I'm Not Broken
I opened my eyes to find a face hovering right in front of mine.
"Hwehng?!"
"Oh, you're awake?"
Nayeon was sitting on the floor beside the sofa, peering down at me. Both her arms were plastered with pain-relief patches, a blanket draped over nothing but her knees.
…Judging by the posture, she'd been like that all night.
"Did you sleep there?"
"No? I was just watching for a bit."
Just watching, she said — so why were her eyes that red?
…Well. Of course. Nayeon must have been terrified too. She'd nearly watched me get sucked into a rift right in front of her.
Between the reunion with my former master and everything else, I'd been so out of it I hadn't even considered things from her side. Arms and legs that wouldn't listen. Collapsed right there on the spot — how helpless must she have felt?
…Just like me, back when I was a sword. Able to do nothing but watch.
All morning long, she trailed after me as I toddled around the office on my little walks. When I peeled an egg, she finished the shell for me. The moment I so much as stood up from the sofa, a "Where are you going?" came flying over.
"I'm just getting some water."
"Unnie will bring it for you!"
At this point, this is surveillance, you know!
I shot her a pointed glare loaded with that exact complaint.
"This oppa I know said so, okay? Even if your ribs are cracked, you can look totally fine on the outside!"
"…It doesn't hurt even a little bit."
"It could suddenly hurt tomorrow!"
Sigh. Patience. Patience. I was the one who'd made her worry, after all.
Lunch arrived as a steaming bowl of porridge.
"…Porridge again?"
"Well, you're a patient?"
"Dinner last night was porridge too! And white porridge, again!"
One meal I could endure, but two consecutive bowls of plain white porridge was just cruel! At least give me abalone porridge! I knew it was a luxury for our guild's budget, but… we'd gotten a decent payout from this job!
"I—I need protein… protein…!"
Hey. You talking to a sword? Do you have any idea how important protein is? What are you going to do if my big, sturdy hilt goes all limp like a pair of chopsticks?!
"Protein? Where does this kid even pick up words like that."
"Byuri's on the computer all the time. Probably learned it from some community board."
"Honestly, the internet ruins kids."
Neither of them so much as half-listened to me.
I finally lost it and slammed my fist down on the tray — well, more of a light thok — and shouted:
"I'm not even a patient, Master!"
"Oh, please. Yesterday you… you fell, remember."
I hadn't fallen. I'd been sucked in. Feet lifted clean off the ground.
But Nayeon never used those words. She danced around it — "fell," "tipped over," anything but the truth. I understood why, but still…
Either way, I needed to eat. The moment I picked up the spoon, my hand was empty.
"Ah?!"
Nayeon had snatched it away. She scooped up a spoonful of porridge, blew on it with great care — hoo, hoo — and then:
"Aaah~"
"Okay, this is a bit much."
"Aaah~"
"……"
"Aaah~"
I ended up eating it.
Beside us, Jihyun let out a little snort of laughter mid-page-flip. For the sake of my dignity, I pretended not to hear.
Fine. Up to that point, I could still tolerate it.
The problem came when I tried to head to the kitchen for water again.
"Come on. Over here."
Nayeon turned her back to me, determined to give me a piggyback ride.
"…Master."
"Hurry up!"
"……I didn't break."
"You've broken before! In that exact dungeon!"
I had nothing to say to that.
I had broken. Cleanly. Right in two.
The funny part? After she yelled that, the person who looked the most startled was Nayeon herself.
"…No, that's not what I—"
"I know."
"That's not it, what unnie means is—"
"I said I know."
This wasn't caregiving. It wasn't nursing, and it wasn't surveillance either. If I had to name it, it was something closer to a verification process.
Am I here. Am I still here. Am I here right now. Am I really here…
"…Please carry me."
"Hm? Oh — okay!"
Getting piggybacked by someone whose arms were in tatters felt a little wrong, but… I was light. And more than anything, this person needed to be doing something right now, or she wasn't going to calm down.
Nayeon hoisted me up. Her back trembled just a little. I decided not to notice.
Even after I drank the water, I stayed on her back for a full lap around the office. The floor looked so far away. If I'd had a fear of heights, I would've shrieked.
Was being carried around always this comfortable? I'd spent three whole years being carried around — why hadn't I noticed back then?
Ah. Back then, I hadn't been carried this gently. I'd just been hauled around like luggage, jostled without a second thought.
"All aboard the taxi~ Whoosh~"
"Mhehehe."
Well. Getting piggybacked every now and then didn't seem so bad.
Jihyun had been buried in paperwork since morning. On top of yesterday's statement, a whole pile of additional documents seemed to have come attached. Judging by how many times she took her glasses off and put them back on.
She typed away furiously, then called me over with a small sigh.
"Byuri."
"Yes?"
"…How do you think this is going to play out? On the Association's end."
Huh. Was she asking me?
"What do you mean?"
"How do you think they'll handle this. You've been around that world long enough, haven't you."
I had. For three years, carried in the hands of some very important people. And even before awakening, I'd been glued to the hunter galleries picking up all kinds of things — so yes, I knew plenty.
"They'll bury it."
"Bury it?"
"Yes. It's an accident with no one to take the blame. They'll close it as cause unknown, collect the statements, and then the paperwork will just spin in circles until someone finally steps up to stamp it. 'Isn't this that department's fault?' 'No, it's theirs~' — that kind of thing."
Jihyun's pen stopped.
"…And then?"
"The moment someone stamps it, things will start moving fast. They'll probably call in the softest target they can find and lean on them hard."
And that would most likely be…
"…Us."
Jihyun dropped her head, then lifted it again with a face that had aged three years in a second.
"Why do you think that?"
"It happened last year too. A C-rank, I think? A ranking error, and three trainee hunters died."
"Ah, I saw that in the articles."
Gate ranking errors. They were common enough that the usual rule was a couple of articles and then everyone moved on. But one of the trainees caught in that particular accident happened to be the eldest grandson of a family with serious clout.
"Want to know how it ended?"
"……Cause unknown."
"And the compensation got passed around until a mid-sized guild ate the cost. Reason being incomplete documentation, I think? That guild got wrecked right after."
Jihyun's face tightened slightly.
Back when I was a sword, there wasn't much I could do — so I just watched and listened to everything with the eyes and ears I still had. In guild offices, in waiting rooms, in cars on the move… People don't watch their mouths in front of a sword hanging on the wall.
"Hmph."
You thought swordsmanship was all I knew? I'll have you know I'm something of an intellectual ego sword!
Jihyun was quiet for a long while, then pulled out a fresh sheet of paper.
"Then let's write ours in advance."
"Write what?"
"Everything we did that day. Down to the timestamps."
"Hey! Why are you telling a kid that kind of stuff!"
Nayeon's voice rang out from the kitchen.
"Sunbae. She knows more about this than we do."
"What? Even so—"
"At the very least, she knows more than you do, sunbae."
"…Ugh."
My shoulders were itching a little. Being trusted like this — honestly, it didn't feel bad at all!
"Heh. Funny. We're already short on ego swords for combat, and here we are using one as a consultant."
Jihyun snickered, then buried her face back in the monitor.
"Jihyun unnie."
"Hm?"
"When you write that… leave out what I did."
"Why?"
"If it draws attention, the Association might call us in. And if they decide they want to run some kind of examination…"
Jihyun stared at me, pen still in hand.
"…What exactly did you do with your life when you were a sword?"
What did a sword do with its life, she asked.
The moment the words left her mouth, she seemed to realize how absurd the question was. Jihyun quietly picked her pen back up.
That afternoon, I quietly climbed up to the computer. I needed to check how the world was chewing over yesterday's events.
"……"
Good. The only person left on the record from that day was Nayeon.
Being able to transform into a sword was pretty useful at times like this. It was an object that countries had tried and failed to reproduce because nobody even knew how they came into existence in the first place. Who would ever calculate that one of those was just rolling around somewhere like this?
Still, one thing bothered me…
…What the hell is a Berry.
Anyway. Had someone seen Nayeon running with me in hand?
But I decided not to worry. The gallery was already debunking it for me right below — complete with a fact-check bombardment calling me a corrupt boomer sword, plus the airtight logic of "how does a broken sword come back."
"Heh."
In the old days, that would've honestly stung. But as an ego sword? I could laugh it off!
I quietly hit the upvote on the comment and left the thread.
"Wonder how long this thread will last…"
An incident inside an A-rank rift. It was big enough that it wouldn't die overnight, but three days at most? The second anything juicier came along, it'd be forgotten. A named hunter's scandal, a dungeon clear write-up… something like that.
That was when the phone rang.
Riiing-riiing-riiing—!
"Yes, this is Saetbyeol Guild. Ah… yes, regarding that matter—"
Jihyun's voice went stiff in an instant.
"I'm sorry. We don't take scout offers."
Click—
The sound of the receiver hitting the cradle was unusually short.
"What, those people again?"
Nayeon burst out of the kitchen.
"I told them we're not selling! Why do they keep trying to—"
"It's not about Byuri."
"Huh?"
Jihyun pushed her glasses up.
"It's about you, sunbae. They said your rescue work left an impression and asked if you'd consider an interview."
"…Huuuh?!"
Ugh. And here I was, responsible for at least ninety percent of that achievement!
…It was a good thing, obviously, so why did it still sting a little?
That night, the chat window blinked for the first time in a while.
Well, of course she had. Every spotlight in the world had been pouring onto the S-rank hunter from that mission.
Wrapped up without any issues, huh…
Not entirely wrong. Thanks to someone's spectacular performance, it had ended as a harmless little incident with zero casualties!
And then a long silence.
Whenever this person went quiet like this, there was always something awkward waiting behind it.
My fingers froze over the keyboard.
The online light went out.
I stared at the darkened screen for a long time.
…What was she thinking, that person.
"Thinking about the old days…"
It wasn't like I never did the same. Even after all this time, the days I'd spent with that clumsy version of her still came back to me. So I guess that meant my scrub era hadn't been all bad either.
"Sigh."
Too much damn sentiment for my own good…
I closed the chat and lay down on the sofa — only for Nayeon to settle onto the floor beside me again.
"…Again?"
"Huh? No, I was just passing by."
People who are just passing by don't usually carry blankets.
"…Come up here."
"Hm?"
"On the sofa. The floor's cold."
Nayeon grinned wide and scrambled right up.
…Tight! Extremely tight!
"Ugh… wow, narrower than I thought. Right?"
"…"
"Well, nothing for it then!"
Was she going to get back down?
I'd been hoping, but fat chance. Nayeon scooped me up and plopped me straight on top of herself.
"This way we can both lie down!"
Soft. Especially the back of my head.
I quietly closed my eyes.
…Honestly, I was satisfied.
The next morning, I was peeling a hard-boiled egg. It must have been overcooked — the shell wouldn't come off cleanly, and I was picking at it scrap by scrap with my fingernails, grunting with effort, when—
"Byuri."
Jihyun called me, phone in hand.
"Just got a call from the Association."
"Yes?"
"That case — it went upstairs."
That case. She meant the incident in the rift, of course.
"Upstairs?"
"Yeah. Apparently the handler's changing."
"…To who?"
"I didn't ask."
"……"
Jihyun turned away like it was nothing.
"Well, paperwork getting passed around is normal."
Normal. She wasn't wrong, but… the problem was what was written on those papers.
One cooperative entry for a rescue operation. The name of a C-rank hunter from a thoroughly soft, easy-to-lean-on guild. And the single sword she'd been armed with when she went in.
Somehow, I wasn't getting a great feeling about this.