036 – To Whom Does the Golden Apple Go? # 3
I never bothered with social media.
Back when things were going well for me, I'd had an account, but I blew it up later on. Even so, I knew perfectly well what a mountain of followers could do for a person. Why do you think they call them influencers? One post from me and the ripple effect alone would be tremendous—! Ad deals would come pouring in!
Superstar Ha Ildo. Followers: three million.
Just imagining it put me in a good mood, which was when Seo Yerim spoke up in a slyly coaxing voice.
"Well? Pretty great, right? You do know I don't hand out a chance to shoot an ad with me to just anyone? I'm the woman who sold out the entire first production run of water purifiers. If I back you, you could become a real star!"
My ears couldn't help but prick up at that. Overwhelming influence backed by an enormous follower count, and the wealth that would follow—was there a better offer in the world? If I'd been nothing more than a simple greedy man, I might have handed the apple straight over to Seo Yerim on the spot.
But this apple wasn't a product for sale. It was a gift, plain and simple. And if I was going to give it away, I wanted it to go first to the person who needed it most—which meant hearing everyone out—was what I was thinking when Yu Ari raised her hand.
"Senior! You know better than anyone, right? If you ride someone else's coattails, the fall comes just as fast as the rise! Followers you didn't build yourself are gone before you know it!"
She had a point. I knew a few people who'd latched onto the successful like a straw and skyrocketed overnight. The hunter scene was full of them. B- and C-rankers throwing piles of money around to get carried through missions on E- and D-rank party buses.
Stack up easy experience like that and sure, your mana capacity climbs and your rank goes up—but in the end, those people's fundamentals are so underdeveloped that most of them crash into a slump. So even if Seo Yerim pushed me into stardom, if you asked whether I'd truly earned it, the honest answer was no.
Yu Ari pressed on.
"Glory is something you're supposed to achieve with your own two hands. And no one can chart your career path more precisely than I can, Senior. You know about my Super-Sense, right?"
"Intimately."
"Using a special diagnostic exam with that skill, I can consult you on exactly which skills, tactics, and techniques you should develop going forward! That is a really big deal, you know!"
Skill consulting. Yu Ari's Super-Sense wasn't just for combat—it was astonishingly efficient outside of it too. I'd heard she could thoroughly map out other people's strengths and weaknesses, then reinforce the strengths and shore up the weaknesses.
Case in point: she'd once told Kim Yumi, then a C-rank stuck in a rut, "Yumi, a bow suits you better than a spear." Kim Yumi took the advice, clawed her way out of her C-rank slump, and climbed all the way to A-rank—a famous story by now. And she was offering me that kind of consulting?
For an awakener, an opportunity like that was genuinely rare.
"Tch—."
Seo Yerim clicked her tongue, while Yu Ari somehow seemed to stand even taller than before.
Then Seo Yerim asked, "Hey, Yu Ari. If you got the apple, what would you even use it for? You don't need it."
"What would I use it for? I'm a doctor. If I got the apple, I'd use it as research material for curing mana sickness and other rift-borne endemic diseases. I could save an unbelievable number of people."
A noble cause, to be sure. Should I give it to Yu Ari, then—was what I was thinking when my eyes finally turned to the last one left, Lee Jina.
The fact that Jina had come to this gathering at all meant that, whatever her excuses, she wanted the golden apple. Best to just ask why.
"Jina, you need the apple too, right?"
I asked. Jina scrunched up her face and went tch—clicking her tongue.
"I can't do anything as grand as what these two are offering. All I can do is—Ha Ildo, if there's someone you like, help things go well between you two. That's about the size of it."
When I liked someone, she could help me end up with that person? How was that even possible? I was dying to know. And I realized, somewhat belatedly, that I had no idea what Lee Jina's awakener 'specialty' actually was.
Seo Yerim looked equally stunned.
"Help things go well with someone you like? How is that even possible? By what means? Do you hire a private detective to tail them or something?"
"Why waste money on that? Look, I have mana that reacts with hypersensitivity to shifts in other people's emotions. That's my trait."
She could pick up on other people's emotional changes? What a fascinating ability. But Jina just frowned and whipped her head away.
"Other than being great for service-industry work, it's pretty useless for actual hunter jobs. If anyone's curious about someone's intentions, or wants to sound out how they feel, come talk to me."
Impressive. While I was still nodding along, Jina went on.
"My older sister has mana sickness. She's had it for a long time. We've tried feeding her every health thing under the sun and nothing's worked. I figured if that golden apple is the real deal, maybe it'd help her."
Her sick older sister. Was she talking about the woman who used to shake me down for gift certificates back in middle school? This was the first I'd heard of her suffering from mana sickness all this time.
But in many ways, the conclusion seemed to have arrived on its own.
The apple of our first harvest. Was there anything more meaningful than using it to save a sick person? Just as that thought settled, Yu Ari spoke up.
"I think the apple should go to Jina."
Was she giving up her claim? Jina raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"You're giving up the apple? What's your angle?"
"You said you're hypersensitive to emotions, didn't you? Then you know perfectly well I don't have a single hidden agenda. We're all just helping each other out, that's all."
Sliiide—. Jina's eyes narrowed to slits. Was she probing Yu Ari's emotions, testing their sincerity?
While Jina held her tongue, Yu Ari opened her mouth first.
"Also, if your sister is suffering from mana sickness, may I examine her? I'd like to verify whether the apple's effects are genuine. It's useful information for me too."
Ah. Yu Ari really was sharp. So that's the level of thinking it takes to be a doctor.
"I'd love to have the apple, but I don't need it urgently. Apples will grow again anyway, so I'm fine receiving mine later."
The heart of someone willing to step aside to heal a patient—kind to the bone. So did that leave only Seo Yerim? And then Seo Yerim said:
"Honestly, I didn't urgently need it either. More importantly—Jina, was it? You've got an unusual ability there. Same 'special-rarity' category as Yu Ari, more or less? Not a common type."
Seo Yerim seemed to have taken an interest in Jina's power. And just like that, the owner of the golden apple became Lee Jina. There was something strange about seeing her garishly bleached blonde hair holding a gleaming golden fruit.
"So this is the golden apple—."
Jina's eyes glittered as she looked down at the fruit in her hand. The luminous gold of it seemed to shine even brighter in her palm.
Everyone was heading home. As Seo Yerim stepped into her shoes, she fired a question at me like a dart.
"So? Do you actually like someone? Jina said she could match you up with whoever you like, and that's why you gave her the golden apple, isn't it?"
"What are you on about? Her sister's sick. If the apple can cure her, isn't that a wonderful thing?"
All that happened was that a spare item went to someone who needed it. That said, if I were being honest, the reward Jina had described did interest me in its own way.
"Well... there is someone I've been curious about."
"Wha—!? Who is it!?"
Seo Yerim froze mid-step, one shoe half on. Yu Ari, who'd been talking with Jina about the illness, stopped walking too.
I headed into the yard and called out to Jina, who was sitting in the truck.
"Jina, could you read what emotion I'm feeling right now, and what I'm really saying? It shouldn't take long."
"Eh. It's not exactly difficult."
Jina answered with supreme indifference. Meanwhile Yu Ari, in the passenger seat, was the one who panicked.
"Senior! You're seriously going to conduct an illegal probe into someone's heart?! For perception-type awakeners like me and Jina, that's the kind of thing that raises some very touchy issues—!"
She had a point. I'd heard that perception-type ability holders generally disliked revealing their powers. Imagine a man who could see through every lie ever told. Most people would feel a little uneasy getting close to him, wouldn't they? Jina must have been hiding her ability for the same reason all this time.
But as far as I was concerned, no such worry applied.
"It's fine. I'm not using it on a person. Hey, Keong-keong-i!"
━Keong-keong…!
I called for Keong-keong-i. She came scampering across the yard and swarmed up my knee and onto my shoulder in a flash. I lifted her onto my palm, stroked her vigorously, and asked:
"Jina, the reason you and Keong-keong-i always got along so well—it was because of that specialty of yours, wasn't it?"
Keong-keong-i had always adored Jina. She'd often scratched Keong-keong-i's neck and back, and never failed to hand out peanut treats whenever the little guy was hungry—whereas I'd assumed their bond was just because I happened to like cute squirrels. But what if Jina's power reacted to animals' emotions too?
"Could you understand what Keong-keong-i means just from hearing him bark?"
Communication with animals. Living with Ang-ang-i and Keong-keong-i, it was the one ability I truly wished I had.
Swish, swish—.
Deliberately, I stroked Keong-keong-i's fur against the grain. For a moment her whole body bristled—
━Krurrrung…!
Keong-keong-i let out a thunderous bark of outrage at being brushed the wrong way. Watching this, I turned to the resident delinquent queen Lee Jina.
"Now! Can you tell what Keong-keong-i is thinking right now?!"
"Thoughts, no. I just feel emotions. And Keong-keong-i hates this right now. He hates having his fur brushed backward."
"I knew it!"
Her power was the real deal. All this time I'd wanted to understand the minds of animals—and the answer had been right under my nose. People really do live by helping each other out.
"Blegh! Disgusting! Hey, Jina! What are you feeding me?! Blegh—guh—aaack—!"
The golden apple. The moment Jina's older sister, Lee Seona, swallowed it, she convulsed and shook as if in a seizure. Jina tensed up for an instant, wondering if she'd just poisoned her own sister—but Yu Ari's expression was perfectly calm.
"The taste appears to be absolutely wretched, but the effect is remarkable. I can feel the mana being stored in her body in a healthy, vital way. A complete cure? We'll need to monitor the progression, but it's genuinely working!"
Yu Ari was amazed. Mana sickness—one of the endemic diseases the rifts had brought into the world, still tormenting countless people across the globe to this very day. And now it was being cured by an apple that Ha Ildo had brought back. How many lives might this save?
'Senior really is incredible!'
Yu Ari felt as pleased as if she'd done it herself.
On the drive home, Jina had picked up the doctor who'd come all this way for her sister's sake.
"Thanks for examining my sister. So, are you planning to put all this on my tab as a debt?"
Jina asked it in a flat, offhand tone from the driver's seat. Yu Ari, scrolling her phone, brushed it aside.
"I told you already. We help each other and get along—simple as that. Curing your sister's illness with that apple is a valuable opportunity for me in all sorts of ways."
"You're a perception-type too, same category as me. Then you know full well that ordinary lies don't work on me."
She said it, but Jina found Yu Ari's true intent strangely hard to pin down. It was as if a vast curtain had been drawn over her emotions. Jina had felt this before with people professionally trained to control their feelings—and Yu Ari fit the profile exactly.
Slide—.
At last, Yu Ari tucked her phone neatly into her handbag.
"Jina, you know the reverse works too, right? You scanning me means I can scan you. And I know this much: you claiming you first met Senior at the rift job—that's a lie, isn't it? It's not even like you're just neighbors from the same district."
"……."
"Look, I'm not a detective or a cop, and I have no intention of calling you out on it. I keep plenty of secrets from people myself. But if that undisclosed 'secret' of yours ever puts Senior in danger—"
Yu Ari buried the rest of the sentence in a chilly silence. As a perception-type herself, she knew better than anyone: sometimes what's left unsaid reveals far more than what's spoken aloud.
'That little brat took the hint, I'm sure.'
Yu Ari felt a glow of satisfaction, as if she'd just put a girl who'd tried to unwrap her packaging without permission firmly in her place. Now she'd sweet-talk this young delinquent properly and use her as her own personal Cupid—was what she was thinking when Jina started operating the phone mounted as the navigation.
"What are you doing?"
"You're right. Hiding this and that honestly wasn't my style anyway. So, fine, I'll just lay it all out."
Beeeep—.
A loud ringtone poured from the truck's speakers, and just as someone picked up with a "Hello—?", Jina spoke.
"Ha Ildo, it's me, Jina. Are you free tomorrow? My dad wants to have a meal with you. The truth is, there's something I haven't told you all this time. I'll tell you everything tomorrow."
Click—.
And with that, Jina ended the call.
"Whew, I feel lighter already. That's your doing. Turns out listening to your elders really does pay off."
"Huh?"
In that moment, Yu Ari finally understood the true nature of the strange jealousy she'd felt ever since meeting Lee Jina. It was this: her chemistry with this yellow-haired delinquent girl was absolutely, catastrophically the worst!
