I Did What Grandma Said and Got Captain
Kang Jihyun pressed the refresh button, praying with everything she had.
A chime rang out.
"...Excuse me?"
Kang Jihyun's eyebrow twitched. Her shoulders slumped. She wondered if she'd seen it wrong, so she checked the job list again, closed her eyes, opened them, and stared with extra focus. Nothing had changed.
I did pray pretty hard, though.
She felt like an idiot for actually expecting a good job to come out.
Should I refresh?
She couldn't make up her mind. Masseur and Miner both required physical strength, and no matter how she looked at it, neither suited her. Hairdresser, though, was a little different.
You never know, right?
Maybe she had a hidden talent as the world's greatest hairdresser. Maybe, despite how she looked, some special ability was lying dormant inside her.
I should at least check.
Kang Jihyun opened the Hunter Gallery — HuntGal for short, the community hunters used more than any other. With that many people came an ocean of garbage posts, but right now, there was nowhere else to ask.
Her fingers tapped across the screen, and she put up a thread immediately.
A little time passed, and the comments started rolling in.
Kang Jihyun finished reading and reached for the refresh button. She still had chances left. There was no need to worry too much.
It's not like I'm some pathetic little girl. Don't act like a coward.
If she was going to pick Hairdresser, she would have been better off taking the Berserker that had come up first. Choosing Hairdresser now was no different from failing to sell a stock at its peak and panic-selling at the bottom.
It has to be at least Berserker-tier.
She had no intention of picking a job worse than that.
I prayed and this is what I got.
This time, Kang Jihyun didn't pray. She decided not to leave it to God.
I got all worked up over nothing.
This time, she would refresh quietly.
She pressed the button.
A chime rang out.
Kang Jihyun stared at the list for a long time. Scout and Funeral Director were out immediately. Scout made her nervous about Physical Compatibility, and Funeral Director looked like it could make decent money — but no matter how she thought about it, that was not her kind of work.
Acrobat was another story. A combat job that fought by hurling daggers with dazzling movement. A job on the same level as Berserker had come up again.
A mage-type would've been nice, you know!
The job itself was a good one, but Physical Compatibility was the problem all over again. Kang Jihyun's body was not flexible. Back in high school, her friends had dragged her into filming a dance challenge, and she had wondered whether her body was actually made of wood.
Acrobat doesn't seem right either.
She let out a long breath.
"Haaah..."
One refresh left. This was the last chance. If something worse came out, there would be no taking it back. She would have to pick it whether she liked it or not.
...Should I just go with Acrobat?
Factoring in Physical Compatibility, it looked like a better option than Berserker. There was no guarantee a better job would come from refreshing.
Acrobat is a good enough job.
In the end, Kang Jihyun decided to take it. Her finger drifted toward the Acrobat button.
That was when the door chime jingled.
An old woman walked in. Her back was bent, and she leaned on a worn walking stick.
Customer first.
Kang Jihyun pulled her hand away from the Acrobat button.
"Hello there."
"I-I'd like to buy these..."
The old woman held out a sheet of paper with trembling hands. It was crumpled, as if it had been folded and unfolded any number of times.
"Could you tell me where these are?"
"I'll go get them for you. Please wait right here, ma'am."
"Th-thank you."
The old woman looked up at Kang Jihyun.
"What a pretty young lady, and such a kind heart too."
"You're beautiful yourself, ma'am. I'd believe you if you said you were my older sister."
"Heh heh. And a sense of humor, too."
A smile spread across both of their faces.
"Just wait a moment. I'll bring everything right over."
Kang Jihyun went and found each item written on the paper, one by one.
"That'll be fifteen thousand won in total."
"H-here you go."
The old woman pulled a fistful of crumpled bills from her pocket. They were stained here and there, and a few were worn down to the corners.
"Sorry the money looks like this."
"It's fine."
Kang Jihyun took the bills without batting an eye, smoothing each one out to check the amount.
"You've given me two thousand won extra."
She held out two bills. The old woman didn't take them. Instead, she simply looked at Kang Jihyun's face. The eyes that had been trembling just moments ago were suddenly sharp and clear, as if a light were glittering in her pupils.
"...?"
Kang Jihyun felt a strange emotion she couldn't put into words. It was a gaze that seemed to see straight through her — not her appearance, but her very essence. She didn't know why she felt that way. Only an inexplicable sensation remained.
The old woman smiled and opened her mouth.
"...Pardon?"
"Don't pick the job that's showing right now."
The old woman looked Kang Jihyun straight in the eye.
"Give it one more refresh."
"How did you know I was choosing a job right now?"
"Heh heh. I just know."
A faint smile touched the old woman's lips. Then her eyes turned serious as she looked at Kang Jihyun again.
"Before you refresh, stick a metal spoon to your forehead."
"...Excuse me?"
"Then fly a paper airplane more than a meter. After that, you press refresh."
"Why would I do that?"
"I have a feeling a very good job will come out if you do."
"...Ah. Okay."
Kang Jihyun nodded awkwardly.
"Well then, I'll be on my way."
"Take care, ma'am."
The door chime jingled, and the old woman left the convenience store. Kang Jihyun stared at the closed door for a while.
"...What was that?"
The old woman who had been standing there a moment ago felt like a dream. The whole thing was ridiculous.
Come on. There's no way that's real, right?
And yet it nagged at her. The strange energy she had felt from the old woman sat uneasily in her chest. It was too unsettling to dismiss as a weird joke.
Should I actually try it?
She still had one last refresh. A better job than Acrobat might come out. She hadn't been that happy with Acrobat to begin with. Maybe, deep down, she had been hoping someone would tell her to reroll one more time.
She looked around.
A spoon and some paper...
This was a matter of her entire life. Real or not, she wanted to try every superstition she could get her hands on.
Kang Jihyun grabbed a metal spoon and a magazine she had put outside to throw away. She stuck the spoon to her forehead and looked in the mirror.
"Haaah..."
The sight of herself with a spoon stuck to her forehead was so absurd that a hollow laugh escaped on its own. Still, she had started this, so she was going to finish it.
She folded a paper airplane out of the magazine and looked down the convenience store aisle, gauging the distance. It looked longer than a meter. She pinched the airplane between her fingers, drew her arm back while being careful not to let the spoon fall, and threw it with everything she had.
The paper airplane cut through the air, hit the far wall, and dropped to the floor.
"Done."
One thing left. Refresh.
Kang Jihyun kept the spoon on her forehead and looked at the button.
I did everything you told me to, Grandma. I'm putting my faith in this!
She pressed it.
A chime rang out.
"...Captain?"
Kang Jihyun blinked several times. The spoon clattered off her forehead and hit the floor. She didn't have the presence of mind to pick it up.
Mail Carrier and Tour Guide, at least, she understood. The problem was Captain. She had never seen that job before.
What kind of job is this?
She hurriedly unlocked her smartphone. She needed to figure out what it even was. She typed hunter job captain into the search bar.
What? Why is there nothing?
She switched over to YouTube.
⊳ CaptainTV — Fish Fishing Channel
⊳ Warship Captain Documentary
⊳ How to Become a Captain at the Naval Academy
...That's not it.
She went into a Job Compendium site. Hundreds of jobs were listed out in a long row. She scanned them one by one in alphabetical order. It wasn't there. She checked the combat jobs, the lifestyle jobs, even the special jobs. She looked through all of them. The job called Captain was nowhere.
The closest thing was Skipper — a lifestyle job that involved piloting a fishing boat out at sea.
...Are Captain and Skipper basically the same thing?
The names were different. She didn't know exactly what the work involved, but it seemed like it would be similar.
Even if I asked HuntGal, nobody would know.
It was a job that wasn't even in the Compendium. Asking HuntGal probably wouldn't get her an answer. She would be the first person to register it.
Doesn't seem like a good job.
"Hahaha..."
Kang Jihyun let out a hollow, powerless laugh and pressed a hand to her forehead.
I must've been out of my mind. Why did I listen to that old lady?
She felt pathetic for falling for a single sentence from a grandmother she had never met.
Strange energy, my ass. Probably just a cold coming on.
Looking back on it, she might have been an ordinary old lady whose hobby was messing with the neighborhood convenience store clerk.
"Aaaargh!"
Kang Jihyun clutched her head. It was unfair. But there was no way to undo it.
Captain. Mail Carrier. Tour Guide. She had to pick one of the three, no matter what.
Captain's the best of them, I guess?
Mail Carrier and Tour Guide were obviously lifestyle jobs. Captain was different. There was at least a chance it was a combat job. Maybe she could climb the Tower and turn her life around. And however Physical Compatibility applied to it, one thing was certain: the name alone had some serious swagger.
Kang Jihyun made her decision with a whatever-happens-happens attitude.
Ah, screw it. They're all busts anyway, and this one looks like the least bad.
She moved her finger over Captain, and pressed down.
A deep rumble rolled through the air. The ground shook. Light poured down as if the sky itself were splitting open, and a thunderous roar erupted.
Kang Jihyun stepped out of the convenience store and looked up. A massive shadow was covering the sky.
"...Wh-what? Don't tell me another Tower is falling?"
It looked like a building, but it wasn't a Tower. The thing floating in the sky was large enough to swallow several buildings whole — a hull sheathed in steel, the kind you only ever saw in sci-fi movies. A space battleship hung in the air.
"...Huuuh?!"