Our Little Secret
The place we arrived at after wrapping up the day’s work was far from fancy. It was a back alley in a small town in Jaeryeong County, a little ways outside Sariwon City. The kind of neighborhood where neither hunters nor monsters bothered to show up. I followed Cheon Mari as she led the way, and soon a sign written in Chinese characters caught my eye: 怪食食堂 (The Bizarre Food Diner). In plain terms, Goesik Restaurant. The name instantly brought to mind a word that, in my previous life, had carried a very unflattering meaning.
“A bit shabby for a third-generation chaebol heir, isn’t it?”
“It may look shabby, but the taste is anything but.”
Her expression brimmed with confidence. She must have visited this place countless times in her previous life. When we finally stepped inside, the somewhat worn-down interior came into view. But that wasn’t what stood out to me right now.
“Hmm, you’ve rented out the entire place. Clean sweep.”
Cheon Mari had sent her subordinates ahead to book the whole restaurant. That included the chef who was still busily chopping away in the kitchen.
“I didn’t want you to go this far.”
“Why not? You said you wanted to eat, so I prepared a comfortable spot.”
“It’s too much. I’m just a commoner—this doesn’t suit me at all.”
“Come on, every once in a while you’ve got to treat yourself to a little deviation from the norm. Besides, the Nartika employees owe you a huge debt today, so just think of it as them treating you~”
A huge debt? What debt? All I’d done was act with confidence. If I hadn’t thought that giving it a shot wouldn’t be so bad, I never would have tried in the first place. If anyone deserved thanks, it was the Nartika hunters who’d had their prey stolen from them. I considered telling her the truth, but the saying “excessive humility is a nuisance” came to mind. If that’s how she wanted to see it, there was no need to nitpick and correct her.
I took off my dirty shoes and stepped into the room. Dishes were already laid out. They looked ordinary but were thoughtfully arranged; it was clear someone had put in real effort. After a while, the wolf-boss-based dishes started coming out one by one. They weren’t anything particularly extravagant, though. Most of it was simple fare—iron-grilled meat, charcoal-grilled meat, meat stew, that sort of thing.
We ate slowly, chatting between bites.
“Something happened not too long ago—I’m not sure if I told you. Did I ever mention punching my relative?”
“No, you never did.”
“Well, it went like this. One day I came home after a tough job, and the whole house was deathly quiet. So I asked the housekeeper straight up what the hell was going on.”
“Hmm, what was it?”
“You know what she said? That my relative had been caught doing drugs!”
“Huh? Drugs?”
The story started off pretty spicy. It was the kind of inside scoop about a powerful family that normal people never got to hear. A perfect moment to realize just how different our worlds were. I listened closely as Cheon Mari continued, her voice laced with emotion.
“Yeah! And it was Gwangjeungcho! The first thought that popped into my head was, ‘Holy shit, even my friend’s friend’s kid is doing drugs and nearly ruined my friend’s life…’”
“And now one of my own family members is popping that crap?”
“Exactly. That’s how I felt. But you know what’s even funnier? When Grandpa heard about it, he just scolded the guy and told him not to do it again!”
“Scolding doesn’t fix a drug addict.”
I could say that with the authority of someone who had nearly died because of it. For addicts, a good beating was the real medicine.
“I couldn’t just let it slide. So I grabbed him, dragged him to the company entrance first thing in the morning, and beat the living hell out of him—calling him every name in the book: you son of a bitch, you fucking bastard, you piece of shit.”
“Nom… Didn’t his parents try to stop you?”
“Of course they did. They even clung to my legs, grabbing my stockings.”
“…You didn’t hit him too much at once, did you?”
“I hit him a ton! Who does he think he is? If he didn’t want to end up like that, he should’ve never touched the stuff in the first place. If it got out to the media, we’d have to do so much damage control I can’t even imagine.”
“That’s not what I meant. I just think beating him periodically in smaller doses would’ve been more effective. Beating him all at once like that—he’s just going to do it again anyway.”
In truth, even that didn’t guarantee he’d quit. After all, Lim Hana had been scolded countless times by her parents and still couldn’t kick the habit. Of course, she might have cut back a little by now, but that was my honest opinion.
Cheon Mari suddenly opened her mouth like she had achieved enlightenment.
“Ah…! That’s right…!”
“I bet if you went into his room right now, you’d still find some Gwangjeungcho hidden somewhere. That’s exactly how Lim Hana used to hide hers.”
“You really are a fucking genius! Why didn’t I think of that?”
And so Cheon Mari resolved to go home and tear her relative’s room apart. Deciding to bring a club along was just a bonus. Truly an educational conversation.
After we finished every last grain of rice and I started wondering whether Lim Hana had actually cut back on the drugs, Cheon Mari, who had been idly tapping her fingers, turned on the TV in the corner.
Perfectly ordinary channels. Cheon Mari thought for a moment before settling on the economic news.
“Ah, guess it’s about time I start making some money.”
She said it like she wanted me to hear. I kept glancing back and forth between her and the news.
“What, you’re going into business?”
“Not business. I’m thinking of dabbling in stocks. Big time.”
“Stocks?”
The basics for any regressor were using future knowledge to copy-paste money through the stock market. But now that I thought about it, I had never once heard her talk about playing the market. The only “investment” she ever bragged about was telling her grandfather something and raking in insane profits. For a regressor, her laziness was on another level.
“I’m going to need quite a bit of money later on.”
If that was the case, she should have started when she was younger. Why bring it up now, of all times? For now, I pretended to be a normal middle-schooler and acted worried.
“You could lose everything if you’re not careful.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. Who do you think I am? The Midas touch—everything I touch turns to gold. That’s Cheon Mari.”
“But do you really need that much money right now?”
She nodded. Even after thinking about it, I couldn’t come up with anything that urgent.
“Your friend’s academy buddies.”
Ah. Right. And it was a huge one.
“If I’m going to acquire them like I promised, it’s going to cost a fortune. And it’s not like there’s just one or two guilds involved.”
The guilds connected to Lim Hana’s friends were by no means small. They were big enough to be considered fairly large, and for Nartika—which was barely hanging on to big-business status—it would be quite the burden. So Cheon Mari was clearly trying to soften the shock that would hit the company. She was gathering the acquisition funds from somewhere else.
‘But that’s strange.’
Did she really need to tell me about this? Honestly, copying money through stocks was something she could do perfectly well on her own. It was practically a privilege reserved for regressors with future knowledge. In fact, casually leaking this information to me was a risk in itself. It created the possibility that things could go wrong.
“You wouldn’t just say something like this for no reason… Is there a specific reason you’re telling me?”
“Yep! So, Sian, can you help me with the stocks?”
This was even more problematic. I had no idea what kind of help she wanted. Since she was a regressor, all she had to do was buy and sell the stocks she remembered. The fact that she needed help from a small fry like me was strange in itself.
“Exactly how?”
“Well, you’d just buy and sell the stocks I tell you to. Think of yourself as a trader.”
“But… couldn’t you do that by yourself?”
“I have a lot of things to take care of. It’s too much for me alone.”
“Besides, I don’t know anything about that field…? Wouldn’t it be better to hire a professional?”
“This is something I can only entrust to someone I trust. And if you don’t know, you can just learn.”
Dangerous. Way too dangerous. This was far too serious to do out of mere loyalty. Looking at everything Cheon Mari had done so far, it was hard to believe she was only a seventeen-year-old soon-to-be high schooler. She had meddled in company management during kindergarten, stood out as a hunter in elementary school, and solidified her position as successor in middle school. And I had watched her regularly shatter plausibility and realism from right beside her. Our first meeting that seemed to lack any sense of reality, her remarks that sounded like she could see straight into the future, the incident where she headed underground during an earthquake, the fact that she had taught me countless martial arts despite being the same age. Anyone would find it suspicious. Anyone would find it shady. I had been forcibly ignoring all of it until now. Or rather, I had brushed it off with a “whatever” even when the pieces didn’t fit. But if I actively helped her use a regressor’s future knowledge here? It would become impossible to keep brushing it off. Maybe the things I had tried so hard to ignore would finally be exposed. Cheon Mari might even start suspecting me. Not as the ordinary middle-schooler Kang Sian, but as the suspicious human Kang Sian.
In fact, if you really thought about it, a properly functioning regressor would never have done this. They wouldn’t have scattered sparks of suspicion among the people around them like this. It was a situation that made me want to curse out loud.
I was busy trying to come up with some excuse to refuse when Cheon Mari slowly stood up from her seat. Just as I wondered what she was doing, the door suddenly swung open.
“Excuse me, ma’am. Bring out every single bottle of alcohol in this place right now.”
“What?! What the hell are you doing?!”
Startled, I shot to my feet. I immediately shoved Cheon Mari—who had just uttered words no minor should ever say—against the wall. I had to stop her before she said anything else. I waved my hands frantically at the woman outside.
“No! My friend must have gone crazy for a second! It’s nothing!”
“Ma’am! Make sure you bring the dongdongju!”
“Hey! Cheon Mari!”
I grabbed both her arms and shoved her against the wall again. As if asking what the hell she was doing. But Cheon Mari just grinned mischievously and poked her head out, looking like she was asking if this was really such a big deal.
“No one’s going to find out anyway, right? If we keep it as our little secret, there’s no way we’ll get caught.”
“That’s not the point. We were talking about stocks and now you’re doing this?”
“I didn’t think I could say something this honest while completely sober.”
“Then let me be honest first. My answer is no.”
“Aw, that’s a little disappointing.”
She lifted the corners of her mouth in a seductive way. It didn’t look like she was simply upset. There was clearly some other purpose—something hard to guess.
“But that’s not what I want to talk about right now.”
“Then what is it?”
“Hmm~ I think I’ll only be able to tell you once we have some drinks.”
Do as I ask. Then you’ll understand. There was no other way. I gently let go of Cheon Mari. I told the auntie who was staring at us to bring the alcohol. Only then did Cheon Mari look satisfied and nod with a positive expression.
She was my friend, but she was also an enormous headache. I had no idea how I was going to keep her under control once we entered the academy.
“I’ll drink, but how are you planning to deal with the smell of alcohol?”
“Well, we can just get a hotel room and stay there for the night, right? If they say we can’t because we’re minors, we’ll just lie our way through it.”
“My aunt and your grandfather will worry.”
“We can just make up a suitable excuse. Say we were training, got tired, and just slept at the company.”
She was right. They would probably let it slide with a light scolding at most.
“……”
But that was exactly why my head was starting to hurt. If Lim Hana saw this scene, she might have laughed at me. A girl who did drugs openly with her friends even though she was a minor. A guy who drank alcohol openly with a female student in a restaurant even though he was a minor. My sins might be lighter, but somehow my heart felt heavier.
“…Damn it, I don’t care anymore. Do whatever you want.”
“Thanks~”
Cheon Mari beamed. It felt like a bomb was about to drop any second now.