No mistake about it. This was the Woo Dojin he knew.
“Hey, you little bastard, you’re finally awake!”
The man rushed over in a single stride, face brimming with emotion, and threw his arms around Dojin. Dojin screwed up his face at the rough handling and shoved him away just as roughly.
“Get off.”
“This guy, this guy, do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting for you to wake up?”
It must have been true, because Chief Lee’s eyes were swimming with tears. He went on, his words all mushed together.
“You were out for more than two months. Two months! The whole time I really thought you were never going to wake up... you have no idea how sick with worry I’ve been, do you? I’m just glad you’re up...”
“...What, you short on manpower lately?”
“This guy, honestly. What do you take me for!”
Chief Lee dabbed at the corners of his eyes with his half-undone tie, then asked,
“So. How are you feeling?”
“Fine. Nothing hurts.”
Dojin rolled his arms and shoulders a few careless times as he said it. Watching him, Chief Lee nodded, looking relieved.
He’d been lying there for a good two months and change, and everyone had started whispering the same thing with one voice: Woo Dojin was never waking up.
When he was first carried into the hospital he’d been a mess, drenched in blood and in a terrible state, but strangely enough he’d hardly had any wounds. He’d looked soaked through with gore, yet once they stripped him down he was, unexpectedly, fine, if you could call it that. And yet, bizarrely, he simply wouldn’t regain consciousness.
Anyway, thank god he’s awake. Chief Lee let out a sigh of relief.
“That’s a relief. So when should we start the discharge paperwork? I asked, and they said if nothing hurts you could do it right now... and then you’d just come in weekly for checkups...”
“Did anybody else come here?”
The question came out of nowhere, and Chief Lee looked at him. Dojin’s eyes were fixed on the folding chair beside the bed.
“Anybody else? Who?”
“...I don’t know who.”
“I don’t know who you mean either, but... no, I don’t think anyone came. You don’t have anyone close to you.”
Chief Lee’s remark landed right where it hurt, and Dojin shot him a look as if to say, seriously? Chief Lee avoided his eyes and cleared his throat for no reason.
Dojin narrowed his brows, openly irritated. Reading his mood, Chief Lee inched backward, step by careful step.
“So anyway, first the discharge paperwork, and...”
“Oh.”
Chief Lee flinched.
What’s he going to chew me out about now? He stood there on edge, bracing for whatever would set Dojin off, and what came out of those lips was the most out-of-left-field thing imaginable.
“The slime.”
“...Huh?”
“Wasn’t there a slime next to me?”
About this big. Dojin raised both hands and shaped a small ball. It was a dainty little size.
Did he eat something bad? Chief Lee tilted his head, not following at all, but Dojin’s face was serious. Unusually so, for him.
“There, there wasn’t anything like that.”
“...You’re sure you looked properly?”
“I’m telling you. Somebody reported you collapsed in the middle of the road and that’s how you got brought in. Nobody said a word about anything like that being there. We checked all the CCTV, too.”
“...”
Somehow Dojin looked a little disappointed. Wait, disappointed? Since when did he let an emotion like that show on his face? Half puzzled, half worried, Chief Lee asked,
“What? Is there a monster you didn’t get to kill or something?”
“...For fuck’s sake. The things you say.”
“No, come on, I just...!”
Before Chief Lee could finish, Dojin swung himself off the bed and onto his feet. Chief Lee felt his line of sight shoot upward in an instant and swallowed hard.
Seeing him again after so long, somehow he looks even more menacing. He’s spent over two months flat on a bed, so how is he still this huge, how has he not lost a scrap of muscle, and why does he look even taller?
He was hovering there, gauging Dojin’s mood, when another question came flying at him.
“How’d you get my arm reattached? A potion would’ve been too late.”
Chief Lee blinked, utterly lost.
“Your arm? Your arm’s... exactly the way it’s always been?”
At that, Dojin looked down at his own arm with a grave expression, and Chief Lee asked hurriedly,
“Did you hurt your arm? Should, should I have them run the tests again?”
“...No. I’m getting discharged, so go get it sorted.”
“O-okay. Got it.”
He stood there blankly watching Dojin strip off his hospital gown without the slightest self-consciousness, then hurried to hand over the tracksuit he’d brought. Once Dojin had changed into the trousers as well, he crammed what little he had lying around into a duffel bag.
Chief Lee’s phone buzzed; he took the call, said he’d wait outside, and stepped out of the room with a “Hello?”
Hands in his pockets, Dojin let his gaze drift indifferently around the room. One bed, one TV, one cabinet. That was the whole of the private room.
So nobody came. ...Right, of course there’s no way he could have come here. It would only have put him in danger.
Dojin drew in a slow breath. Beyond the harsh chemical smell of the hospital room, he couldn’t catch a single other scent. The warm presence and the sweet smell he’d felt in that dream, had it really been nothing but a dream?
Dojin looked down at both his hands, opening and closing his fists.
My arm’s attached. The leg that got bitten is fine too. So that thing really was the boss monster, then. If so, that explains how I got out of the dungeon. But a body this intact? I have no idea what the hell happened.
There hadn’t been a potion in that dungeon worth anything for regenerating human tissue. He’d lost a huge amount of blood on top of internal injuries, so even with a potion he’d have missed the golden window and died right there. It didn’t look like the hospital had used a healing-type hunter either. According to Chief Lee, his arms and legs had already been attached from the moment he was brought in.
What on earth happened?
Dojin blinked at the impossibility of it. On top of that, a strange energy had been circulating through his whole body since earlier. It was a sensation he’d never felt before. Power welling up from his core, spreading out to every part of him, pulsing with force. He’d supposedly been lying in a hospital bed for ages, so what was this absurdly strong power?
He was still staring at his own palm, caught on the strangeness of it, when the door creaked open and Chief Lee poked his head through the gap.
“You’re not coming...? The reporters are going to swarm the place any minute now...”
“...”
Dojin walked, steady and unhurried. He stepped out of the room without looking back. Nothing was left behind in the ward but cold air.
“Get some rest for now. I’ll call you once your schedule’s set. Oh, and I’ll be handling your outpatient appointments too, so keep that in mind.”
With that short speech, Chief Lee turned to go. Then, as if something had just come back to him, Dojin caught him before he could walk off.
“What about the people who were on my team?”
“Huh?”
The sudden question made Chief Lee lift his head, puzzled. Dojin’s face was as blank as ever.
“I mean the ones who got out of the dungeon before me. Where are they now?”
Chief Lee scratched his head, his expression turning a little awkward.
“From what I heard, they quit.”
“...Quit?”
“Yeah. Sounds like they came back with injuries too. Said they weren’t in good shape, left the guild, and now I’ve got no idea where they are. We all just figured the dungeon had hit them hard. Everyone thought you weren’t coming back either, so... but why are you asking?”
Chief Lee studied Dojin’s face, tension creeping into his own.
Dojin clenched his jaw. Reporting it to the higher-ups at this point was pointless. They’d already run, and there was no guarantee they’d be caught quietly, or that they’d own up to what they’d done even if they were. Odds were good they’d deny the whole thing ever happened, or walk away with a slap on the wrist. If that was all it would amount to, it made more sense to handle it himself, however long it took.
Dojin shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them.
“Never mind. Call me when the schedule’s set.”
“R-right. Got it. I’ll head off, then.”
Chief Lee backed away in small, shuffling steps, relief written plainly all over his face. Dojin let the man’s goodbye go in one ear and out the other and headed into the building.
The annex on the guild grounds was the hunters’ dormitory. In practice, hunters preferred to keep places of their own rather than live in the dorm, and they had the money to do it, so the building sat all but empty. Dojin had lived nowhere but the dormitory for years, ever since he’d become a hunter.
He rode the elevator up, walked the corridor, and came to a stop in front of his own unit. He punched in the passcode still sitting in his memory, and when the door opened, a space both familiar and foreign greeted him.
A sofa, a table, and a TV.
The place was spacious, and yet somehow hollow and bare inside. Honestly, he found himself wondering what exactly separated it from a private hospital room.
Same as ever.
Dojin swept a sharp eye quickly over his apartment, checking for intruders, then dropped his duffel bag carelessly on the floor and flopped onto the bed.
He’d been lying in a hospital bed until minutes ago, and still it felt like ages since he’d last lain down on a bed. Dust had piled up thick from going so long without a cleaning, but a home was a home, apparently, because it gave him the feeling of having arrived somewhere.
Dojin closed his eyes and let himself feel the mattress under him for a little while, then sat right back up.
There was no time to lie around. He had somewhere to be.
Dojin hurried to the wardrobe, pulled the door open, and took out a track jacket. Then he dug into the bag he’d brought and fished out a black cap, which he pulled on.
Dressed head to toe in black, Dojin headed straight out. His fast walk eventually turned into a run, and before he knew it he was sprinting across the annex lobby. Then he climbed straight into a taxi waiting in front of the guild’s main gate.
“You’re headed to Bukamsan, right?”
