Ugh, That Auntie Kim Rok-hee!
The surgery that lasted roughly an hour ended in perfect success.
“Thank you…!”
“Don’t mention it. I don’t know who performed the emergency first aid, but that person is the reason she’s alive. Without it, she would have died on the way here.”
The doctor explained that thanks to Sephirah support, the operation’s difficulty had dropped significantly compared to the old days. Recovery rates for patients like Cheong Ha-rin who had suffered major organ loss had improved dramatically. These days, unless it was an extremely dangerous raid, fixers rarely lost their lives.
As long as your head doesn’t explode, you can survive. The world really has gotten better.
Still, the doctor said Cheong Ha-rin would need to stay inside a recovery capsule for about three days to heal completely. So they returned to their new home—the Ghost Office.
Baek San-ah floated her exhausted body into the air after running around all day.
Time to sleep!
…Bzzzzz.
“Ugh, seriously!”
The only people who would contact her at this hour were either the hospital or Woo Chun-yeob, so she snatched up the terminal.
[You’ve pulled off quite the stunt.]
Of course he already knew everything.
He had acted completely clueless when they met at the hospital. What a creepy guy. Still, since she had used her power to protect a human, he was probably willing to overlook it. The fact that he hadn’t even mentioned expulsion was proof.
“You knew the whole time and still pretended not to?”
[There were things I needed to confirm. You already know your neck armor isn’t just for simple expulsion, right?]
“I guess.”
[Anyway, I’ll handle this incident as if I were the one who took care of it. From now on, any matters related to you will be covered up using appropriate third parties.]
She had been listening absentmindedly when her eyes suddenly flew open.
What? Even the Wall-Facing Division wanted to thoroughly hide her identity?
[However, there is one problem.]
“There can be a problem when the Wall-Facing Division is personally covering it up…?”
[There’s God. The one who can obtain every piece of information in this world.]
“Ah.”
Her friend, colleague, mutual debtor, and various other connections—God.
Yeah, that guy would definitely know she was the one who cleaned up the Window this time.
“I’ll talk to God. I’ll ask him to play dumb.”
[I’d appreciate that. It’s fortunate our goals align.]
“If we don’t do this, I’ll get expelled anyway…”
She didn’t bother asking why he was trying to hide her power. It was obviously related to entering the City Center.
‘The City Center bastards live in their fortress and hate getting involved with strong people. It’s disgusting to them.’
The City Center administrators were staking their lives on recreating the pre-anomaly era, so she could understand the rejection. A clean City Center without anomalies!
…Just wait. An anomaly is coming soon(?). Just wait.
Right after ending the call with Woo Chun-yeob, she relayed the story to God. The reply she received made her realize she was an idiot.
In the end, there was no need to persuade God separately.
“Ugh. I wasted time I could’ve used sleeping.”
When you lie down to sleep, handle an urgent matter in a panic, and then try to rest again?
Sleep is gone.
That’s right. She wasn’t getting any sleep for the next few hours.
“Ughhhhh I can’t stand it! Guess I’ll just browse the gallery.”
Strangely enough, if she messed around on the gallery long enough, sleep would eventually creep in. It was because she had spent so much effort on it that she got sleepy, but there was no harm in packaging that as a feature.
All hail the Fixer Gallery.
“Let’s see…”
The topic she knew best was currently the hottest bait on the gallery—the sudden mass explosion of bugs during the Window DA-112 raid.
Kim Rok-hee seemed to be running around asking everyone if they knew the fixer who had lent a hand.
Oh dear. That wasn’t a fixer, it was an anomaly. She was barking up the completely wrong tree.
How could she let such entertaining material pass by?
‘He said the Wall-Facing Division would cover up all related information…’
A little prank should be fine, right? The Wall-Facing Division was famous for being able to cover up even if a hundred people suddenly dropped dead. (Unverified.)
I was trying to sleep but couldn’t so I wrote this random post haha
But something unexpected happened.
Instead of getting angry, Kim Rok-hee started clinging to her. Was it because of the Cheong Clan Alliance incident? She seemed absolutely convinced that AnomalyLivingAGoodLife360 knew something.
It would have been fine to stop there and run, but she suddenly got curious about the gift Kim Rok-hee was offering. If it wasn’t a one-on-one date ticket, what was she planning to send?
‘Anyway, a one-on-one date ticket only works on humans so I wouldn’t get dragged away.’
“Ssaksak… Chicken?!”
Ssaksak Chicken. In this Korea where real meat had become rare, it was the only brand that raised actual chicks into chickens for their product. It operated on a membership basis in the Seoul City Center.
Once membership slots were full, they didn’t open more. A slot only became available when an existing member withdrew, so people often bought and sold the memberships. How much were they again? A full transfer was a million credits? More expensive than a prime commercial property in a busy district.
“That chicken taste… again?!”
The last Ssaksak Chicken she had eaten had been the Cheongyang mayo flavor. Back when she lived outside the city boundary, some benefactor had let her try it once.
The reason people offered Ssaksak Chicken as bait for going to the City Center was because plenty of people would willingly become slaves for days if it meant getting the real thing. And honestly, it was just delicious. In a world full of fake meat, it was real chicken. One bite and you understood.
Leaving behind the gallery members who had lost their minds at the news, she opened a private chat with the Magic Tower Master.
Flash.
The Ssaksak Chicken QR code really did flicker across her vision for a brief moment.
Damn it, she wasn’t expecting it so she couldn’t screenshot!
Since she was an anomaly with a conscience, she planned to give something of equal value to the chicken she received. However, she had never said the information would be about her.
‘I can just say the person who made the bugs explode sometimes visits our office.’
Woo Chun-yeob had volunteered to frame this incident as his own doing. Once the Wall-Facing Division—an urban legend in its own right—stepped in, everyone would accept that version before long. Naturally, both she and Cheong Ha-rin would escape the gallery users’ investigation net.
In that situation, if Woo Chun-yeob kept visiting their two-person office? It would look incredibly suspicious. He would naturally start avoiding physical visits.
‘The best thing is to only contact that burdensome uncle through the terminal. Yep.’
The Sephirah pressure she felt from that man was so enormous and heavy that standing next to him felt like someone pressing a giant finger down on her head. It made her want to transform into a four-legged beast with big cheeks and cry “Uweh—!” without even realizing it.
“I get to eat two chickens and keep my distance from that guy. This is a truly genius idea.”
Meanwhile, at the recovery ward of a hospital in southern Seoul.
“How are you feeling? Are you awake?”
“Yes…”
“You suffered a severe penetrating wound to the abdomen, but you’ve almost fully recovered. If you receive capsule treatment for six hours twice a day, you can be discharged in three days.”
“I see. Um…”
Cheong Ha-rin, touching her now-perfectly healed abdomen, asked the nurse.
“The person who brought me to the hospital… was it a young girl? Black hair, wearing a white full-body suit, with purple eyes…”
“Ah, I’d need to check with the emergency room for that. I only handle the recovery ward. Shall I look into it for you?”
“Yes, please.”
It didn’t take long for the nurse to return with the answer. The result was exactly as Cheong Ha-rin had expected.
Baek San-ah had brought her all the way to the hospital.
Cheong Ha-rin carefully recalled what had happened yesterday. She had been on the verge of death and couldn’t move a single finger, but her memories right before arriving at the hospital were crystal clear.
‘It was definitely San-ah. San-ah saved me…’
While she had closed her eyes and focused, the bugs had exploded in a chain reaction. Countless droplets of blood had shot in every direction—and then.
Pop.
The moment Baek San-ah opened her eyes, she let out a short word. Immediately after, with a series of bangs, every single bug exploded as if on cue.
‘She killed all the bugs…? San-ah did?’
She had been a pure girl who lit up at talks about delicious food. Even so, there had been suspicious points.
Having an enormous amount of money for her age. Using a terminal model that only office representatives usually carried. Things like that.
‘She definitely said she wasn’t a fixer. Dad said she wasn’t one either. So is her mother a fixer?’
No. That couldn’t be it.
There was no way it was such a simple lie. The fact that she claimed she wasn’t a fixer was already something to be suspicious about.
The Window had felt like a Na-class one after several months of dormancy. Yet she had cleared a Na-class Window alone, that easily?
The codes attached to Windows—Ga, Na, Da—meant that ten fixers of the corresponding rank could clear it without much trouble…
‘If San-ah is a fixer, everything fits. She has to be at least Ga-class.’
But why would a Ga-class fixer wander around alone without telling anyone? She might have come in advance to prepare for the Window’s Qlipha level rising, but usually in those cases they made an official announcement, didn’t they?
Just leaking the news that they were moving increased popularity and approval ratings, which affected office rankings. Higher rankings meant more benefits for the office and its fixers.
So what reason could there be to move so quietly?
‘…No.’
However, as Cheong Ha-rin continued to build up questions, one critical issue suddenly took center stage in her mind.
It was the matter of ‘making a living.’
She must not forget. She was currently an unemployed person who had lost her job and possessed no special abilities.
‘A Ga-class fixer connection? That’s not something you can get easily…’
She had been planning to ask AnomalyLivingAGoodLife360 for work or a placement, but there was no need for that anymore. She could just ask Baek San-ah!
‘She even fed me and I owe her my life.’
If she said she would work her entire life to repay the life debt, maybe she would at least be given odd jobs like cleaning the office? If there was no office, she could become a live-in maid managing the house…!
‘The moment I’m discharged, I’ll beg her. Please treat it like you’re saving one more person.’