The Korean Restaurant Run by a Succubus Is a Traditional Favorite
"Sign here, Great Chieftain of the Succubus Tribe!"
"The Succubus Tribe is... a minority race... of humanity..."
It was a quiet lunch hour.
Nam Gong-ryun was eating tteokbokki.
Carbonara jjajang tteokbokki, to be precise.
If Un-rang ever heard about it, he would shudder and call it some kind of abomination, but Gong-ryun thought it was pretty damn good.
This place had an insane number of carbonara options on the menu. Carbonara fire-chicken tteokbokki, carbonara cheese tteokbokki, carbonara soy-sauce tteokbokki, carbonara jjajang tteokbokki, carbonara volcano cherry-blossom tteokbokki… He regretted only discovering this restaurant recently. The prices were ridiculously cheap, too. Everything was perfect—except for one little thing.
"Hmm~~ Is carbonara really that good~~?"
The tteokbokki shop lady. The manager of this place. A Galaxy Succubus.
She was an absolute beauty, with long black hair twisted up into an elegant bun that always caught the eye. She always wore a long skirt that reached her feet. Nine long succubus tails poked out through a small hole cut in the back of the skirt. Each tail looked like a fox's tail stretched sleekly to about a meter, except the tip was shaped like an upside-down heart—sharp as a scorpion's stinger.
She had casually slid into the seat beside Gong-ryun and started chatting. Her tails swayed lazily behind her.
"Not many people come here just for the tteokbokki, you know~."
"Ah… yes… but it really is delicious… and cheap."
This lady was clinging more than usual today.
Of course, calling her "lady" out loud might get him killed. He only used the word in his head. Outwardly she looked like nothing more than an incredibly pretty older sister. But the depth of her strength was something he still couldn't fully measure. She had probably lived a long time and undergone bone-refining transformation or rejuvenation to reverse aging.
"Oh my~ Are you really not interested in anything else~~~?"
Absolutely not interested.
The first time he came here, pure curiosity had dragged him through the door. A shop run by a nine-tailed Galaxy Succubus? Surely he might catch a glimpse of her draining someone's vital essence or something? What red-blooded young man could ignore a rumor like that? He had been dying to know what the place was really about.
So Gong-ryun and Un-rang had boldly shoved the door open and walked in.
"Kuuuugh…"
"Keheok…"
What they found were a dozen or so people collapsed on the floor, bleeding. And standing among the fallen was a single woman. She looked demure enough at first glance, but her eyes glowed with killing light, and the nine sharp tails behind her were soaked in blood.
"You kids mercenaries too~~? Did you come to bag me as well~~?"
The languid voice sent pure chills down their spines. It carried so much murderous intent it almost rang like metal. Gong-ryun had felt death more clearly then than when he faced the Arachne in the abandoned mine.
"W-we just came to eat…"
"Really? Do you even know what kind of restaurant this is~~? What are you ordering~???"
The succubus's eyes flashed with sudden light.
"Ca… carbonara fire-chicken tteokbokki……"
"Mmmmm~~~? Real customers, then? Aigoo, come on in and sit down~~"
And so Gong-ryun and Un-rang had quietly eaten their meal and left. Tteokbokki eaten in the same room as people bleeding on the floor had a very special flavor. Un-rang had been so terrified that, despite having no throat, he had tried to shove the rice cakes down his gullet as fast as possible.
Once they got outside, Un-rang had sworn he would never come near this place again, but Gong-ryun had fallen hard for the carbonara. The taste had stuck with him even though he had eaten it while shaking. And right around then, his usual carbonara place had been wrecked in a disaster. In the end Gong-ryun started dropping by often enough to become a regular. He had already cycled through every carbonara item on the menu once and was starting the rotation again.
The succubus lady had been terrifying only at first. He gradually got used to her. She was friendly and kind. After all, a person running a restaurant wouldn't beat up customers for no reason. Those guys had come to kill her first, so of course she had hit back.
"So yeah~~ Those guys were mercenaries. Apparently they took a private job. Some rich individual hired them to capture me alive~~"
"Well… that was their own fault for taking an illegal black-market request. They reaped what they sowed."
That was exactly why he never touched illegal private commissions. Most of them were borderline criminal, and half of them offered zero safety guarantees. Proper work meant only official requests certified by the planetary government. Even a private job, if it were legitimate and aboveboard, would have been registered properly through an office. Those shady black-market jobs with suspiciously high pay always had a reason for the money.
"Bastards like that only make the mercenary image worse…"
Not that the image had ever been great to begin with. It just kept sinking lower.
"Well, if you're part of the unorthodox path you can't help it~ Still, our Gong-ryun is pretty mild-mannered for an unorthodox type~~ Polite, too~~ Such a good boy~~~"
"Thank you… ahem…"
"Oh my, already finished~? Want some free sikhye on the house~?"
"Yes!"
Ahh. This was why he couldn't quit coming here.
Gong-ryun beamed. While waiting for the complimentary sikhye he switched on his personal device. He opened the planetary government's official mercenary app and started browsing for decent work. He had hit a big jackpot not long ago finding a hydra nest, so now he was looking for something light and low-pressure.
Mining support, errands into hazardous zones, exploration inside Morlaren Canyon, asteroid detachment missions, drug-test part-time work… The listings scrolled past one after another.
"Oh my, Gong-ryun~~ Looking for work?"
"!!!"
The lady was already standing behind him with the sikhye in hand. Gong-ryun hadn't sensed a single trace of her presence and nearly jumped out of his skin.
"Ah… yes…"
"Hmm~~ Want me to recommend one~~?"
"Pardon?"
"Nothing weird~ Just someone I know is looking for extra hands~ And they registered it as an official request, too~~~"
"Oh… if it's an official request, then it's trustworthy."
"You know about catching moles in the underground waterways, right~?"
"That's a super common part-time gig. I've done it a lot."
The pay was a bit low, but the difficulty was easy and the danger was low. When you first started as a mercenary, mole-catching was one of the most common jobs. Gong-ryun had enough experience now that he had graduated from mole-catching.
"Is that so~? Then have you been to the western district waterways a lot~?"
"The western district…? Never been there. The rumors about that place are…"
Gong-ryun was currently based in the southern district. All his waterway work had been nearby. He had poked into the eastern district a few times, but never the west.
Because people went missing there.
Quite a few of them.
"Yeah~ Those rumors mean nobody wants the work~ But my friend is the one in charge over there, and she's down in the waterways every single day with zero problems~~ If you go together it'll be safe, and it should be nice~"
"Mmm… even so, the western district is a bit…"
"The pay is double~"
"Whoa! I'll go right now. Who cares about rumors!"
Double the commission fee? Nothing better than that. So this was why connections mattered. That bald monk had been right. A man needed to cultivate sociability.
That was what Gong-ryun thought.
"Right~~? You've got to grab opportunities while they're there~~"
The older sister said it with a smiling crinkle of her eyes.
And so he accepted the request and headed for the western underground waterways.
Ding!
His personal device acted as a navigation system and pointed the way. He was heading toward the coordinates the client had sent.
Except those coordinates…
…were right in the middle of the western underground waterways.
According to the briefing, the client would be waiting there and would give him the detailed instructions once they met. Which meant he had to get that far alone.
The ghost stories about the missing people kept flickering through Gong-ryun's mind.
"The tteokbokki shop lady… she wouldn't be scamming me, would she…?"
The thought surfaced for a second and then vanished. She might be a little scary, but she seemed like a good-natured person; he couldn't picture her pulling a scam over something like this. And it was an official, government-certified request. That was genuinely trustworthy.
Step. Step.
Gong-ryun kept walking through the underground waterway.
The tunnels were deep and wide. This city had been built on top of the mines from the planet's early development days. The spaces excavated for mining had been cleverly reused for water and sewage systems, bunkers, subways, and other facilities. Most of the city's underground waterways were the result of reinforcing and expanding those old mine shafts. Advanced galactic-era civil engineering had helped create the massive underground water system as well.
"No matter how many times I see it, the tech is incredible…"
To a country bumpkin like Gong-ryun, facilities this enormous still looked amazing.
Even though they were waterways, the water flowing through them had already undergone primary purification, so there was no deathly stench. And the passages were wide enough that walking paths were clearly separated from the water channel itself. A deep waterway ran down the center; the raised walkways on either side let people pass without ever having to step into the filth.
He kept going until he spotted a familiar monster.
Zzz…
A mole the size of a bull, its body covered in thick gray fur, fatter than a pig. A so-called Galaxy Mole. It was sprawled on its belly, sound asleep, completely blocking the path.
