In her Essence of the Strait office, Yoo Yeonha rested her chin on her palm and looked out the window. She looked quite picturesque, but the air around her was sharp like a blade.
“I apologize…”
A woman was kneeling in front of her and trembling in fear. It was Yi Jinah, an intermediate-high rank hero who aligned with the vice guild master’s faction to get ahead in her career.
“It might sound like I’m making excuses, but I really had no idea he was doing those things…”
She was telling the truth. Yi Jinah wasn’t involved in anything illegal and the only reason she sided with the vice guild master was because she loathed Yoo Yeonha for rising up the ranks as Yoo Jinwoong’s daughter.
Yoo Yeonha knew what she was thinking.
“I know and that’s why I was thinking of…” Yoo Yeonha tapped on her desk.
Yi Jinah’s shoulders flinched at the rhythm of the tapping. She tightly shut her eyes while waiting for the next words.
“… Leaving the field we won at the auction to you.”
However, something was strange. Yi Jinah’s head turned blank at those words.
She was probably mistaken, right? Or did she mishear what Yoo Yeonha said? What did Yoo Yeonha just say?
“… Pardon me?”
“I said, I’ll leave the new field to you.”
“…?”
Yi Jinah had the ability and was worth bringing along. Besides, she could simply leave the guild and join some other foreign guild if she was punished.
More importantly, Yoo Yeonha wasn’t the foolish emotional type who would lose a talented subordinate because of personal grudges.
“P-Please leave it to me! I’ll work hard and dedicate my life to it!” Yi Jinah shot up and exclaimed while repeatedly bowing.
Yoo Yeonha nonchalantly nodded and said, “Then, shall we go out together?”
“Y-Yes, ma’am!”
Yoo Yeonha stood from her seat and Yi Jinah followed closely behind with her head down.
Both of them came out to the corridor. It was Yoo Yeonha’s way of announcing that Yi Jinah had been forgiven for her transgressions.
They went to the elevated parking lot.
“Go ahead and rest for today. You’ll be quite busy from now on,” Yoo Yeonha said.
“T-Thank you! Thank you!” Yi Jinah repeatedly bowed once again and thanked her.
Yoo Yeonha hopped into her limousine. She looked at Yi Jinah profusely bowing to her and scoffed, “Hmph!”
Yi Jinah used to ignore Yoo Yeonha in the past, but that all changed the moment she realized that who she believed to be a strong backer turned out to be a bust.
“I shall depart now.”
“Yes, please do.”
Yoo Yeonha checked her social media accounts.
Numerous people posted various messages of support and the media was having a field day with the vice guild master. It seemed like this saga was coming to an end.
“Hmm…?” Yoo Yeonha muttered when she came across a picture.
It was a picture she personally uploaded when she was walking in Paris. Ironically, she could see Kim Hajin in the corner of the picture. He was wearing sunglasses and following her from behind.
“Ah…”
Then, she realized that he was always there whenever a picture of her was taken. He was eating ice cream on the beach, sitting a few rows behind her in a fashion show, and randomly making a snowman outside her mountain villa. He was like a permanent background decoration that never left her side.
“Hehe…” Yoo Yeonha smiled.
Things turned out well for her thanks to him. She wondered if it was possible for them to help each other out from a distance even if he was no longer by her side as her bodyguard.
“We have arrived.”
She reached her mansion while she was lost in her thoughts. Yoo Yeonha walked up the stairs and reached the third floor, which used to be Kim Hajin’s accommodation.
Then, she was shocked by what she saw.
“W-What happened here…?”
The entire third floor was empty. All traces of him staying there for the past six months were wiped clean from the room.
“Who did this?!” Yoo Yeonha screamed in anger.
Her voice reverberated across the mansion and a servant hurriedly rushed to her side.
“P-Pardon me, ma’am…?”
“Why is this place tidied up? It was fine until yesterday…!”
The servant was surprised by this side of her that she never showed before, but he immediately bowed his head and replied, “H-Hajin came yesterday and personally took everything.”
“What did you say just now? He came and left?”
“Y-Yes, that is correct…”
Yoo Yeonha looked dazed for a while before she muttered, “… Is that true?”
“Yes, he mentioned that he left a gift upstairs,” the servant replied.
Yoo Yeonha rushed to the fourth floor and found a huge bed in her living room with a note on it.
[You can have it. I figured you liked this bed. I thought about making you a new one, but it’s better to use something you’re familiar with, right?]
[P.S. You don’t need to repay me for this.]
Yoo Yeonha stood still and read the letter over and over again.
You don’t need to repay me for this… That last line sounded off for some reason. An ominous thought flashed across her mind.
She immediately called Falling Blossom, “It’s me. About what I said last time…”
Yoo Yeonha was planning to give many benefits to Kim Hajin within the legal boundaries, but…
— Ah, I was about to report…
Yoo Yeonha nervously gulped at the pending words. Soon, the ominous feeling she had turned into reality.
— He disappeared.
“…”
— He sold all of his stocks and even his house and just disappeared. We were quite surprised by it…
Yoo Yeonha stood up without saying anything. She was trembling like a wilting tree swaying in the wind. Whatever Falling Blossom said after that fell on deaf ears.
***
— Yes, I’m currently at the headquarters of Essence of the Strait.
Yi Jiyoon filmed with her advanced camera that cost tens of millions of won. The content of her vlog was Essence of the Strait.
Her video already hit three million views thanks to her army of two million subscribers.
— As you can see, there’s nothing special about heroes. When we aren’t mobilizing we tend to play, study, analyze dungeons… Oh! Vice guild master!
Yoo Yeonha was caught on camera. Yi Jiyoon zoomed in on her and I flinched. I was expecting her cameo after she became the vice guild master, but she appeared too suddenly.
— So, what do you think of our awesome vice guild master Yoo Yeonha? She was promoted to intermediate-high rank hero last week and placed fourth in our batch. You know, the golden batch with Kim Suho, Shin Jonghak, Rachel, Yoo Yeonha, Chae Nayun, Shen Yuan… The golden batch… It’s a shame I was in that batch… I could’ve graduated with a single digit ranking if I was born a year earlier…
It seemed that a lot of things had happened in the past six months. The former vice guild master of Essence of the Strait lost everything and ran away. That once decorated man was reduced to a wanted fugitive.
Yoo Yeonha trained like crazy fearing that the fugitive would retaliate and that training catapulted her into a intermediate-high rank hero.
She became stronger than me in that short period.
— But she doesn’t smile. Oh right, she smiled once when our guild became the top guild in the world three weeks ago… Also, there are some rumors about this. Do you guys remember the scandal?
The guild’s value shot up after Yoo Yeonha took the reins. They took first place from Creator’s Sacred Grace three weeks ago.
— Her romance with that bodyguard… Well, we all know it’s not true. Surprisingly though, it was around the time our vice guild master started immersing herself in training. Not only that, she stopped smiling ever since then as well, so some people are saying that…
— Yi Jiyoon?
Yoo Yeonha suddenly appeared from behind Yi Jiyoon’s shoulder like a ghost.
Yi Jiyoon’s face turned ghastly pale as she put down her camera and Yoo Yeonha glared at her.
Then, she was bombarded with various nagging questions like, ‘Are you crazy? What are you doing right now? We’re going to raid the dungeon soon, but you’re filming a vlog? Can you please grow up?’
— Edit me out of the video.
The Youtube video ended with those words and a fierce glare from Yoo Yeonha.
“Pfft…!”
She hadn’t changed at all.
I had a good laugh and grabbed my bow. Then I pulled the bowstring and shot an arrow. The arrow flew ten kilometers and struck a monster.
“You’re quite good without even using mana.”
The lady beside me, Jin Seyeon, was thoroughly impressed by my archery.
I simply shrugged and replied, “I still have a long way to go compared to you.”
I was currently in the Amazon in South America on top of a tropical tree and doing something like a competition with Jin Seyeon.
“Long way to go? I hate to admit this, but you’re much better than me if we’re only talking about archery,” Jin Seyeon said as she aimed her bow.
My meeting with this cool and humble archer was a complete coincidence. No, it was more like luck to be honest.
I came to the Amazon hoping to become stronger and it turned out that Jin Seyeon was here for charity work too. We started talking to each other before we found common ground in archery, which helped us become closer.
“Rather than that… Shall we go at it again?” I asked.
“Yes, that sounds good to me. I should be more proactive in our bet this time,” Jin Seyeon put on a serious face and pulled her bowstring.
Taaang!
I watched in amazement as her arrow shot forward like a cannonball. I picked up my bow and pulled the bowstring to erase the lingering face of my beloved supreme team leader from my head.
I shot my arrow towards Jin Seyeon’s arrow.
***
Taaaang!
The sound of a gunshot roared.
“…!”
Yoo Yeonha was shaken awake by the loud sound.
“That was scary…”
It was a dream, a nightmare. Kim Hajin was in her dream. He was always her savior even in her dreams.
However, he wasn’t there when she woke up. Everything disappeared like a mirage.
“Haa…” she let out a sigh and arranged her disheveled hair.
A year had already passed since then. She always thought that she could meet him any time she wanted, but that wasn’t the case anymore. So much time had passed that her memories with him were nothing more than a fleeting dream now.
Knock! Knock!
Someone knocked on her door.
“Come in,” Yoo Yeonha said.
The door opened and an old friend walked in.
Yoo Yeonha smiled after seeing her friend.
“Oh, you’re already Vice Guild Master Yoo Yeonha.”
Both a little girl and a lion coexisted within the body of Chae Nayun. She took a look around the room before snickering.
“Yeah, Nayun. Are you ready?”
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
Chae Nayun spent her time training on Mt. Baekdu as soon as she graduated. She finally descended from the mountain after becoming a powerful swordsman.
Chae Nayun sat down and smiled brightly.
“Then, Nayun. You will have to take care of…”
“Oh right, I met him. Kim Hajin.”
“…?”
Yoo Yeonha doubted her ears for a moment.
“Huh?”
“Kim Hajin. You don’t know him? You know that bastard who kept pestering me to use a sword instead? Don’t tell me you already forgot about him?”
Chae Nayun found it odd that Yoo Yeonha was acting strangely all of a sudden.
Yoo Yeonha suddenly realized that Chae Nayun wasn’t aware of the scandal since she was up in the mountains all that time.
She bitterly smiled and replied, “Yeah, I know him… Where did you meet him?”
“I bumped into him at the casino. Hey, you know, he was sucking the place dry!”
“What did you do after you met?”
“I had a few drinks with him.”
“…”
Yoo Yeonha suddenly felt something heavy and painful in her stomach. She had to hold her breath and try her best not to show it.
“Had a few drinks…?”
“Yeah, but he was chased out right after having a drink. He earned too much, so they didn’t seem to want him there. Hey, he was racking up billions per game, you know? Damn it… I lost three billion after trying to imitate him…”
“I see…” Yoo Yeonha replied with a smile.
Then, she took out an envelope from her drawer.
Chae Nayun frowned after seeing that Yoo Yeonha’s hand was trembling.
“Did you develop a tremor?”
“Huh? No, what are you talking about? Anyways, take a look at this. This is your mission.”
“How important is the mission that you’re trembling?” Chae Nayun grumbled while taking the envelope.
“The specifics are all written there…”
It was then.
Bzzt! Bzzt!
Chae Nayun’s smartwatch vibrated.
Yoo Yeonha’s eyes instinctively went to the smartwatch.
Chae Nayun checked her smartwatch before smirking and said, “Then, I’m going first. My dad and brother are waiting outside.”
“Who’s that?” Yoo Yeonha grabbed her wrist and asked.
“Huh? Who what?” Chae Nayun tilted her head in confusion.
“That,” Yoo Yeonha pointed at the watch and continued with a hint of emotion in her voice, “Who was that message from? Was that from your father?”
“No?”
“… Then who was it?” Yoo Yeonha bit her lips and asked.
Chae Nayun flashed a mischievous smile and replied, “Hehe, I’m not telling you.”
She immediately left the office while snickering.
‘H-How dare that lowly member do that to the vice guild master!’
Yoo Yeonha didn’t even have the energy to rage. She just stood still like a dazed person and muttered, “Ah…”
This went on for around two minutes before she suddenly pressed her temples and muttered, “I feel dizzy…”
She thought of Chae Nayun’s smartwatch while pressing on her temples. She noticed that Chae Nayun’s expression changed the moment she saw her smartwatch.
‘Was it a message? It was a message, right? Then who was it from? Who sent it? Don’t tell me… Was it that person? Did they do more than have a few drinks…?’
“Oh, right…” Yoo Yeonha suddenly remembered a shocking old memory.
The person he liked during his Cube days was none other than Chae Nayun. He kept pestering her to use a sword instead of a bow, which turned out to be significant advice for her.
The person who gave that advice and confessed that he had been watching Chae Nayun for the longest time… was none other than Kim Hajin.
He liked Chae Nayun…
“No…”
Yoo Yeonha felt dizzy again as her surroundings spun, but she shook her head and came back to her senses.
“This isn’t the time for me to be like this…”
She immediately booted up her desktop PC and clicked on her task for the day.
[Dungeon Raid Report – For Government Report]
She still had a lot of work to do.
But what if she didn’t say that to him back then? What if she asked him to stay by her side?
‘If I did… would he be by my side right now…?’
She didn’t have the luxury for such thoughts. It was none of her business if he dated someone or was trying to win his old love, Chae Nayun’s heart. That was really none of her business.
Yoo Yeonha bit her lips and focused on the document.
The gut-wrenching thoughts only lasted for a minute as she became immersed in her work.
That day, the vice guild master made simple typos in her report, which was something she never did in her life. To be exact, there were thirty-nine typos in the file.
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