A Strange Human
The next morning.
My eyes opened before the alarm even had a chance to ring.
I checked the clock. 8:30 AM.
I couldn't tell whether it was the power of the twenty million won deposited into my account yesterday, or that threatening text that had flown in at dawn.
I slid out of bed and headed straight for the bathroom.
And I looked in the mirror.
Hmm.
Maybe it was the shaggy fringe hanging down over my face, but my expression looked a little dull.
Out of nowhere, Licia's voice from last night echoed in my ears.
'I'll have new clothes fitted for you, so let's meet tomorrow.'
If I was going to get nice clothes for free, the least I could do was show up looking presentable. It was a matter of basic courtesy.
I dug out a jar of hair wax that had been banished to the corner of the sink drawer.
Then I swept my bangs back.
Armed with a blast from the hair dryer, I attempted something like the clean pompadour styles I'd seen in barbershop magazines.
With my forehead exposed and my brows tidied up, a fairly decent-looking man stared back at me from the mirror.
"Oh. Not bad, actually."
Men's trait #1: the moment you look in a mirror, you think you look pretty good.
With my hair roughly sorted out, I stepped out to the living room.
Since I was up early for once, my sister was already seated at the table.
"Huh?"
Her eyes went wide as saucers.
"Look at you, all dressed up this early in the morning. Where are you going?"
"Ah, I have an appointment. Headed out for it."
I straightened my clothes, and my sister's brow creased slightly.
"An appointment? With who? You barely have any friends, you know."
"Do you have to go straight for the jugular? They're not a friend — I'm meeting Ms. Licia."
The instant that name left my mouth, my sister's expression clouded over.
Her fingertips seemed to tremble almost imperceptibly, and then she pulled an excruciatingly awkward smile onto her lips.
"Th-that... your manager?"
"Yeah. She called out of nowhere last night and said it's contract renewal season for hunters, so she's taking me out to buy clothes. Free clothes — what reason would I have to say no?"
"Really? Where are you meeting her? Where are you going?"
"No idea. She said we'd meet at a café first and go from there. How should I know where she'll drag me?"
My sister bit her lip, hesitated for a long moment, then got up from her seat and shuffled over to me in quick little steps.
"Hey, Hyunwoo."
"What."
"When you get wherever you're going... could you send your big sister a text?"
Well... it was understandable. I'd just gone off to fight a magic beast yesterday. Of course she'd worry.
"Fine. It's just one text."
"Yeah. That's all I need."
She looked relieved, and then her gaze drifted up above my face.
"Wait. What is that on your head?!"
"What?"
"What's with your hair? Why'd you slick it back like that?!"
I touched my bangs, baffled.
"What? Does it look weird combed back neatly? I looked in the mirror, put in some wax, tried to style it properly. I thought this looked better..."
Before I could even finish, my sister thrust her hand out.
"Ah— what are you doing."
She started raking her fingers through my carefully styled hair.
My sprayed-and-waxed pompadour proved utterly powerless against her, and my swept-back fringe collapsed in a heap.
In seconds, my forehead was buried again, and my hair was restored to its original shaggy state, hanging all the way down over my eyebrows.
"Augh... do you know how long that took?"
Regardless of my protests, my sister nodded at her work with a satisfied expression.
"This suits you way better."
"No matter how many times I look, I really don't think so..."
When I grumbled, she propped her chin on her crossed arms and scoffed.
"A man's eyes and a woman's eyes are different. Nine times out of ten, the hairstyle a guy thinks makes him look cool comes across to women as try-hard and greasy."
"Huh. Hearing it spelled out like that, I guess you have a point."
"Exactly! So never touch the bangs again. Got it?"
Well, it was true that a woman's judgment on these things was more reliable.
I gave my hair a half-hearted shake to tidy it up and opened the front door.
"I'm off. I'll make sure to text."
"Yeah! Be safe out there!"
With my sister's send-off at my back, I stepped out of the house.
Ten in the morning.
I'd planted myself at a window seat in a big chain café near the subway station.
Our meeting time was 10:30.
An iced americano sat on the table, and I sipped it through a straw while gazing out the window.
Being a weekend morning, the street outside was bustling with passersby, and the café was fairly packed with customers clustered in twos and threes, chatting away.
Hmm.
I casually glanced around the room.
To be perfectly honest, from the moment I'd walked in and ordered, a faint, sneaking hope had taken root in the corner of my mind.
After all, an article with my face and name splashed across it in giant letters had gone up, hadn't it?
'Oh my god, isn't that Hunter Lee Hyunwoo from the news yesterday?! No way, look at him in person!'
'You're Hunter Lee Hyunwoo, right? Could I possibly get an autograph?'
'Eek! He's so cool!'
I'd been picturing scenarios exactly like these, subtly flexing my shoulders — but reality was a cruel mistress.
Not a single person looked my way.
The barista at the counter recited "one order coming up" with the dead eyes of the soulless, and the couple at the next table was too absorbed in the drama of their own relationship to notice anything else.
Worse still, the group of university students sitting directly across from me was scrolling through hunter-related news on their smartphones — without registering even one percent that the subject of that very news was sitting right in front of them.
"Well, to be fair..."
Thinking it over, it made perfect sense.
The photo in the article had shown me in a desperate, blood-and-dirt-covered state, gripping a sword. The current me was just an ordinary guy in his twenties in a cardigan, with shaggy hair, sucking on an americano.
And even by my own assessment, I wasn't exactly a looker...
"Drank mykimchi soup for nothing."
I was chewing sourly on my straw to drown my disappointment when—
Ding-a-ling.
The bell above the café entrance chimed. And in an instant, a hush fell over the entire café.
The murmur of noise rippled and died away, and every gaze among the people seated near the door swung toward a single point.
"Wow... incredible."
"Is she a foreigner? An actress?"
"God. Look at those proportions."
Hushed gasps and whispers erupted from every corner.
Wondering what on earth all the commotion was about, I turned my head toward the café entrance.
...
The person walking through the door was Licia.
Breathtaking silver hair flowed softly down to her waist.
And her jewel-like blue eyes radiated an air that was at once coolly distant and unmistakably noble.
Finally, there was the outfit — modest, revealing nothing, and yet utterly incapable of hiding the curves of her figure.
Urban and polished, yet somehow carrying an unreal decadent beauty and a hypnotically alluring aura — that was Licia.
No matter how many times I see it, I'll never get used to it.
Then a well-dressed man sitting along the aisle seemed to work up his courage and rose from his seat.
"Excuse me, sorry to bother you, but you're so beautiful I just have to ask — could I possibly get your number? Maybe grab a coffee sometime—"
She didn't spare him so much as a glance.
As if he were nothing more than a rock placed in her path, she gave his shoulder the lightest bump and swept right past him.
Click, click.
The steady rhythm of her high heels rang out, then came to a stop in front of my table.
Licia dragged the chair opposite me out with a scrape and dropped into it.
Then she stared at my face, long and hard.
Her dark brows slowly began to draw together.
"..."
She studied me for a good while, and I swallowed a dry cough and finally spoke up.
"What, are you going to glare at someone's face the second you see it? I wasn't even late — I came out thirty whole minutes early and waited."
Licia didn't answer. Instead, a hand shot out toward me.
"What are you doing."
Her fingertips touched my forehead, and she swept my bangs upward.
And for one fleeting instant.
The corners of her frozen lips curled gently up.
Of course, that smile lasted less than a second.
The moment my fringe lifted and my face was revealed, I felt several curious gazes from the surrounding tables turning to stare — and that was all it took.
In a heartbeat, Licia's eyes went ice-cold again.
Pababak!
She messed up my hair with the very hand she'd been holding up.
"Hey, that's — I'm not a toy, you know."
My hair was a shaggy mess once more.
Only then did Licia pull her hand back with an air of satisfaction.
"Just... don't slick your hair back, Hyunwoo. Ever."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Don't cut it short in the future either — keep it long and over your eyes, always. Just live exactly like you are now, draped in that rag-like mess of hair. It suits you better."
Was the gap between what men and women find attractive truly this vast?
"When a guy's hair is a bit long and shaggy, doesn't it just look stifling and unpleasant? For professional life, neat and tidy is half the battle."
Licia nodded at my words.
"Yes. It looks sloppy and stifling."
"Then why are you telling me to cover it up?"
"That's exactly why."
"What kind of nonsense is that?"
"There are reasons for things. Deep, profound reasons that Hyunwoo doesn't need to know."
A brick wall if I ever met one. Fine. I'd ignore her and drink my coffee.
Just as I reached for my americano, Licia's hand got there first and snatched my cup away.
Slurp.
She drank my coffee through the straw, took a sip to quench her throat, and set the cup down without a care in the world.
If I had to mention that straw — it was the exact same straw I'd had in my mouth not two minutes ago, chewing on it bit by bit!
"What? My throat was dry. I can drink some, can't I?"
"Ah. Yes... I suppose. Sure. Of course."
"Anyway, I'm planning to spend at least... hmm, ten million won or more on you today. I'll have you upholstered head to toe in luxury brands, so you can afford to buy me coffee like this, right?"
Boundless generosity in the face of money — surely that was the cardinal virtue of life in a capitalist society.
"Fully acknowledged. So, where exactly are we going?"
"Hmm... somewhere quiet, first."
And with that, she wasn't even giving my americano back — she'd simply confiscated it.
'Just order another one, then.'
Truly, this woman was a strange one.