I Need You
I need you.
Back home, I stripped off my foul-smelling clothes, took a shower, and collapsed onto the bed for a deep, dreamless sleep.
When I finally opened my eyes the next morning as the sun crept up, I could feel the overheated fog in my head finally clearing. Apparently I'd slept a full twenty-four hours. Which meant, come to think of it, I'd skipped work without so much as a phone call.
And how exactly was I supposed to explain walking out mid-shift without permission?
I was still lying there staring blankly at the ceiling, chewing over that problem, when my smartphone chimed.
—Ring!
"Hm?"
A text from the guild. With a thudding heart, I opened it.
"Ha!"
A single text. Two sentences. That was the full extent of the courtesy a guild I had slaved for over seven years could show me.
Granted, I'd signed my contract as a contracted hunter rather than a salaried employee, so technically a dismissal by text was well within the rules.
Still. Seven years together, and this is what I get?
"And to think they used to grovel to me once upon a time."
After awakening alongside Kim Seolyeon, the two of us had operated without any guild at all, just the two of us. Back then, guilds hadn't yet proven their worth — the two of us could clear gates on our own. But as the importance of guild affiliation grew more pronounced and we began to feel our own limits, we finally sat down with the Guild Master of Deungcheon.
The man groveling at the Guild Master's side back then was Team Leader Kim Minsu — the very man who had just fired me by text.
You really can never know what's in a person's heart.
The partner I'd believed I'd spend my whole life with betrayed me in a way I never could have imagined, and the man who had once acted like he'd do anything for me cast me out with a two-line message.
Ten years of devotion. Seven years of guild life. All that remained at the end of it was the deposit on one tiny studio apartment.
"Haha."
Laughter spilled out of me as I stared up at the yellowed ceiling. Not the laughter of joy — just hollow, empty disbelief.
"Haa."
So what now? I didn't have much saved up, which meant I needed to work.
Like an idiot, I gave away every last bit of it.
We help each other until we both make S-Rank. For the sake of that promise, every won I earned had gone into Kim Seolyeon's equipment and her health care.
Needless to say, that kind of spending devoured money at an absurd rate, so all I had to show for a decade of work was the deposit on the one-room I lived in now.
I was still staring blankly at the ceiling, mulling over my future, when the guilds that had once reached out to me came to mind.
"Hmm..."
Most of them had approached me as a route to Kim Seolyeon, but a rare few had shown genuine interest in me.
I picked up my phone and scrolled through our old exchanges. Hmm. No, not this one. Not them either. Maybe... this one?
"...Who was this again?"
No matter how hard I racked my brain, I couldn't place her. I'd spent ten years in the hunter industry, so I had a few long-standing connections — but forgetting the name of someone who was practically a CEO? Unforgivable.
Still, figuring a refresher couldn't hurt, I read the message properly.
Warm. Almost aggressively friendly. A bitter smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.
A startup guild, apparently.
Every so often, a guild like this would appear. Ten years of experience. Kim Seolyeon's partner. They'd see those two lines on paper and make an offer.
But I never had the option to choose. Kim Seolyeon always decided. Once people realized that, watching their attitude flip and their backs turn had become an old, familiar ritual.
Nearly every message I'd ever received followed that pattern. Usually they'd test the waters once and never contact me again.
They have plenty of other ways to reach Kim Seolyeon besides me, after all.
If it worked out, great; if not, whatever. That was exactly how the hunter industry treated me. But this person had been different. Her message history showed text after text, again and again.
"Hm...?"
Back when I was utterly devoted to Kim Seolyeon, messages like this hadn't given me a second thought. I want to make Kim Seolyeon an S-Rank hunter as fast as possible, without a single distraction. That was all that mattered to me then.
But now, things looked different. In ten years in this industry, this was the first time I'd ever heard such a thing. Recruiting me — not Kim Seolyeon? There was no reason to go out of their way for that.
Only now, with all this distance behind me, did curiosity about that message finally stir.
People as capable as me are a dime a dozen.
The one thing I'd ever taken pride in was granting Kim Seolyeon the Extremity skill — and, thanks to it, having contributed some small part to her success story. That was it.
Strip that away, and my abilities were utterly ordinary. Which was exactly why I'd always been served cold rice even inside the guild.
"Whew. Unbelievable."
Was that why? Kim Seolyeon's partner. The kept man. The nepo hire. This message, which evaluated me on nothing but my own abilities — and not a single one of those labels — felt strangely, achingly grateful to receive.
"It's a little late, but maybe I should at least hear them out."
On the very first day of my unemployment, I took my first steps toward a new connection.
—Ring!
"What? Seriously?!"
Lee Miseon, Guild Master of Saebit Corporation, beamed down at her phone. She'd left that message ages ago on a long shot, and out of nowhere, a reply had arrived today.
"What do I do? What do I do? When are you free? Hm? Miseon, focus! This is a rare opportunity!"
Pacing in circles around her five-pyeong office, she typed out her reply. And just as her muttering suggested — the fact that Lee Siwoo was willing to talk at all was a genuinely precious chance.
Why would that impenetrable man of all people...?
Her new guild had almost no connections worth the name, so she did briefly wonder if this luck was too good to be true.
But then—
—Ring!
The moment she confirmed that Lee Siwoo was on his way to her office this very minute, Lee Miseon's eyes went round.
"No way!"
His skill hadn't been verified, but as far as she was concerned, that hardly mattered. Years ago, she had worked as Deungcheon Guild's gate liaison — and she had watched, firsthand, how Lee Siwoo handled incidents.
Flexible incident resolution. The people skills to butter up hidebound bureaucrats, plus meticulous administrative work.
Those three things alone were more than enough reason to headhunt him. And on top of that, he was a fully Association-certified hunter.
What hunter on earth would handle this much desk work on top of combat duty?
This is my chance!
Since quitting her government post to found her own hunter management company, Lee Miseon had been standing at a fork in the road with only two paths.
One was bankruptcy. For reasons she couldn't quite explain, there was simply no work. The world was crawling with gates — so why couldn't she land a single contract? On top of that, her hunters kept hitting their growth ceilings far too quickly. Two skills learned, and done. That was it.
The other path was recruiting Lee Siwoo. For a company as shorthanded as hers, a man who could handle the paperwork and serve as a supporter was a jackpot hire.
Better still, he came with the connections to bring in the contracts she so desperately lacked.
And on top of all that — ten years of support work under his belt.
He'd been at Kim Seolyeon's side the whole way from F-Rank to A-Rank. This was her chance to acquire that exact expertise.
There are rumors he's not actually a hunter, though.
Ten years ago, back when the systems governing hunters hadn't yet been properly established, word had it that someone had exploited the chaos to acquire hunter credentials illegally.
But as a former Hunter Association official herself, Miseon could only snort at that one.
If the Association President himself took notice of him, there's no way he's a fake.
Back when she'd just shed her trainee badge and made administrator, she had pieced it together from half-heard whispers: during the gate outbreak crisis, someone had covertly funneled support to Lee Siwoo as he handled the fallout.
And that someone had been none other than the Association President.
The famously impartial chief who cherished promising talent above all — secretly backing one hunter? That was as good as a signed certificate. A smile spread across Miseon's face as she surveyed her office.
It's clean, at least.
With no staff, the place looked bare and a little forlorn — but bare beat filthy. Chuckling wryly at herself, she settled in to wait for Lee Siwoo's arrival.
Then—
—Creeeak.
With the familiar groan of the aging building, footsteps sounded on the stairs. Not a man's — if the lightness of the steps was anything to go by.
"Guild Master."
"Hm?"
Kim Eunji, hunter of Saebit Guild — currently on standby at her dorm for lack of any assignments — pushed open the door wearing an odd expression.
"What's up?"
"I'm hungry. Can you please let me take a part-time job or something?"
"...The boss lady will order us delivery, so stay on standby. No part-time work."
In this day and age, a hunter might as well be an idol. A contracted hunter doing part-time gigs instead of clearing gates or making broadcast appearances?
The hate comments slamming the agency's incompetence would come flooding in by the thousands. And it wouldn't just be the company taking the hit.
The hunter herself would end up branded with the same ugly reputation, so Miseon had no choice but to refuse.
"We have an interview today with a new employee who's going to help us out. With him on board, we'll finally be able to bring in real work. So can you hold on just a little longer?"
"...Then I want to watch too."
"Huh?"
Miseon stared at Kim Eunji, nonplussed. The black bob cut. Those beautiful violet eyes, transformed by her skill. Half-lidded eyes, a proud straight nose, porcelain-pale skin.
A face that could steal the center spot from just about any idol group in the country.
But the girl had never cared about anything except hunter work, which was exactly why Miseon was caught off guard.
"I'm curious how reliable this person really is. And my contract renewal runs through the end of this month, remember? If there's no work, I'm going to another guild."
"...Right."
Kim Eunji was the one and only hunter in the corporation whose talent had actually blossomed. Miseon couldn't fend off offers from the major guilds forever.
I spotted her first, though!
Her instincts had told her Kim Eunji had staggering potential, and she'd locked in the contract back when nobody else knew what the girl was capable of.
But a brand-new guild with barely any connections was never going to receive gate-clearing requests. Two whole years wasted as a second-string standby team in some backwater region that didn't even pay — two years of Kim Eunji's contract, burned for nothing.
"Whew."
Which was why this truly was the last chance. She had to land Lee Siwoo and, at the same time, work every contact she had to pull in as many gate contracts as possible.
If Kim Eunji left too, Saebit Guild had no future at all.
—Knock knock.
"It's Lee Siwoo."
"Come in!"
The man she'd been waiting for finally pushed open the door. The shaggy black hair, the gentle eyes, the faint upturn at the corners of his mouth — he looked every bit as kind as the rumors said.
Miseon rose from her seat and gestured to the sofa.
"Please, have a seat. Make yourself comfortable."
"Ah. Thank you."
Miseon glanced briefly at Kim Eunji, standing off to the side. She couldn't help being curious how the girl would size him up. And then—
"Hup—!"
Kim Eunji — taciturn Kim Eunji, who normally barely spoke and poured everything into training — was staring with both eyes wide open, hands clapped over her mouth.
Uh... what?
Just as Miseon gaped at the unprecedented sight—
"H-hellooo! I'm Kim Eunji, second-year hunteer!!"
Face flushed scarlet like a fangirl who'd just laid eyes on her favorite celebrity, Kim Eunji thrust out her hand and asked for a handshake.