#137
“Jaeha, are you alright?”
I don’t understand why I faint so often here when it didn’t happen in the real world. Is Lee Jaeha’s body particularly weak? It’s not even short fainting spells, but repeated episodes of losing consciousness and not waking up for a long time, as if there’s some illness.
I realized that I had fainted again and let out a small sigh.
“What happened… Ah! Did you turn on the buoyancy device?”
“Shin Haejun took care of it.”
At least this time, it didn’t feel like I had been unconscious for too long. I tried to get up from the floor, massaging the stiff back of my neck. It seems I had been resting my head on Hyun Dowoon’s leg the whole time. I was about to get up, thinking his thigh might be sore, but Hyun Dowoon gently pressed down on my body, preventing me from rising.
“You shouldn’t get up right after fainting. Stay lying down a bit longer.”
I was already feeling a bit dizzy, and since he said it wasn’t good, I decided to stay put obediently.
I slightly turned my head and eyes to look around.
“Han Nari…!”
“She hasn’t woken up yet. She didn’t hit her head. It seems she fainted from the fear of falling.”
When I was startled seeing Han Nari lying on the floor to one side, Hyun Dowoon reassured me. While that was a relief, I wondered if it was okay to leave her sprawled out on the floor like that.
‘I feel a bit dazed…’
Although I thought I should check if Han Nari was alright, my head was still fuzzy, so I remained limp for a moment. For some reason, my chest area kept hurting. I wondered if I had indigestion, but after blinking a few times, I recalled the situation just before I fainted.
‘Despair?’
Why did I feel that? As I was falling, something like déjà vu flashed by… If I hadn’t fainted, I might have remembered, but now nothing came to mind. All I could recall was a feeling of sadness and despair so intense it made my chest ache.
Even if I really hit the ground, there was nothing to fear if I used the items in my inventory. Even if I got terribly injured, I could just pour in an elixir, or use the impact prevention cushion I had used with Han Nari last time right before falling.
So why did I feel a shock as if the world was collapsing?
“So where… are we now?”
Looking around, it was clear we were still inside the spaceship. However, I couldn’t see the scenery outside because the windows were too high.
“We escaped the sinkhole and stopped the spaceship in a safe place for now. Sinkholes kept appearing, big and small, every time we moved.”
“We keep falling underground since last time.”
As I muttered with a bitter smile, Hyun Dowoon frowned and said,
“We’ve never really encountered traps in dungeons before, so maybe we’ve discovered a new attribute.”
I wondered if new attribute dungeons could appear at this point, but since I didn’t know anything about dungeons, I just accepted it.
Now that I was a bit more clear-headed, I thought I should check on Han Nari. Looking at her closely, it seemed like she had fallen asleep after fainting. Her chest was rising and falling steadily.
‘Maybe it’s better to let her sleep like this.’
It might be better to wait until she wakes up on her own. If she had a brain injury or was in an emergency situation, Hyun Dowoon would have used his healing skill.
Thinking this, I reached into my pocket to take out my phone to check the positions of other monsters.
‘Huh? It’s not here…’
As I fumbled around my pants pockets, I couldn’t feel anything. Suddenly, I became fully alert. How could my phone be missing?
“What’s wrong?”
Noticing my startled reaction, Hyun Dowoon asked with concern. I immediately grabbed his arm and asked,
“My phone is gone.”
“…Ah.”
Hyun Dowoon seemed to know its whereabouts. As I looked at him with a desperate face, he looked down at me with a slightly troubled expression.
“Um… I’m sorry for using your phone without permission. Shin Haejun took it to explore and film the outside a bit. I left my phone behind, and Shin Haejun’s was damaged from the fall.”
“But Han Nari usually does the filming… Oh.”
They couldn’t film while carrying an unconscious person, and they couldn’t just remove accessories from someone, so they borrowed my phone instead.
It was a reasonable explanation, but not having my phone made me anxious, and my hands trembled. I even felt resentful towards Shin Haejun for exploring the surroundings.
‘How can I think like this.’
I immediately felt remorseful and tried to get up.
“I should go out and help Haejun.”
And incidentally, get my phone back. I was aware that I was too dependent on my phone, but knowing I couldn’t change that, there was nothing I could do. If it weren’t for Nine, I wouldn’t have to rely on it this much.
“…Jaeha just woke up after fainting, so I’d better go instead. I’ll go find Shin Haejun and bring him back.”
“But I should…”
“No, I’m worried, so stay here. Han Nari might wake up, so keep an eye on her.”
Hyun Dowoon stopped me with a resolute face. He carefully seated me in a chair and then swiftly went outside the spaceship.
His words were so logical that I couldn’t argue anymore. I had no choice but to stay in the spaceship with Han Nari. In the silence, I thought it would be better to just wait for the two to return quickly.
Outside was covered with soft crops about as tall as a person, like a cornfield. Because of this, I couldn’t see Shin Haejun’s position from inside. I could only see the plants rustling along the path Hyun Dowoon was making. It seemed that even Hyun Dowoon didn’t know where Shin Haejun was, so he was moving directly instead of teleporting.
‘…Huh?’
Suddenly, a small sense of incongruity flashed through my mind. It was really nothing… but like a tiny thorn pricking me, a very small sense of discomfort.
‘…Shin Haejun doesn’t know my phone password.’
My fingerprint is needed to unlock the phone screen. And if someone tries to unlock it without the fingerprint, they would need to enter a 6-digit password next. This was because I had chosen a password instead of a pattern to unlock the screen. I wanted to make sure no one but me could access the phone.
It wasn’t a phone that could use the camera directly from the lock screen like in the real world either. It had to be unlocked first.
‘Then… how is Shin Haejun taking pictures?’
…If he’s not holding the phone to take pictures, what is he doing with someone else’s phone that he can’t use?
Suddenly, my heart started pounding. I felt anxious and ominous.
If I hadn’t known that Shin Haejun had taken it, I would have just been trying to find where it had fallen. But Hyun Dowoon had clearly said that Shin Haejun had taken it.
‘When Dowoon returns with Haejun… then I’ll ask how he used it…’
No, should I ask how he knew my password?
But no matter how I thought about it, neither Shin Haejun nor Hyun Dowoon had any way of knowing my password. I made sure the phone password didn’t overlap with any other passwords, including those for my house or laptop.
Suddenly, that deep sense of despair I felt earlier came rushing back. A flash of intuition that something was wrong struck me.
I clenched my fist tightly, then interlaced my fingers as I felt a chill. I could feel my hands trembling violently.
‘The ring…’
As I unconsciously looked at the finger with the ring, I suddenly felt sad. I was happy after giving the ring, so why did I have to feel this way now…
‘Ring?’
Wait a moment.
Suddenly, I remembered. The function in the ring… the one I never thought I’d use.
The “Record of Love” that could be activated by rubbing the inside of the ring five times was a function that allowed you to see recordings of moments when the person wearing the matching ring talked about you for more than a minute. The one-minute limit seemed to be there to exclude moments when they simply called your name.
Shin Haejun and Hyun Dowoon could use it too, but they didn’t know the item had such a function, so they couldn’t use it…
‘Is it… okay to open the record?’
It was purely a matter of luck. If Shin Haejun hadn’t talked about me to himself after taking my phone, it wouldn’t work.
But at the same time, if it did work. Would it be okay to look at it?
Maybe I would just end up being Pandora, and that would be the end of it. Pandora, who lost her husband because of suspicion, and then tried to get him back, only to ruin the situation again by opening the box out of curiosity.
I have no idea what I’m suspecting or what I want to know, but… what if it just ends with me arbitrarily suspecting the person I love?
Will I be able to look at Shin Haejun and Hyun Dowoon’s faces as if nothing happened?
‘…I’m sorry, Haejun.’
But at the same time, I felt that if I couldn’t resolve this uneasy feeling, I wouldn’t be able to look at Shin Haejun honestly either. Because I would keep thinking about Shin Haejun and the secret of my phone, inflating my imagination.
This is to prevent that. If nothing’s wrong, I can just cover it up.
I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them and took the ring off my finger. It was the symbol of my heart that I couldn’t take off even when washing my face or showering because I was so happy and proud. But now, I took off the ring myself out of suspicion towards Shin Haejun.
‘Please.’
Not knowing what I wanted to find, or what I wanted to wish for, I rubbed the inside of the ring.
Once, twice, three times, four times, and five times.
Wearer: Shin Haejun
Month Day – 5 entries (Currently recording)
A list of moments when Shin Haejun had mentioned me appeared before my eyes. Although it hadn’t been long since I gave him the ring, there were more entries than I expected.
And I stared at the 5 entries from today’s date, which were marked as “Currently recording.”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
