A Truly Fascinating Person
The moment the doctor said I was fit for discharge, I bolted straight out of the hospital room.
Stepping outside, the first thing to catch my eye was the pitch-black evening sky, the sun long since sunk. The streets were quiet, as befitting a weekend afternoon.
Aside from a few hunter corporation employees with wrecked work-life balances and some staff from the nearby broadcasting station, there was barely a soul in sight.
Just how many hours was I lying down?
I was pretty sure it was early afternoon when I'd started gushing blood and blacked out, too.
So I burned through an entire Saturday in the blink of an eye….
Swallowing a sigh, I slung my bag over one shoulder and headed straight for the nearest convenience store.
And began sweeping every snack on the shelves into my basket.
"What about this one?"
"Love it!"
"Those chocolate pretzels?"
"Really, really love those."
"Do I need to get candy too?"
"Yes! Yes! You have to buy candy too!"
I could feel the part-timer shooting glances our way, but with my wireless earbuds in, their gaze slid right off me.
A basket stuffed with every manner of chips and munchies was set on the counter.
"……That comes to 124,800 won."
It was my first time ever dealing in six figures at a convenience store.
When I handed over my card, the clerk's eyes flicked worriedly between me and the snack-laden basket.
It's not for me, I promise.
Granted, I had no idea how Nabi, invisible to anyone but me, was going to put away that many snacks.
Well… that's a problem for later.
My mind drifted back to the brutal negotiation Nabi and I had hashed out right before I left the hospital.
"I'm sorry! Let's go buy snacks right now."
"You promised. And you kept breaking it."
"You're right, that was my fault. I'm really sorry. But it's not like I deliberately refused to buy you snacks."
"I don't care. I'm mad. Do you like Eternal Rest better?"
God, how I'd wanted to squeeze my eyes shut right then.
"I was in so much pain I must have lost my head for a moment. I wanted to buy you snacks so, so badly, but my body just wouldn't move. You know?"
"……You didn't forget, did you?"
"Of course not. How could I forget a promise I made with you? It was a promise with a friend, no less."
"Right. You couldn't forget. It was a promise with a friend."
"Yeah, so let it go, okay? Let's go buy snacks right this second. I'll get you everything you want."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Then… fine. I'll try to forgive you."
Now imagine hearing the sound of a doll's seam being unpicked, thread by thread, for the entirety of that conversation.
It was like carrying a bomb with a timer strapped to my back.
Right now, though… the ticking seemed to have stopped, mercifully.
"Thank you."
"Thank you!"
Plastic bag in hand, I left the convenience store behind.
The alley leading home was dim, lit only by the sparse streetlamps.
Even the garbage bags slumped against the wall required very careful scrutiny before you could be sure they weren't, in fact, a person lying there.
As it happened, a quick scan of my surroundings turned up not a single passerby.
This much should be fine.
I fished a cookie out of the plastic bag and tossed it back over my shoulder. And then… the sound of a seam being unpicked came through, crisp and clear.
Thrip.
Thrip.
Thrip, snip.
A faint weight settled into the bag with a stealthy little shift, and past the smooth texture that brushed my fingertips—
the cookie was gone.
Crunch.
Crunch.
"……."
Gulp.
…So it can eat. Out of sheer curiosity, I let my eyes drift sideways and back, and there it was: a single white puppy doll dangling from the end of my bag.
And if you looked closely at it…
Through the torn seam along its back, something that was decidedly not cotton stuffing.
The harder I tried to make out what shape that thing actually was, the more a dizziness spread through my head, like ink bleeding across water.
The instant I registered the nausea and the edges of my vision going hazy, I shook my head side to side and fixed my gaze dead ahead.
Enough.
Nothing good would come of looking any further.
Eyes forward. Eyes forward only.
Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.
Crunch.
Crunch.
And so, after our dramatic reconciliation, we finally made it home. I kept handing over snacks the whole way, and Nabi kept receiving and devouring them.
There we go. Peace at last.
Baek Cheonhyeong walked slowly, unusually lost in thought.
Turning over and over in his mind the searing sensation he'd felt in his palm, he walked and walked the long corridor.
What was that, exactly.
That strange, foreign reaction from moments ago.
While still probing at the alien sensation, he found he'd somehow arrived at his destination.
Opening the door that connected the corridor, he saw his executive secretary and assistant secretary in turn. He dipped his head slightly at the assistant — newly hired not long ago — with a kind smile.
…All while his mind was still replaying the fading feeling in his palm, of course.
Once inside the office space deeper within, Baek Cheonhyeong turned to his executive secretary, who had shrewdly followed him in, and asked,
"Do abilities dull if you don't use them?"
His voice was excessively light, as if asking a question of no real consequence.
"I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'dull,' sir, but in terms of control, it's possible. Ability usage does, after all, rely on feel above all else."
A textbook secretary's answer.
But that wasn't what he'd been curious about.
"Even when an S-rank uses it against a D-rank?"
"At that point, wouldn't it be little different from a tiger pouncing on a wild dog?"
As expected.
So it's absurd, is what you're saying.
Baek Cheonhyeong nodded readily enough. That didn't mean he fully accepted it, however.
Because something had just happened that flatly contradicted those words.
He looked down quietly at his right palm, still trembling faintly.
So — how did this happen again?
To find the cause of that 'absurdity' he had personally experienced moments ago, Baek Cheonhyeong decided to mentally replay the day's events, piece by piece.
…In truth, contrary to what he'd told the teacher, he hadn't come into the office that day for overtime.
Do I even have a concept of 'overtime'?
Company work piled up daily, without fail. Documents accreting fresh by the minute and second, meetings and calls springing up at every turn — they filled his days to bursting.
Thanks to which, he ate and slept at the office.
But he had no intention of explaining all that so candidly to the teacher, so he'd improvised something plausible instead.
Anyway. Early that afternoon, he'd been grinding through one tedious document after another as on any other day, when unexpected news arrived.
News of an EX-rank dungeon — the first to break in nearly a year.
He immediately dispatched the field team working the weekend to the site.
Part of him wanted to go himself, but if he failed to process the flood of work in time, things would get difficult, so for now he held back.
Except.
"Cl…"
"Cl…?"
"Cleared! And, uh — zero casualties across the whole team. Looks like a rare clear even among EX-rank dungeons. And also…"
"Also?"
"Also, among the survivor names, there's a— no wait, why is this person here of all places. There's no way it's just someone with the same name… Right. No, there isn't."
The team member's voice, carried through the phone, was distinctly off-kilter, trailing off into mumble.
Baek Cheonhyeong's head tilted crookedly to one side.
"Field Team Na's Team Leader Moon Chaeyoung, and a kindergarten teacher employed under the company — a Teacher Na Hwiyeon, they say… and also—"
"Ha. Haha."
What a fascinating combination.
The moment that thought crossed his mind, his curiosity about the supposedly rare EX-rank dungeon was shunted to the back burner.
Baek Cheonhyeong dictated the company's brief official stance on the EX-rank dungeon and a handful of negotiating points for the government to his executive secretary, then rose from his seat.
It was an impulse — to go to the site himself, see their faces, and hear the situation firsthand.
But before he'd even fully left the company building, they appeared first.
…One was wheeled in unconscious, face painted entirely in blood.
The other brushed past him with a blank, deadened expression.
The woman followed the man being carried to a hospital room and vanished as well.
Baek Cheonhyeong halted his briskly advancing feet for a moment.
And stood there for a long while… before returning once more, at the same relentless pace, to his desk buried in documents.
I don't know why I did that.
Looking back, it was astonishingly hasty, pointless decisiveness.
What was I even planning to do, showing up in the middle of that?
Not that my duties here are going anywhere.
Even at Baek Cheonhyeong's return, the executive secretary said nothing.
The two simply put their heads down in silence, crafting measured responses to the flood of press inquiries, drafting the company's official position, and scheming up ways to squeeze every last drop of profit out of the cleared EX-rank dungeon.
And then… evening came.
"Shall we head over, sir? I hear Teacher Na Hwiyeon is in a private room at the emergency center right now."
Evening fell, the shift for breathing room arrived, and the executive secretary spoke up.
I had no appetite anyway.
So he went — telling himself it was a courtesy visit to console the man for the ugly incident connected to that underground dungeon.
But once he actually entered the room, the other party was dead to the world, asleep.
He considered simply turning back…
Well, I'm here for a moment anyway. Sitting down for a little while won't hurt.
He settled into the chair in the hospital room and closed his eyes, feeling the taut, perpetually spinning gears of his brain cool as though plunged into a refrigeration unit.
Being cooped up indoors lately was slowly killing him. His body itched for action, his brain overworked to the point of fraying.
Baek Cheonhyeong.
One of only four S-rank Hunters in all of South Korea.
One of only two in BOND.
And not merely that — a combat powerhouse with mental-type sub-skills on the side, a talent specialized, in the truest sense of the word, for the field.
Yet here he was, not in the field, but entombed in an office drowning in paper.
Thirty years ago, he'd have had no choice but to wander dungeons and battlefields. But in this 'Peace Era,' even that was a privilege you were only allowed to exercise when someone found a use for you.
Besides, the CEO position he'd never wanted had chained him to his chair around the clock.
His modest dream was for his little sister Cheonji to grow up fast, hand the company over to him, and let him return to the field.
Sitting still and pushing paper doesn't suit me at all.
Just as the thought of throwing it all away and running off somewhere surged up out of nowhere—
Baek Cheonhyeong cracked his closed eyes open.
Because he'd caught the faintest stirring of movement.
The dark hospital room relied on a single orange lamp, rather insufficient for studying the patient.
"You're awake?"
Baek Cheonhyeong rose readily from his seat.
The man squinted, trying to make out the approaching silhouette.
"How are you feeling? This is an inpatient room on the second floor of our company's emergency center."
Baek Cheonhyeong asked naturally after his condition, and even kindly added an explanation that this was a hospital room, for the sake of the man who'd been wheeled in unconscious—
But perhaps because of the unexpected visitor, the man looked flustered.
Judging from that look, Baek Cheonhyeong quickly concluded that smooth information gathering would be impossible.
At the very least, he decided, this was no time to interrogate someone whose face had gone sheet-white.
After an ordeal like that, trauma is bound to blur his memory considerably, at least for a while.
And if a proper situational investigation happened later, he could hear the whole account without difficulty then.
So, regrettably, he resolved to stick to his original purpose — consolation and a courtesy visit — and nothing more.
Baek Cheonhyeong put on the agreeable smile he reserved for the heavyweights of hunter corporations and government oversight coming to call.
He even attempted a joke, which was not normally his style.
Recalling, of course, the amusing rumor about the teacher that had been circulating through the company.
The preposterous one — that he was a spy from a rival hunter corporation.
"Between the underground dungeon incident and now this… Teacher, you really do seem to. Stumble into a remarkable number of coincidences."
To him — the man who knew exactly who Na Hwiyeon really was — the idea was fairly entertaining.
Having gone beyond the résumé and interview he'd personally reviewed to complete a full background check, he found it laughable.
Astonishingly exemplary student, that one.
There had been some questionable episodes in his school days, but everyone wandered a bit in their youth, so he'd judged nothing worth worrying over.
Perhaps it was the effect of dredging up a baseless rumor just for the sake of a joke, but the atmosphere wasn't bad at all.
Na Hwiyeon's complexion had recovered enough to look almost human again.
Still, before returning to his office, he decided to do one small verification.
Namely: he intended to skim, at least in fragments, what Na Hwiyeon had experienced that day, using his sub-skill.
And if it went further and required manipulating the man's memories, he was prepared to use that as well.
Considering the skill's penalty — a fever like a bout of sickness for a good while afterward — restraint would have been wiser…
But then it occurred to him that this much consideration was simply a matter of employee welfare, under special circumstances.
Just blurring the gruesome parts a little should do it.
So with that light-hearted intention, he would skim through, and if counseling seemed necessary, arrange for the company's staff psychiatrist.
However—
The moment Baek Cheonhyeong reached his hand toward the top of Na Hwiyeon's head and invoked his ability—
the power was repelled outright, in a flash of searing, stinging pain.
…He looked down at Na Hwiyeon in his hospital gown before him.
There had been no particular current, no unusual presence to feel at all.
That was strange.
He wasn't even an nullification-type awakener.
How can something like that even happen?
But his alarm didn't last long. At Na Hwiyeon looking up at him with a puzzled face, he withdrew his hand at once.
Spitting out some excuse about dust in the man's hair, he hastily made his escape from the room.
Ah — right, he had failed to resist voicing that observation on his way out, in the end.
"You really are a curious one, Teacher."
And so, back in his office at present.
Baek Cheonhyeong drummed his index finger lightly on the desk.
The one person who cleared an underground dungeon with no boss ever found — and emerged from it still conscious.
Once could be coincidence.
But…
He had now walked out of an EX-rank dungeon — today's confirmed anomaly case — alive and unscathed, again.
Not to mention the absurd articles about Na Hwiyeon the company had strained itself to bury.
News pieces stitched together from assorted citizen interviews all revolving around him.
The contents were so ridiculous and full of holes I dismissed them.
He'd simply assumed the truth got exaggerated somewhere in the retelling…
So is this a coincidence again, too?
…And finally, the ability backlash he'd experienced mere moments ago.
In other words — an S-rank, himself, had used his power against a D-rank named Na Hwiyeon, and not only had it failed to take hold, it had been bounced clean off.
To quote his own executive secretary: wasn't that precisely a tiger pouncing on a wild dog, only for the dog to carry the day?
Tap.
Tap-tap.
The index finger, rising and falling in its rhythm, stopped abruptly.
A crooked smile surfaced on Baek Cheonhyeong's face.
"What a truly fascinating person. Our Dolphin Class teacher."