A Puppy's Paycheck
I love web novels.
Not just web novels, either. Comics, anime, voice dramas — if it's a creative work, I'll take it. I loved them before I transmigrated, and I still do.
But hobbies need spare time, and spare time needs a little breathing room in your life. Somehow, after transmigrating, I hadn't touched a single web novel, comic, or movie. I hadn't even listened to music, aside from whatever leaked out of street-side shops as I walked past.
Then, out of nowhere, free time found me.
The reason was simple: the Mudwell incident — a big, messy affair — had finally been cleaned up. The only reason I'd been scrubbing out other organizations in the first place was because I'd needed cash, and fast. The Mudwell job had paid well enough that I wouldn't be pinching pennies for a while.
The Mudwell incident had also been the official starting gun for the main story, and now it was Siyun's turn in the spotlight. For the time being, my duties amounted to showing up at the Academy and doing night training with Cecilia. I still had to hang out with my friends now and then, and Siyun and Carmen's Fire Festival was coming up soon — but free time was free time. That much was undeniable.
With hours suddenly on my hands, my eyes drifted, naturally enough, to the internet.
It wasn't the first time I'd taken an interest since transmigrating. Right after waking up in this unfamiliar world, curiosity had sent me poking around. But this was the first time I'd gone looking in earnest.
After about an hour of searching, the main takeaway was that this world wasn't all that different from the one I'd left. Platform names were slightly off. The authors I'd once loved were nowhere to be found, replaced by a sea of strangers. Of course there were differences — different worlds will do that. It would have been weirder if there weren't any.
I'd harbored a quiet hope that I might pick up the series I'd been reading before transmigrating. That hope died fast. I gave up and started hunting for something new.
And then, by pure chance, one title caught my eye.
#SecretOrganization #Noir #Villain #Yuri #Mother
Just from the title, it looked like a story about tender, forbidden love. A quick search confirmed it had been exploding in popularity lately. And the tags were wild: secret organizations, noir, villains, yuri, mother. Tags that would have struggled to trend in my old world — which meant it had to be genuinely good to be this hot here.
It seemed like a perfect first web novel for this new life. I opened it with a light heart.
When I came back to myself—
"…Huh?"
It was 5:36 in the morning. I was curled up alone under the covers, tears streaming down my face.
A masterpiece. No question.
The story so far, roughly: a young heroine abandoned by her parents is taken in by a woman of such breathtaking beauty you could believe she was the most beautiful person in the world. That woman turns out to be the boss of a secret organization. The heroine calls her Mother, grows into the organization's ace, and handles every dangerous job thrown her way — all to make Mother's wishes come true. Along the way, she realizes the burning feelings she holds for Mother. The delicate, heart-wrenching descriptions of that realization were so vivid I half-wondered if the author had lived them.
And the last chapter I'd just finished had dropped an enormous bomb. A girl who looked exactly like Mother had appeared at the school where the heroine was hiding her identity.
"Th-the next chapter… where's the next chapter?"
My trembling fingers tapped and swiped, but the only text that met my eyes was this:
[This is the last registered chapter.]
"Ah… if I just kidnapped the author… yeah, with who I am now, I could totally…"
I'd signed up on the platform just to read Is It Wrong to Love You? and loaded my account with plenty of money, and now—
"This is exactly why you don't touch ongoing serials…"
Swallowing a wave of bitter regret, I opened the comments and left one. The author was the type who replied to every single comment, which made leaving them half the fun.
I hit send, turned off my phone — and an instant later a reply notification popped up. I checked it.
…Huh. Was the author actually a little dangerous?
"Nah. Typo for 'I want to write it soon,' probably."
I brushed it off and powered down my phone.
Alright. Is It Wrong to Love You? uploaded one chapter every two days. Forty-seven hours, fifty-four minutes, and thirty-six seconds to go.
Bind had grown, with the Mors Family at its back, into something that could rival most organizations. And Yeris, its boss, had spent the last two weeks on a schedule so brutal that just looking at it could make a person faint.
How brutal? In the two weeks since Bind had become a subordinate organization of the Mors Family—
"Only three hours of sleep…"
Having finally cleared the backlog, Yeris collapsed face-first onto her desk and groaned. Not three hours a day. Three hours total, across two entire weeks.
Yeris was a Level 7 Awakener. Going two weeks without sleep wasn't a real problem for her — just a little tiring. But working two weeks without sleep or rest was a different animal entirely. Especially when the work was the kind that would still be brutal even if you did it twelve hours a day, fully rested, in peak condition.
"Urrrgh… I'm dying…"
She folded her arms into a pillow and tried to close her eyes for even a moment — and someone pushed the door open without strength or ceremony.
Under normal circumstances, Yeris would have snapped about the lack of a knock. Unfortunately, she no longer had the energy for it.
"Who…?"
The person who approached was one of her subordinates, dark circles hanging all the way down to her jaw — and in her arms, a mountain of documents.
"……"
Their eyes met in the empty air. Silence stretched. Yeris cracked first under her subordinate's scorching stare, glancing sideways at the document pile.
"…What's that?"
She asked it in a tone that sounded like she was denying reality. The subordinate holding the stack beamed. Her eyes were still dead. Only her mouth was smiling.
"Obviously work the boss has to do!"
A bright, cheerful delivery — paired with a voice so raw and cracked it sounded ready to cough up blood. Yeris cared about her people, even if she pretended not to, and she did feel bad about the sudden mountain of work they'd all been buried under. But Yeris was still human. She'd just finished a brutal stretch of labor. The last thing she wanted was more.
"Look, I just finished my work, okay? I want to rest a little—"
"Excuse me? Rest? Then what about us?"
The woman fixed Yeris with a look of pure, despairing resentment. Before Bind had become a Mors Family subordinate, no one would have dared look at Yeris that way. But people under extreme stress tend to lose a few screws upstairs. And Yeris didn't exactly have a leg to stand on.
She pressed a hand to her forehead, closed her eyes, and asked the only question she could.
"If I finish just these documents… I can actually rest after that, right?"
The subordinate smiled sweetly.
"Of course."
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Yeris thought: Isn't it a little weird that the boss is asking permission to rest? But her brain had checked out a long time ago. Which was probably why she made such a stupid choice.
She let out a long sigh and nodded.
"Fine… bring them over."
"You heard her, everyone? Bring them in."
"…Huh?"
Before Yeris could process the words, the people who'd been hiding behind the door poured into the room, arms full of paperwork.
"…Wait."
"We'll be counting on you, Boss."
Yeris shot to her feet, ready to demand an explanation — but it was already too late. A mountain of documents had already risen between her and her subordinates. While she stood there, face blank with shock, they bowed in a hurry, clearly intending to flee before she could yell.
"We'll just go handle our own work, then."
Bang!
The door slammed shut. A few loose sheets fluttered to the floor.
"……How did I end up like this."
Still standing, Yeris trembled and kicked at the empty air, muttering under her breath. Right. Being ignored even by her own subordinates — all of it started the day she got tangled up with the Mors Family.
She grabbed her phone — untouched for two weeks — intending to call Luna and complain right then and there. And at that exact moment, a text from Luna arrived.
Seeing the sender, Yeris ground her teeth and opened the message, ready to give her a piece of her mind.
"I don't care what it is, I'm saying something—"
Then her mouth shut.
"…Salary? I had a salary…?"
She muttered it, then checked her account. The balance was exactly double what she'd last seen. The money she'd thought was a one-time payment had, apparently, been a paycheck all along.
Yeris stared blankly at the deposited amount. Then she sat down in her chair with perfect, demure posture, sent Luna a single reply, set her phone aside, and started working in silence.
Rina watched Luna tapping at her phone and asked,
"Unnie. What are you doing?"
"Hmm…? Just giving the puppy some snack money…"
"…Puppy? Do we own a puppy?"
Rina tilted her head, confused. Luna looked at her with complete seriousness.
"Last time, you looked at Yeris and said, 'From now on you'll have to work like a dog,' remember?"
"…That was just a figure of speech."
"So she's a puppy, right?"
There was so much genuine disappointment in Luna's voice that Rina finally broke into a smile.
"Yeah. She's a puppy."