Date? (1)
The next day.
"Uuuuugh..."
Taejin dragged himself out of bed, feeling every ounce of his half-exhausted body without filter or mercy.
I definitely went to sleep at ten last night... so why is it eleven?
He had slept a full thirteen hours straight. Without waking up even once, for the record. Thanks to that, his bladder was at critical capacity, and he bolted for the bathroom. Afterward—
"Ah, right. Shopping."
He remembered the promise he'd made yesterday with Gicheol, his senior on the security team.
"Nnngh—! Nothing else to do for once. Might as well go."
Taejin stretched hard, then headed into the shower. The shopping run was only about ten minutes by public transit from here, but he still needed to clean up first. Once he was properly washed and presentable, he hopped on transit and followed the directions Gicheol had texted him.
After a short bus ride, Taejin cut through the park—the usual shortcut to the big-box supermarket that sold groceries and everyday essentials.
Maybe it was the holiday lunch hour, but the park was full of all kinds of people. A pot-bellied middle-aged guy out to play with his enormous dog. Little kids racing around with their friends. Couples out for a stroll. And a Hunter surrounded by a massive crowd, signing autographs... wait, what?
Taejin blinked hard, double-checking that what he was seeing was real.
That person is...
Then he pressed a hand to his forehead and let out a long, heavy sigh. Of course he did.
"My child is sick with an illness, so if you could somehow..."
"Saintess unnie, please sign this!"
"Saintess, if it isn't too much trouble, could you co-sign a loan just once..."
"Hey, damn it! Stop pushing! More importantly, take a picture of me—"
The person trapped in the middle of that swarm, smiling through pure awkwardness, was none other than Han Sohee—a B-class Hunter famous under the epithet Korea's Saintess.
And I happened to be someone who knew her. More precisely, we had a mutual-help arrangement for various complicated reasons, but still.
Haa. How many times have I told her to run the second people start grabbing her on the street.
Watching her stuck in that crowd, unable to move either way, Taejin thought exactly that—then immediately considered another option.
Hmm. Should I just bolt?
Honestly, getting tangled up in that looked like the single most annoying thing in the world. But that plan died on the spot.
"Oh? Taejin-ssi!"
...Because Han Sohee had spotted me and started waving.
Damn it. Too late to run now.
Thinking that, Taejin walked over to the waving woman. And then—
—Grab.
Without a word of warning or explanation, he seized her wrist and took off running.
"Wh-what?!"
"Saintess?!"
"Who the hell is that guy?!!"
My total bastard-move left the people around her looking like their brains had left the building. I ignored them completely and sprinted. Oh, and for the record—if this looks like I'm dragging Han Sohee-ssi against her will, keep in mind that even a weak B-class has more than enough power to body-slam someone like me into the pavement if she wanted to.
Anyway, once we'd put a decent distance between ourselves and the crowd, Taejin released her wrist and asked,
"...What on earth were you doing back there?"
"I came out to do some shopping, and someone happened to recognize me..."
"This time I happened to see you, so I got you out."
"Thank you as always! Hehe!"
Honestly. Could she not talk for once.
Taejin thought that and rubbed his forehead. Han Sohee just beamed at him, all sunshine and zero self-awareness. Looking at her, Taejin wondered inwardly,
What am I even supposed to do with this woman.
P-please help me!
Tch.
A sudden memory of her surfaced as he looked at her, and he finally sighed and said,
"Haa... From now on, please don't get caught. I have to go shopping, so..."
He was fully prepared to put as much distance between them as possible right then and there.
"W-wait a second!"
She suddenly grabbed my arm, and—
"I-if you have some free time... would you maybe shop with me?"
—until she made that proposal, that is.
Before anything else, could you let go of my wrist.
Feeling Han Sohee-ssi's grip clamp down hard on his forearm, Taejin closed his eyes. And she called herself a fragile ordinary person. Contemplating what was probably a bright-red wrist by now, he thought exactly that.
After somehow getting her to release his arm—
"All right. Let's go together."
"Yes!"
—Taejin accepted her proposal. There were a few reasons for it. For one, he still owed her. For another, walking around with a beautiful woman wasn't exactly a hardship.
What, you got a problem?
Even I didn't have the guts to completely push away the woman famous across the Hunter world for her absurd beauty and figure—never mind being one of the top beauties in the country. On top of that—
"But if people show up, you deny everything and run."
"Yes! Got it!"
...I hadn't planned it this way, but I'd ended up half-playing the role of her bodyguard. How it got to this point... honestly.
Either way, Taejin went shopping with Han Sohee-ssi. They arrived at a large brand-name supermarket and headed for the grocery section with the ease of people who knew the place well.
"What are you buying today, Taejin-ssi?"
"Ah, today I'm running an errand for another security guard."
"You security guards run errands for each other like that?"
To Han Sohee-ssi's puzzled look, Taejin explained patiently.
"Sometimes people keep saying they'll buy stuff, keep putting it off, and then their shift is about to start and there's nothing in the house. Those people ask occasionally."
"Heeh. We don't have anything like that, so this is news to me."
"I was a little surprised the first time, too."
They walked for a bit, trading light conversation like that.
"Oh, right—Sohee-ssi, when did Seoyoung noonim say she'd be back?"
I suddenly thought she might know something about Seoyoung noonim's schedule, so I asked. For the record, they both had the surname Han, but they weren't sisters—just the same family name.
Well, it's not like there's zero connection.
Seoyoung noonim was the one who'd introduced me to Han Sohee-ssi in the first place.
"Ah, Seoyoung unnie... she said it'll take two months at the shortest, four at the longest."
"That long?"
I asked her with a face that clearly showed how much longer that was than I'd expected. She sighed, looking just as helpless about it.
"A huge number of Gates opened in France this time, so it'll take about a month just to stabilize things, and then they need to monitor the aftermath for another three months or so..."
"Hunters really have it rough."
"Haa. Tell me about it. Do you know what kind of civil complaints we've been getting lately?"
"Hunters get civil complaints?"
For the record, that was a genuine question. In present-day South Korea, the single most powerful group was, without question, the Hunters. Their authority dwarfed even that of corporate tycoons and National Assembly members—mostly because every time Hunters got fed up and went on strike, the entire country went to hell. Multiple times. On top of that, a solid chunk of the National Assembly was made up of Hunters now, so they were basically the same social tier.
Anyway, that wasn't the important part. Given how powerful Hunters were, I'd assumed nobody would dare file complaints against them—but apparently that wasn't the case.
"Eeh— we actually get a lot more complaints than you'd think."
"What kinds of complaints usually come in?"
She thought for a moment at Taejin's question.
"Umm, this time we got ones about bystanders getting hurt, kids feeling scared by the skills Hunters use, or that it's bad for their emotional development..."
"Yeah, I think I've heard enough."
Apparently a lot of completely pointless complaints came in.
"Anyway, we have our own share of headaches."
Taejin nodded at her words. After that, we kept up a comfortable stream of small talk while each of us did our shopping. Of course—
"Isn't that the person from the Pohang Great Disaster..."
"Ahh, the Saintess!"
—people recognized her here and there in the middle of things. But—
We'll split up, you shake them, and we meet back up.
Okay!
—with my quick situational judgment, I'd tell Sohee-ssi to ditch them, then reunite a short distance away. Minimizing the hassle as much as possible.
After finishing that spectacular shopping trip—
"Whew. I'm heading to lunch now. What about you, Sohee-ssi?"
She answered like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Obviously I'm coming with you!"
"...I'm going for gukbap, you know."
That was a lie. I was going for expensive pizza. But I said it hoping this celebrity would please, for the love of god, just leave—except—
"I love gukbap."
"You like gukbap?"
"Yes! Especially the kind with Brachion meat!"
The Brachion meat she was talking about was famous for being one of the worst-tasting options among monster gukbap. In other words—
Damn it, she has weird taste?!
We talked fairly often, but she almost never brought up personal stuff like this, so I'd had no idea. And just like that, Taejin found himself stuck having an unplanned meal date with a woman. Though calling it a date was a little strange, given how complicated their relationship already was.