Chapter 194

Shin Jae-heon had observed Joo Yian up to now as someone with a gentle disposition, but she wasn’t without anger.

Rather, the problem was that she suppressed it too much.

A person cautious about unleashing after years of suppressing her own story.

Especially at this point in time, Joo Yian was even more so.

‘If I had acted more assertively earlier, maybe I wouldn’t have been a burden to the team.’

Hunter Joo Yian had once said that.

The Hunter team had made headlines a few times along with the Happiness Nursery story.

But no one in the team thought Joo Yian was a nuisance.

Except Joo Yian herself.

I’ll erase that regret!

He intended to smash everything that stressed this point’s Hunter Joo Yian.

And so they arrived at the nursery.

He crumpled the nursery’s computer main unit like paper and sneaked out of the nursery without the kids noticing.

“I’ll buy a new one later.”

Anyway, during the time he watched, the kids couldn’t touch the computer whenever they wanted.

They could only touch it when pressured by the director to send letters to Joo Yian.

Instead, he left a note in the kids’ playroom so that any kids who wanted could send letters to Joo Yian.

[To Joo Yian, XXX-X, XX-dong, XX-gu, Seoul-si]

That was the address Joo Yian used for personal contacts at the time.

The director bastard wouldn’t even enter the playroom, so only the kids would see it.

And next to it, he piled up a stack of stationery and ballpoint pens.

Leaving the TV with the news behind him, he slipped out of the nursery.

Hunter Joo Yian, now directly managing the nursery, wore a deeply satisfied expression.

Shin Jae-heon sat on the roof of the house where his past team had lived, listening in on the conversation.

“The kids like it too.”

The voice of past Shin Yuri reached him.

A voice a bit more youthful and lively than now.

It was the moment Shin Jae-heon smiled.

Shin Yuri suddenly fired off a sharp question.

“Wow, but the one who smashed the computer was Hunter Joo Yian, right?”

Shin Jae-heon, listening in, froze. Hey, don’t ask that!

As expected, Joo Yian’s reply came a beat late.

“Yes? Me?”

“No? It’s completely smashed? Look at this.”

Don’t show it!

“This is……”

Joo Yian seemed too surprised to continue.

At that moment, Shin Jae-heon heard a familiar voice.

It was his own voice from this time period.

“The kids must’ve rioted or something. The director had a real shitty personality.”

That’s right!

Shin Jae-heon nodded.

“Might as well buy a new one now. Weren’t we planning to expand anyway?”

“Good thing the kids weren’t hurt. Just find the one who did it and beat them up……”

Shin Yuri continued.

The culprit’s right here. Shin Jae-heon smiled silently.

In the meantime, a system window popped up.

His vision slowly turned pitch black.

Clearly, he was being transported somewhere else.

As soon as Joo Yian entered the dungeon, he received a bizarre system message.

So it took some time to grasp the situation.

Why Hunter So Yeri’s info all of a sudden?

Before he could even question it, an unfamiliar status window unfolded before him.

In this utterly bewildering situation, what stood out was the ‘New Self (L)’ buff.

A permanent buff.

She never mentioned having something like this.

Summoned to an unfamiliar hospital with an unfamiliar status window, Joo Yian floundered for a moment.

“Clearly……”

It said ‘Memory – So Yeri’, so Hunter So Yeri should appear.

Yet she was nowhere to be found in the hospital, having left behind only this unfamiliar status window.

Even though, with her red long hair and sparkling golden eyes, she’d stand out anywhere.

“……?”

The hospital wasn’t even that big.

Joo Yian tilted his head in confusion.

“Room 303, bed 4~”

To freely explore the hospital, he disguised himself as a staff member.

Another staffer handed him a bed without suspicion and hurried off, looking busy.

Joo Yian silently wheeled the patient’s bed along while scanning his surroundings.

Among the people passing by, there wasn’t even a glimpse of vibrant red hair—brown was hard to spot too.

“……Ah.”

He soon realized upon seeing the TV in the hospital lobby.

The place he’d been summoned to was Eunryeong General Hospital, and this was before the Gates had burst.

After the Gates, hair colors of every shade became common, but before that, it was almost all black or dark brown.

But why this time period?

And where had Hunter So Yeri gone?

As he pondered without answers, something resembling a clue appeared that afternoon.

“Take that student to room 401, please.”

The person hurriedly entrusted to him by the departing staffer was familiar.

“I can walk.”

“Shut it and listen?”

Their bickering was the image of much younger students, but unmistakable.

“Shin Jae-heon, with two perfectly good legs, why go down that slide?”

“Humans have evolved since time immemorial to use energy efficiently, you know? If we don’t research ways to use energy even more efficiently, we’ll get weeded out by nature—”

“Shut up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

It was young Shin Jae-heon and Shin Yuri. The one with the injured leg was Shin Jae-heon.

Both wore the same school uniform.

Before the Gate incident, so probably Eunryeong High School uniforms.

“……”

It was his first time seeing their childhood selves, so Joo Yian naturally froze for a moment.

“Where should I take the bed?”

Shin Yuri asked then.

Snapping back, Joo Yian pulled the bed with Shin Jae-heon lying on it.

“Up to the fourth floor.”

He couldn’t let on that he knew them, so he turned away deliberately, but his gaze kept drifting back.

Even at this time, Hunter Shin Yuri was cheerful. She didn’t show any worry.

Except for those moments when Hunter Shin Jae-heon closed his eyes, gazing at him anxiously.

It was the same back then too.

Shin Jae-heon’s brave movements, as if saying don’t worry, also caught his eye.

Joo Yian gave a faint smile, bitterness lingering on his lips.

Still, he was puzzled.

Why are these two showing up in ‘Memory – So Yeri’?

The answer lay in room 401.

“……!”

The moment Joo Yian entered the room, he realized.

This was the very room he’d first been summoned into.

And though patients frequently cycled through this room, there was one whose bed never changed.

“Patient Lee Jin-ah.”

“Yeah.”

A female patient irritably responding to the nurse.

While other beds came and went countless times, hers stayed put.

Inside the curtain she’d drawn, it was as if time had stopped—nothing changed.

[Lee Jin-ah]

The name was definitely Lee Jin-ah.

“……?”

Joo Yian tilted his head slightly.

[New Self (L)]

Glancing at the buff window, he considered one possibility and widened his eyes.

After observing the room for a while, Joo Yian reached a conclusion.

He didn’t know the full story, but patient Lee Jin-ah was undoubtedly Hunter So Yeri’s past self.

Even accounting for illness, her demeanor was worlds apart from the current Hunter So Yeri.

[New Self (L)]

As proof, the offending buff twinkled every time he looked at her.

“Not hurting, so I’m going.”

“Do we have to check your blood pressure and pulse every damn day?”

As a long-term patient, she was in an extremely irritable state.

To a degree unimaginable for the current Hunter So Yeri.

Across from her sat Shin Jae-heon and Shin Yuri, who had gone nearly mute after hearing her snap a few times.

But thanks to possessing So Yeri’s stats, their conversation came through clearly.

“That lady over there. The one by the window. Doesn’t her skin sting always basking in sunlight like that?”

Shin Yuri’s whisper reached him.

“It stings. If we soaked up sun like that, our skin would turn red too.”

Shin Yuri seemed to ponder Shin Jae-heon’s reply.

Before long, Hunter Shin Yuri fetched a parasol and hung it on So Yeri’s bedpole.

“What’re you doing?”

Only an irritable reaction came back, but Shin Yuri smiled and slipped out.

“So damn noisy……”

Even hearing the grumbling, Shin Yuri’s face stayed bright.

She must have noticed the parasol blocking the sun just as desired.

A short while later.

“Then, take care!”

The young Shin Jae-heon was discharged.

Lee Jin-ah, left alone in the room, coldly eyed the spot they’d vacated before drawing her curtain.

But.

“……Was I too harsh on the kids?”

A twinge of regret.

“Whatever, good riddance to those noisy brats.”

She repeated mutterings like that.

It was around then.

At the sudden news alert, Lee Jin-ah yanked back her curtain and stared at the TV.

Her face was shocked.

“Oh my god, isn’t that the school those kids from this room went to?”

The other patients murmured in surprise.

Lee Jin-ah sat frozen, eyes glued to the TV, unable to move.

Her face stricken with shock.

The breaking news droned on about Eunryeong High School.

“What’re we gonna do.”

As the room buzzed, another alert appeared soon after.

“Don’t most Eunryeong High kids live there?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh my god.”

As the room’s murmurs rose, Joo Yian saw Lee Jin-ah clutching her bedsheet tightly.

“……”

Joo Yian pondered for a moment.

Lee Jin-ah was indeed Hunter So Yeri’s past self.

Anyone could see she was worried about those two.

Until Shin Yuri hung up the parasol, she’d only responded sharply; only after they left did she realize she hadn’t even said thanks.

Or that she’d only lashed out at their simple kindness.

And right then, a Gate had broken out at Eunryeong High.

“……”

The Eunryeong High Gate would be cleared by those two anyway.

So did that mean he needed to handle the Eunryeong Apartment Gate?

[‘Memory – So Yeri’]

But this was Hunter So Yeri’s memory, not Shin Yuri’s or Shin Jae-heon’s.

He should help with something tied to Hunter So Yeri…

Hunter So Yeri would surely have hoped the Eunryeong Apartment Gate resolved safely too.

But his instincts, honed by countless dungeons, told him this dungeon’s goal wasn’t that.

“What a tragedy.”

As he watched the others lament, he soon learned the dungeon’s true objective.

……As the hospital transformed into a Gate.