Why on earth did I get jealous?
No wonder he seemed off.
After chatting with Im Seonhwa behind that kind smile, Hanul had glued himself to Dojun's side.
At first he'd wondered whether it was a stupid misreading brought on by his own jealousy.
The way he'd assigned meaning to Hanul's every gesture during the first and second bouts, rationalizing that even with your memories gone, I'm special to you.
But the instant he tried to leave Hanul talking with Songhwa's hunters so he could go scout, a hand caught his elbow, and from that grip Dojun understood the state Hanul was in.
It is the thing he hates most.
Over a week stuck in a dungeon with none of the benefits of civilization had left Songhwa's hunters filthy.
For a Hanul already in a foul mood from being hounded by reporters, it was too much stimulus to bear.
So Hanul was making a request of the one man who knew his germaphobia inside out: keep those people from coming too close.
So that's why he went out of his way to ask whether I was the jealous, possessive type.
He'd judged that a suitable pretext for Dojun pushing people back without disclosing the germaphobia.
Part of Dojun wanted to slap the hand away and tell him to handle it himself.
But he could read desperation in the fingers clinging to him so he couldn't escape.
In the end Dojun couldn't refuse, and dutifully served as his screen.
It earned him odd looks from Seonmyeong's team, but as long as Songhwa didn't notice anything strange, that was enough.
“It's embarrassing, but every monster in this dungeon is a marine creature, and there's a limit to what I can do about that.”
“Affinity isn't something you can ignore.”
“Still, I should have protected my team properly...”
Dojun glanced sideways at Hanul, who was conversing with Im Seonhwa across him. Sensing the look, Hanul curved his eyes into crescents and spoke.
“Don't do that to yourself. Some things simply can't be helped.”
It's not something I can help either, so shut up and screen me?
The bearing of a man asking for a favor was awfully rigid.
But Hanul's ability was crucial to this raid, so Dojun scraped his patience back together.
Meanwhile, Hanul gently reassured Im Seonhwa.
“I know you did everything you could.”
Hanul drew his brows together and examined her injuries. In reality he was recoiling from the filthy state of her, but from the outside, at least, that's what it looked like.
Even to Dojun's eye, Im Seonhwa was unmistakably the dirtiest of Songhwa's raid team.
She had plenty of small scrapes, but her clothes, holed through in places, were caked with monster filth that hadn't come off, and her hair was half hacked away and a mess.
That Songhwa's strongest hunter looked like this meant she'd stood at the very front against the monsters, every single time.
Her team carried wounds large and small, but the fact that a Class 1 dungeon had produced no fatalities so far was entirely down to her effort.
Like Songhwa Guild itself, Hunter Im Seonhwa put her team's safety first.
Since a dungeon only permitted entry until the raid was complete, hunters had to use an item to send a rescue request outside, and in the process Im Seonhwa had sent along a sample of the boss monster.
Once Songhwa Guild confirmed the boss was a marine creature, they knocked on Seonmyeong's door immediately.
Because Hunter Im Seonhwa handles fire.
Even powerful fire couldn't bring its strength to bear in front of this much water.
Hanul, by contrast, was a black-rank hunter who commanded water.
No electricity-type black-rank had appeared yet, so at this point in time the most suitable ability-holder for facing marine monsters was Hanul.
“So for now, I'd like us to focus on finishing the raid. Would you tell me about the boss monster?”
Faced with Hanul's warm, dependable expression, Im Seonhwa stopped blaming herself and listed the traits of the boss she'd been fighting for over a week.
“It's never fully surfaced, so this is guesswork, but going by the suckers, I'd estimate a squid or an octopus.”
Im Seonhwa looked out at the calm, transparently glittering sea and clenched her teeth.
“Over thirty limbs came out at once, and it must have some regenerative ability, because cutting them off got us nowhere.”
Self-healing made for poor conditions.
Even if you tried to cauterize the wounds with fire, once it slipped into the water, chasing it was difficult.
“So I wanted to attack the main body hiding in the sea, the trunk of it, but on our own that was impossible. We can't move freely underwater.”
Im Seonhwa looked straight at Hanul.
“But Hunter Seon Hanul is different.”
So she's telling Hanul to go into the sea and attack the monster's body?
But Hanul found monsters profoundly revolting, and he wasn't the sort to throw himself blindly into a sea packed with them.
He'd go in if there were no other way, but then he'd be sick in bed for days afterward.
And the one nursing him through it would be Dojun.
Feeling the hand gripping him tighten, Dojun spoke up.
“Let's not bother going into the sea.”
“Hm?”
At Im Seonhwa's question of what he meant, Dojun continued.
“Going into the sea doesn't mean spotting the boss right away, and the monster is just as free in the water as he is.”
Having delivered his opinion that going into the water wasn't a particularly good plan, Dojun turned to Hanul, whose gaze was fixed on him.
“So how about using the method I used to scout this place? Find the boss monster hiding in the sea with your ability.”
But the answer came back from Im Seonhwa, not Hanul.
“Is that even possible?”
Having worked in step with him several times, Im Seonhwa knew how Dojun searched a dungeon.
“The sea here is this wide.”
She looked out over the vast water with worried eyes.
Her concern wasn't hard to understand.
There was a beach, yes, but the largest share of this dungeon was sea.
A wide, immense sea.
But for all that, this place was a dungeon.
However hard an ultra-high-risk dungeon worked at imitating Earth, its spatial limits were clear.
It might look endless from the outside, but this sea wouldn't run deeper than Earth's, and the horizon that seemed to stretch on without end had an end to it.
Dojun smiled without taking his eyes off Hanul.
“I managed it. There's no way he can't.”
This was a blatant provocation.
Fine, I'll admit it.
Dojun was irritated.
Even though pushing people back on Hanul's behalf and accommodating his germaphobia happened often enough.
Being cast as the jealous one wasn't rare either, so truly, this much amounted to nothing.
And yet today a spite he couldn't swallow had risen in him.
Why?
Because Hanul hadn't noticed a thing, but today Dojun really had been jealous.
Knowing perfectly well how much Hanul loathed anything dirty, and still watching him smile that phony smile at Im Seonhwa and feeling jealous because the two of them looked close.
He couldn't have been more pathetic or more stupid.
So for something he could have proposed plainly, Dojun chose provocation instead.
Which made this a form of venting.
Seon Hanul overshadows it, that's all. My own temperament isn't particularly good either.
Dojun's mouth twisted into a smile.
“Right? I don't get the sense you'd fail.”
Hanul watched him without blinking, and then a bright smile bloomed at his mouth.
“And once I've found it that way? Finding it isn't the end.”
Because they'd decided not to disclose the flare-up to Songhwa, Hanul had to drop the formal speech and address Dojun casually.
Perhaps that was why.
His discomfort seemed to have bled straight into his tone.
Probably it had. Which was surely why Im Seonhwa, standing right there, looked so at a loss.
But Dojun didn't change his attitude.
“You're right. Just finding it is half a plan.”
If anything, he lifted his chin pointedly and nodded at the impossibly peaceful sea.
“So after that, join forces with me.”
Dojun brought his hands together as if to clap, then spread them wide apart.
Watching it, a glint came into Hanul's eyes.
He'd caught what Dojun was asking for at once.
But knowing the answer perfectly well, Hanul asked anyway.
“Join forces and do what?”
Dojun looked into eyes faintly steeped in excitement and smiled with absolute confidence.
“Split the sea.”
