The Pretty Girl Rental Shop (Illustration Updated)
"Not looking. There's such a thing as a fated encounter, you know. You and I were destined to meet."
The madwoman who had announced herself by shattering the window of my naming shop.
Watching her from outside the broken glass, her mana pressure had made it hard to tell who she was — but with her face shoved right up against mine, it was obvious.
Goo Seoha, the strongest mage in South Korea.
A prodigy who had touched the Geungnyang — the Upper Realm — at a remarkably young age on the strength of her overwhelming mana reserves. Rumor had it she used nothing but elementary spells because chanting was a bother, and yet she could supposedly beat most S-Rank mages anyway. Rumor also had it she'd once brought an entire Gate crashing down. Though since Gates were national infrastructure, the government had allegedly billed her for the damage. Or something like that.
Anyway.
Pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat.
Pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat.
"Hee-hee-hee-hee-hoo."
What is it THIS time?!
Yep. Everyone in the Upper Realm is a lunatic.
Goo Seoha had me locked in a crushing embrace, ruffling my hair without a shred of mercy. She'd even clamped her legs around my waist so I couldn't wriggle free. Not that I had anywhere to run, or any way to run, so I'd simply accepted my fate.
Sigh.
When she'd blown out the window I genuinely thought she was about to kill somebody, but in the end she hadn't done anything of the sort. Just patted my head, took a sniff of me, nibbled my cheek a little?
Wait, no — that's actually quite a lot?
Come to think of it, all she'd really accomplished was grinding my dignity into the dirt.
Tch. A man of action like Lee Yumin cannot tolerate this.
Except right now I'm soft, squishy Lee Yuna. Yuna can put up with it.
So I lodged a perfectly civil protest via text.
Pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat.
Hmm.
Bad call, maybe? Starting to think running was the better option. Yeah — surely if I brought this to my landlady, she'd handle it somehow?
Except I've racked up way too much karmic debt with her lately….
She'd covered my overdue rent, bought me hamburgers, waved off my talking back to her like it was nothing…. I've taken far, far too much from her already….
So no. I couldn't drag my landlady into a customer problem. This was my shop. If a customer was the problem, solving it was my job. That's just how it works.
Mm-hm.
I nodded along while Goo Seoha kept petting me, and her hand followed my bobbing head in smooth, absent circles.
"————." (Haaah….)
Honestly, what were the odds she'd politely take her leave if I asked nicely? No — would Goo Seoha, currently mauling my scalp, even register a word I said?
There's a saying: when the mind suffers, the body pays the price; when the body suffers, the mind pays it instead. For someone with a bad head and a worse body like me, exactly one solution came to mind.
A mage's essence. The very reason mages are called mages at all.
Magic. My unique magic, specifically.
Mine was a little on the dangerous side, so I avoided using it whenever humanly possible. But nothing else came to mind — if I just sat here, I'd be petted senseless until the day ran out.
So, while Goo Seoha's fingers worked through my hair, I quietly began to murmur an incantation.
"I petition the god of the Named Realm. Grant me the chance to redefine a name. The chance to redefine the world…."
⟨ Naming ⟩
Ssssshhhhrrrip!
Countless strings of characters burst from my skin before I'd even finished the incantation — glyphs I recognized jostling against scripts whose very existence on Earth was questionable. Every symbol ever accepted as language began filling the naming shop to the brim.
My unique magic, Naming, is exactly what it sounds like: the magic of giving names. Put another way, it can interfere with anything that bears a name — bestowing new ones, or reclaiming them outright.
Because it is magic that rewrites the world, it naturally came with two drawbacks. First, anyone struck by Naming loses all memory of it. Second, the domain of names I could interfere with scaled with my mana.
Ordinary me would've been limited to, say, rewriting the name of a hamburger I didn't like. But right now, I was channeling the mana of Yumin Ashi, an Asamkhyeya-class mage. Even without inheriting everything Yumin had, I held enough power to brush the Upper Realm myself — enough to casually interfere with an Upper-Realm mage or two.
Shashashashashak—!
The characters pouring off my body filled the shop and wove themselves into a vast, spherical domain. When I normally used Naming, a few glyphs just drifted in the air — but a sphere built entirely out of text? Once again, it truly hit me that Yumin had been a Celestial-Realm mage.
Inside the sphere of letters stood me and Goo Seoha.
She had stopped petting my head and was gazing around the interior of the sphere that had materialized out of nowhere. A space where Earth's languages and otherworldly scripts mingled in glorious chaos — it must have been endlessly fascinating to her. Crazy she may be, but at her core she was a mage; that inner scholar of hers was surely burning bright.
And I, seizing the moment her grip loosened, placed a hand on top of her head and finished the incantation.
"————." (Naming.)
Chwaaaarrrrr!
The sphere of characters enclosing the two of us spun at blinding speed, then unraveled into hundreds of glistening threads. Drifting serenely through the air, they appeared and vanished in turn — two fading, one new one surfacing, the count steadily dwindling.
"————." (Heh-heh.)
Invisible to Goo Seoha — but to my eyes, every thread's path and vanishing point was crystal clear. The threads of text were burrowing into the world itself, carving their new design into it. They only seemed to flicker out and resurface because the world rejected them and they simply tried again. In truth, nothing was disappearing. They were driving deeper and deeper into the world.
Once every thread had vanished, I gave a light round of applause and put up a text. Though she'd never know it, I had redefined her affection for me — from adoring, doting fondness to fond, but keeping a polite distance.
"Huh? Huh. Wha—. Hm. What was that. There was definitely something, something-something-something, what was it…?"
Struck by Naming, she looked around the shop with a dazed face.
"————." (Heh.)
I settled onto the customer sofa, crossed my legs, and shamelessly put up more text.
Goo Seoha clenched and unclenched her hand, as though trying to recapture the soft, fluffy sensation that had abruptly evaporated. She could clench and unclench until doomsday; what Naming had redefined was not coming back.
Before long she shook out her head and pulled herself together.
"No, no, no. A super-high-school-level genius mage such as myself cannot afford to wallow in petty emotions."
For the record, she turns 28 this year. A little old to be calling herself super-high-school-level…. Well. Just so you know.
I hauled my crooked grin as wide as it would go. I'd never actually seen Goo Seoha in person before, so this side of her felt utterly unfamiliar. On the news she'd always come across as the cool, composed type — the elegant senior who only occasionally flashed a smile…
Turns out she's just a person with a lot of issues, huh?
Goo Seoha stared at her own palm for a long while, her face full of inexplicable loss, then apparently tired of it, stretched out all four limbs, and colonized the sofa.
"Kant, Schrödinger, Plato. Know what those three have in common?"
"They're dead. And it looks like one more name just got added to the list."
Left to my own devices, she was clearly prepared to camp out here until the sun went down. Time for Lee Yumin's emergency measures! Operation: Make the Customer Feel Deeply Unwelcome!
Obviously. Imagine running a business, and a customer just flops onto your couch going, "Ahh! Not leaving! Staying right here!" That's no different from a brat throwing a tantrum on the supermarket floor because Mom wouldn't buy them a toy — that's what I'm saying.
God, this brat.
Oh. Right. Duh.
"————!" (You shameless freeloader!)
If you assumed that was emotional cursing… you'd be right. Yes, I'm being emotional. Especially toward people who don't pay. I believe I am owed full compensation for the wanton violation of my hair, my cheeks, and so forth.
Who am I? A man who can only be served if you hand him a penthouse in downtown Seoul first.
Hold on. Could this person actually manage that?
Whoa. Dangerous thought.
Anyway, my point stands: I am owed a lot of money. You know how Japanese restaurants tack a seating fee onto every bill? Same principle. The longer she lingers, the more I collect.
I slowly uncrossed my legs and fixed Goo Seoha with a glare — with none other than the eyes of Lee Yumin, hunter of hamburgers.
I put up the text with the energy of a loan shark three years deep into your debt — no telling whether the tone carried. At least my face matched the delivery, so she probably read the gist of the text correctly too.
Goo Seoha swept her crimson hair back and smiled.
"Of course I do."
The moment the words left her mouth, her mana detonated.
Unrestrained Upper-Realm power bore down on me like a physical weight. Breathing turned difficult — but I held my predatory-loan-shark expression anyway. She was sprawled across my sofa without paying a won. Strongest in Korea, S-Rank, whatever — shameless was shameless.
"Hah."
A meaningless exhale. Goo Seoha's eyes had gone ice cold — so much so that I wondered if this was even the same person who'd been ruffling my hair minutes ago. She looked me up and down, then opened her mouth slowly.
"It's a place that rents out pretty girls, isn't it?"
"…."
Hmm.
Maybe Goo Seoha was even more unhinged than I'd given her credit for. I should have realized it the moment she vaporized my window out of nowhere. If the Upper Realm already has people like this, what on earth does a person become at the Celestial Realm?
Is she, like, one of those people who gets worked up from human touch and stuff?
