Four Hundred Thousand Coins
· · ·
For days the internet burned over the cat mask that had appeared at the 27th Hunter Auction in Sejong.
Guess after guess circled the owner of those four hundred thousand coins, and not one of them named the Princess of Dark Flare.
Which was only natural. No one was about to imagine an F-rank concept hunter sitting on four hundred thousand coins.
The woman at the center of all that noise had only just reached her destination.
Bzzzt—
A vibration went off in her back pocket.
The sender, for the record, was Ayeon. Yoni♥ was a name Ayeon had typed in herself.
Right before they parted after the auction, Ayeon had caught Eunha by the ankle and insisted they exchange numbers.
Bzz, bzz, bzz—
The phone kept buzzing without a pause. Parting from Eunha like that, it seemed, had not been nearly enough for her.
Eunha slid the phone back into her pocket and lifted her head.
She knocked twice on the firmly shut door. From the other side came a gentle voice.
“Come in.”
Dr. Plant. Rose.
“You…”
The moment Rose saw Eunha, something strange flickered through her eyes. It lasted only a second.
“I was under the impression outsiders were being kept out. How did you get this far in?”
Eunha didn’t answer. She simply held something out.
“You said you needed this.”
Thud.
A pouch dropped onto the desk. Rose stared at it for a moment, set down the pen in her hand, and looked inside.
“……!”
The white powder heaped in the pouch glittered, dazzling, as if someone had ground diamonds to dust.
Rose knew exactly what it was.
“Pixie Powder…”
She murmured it blankly, the pouch clenched in her fist. For a long time she stayed rigid. Only then did her gaze creep up, halting and slow.
…How?
Where had she gotten this, and by what means?
Even with the star-bright powder in front of her own eyes, Rose could not make herself believe it.
She had already heard that a Hunter Auction had been held in Sejong the day before. That Pixie Powder had been put up for sale. That the final bid had reached four hundred thousand coins. The people around her would not shut up about it. There had been no way not to know.
Then was this woman the owner of those four hundred thousand coins?
“Did you obtain it yourself?”
“I didn’t steal it.”
“……”
Tick. Tick. The second hand walked across the silence. Rose watched Eunha with an unreadable look, the Pixie Powder still in her hand.
In the end Eunha, unwilling to wait, was the first to speak.
“So. Is that much enough?”
The calm voice reached her ear, and Rose came back to herself with a start.
“…Yes. More than enough.”
She seemed to hesitate. Then, slowly, her lips moved.
“There’s something I’d like to ask.”
She set the Pixie Powder down and gazed steadily at Eunha.
“You… by any chance…”
The rest never left her mouth.
“……?”
Eunha looked back at her, puzzled.
A faint smile touched Rose’s lips as she shook her head.
“No. It’s nothing.”
Are you really F-rank?
That was what she had meant to ask. But what good would asking do?
The accuracy of the Measurement Device held by the Korean Hunter Association was internationally certified. And it was hardly the first time Yu Hwan had been wrong about something.
If, by some one-in-ten-thousand chance, the woman really was hiding her strength, she would not answer honestly in any case.
Above all, her rank was not what mattered most in this moment.
“I’ve received the Pixie Powder. With this amount, it’s sufficient.”
Rose brushed her fingers over the powder and glanced at Eunha.
“But are you sure? Just handing it over like this.”
She knew perfectly well what the white powder was worth. It was not the sort of item one gave away on a whim.
Eunha nodded without thinking very hard about it.
“Yes.”
The ease of the answer was what startled Rose. Eunha added, simply:
“Because we’re family.”
“Family?”
Rose blinked, slow. Then a thin smile rose, and she said:
“That isn’t what I meant.”
She drew a finger gently through the fine-grained powder in the pouch.
“I mean, what are you going to do if I take this and play dumb?”
“You won’t.”
Again Eunha answered without a pause.
“You said a doctor can’t save everyone. You never said you couldn’t save that child.”
“……”
Beyond the rimless glasses, Rose’s gaze found her. The fingers stroking the white powder went still.
“All I could do was bring this. From here on, I have to leave it to you.”
Having said that much, Eunha slowly turned her back. Just before her hand closed on the knob, she looked over her shoulder one last time.
“Please look after her.”
Click.
The door shut.
She had handed over a relic-grade item as easily as that, and walked away.
Rose gazed at the Pixie Powder lying before her.
And then a voice grazed her ear. Yu Hwan’s. In the eyes she remembered there had not been a single trace of a joke, and what he had said was plain.
The truth is, I wasn’t the one who obtained the Sea’s Tear. Not Do Seongyun. Not Heo Jaemin. No one else in Bulmyeol, either.
The Princess of Dark Flare. An F-rank concept hunter, contracted to Wolf.
Shh—
Pixie Powder slipped through her fingers. Rose did not move. For a long time she only watched it fall.