A Meal Worth 1.6 Million
I stared at the menu in disbelief. A hundred thousand won for a hundred grams of beef? What the hell did they do to the meat to justify that price? My jaw practically hit the floor at the insane price tag, but the man sitting across from us just smiled gently as he watched me and Elphy.
“Have you decided?”
“Uh… well… um…”
“Excuse me! One of your mixed set A to start, please.”
“…?!”
Mixed set A? Holy shit, how much does that even cost? Shocked by my slave’s sudden move, I frantically flipped through the menu. Thirty? No, thirty man? Three hundred thousand won?
“Hey…! Do you even have a brain?!”
“But… when I calculated it, this was the cheapest way to eat.”
“Cheapest? If you order three hundred grams it’s a hundred and fifty thousand won. What the hell do you mean ‘cheapest’?!”
“Haha. It’s fine. Please eat as much as you’d like.”
“No, but…”
“Don’t hold back. Excuse me, miss? We’ll also take the B and C sets.”
“…”
What the hell was this guy doing? It wasn’t pocket change. When I saw the receipt for one hundred and thirty thousand won already sitting on the table, gratitude quickly turned into straight-up fear. The meat was so damn good that I couldn’t stop myself from reaching for more with my chopsticks. I scarfed down the pieces the server grilled like a starving dog, only regaining my senses once the charcoal under the grill had burned low.
(Did I seriously just eat like a shameless pig?)
(Well… they already ordered it. It’d be wasteful not to eat it…)
I told myself I had no choice but to eat so the money wouldn’t go to waste. That horned pair of milk tanks over there was devouring everything like a gluttonous demon, so I had to protect my share. That was how I rationalized it to myself. But setting that aside… why the hell was this guy buying us expensive beef?
The best meat I’d ever eaten in my life had come from three people: the bastard who asked if I wanted to become a non-commissioned officer, the squad leader who died during that sweet mission in the Middle East he’d invited me on, and the son of a bitch who gathered us before Operation 72. That was it. So this kind of unprompted goodwill? It felt ominous as hell to me.
“Hey…”
“…”
“Hey.”
“Huh?”
“I said pick between doenjang stew or cold noodles. What are you thinking about?”
“Uh… um… doenjang…”
“Not that! I mean… thank you for treating us like this, but isn’t it a bit much…?”
I asked if he had some kind of ulterior motive. No matter how I looked at it, this situation didn’t make sense. Sure, I’d already stuffed my face and now I was acting all modest, which was pretty shameless… but from experience, I knew I had to clarify things now. I looked straight at the man named Kim Minhyuk. He nodded like he’d been expecting this.
“You’re right. So after we finish eating, would you like to grab coffee as well?”
Even though I’m broke right now and my average daily meal costs have converged on tuna cans and instant ramen, back when I was rolling in cash I used to do three omakase dinners a day. So I’m not the type to hesitate spending money on food… but still. Ten thousand won for shaved ice? That’s pushing it, isn’t it?
It wasn’t even my money, it was someone else’s, yet my slave had the nerve to suggest one mango shaved ice per person while ignoring the perfectly normal 4,500-won Americano. As her master, I felt deeply embarrassed and reflective at the same time. I sighed and carefully studied the man in the suit sitting across from us… and the bastard was smiling.
“Ah~ It’s delicious. Thanks to you, I got to try a hundred-thousand-won shaved ice.”
“You wrote off a single lunch for ‘1.6 million’ on the company card. What’s the boss going to say?”
“Haha… well, about that…”
“Haha. Right? Since we burned through a full ‘1.6 million,’ I hope we get some kind of result out of it.”
“…”
Shit… he still hadn’t said anything like ‘Fuck, this is complete dogshit, haha,’ but if I slipped up here, that exact sentence was definitely going to come flying out. Thanks to that, the pressure in the air felt even thicker than it had back at the restaurant. The pair of milk tanks next to me must have had a steel plate welded to her face because she was just happily stuffing her cheeks.
“Whoa… this is insane. Apple mango shaved ice is seriously fucking delicious.”
“You’re not eating yours? If you’re not gonna eat it, give me some.”
“…”
Ha… damn it… was this bitch possessed by a hungry ghost? All her sense of shame and social awareness must have migrated straight to her tits and hips… Anyway. I should’ve left this damn slave behind. I swatted away the spoon that kept invading my bowl and decided that even if I couldn’t live up to 1.6 million, I’d at least try to meet the sixty-thousand-won expectation.
“Ahem… so. What exactly did you want to talk about?”
“Ah… first, here’s my business card. I already gave you one through Miss Elphy, but allow me to introduce myself properly once more.”
“I’m Kim Minhyuk, recruitment manager at Gaehwa Environment. I handle scouting hunters.”
“Scouting?”
“Yes. The reason I arranged this meeting was to scout you, Mr. Kim Chanhyuk.”
“…Pardon?”
(Scout me?)
(Wait… why? Why the hell would they want me…?)
No matter how I looked at it, they seemed to have picked the wrong person. If this was how they were playing it, there was no way I could live up to a sixty-thousand-won expectation. I stared at the salesman in front of me with a dumbfounded expression… but the man looked completely serious.
“Ah… no, I’m not…”
“I know. I looked you up. You’re not a hunter.”
“That’s exactly why I’m asking you like this.”
“This industry is smaller than you think… once word gets out, other companies will try to snatch you up immediately… so please…!”
For the sake of the tenderloin, flower sirloin, flower short rib, skirt meat, chuck flap, chateaubriand, and T-bone we just ate… and for the sake of not getting his ass chewed out by his boss when he returned to the office, please, please just listen to his proposal seriously. At the young man’s desperate plea—the one who shared a name with my little brother—I nodded. But wait… he said that once the rumor spread, other companies would immediately try to scout me. Did that mean other companies besides this one were already after me?
“Of course.”
“You entered the deepest part of a B-rank dungeon and came back completely fine. That’s why.”
“But… I didn’t actually close the dungeon…”
“No. Just surviving it is more than enough. They say you usually need to be at least S-rank to close a B-rank dungeon solo. So…”
Please. Just take a simple test. Seeing how desperate he looked, it seemed they were treating me like an S-rank prospect at minimum… I wondered what kind of face he’d make if he found out my combined physical, body, magic, and defense stats only totaled two thousand like a complete cripple…? Shit… just thinking about it was horrifying. Instead of trying to live up to their ridiculous expectations, it was probably better to just refuse. I’d already made up my mind anyway… I was about to tell him I was sorry when that voice appeared again, along with a screen floating in front of me.
Quest — The Beginning as a Hunter (0/1)
“There is no option to refuse. Accept it.”
(No option to refuse…)
(What happens if I actually refuse?)
Staring at the unidentified message that had appeared before me once again, I felt like I was under some kind of spell and ended up agreeing to his proposal. Thanks to that, I was now lying awake in the middle of the night, absently running my fingers through my sleeping slave’s hair.
(Ha… fuck… I can’t sleep…)
(If I don’t get some sleep now, I won’t be able to do well tomorrow…)
I tried forcing my eyes shut, changing positions, getting up for a bit, sitting back down… I did everything I could think of, but sleep just wouldn’t come. In the end, I crawled back into bed and resumed what I’d been doing earlier.
(Smells nice…)
(Does she use the same shampoo as me…?)
Maybe it was because her hair was so long… or maybe demons naturally smelled good. Unlike human hair, hers wasn’t scratchy at all. Just touching it somehow calmed my mind. That must have been why I kept running my fingers through Elphy’s hair as if I were possessed.
“…”
“What the hell… why do you keep touching my hair? You wanna have sex?”
“…No. More importantly, you weren’t sleeping?”
“Well… you kept playing with my hair, so I thought maybe you were going to jump me in my sleep…”
She’d been secretly hoping for it? Ha, fuck… please don’t say such terrifying things. I sighed and rolled over, turning my back to my slave and closing my eyes.
“Aww… I was just kidding. Come on, turn back this way.”
“Are you worried? Is that why you’re acting like this?”
“No… we’re just going into an E-rank dungeon together. What could possibly happen? It’s just…”
I told her I couldn’t sleep and that I was going to sleep now so she should stop talking to me. The moment I closed my eyes, I suddenly felt something soft and warm wrap around me from behind.
“What the—?! What are you doing? I’m injured, you know? I’m a patient…?”
“I know. Just sleep like this. Back when we first came here, we used to sleep like this all the time, remember?”
“Remember? How you taught me Korean every single day?”
“…”
Yeah… that’s right. Maybe I was only alive right now because of this girl. No, that wasn’t an exaggeration. The horrific pain of losing everything—precious people, home, possessions, all of it. Every night, screams echoed through my dreams. I had lain in bed all day like a living corpse, completely helpless. Yeah, back then I hadn’t been in my right mind. If this girl hadn’t stayed by my side and taken care of me…
“Want me to sing you a lullaby?”
“A lullaby? No thanks.”
“Why? Are you embarrassed? You used to beg me to sing for you.”
“That was… because of my depression. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Aren’t you having trouble sleeping right now too?”
“…”
This girl really never let anything I said go unchallenged. I wanted to say something out of embarrassment, but nothing came to mind. Before I knew it, her warm body heat and a familiar melody filled the air. The language of that other world instantly softened my razor-sharp nerves. With my eyes still closed, I slowly began to drift off into the land of dreams.
“…”
“Good night, Master…”