Sunwoo's Unspeakable Secret

"Ooh, this place is nice too!"

The two of them had returned to Sunwoo's apartment via the Warp Gate.

They'd done it on purpose, knowing full well how many people would be lying in wait outside the Tower.

"Yikes... it's a total circus out there."

Sunwoo muttered, staring at his hunter device.

So an A-rank dealer could check the situation around the Tower, too?

"How are you even looking that up?"

Jiyu poked and prodded at Sunwoo's hunter status window.

She had long since blown past every achievement Sunwoo had ever made as a hunter. And yet there were still fields where she lagged behind — things like experience, and knowledge.

"Ah, right. You wouldn't have this."

And sure enough, there came that insufferable smirk. She nearly decked him on the spot — but held back. The odds of him dodging were higher anyway.

"This is called the Hunter Gallery. Only A-rank and above can sign up."

Sunwoo typed his hunter ID into Jiyu's status window, and remarkably, the gallery materialized right there on her screen.

"What's this?"

"The International Hunter Gallery. You only get an account if you're upper-to-mid tier even among A-ranks."

The status window itself had been created and distributed way back in the earliest days of the Cataclysm by a certain S-rank hunter, so a community feature attached to it wasn't exactly surprising.

To Jiyu, though, it was a devastating revelation.

"I'm sorry — what?"

Her pupils trembled. Something like this had existed all along? Her mind went utterly blank.

A-rank and above meant people boasting some of the highest incomes on the planet. Plenty of them were more famous than A-list celebrities.

'If it's a gallery for people like that, the quality must be incredible, right?'

All those long hours Jiyu had spent grinding the Dealer Gallery — enduring the mod's bizarre conspiracy theories and endless garbage posts — had even that been the exclusive property of dealers? A wave of melancholy settled over her. And at the same time, anticipation bloomed.

Heart pounding, she scrolled down.

"Ah."

Apparently not, then.

People were people everywhere, it seemed. Aside from the built-in translation function, nothing about the place looked particularly high-class.

Jiyu poked around the Hunter Gallery a little further.

A gallery in a state of absolute, literal chaos. Honestly, the Dealer Gallery looked better by comparison — at least what got posted there were photos of Earth-born lifeforms.

"Why would you show me this?"

"What the— why are they acting like this all of a sudden?"

Naturally, this was apparently not the sight Sunwoo had intended for her to see. Careful not to click a single post by accident, Jiyu flipped back through the pages.

"Oh. Wait. Is this because of me?"

Until just a few hours earlier, Jiyu's record-breaking run had been the gallery's main hot topic. Just as there'd been that one guy in the Dealer Gallery whose jealousy curdled into gross-pic terrorism, the Hunter Gallery had its own. 'This much quality, fine. This much I could tolerate.'

Her romantic vision of the world of high-rank hunters lay in smithereens.

"Wow, there's a huge crowd gathered in front of the Tower right now."

The more she scrolled, the clearer it became what Sunwoo had wanted her to see. Not many people could check the Tower rankings in real time — basically just industry insiders. But Jiyu was already far too famous, and once she began stacking impossible records one after another, the information had slipped clean out of anyone's control. Granted, those records had been set together with Sunwoo, but he surely wouldn't sulk about it. Not a soul on earth believed an A-rank ranged dealer had anything to do with numbers like those.

"So you were being considerate. Appreciate it."

If they'd exited the Tower through the front door, Jiyu would have been in a genuinely difficult spot — there was the identity issue, for one, and she'd been wearing Sunwoo's childhood clothes. Facing a swarm of reporters in that state would have been nothing short of a disaster.

"It's already late. You must be wiped — just wash up and sleep."

"Can I sleep here?"

"Of course. I'll turn in too."

Sunwoo handed over his own master bedroom. Apparently he'd been sleeping in the small room. With an apartment this enormous, maybe that kind of luxury was simply possible. From Jiyu's side of things, it was nothing but a kindness.

"See ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you tomorrow."

The door closed, and Sunwoo's face vanished behind it.

"He was tired too, huh."

He'd bolted in a hurry — and to be fair, he had reason. They'd blitzed up the Tower at breakneck speed, but floor ten had devoured an enormous chunk of time. Sunwoo in particular had spent hours on end continuously dealing damage; he had to be dead on his feet. Jiyu was exhausted as well.

'Still, work is work.'

Exhausted body and all, Jiyu did not stop grinding the gallery. When the most celebrated hunters on the planet were talking about nothing but her, how was she expected to simply close her eyes?

The threads coming through in real time had a rather murderous atmosphere, to put it mildly. So Jiyu was skipping the fresh posts and digging through the ones from when news of the record-breaking had first started spreading — that was when it happened. There was one thread, recent enough, that caught her eye and refused to let go.

"Huh? I'm not in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Korea?"

She had stumbled onto speculation too ridiculous for words.

Gallery opinion, broadly speaking, matched Jiyu's own. And yet, surprisingly, there were more than a few who quietly agreed with the outrageous claim.

Someone claiming to be an American S-rank ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hunter had just dumped a whole barrel of oil on the fire. Nobody could tell who he actually was from a nickname alone.

"Wait — is he the guy whose record I broke?"

Predator, the S-rank Commander. There were plenty of stories about his bottomless grudges and his relentless pissing contests.

"Nah. Couldn't be."

If that were really why he was writing posts like this... kind of sad, honestly. He was an S-rank hunter, for crying out loud.

"Ugh... I don't know about any of that. Just praise my record more..."

The atmosphere had turned ugly with all the trolls swarming in. As the gallery regulars began tearing into one another, the whole thread went up in flames. In moments like these, simply going to sleep was always the wisest course. The sailor uniform — the Supporter protective gear set — had already shifted back into a hoodie and sweats, and her body had come clean along with it.

"Shower's for tomorrow morning... wait. How am I even supposed to shower?"

Another obstacle revealed itself, and Jiyu suffered accordingly. She resolved to fall asleep thinking only positive thoughts. Getting worked up about it wouldn't change a thing.

"If it gets out that I received a Tower Domain, the gallery's going to lose its mind, right?"

Unlike the record-breaking, this was information that would only come to light the moment Jiyu herself announced it. And at that point, naturally, she'd be watching the gallery posts pour in live.

"Heheh. Can't wait."

Jiyu burrowed under the covers. She had nothing suitable for pajamas, so she was wearing Sunwoo's swim trunks. At some point, she'd gone completely numb to this sort of thing. She'd been embarrassed by the outfit at first.

"Okay. I'll just go to sleep looking at this."

And yet, in the end, Jiyu logged back into the gallery. The very fact that she could browse a forum through her status window was simply too novel to resist. Skipping the freshest posts, she began binging everything from the threads posted the moment the S-rank gate had appeared.

It was a good, long while later that she finally drifted off.

"Asleep?"

Sunwoo stood well back ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠from the door, listening for any sign of life. Then he swallowed hard.

"Why is she doing this to me..."

He nursed a quiet, gnawing resentment toward Jiyu. She had made him do an awful lot of hard things. And no, he didn't mean the parts where her becoming a woman had forced him to lend a hand — that much had been unavoidable.

There had been worse.

"Phew... I nearly died holding it in."

Sunwoo locked the bathroom door, every sound strangled to nothing. Thankfully, it was a good distance from the master bedroom. This being Awaken Palace, there was of course a second bathroom en suite in the master bedroom as well. Which meant there was no reason whatsoever for Jiyu to come here.

"Hoo..."

Baek Sunwoo drew a long, deep breath. It had been a matter of sheer irresistible force.

Jiyu's Curtain of Light.

The skill that restored the stamina of the caster herself and of whoever she cast it upon. And it truly did restore every category of stamina, exactly as advertised.

"Nghk..."

Right down to the kind of stamina only a man possesses — filled to the brim, over and over. Jiyu was a woman now and couldn't have dreamed of such a thing.

"Seriously, how did I survive that?"

Every time his mind control failed, Sunwoo's member had been forced to stand at full attention. Plenty of the combat formations had him facing away from Jiyu, which was the only reason any shred of his dignity survived.

"Ha... damn dragon."

The engagement with the dragon especially had very nearly killed him.

"Hahaha. What a pathetic sight you are!"

A battle that stretched across hours. Curtain of Light had been cast countless times throughout. And always, always accompanied by Jiyu's jeering. That his damage cycle never so much as wavered was nothing short of superhuman willpower.

"Can I actually keep doing this?"

If Jiyu was going to climb the Tower, she would need a dealer to carry her. He'd probably have to go groveling to the Guild or the Association and somehow scrape up a replacement. Sunwoo had gotten as far as worrying about that.

Though the worry died in an instant.

"Huh? Wait. Something's off here."

The thing now clasped in Sunwoo's grip. It did not have the familiar feel.

"It got bigger?"

Left unrelieved, the Curtain of Light's restoration of one particular category of stamina had gone on accumulating, layer upon layer. And it turned out that category carried a side effect: making that part of him grow.

"Well then — that much is just something a man endures."

The corners of Baek Sunwoo's mouth curled slowly upward. A very, very smug smile indeed.