time if he were to seek out the remaining dead Giants and turn them into Shadow Soldiers.
He did leave a shadow on standby there, so the issue of travelling back would be resolved as soon as Shadow Exchange’s cooldown time had elapsed. But his current problem would be with how he’d go about spending the next two hours of waiting.
‘Going home…. is out of the question.’
Her son came back home after over a week spent in another country, so what kind of expression would his mom make if he had to leave again only a couple of hours later?
He didn’t have to be there to know.
Ting!
The elevator stopped on the ground floor and opened its door.
Even as he stepped out of the Seoul Ilsin Hospital’s front entrance, Jin-Woo continued to agonise over what he should next, but then, a rather nice idea popped up in his head.
‘Okay, should I search for an ownerless dungeon or something?’
Jin-Woo undid ‘Stealth’ and greatly extended out his sensory perception.
His senses picked up four or five Gates near his location. He pulled out his Hunter-issued smartphone and accessed the Association’s app to confirm the details on those Gates.
‘….Found you.’
Jin-Woo found out that two of those Gates weren’t reported to the Association yet. A meaningful smile formed on Jin-Woo’s face right away.
***
“Miss. We’ve arrived.”
“Thank you, driver.”
Chairman Yu Myung-Han’s eldest daughter, Yu Jin-Hui, was returning to the hospital after escorting her nearly-fainted mother back home. She stepped out from the chauffeur-driven car’s back seat.
She felt as if the heavens were crashing down on her the day she learned of her father slowly dying from that illness.
Even then, she unreservedly believed her father’s words.
[“I’m still searching through all avenues for a cure. I seemed to have found a strand of hope, so do not worry about me too much.”]
If someone else declared oh-so-proudly that he’d cure this incurable illness, Yu Jin-Hui would flat out not believe that man.
However, just who was her father?
Was he not the one and only Chairman Yu Myung-Han, the man who could legitimately be called the top dog in South Korea’s financial world?
That was why she held on to that slim strand of hope, but in the end, things had become like this. If only she knew things would end up this way. She’d have thrown away all notions of studying abroad and spent more time with her father, instead.
She recalled him doing his best to hide his loneliness when she told him about her plans to study abroad and quietly wiped her tears away.
It was around then.
As she raised her head, her eyes briefly caught the sight of a rather familiar face walking past her.
‘…Uh? This man….’
Hadn’t she seen that face often before?
As she began wondering where she had seen him, the man also must’ve sensed her gaze, because he pulled the hood down even further and rapidly distanced himself from her.
She stared at the man’s back and tilted her head just a little, before resuming her walk. The identity of that man was not an important issue to her, anyway.
Yu Jin-Hui anxiously waited for the elevator’s door to open up. But then, her phone suddenly issued out loud ringtones.
Ringggg, ringgg…
With the hour being so late already, the corridors of the hospital were mostly empty now and the ringtone sounded especially loud to her ears.
She didn’t recognise the number shown on the screen. She usually wouldn’t answer a call from an unfamiliar number like this, but now….
‘Who could this be….?’
Perhaps because she had been experiencing a storm of events for the whole day, she got this feeling that she should answer this call no matter what.
Yu Jin-Hui tapped the ‘Answer’ icon and pressed the phone to her ear.
“Hello?”
– “Yes, hello. I’m calling from Seoul Ilsin Hospital, miss. I couldn’t get in touch with your mother and had no choice but to contact you first.”
Her mother had taken a shot of sedative and had fallen asleep at home, so she wouldn’t be able to wake up and answer the phone now.
But, why was the hospital calling her like this? Yu Jin-Hui instantly became scared by this call made by the doctor in charge.
That was why she was extra cautious when asking back.
“Did something happen?”
– “Actually, Chairman Yu Myung-Han has….”
As she heard the ensuing explanation, her eyes grew as large and round as a rabbit’s.
This had to be a lie.
‘You, you expect me to believe that?!’
Her eyes were getting wetter and wetter but she still managed to ask that one last question.
“You… are you telling me the truth??”
– “We also would not have believed it’s real if it weren’t for confirming the fact with our own eyes. It’s pretty much impossible to find any patient waking up from the ‘final sleep’ state, you see. In any case, please hurry and come to the hospital, miss. We do not know when the Chairman might fall back asleep again.”
“H-hang on! I’m already there!”
Ting!
With excellent timing, the elevator opened its door and Yu Jin-Hui practically threw herself inside.
Oh my god.
‘Really…. Truly??’
These few minutes the elevator took to climb up felt like the longest moments in her entire life so far.
Ting.
The moment the door opened, she rushed out and entered the hospital room – and was greeted by the sight of her father’s face shifting towards her.
From the top of his head right down to the tip of his toes, he was definitely her father and there was no need to even suspect otherwise.
“Dad!!”
Yu Myung-Han, currently surrounded by a cordon of doctors, turned his head towards his little girl.
“Jin-Hui….?”
“Dad!”
She jumped into his embrace and as Yu Myung-Han gently patted her back, he finally realised that he had returned from death’s doorstep somehow.
‘I’m alive.’
However, could he really describe this as a coincidence?
While the cordon of doctors in charge responded with whispers of “It’s a miracle”, and with his daughter sobbing her eyes out as she clung to her dad, Yu Myung-Han began focusing on the sounds of his own beating heart.
‘B-but…. How could this be??’
Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump!!
He was already well past his fifties, yet his heart was pounding away vigorously as if he was still in his twenties, instead.
< Chapter 180 > Fin.