pieces, like a national museum in its own right?
I was basically in the position of a third-generation chaebol heir, so 200 million won might be about a month's allowance.
"Once class is over, I should check my account balance first."
I was almost afraid I might pass out when I checked.
It was just as my tangled thoughts were sorting themselves out.
Suddenly, I heard murmuring.
"Hey, it's starting again."
"He did that last week too. Why's he so desperate to chew someone out?"
I had a rough idea of what was going on.
The front screen was packed with dense blocks of text, and Lee Taek-jin was scanning the students like a monster choosing its prey.
Under the pretext of gauging the students' level, he'd thrown in an unfamiliar Monster and was looking for a sacrifice.
In cases like this, ninety times out of a hundred he'd pick a student he didn't like—someone he wanted to needle.
"Student Park Ha-yul?"
Last week I'd gotten lucky and dodged it, but this time there was no escape.
The moment our eyes met, Lee Taek-jin called my name without a moment's hesitation.
"What do you think the problem is in a situation like this?"
Certain I wouldn't know, he gave a short scoff and pointed at the screen up front.
Too bad for him. It just so happened to be a Monster I knew......
Judging by its appearance, it was a 'Venom.'
A Grade 7 Monster modeled after an alien.
So I answered without hesitation.
"Your mouth, you bastard."
"......"
Huh? The words came out wro—
"...Not that. The Venom's mouth."
"......"
"I mean, they have another mouth inside their mouth, so......"
I tried to salvage it somehow.
"Pfft."
"Heh."
But the laughter had already spread.
The students bit their lips hard and held on desperately, but once it burst, it spread uncontrollably.
"Pffhaha!"
Amid all that, there was one bastard laughing like he was about to die, so I looked to see who it was.
......But why did it have to be you?
"You seem to be enjoying yourself, Student Cheon Seo-yoon."
"Huh? P-Professor. That's not......"
"One penalty point for causing a disturbance in class. Show the courtesy befitting your excellent grades."
"Whaaat, Professor? I just got back today."
"Whaaat?"
"......I'm sorry."
Cheon Seo-yoon hung her head with a miserable look.
It was straight out of a sitcom, yet maybe my feelings had changed.
I couldn't quite bring myself to smile.