Hup, two. Hup, two.
“One more!”
Kkuung...!
The slime’s body sank low, then rose back up. Dojin nodded.
“Good. You can rest.”
Pyureureu.
The slime let out a bizarre little wheeze and flopped out flat. Handing over the bowl of juice, Dojin asked,
“You’ve been going at it pretty hard lately, huh? Something up?”
Kkumul-kkumul.
The slime squirmed and twisted, like he was embarrassed. Dojin’s eyes narrowed on him.
Weird. That first day he’d hated training enough to run away from it. And then, from the very next day on, the slime’s whole attitude had flipped. He went at it like he was prepping for a bodybuilding competition. Was the first day just him not being used to it?
Figures... there wasn’t a gentler, more diligent slime anywhere.
The slime took his water on fast, then chyap, popped right back up. From there he bustled off to the wall where they measured his jump. Dojin scooped up a pebble lying nearby, tossing it into the air and catching it again as he ambled after him.
“Why don’t you rest a bit longer.”
But the slime didn’t so much as pretend to hear him and jumped with everything he had. Dojin laughed a little at all that drive, then checked the height.
“About 0.001 centimeters higher than yesterday. You’ve improved.”
Koong!
He let the delighted little noise go in one ear and out the other, and was about to scratch the wall with the pebble when his hand stopped. Beside the slime’s jump records, he could make out a faint cluster of small tally marks.
Right after he’d been left alone in the dungeon, he’d kept a record of the days, one scratch for each one that passed.
Twenty days.
The marks stopped there, exactly.
As three weeks closed in, Dojin had quit counting. He knew that keeping track of time mattered most in a situation like his, but he couldn’t stop the despair that welled up every time another scratch joined the rest.
The feeling that he’d never get out of this place. Not ever.
He’d judged that it did nothing for his circumstances, and stopped recording on the spot. After that he only checked the time ticking by on his dungeon wristwatch, and kept no separate count.
...It’s got to be well past that by now. A month. No, is this the second month?
He’d picked it up secondhand once, somewhere: that there were items capable of opening a sealed dungeon. Which was probably why some hope had stayed alive in him that someone would come to save him. But now there was nothing like that left.
There was no chance the higher-ups would burn a rare item like that for the sake of one man. Unless they meant to wait for the entrance to open up with a monster respawn and come collect the corpse.
“...”
His stomach churned out of nowhere.
Dojin tossed the stone down on the ground and dropped his head. For a few days now there had been moments when his gut twisted and nausea rose up in him. Was it psychological, or had something actually gone wrong with his body? He didn’t know, but whatever it was, it wasn’t a good sign.
Kkuung?
Maybe the way he’d thrown the stone gave his mood away, because the slime went puzzled.
Don’t think. Not about what’s coming, and not about what’s already happened.
Once he’d talked himself down, he managed to drag the corner of his mouth up. Then he met the slime’s eyes.
“Let’s call it there and go wash up.”
Moong...
Dojin gathered up the bath things: the sheep-head leaf wraps, the herb water, and the juice bowl. He could feel a prickling stare on his back, and pretended not to notice.
“Ahh, that hits the spot.”
Kkuuung...
Dojin groaned like some old man at the bathhouse, and the slime copied him. As always, the two of them had their leaf sheep-heads on and were stewing themselves in the pool.
The water in the bath, cold at first, had climbed in temperature until at some point it had gone pleasantly lukewarm. A dungeon is a place where things happen that no words can explain. Which meant nothing that happened in one was strange. In any case, this particular phenomenon was purely to their benefit.
Watching the slime slurp at his juice through a thin, hollowed-out wooden straw, Dojin muttered,
“I bet you’d love banana milk.”
Gulp, gulp... moong?
“There’s one they call ddungba. It’d suit you.”
Ddungba? The name must have struck him as odd, because the slime tilted to one side with the wooden straw still in his mouth. Watching him, Dojin found himself scanning the area around them. Then he sighed. If I had my phone, I could’ve gotten a picture of something that cute.
Instead of a phone, Dojin dragged over the item bag the slime had been riding around in and shoved his hand inside.
The gummies are gone too. Nothing left to give him.
Whenever he wanted to give the slime something, he’d catch himself rummaging through that bag. It held nothing but items, so the result was a wasted effort every time.
He was pushing down the disappointment and pulling his hand back out when it happened.
Tok.
Something inside caught on his fingertip and popped out. The square piece of plastic leapt into the air, landed on the surface of the water, and floated there, bobbing. His face hardened as he registered what it was.
A Republic of Korea hunter’s license.
A thing he’d utterly forgotten about was suddenly burned into his retinas without warning. And with it, several voices went drifting past.
‘Fuck, like being A-rank means anything coming from him. Arrogant prick.’
‘Pisses me off. Personality of a sewer and the luck of a lottery winner. And honestly, take away the face and that prick’s got nothing, right?’
‘We’d be at his level too if we had the gear.’
The voices of the bastards who’d offered him up here as a sacrifice and walked away.
...Fuck.
That was the trigger. Every memory of the real world he’d worked so hard to bury came pouring down on him.
Himself, clocking in and out like anybody else, going in and out of dungeons. Dropping by the center office to shoot the breeze with Chief Lee. Even the little nothings, like hitting the gym and then getting home and ordering delivery.
Ordinary life occupied his whole head. The gulf between that and where he was now made itself felt, brutally.
And with it came a question.
Did the higher-ups just write me off completely?
Did those bastards not tell anyone what kind of situation I was in? Or did they tell them, and the plan is to wait until I’m a corpse and then come collect me? What are those bastards doing right now, anyway? I’m stuck down here like this, and those pricks are stuffing their faces with hot food and lying in bed scrolling their phones, aren’t they? Am I really supposed to just sit here and let that happen?
Why am I even sitting here doing nothing? Do I really need to hole up in this spot and just wait for monsters to respawn?
...I could just comb through every inch of this place and kill whatever crawls out, the second it crawls out.
The dark emotion buried deep inside him swelled up and spilled out before he could do a thing about it.
Dojin had gone quiet all of a sudden, and the slime must have found that strange, because he came swimming over, pushing the item bag along with him.
But once the thought had surfaced, it showed no sign of stopping.
Isn’t the monster respawn way too slow? When there’s a perfectly living human down here, and a slime too.
His shadowed gaze drifted, landing on the creature splashing happily in the water.
...Unless the boss is already right in front of me.
That early suspicion came creeping back up.
The slime had let go of the wooden straw and was coming toward him with the drink bowl hugged to his chest. Staring down into his own empty bowl as he came.
Dojin shut his eyes tight, then opened them again.
What the hell am I thinking? There’s no way something this small is a boss monster. And his mana is just as faint as it was on day one.
Right. It isn’t the slime.
But the thought that had taken over one corner of his head stayed exactly where it was.
If there’s anything else down here besides the slime, maybe I should deal with it first.
His unfocused eyes were very, very dark.
After that day, Dojin often went blank. He had no drive to get up and do anything, and no appetite either. If anything, just thinking about the act of eating made him want to gag.
He’d never heard that dungeon food agreed with human bodies, so maybe the side effects were finally showing. Maybe the strange part was that eating the products of a dungeon had done nothing to him until now.
Short on protein and every other kind of nutrition, his strength was dropping badly. His churning stomach might well be proof that he was rotting from the inside out.
Dojin lay on the floor and turned his back. The pitch-black cave wall filled his vision. He ran his hand over the surface of it. If only I could smash through here and now.
Bbyok, bbyok.
That familiar squeaking sound came from behind him.
M-Mooong...?
At that cautious little sound, Dojin answered without turning around.
“I’m not eating.”
Koo...
“It’s fine. You eat all of it.”
The slime seemed to hesitate, shifting in place, then bounced away from Dojin’s side.
Dojin kept staring at the wall in front of him, expressionless, boring holes into it. The relatively lively look he’d had in his eyes early on was long gone, and black shadows had settled underneath them. In the darkness of the cave, the sharp line of his jaw and the ridge of his nose stood out all the more.
For the first time, this place where he lived felt suffocating. He simply closed his eyes.
Chap, chap. Rustle.
Back at the stone table, the slime tucked Dojin’s share of the fruit back into the food basket and twisted around for a quick peek. Dojin still had his back turned. Slumping down in front of the table, the slime let out a small sigh.
Something’s wrong with Dojin, I think.
At some point Dojin had started looking unhappy. His eyes were super black, and it was dark under them too.
Ddungba (뚱바), short for “fat banana milk,” is the squat, round-bellied bottle of banana milk sold all over Korea.
