The Unlucky Soul (2)
While lying in her hospital bed, Cheong Harin had done nothing but think.
As a fixer who's only ever done physical labor, what else could I possibly be good at...?
After agonizing over it again and again, the answer she arrived at was surprisingly administrative work.
San-a is still young, so she might find running an office difficult!
It was a somewhat presumptuous thought.
But she was absolutely certain that Baek San-a would "naturally" hate anything complicated.
After all, even to Cheong Harin, who was often called a muscle-brained idiot, Baek San-a seemed like a total fool!
It wasn't a matter of how smartly she spoke.
It was just an instinctively felt idiot gene—her extreme love for laziness, and the way her eyes crinkled into soft crescents whenever food was mentioned.
Everything about her painted the picture of a certified dummy.
What if I take care of all the paperwork and miscellaneous chores for her?
Wouldn't San-a love that?
It was a simple idea born from the logic that since she hated paperwork, Baek San-a must hate it too.
All the way to the address Baek San-a had given her, Cheong Harin was convinced this plan would work flawlessly... except for one thing.
“What... are you doing here?”
“Ah. San-a and I made a bit of a deal. We both had things we needed, so I agreed to help out with the chores and paperwork.”
She had overlooked exactly one thing.
Her own terrible luck.
She had forgotten that she was an extreme case of "luck-skinny"—someone whose life had never once gone the way she wanted since the day she was born.
“This... this isn't right...?”
I mean, did it make any sense for Kim Lokhee, the representative of an entire office, to be doing paperwork here out of the blue?
Thanks to this, the theory that Baek San-a was a Ga-grade fixer gained even more weight, but...
Still, this is too much!
Unable to calm her bewildered mind, Cheong Harin asked,
“Is your office struggling lately...? But you even completed a Window mission recently, which you didn't even have to take.”
“Like you said, Harin, the Magic Tower doesn't have any financial issues.”
“Th-then why are you working part-time in a shabby office like this?!”
The moment the words left her mouth, Cheong Harin regretted them.
Fortunately, Baek San-a wasn't here. She had gone to the convenience store.
Kim Lokhee burst into a fit of giggles.
“I told you, I'm not a part-timer. We made a deal.”
“No, I mean, what kind of deal...”
“I get the right to hang out here, which is great for me. And San-a gets to dump all her headache-inducing work on me, which is great for her.”
“Ugh...”
How on earth does the "right to hang out" become a tradeable commodity?!
It's a personal matter, so I can't really pry any further...
But as mentioned before, Cheong Harin was also an idiot.
The kind of idiot who, rather than deeply contemplating how things ended up this way, preferred to throw herself into action to find a way out.
Baek San-a had paid her hospital bills, but if she didn't find a job within a few days, she might literally have to start digging up nutritious dirt to eat.
In a world like this, one couldn't expect the welfare policies of the past.
It was every man for himself; you had to survive on your own.
“Where did San-a go?”
“There's a convenience store just down the street. It's the only one around here, so it shouldn't be hard to find.”
“Thank you!”
“Oh, wait! Before you go...!”
Cheong Harin dashed out of the office in a flash.
Kim Lokhee clicked her tongue and muttered,
“She really is fast. No wonder they say she survived a long time for a Ra-grade.”
As she continued preparing Cheong Harin's employment contract, she tapped her terminal to check the time.
It had already been an hour since Baek San-a left for the convenience store.
“Is the line long because of the city-imported goods...? It's taking quite a while.”
About an hour ago.
“Wow, crazy.”
Having come to the convenience store to buy gummies, I frowned at the sight of the massive line.
Damn it. I got late because I was watching a flame war on the Fixer Gallery.
Before the Overflow, you could get high-quality, sterile-packaged gummies just by walking into any convenience store.
From fruit flavors to cola flavors, healthy gummies to junk food gummies.
You could practically replace a whole meal with gummies just by visiting one store.
But now, gummies were incredibly rare.
Especially "gummy jellies," famous for their chewy, bouncy texture—you couldn't even get those in the city center.
It was just too hard to source gelatin these days.
I quickly stood at the very end of the line and asked the person right in front of me,
“Excuse me, how long have you been waiting?”
“Are you wondering how long the wait is from this spot?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“The person who stood here earlier probably waited about an hour.”
“Noooooo.”
The man chuckled.
“Don't worry, they said they have plenty of stock. There's a purchase limit per person, so you'll definitely get some.”
“Well, that's a relief...”
Ugh.
If only I could go to the city center, I could buy gummies instantly.
But right now, that was a pipe dream.
I heard that even fixers who mastered martial arts or magic had to go through incredibly strict procedures just to enter the city center.
It really makes me realize how amazing it was of Lokhee to share that chicken...
Sharing something so precious instead of eating it all herself—she really has a great personality.
By the way, a purchase limit per person?
In an era where personal identification info could easily be forged, how could a mere convenience store enforce that?
Couldn't someone just change their clothes and come back?
Wait, is that why the line is so long?
Because the same people keep lining up over and over?
Curious, I called out to the man in front of me again.
“But how are they enforcing the purchase limit?”
“Curious about that, are you? I wondered the same thing at first, but the store owner was pretty clever.”
He pointed to a bus parked opposite the line, right across from the convenience store entrance.
It was a dilapidated bus that looked ready to collapse, wrapped in a familiar red cross design.
Several of them were parked side-by-side, completely blocking the alley, giving them a massive presence.
“It's a blood donation bus.”
“If you donate blood, you're guaranteed to have a needle mark, right? They're using that to limit the purchases.”
“Hmm. Smart.”
“Right? Thanks to that, latecomers like me can actually buy some. Plus, the donated blood goes to save sick people, so we're doing a good deed too.”
I remember donating blood back when I was a human just to get the free merch.
I tried to donate twice to get two items, but they rejected me, saying it was dangerous.
But now, my entire body is made of blood.
A casual scan makes me look human, but it's all a fake body made of solidified blood.
Twice?
I could do it a hundred times!
“If you donate blood twice, can you buy twice as much?”
“...Huh? I don't know. I hadn't thought of that.”
I immediately opened the Seoul Southwest Gallery.
Someone might have posted about it.
“Ah.”
Emergencyyyyyy.
People who awakened their Sephirah can't even donate blood?
Wait, then does that mean I can't donate blood either?
I'm an anomaly.
Awakened humans still have plenty of human parts, but I'm 100% anomaly.
...I'm screwed!
Damn it. Lokhee is an Awakened too, so she can't donate.
If I had known this, I would have waited for Cheong Harin to be discharged.
I did message her to come find me, but I rushed out because it overlapped with the gummy sale time...
Should I go back and wait for Harin? But what if the gummies sell out in the meantime?
Ugh.
Why is life such a continuous series of painful choices?
If only Cheong Harin joined our office...
Then there would be a chance even if similar limited sales happened in the future.
...Come to think of it, this is reverse discrimination against Awakened and anomalies.
Anomalies have mouths too! We want to eat gummies too!
I should just wait for Cheong Harin to get discharged...
I was too soft-hearted to call her and tell her to run over here.
She might be fully recovered, but it felt a bit wrong to make someone who just got out of a hospital bed run a gummy errand.
If I reach the front of the line, I can pretend to be generous and let the person behind me go first, then swap places with Cheong Harin when she arrives.
Alright. Please get discharged quickly, Harin Cheong.
You have a vital mission.
Let's just browse the gallery while waiting.
There really is nothing better than browsing the forums when you have time to kill.
They say people spend way more time on the galleries after the Anomaly Overflow.
Mostly because work suspension orders are issued so frequently due to anomaly alerts.
Filter out the brag posts, comfort the pitiful ones, skip the proxy buying requests—I can't even buy them myself, how am I supposed to buy them for someone else?
As I scrolled through the list, I spotted something interesting.
“Oh my god.”
Betraying the office over gummies.
He could get a bounty on his head and die if caught.
“...Actually, if it's for city-made gummies, maybe it's understandable.”
Right now, even I am praying for Cheong Harin to contact me quickly.
How badly must everyone else want to eat them?
If it were a Ga-grade or Na-grade office, maybe, but for a Da-grade...
Yeah, it happens. Hang in there.
Maybe I should ask the owner just in case.
I didn't know if he'd remember since a truckload of people had passed through today, but fortunately, the fixer's outfit in the photo was quite eye-catching.
Since people often went missing due to anomalies, they intentionally wore bright, conspicuous colors.
It didn't have to be just colors, though.
In the case of the Loki Office, they wore wizard robes or hats.
After waiting for exactly one hour, I finally reached the sixth spot from the front of the line.
And Cheong Harin contacted me at that exact moment.
“...?”
I decided not to care about why her tone had suddenly become so polite.
What mattered right now wasn't her tone, but the gummies.
“In front of Haengbok Convenience Store. Should I send you the address?”
I figured finding the way would take her a second if she just asked her terminal... and indeed, not long after.
“San-a-nim!!”
Cheong Harin appeared at the far end of the alley.
She was running as fast as a sprinting cheetah.
I thought she'd still be weak since she was discharged today.
But she looks perfectly healthy? I guess a fixer is still a fixer, even if they're Ra-grade.
Reaching me in a matter of seconds, she panted,
“I! I have something to tell...”
“Before that, do me a favor.”
“Y-yes?”
I immediately transferred credits to Cheong Harin's terminal.
They said they didn't accept credit cards, so I had already exchanged cash with Auntie Lokhee beforehand.
“Donate blood, get in line, go inside, and buy as many gummies as you possibly can.”
“...Huh? Blood donation? All of a sudden? Eh?”
“Please. I really, really want to eat those gummies.”
If she looked sick, I might have hesitated, but since she's this healthy...
“I was planning to hire you as the office cook anyway, so think of this as a trial run.”
“H-hire?”
Cheong Harin's eyes trembled, her face lighting up.
I nodded and told her,
“Yes. Today's mission is to secure the gummies. It's a very important mission. By my standards, it's a Special-grade mission.”
“...!”
Cheong Harin bit her lip firmly, as if making a monumental decision.
Looking at her expression, you'd think she was actually embarking on a Special-grade mission.
“I will absolutely return with the gummies!”