Chapter 34 — The Magpie That Received a Debt of Kindness
I lost my sense of taste...?
Oh Hyeon-seong was genuinely shaken.
He could accept the fact that his trump card hadn't worked on her. What he hadn't expected was that the battle had left her with aftereffects of that magnitude.
For some reason, deep in his subconscious, he had always assumed that of all people, she would be the one spared from the lingering scars of injury.
He shuffled outside and found Han Su-yeon just as she was taking a drink of water.
"Oh, Sunbae. All the work outside is done."
"Good job."
The two of them sat down side by side on the wooden porch.
From there they could see Choi Jeong-il's back as he fussed over something with great concentration.
It turned out he was repairing the broken furniture with his own two hands.
Come to think of it, he'd always had a knack for woodworking — it had come in handy more than once during operations back in the day.
"Now that you mention it, it's been ages since I've seen you two together."
"Even when we ran into each other, it was only ever a brief face-to-face at official functions before we passed each other by. So we finally caught up on everything that's been piling up."
Trivial, mundane chatter — the kind that would never surface anywhere else.
Facing each other in sweat-stained work clothes while doing chores made it all feel strangely fresh.
"But still... I can accept the rest, but what on earth is with that beard?"
"He stayed at my place for a while. He's been so absorbed in fishing this whole time that he's let himself go."
"Fishing...? He still does that?"
Han Su-yeon knew perfectly well how much Choi Jeong-il loved fishing.
But for him to suddenly pick it up again now, after quitting all those years ago?
Besides, she wondered whether there was even anywhere around here to fish in the first place.
"Well... I'd say it's a mercy, honestly. It really doesn't suit him."
"You're not wrong."
At her words, Oh Hyeon-seong burst out laughing.
He ducked into the kitchen, shaking his head, and brought out bibimbap for the others as well.
Unlike Baek Ji-soo's flat reaction, the food itself had done nothing wrong — if anything, it was met with an emphatic response.
Choi Jeong-il and Ju Ji-hye, seated at the outdoor table, devoured their bowls with boundless delight.
"Wow."
Han Su-yeon, still perched on the porch, nodded along in genuine awe.
It was an extraordinary taste.
It was the first time she had ever eaten crops grown under the influence of a high-tier spirit like Alvern — she had no choice but to marvel.
Only after clearing more than half the bowl in a daze did she come back to herself.
"Sorry, it was just so good..."
"I like that kind of reaction from people."
A faint blush crept across Han Su-yeon's face.
And yet, even as she blushed, she couldn't bring herself to set her spoon down — the food was even more potent than last time.
"Getting my comeuppance after so long, and trying something new — it was a good day."
Han Su-yeon said, rubbing her forehead.
With a career as formidable as hers and a flawless record in every operation, she hadn't been on the receiving end of anything like that since her trainee days.
Of course, it had clearly been her own fault, and she wasn't about to complain about it.
Hyeon-seong had controlled his strength, sure — but that kind of thing didn't belong indoors.
"It's rare to see you lose your temper that badly. What happened between you two?"
"Well..."
At his question, Han Su-yeon fell silent for a moment.
Hyeon-seong couldn't help but be curious. He knew their personalities had never really meshed, but the two of them had never been so openly at odds like this before.
They were awkward with each other, yes — but it was the kind of relationship where they mostly traded good-natured jabs over work.
The words flying between them just now, though, had been laced with genuine venom.
"You don't have to tell me if you'd rather not."
"...Thank you. A lot of things just... happened."
Han Su-yeon let out a sigh and continued.
"I don't know what Baek Ji-soo said to you, Sunbae, but you shouldn't get tangled up with her. Not for your sake."
"What, you think I'm about to get played for a fool?"
"I don't worry about that where you're concerned. I'm just saying — don't judge her by the Baek Ji-soo you remember. Just as I've changed over the past five years, so has she."
Han Su-yeon had never liked Baek Ji-soo to begin with.
Back when she first joined the unit,
there had been friction between them — she resented the way Oh Hyeon-seong was willing to sacrifice two of his own people to keep the rest of the team firing on all cylinders.
But Baek Ji-soo went a step further than even that.
She never hesitated at ruthless methods if they served the objective, and to Han Su-yeon in those days, it provoked a deep, visceral resistance.
And yet the Baek Ji-soo of today wasn't even that anymore.
Drowning in her objectives, cruel to everyone around her — and living a life that was, in truth, quietly self-destructive.
"People change as time passes, so maybe that's to be expected. But there were things about her that haven't changed."
"And how would you know that, Sunbae?"
He'd only laid eyes on her today for the first time.
Far too brief a window to judge anyone by.
And yet in that short time, there was something in Baek Ji-soo that Oh Hyeon-seong had confirmed for himself.
If she'd truly changed completely, she would have used it already.
At times she came across as calculating and cold-blooded — but by the same measure, she was someone who never forgot a debt she owed.
That was the Baek Ji-soo he knew.
Every wall, down to its color, had been unified perfectly — the interior now looked immaculate.
After grinding away at it for hours, Baek Ji-soo had finally finished the painting to her own exacting satisfaction.
"..."
She gave a small nod, then silently pulled on her coat.
She could have said a word or two to the people she hadn't seen in so long before leaving. Instead, without so much as a sound, she slipped quietly out the front gate.
But standing beyond the gate, waiting for her, was Oh Hyeon-seong.
"Sunbae?"
"Back then and now — you haven't changed one bit."
"That's a first. Nobody's ever told me that."
Baek Ji-soo replied bluntly.
"Sorry for the commotion. I won't be coming around again."
"Then why not tell me before you go? That deal you mentioned — instead of some vague line about granting my every wish, you must have had a real card in your hand. What was it?"
"No. There was nothing."
Baek Ji-soo shook her head.
"A deal only works when both sides put something on the scale. And no matter what I put up there... it wouldn't mean anything to the you of today. Forget it."
With those words, she turned her back without a shred of hesitation.
She didn't even bother with a final goodbye.
But Oh Hyeon-seong stopped her.
"Baek Ji-soo. Why not try putting that obsession of yours down?"
"...What's that supposed to mean?"
"I mean don't push yourself too hard. There are plenty of people who can take your place — it doesn't have to be you. It's something I only learned after I came out here myself."
The de facto highest authority of the National Security Bureau.
It was Baek Ji-soo who held in her hands the torrent of intelligence flowing in from every corner of the country — and the world.
And because of that, she had no choice but to be tormented by every possibility and every risk that information dragged in with it.
Because she alone knew just how precarious and carelessly stitched-together this society really was, beneath its air of normalcy.
"Ha. If you were still sitting where I sit, Sunbae, you'd never say that."
"I would. I know better than anyone. Have you already forgotten? Things were an even bigger mess in our day."
Oh Hyeon-seong let out a short laugh.
In the early days of the Gate catastrophe, they had thrown themselves headlong into every kind of chaos imaginable.
It would be fair to say they had seen it all.
Which was precisely why Baek Ji-soo clung so desperately — to keep the world from sliding back to those days.
But there was one thing she had overlooked.
Even amid all that instability, all that chaos, the world had, in the end, kept moving forward.
"You don't need to believe you have to handle everything perfectly. Just... take it as something to keep in mind."
"...I'll be going."
And she walked off down the road, composed as ever, her footsteps steady.
Thud!
Baek Ji-soo climbed into the Bureau's freshly prepared vehicle.
Leaning her back against the seatrest, she closed her eyes for a moment.
"Thank you for your hard work, Director. But... is that man truly someone important enough for you to pay a personal visit?"
"He is. I could talk your ear off about it."
A name that, with so many of that era dead and gone, hardly anyone alive even remembered anymore.
But to the 1st Generation hunters who had lived through that period, he was someone who could never be forgotten.
Oh Hyeon-seong's very existence was a rallying justification in itself — which was exactly why she had tried to pull him as close to her side as possible.
Viewed the other way around, it meant he could just as easily become the center of gravity for hostile factions.
Regardless of how much strength he had actually recovered, he was a being capable of flipping even a board that had already completely tipped.
A massive variable the National Security Bureau was bound — by duty — to guard against and to fear.
"...What was I even doing back there."
Baek Ji-soo dragged a hand down her face and exhaled.
She knew full well that she was above being swayed by such shallow ploys. She knew, too, that the entire premise had been absurd from the start — and yet here she was.
Crunch!
She crushed the wiretap device she'd been holding in her fist.
The unused wreckage scattered across the floor.
Baek Ji-soo returned straight to the Bureau.
She had to clear her internal schedule and then power through her overseas commitments the following day, which meant moving fast.
But on her way to the interrogation room with a subordinate to conduct the questioning—
"Hold on... you go on ahead."
"Ma'am?"
Her face gone ashen, she ducked hurriedly into the restroom.
Thud!
Once inside the stall, she braced a hand against the wall and slid slowly down it, breathing ragged and hard.
A vicious pain, as if her body were being pierced through.
Her arm trembled uncontrollably, beyond her command.
"Hkk..."
Dark blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.
In the past, Baek Ji-soo had possessed one of the strongest miasma resistances even among hunters of her own elite tier.
Which was why she had always stood on the very front line of the sites where the miasma ran thickest.
Gates armed with exceptionally potent turbid energy — the kind where even squadmates like Han Su-yeon might fail to breach the threshold — were precisely where she and Oh Hyeon-seong had always led the charge, side by side.
But back then, no one knew that a level of miasma the body could endure in the moment would steadily accumulate in the flesh over time.
Her body, driven past its limits from years of shuttling between front lines, was already being devoured.
"Haa..."
As the searing spasm passed, Baek Ji-soo steadied her breathing.
She pressed her palm to the floor — but couldn't even feel the coldness of the tile beneath it.
Every time this happened, she felt her body going out, bit by bit, like a dying ember.
The symptom afflicting her miasma-consumed body was loss of sensation.
After the injuries she suffered in the Queen Subjugation, the first thing to go had been her sense of taste — but the other senses had been dulling steadily ever since.
Even her most exceptional sense, her sense of smell, had degraded to the point where it could no longer serve her on the battlefield.
She emerged looking utterly worn, and ran into her subordinate.
"I-I'll handle the interrogation myself, Director. Please rest, even just for a moment."
"Get out of my way."
Shouldering past him, Baek Ji-soo strode ahead.
Her body still ached and creaked with leftover pain, but with her color returned, she was once again the picture of composure — not a single thread out of place.
Her own physician had told her to quit hunting immediately and go into long-term care. She hadn't stopped for a single day.
And so Baek Ji-soo entered the interrogation room, and—
Rustle.
Before stepping into the room where the interrogation subject waited, she pulled an energy bar from her pocket.
A truly dreadful food product — engineered around nothing but essential nutrition, with taste stripped out entirely.
The old her wouldn't have dreamed of putting it near her mouth. Now, she actually preferred it: it let her finish a meal fast, without feeling anything at all.
Crunch.
She chewed the energy bar mechanically.
But only a few bites in—
Her jaw stopped mid-chew, and she froze where she stood.
"...?"
Baek Ji-soo's face reflexively scrunched itself tight.
She felt it — a sensation so unfamiliar it took her a moment to even name it, one she hadn't experienced in far, far too long.
Still vanishingly faint, yes. But she of all people could not mistake it.
"It tastes awful."