Swallow It. It's Not Weird.
The woman had no idea that dark footsteps were heading straight toward her. If you mentioned “dark footsteps” to her, she’d probably picture a Black person first. Ines had just kicked off her shoes and flopped onto the bed. The soft mattress pressed against her bruised body, but there was nothing she could do except grit her teeth and endure it. She’d been beaten so thoroughly that ordinary ointments or pain patches wouldn’t make a dent. To fix pain like this, she had only two difficult options.
The first was fentanyl—the drug currently plunging the entire United States into chaos and turning the neighboring world into a complete mess. It was cheap and insanely effective, but unfortunately, Ines wasn’t the type to enjoy painkillers. A true American, after all, should never surrender to mere pain. Turning to drugs just because your body and mind hurt a little? What kind of pathetic weakness was that? In her opinion, people who did that deserved to be culled from society. Like those hunter-perv furries who wandered the streets in animal costumes.
The second option wasn’t medicine in the usual sense, but a high-performance elixir. It didn’t just suppress pain—it actually healed the wounds, so Ines had no particular aversion to it. The only problem was the price. It was so expensive it felt like it would require digging up her parents’ ancestors’ graves just to afford it. No, more like it would bankrupt the entire family line.
“Elixirs are too expensive… I’ll just rub some ice on it later…”
For the record, the elixir she was talking about wasn’t the Shareltea version that mercilessly crammed blessings into a bottle and debated whether or not to add the World Tree’s lewd sap. It was the Earth version—purely scientific and magical enhancement of natural recovery power.
Either way, both options were out of reach for Ines. Even the cheap several-hundred-thousand-won elixir was a burden for a farmer’s daughter. One might suggest going to the hospital for healing magic instead, but unfortunately she was American, and America was the country the Creator had blessed with medical bills. American-style healthcare costs followed quantum mechanics—they could spike to any value before observation. Ines had no desire to blow several months’ living expenses on a hospital visit.
There were no other options. In the end, she could only lie there groaning, trying to forget the memory of getting beaten senseless by an elf.
Her family was collapsing. Society was collapsing. Justice lay in ruins. Just as her mood sank even lower, the doorbell rang.
“Delivery~”
Her eyes snapped open. She bolted upright. It was hard to believe this was the same person who had been writhing in pain moments ago. Her movements were far too energetic for someone supposedly suffering. This was the moment it was proven that deliveries were basically legal drugs.
Ines walked to the front door with noticeably lighter steps.
“Hello? Is anyone home?”
“Yes~ Coming~”
Her heavily hoarse voice raised no suspicion. The only thing that mattered was that a package had arrived. Without the slightest hesitation, she opened the door.
Ines, bright and cheerful as could be… simply froze.
“Ah.”
“So this is where you live? It’s nicer than I expected.”
That bastard. That elf. That Asian. That lowborn blood.
It was none other than Kang Sian, standing at her doorstep.
“H-how…!!!”
“I just followed you. Like you did to me last time.”
The worst possible scenario, one she hadn’t even imagined. Her expression crumpled as if the heavens had fallen. She immediately tried to slam the door, but Sian caught it before it could close. She spat a weak curse and fled backward.
She headed for her room. Inside, two items waited on one side of the space. One was her charging smartphone. The other was her main weapon—a spear.
Since Sian hadn’t immediately followed her, using the smartphone was the safer choice. Even characters in horror movies usually died because they did something stupid instead of calling for help. If she calmly locked the door and reported the incident quickly, she could survive this.
She might be from the sticks, but she wasn’t ignorant of such basic lessons. The plump “Doldol” from her computer had spread mass media even to rural villages. Gathering the information she’d learned there, she displayed the kind of brilliant ingenuity befitting a game protagonist.
‘I have to take him down with the spear!’
She ignored the smartphone and grabbed the spear instead. Truly an incredible decision.
She charged back out of the room. Sian, who seemed to have no grasp of the situation, stood there blankly with his bag still on his shoulder. She lunged at him, swinging the spear infused with magic power. Her large chest bounced as faint blue particles rose, but compared to him it was pathetic.
Sian watched, then slightly raised his senses.
“You son of a bitch—!”
He slid sideways, dodging both her shout and the attack. The spearhead struck the floor with a loud crack—or it should have. But right before it reached the wooden surface, the spear was caught and stopped dead.
“Is it okay to swing weapons inside the house?”
With a single hand, he had completely blocked an attack that carried her full strength, weight, and momentum. She frantically tried to yank the spear back, but Sian’s hand moved faster.
Thud!
His fist slammed into Ines’s face. She lost her balance and fell backward.
“You filthy half-breed…!”
Even if she was half-dead, she was still a hunter aspirant. She endured the pain and forced herself up. She quickly scanned the room, snatched a vase from the drawer, smashed it against the wall, and grabbed a sharp shard. Blood flowed from her palm, but she held on through sheer spite and willpower. She swung it immediately.
Sian casually swatted her hand aside. The shard clattered to the floor. Left with no choice, she quickly assumed a boxing stance and threw a punch. Every strike was dodged. The blood leaking from her split lip only made her bite down harder. Her hatred and determination to somehow defeat that damn elf, Kang Sian, ran impossibly deep.
In the end, Sian had no other choice. He raised his senses a little more, blocked every attack, and slammed her onto the floor. He had controlled his strength, so the floor didn’t break, but the heavy thump left her completely incapacitated. Her body, exhausted from accumulated injuries, refused to move anymore.
Staring up at the ceiling of a house she barely ever looked at felt ridiculous. Now it seemed the only thing left was for that elf to do whatever he wanted with her. It sounded like a delusion, but the possibility was real. A man who had broken into her home—and someone she had fought, at that. If nothing bad happened to her here, that would be even stranger. If he didn’t do anything, then Kang Sian would truly be the weird one.
“Kuh… Just kill me already…”
“There you go talking nonsense again.”
And Kang Sian was indeed a strange person—just not quite as strange as Cheon Mari. It made sense; he was the childhood friend of a woman who wasn’t entirely sane to begin with. At any rate, acting as if he didn’t have a single improper thought, he helped her up and sat her against the wall.
He then pulled several potions from his bag.
“W-what the hell are you trying to do?!”
“I’m giving you medicine so you don’t turn into a complete idiot.”
The potions were clearly labeled with the Nartika logo and the words “Superior Elixir.” Unfortunately, because of the angle, Ines couldn’t read what kind of potion they were. Her face turned deathly pale, as if she were about to be used as a test subject.
“You bastard!! If you leave here I’m reporting you for breaking and entering—!”
“Go ahead if you want. You won’t find it as fun as you think.”
His face said he wasn’t worried in the slightest. It was an obvious truth. She wondered what countermeasures he could possibly have. But unlike those idiots who relied on their parents, Sian had the legal team of the company he owned. And while it wasn’t exactly cash, he had plenty of money. Given enough time, there were endless ways to make problems disappear. After all, “rich people don’t go to jail” was a universal law.
“Don’t act so cocky! You think a foreigner can avoid punishment?”
“Yeah, I’m a foreigner. But this is Arecibo.”
It was America, but a special zone where even Americans counted as foreigners. If they started measuring each other with different standards and got into a dogfight, the other side wouldn’t come out looking too good either.
“It would be really interesting if I testified that I suffered severe racial and species discrimination, wouldn’t it?”
“……”
So shut your mouth. I didn’t come here to beat you half to death, after all.
Of course, those words weren’t enough to calm her. She struggled with all her might, but Sian forced the elixir down her throat anyway.
“Kehk, kek!”
“Swallow it. It’s not weird.”
She tried to vomit it up, thinking it was poison, but it was impossible. With her hands barely able to move, there was nothing she could do. It was utterly miserable. What was even more miserable was that this wasn’t the end.
“Eek?!”
“It’s not bad, so stay still.”
She could only helplessly watch as Sian wiped her wounds with cotton soaked in elixir. And every time the cotton touched her injuries, she felt a strange sensation that wasn’t exactly pain, which made her face flush slightly.
Ines kept turning the situation over in her mind. She repeated to herself that what she saw wasn’t everything.
‘This bastard is poisoning me…! I have to wipe it off somehow, throw up, and get to a hospital…!’
Because of her openly disgusted attitude, the treatment couldn’t continue for long. Sian only cleaned the visible areas, then left a few more bottles of elixir beside her. He didn’t seem to mind the waste. He stood up.
“The potions I fed you and applied are superior elixirs.”
“W-what?”
“I’ll leave two more bottles here. If your condition gets worse, drink them.”
Sudden words. Incomprehensible statements threw her into complete confusion. She had thought it was poison, that she was being drugged—but he was saying it wasn’t? No matter how she looked at it, the statement didn’t match the current situation. She judged it a lie, but soon realized it was the truth. The pain in her body was fading, and she could feel her functions slowly returning.
Ines stared at the silver-haired elf in front of her with confused eyes. Why had he come all the way to her house to give her this kind of treatment? What possible benefit could he gain from using such expensive superior elixirs? Why would a lowly elf show her this kind of mercy?
“I don’t have any more business here, so I’ll be going. You don’t have to thank me.”
“Wait!! Who the hell are you?!”
There was no need to explain. He turned sharply and headed for the door. He stepped through the sunlight pouring in from the doorway, then stopped. As if something had occurred to him a little too late.
“Oh, right. If you pull that kind of shit again next time, I’ll beat the living hell out of you.”
He glanced back slightly and spoke in a cold voice. It was a warning he knew wouldn’t be heeded, but he said it anyway to vent his frustration. That was the end of it. Kang Sian left the house completely.
“What the…?”
A reality so absurd it felt empty. She couldn’t move, stunned by the fact that she had received such treatment from someone she hated. Emotions so tangled they felt twisted. More than anything else, the overwhelming weight of inferiority and despair pressed down on her. For now, that was how it was.