Chapter 33. Crispy outside, soft inside.
Chapter 33. Crispy outside, soft inside.
I felt a sense of déjà vu.
"Déjà vu?"
"Huh? What? What does that mean?"
The woman asks. How do I explain this? There's no way to explain it, is there? Then I guess I have no choice but to brush it off?
My hesitation was brief. Because I could never let this woman know the meaning of what I had said.
[...I wish she had bronze skin, a sprinter's physique with smooth, toned abs, and a ponytail with a bit of a curl. Like a lonely wolf, you know? I'd like her to prefer leather outfits, and be a beauty with a fierce-looking impression. If she also talks like a tomboy, that would be the icing on the cake.]
Leather outfit. Ponytail. A toned body like an athlete's, and her breasts are quite large, too. Definitely bigger than Lim Seo-yoon's, and maybe a bit bigger than Choi Yeon-ju's? Or maybe about the same size. Her impression is that of a tough girl, plus the tanned skin and the way she talks are to my liking; it felt like the woman I described before had just popped into existence.
If I said, "You look like someone I really want to fuck!", I'd probably end up getting kicked in the stomach and dying just like that goblin, right?
This was the only thing I could say.
"I feel like I've experienced this situation indirectly in a dream."
"Ah~ I know what that is. I've experienced it too. But it wasn't real. It was just a misunderstanding."
The woman laughs heartily and empathizes with me. Why does her personality seem so good? Isn't it normal to look at someone with a disgusted expression when they say something like that? I'm just bewildered because she seems to be letting it slide more easily than I thought. While I'm still unable to get up and tears are streaming down my face, the woman reaches out a hand to me.
"Don't just sit there, get up. Are your eyes okay? Tears are streaming down."
"Ah. No. I feel like I'm dying..."
"It's because your eyes are stinging, right? To throw a flashbang yourself and then get hit by it. You're really something."
"Ahem...."
She looks at me as if I'm impressive, and I've never felt so humiliated.
ㅡ
The woman's name was Im Da-eun. Given her appearance and her very husky voice, I thought the name 'Da-eun' didn't quite suit her, but no matter how much of an idiot I am, I'm not such an idiot that I'd say "That name doesn't suit you!" to the person who saved my life.
She said she's a hunter who usually does crew activities, but on her days off, she enters the gate alone to loosen up and earn some money.
"What about you? Seeing you running away from the goblin earlier, you don't seem to have very strong abilities, so did you come in alone?"
"I came to gather medicinal herbs, and then..."
"Ah. Herbs. How much did you gather?"
When I answered her question, Im Da-eun asked again. What is this? Is she asking for them as payment for saving me? I didn't want to show her because I felt like I was going to get shaken down, but as I said earlier, this woman is my lifesaver. In a way, people even ask for a reward for finding a lost phone on the street, so I figured this was acceptable and promptly showed her.
Seeing that, Im Da-eun whistled.
"Wow. That's more than I thought? How much did you gather?"
"About an hour or two? I think I gathered for about that long."
"But you've already collected this much?"
Did I gather more than I thought? I've never seen a herbalist, so I can't gauge how much I've gathered. Anyway, if Im Da-eun is surprised, it must be quite a lot.
I answered, feeling smug.
"I'm actually damn good at finding herbs. I'm an expert who can find them based on the atmosphere, smell, humidity, and various other things."
It was bullshit.
But Im Da-eun believed it.
"Really!? For real!? You were a more impressive guy than I thought? Wow. I'm a little jealous of that."
Im Da-eun said, smiling as if it were a pity. What is she jealous of? I'm in a position where I have to run away whenever I see a monster. Hearing someone who beat four goblins that were chasing me to death without even using a weapon say she's jealous, I didn't feel smug at all; instead, I felt bitter.
"Isn't your income much higher than mine, Im Da-eun-ssi?"
"Hm? If we're talking about net profit, it's probably about the same."
"Why? Didn't you say you're active in a crew?"
"Ahahaha. Well, that's..."
Im Da-eun scratched her head.
ㅡ
"So, your strength and durability are 2-3 times that of other Physical Enhancement Ability Users, but your senses are dulled?"
"Yeah. So I don't feel pain well either. It's nice not to feel pain when fighting, but since my other senses aren't good either, I'm actually terrible at combat. You know, right? Awakened are all the same. If you're exceptionally strong, there's bound to be a penalty."
"What about when you were beating up the goblins earlier?"
"Are goblins even monsters? They're monsters that even a high school student could beat. It's just that people who aren't Awakened can't enter, so they've never fought them. If they fought one-on-one without weapons, a high schooler would win, right?"
"......."
"Then what about me?"
"Does that mean I, who fights a 1v1 deathmatch with an old goblin, would lose to a high schooler?"
I felt like I would lose.
High schoolers these days are big and scary.
As my expression started to die, Im Da-eun gasped in surprise. Like the saying 'a frog can be hit and killed by a stone thrown without thought,' she probably didn't know that her thoughtless words would shatter my self-esteem.
"You have a tremendous talent instead of combat power, right? Finding herbs well. Not just anyone can do that. It's harder than you think. Look at this, for example."
Im Da-eun hurriedly tried to soothe me. While doing so, she took out her backpack, opened the entrance, and showed me the inside. There were exactly four roots of herbs inside.
When I looked up at Im Da-eun, she scratched her cheek with an awkward smile.
"Ahahaha... I've been here since early this morning, but this is all I could find."
"This is a bit severe, isn't it?"
"Why don't you catch monsters?"
"The only monsters I can catch alone are goblins and orcs. Even if I can beat all the goblins to death, they don't make money, and the parts I have to sell are... ahem ahem. They're in that area, so I don't even want to touch them. Orcs, I can easily beat to death one-on-one, but honestly, they're no different from goblins. Unless I raid their village and loot the ores they've collected, the ones wandering around don't really make money."
"Don't things like orc tendons fetch a pretty good price?"
"I... I don't mind hitting and killing them, but I can't dismember the corpses."
She was even blushing now, looking shy. I felt like I understood. I felt that a lot when I lived in the orphanage. The elementary school kids at the orphanage used to ask me, a middle schooler, about equations.
They probably thought I would solve the problems very easily and explain them in detail, but I was a math-hater who gave up on math the moment alphabet symbols appeared in it.
I think I probably made the same expression as Im Da-eun back then. And aren't I making the same expression as the elementary school kids who asked me math problems back then?
"No, but if you're active in a crew, don't you earn good money?"
"That much goes into equipment costs. I didn't bring any equipment today, but since I can't feel pain well, my equipment breaks quickly. Attacks that I should normally dodge or deflect, I just take with my body."
"Aha. So what you earn goes out, making it plus-minus zero."
"Right. That's exactly it. So when there's no work, I make an excuse about loosening up and come out here to gather herbs. Anyway, goblins aren't dangerous."
"But if you can only gather that many herbs, wouldn't manual labor be better?"
"Manual labor pays at least 100,000 won a day."
"That won't do. The crew members of the crew I'm currently in are snobbish. If they heard I was doing manual labor, I might get kicked out."
"They don't even contribute anything, so who are they to kick you out? Aren't they crazy?"
"It's not like that. A crew isn't a company. It's like a party, so if they don't like you, they're free to cut you and recruit someone else."
"Can't you just transfer to another crew, Da-eun-ssi?"
"That's difficult. Every time I go to a gate, I have to earn more than the repair costs. There aren't actually that many crews where that's possible. Ah. I'm saying this based on my standards."
Im Da-eun quickly corrects herself. I wonder if 'more than repair costs' refers to Im Da-eun's equipment repair costs. I do wonder just how much the equipment costs, but individual problems exist everywhere, so there was no reason for me to pry and tell her what to do.
That aside, her personality is much better than I thought! Her easygoing nature, her appearance—she's the type of person I really want to get close to. But in the end, it's just a thought. Anyway, since all I can do in the gate is gather herbs, there was absolutely no reason for Im Da-eun to walk around with me.
I opened the bundle of herbs I had gathered.
"What are you doing?"
"It's a small token, but take this..."
"What? Hey. No, no. Ehey. I told you it's fine?"
The herbs I gathered were enough to fill a 10-liter trash bag, if I exaggerated a little. It would be nice to earn money, but since I was a parasite to Choi Yeon-ju, I wasn't exactly in a situation where I was strapped for cash. Besides, Im Da-eun was my lifesaver. Giving all the herbs I had gathered so far to the person who saved my life wasn't something to be stingy about. And I shouldn't be stingy, either.
If Im Da-eun hadn't saved me, I would have left this world without even being able to hug Lim Seo-yoon, let alone Choi Yeon-ju.
But Im Da-eun's resistance was strong. Since I'm a man, I could have yelled and shoved them into her hands, but given who she was, that was impossible. She seems to be holding on very weakly, but when she grabs my wrist, it doesn't budge at all.
"If I had died, the goblins would have taken and eaten it all anyway."
"Honestly, saving you was nothing. No matter how many goblins there are, they're no match for a Physical Enhancement Ability User."
Im Da-eun adamantly refused. As the tug-of-war continued like that, Im Da-eun seemed to remember something and suddenly asked me this.
"Then how about this."
"What is it?"
"I'll protect you. You're a herbalist, right? I'm a Physical Enhancement Ability User, so no matter how flawed I am, I'm basically a gangster in goblin-infested areas, you know?"
"In exchange, do I gather the herbs?"
"Right. And share half of the gathered herbs with me."
The look in Im Da-eun's eyes as she spoke to me was quite sincere. Is she in that desperate of a situation?
Come to think of it, it was a situation where there was absolutely nothing bad for me. I was gathering herbs to get used to the gate anyway, not to earn money. Im Da-eun was a woman who was quite a strike to my taste.
With my safety guaranteed and even a date possible, is there any reason for me to refuse?
"Just for today?"
"If you don't like it, it's fine if it's just for today, and if you do like it, we can go together when our schedules match. How about it?"
"I'd fucking love to."