Searching for a Breeding Female (2)
The 1st Generation Heroes were still active as ever.
Some of them had retired or fallen in battle, but ten heroes were still out there saving the world to this day.
And just ten of them produce this much paperwork?
Which meant Thetis had far too much on her plate. The workload was one thing, but ability users who lived too long tended to have their personalities twist into something eccentric. That led to countless incidents, and cleaning up after every single one of them fell squarely on Thetis's shoulders.
"Let's start with sorting the documents, if you would."
The stack weighed over thirty kilograms. Everything was jumbled together in a hopeless mess, and there wasn't even a clear standard for how it should be organized.
"These are deployment reports, these over here are damage compensation claims, then there's equipment requisition forms... and budget and miscellaneous administrative expenses. Just sort them all and bring them back to me."
"Understood."
It was a mountain of paperwork to dump on a brand-new recruit, but since he'd volunteered, Thetis handed it over without a second thought.
About ten hours' worth, I'd say.
Jeon Jihu was the first person to ever offer to help with this much work, which had surprised her a little. But she knew full well that he would eventually head elsewhere.
He said he wouldn't run away... but anyone can promise anything with words.
She didn't expect anything from the start. How many times had she trusted a human, only to be stabbed in the back? All that experience had taught Thetis never to place expectations on anyone — and she had no intention of starting now.
The volume is certainly impressive, though.
He picked up a single sheet. After skimming its contents, he spread several pages out at once.
If he paces himself, he could finish within the hour.
Jeon Jihu immediately sorted the documents into three piles: things that could be processed, things that needed verification, and finally, things requiring her sign-off.
It was a document-triage method he'd been honing since high school. He'd learned early on that when you were grinding through work assigned by a senior at a small company that didn't care about your education, sorting your tasks first was the way to survive.
Then, starting with the processable pile, he cross-checked dates against incident numbers.
"Hold on a moment."
At his words, Thetis looked up from the document she'd been halfway through signing.
"What is it? Don't tell me you're already—"
"It's not that. Incident 2174 and Incident 2178 have identical damage amounts."
"Hm? What's the problem? That happens from time to time."
"The damage breakdowns are almost exactly the same too, but the locations are different."
Jeon Jihu placed the two reports side by side, quite deliberately.
"It looks like someone transcribed the figures wrong on one of them, most likely."
She compared the two documents back and forth — and sure enough, there was a transcription error. Since the paperwork had been typed out on a typewriter rather than a computer, it was an understandable mistake.
"One incident was at a commercial building with eight hundred million won in damages, and the other was a warehouse — also exactly eight hundred million won."
He answered casually and set the papers aside.
All he had to do was sort them... and he caught typos on top of that?
An S-Class hero's dynamic visual acuity was exceptional — sharp enough to snatch the wing off a fly in midair. Jeon Jihu now put that ability to full use. The instant a document hit his hands, it was separated; anything with a typo or transcription error went into its own pile.
"Uh..."
Thirty minutes after Jeon Jihu had started sorting. Fifteen of those minutes had gone into calibrating exactly what sense to flip through the papers with, so the actual time spent was a mere fifteen.
"All done."
"Thank you for your hard work, Jeon Jihu. Hmm... it seems the work is finished for today. Go get some rest."
"With respect, I'll wait until you finish your work as well, Lady Thetis."
Under normal circumstances, just hunting down and reviewing each document would have taken a full day. But he'd gripped the papers with just enough force not to tear them, speed-read the contents in under a second per page, and finished sorting them to boot.
The S-Class heroes Thetis knew didn't use their power this way. It was meant for crushing villains and saving the world.
Thetis's affection has increased.
10/100
You have acquired 1 Stat Enhancement Ticket.
With that task done, Jeon Jihu had cleared the quest with ease. A modest rise in affection was enough to leave Thetis's feelings strangely stirred.
"Then... would you keep me company while I work? Just talk with me a while?"
"Of course. Gladly."
"I used to be a whale, you know. A humpback whale."
Thetis had always been famous as the silent hero. It was a habit born from being battered by the world's harshness from every direction.
"I drifted across the open ocean... and then the mystic magic of the sea settled upon me, and I became this — a human woman."
But for some reason, right now she wanted to talk about the past. Was it because she'd met a capable new hero? Or because she'd finally reclaimed a taste of freedom from the paperwork, if only for a moment?
Under the quest's influence, she found herself feeling uncertain — unable to tell what she was feeling. This emotion, one she'd never known in her life, left Thetis gazing into the distance as she continued with eyes that seemed lost in a dream.
"Sometimes I miss those days. Swimming free, with the whole world I belonged to spread out beneath me... back when I wasn't crushed under a weight of responsibility like I am now."
Scratch, scratch.
The sound of a pen nib skimming across paper rang out with unusual clarity.
"Are you anxious?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Ah— no, never mind. That was foolish of me to say."
Anxious, huh.
In a way, maybe she was. Becoming human meant relationships with others — growing weary of partings and betrayals.
She was feeling anxious about this new beginning, and Thetis honestly admitted as much to herself.
"You're not wrong. Maybe I am..."
"To say such a thing to someone I just met today. I-I'm sorry."
Oh no. This is bad.
Jeon Jihu suddenly realized he'd misspoken. Why on earth would he say something like that to a person whose face he'd known for less than a few hours?
First impressions matter most, they say. At this rate, all the affection I worked to raise might take a dive.
"It's quite all right. Thanks to you, the work will be finished that much sooner. And... being next to you, Jeon Jihu, I feel a little of the tension draining away."
"Th-thank you."
"The daily paperwork has been wearing me down, you see. From now on, I think you'll be able to chase my anxiety away."
Even as she said it, Thetis gave a slight shiver.
Chase away my anxiety? This person...?
Well, it was certainly true in a practical sense — she could offload the tedious work onto him.
Then why did her heart sink with a little flutter the moment the words left her mouth?
Thetis's affection has increased slightly.
15/100
That night, a post appeared on the Hero Gallery.
A crush...? Love at first sight?
Thetis, of course, knew nothing of such emotions. With even camaraderie a faint, unfamiliar thing to her, something as sweet and utterly unnecessary as that felt completely foreign.
A bolt from the blue!
Being called a crush was mortifying enough, but now she was about to be labeled a pervert of an older boss preying on the young?
SeaLover, AKA Thetis, a longtime lurker of the Hunter Gallery, was thoroughly aggrieved.
Judging that her honor was about to take a serious hit, she frantically hammered at her keyboard and began posting clarifications.
It was, of course, no courtship at all. Jeon Jihu had approached Thetis with not a single gram of lust in him, purely for the sake of his own advancement.
But Thetis, with practiced skill, twisted the facts in order to protect herself...
What an utterly vulgar thing to say!
Not that she'd opened the Hunter Gallery expecting elevated discourse, but Thetis, hopelessly weak to lewd talk, flushed red and found herself at a complete loss.
Ashtu, Thetis's comrade of many years, had already destined Jeon Jihu as her own mate...
Would it really be all right to take that chance from her? No — whatever I feel toward him, it's surely nothing like that.
...Though it would be comfortable having him around, I'll admit.
If Ashtu returned and took Jeon Jihu away with her, Thetis's paperwork would become an uphill battle all over again.
And she didn't want to go back to that...