Hehe, Noona
A title so provocative I physically could not look away.
Curiosity swallowed my exhaustion whole, and I clicked it like a man possessed.
Huh... this is...
I read every last comment.
"This guy is complete garbage!!"
Was this bastard insane? Playing unicorn in real life? If you're gonna pull that, maybe try keeping your own damn virginity first. He did everything there was to do, and the second he wanted a girlfriend he was out here hunting for a virgin. There were just way too many irresponsible assholes in this world.
If I could find out who this guy was, I would summon the Sword of Asrein and annihilate him down to his very soul.
It's probably fake, though...
A barcode nickname. A brand-new account. And the way the OP was personally replying to every single comment... yeah, this reeked of a fabricated post.
And then—
A chat notification suddenly buzzed on my phone.
Who the hell...?
The time was 10:10 p.m. Nobody texts me at this hour. I picked up the phone and checked. One message was waiting.
The next day.
"Bwahahahaha!!"
I was in an outstanding mood. I hadn't even summoned the Sword of Asrein, and I still could not stop laughing.
Last night, after Yuna's text, we talked for a bit — and then she suddenly grabbed a taxi and showed up at my front door. We made up. And then we had another very long, very hot night.
On top of that, there was the new side of her she'd shown me yesterday.
"Manager... don't throw me away... please, just stay beside me..."
The way she said it through tears was so cute and so sexy that I went at her all over again.
"AHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
Everything was coming up roses. A problem that had been eating at me, solved that fast! And it was all because I had done Karante a good deed.
See? People really should live kindly!
Granted, I had messed with Karante's horn a little. But that was just a light prank. He had definitely enjoyed it too. Obviously.
Anyway. After that, Yuna and I had lunch, watched some anime, and spent a lazy day at my place until she had to go home and get ready for work the next morning.
"Manager, I'm sorry... please don't hate me..."
"What are you even sorry for?"
"Just... everything. I'll do better from now on. I really will..."
"I hear you. So don't get like that."
Once I'd sent Yuna home, I went right back to grinding through flash-sale apps and deal sites, shopping like a man with a purpose. Weekdays were work, workouts, and training. Wednesday I spent a very pleasant stretch of time with Yuna. And then Thursday evening arrived.
He'd said there was a mandatory mission, hadn't he...?
I had taken Friday off specifically so I could head out on Thursday. Before Karante and I had parted ways after that unpaid favor last time, he'd mentioned that a mandatory mission was scheduled for every zone.
"There's probably going to be a large-scale Demonkin subjugation next week."
A mission you had no choice but to join. Right now the Quest Office was pouring every resource it had into the operation, which also explained why lower-tier missions had all but vanished.
Hunting Demonkin, huh...?
I remembered fighting Isra. That bitch had been ridiculously, impossibly strong.
Of course, the ones actually fighting the Demonkin this time would be the high-ranking Participants running A-Rank and B-Rank missions. We would be support — watching the perimeter, or holding the line against whatever came flooding in from the rear.
I sorted the situation out in my head, more or less, and headed for the Base Camp.
When I arrived at the Base Camp, Aria and Kiki were there. And, of course—
"Huh? Oppa's here?"
Rin.
Might as well just come clean at this point...
It wasn't as if I could keep hiding it forever. She was glued to our Base Camp every other day anyway. What was even the point of keeping secrets anymore?
"Rin. I need to tell you something."
So I told her everything. That I had two skills. That one of them meant I went back and forth to the real world every single time.
"Whoa! So oppa goes to work AND does this stuff?"
Had I finally found someone who understood? This exhausting double life of mine. She was a modern person. Of course she would get it.
"Ah! But I got brought here when I was in high school, so I don't really know anything about having a job. Hehe."
Fuck. Of course she doesn't.
"Rin, if there's anything you want me to pass along to your family or your friends, I can do that."
"Mm... no. It's fine. I think it's better if I just don't contact them."
"Yeah, well..."
Everyone had their reasons.
"But oppa. Then can you download some Netflix and bring it? On a tablet or something!"
"Oh. Yeah, I could do that."
I had actually already tried showing Aria and Kiki videos, hoping it would make Base Camp life a little less boring. But—
They hadn't understood a word...
I had saved videos on my phone and played them, and all they did was marvel at the smartphone itself. They couldn't follow a single line of dialogue. They couldn't even read the letters printed on the food packaging I had brought.
My guess was that the system automatically translated the speech and writing we used among ourselves. Anything I hauled in from the modern world just fell outside that range.
Rin, though, was from Earth to begin with. If I brought Japanese content, there wouldn't be a problem — she had already torn through that manga just fine. As for battery life, I could just charge a power bank and bring it along.
"I'll load some stuff onto a tablet next time I come. Anything you want to watch?"
"Oh, in that case!!"
Rin rattled off request after request, and I jotted them down on my phone.
After we finished eating at the Base Camp, we headed for the Gathering Hall. On the way to the Quest Office we stopped by the blacksmith and bought two more of the cheapest swords they had. We were just about to move on when—
"Rin, where are you going?"
A soft, honeyed woman's voice. I turned around.
An extraordinary beauty was looking our way, smiling with something almost maternal in it.
"Huh? Elena unnie!!"
Wavy brown hair. Eyes that drooped just slightly at the corners. And above all, that violently generous figure the lines of her dress did absolutely nothing to hide.
That was...
Maman......
She was maman incarnate.
"Oh my. Could that boy be the Minwoo I've heard about?"
"Yes! That's him, unnie!"
Boy? I'm thirty-five...
"Hehe. Nice to meet you. I've heard so much about you from Rin."
"Ah — yes. Hello..."
Who starts off speaking down to someone they just met...?
"Aria, Kiki, it's been a while. Have you two been well?"
"Keruk! Keruk!"
"Yes. I hope you've been well too, Elena."
What? So everyone knew her except me?
In that moment, four men came up behind Elena.
"Elena, those people are...?"
"They're the children who work with our Rin."
"Ah... I see..."
And the look in those men's eyes... they were watching me with open wariness. That whole picture was—
Worker bees serving their queen, aren't they?
Anyone could see they were completely bewitched by Elena. She was beautiful enough to warrant it, sure. But they still looked painfully pathetic.
"We should get going, Elena. We need to leave soon."
They kept urging her along, clearly desperate to peel her away from me.
"Hehe. All right..."
Elena turned as if to leave us behind. Then she looked back at me.
Okay, but.
No matter how I looked at her, Elena seemed even younger than Yuna. Calling herself noona. Calling me a kid. Was it really okay to treat a full-grown adult like a child?
This was something I needed to correct. I was a responsible adult, after all.
So I said—
Ah, for fuck's sake!
I had folded without even meaning to. For an orphaned bastard with no mother, was the maman type really this dangerous?
"Hehe. Good. Let's meet again sometime, okay?"
With that, Elena said her goodbyes and left.
"That maman noona... I mean, who is this Elena person?"
"She's the unnie from our zone I told you about before!"
Now that she mentioned it, I did remember something like that. Rin had said that if they ever transferred, she wanted them to transfer together.
"Aria and Kiki have met her before too?"
"We've run into her a few times at the Gathering Hall. Once she heard we were with Rin, she treated us incredibly well."
Okay, but why was that woman walking around with a swarm of worker bees? And why leave Rin on her own...?
"Rin, why do you run missions separately from Elena?"
"Unnie is really, really strong. So she goes on missions with the high-ranking Participants. I'm not at that level yet."
That tracked. Elena had that look — like there was something more to her. That distinctive ease, too. She was nothing like anyone else we had met at the Gathering Hall. Even the four worker bees had looked plenty strong.
That strong, and they're still just attending a queen bee. Pathetic way to live.
Anyway.
We made our way to the Quest Office, took a mission, and joined the large-scale subjugation.
The mission we received was to hold position in a village and stop any Demonkin thralls or corrupted husks from getting in. Originally, each party was supposed to cover one village on its own. Because our track record was nothing special, though, we were being stationed with another mediocre party.
Yeah, our mission efficiency has been completely fucked...
Last week we had even burned a whole stretch of time helping Karante and come away with nothing to show for it.
Still, maybe this is a good thing?
Sharing the post with another party might actually work out better. Not that I had any idea what kind of people they would turn out to be.
We moved to the mission area. The village we arrived in was already empty — the evacuation had clearly been completed.
"Minwoo, I believe that's where we're supposed to wait."
The spot Aria had found was on the outskirts of the village, centered on the clock tower. We settled in and started keeping watch.
"Oppa, want to go up and do a little scouting?"
"Yeah. Let's go."
Rin had the wider field of view, so the two of us climbed the clock tower and looked out over the surroundings.
A man was moving along the boundary of our zone. He was surveying the terrain, making a reconnaissance circuit — an utterly ordinary picture. Probably a Participant from another zone who had been assigned to the same village.
I asked Rin without thinking much of it.
"Rin, that guy's probably a Participant from another zone, right?"
I turned to look at her.
And I could not get another word out.
The look on her face was one she had never shown before. No — it was one I had never seen in my entire life.
Crrk. Crrk.
Rage. Enormous, consuming rage. Hard enough to shatter teeth. Hard enough to burst every vein in her eyes.
The cute little witch-girl Rin, the one who never lost that bright, sparkling smile—
was no longer here.