The Mysterious Woman
About a week had passed since Hanna told me she'd occasionally fill in as my wife.
Through sex with her, I'd raked in another massive haul of points.
To be precise—
You have stabilized a resident of the apartment who was in a dangerous state.
Bonus points awarded.
Calming Hanna down from a seriously dangerous state had earned me a huge pile of points. Of course, it was a little less than the first time—roughly a thousand points or so—but still. Thanks to that, I'd fully recovered every point I'd spent raising my security rank.
Security Points:2455P
Taejin smiled at his newly padded point balance. Sure, one proper upgrade would wipe it clean again—but just having a fat stack of points felt good all on its own.
Anyway, even though I'd been messaging Hanna a lot—the woman who'd made all those points possible—I still hadn't managed to go see her.
Honestly, part of it was that one visit meant getting wrung dry until I collapsed—and the other part was that I'd genuinely been busy.
Ugh. Gate frequency spiked out of nowhere, and now I'm on nothing but night shifts.
Gate occurrences across the Seoul area had surged, throwing Hunters' work schedules into complete chaos—which meant more of us got thrown onto overnight duty. Normally, a Gate run took two or three days. But when they spawned in bulk like this, the Gates themselves got shorter and easier, so Hunters could wrap up in a few hours or a day or two at most. Naturally, they worked themselves to the bone during stretches like this, trying to squeeze out every last bit of profit.
The result: a flood of people leaving and arriving at all hours of the night, and we had to sort them out from everyone else. After days of that, most of the other guards had dropped from exhaustion. The only ones still standing were the ones with enough stamina left to keep rotating shifts.
And so Taejin found himself once again helping cars in and out in the pre-dawn dark—until, after who knew how long—
"Taejin. Your turn on patrol."
"Ah, you're back already?"
"Yeah. Let me get some rest already."
The senior who'd just finished his rounds swapped out with him. Why patrol again after already doing a full loop? Because during periods of heavy late-night traffic, the number of people trying to sneak in spiked hard—so you had to keep circulating. The pay was better than usual, sure, but it was also exhausting as hell.
With that thought, Taejin picked up his flashlight the way he always did and started walking the apartment grounds.
—Clack.
—Clack.
Nearly every light in the complex was out. Only the streetlamps lit the roads. The whole place looked, for lack of a better word—
Like something out of a horror game.
The streetlamps kept it from being truly spine-chilling, but the pitch-black corners and the dark gaps between buildings still made him half-expect a monster to come lunging out. It was a fear burned into instinct—the kind anyone living in this Great Gate Era carried around whether they wanted to or not.
Taejin walked those dark paths, letting the unease sit with him for a while—until something snagged his attention.
Hmm. Feels like there's a presence over that way?
Drawn by that faint, strange sense of someone nearby, he swept his light into a dark corner.
"Huh. Just my imagination?"
Naturally, the alley he lit up was empty. So Taejin scratched his head, started to turn away—and then—
"...and that was the fake-out!"
He spun back in a flash and lit up the corner again. Not because he actually expected anyone to be there—just a second check, nothing more.
Which meant he was completely unprepared for what he found.
"Oh my. Caught me♥"
A naked woman. Standing right there.
What the—
Taejin's mouth fell open. The light was his own, but the figure it revealed still short-circuited his brain. A monster would have been bad enough—his mind would have locked up just fine. But a naked woman? Wearing nothing but a mask and shoes? How the hell was he supposed to react to that?
His brain froze for a beat. Then, having already survived more than its share of absurd situations, it rebooted—and the very first thought that came online was:
Holy shit, look at those tits.
Pure, unfiltered lust. And honestly, what else was he supposed to think? When some crazy woman suddenly flashed you her bare body, "I shouldn't look!" was never going to arrive before "Oh..." And these weren't small, either. With a bust that size, how was anyone supposed to look away?
Of course—
Crap!
The fact that this was a Hunter apartment slammed into him a second later, and he jerked his eyes—and the light—away. Once you thought about who would be insane enough to pull a stunt like this in a place like this, his reaction made perfect sense.
The only people who'd walk around naked in a Hunter apartment are, obviously—
Hunters.
Having pieced that together at speed, Taejin kept his head turned. And at that—
"Hehe. Sharp one, aren't you, oppa~?"
—the naked masked woman spoke. Strangely, even though she was clearly some distance away, her voice sounded like it was right against his ear. Taejin registered the wrongness of it, but he didn't dare open his mouth. Some instinct screamed that speaking would get him killed.
Caught halfway between lust and raw tension, his brain was pure static—when the woman who'd been silent until now spoke again.
"I like that kind of oppa...♥"
No—more precisely, she had already slipped up behind him, arms sliding around his neck.
"You wouldn't go running your mouth all over the place like some loose-lipped idiot, would you?"
Taejin understood exactly what she meant.
Talk about this to anyone and I'll kill you. That's what she's saying.
Deep down, he wanted to snap back—Fuck off. You think a threat like that is going to make me fold?—but reality was reality.
I don't have any power yet. Saying no right now is suicide.
Taejin, who was very good at facing facts, simply nodded. It was absolutely not because he wanted to keep the image of that naked woman all to himself.
Behind him, the masked woman seemed pleased. She unwrapped her arms from his neck.
"I knew you were a good oppa~♥ Next time I see you, I'll give you a little reward♥"
With that, every trace of her presence vanished from behind him. Relief flooded through him—and right alongside it came a colder thought.
Just pumping stamina and virility isn't going to cut it.
Replaying the terror of that moment made it clear: stacking nothing but endurance and sexual performance wasn't enough. If a non-resident decided to cause real trouble, Taejin had no way to stop them. At the very least, he needed some kind of combat capability.
Turning that over in his mind, he started weighing where his next points should go.
Strength, right...? No—maybe speed, so I can run? No, wait—mana...?
He was supposed to be on patrol. The scenery around him might as well have been invisible.
Meanwhile, the mysterious woman who'd just flashed Taejin was smiling to herself, thoroughly amused.
"What a fun oppa~?"
She'd only gone out for a little walk, and she'd run into someone who could actually sense her presence. How could that not be fun? No—fun didn't even cover it.
Haaah♥ I think I got a little wet...♥
She was turned on. Just from the fact that someone had noticed her. Of course, it could have been a coincidence. No—the odds of coincidence were much higher. But simply being looked at had been enough to delight her.
And why wouldn't it?
In Japan, not a single person ever noticed me. Come to Korea, and two people have already figured me out~?
Two people had already caught on to her. Technically, one of them was a given.
"Hey! I told you not to walk around naked inside the house!"
"Aww, Reika~ I don't really get Korean~"
"You're wearing a translator and you still—?!"
That one was the woman known as Korea's top S-class, the Ice Empress—the one who'd called her here in the first place.
"Haa... I can't believe they actually brought someone like this in as support..."
"I did work for Japan and the world, you know~"
"I know. That's the only reason I haven't thrown you out."
If anything, it would have been strange if she hadn't recognized her. Which made it all the more delightful that an ordinary civilian—someone with not a scrap of mana to his name—had somehow managed to sense her presence, even if only by pure luck.
And because of that—
Heh heh. Maybe I should go ask his name later~
—she was starting to take an interest in Taejin. More precisely: Japan's unofficial number one, the head of the country's largest criminal syndicate and assassination organization, the Queen of the Night—
Tsukishiro Reika's attention had begun to settle on a mere security guard.
"Looks like this is going to be fun. Life in Korea♥"
"Ugh, what the hell? Why do I have chills all of a sudden..."
"You okay?"
"No, it's nothing. Just got a bit of a shiver..."
"Eat better, will you? Here—hot chocolate."
"Ah, thank you."
It was the kind of attention Taejin would never, under any circumstances, have wanted.