Perfume
Perfume
The first time they were stopped for a random inspection, Im Ha-neul was just as flustered.
'Out of nowhere?'
It was also her first time experiencing something like this.
Usually, they never even spared them a glance when they walked around. Now, it was clear the royal family was on high alert because of that Lemegeton Cult.
'What should I do?'
Thanks to that, her mind went blank as well.
She had an adventurer's card, so that was one thing, but Yor didn't have anything to prove his identity. She was the only one who knew his secret, that he was a Demon's Blood bearer.
A flurry of ominous thoughts raced through her head.
Then suddenly, a decent idea came to mind.
She would use the spell she had learned, Illusion Sight.
This magic, capable of deceiving a person's vision, could even create something that didn't exist.
"What are you doing? Hurry up and take it out."
Thus, she resolved to put on a little act.
She ignored her pounding heart and kept her usual unaffected composure on the outside.
Fortunately, since she was normally so blunt, it was easy to keep a blank expression.
Quick on the uptake, he promptly played along with her act.
While he searched his pockets, Ha-neul constructed an image in her head.
Simply feeding mana into a spell wasn't enough to create a false image.
It required a concrete Mental Image to produce a proper illusion.
What she envisioned in her mind was an adventurer's card.
She had the image down, and now it was time to naturally show that illusion.
"...Hold on, I'll look for it."
With that, she reached into his pocket without his permission.
She felt Yor flinch for a second, but the situation was urgent, so it couldn't be helped.
Pretending to rummage through his front pocket, she was actually weaving the adventurer's card into existence with magic.
Illusion Sight was not a fast spell to cast.
Most likely because it required drawing a detailed image.
Because of that, Ha-neul couldn't help but extend the time she spent fidgeting inside his pocket.
After a moment of this...
With a soft, palpable stir, she felt a foreign sensation in her hand.
Though it was only for an instant, the texture was distinctly different from the scratchy pocket.
Judging by the contour she could feel, its size was also quite significant.
'Huh?'
She wondered what it was for a moment, but soon realized its identity.
The place she was searching was his front pocket, and there was only one kind of foreign sensation to be felt in a man's front pocket.
'This is the d—'
Oh, shit.
Once her thoughts reached that conclusion, she let out a curse inside her head.
They even rendered this texture? What the hell was wrong with this game company's heads?
Damn it, if she'd known this would happen, she would have raised her Assimilation Rate higher. She cursed her past self for only bumping it up to 45%.
On the other hand, she also had this thought:
'...I'm fucked.'
Even if it was a mistake, she had touched a man's... anyway, that part. It was blatant sexual harassment.
If this were the real world, she'd have no excuse for being hauled off to the police station.
Of course, this was a game, so that wouldn't happen. But if she wasn't careful, it could become a major incident that lowered an NPC's trust in her.
Even so, her magic wasn't interrupted.
Caught between a strange shame, a sense of happiness, and anxiety, she stubbornly finished the guild card.
Ha-neul then showed the illusory guild card to the guards.
It was an adventurer's identity plaque with a large letter 'B' embossed on it.
The guards nodded upon seeing it.
"My word, to be B-Rank at such a young age, that's impressive, young lady."
"Ahem, ahem... Anyway, we would appreciate it if you could refrain from public displays of affection, however..."
Because of her excessive actions, she had even drawn an unnecessary misunderstanding.
"No, that's not what...!"
"Well, then, have a pleasant time. Thank you for your cooperation with the inspection."
Ha-neul tried desperately to deny it, but the guards had already left.
Thus, all that remained were the two of them, a man and a woman standing awkwardly.
A strange silence wrapped around them for a moment. She cooled her burning face and barely managed an excuse.
"Th-that just now... it couldn't be helped because of the magic... Anyway, it wasn't on purpose... You know that, right?"
She couldn't exactly whip a mercenary card out of thin air and show them, could she?
In other words, it was an act of god. How was she supposed to know there'd be such a huge thing under his trousers?
Anyway, Ha-neul felt wronged.
Yor stared at Ha-neul with a blank face. His expression was as unreadable as usual, but perhaps because his features were fierce, it felt like he was glaring at her for no reason.
After a moment, Yor grinned and said one thing.
"...You've got a surprisingly pervy side, don't you?"
"No...!"
She could only desperately plead her innocence.
*
There had been a slight (?) happening.
In any case, the city exploration continued smoothly.
I was startled for a second there, too, but I knew she'd done it to save me.
I wasn't such a rotten human being that I'd get angry over something so trivial.
'And besides...'
Honestly, why would something like this ever upset me?
I didn't know how the ‘men’ of this world would take it, but as a super Korean guy, I simply found it funny.
If anything, seeing her so intensely flustered stirred up a strange sense of sadism in me.
I didn't know for sure, but for the 'women' here, this kind of thing seemed to be a legally serious matter.
In the end, I couldn't help but tease her a few times.
Things like, "If you wanted to touch it that badly, you should've just said so."
Or, "If you want to see it, you can just open them up and look right now."
I fired off one cheesy line after another, playing it up. Every time, the shy girl couldn't react properly and could only blush.
"...Ugh."
The result was this.
She was walking blankly beside me, turned completely into a tomato.
She barely responded when I talked to her, so she seemed about halfway broken. Only then could I stop teasing her.
Honestly, I wanted to unleash 'But what if I touched your chest, too? That would make us even, right?' on her here... but I held myself back at least that much.
It felt like I'd be throwing my authority around too much.
And mostly, because if I went that far, I didn't think I'd be able to hold back.
She knew my secret, but she was still an Otherworlder regardless.
To her, this world was ultimately a game. I trusted her, but I still wanted to leave a line uncrossed for now.
The fact that this was a city also played a big part.
I didn't want to do anything major in a place where one misstep could turn everyone around me into an enemy.
Of course, if I were in the middle of Berserk B, that would be a different story. But I wasn't right then.
"..."
"..."
Anyway, thanks to that round of teasing, things were now in a brief lull.
The streets were as bustling as ever, but an awkward silence hung between just the two of us.
I thought about talking to her, but she was probably busy trying to recover her mental state at the moment.
'Well, it can't be helped.'
So I decided to wander around by myself for a bit.
"Why don't we each look around on our own for a moment?"
"Huh? All of a sudden? Why...?"
"Don't worry, it's nothing. There's just somewhere I want to stop by for a sec."
I had two kinds of nostalgia.
One was the acrid smell of exhaust fumes I had smelled in my past life.
And the other one was the smell of people before I turned ten, which I had smelled in this place.
These two nostalgic scents would sometimes surface in my head and torment me.
A suffering called longing.
Today, since I was in the city, I planned to catch the scent of one of those nostalgias.
"Let's walk together until the halfway point. Sorry for just going off on my own after coming all this way. Oh, just in case I'm asking: this disguise will hold up for a while even if we're apart, right?"
"Ah, yeah. It will, but..."
Looking uneasy for a moment, she eventually nodded at my request.
She must have sensed my demeanour was more serious than usual.
Feeling grateful, I started walking down the street with her.
We passed through the noisy city center and headed toward the outskirts, where even the guards rarely ventured.
There was more trash on the streets, and more beggars far removed from any wealth.
Not everyone lived well just because it was a big city.
Where there was light, shadows were bound to form, and where there was a bustling district, there were bound to be slums.
And this was my hometown.
Even though I was chased out when I was ten, the memories from that time remained everywhere.
"Then let's split up here for a bit. I'll meet you soon."
After going in a certain distance, I parted ways with Ha-neul.
Then, I went a bit further in by myself.
If you went deep into this place, you'd reach an alleyway full of criminals. If you stopped halfway, you'd find the place where I used to live.
A small, shabby orphanage.
The place I had lived before being cast out was still clinging to existence.
Vines had grown over the building a bit, and the facilities were decrepit.
But it seemed to still be running, as a savory smell of soup wafted over from beyond the building.
I was steeped in a strange sentimentality.
All sorts of curiosities surfaced in my mind.
Was the nun who looked after the kids when I lived here still around?
If she was still working, she would be heading from middle age into old age by then.
What about the kindly old man who ran a bakery nearby?
Now that I thought about it, I hadn't seen it on my way here. It seemed he must have closed up shop.
Well, he used to sell his goods cheaply enough for the orphanage kids to afford. Maybe he'd run into trouble with maintenance costs.
I prayed that old man had made it into the bustling district and earned a lot of money.
What about those little kids I used to play with back then?
Twelve years having passed, they would have graduated from the orphanage by then.
Now full-grown adults, they might be working somewhere in this city.
Now that I thought about it, there seemed to be one girl back then who was especially fond of me. I was a bit curious about what she was up to these days. Though I couldn't really remember her face anymore.
"..."
In that way, I stood in front of the orphanage and breathed in my nostalgia for a long while.
I didn't go so far as to actually go inside the orphanage. Because for me, cast out from civilization, all that was permitted was watching from a distance.
But now, looking back on it...
That childhood life I thought was nothing but tedium seemed to have been a kind of happiness, in its own way.