Chapter 32
[BEST] (Breaking News) Did a +15 Native Necklace really appear?
Author: Soul
(JPG)
Yeah, it did ㅋ
– Asuka Server Jungwon Guild recruiting guild members
Comments
➥ ??????
➥ I thought this was fake when I clicked…
➥ What’s the expected cost for a +15?
➥ In cash, it’s hundreds of millions of won.. Even Holy Light didn’t attempt it because it’s too expensive
➥ Is it yours?
➥ Nope ㅋㅋㅋㅋ I’m an Assassin
➥ Wow ㅆㅂ A +15 necklace of all things? Is that even possible?
➥ Nice photoshop
➥➥ It’s not photoshopped
➥ Looking at those beautiful options on a Holy Knight item with class awakening, it must be Holy Light’s item. Is he returning????
➥➥ He successfully sold his items
➥➥ Who’s the big shot that bought them? ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
➥ Soul, so whose item is it?
➥➥ A Holy Knight from Shinmyung guild
➥➥➥ The newbie who demolished the Demon King?? ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
➥ The Chairman must have started playing
➥ Isn’t that person a college student? The rich get to play games comfortably too ㅋㅋㅋㅋ so jealous
➥ Sorry for misunderstanding Demon King!!!!
➥➥ He fought well despite losing…
➥ So the timeline is: Holy Light sells items -> this HolyKnightKnight person buys them -> makes a +15?
➥➥ Yeah seems right
➥ Do Jung-hoon, what did you plant in the guild before going on your trip? ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
➥➥ That’s the #1 YouTuber for you
➥ The surname is the issue
➥ Why is Holy Knight, with its terrible performance, the class that’s breaking the ecosystem instead of Tier 1 classes? ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
➥➥ It was truly the noble class all along…
* * *
With less than six hours of sleep, Ji-won frowned at the ringtone filling his room and lazily reached out to turn off the alarm. Though he’d already paid the fee and roughly packed his things, he felt like backing out and declaring his absence immediately.
Still, he had to go since he said he would. His friends would be there, and he had promised Kwon-ju too. As he forced himself up and was tidying his blanket, his phone suddenly lit up and rang repeatedly. Curious, he checked and found a flood of KakaoTalk messages from Jung-hoon.
[Hey]
[Hey]
[Hey]
[Hey]
[Han Ji-won]
Who sends KakaoTalk messages like this at 6 AM? If there’s no response, he should just assume the person is sleeping and give up, but instead he was determined to create a 300+ notification. Ji-won reluctantly checked the content.
[I bet you’re sleeping]
[Is it true a +15 appeared in our guild?]
[What’s going on]
[People are asking if it’s my stream’s Chairman]
“Chairman” seemed to refer to a fan who regularly donated tens of millions of won to Jung-hoon’s stream. Indeed, it wasn’t strange for people to think that, given that a big spender had suddenly appeared in a YouTuber’s guild. It seemed Jung-hoon was seriously misunderstanding the situation, so Ji-won immediately explained.
[Remember when you came to my house before]
[I told you a new guild member joined]
[Yeah the newbie]
[That person made a +15 necklace]
[Holy shit]
[No wonder, our Chairman is 48 and doesn’t play games]
[Our newbie is 21..]
[??]
[How does a 21-year-old make a +15? Seriously]
[Who did you bring into the guild?]
I didn’t know what kind of newbie I was bringing in either… And it was even more unexpected that it would be Kwon-ju. He didn’t bother mentioning that it was his junior.
[Must be one of those real gold spoons they talk about]
[Makes life feel pointless..]
Ji-won found it ridiculous that Jung-hoon, who at twenty-three was already raking in money from his broadcasts, was acting like the world was so bitter. As if he wasn’t currently lounging in a five-star hotel.
Well, there’s no end to envy. Ji-won himself had sometimes wished he could spend hundreds of millions of won on Arc Serenity. And the fact that Kwon-ju hadn’t even played for long but bought items right from the start made him seem especially extraordinary, like he was living in a different dimension.
Understanding that everyone probably felt the same way, Ji-won replied while putting on the clothes he’d laid out.
[Go eat something]
[I need to sleep first and then eat lol]
[Bye]
Still on streaming break but hasn’t broken the habit of going to sleep at sunrise. Ji-won, genuinely concerned about his friend’s health, left the house on an empty stomach.
“You’re here?”
Mingyu, who had arrived early and was checking attendance, greeted him with a welcoming face. As Ji-won stood next to him waiting for the slow classmates who hadn’t arrived yet, Kwon-ju, who arrived right on time, had no friends to wait for and boarded the bus first.
Kwon-ju sat in a suitable front seat without much thought. The back was already occupied by seniors, and he had no one to sit with. Of course, there was someone he wanted to sit with… As he was looking at the white clouds outside the window and imagining that face, he heard someone loudly calling Ji-won’s name from a distance. He didn’t know who it was, but it must be one of his many friends.
“Hey, hurry up.”
“Just a moment.”
Rushing onto the bus at his friend’s urging, Ji-won’s eyes caught someone sitting by the window. Today too, his face gleamed brilliantly as if receiving natural light from a movie. The empty seat next to him would surely remain vacant until arrival. It seemed he still hadn’t made friends.
“I’m going to sit here. You go to the back.”
“Huh? Why?”
Ji-won winked at his friend’s bewildered question and plopped down in the empty seat. Kwon-ju, who was about to frown at the sudden presence, immediately softened his expression when a familiar scent touched his nose, and Ji-won greeted him.
“Hi, Kwon-ju.”
“Oh, hi.”
“We played the game for too long yesterday. Aren’t you tired?”
“A little.”
His heart was pounding since he hadn’t even considered the possibility of Ji-won sitting next to him for the trip. He’d assumed Ji-won would naturally go with his friends and hadn’t prepared himself mentally. They were so close that their shoulders would touch if either leaned slightly, and he could even feel Ji-won’s body heat. He would need to stay firmly on guard.
But the important fact was that he was on this bus with less than five hours of sleep. Apart from his efforts to maintain a regular lifestyle, Kwon-ju was a heavy sleeper. He still couldn’t break his habit of sleeping 12 hours a day from his high school days.
“……”
Ji-won, who had been quietly listening to music with his eyes closed, glanced to the side when he suddenly felt a weight. It seemed that Kwon-ju’s nodding head had found a stable place to rest on his shoulder. Looking at the hair gently swaying above Kwon-ju’s forehead and the features settled beneath it, Ji-won thought anew: He really is pretty.
If it had been Mingyu or another classmate, he would have shaken them awake or nudged them to lean against the window instead, but for some reason, his hand wouldn’t move. With such a pretty face sleeping so peacefully, pushing him away seemed… not something a person should do. After a brief deliberation, he decided to leave it be and turned his head to the opposite direction. I’ll wake him after we go a little further.
“…Oh.”
But before Ji-won could wake him, Kwon-ju’s eyes suddenly flew open when the bus hit a speed bump and shook violently. He belatedly began to assess the situation. Where was his head resting? The hard yet somehow warm sensation was clearly someone’s shoulder.
“Are you awake?”
“Ah, yes.”
Kwon-ju quickly answered and sprang up from the shoulder like a released spring. If it had been him, he would have just pushed the person so their head hit the window, but how could someone be so kind? To cool the heat rising to his face, Kwon-ju hastily pressed the cold back of his hand against his cheek. Ji-won smiled kindly at his flustered junior and casually fixed Kwon-ju’s flattened hair with his palm.
“Your hair got squished.”
“I’m sorry, I fell asleep suddenly.”
“It’s fine.”
Normally he couldn’t even fall asleep in such an uncomfortable bus, let alone with his crush sitting next to him—he had no idea how he’d managed to doze off. A quick glance at Ji-won’s shoulder showed it was fine, so fortunately he hadn’t drooled. Just then, the bus entered a tunnel, and as he hurriedly checked his face in the window’s reflection, he met eyes with someone staring at him from behind.
“…Ah.”
As soon as their eyes met in the window, Ji-won burst into laughter and turned his head the other way. Kwon-ju’s face, which had heated up instantly at the brief sound of laughter that brushed past his ear, turned bright red. He shouldn’t keep showing his reactions on the outside like this. He felt resentful about being made to react this way, but seeing Ji-won’s smiling face erased all other emotions, leaving only pure happiness.
Somehow the start felt good. Although he never wanted to go to any group activities like MTs, the simple fact that Ji-won was there made him feel that it would be an enjoyable day.
…Or so he thought just a few hours ago.
“Just mix it all, damn it.”
“Hands up if you need more pork belly.”
The smell of alcohol, the smell of meat, and the loud voices filling the pension—he felt like he was suffocating. There were many people, but the bottles of alcohol lined up endlessly, as if they had brought countless boxes. It would have been nice to be just a spectator of this nauseating scene, but right now, Kwon-ju was part of it.
Hell began the moment the bus arrived at the pension. They suddenly divided everyone into teams and played games like crazy people until sunset. To the point of nausea. It was aggressive and disorienting, like some outdated variety show, and his mind immediately emptied. Even though he had mentally prepared himself before coming, it was no use. Reality was worse than his imagination.
After enduring such torture for hours, there was no way he wanted to eat something while trapped in this human hell. He could just say he felt unwell and go lie down in his room, but Ji-won had again sat next to him, so he couldn’t bring himself to leave. Every minute, every second spent together was precious.
As Kwon-ju kept repeating the meaningless action of picking up and putting down the instant rice in front of him with his chopsticks, Ji-won suddenly spoke to him.
“Not hungry?”
Their shoulders touched. It was because the seats were cramped, but regardless of the reason, the fact that they were in contact without any gap remained unchanged. Somehow, he felt like he could breathe a little better. The smells flooding his nose seemed to fade, and instead, the sound of his heartbeat grew a little louder.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
