Was That So Hard? (2)
A hearty laugh rang out through the tower.
If anyone saw me, they might call me a madman, but it didn’t matter. Other people’s opinions weren’t important right now.
After all, I had Memorize—the skill that mages apparently called a straight-up cheat key. I’d also picked up an unexpected skill called Quake. And on top of that, money was pouring into my bank account every single day. How could I not feel good?
Every day was farming. Every day was fun.
I stretched with a pleased groan and rolled my neck from side to side. Feeling my stiff muscles loosen up, I started heading for the tower exit. I was already thinking about going home and taking a nice hot shower when it happened.
Thud. Thud.
Steady footsteps echoed from the shadows near the entrance. Almost no one visited the tower at this hour. Unless they were exceptionally skilled, hunters usually tackled it in parties, and those groups were most active during the day and afternoon. In other words, low-ranking hunters who cleared the lower floors didn’t roam around late at night.
Wondering who it could be, I stopped and turned toward the sound. A woman slowly emerged from the boundary where shadow met light.
She wore neat black combat gear, but the fabric was splattered with traces of battle—bloodstains that clearly belonged to monsters. What overwhelmed me most, though, was the aura she radiated without the slightest attempt to hide it. With every step, she crushed the air with her magic power. The pressure was so heavy it stole my breath.
Just what the hell was this woman…?!
Finally, her face came into the light. Jet-black hair falling straight to her waist, skin so pale it looked almost white, and eyes that were cool and indifferent, showing not a single flicker of emotion.
I didn’t need to check the Hunter Gallery or scroll through news articles to know who she was. I’d seen that face hundreds of times on TV and the Hunter Association’s giant posters. She was the person who had caused endless uproar.
South Korea’s youngest S-class Awakener. The object of every hunter’s admiration and the symbol of unreachable power. It was Kim Soyeon.
What was she doing coming out of the tower at this hour? Then again, for someone like her, clearing it during a quiet time wasn’t strange at all.
While I was thinking that, our eyes met.
“You must be White.”
Her voice was small and completely dry. She spoke as if she couldn’t care less.
I couldn’t react. I froze solid. I should have immediately denied it, but my mind had gone blank. How did she know? How could she possibly know?
Lee Chaeyeon might have pieced it together from circumstantial evidence, but how could Kim Soyeon—who had never even met me—know? And she’d pointed me out as White with absolute certainty right from the start.
I suppressed my pounding heart, forced a calm expression, and answered.
“What are you talking about? You’ve got the wrong person.”
Hmm. Not bad. My voice didn’t shake, and I’d hidden my panic pretty well. I probably just looked like some hunter coming out after a late-night run.
But contrary to my hopes, Kim Soyeon stopped walking and stared at me. She tilted her head slightly, looking straight through me, and said,
“That’s the face of someone wondering how I knew.”
…Ah, shit. I thought I’d controlled my expression, but apparently not. The way she spoke with such certainty made it obvious. Those emotionless, bone-dry words made cold sweat break out across my entire body.
I had to answer carefully. One wrong word and my identity would be blown wide open. I wasn’t ready to face her yet. The Gallery had explicitly warned me that the first-playthrough version of her had insisted on consulting with herself before meeting the current her. They’d told me to be cautious. To approach carefully.
I bit my lip hard. If I responded recklessly here, I’d get swept up in her pace.
Whether my head was spinning or not, Kim Soyeon simply nodded. She seemed to take my silence as confirmation. With the same indifferent face, she continued.
“Want me to tell you?”
“…”
“I also just finished clearing the tower. Naturally, right before leaving, I checked the records to see my results.”
She stared at me like she was observing a specimen. There was a spark of interest in her eyes.
“Then, by chance—pure coincidence—I remembered hearing that someone named White had been breaking records lately, so I looked at the lower floors.”
I swallowed dryly. My eyes never left her lips, her face.
“The tenth-floor boss stage record. The clear time was updated to fourteen seconds. And the nickname was White.”
…No way.
She really happened to have the exact same timing and witnessed it? Pure coincidence?
“The funny part is, I didn’t just see the record after it was updated… I saw it being updated.”
I’m fucked.
The version of me reflected in her black eyes looked like a pathetic loser sweating bullets. An idiot who couldn’t hide his panic at all was standing there.
And in her eyes, a very faint light had begun to shine.
“So I came out immediately. The time it took me to walk out of the tower, and the time you just came out. The margin of error between those two times is less than one second.”
Crazy. In other words, she’d rushed out right away just to confirm it. Because she was curious who it was. The one and only youngest S-class hunter in the world had come out specifically because she was curious about someone like me.
“And at this quiet hour, the only person here besides me… is you.”
“…”
“Therefore, you are White. End.”
My breath caught in my throat. It was a perfect, airtight trap. There was no way to physically refute it. Denying it after she’d personally witnessed the record update and calculated our exit times would be ridiculous. Above all, her eyes were filled with absolute certainty. No matter what I said, it wouldn’t matter—she had already decided.
All I could do was keep my mouth shut. While staying silent, my mind raced.
This was Kim Soyeon—one of the people who never hesitated to nag. Yet the person in front of me felt… strangely off. It was confusing. My head was a mess.
That dry, emotionless way she logically dissected someone else’s secret without caring about their feelings. The intellectual violence of it.
Only one thing came to mind, so I spat it out.
“Why the hell are you speaking informally, you crazy bitch?”
“…What?”
“What do you mean, what? So what?”
I deliberately twisted the corner of my mouth into a smirk and glared at her, letting my annoyance show.
“Let’s say I am White. Maybe the timing really did overlap by coincidence like you said. So what?”
“…Hey, you.”
“So, does the famous S-class have any business with a nobody like me at this hour?”
“…”
For the first time, she looked flustered. She couldn’t respond to my sudden outburst.
“Do you even know me? Why are you speaking informally?”
“…I don’t.”
“You don’t know me but you’re talking down to me? Do I look like a joke to you? Want to die?”
“…No.”
“So what? You got business with me?”
“No.”
“…”
“Yo.”
Tsk. I wanted to keep chewing her out, but I decided to let it go. I turned my back on her still-flustered face without hesitation.
Even though I’d thrown a bunch of rude crap at her, my head was completely blank. My identity had been exposed out of nowhere, leaving my mind pure white.
She really just came to check? She had to know that all the major guilds were desperately searching for White. And she just… confirmed it? Just like that?
“W-wait!”
Her voice called out from behind me, but I ignored it and kept walking. I hurried toward my lodging like I was running away.
Once I reached my room, I muttered in a hollow voice.
“They really weren’t kidding when they said you never know what’ll happen in life…”
I clicked my tongue, grabbed a can of beer from the fridge, chugged it, and collapsed onto the sofa. While staring blankly at the ceiling, the image of Kim Soyeon I’d just met flashed through my mind and I shuddered involuntarily.
To share this chaotic feeling with someone, I opened the Gallery. It was still filled with the usual pointless chatter. I hit the write button and made a new post.
Self-explanatory. What do I do? I got so flustered I said some fucking crazy shit.
I took another swig of beer. Normally, posting something like this would cause Cheonma or the Archmage to lose their minds. But less than a minute after I posted, a notification sounded and a new post shot to the top.
I'll tell you one weakness. Back then I went around without panties lol
“PUUUUUH—!!!”
The beer I’d been holding in my mouth sprayed out in a magnificent arc. I watched it splatter across the sofa and table. Even while coughing from the burn in my throat, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
No, seriously?
I rubbed my eyes and looked again, but the content was the same. No panties? For real?
As if expressing my utter confusion, comments began flooding in.
I couldn’t close my mouth the entire time I was reading the comments. “Wait a second…”
I let out a dumbfounded laugh and was about to close the Gallery window when my finger froze in mid-air. I set the beer can down, wiped my mouth, and stared blankly at the city nightscape visible through the window.
Then I flopped back onto the sofa and muttered in a low voice.
“Ah… I am kinda curious, though.”
Perfect weather for being curious.