Chapter 218
Chapter 218
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 218
Chapter Title: Episode 72. What a Guardian Needs (3)
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“N-no, that’s not it!”
Yoo Gaeul flailed her hands in panic. Her golden eyes flickered with anxiety, bewilderment, and fear. It was a lively gaze, just like the one he’d always seen—the usual Gaeul.
“I-I didn’t do anything weird!”
“Then what did you do?”
“I was just practicing healing magic...! L-look at this!”
With that, Gaeul picked up the towel, antiseptic, and other items placed next to her leg.
Maybe he’d overreacted. Yoo Ji-tae let out a deep breath. The heat subsided. It felt like the blood was draining from his head.
Unaware of his feelings, Gaeul kept fluttering her hands with uneasy eyes. He approached slowly and sat down in front of her, grabbing her wrist. The startled Gaeul bowed her head.
The wound was on her palm, not her wrist. It was shallow. To injure her own body, protected by all sorts of internal blessings, Gaeul had used a fair amount of mana to create the cut.
“Why practice healing magic on yourself?”
“There’s no big reason. Um, well, just... I need time to practice alone too. Um... You need something injured to heal it, right?”
“You could do it during class. Or go to the training room.”
“Well... Um...”
Gaeul hesitated. In the meantime, Yoo Ji-tae wiped the blood flowing from her small hand—her tiny palm—with gauze.
“First, heal your hand.”
“O-okay.”
Gaeul gathered mana in her other hand. Whenever Gaeul focused on something, the sensitive healing attribute imbued the mana. The basic yet incredibly difficult spell Heal (C) began staunching the blood, sterilizing, and rapidly regenerating the wound on her palm. The cut vanished in an instant.
“...”
While she worked, Yoo Ji-tae examined Gaeul’s complexion. When the kid immersed herself in something, telltale signs emerged that she couldn’t hide.
A person’s beliefs and thoughts stem from the eyes through which they view the world. The world Yoo Ji-tae saw and the one Gaeul saw couldn’t be the same.
Proving that point, Gaeul’s gaze now looked oddly sullen.
“Bom.”
“Yeah?”
Her true feelings slowly surfaced in her expression.
“Yeah!? W-why? Why bring up Bom unni all of a sudden?!”
...She’d been channeling Bom while casting the healing magic.
He thought for a moment.
How should he handle a conversation like this?
Bom had always approached it more calmly. Not jumping straight to the core, but starting from the smallest branches of the root.
“That’s new.”
“Huh?”
“Didn’t it hurt?”
“Uh, um...”
“You. If you stub your toe while walking, you whine about it for an hour.”
“...That’s not true! I only fuss for like five minutes from the shock.”
“So. Did it hurt?”
“Uh... Yeah, it did.”
“Yeah?”
“It hurt a ton. I was so startled... The flesh split open like that, all creepy and goosebump-inducing. I almost burst into tears...!”
But why go and do something like that?
She seemed to understand his pointed look. Gaeul gave an awkward smile and looked down. The wound was healing.
“Something happened to you. In class. Or while learning magic from Bom.”
“No...?”
The way her eyes darted around meant something had definitely happened. As he fiddled with his watch, Gaeul asked in an anxious voice.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking up your healing studies professor’s number.”
“Why?!”
“To ask.”
“W-wait a sec!”
Even as he kept manipulating the watch, Gaeul clung to his arm.
“No! Just wait...! No, stop! Stop pressing! Aaah—hold on!”
Taking it further, she grabbed his index and middle fingers with her tiny hands, one each.
“Hey.”
“I’ll tell you...! No, no, it’s not a big deal, okay?”
“Then what is it?”
“Just... I guess I don’t have much talent for healing magic...”
What kind of nonsense is this?
As he paused his hand, Gaeul’s expression calmed a bit.
“Yeah. That’s it.”
Trying to slink away like a sly fox.
No, if this was slyness, it was the slyness of a stone fox.
So when he moved his fingers again, unmistakable tension appeared on Gaeul’s face. She grabbed his fingers once more and started whining.
“Aaah! Nooo—don’t do that...!”
“Tell me straight.”
“I messed up the healing...!”
“What?”
“During lab practice...!”
Ha... Gaeul let out a long sigh, glancing at him nervously as she began to explain bit by bit.
“I did the healing magic exactly as taught. But it didn’t work. After I healed it, the practice chimera got even more injured.”
“That’s weird. You just healed your wound fine.”
“Um, I don’t really know about that.”
“Did you tell Bom?”
“No... I wasn’t gonna say anything.”
“Why?”
“Bom unni teaches me well. When I copy her, the healing magic works fine.”
“But?”
“But that only works when I’m imitating Bom unni exactly. Like just now... That’s not my healing magic. That’s just Bom unni...”
He paused for a moment. Then he thought it over.
Dragons are fiercely independent and inherently exclusive toward other clans.
Room 301 was just Yoo Ji-tae forcibly gathering the kids together; normally, Bom, Yeoreum, Gaeul, and winter wouldn’t have ended up in one place, getting along like this.
It was like when Yeoreum had refused to learn from him. Back then, she’d vented about her “identity as a Red Dragon.” And conveniently, he knew how to handle Red Dragon mana and combat techniques.
But not healing magic.
“What happened to the practice chimera?”
Gaeul hesitated before answering with a sigh.
“It... just didn’t recover...”
Gaeul’s gaze darkened sharply.
Something was off.
A medical practice chimera.
Receiving healing magic from no one less than a “dragon.”
And it didn’t recover?
Why?
Gaeul is a dragon.
And a magical clan at that.
Sure, she was just a kid in her early teens, so mistakes could happen. A dragon’s uniqueness is forged over eons of history.
Even so. As a mana clan. The originators of magic. No matter how little talent, would she really struggle with something like healing magic?
He needed to check himself. He gathered killing intent at his fingertip, sharpening it into a small blade. Without hesitation, he slashed his own palm.
With blessings and powers released, a stinging pain erupted. The skin tore, damaging flesh and muscle.
Blood began to flow. Startled, Gaeul looked up at him.
“W-why did you do that!?”
“Wanna try healing me?”
“N-no...! You might get hurt...!”
As she said that, half a beat late, Gaeul seemed to remember who Yoo Ji-tae was.
Blood drops were already falling to the living room floor during her hesitation. Cautiously, she said,
“You shouldn’t get hurt... Okay...?”
“I won’t. You little rascal.”
“O-okay...”
Soon, Gaeul began casting her healing magic.
Mana gathered in his hand. Particles of mana imbued with healing attributes. They were regenerating his palm.
He checked the attributes in the mana: Guidance, Sterilization, Sedation, Hemostasis, Stabilization, Regeneration... Just like standard healing magic.
Perfectly fine.
Not bad at all.
So why hadn’t the practice chimera recovered?
As Gaeul’s magic continued, Yoo Ji-tae realized it.
“...”
A hollow chuckle tugged at his lips.
There was a massive “problem” with Gaeul’s healing magic.
“Huh?! Why? Does it hurt...?”
“It’s fine.”
Gaeul’s healing magic used an absurd amount of mana.
And the magical output was ridiculously high.
Healing magic normally consumed a lot of mana, but there were limits. It was like placing a dam in front of a water hose—no wonder the spell couldn’t function properly.
Precision was an issue too. If you could handle hose-level mana, directing it was easy. But controlling the flow from a burst dam? Not so much.
To put it simply, Gaeul’s healing magic was like placing a boulder on a fine sieve.
No way a mere practice chimera could withstand that mountain of mana. It was fortunate she hadn’t tried it on a person.
But Yoo Ji-tae had no issue absorbing Gaeul’s mana. His wound began to heal.
“Huh...? Yeah...?”
Anyway. Healing magic didn’t suit the kid while she was playing around. Refining mana control like this would take centuries at least.
So he reached a conclusion.
“That. Stop it.”
“Huh?”
“Healing magic doesn’t suit you.”
“...”
The startled Gaeul asked cautiously.
“Why...?”
Yoo Ji-tae answered sincerely. The principles of healing magic. How it worked. Why it didn’t suit Gaeul.
A shadow fell over Gaeul’s face. Her gaze dropped.
“Got it?”
“Yeah...”
“Drop the class. Stop learning from Bom too.”
Gaeul didn’t answer. She just nodded slightly.
You couldn’t take her response at face value.
Scales Eye (SS)
“Why. You really want to do it?”
When he asked again, Gaeul shook her head.
She didn’t want to. Scales Eye showed True for the veracity. She didn’t have to.
“Don’t like what I said?”
Gaeul shook her head again. True once more. She didn’t dislike his words.
“Then. Anything you want to say?”
“No. Ajusshi’s right. Healing magic doesn’t suit me.”
“Sorry for saying it like that.”
“It’s fine. It’s the truth. I know. That I’m always like that...”
Her response was True again. Her self-regard was overwhelmingly positive. She meant it. She didn’t hate herself.
Yet Yoo Ji-tae’s mind wasn’t at ease.
‘It’s fine.’
Her last words lingered strangely in his ears.
Fine, huh...
It was true, but it stabbed at some indefinable corner of his emotions.
It stemmed from his 4th run. BY had always said she was fine, even when she wasn’t. More adept at hiding emotions than the current Gaeul, BY had seemed truly okay.
But was BY okay?
No.
BY wasn’t okay.
In the time she parroted “fine” like a bird, she’d been piling things up in her heart. Things that would eventually burst forth...
Until now, Yoo Ji-tae had always trusted Scales Eye.
He was always the planner.
Scales Eye had no errors.
But right now, he felt he shouldn’t trust it.
Why? He didn’t know.
Maybe in the daily life spent with Gaeul, he’d come to understand her more deeply than this power’s grasp of truth and falsehood.
His senses sharpened acutely.
This couldn’t just be swept under the rug.
“Then I’ll go rest.”
“Rest up.”
After sending Gaeul off,
Yoo Ji-tae stepped out of the dorm and called the professor.
—This is Professor Kim Cheol-gon of Healing Magic.
“This is guardian Yoo Ji-tae.”
—Yes, yes! Ah! Hello? Guardian Yoo Ji-tae. I’ve heard a lot about you.
The professor, aware of the Yoo family name, was deferential.
The fact that no one had called when the issue arose might be because Gaeul was from the Yoo family.
“I’m calling about what happened with cadet Yoo Gaeul.”
—Oh, no, it wasn’t a big deal. Haha.
“No. I heard from the cadet that something did happen. Tell me honestly. No sugarcoating. There won’t be any repercussions.”
—Ahh. Well, actually...
Finally, the full story came from the professor’s mouth.
Only then did Yoo Ji-tae somewhat understand Gaeul’s feelings.
And why she’d panicked when he asked her to heal him, and why she’d cut her own hand.
Because it wasn’t just a failure to recover.
“You’re saying it died?”
—Yes...
The medical practice chimera that Gaeul had tried to heal was dead.