107
* * *
In the car returning to their nest after the conquest ended with much ado, Doun muttered with a calmly settled face.
“…I was too much of a mess earlier.”
As soon as the conquest ended, unable to control his temper, he’d taken Samin to a distant place and raised his voice. After getting angry first, he’d even cried pathetically while groveling.
‘Lee Doun, are you really in your right mind?’
Doun’s head throbbed. Usually after conquest ended, the atmosphere was one of chatting or joking around while waiting for collection to finish, but today he could clearly feel everyone watching his mood.
Not a single suggestion came up to go eat together after conquest, and far from an after-party, everyone was busy scattering quickly with excuses of being tired or having housework.
“What’s wrong with that? Hunters can cry a bit while going around towers and fight with the guild master sometimes. When over ten people gather to fight magical beasts with their lives on the line, always going ‘haha hoho’ would be more abnormal.”
“The atmosphere was weird until the end because of me today. Even if I’m oblivious, I’m not that bad.”
Doun let out a deep sigh. Because Samin arbitrarily used his skill, the bad memories he’d forcibly buried were recalled and he’d temporarily lost his reason.
Fortunately, he’d regained stability in Samin’s arms, but this way the guild members would feel like they were going around towers with a time bomb that could go off at any moment.
“Hey, if our conquest team was such a weak-hearted one that the atmosphere got weird just because you and I fought briefly, would I have brought hyung?”
“Still…”
“Should I recite the history of dog fights I buried because it seemed like I was spitting on our conquest team’s faces?”
History of dog fights. The term itself was grand and started to pique interest. Doun forgot about being dejected for a moment and urged the driving Samin with his eyes. Samin chuckled and wiggled his eyebrows.
“Hyung, you know Kim Chansol has a habit of constantly changing weapons, right?”
“…Yeah.”
Kim Chansol’s main skill was ‘Skilled Touch (S)’, which allowed him to use any weapon skillfully. It was such a rare skill with tremendous utility that all major guilds including Yeoun had put effort into recruiting him. Kim Chansol often changed weapon artifacts to fully utilize his skill.
“In the early days after joining our guild, it was worse than now. No lie, he’d flash and make a fuss four times per minute next to us.”
‘Four times per minute is pretty frequent.’
It was just a few weeks ago that he’d carefully advised whether it might be good to reduce delays from Kim Chansol’s frequent weapon changes. He hadn’t taken Doun’s advice badly and actively reflected it instead.
As a result, the few seconds of attack gaps from weapon changes decreased, allowing more skill casting in between and contributing significantly to conquest time reduction.
“Every time he summoned weapons, Hyeonseong hyung complained about his eyes hurting from the effects, so Kim Chansol shot back asking if he already had presbyopia at that age, and they fought that day on the training floor with Suyeon hyung on standby.”
“What?”
“Really. Suyeon hyung told them to wait a moment, then bought popcorn from the convenience store and watched while eating. He got rejected when he asked if he could join in too, so he went around picking fights with other people for a while.”
“…”
Doun closed his mouth. The guild atmosphere was more chaotic than he’d thought. To his eyes, everyone got along without formality, close and comfortable like family, so he’d thought they’d gathered only harmonious people from the start.
“Hyeonwoo and Siwon also had a big fight once. Hyeonwoo got offended seeing Siwon grilling jerky over the fire from his meteor.”
“Huh?”
Doun tilted his head. Do Hyeonwoo was unofficially called Yeoun’s fire starter. Even at team building events, when there was need to start a fire, they’d look for Do Hyeonwoo first, and Do Hyeonwoo would grumble but obediently start the fire. Though he said he grumbled, he seemed to enjoy it like he was joking around.
Even when conquering with Doun, during maintenance time they’d sometimes cook various things using the residual heat from Do Hyeonwoo’s skills, but who knew there had been such conflict.
‘We roasted marshmallows there last time, right? Since he said his blood sugar was dropping…’
Seeing Doun’s puzzled expression, Samin continued the story to clear up the confusion.
“Hyeonwoo got really angry at Siwon then, saying he had no respect for hunters and asking if he thought of him as kindling, almost to the point of giving up conquest, but somehow it got resolved well.”
“How?”
“The jerky grilled with his skill was delicious. Siwon told him to try it first then judge and stuffed it in his mouth, and Hyeonwoo quickly ate it too. Anyway, since it was tasty, he loosened up and pretended to be angry a bit more before reconciling well. After that, he started bringing things to grill over the fire himself.”
“…Ah.”
“It’s not just you and I who do this – everyone fights over trivial things. The reason we fought today is really mild.”
“If that’s the case, then good… I almost felt uncomfortable thinking everyone was just being considerate of me.”
After hearing those tremendous stories, his heart felt at ease. Doun smiled sheepishly.
“When new guild members join, they treat hyung similarly to everyone else. So you don’t feel left out alone when existing conquest members are already close. They’ll probably take even more care for a while. When Jiwon first joined, it was worse than with hyung.”
“Jiwon?”
“Yeah. Dong Jiwon suddenly called us all together saying he had something to say.”
“Yeah.”
“So we gathered, and what he suddenly said was that he absolutely wouldn’t buy things like cult jade mats, enzymes, nutritional supplements, germanium bracelets, or unproven tree sap. With a really serious face.”
“Did he think it was a pyramid scheme?”
“Seems like it. Even more, he said he’d definitely go to hell when he died and was a poor guy with not a penny of inheritance from his parents, so there was no money to extort, so if we had vain thoughts we should give up immediately. It was funny.”
Doun felt increasingly embarrassed listening to Samin’s story. He’d thought too much about people who had been kind to all new guild members to the extent that Dong Jiwon would say such things, unnecessarily adding meaning to the pretense of being ranking 1st and feeling excessively burdened.
‘Geez. Ranking 1st, what’s that supposed to be? It’s nothing, but my ego just got inflated. Ugh!’
Doun did a dry face wash and waited for the embarrassment to subside. Samin watched Doun struggle briefly, then laughed as he entered the apartment complex.
“And if someone did well, praising them for doing well, and if there are things to fix, speaking nicely about them. Honestly, isn’t this all basic in social life? There’s no need to feel burdened. Normal people all do this.”
“…Yeah.”
“And our guild is about earning moderately and bouncing, so we don’t plan to run the guild strictly like a corporation like neighboring guilds yet. We made the guild for conquest-loving people to get together and cheer each other on, not to make money and shoot CFs.”
Samin skillfully parked then rested his arm on the steering wheel and glanced at Doun.
“Annoying guys say our guild is a place where kids play house…”
“I love our guild so much.”
Before Samin could finish speaking, Doun quickly answered. He liked how Doun now consistently called it ‘our’ guild every time he referred to Yeoun.
“Right? Our guild may look like this, but it’s the guild hunters most want to join. Almost no old-fashioned behavior, no politics about whether you’re guild master line or sub-guild master line, and everyone definitely does their part.”
Slowly Samin’s upper body leaned to the side. Doun’s face sitting in the passenger seat was right in front of him. A smile caught in his pretty, neat-looking eyes.
“So I entered such a guild as a newcomer?”
Doun didn’t get depressed and tried to speak positively while clumsily imitating Samin’s speech pattern. It was his first try at being cheeky, but strangely it wasn’t embarrassing. It was because he heard Samin’s tremendous words every day, so this much felt like nothing.
“Right. To be precise, hyung chose our guild. After the beautiful ranking 2nd guild master’s desperate courtship…”
Samin’s gaze went to Doun’s lips. Doun glanced up at Samin who was staring intently at his lips. Then he leaned his upper body and bumped lips first. A tongue that seemed to have been waiting came out and penetrated between his lips.
After a light tongue-mixing and short kiss that ended disappointingly briefly, Samin pulled his head back first.
“Let’s go home and continue. If I get excited in the car, I’ll get arrested as a pervert.”
“…Only you would get arrested? We enjoyed it together, so why only you?”
Doun smiled bashfully and unbuckled his seatbelt. As he opened the car door to get out, his forearm was suddenly grabbed.
“Hm?”
“Hyung. If you keep doing that, I might just devour you at home. Don’t keep stimulating me outside.”
Samin warned quietly with an expression of barely holding back. Then Doun quietly looked at his forearm that Samin was gripping and wiggled his eyebrows.
“Samin.”
“…Yes.”
“Do you think you could devour me even when I’m not letting you?”
Samin flinched at Doun’s provocation. How cute. Doun swallowed his inner thoughts and gently removed Samin’s arm. Before getting out of the car and closing the door, he said to the stiffly frozen Samin:
“Let’s hurry home and eat what we bought. It probably all got soggy on the way.”
“…Hurry up!”
Samin’s eyes flashed. The car door closed with a clatter and he quickly slipped next to Doun, chattering:
“Good thing I asked them to package the noodles separately, right?”
“Don’t they usually package everything separately anyway?”
“Can’t you just say I did well?”
“Haha. Right. You did well. You’re so smart.”
Doun smiled brightly while glancing at the area around Samin’s side. As if the place that had taken all his wounds still bothered him.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
