Chapter 134: DO YOU CARE ABOUT ME THAT MUCH?

My face was burning hot.

I sat there on the cold stone floor, rubbing my left cheek where Viora had just slapped me. The sting was real. The cold air filling my lungs was real. The dark, terrifying walls of the bottomless pit were real.

But that field of white flowers? That beautiful blue sky? That soft, warm breath against my lips?

It was a lie. A total, complete illusion created by my own unconscious mind.

’Did I really just dream about kissing Viora in the middle of an apocalypse?’

We were literally trapped in a collapsing palace. The kingdom above us was burning to ash. A legendary Elven Knight was trying to slaughter my entire party.

And yet, my stupid brain decided that it was the perfect time to have a romantic dream.

’What the hell is wrong with my brain?!’

I wanted to scream out loud. I wanted to punch the stone wall until my knuckles bled just to distract myself.

I was supposed to be the spectator who only cared about keeping the timeline intact. But my subconscious mind was clearly going in a completely different direction.

"Woo Jin?"

Viora’s quiet voice broke through my chaotic thoughts.

I flinched slightly. In the deep darkness of the pit, I couldn’t see her eyes, but I knew she was looking right toward me. Even without her mask, her pale face seemed to catch the tiny bits of faint light reflecting off the stones. She looked so calm, so grounded, while I was sitting here losing my mind over a fake kiss.

"Are you fine?" she asked. Her voice was soft, but it carried a deep layer of worry. She tilted her head, trying to listen to the sound of my ragged breathing. "You are moving around a lot. Is your head still spinning?"

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to force the image of the white sundress out of my head. I took a deep, shaky breath and forced my voice to sound flat. To sound normal.

"Huh? Yeah. Yeah, I am fine," I said quickly.

I gave a tight, awkward nod that she couldn’t even see.

"It was just a sudden fall. I am completely awake now. We need to figure out where we are and how to get back up to the others."

I gripped the rough stone floor with my hands, preparing to stand up. I wanted to act strong. I wanted to show her that I was completely unaffected by the drop. I pushed myself up, extending my legs to stand tall.

Snap.

The moment my left foot pressed into the ground, a flash of pain shot up my leg.

It wasn’t just a normal ache. It felt like a hot iron rod was being driven straight through my knee and up into my hip. The sheer intensity of the pain caught me completely off guard.

"Ah—!"

A choked gasp escaped my lips. My left leg gave out completely and I couldn’t even balance myself. My body tilted sideways, and I stumbled down straight, crashing heavily back onto the hard bedrock.

Thud!

My shoulder slammed into the dirt, and I curled into a tight ball, my hands flying down to clutch my left knee.

"Woo Jin!"

Viora didn’t hesitate. I heard the frantic rustle of her dress as she dropped to her knees right beside me. Her hands moved blindly but quickly through the dark, instantly finding my shoulders.

"Don’t move! Do not try to stand up!"

"Damn it..." I wheezed, my forehead pressed against the cold dirt. "My leg... what the hell..."

"Your leg is dislocated. Or broken," Viora said.

Her hands slid down my thigh, moving with a gentle but firm pressure until she reached my knee. The moment her fingers lightly brushed the side of the joint, another wave of intense pain made my whole body shiver.

"The bone shifted completely out of place," she whispered. Her voice carried a heavy, painful realization. "And your back..."

I let out a ragged, trembling breath. The adrenaline from waking up from that dream had temporarily blocked the pain, but now that it was fully awake, I could feel the true damage. My back felt like it had been hit by a freight train.

And it all made perfect sense.

We had fallen down a vertical stone chute that went down dozens of meters. A fall from that height should have killed a regular person instantly. Even for a hunter with enhanced stats, it was supposed to leave me near death. But I had twisted my body in mid-air. I had intentionally positioned myself at the bottom.

I had made sure that when we hit the solid floor of this pit, Viora would land directly on top of me.

My body had acted as a human cushion, absorbing the entire kinetic force of the impact for both of us. And because she had fallen on top of me with all that speed, the extra weight had completely shattered the structural limits of my left leg.

It was all thanks to the points I had recived from the last Mermaid Gate and put them all into endurance.

Viora sat back on her heels. The silence between us grew heavy, thick with the smell of dust and the distant, muffled echoes of the war raging far above our heads. I could hear the faint, rumbling tremors of the palace foundations groaning, but right here, in this deep hole, the world felt incredibly small.

"I saw you," Viora said softly.

I kept my head down, my cheek pressed against the ground, trying to breathe through the throbbing pain in my knee.

"What... what are you talking about?"

"In the air," she said. Her hands came back to my face, her fingertips gently brushing away the dark dust that had gathered on my skin. "When the floor broke. We were falling into the dark. I felt the wind changing. I felt your arms wrap around my waist, and then... I felt you twist."

I went completely still.

"I saw the faint outline of your body moving beneath me," she continued, her voice dropping into a quiet, intense whisper. "You forced yourself to go first. You made sure you would hit the ground before I did."

"That..." I started, but my throat felt completely dry. I swallowed hard, trying to find a logical explanation. "That was... That was just..."

Shit... What am I supposed to say to her? Should I tell her that I care about her which is why I did that? Or, maybe I like falling down?

"Viora... I was—"

"You could have died, Woo Jin," she cut me off.

Her words were simple, but they carried a massive weight. She leaned over me, her face coming close enough that I could feel the slight warmth of her breath against my cheek again, mirroring the dream from earlier. But this time, it was real. This time, there was no field of flowers. Just the raw, brutal reality of her words.

"If the angle had been slightly different, your neck would have broken. Your spine would have shattered."

I clamped my mouth shut. She was right. I hadn’t thought about what would happen to me, I hadn’t thought about my survival. The moment the floor gave out and I heard her gasp, my body had simply moved on its own. My arms had moved to shield her before my brain could even form a single coherent thought.

"You didn’t have to do that," Viora whispered. Her fingers gently traced the edge of my jaw, her touch filled with a strange, aching sorrow. "You shouldn’t have done that."

After that, Viora didn’t say anything for a long time. She just kept her hands on my face, her thumbs gently moving against my skin in a slow, rhythmic pattern. The contrast was striking—the world above us was literally being torn apart by dragons and ancient magic, yet down here, her touch was the gentlest thing I had ever experienced.

"Woo Jin..."

"Do you care about me that much?"

Her voice wasn’t loud. However, it wasn’t soft either. It had a strange, heavy tone to it, which I didn’t understand at first. And for some reason, a chill passed through my spine.

I swallowed hard. My back was still throbbing, and my left knee felt like it was on fire, but suddenly, all that physical pain felt very far away.

*Grab.*

Viora’s fingers didn’t just hold my knuckles anymore. Her grip snapped shut around my wrist.

She leaned in even closer, until our noses were almost touching and I could smell the faint scent of her hair.

"You threw your body under mine," she murmured. "You broke your leg for me. Your spine is cracked because of me. You took the entire weight of the fall onto your own bones just so I wouldn’t feel the impact."

A tiny, unsettling smile slowly curved her lips. It wasn’t the soft, gentle smile from my dream. This one was sharp. Intoxicated.

"I felt it, you know," she whispered, her breath brushing hot against my cold lips. "When we were falling through the dark. Your arms wrapped around my waist so tightly. You were shaking, but you didn’t let go. You held me like I was the only thing that mattered in this entire crumbling world."

"Viora, you’re getting too close—"

"I like it," she cut me off, her voice dropping into a deep, purring tone. Her free hand came up, her bare fingers sliding up my neck, her thumb resting directly over my pulsing jugurlar vein.

She pressed down just enough for me to feel the absolute control she had over my life right now. "I like that you are broken right now. You can’t run away. You can’t push your paper bag mask back over your face and pretend you don’t care. You can only look at me."

My heart hammered against my ribs violently.

’What is wrong with her?’

The calm, quiet girl who followed me around like a shadow was completely gone.

In her place was something much more intense, something dark and deeply possessive.

"Woo Jin," she murmured, her thumb lightly tracing the pulse in my neck. "You said you have a lot of things to tell me if we survive. Why wait? Tell me now. Tell me that you only look at me. Tell me that you’ll keep shielding me, over and over, until there is nothing left of you."

Suddenly, to her, the entire apocalypse was just a background decoration. The only thing that existed in her universe was me, trapped beneath her on the stone ground.

"Say it, Woo Jin," she whispered, her lips brushing lightly against my cheek as she leaned down toward my ear. "Tell me you belong with me. Tell me that you belong to me."