Even an S-Class Hunter Wants to Get Married - Chapter 23
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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23. Margin!
Crack!
Kim Ju-seon’s punch, landing squarely on target, shakes Baek Yeon-hwa’s head violently.
Her pupils trembled, and tears formed at the edges of her Golden Eyes.
He was certain once again.
She had already returned.
“Grgh-.”
Baek Yeon-hwa staggered backward.
She barely managed to regain her balance by striking the ground with her Tail, but what was shaking wasn’t her body—it was her heart.
“Are you still going to keep this up?”
Instead of an answer, rough breathing escaped her.
The growling breaths gradually, little by little, changed into human breathing.
“Hgh…ugh…!”
Before long.
The Dragon’s Roar had disappeared.
What remained in its place was a girl’s sobbing.
“Hgh! I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“…”
The broken Baek Yeon-hwa repeatedly offered apologies.
Words pouring out indiscriminately, as if she didn’t know who they were directed toward.
“Pull yourself together, Ms. Baek Yeon-hwa. What you need to do right now isn’t kneeling down.”
Kim Ju-seon didn’t approach her.
He didn’t extend his hand either.
What was needed now wasn’t apologies, but action.
“You know it too, don’t you? If things continue like this, it’ll escalate into an all-out war between the 3rd Floor and 5th Floor. The inter-floor war will break out again.”
The weight on her shoulders was extraordinary.
Even if she hadn’t wanted it, if she had shouldered it, she had to take responsibility.
“B-But how could I possibly interfere with what the Azure Dragon is doing-.”
“The Azure Dragon is descending because of you, Baek Yeon-hwa.”
“That’s-.”
“Think about it. Why did the Azure Dragon suddenly start descending? Why do you think it’s happening now of all times?”
Since it’s an urgent situation, I interrupt and ask.
Baek Yeon-hwa slowly looks down at the wound on her abdomen. The wound the assassins had stabbed had already healed, but the bloodstains on her white martial arts uniform were still vivid.
“…It was because of the assassins.”
She points it out carefully, but clearly.
“At first, I thought they came to test Lukal. But that wasn’t it.”
She continues while retracing her memories.
Baek Yeon-hwa’s face gradually turns pale.
“They had some other intention. Their purpose was to harm me and make the Azure Dragon descend to this place.”
After that, Baek Yeon-hwa went berserk and was swept away by the Azure Dragon’s power.
I don’t know what the assassins’ real purpose was.
I know there’s an honorable title called Dragon Slayer on the 4th Floor, but-.
‘If they were only strong enough to be defeated by Baek Yeon-hwa, they probably didn’t intend to hunt the Azure Dragon.’
Their only purpose was simply to summon the Azure Dragon to this place.
Then are they aiming for the Second Inter-Floor War?
I’m not sure, but that’s not what’s important right now.
“Baek Yeon-hwa, you must have realized it while speaking.”
“Wh-What?”
“That the Azure Dragon is descending to this place to save you.”
Baek Yeon-hwa closes her mouth and slowly looks up at the sky.
The lightning strikes are beginning to intensify, and now they’re falling on surrounding buildings, causing fires.
The lightning rods installed on the buildings can’t withstand this level.
A literal disaster.
A divine disaster is descending, risking everything for just one person – Baek Yeon-hwa.
“I know that the Azure Dragon is not a welcome presence for you.”
“…!”
Baek Yeon-hwa jerks her head up in surprise.
Her expression shows both irreverence and the look of being caught.
“But I want to ask you something.”
Miss Baek Yeon-hwa.
“Have you ever refused even once?”
“What…?”
“I heard about the Heavenly Record. About how your life has flowed.”
Baek Yeon-hwa’s head drops down.
“Or have you ever raised your voice and shouted even once?”
Her hands slowly clench into fists.
“What, what meaning would that have?”
The resentment she had chewed up and swallowed flows out. What would you know?
For the first time, it was a voice mixed with faint reproach and anger.
The room where the Heavenly Record was written, the Azure Dragon’s voice descending.
The time she endured the oppressive weight they pressed down with her small body was something others should not carelessly judge.
“What meaning would it have! In the end, all of my time stems from that being! My friend’s death too! The reason for the life I built up! My dreams too! In the end, everything-! Everything…!”
Was not mine.
A sigh poured out with tears.
Her life was a novel.
To put it more simply, it was a movie.
Every background was a set, every person was an actor, and every narrative was a script.
Having reached this point in such a way, could she truly.
Really be called ‘Baek Yeon-hwa’?
Or.
Was she merely a ‘character’ named ‘Baek Yeon-hwa’ within the Heavenly Record?
It would be quite difficult to provide an answer.
What Baek Yeon-hwa felt was surely the latter.
It wasn’t that it had been empty from the beginning.
Everything she had believed to be her life was suddenly taken away.
The woman who had lost her way could do nothing but follow.
Kwaaaaang-!
“Right now, even this moment-.”
Along with the fierce lightning strike, Kim Ju-seon’s voice pierces into her ears.
“Is it written in the Heavenly Record?”
The epic poem that recorded your life.
Within that cruel prophecy of the future that you’ve read until it was worn and faded-.
“No.”
There was no such scene.
There was never a moment when her life was threatened, at least not until her forties.
“Then you see.”
He grabs her arm and pulls her along.
Ironically, it was because of this crisis that a unique moment was created.
“This moment- isn’t this the first time you can truly exist as Baek Yeon-hwa?”
Out of the 23 years she had lived.
The only day not recorded in the Heavenly Record.
As he pushes her back, she stumbles forward step by step.
The black path written with the brush called the Heavenly Record.
Baek Yeon-hwa, who had been walking on the text, derails for the first time and steps into the margins.
“Go and speak.”
One step, then another step.
Her footsteps begin to mark the Heavenly Record like stains.
“The emotions inside me right now are definitely my own.”
* * *
Looking up at the sky, Baek Yeon-hwa could feel it.
The Azure Dragon’s gaze was clearly looking down at her.
Her throat felt completely blocked.
Something large and thick was stuck in her throat, making it impossible for her to speak.
Even so.
The words he had spoken made her stand in this place.
23 years.
The first moment she stepped onto the blank space of the Heavenly Record.
Before she knew it.
The role disappeared.
And the woman hidden within was revealed.
Then finally, she felt as if whatever was blocking her throat had disappeared.
Not as a role that must not speak anything outside the script, but as Baek Yeon-hwa herself-.
“Answer me, my god.”
She speaks her first words.
“That all life flows within predetermined constraints-.”
Her tightly clenched fist.
Is the trembling due to fear?
“What I like, what I hate-.”
No, it’s because of an inexplicable sense of liberation.
“My happiness-! And my misfortune too-!”
Everything.
“It was all fake!”
Kwaaaaang-!
A massive Lightning Strike falls.
However, it was clearly different from the blue lightning that had been tinged with anger before.
Baek Yeon-hwa puts even more strength into her voice.
At this moment, the Azure Dragon is clearly listening to her voice.
Her plea reaches the heavens.
“Even all my efforts were completely meaningless! That-! That is! The truth is!”
Kwaang-! Kwang!
“It wasn’t me! Anyone else could have done it!”
Lightning strikes near Baek Yeon-hwa.
Even so, Baek Yeon-hwa showed not the slightest retreat.
“At 17! Was it also you who killed my friend Mi So-hwa? Though I cried and wailed for three days and nights, the vow I made while smiling before that child’s grave in the end-!”
“My promise to inherit So-hwa’s dream of becoming the greatest master under heaven-!”
In the end.
“Wasn’t it all a script you wrote in that damn Heavenly Record!”
Kwaa-! Kwaang!
Just as the Azure Dragon had been most deeply involved in Baek Yeon-hwa’s life.
She too was the only human who had built the deepest connection with the Azure Dragon.
Baek Yeon-hwa knew the meaning of the pouring lightning.
This was not anger.
It was neither judgment nor punishment.
Nor was it wrath over betrayal.
What was falling from the sky right now was-.
“Are you crying?”
It was tears.
“Are you sad?”
For having given the wrong kind of love.
Having never loved, nor been loved.
These were the tears of a father who was painfully incompetent.
Only after breaking free from the oppressive scenario that Azure Dragon had believed to be love did the girl realize.
That she was not merely a role to play, but a daughter.
Her heart ached piercingly.
Baek Yeon-hwa’s heart also stung at the sorrow of the being who had most greatly swayed her life.
After all, the time they had spent together certainly existed.
The most fearsome yet also most reliable ally had always been him.
“My, my god—.”
But.
“If you truly love me—.”
Relationships are beautiful precisely because they have endings.
And sometimes, twisted knots that cannot be untied must simply be cut.
“Now please, let me go.”
A parent’s role is to embrace their child.
But they cannot do so forever.
On that day that must inevitably come.
A parent’s duty extends only to letting go of their child’s hand and watching them move forward.
From beyond the sky filled with fury.
The sound of something crying could be heard.
However, fierce Lightning Strike concealed that weeping, and in the end—.
The dragon’s form slowly disappeared beyond the sky.
“Ah—.”
She opened her mouth.
But no sound came out.
Too many things came rushing at once, choking her throat.
Several times, cries that couldn’t become screams came out like breathing sounds-.
“Hh-.”
A small breath that leaked out.
“Hhu-.”
Breathing that gradually grew louder.
“Hhuuk-.”
Soon it clearly transformed into crying.
“Uaaaaaa-!”
The cry that poured out until her throat was torn soon couldn’t even maintain its sound and scattered.
The woman who had gained freedom cried out loud like a baby meeting the world for the first time.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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