WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The S-Classes That I Raised ◈

Chapter 89: Calm Down (2)

──────

Crunch!

I reflexively opened my eyes at the sound of something breaking. Was it Blue? I was about to ask what Blue had broken this time when I saw the table and remembered I was at Yoohyun’s place. The nine o’clock news was playing on the TV.

...Nine o’clock? Yoohyun had insisted he wasn’t sleepy after coming home, but had he fallen asleep in the end? I should’ve set an alarm instead of deciding sleep was too much trouble.

I quickly sat up and saw Yoohyun on the sofa. He wasn’t asleep.

“Hey, why didn’t you...!”

The words asking why he hadn’t woken me died in my throat. His eyes, fixed on me, were cold and black. I could hear Peace growling faintly on his lap. In Yoohyun’s hand was a phone that had nearly been crushed to pieces.

“Is your hand okay? No, of course it is, but...”

I gathered Peace into my arms first. I might not feel it well, but he seemed to be in a pretty murderous state. I didn’t know why.

...Actually, there were so many reasons for him to be angry that I couldn’t tell which one it was. Since he looked this serious, was it Noah?

“Um...”

“I’m not going to listen to you.”

Yoohyun cut me off and stood. He practically threw the broken phone onto the table, then opened a display cabinet in one corner of the living room. Maybe he misjudged his strength for once, because the cabinet handle broke off. Inside were unopened boxes of phones.

“What are all those?”

“They break easily.”

He answered, but his voice was far from normal. It looked like he intended to just replace the SIM card, but would the chip even still be intact? Then I heard another crunch.

Crunch.

The smashed phone fell at Yoohyun’s feet along with its box.

“...Hey.”

“The packaging wouldn’t open properly.”

As he said that, he crushed the second phone too. A small sigh escaped him. He wasn’t doing this on purpose. Realizing that made worry hit me all at once.

“Yoohyun.”

“Just a moment.”

His voice had been completely flat since earlier. He managed to take out the third phone safely, but the SIM pin went into the wrong spot. The hand holding it seemed to tremble faintly. He stared at the cracked phone and ground his teeth.

“...Want me to do it?”

“No.”

Then the last phone broke too. Heavy silence settled over the room. Han Yoohyun stared hard at the crushed phone in his hand without moving, like a doll whose springs had all unwound.

“Yoohyun. Han Yoohyun.”

“...”

His reaction was definitely strange. I set Peace on the sofa and stood. Yoohyun didn’t move at all even as I took a step closer.

“Even if you don’t want to hear it, listen. I wasn’t trying to hide anything. It was obvious you’d find out soon anyway, so why would I hide it? I just forgot for a while. After I heard that you and Peace were out, I couldn’t think of anything but you two.”

I really had forgotten completely. If I had remembered, I would have prepared an excuse and explained before this mess happened.

“...You forgot?”

“Yeah. I don’t know what you found out, but it wasn’t a big deal.”

Yoohyun’s eyes barely turned toward me. They were stiff with anger, but there was also the faintest trace of fear.

“How could it not be a big deal? The only thing that reassured me was thinking your life wouldn’t be in danger. At least high-grade Hunters would keep you alive because you were useful to them.”

So it was about Noah after all.

“He didn’t attack me.”

“...He didn’t?”

“Yeah. He wanted to go after someone else.”

The problem was that he thought I was that other person, Riette.

Yoohyun let out a short breath and placed the broken phone in the cabinet.

“Who was it?”

“You broke all the phones without listening? Noah Ruhir. He isn’t from Korea. Apparently, he’s the Guildmaster of an overseas guild called Arc.”

Yoohyun looked like he didn’t know the name. He frowned slightly and asked again.

“Are you sure? He didn’t say anything strange, did he?”

“Anything strange?”

“...Like he’d fallen into some kind of cult.”

Why was he suddenly bringing up cults? He couldn’t mean an ordinary cult. Was he talking about the group that worshipped the dungeon system as a god? No, they hadn’t grown their influence yet.

“I don’t know what that is, but not at all. It was basically a sibling quarrel. I just got caught up in it because of bad luck, and Yerim protected me, so I wasn’t hurt much. I was treated properly, too. Look.”

There wasn’t a single mark left now. The injury had not been serious to begin with. Yerim had been hurt much worse.

“More importantly, what do you mean by cult? Aren’t you supposed to be wary of other guilds and people connected to Hunters?”

“I don’t know the details either. ...Something like Confucianism?”

“No, that’s not a cult.”

Confucius would weep. More importantly, could Confucianism really cause something this serious? Judging by Yoohyun’s reaction, it had seemed like an SSS-Class monster had appeared.

I was about to press him for more details when Yoohyun beat me to it.

“So, is this Noah guy dead?”

“...All his limbs are intact. He was only restrained.”

“He didn’t escape, and he’s intact?”

Yoohyun tilted his head as though that made no sense.

“He let himself be captured, there were no deaths, and no non-Awakened people were hurt. Don’t go provoking him for no reason, Yoohyun. Once you know the story, he’s a pitiful person.”

“Did the Sesung Guildmaster go back into the dungeon?”

“No. He brought a healer.”

“And you say it wasn’t a big deal? Is he connected to that guy?”

...Was leaving someone alive supposed to mean they were connected? What kind of logic was that?

“He did offer to subdue him. I refused, though. Anyway, he made a mistake, and he’s calm now, so leave him alone.”

“We’ll see. Then what are those handprints on your neck?”

...He found out about that too. At least Yoohyun knew I had Fear Resistance, so it was easier to explain. After I repeated what Song Taewon had told me, he looked displeased but seemed to accept it.

“So I’m going to keep Fear Resistance turned off at home, at least. Given my situation, it’s better to leave it on most of the time since I’ll often run into high-grade Hunters.”

“...Try turning it off.”

“Now?”

There was no reason not to. I nodded and deactivated Fear Resistance. There was no immediate difference. I could just feel Yoohyun and Peace’s presence a little more strongly. Like the difference between a house cat and a leopard cat.

Yoohyun watched my reaction closely, then smiled slightly with his eyes.

“It doesn’t seem like anything changed.”

“Of course not. Just in case, nothing really happened in the hospital room. Goblin was playing a prank. Even Peep was there, but not a single feather was harmed.”

I got ahead of it and picked up Peace, who had been prowling around my feet. It was nearly ten by then. Blue must already be asleep.

“I should head home soon. Do you have anything else to ask?”

“I’ll take you.”

He held out his palm to me.

“What?”

“The key.”

He demanded it like it was only natural. I placed one of the two remaining front door keys on his palm.

* * *

Since it was the building right next door, we decided to walk. With Yoohyun and Peace there, I had no reason to worry about safety.

With Fear Resistance off, I felt a slight pressure from an A-Class Hunter we passed along the way. It was a little absurd to be intimidated by an A-Class Hunter with an S-Class beside me, but I had been that way even before my regression. I found Kim Seonghan and Seok Simyeong scarier and more uncomfortable than Yoohyun. Maybe it was because I had known Yoohyun since we were young.

The SIM card had survived, and there was a phone store across the street, so after Yoohyun bought a new phone, we walked down the road. The night air was still fairly cool, and it felt pleasant.

“It’s been a while since we did this.”

Just walking down the street together normally, without anything happening. It must have been a while for Yoohyun too, but for me, it had been a really, incredibly long time. Perhaps because we were near the Haeyeon Guild, surprisingly no one approached us, which made me think even more of the past.

“If the world had stayed the same, this wouldn’t be something we hadn’t done in a while.”

Why had things turned out this way? I hadn’t asked the system administrators that. Even if I had, I doubted I would have received a proper answer.

“Would you prefer a world without dungeons?”

“Of course. They’re dangerous, more than anything.”

“People with good skills or stats usually think the opposite. Unless they’ve suffered direct harm.”

I supposed that was true. If I had been at least A-Class from the start, I might have thought life was ridiculously easy. Now, though, I was sick of A-Class and S-Class alike.

I was already rather tired, and worried about what was to come. I even doubted whether everything would really end well if I just gathered fifty people, as the system administrators had said.

...Was this sudden sense that my future was completely dark another effect of turning off Fear Resistance? It felt like all the worries I had pushed aside were rushing in at once.

“Did anything special come out as a dungeon reward?”

I quickly changed the subject. They had cleared an S-Class dungeon with only two people, and really only one S-Class if Peace was excluded, so the rewards should have been better than usual. Maybe he had received a title.

Yoohyun hesitated for a moment, then took something out of his inventory.

“Something I’ve never seen before came out, but I don’t know what it’s for.”

In his hand was a small red egg.

“It’s an SSS-Class item called Red Egg.”

“That...”

I had seen it before. Before my regression. One of the mysterious egg series that appeared very rarely. There had been around five, including red, blue, and green eggs, but no one had discovered anything about them. They were too hard to break, and no matter what people tried, they never reacted, so they had been deemed useless.

“I have no idea either. Let me see it for a moment.”

I took the egg and tried using My Kid, just in case. But not even a notification that the Keyword had not been applied appeared. As expected, it did not work. Even if a growth skill could affect it, applying a Keyword to an egg with no ears would be impossible.

Then I tried Sprout too, but once again, nothing appeared.

“It doesn’t seem like an ordinary monster egg. Is it really just an item?”

If it were alive, Sprout should have worked, but there was no reaction.

“Maybe we should give it to Myeongu. It might be usable as a material.”

“Do whatever you want.”

As I tried to put the egg into my inventory, Peace showed interest. When I held it in front of it, it immediately bit down and gnawed at it. Of course, it did not receive even a scratch. It was an egg that had not budged despite every method tried by S-Class Hunters five years later, whose stats were higher than they are now.

“Don’t drop it.”

- Grrr.

Even though it was the building next door, the rearing facility was large, and we had to go around the building in front, so it took quite a while to walk there. I was worried about Peep, who probably was not asleep yet, and Comet, who would wake soon, but despite that, my steps were unhurried.

As we chatted about this and that, we arrived in front of the rearing facility. What should I do? Should I ask Yoohyun to stay the night? But Comet was a problem. Maybe I should leave Comet at the rearing facility for just today. One day should be fine.

Then my phone rang. When I checked it, there was a text from Song Taewon.

[Noah Ruhir has disappeared again. Please confirm.]

Again? Why did he keep escaping?

‘...Don’t tell me he’s sitting in front of the miniportal again.’

A chill ran down my spine. I turned my head. Yoohyun smiled when our eyes met. I immediately turned Fear Resistance back on. As soon as my mind calmed, I smiled back as though nothing was wrong.

“Yoohyun, could we go back to the Haeyeon Guild?”

“Hm? Why all of a sudden?”

“I just want to rest properly for a day. If I go in now, I’ll have to look after the kids again, and thinking about it makes me tired.”

My little brother looked puzzled.

“There’s a rearing facility. There are Hunters in charge, too. Didn’t you leave them there already?”

“That’s true, but...”

Damn it, what should I do? If I went in like this and ran into Noah, there was no telling what would happen. Yoohyun might just greet him politely and pass by, but I could not be sure Noah would not think of his sister when he saw me.

...Was my poor home really about to get wrecked for the second day in a row? I had barely moved in.

“Let’s go in.”

“Wait, just wait...”

Yoohyun opened the glass entrance door. Without listening to me, he took a few steps inside, then stopped abruptly. He slowly tilted his head.

“That’s an unfamiliar presence.”

“He isn’t my fri... friend. He’s the younger brother of someone I know!”

“You know someone with an S-Class Hunter for a younger brother? I don’t remember that.”

“We got friendly recently, through social media.”

We had become a little friendly, but now things had gone wrong. ...Should I tell him about Riette too? Too many people had heard the call, so hiding it was already impossible. Why had so much happened in just a few days?

“But why is he here? In the middle of the night, too.”

“He came to visit about monster rearing. Um, I guess he wants to show his sincerity...”

How was I supposed to explain this? While I was trying to organize my thoughts, Yoohyun started walking again.

Oh, seriously!

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried