Chapter 8: A Place of Refuge for Two Lonely Hearts

In a situation like this, Taehyun couldn’t simply tell the Gatekeeper to overcome her flaw. Not only the Gatekeeper, but even Choi Jeong-yu had sacrificed certain possibilities in order to achieve the best possible outcome in the Origin Dungeon.

Now, there were limits that neither of them could overcome, no matter how hard they tried.

As long as he understood that those limits existed, there was no point in telling the Gatekeeper to abandon her role as the Gatekeeper. But at the same time, Taehyun didn’t like the idea of making her continue living with this fear.

Then what was she supposed to do?

Choi Jeong-yu frowned as she fell into thought. She felt as though she was on the verge of thinking of a decent solution, yet somehow, there seemed to be one important piece of the puzzle missing….

That was when it happened.

The small fire alarm mounted near the steel door of the shelter suddenly began blaring with an earsplitting noise.

“W-What?!”

[No, it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.]

The red letters flashing wildly made it obvious that something had happened. Moreover, since the fire alarm went off on its own whenever the Gatekeeper became emotionally agitated, it was practically announcing that she was considerably flustered right now.

Why on earth would the Gatekeeper be this panicked?

After thinking for a moment, Choi Jeong-yu’s intuition pulled an answer to the surface.

“Um, Gatekeeper? Is Taehyun and Rigor outside right now?”

[…!]

“I’m right, aren’t I? The screen is all full of static, so I knew it! Listen, I’m not going to ask you to let me out, so could you at least show me what’s happening outside? I mean, I have to see this! There’s no way I can just not look!”

The Gatekeeper seemed to hesitate for a moment without answering, but soon a change occurred. Choi Jeong-yu’s field of vision split in half, and through her right eye, she could see the familiar figures of Rigor and Yoon Taehyun, along with numerous other hunters.

A short distance away from them stood the Thought Police, aiming their guns at the group.

It was an extremely dangerous-looking standoff, but fortunately, it did not last long.

“And this is just my thought, but I think the Gatekeeper will be fine. Choi Jeong-yu needs the Gatekeeper, after all.”

The moment the Thought Police heard Taehyun say that, it let out a sigh and lowered its gun.

And Choi Jeong-yu realized what she could do for this timid Gatekeeper.

****

It seemed her concern that the Gatekeeper might block their entry had been unfounded. Taehyun’s body was sucked straight into the frame and transported into a familiar space.

“Mr. Taehyun!”

As soon as he entered the shelter, he saw Choi Jeong-yu standing in front of the panel. Apparently, she already knew he had come to the dungeon, because she greeted him with a bright smile.

“Thank you so much for coming, Mr. Taehyun! I was just wondering how on earth I was supposed to solve this by myself.”

Choi Jeong-yu said it lightly, almost jokingly, but there was a look of confidence in her eyes, as though she had already found an important answer.

Had she somehow managed to comfort the Gatekeeper before he arrived? Considering how remarkably intuitive she was, it wouldn’t have been surprising.

However, judging by the Gatekeeper’s strangely sulky silence, perhaps that wasn’t quite the case. Maybe Taehyun had arrived just before Jeong-yu managed to calm her down.

“Is there anything I can help you with, Jeong-yu?”

“Uh, I think you’ve already helped enough, haven’t you?”

“I have?”

“I heard what you were saying outside. Listening to that made me somewhat certain about something… Ah, but I’d still like you to stay here beside me. Just think of yourself as a totem.”

Choi Jeong-yu smiled brightly.

If she was saying something like this, then she must have reached some kind of certainty. Taehyun wasn’t sure how much her thoughts overlapped with his own, but for now, he felt it would be best to leave things to her.

At some point, Rigor, who had entered the shelter alongside Taehyun, smiled and pulled him backward. He was already holding Taehyun’s hand.

As the two of them quietly watched from behind, Choi Jeong-yu spoke.

“Gatekeeper. You know, I need somewhere to hide.”

It sounded rather out of nowhere, but the instant Taehyun heard those words, he understood.

The certainty she had found was undoubtedly the same one he had reached.

Just like Seohyun and Han Seon-uk, Choi Jeong-yu also had an emptiness inside her that she could never fill by herself.

“You’ve watched me long enough to know this, but I’m actually the kind of person who gets into trouble pretty often. Until now, my younger sibling always somehow cleaned up after me, but now my sibling is no longer in this world…. I probably won’t be able to fill that person’s place, no matter what I do.”

[…]

“There probably won’t be anyone to clean up my messes or comfort me in my sibling’s place anymore. From now on, I’ll have to do those things myself. But I’m…. well, I’m not very good at it. If I keep trying, I might get stressed out and want to run away somewhere.”

Choi Jeong-yu’s voice was fairly cheerful, but there was nothing remotely amusing about what she was saying.

It was true that she had recently been spending her days happily alongside the Gatekeeper and many other companions, but her “loss” was something much more immediate and tangible. Not nearly enough time had passed for that wound to become faint.

Could Taehyun have made her reopen her own wounds by bringing this subject up?

His heart ached at the thought.

Yet Choi Jeong-yu’s voice remained bright, almost as though she were using this opportunity to finally shake loose the resentment and pain buried deep inside her.

“Would you become my place of refuge when that happens?”

[…!]

“You don’t need to do anything particularly amazing. Whatever trouble I get myself into is my responsibility. But…. I think it would be nice if you could give me somewhere to catch my breath, rest for a while, and then think things through with a clearer head.”

[….]

“If doing that would help you, I think I’d feel good about it too. It wouldn’t feel right if I were the only one benefiting, after all. So…. um, what do you think? I know I didn’t put that very well.”

After finally finishing, Choi Jeong-yu shrugged awkwardly.

Strictly speaking, this sounded less like comfort and more like a request. Asking the Gatekeeper to become her refuge in the future would, if viewed purely in terms of profit and loss, benefit Jeong-yu far more.

But this wasn’t about profit or loss.

It was about exposing the fragile parts of themselves so that they could lean on one another.

If the Gatekeeper could accept Choi Jeong-yu’s pain, if the two of them could somehow give each other pieces of themselves and fill the empty spaces within one another…

“…Thank you, Jeong-yu.”

After a long silence, the Gatekeeper appeared beside the wall where the glass panel had been mounted.

She was wearing a dress, and her face looked as though she might cry at any moment.

But there was a faint smile on her lips.

****

In the end, the little disturbance in the Arachne Dungeon was brought to a temporary conclusion.

Choi Jeong-yu hugged and comforted the Gatekeeper, who had returned to the appearance of a girl in a dress, for quite some time. The Gatekeeper then went to the Spider Painter, explained what had happened, and apologized.

“I’m sorry for getting angry at you. It was just because of my own inferiority complex.”

[If that was what was going on, you should have told me from the beginning. Seriously…. Still, it’s okay. If you eventually figure out how to be friends with me even when I’m no longer hiding, then I’ll be your best friend again, right?]

“Huh? We don’t know that yet. I realized something while listening to that old challenger talk outside. Haven’t you perhaps become closer to the Thought Police than you are to me? You refusing to leave with me was also because you were worried about that person, wasn’t it….”

[Hey! You’re seriously awful! I was finally trying to set the mood for us to make up!]

They continued bickering until the very end, but it seemed the two had more or less repaired their relationship.

According to Choi Jeong-yu, the Gatekeeper and the Spider Painter always bickered with each other for fun, even when there was nothing wrong between them.

Surely, the two of them would continue getting along just fine.

When they finally cleared the dungeon to the end, the Replica gave them a rather substantial reward.

[[System (Temporary)] Congratulations on the Challenger’s victory! Thanks to everyone’s efforts, it seems that the little quarrel inside the dungeon has come to an end, and peace has returned to everyone. I will now distribute the rewards.]

[Event [Mediate the Quarrel]

Complete = 650,000 Glory Fragments in total (1,000 fragments per person, including Choi Jeong-yu),

[System (Temporary)]’s heartfelt gratitude]

‘Wait, you’re including your gratitude as part of the reward too…?’

That minor issue could be ignored for now.

In any case, they had obtained a thousand fragments each from what had been a relatively easy dungeon run, so smiles appeared on the faces of all the hunters.

“Thank you, Ms. Choi Jeong-yu. Thanks to you, we were able to complete the Replica’s request safely.”

“Oh, if it weren’t for you, Mr. Taehyun, I never could have done it by myself. Besides, I got the fragments for free thanks to you, so I’m the one who benefited!”

“I’m going to go do an artifact gacha with these.”

Declaring this, Choi Jeong-yu cheerfully returned to her guild members.

She was promptly scolded by them after seeing their tearful faces, and eventually left the dungeon looking thoroughly dejected. If Baek Hye-rin hadn’t intervened, she probably would have received an even longer lecture from the guild members.

Choi Jeong-yu would probably continue throwing herself into dangerous places in the future.

But now, at least, she had a dependable refuge that would always be there to protect her.

Taehyun silently prayed that the two of them would continue walking forward together, relying on each other for a long, long time.

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