It's a Hit (1)

After the Cheong Clan Alliance incident, the atmosphere in the gallery shifted a little.

“Wow.”

My account had always been pretty well-known in the Fixer Gallery.

To be exact, I was famous as the psycho who picked fights with fixers whenever I was bored.

“Feels like I’ve become an influencer or something.”

But I never had this many people following me before.

I used to get banned on sight and had to make new accounts all the time. Once I did, the people who followed the old one couldn’t find the new one.

However, after the Cheong Clan Alliance incident, the way people treated me inside the Fixer Gallery completely changed.

For details, let’s check OnePunchMan’s notice.

If only the Cheong Clan Alliance had collapsed, the scale of their office wouldn’t have made it this big of a topic….

But because people from state agencies got involved as well, the whole thing blew up.

The head of the Administrative Bureau’s fixer team—who had been manipulating rankings through lobbying rather than actual results—was handed over to the Wall Cross Department, and the Fixer Gallery is in total chaos right now.

Normalized rankings.

Whether those rankings are restored or not will decide who laughs and who cries, and there are tons of fixers in that exact situation.

The benefits you receive depend entirely on your office’s ranking, after all.

But normalizing the rankings, including institutional reform, will take at least a week.

While waiting for that, there’s nothing better than gallery surfing to soothe the frustration.

And once people start gallery surfing, interest naturally flows toward the posts I made—the very starting point of this entire incident.

Especially the information I possess.

Because so many people were interested in the source-unknown information that somehow always had a high hit rate, there were now tons of posts openly putting “GodLifeAnomaly” in the title.

Sorry.

I didn’t mean to get banned either.

There just isn’t anyone in the gallery I feel as close to as OnePunchMan, so I guess I went too hard with the trolling.

But what can I do?

This is just how I live in the gallery.

These days if I don’t get banned at least once a day it feels weird.

Still, I gave up on the idea of immediately asking God to make me an alternate account.

It’s nice that so many people are looking for me, but revealing myself right away is something only amateurs would do.

“A true superstar drives both haters and fans insane.”

Fine.

I’ve been gallery surfing without rest even after getting isolated, but I’ll take today off!

It’s also good to start weaning myself off this gallery addiction—two birds, one stone!

I immediately opened the map app and checked the location of the number one restaurant on the Doksan-dong delicious restaurant list I found yesterday.

“I was planning to do an on-site inspection anyway….”

Today I’ll go tour the delicious restaurant list I discovered yesterday.

I’ll visit them one by one and check whether they’re actually good for solo dining.

“Ugh. But this list only has fake chicken places.”

It’s as hard as picking stars from the sky to get properly raised chicken these days, so there’s nothing I can do about it.

Still, aside from the excuse to go to the Core City, I really want to eat it again.

Real chicken ssaksak chicken….

About twelve hours later.

Southwestern Seoul, near Doksan-dong, at the now-former Cheong Clan Alliance office.

After the Judicial Bureau’s enforcers had come and gone, the place was completely empty. The lone woman left behind stared holes through her terminal, waiting for someone who had to show up in the gallery.

“Ugh. His ban’s been lifted, so why isn’t he appearing…?”

The person she was looking for was none other than GodLifeAnomaly.

There was only one reason.

Because of him, she had lost her job.

“Tsk. We were on pretty good terms usually, so I was going to ask him a favor, but why does he disappear exactly when I need him? Did he notice I was going to ask and run?”

Cheong Ha-rin, a D-rank fixer formerly of the Cheong Clan Alliance.

She had already been full of complaints because last month’s paycheck was late. The moment the Seoul Judicial Bureau’s investigation began, she became their number one informant.

Come on, she had been second only to the three founders, yet they still withheld her pay?

How could she stay quiet? She spilled every suspicious thing that had happened in the office to the Judicial Bureau, hoping to clear her own charges.

Stories about how they claimed to buy equipment with citizen donations and go on missions, yet she hadn’t even seen any equipment for months.

Stories about how the three founders had been spending more and more time meeting only with each other, and so on.

After a sort of plea bargain was made, Cheong Ha-rin was able to leave the Judicial Bureau as the first of the Cheong Clan Alliance fixers who had been taken in.

But just because she got out didn’t mean her life was over.

She still had to eat and survive.

Even if she tried to join another fixer office, it was obvious she would be turned away at the door since she had zero Sephira.

The Cheong Clan Alliance had been running on conventional weapons without any Sephira, which was how she had survived until now. But that was no longer an option. She was now a total jobless bum.

That was why GodLifeAnomaly—the guy she had bumped into constantly in the gallery—had become her last ray of hope and only lifeline.

She wasn’t expecting much. She didn’t even know if he was actually a fixer.

But someone capable of moving even the Wall Cross Department?

He was definitely not an ordinary person.

There was also the perfect guilt-tripping reason that she had lost her job because of that incident.

If she could just talk to him, she could beg for the smallest helping hand to survive and appeal with tears.

Yet even after several hours, GodLifeAnomaly still hadn’t appeared.

It had already been six hours since his ban was lifted, but there was no news at all.

The surroundings were gradually darkening as dusk ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠settled in.

Sitting alone in an empty office doing nothing but wasting time was driving Cheong Ha-rin insane.

“…Should I eat first?”

She hadn’t eaten anything since morning, sitting there for a full twelve hours.

Even her stomach, which had been growling earlier, seemed to have given up and gone quiet.

“Sigh. Yeah. Better to die looking good than starve to death.”

Cheong Ha-rin trudged forward.

Her destination was a ramen shop that only had one item on the menu: chashu ramen.

Even in this era where ingredient supply was extremely tight, the owner was a miraculous chef who somehow recreated the taste and texture of the past using substitute meat and grains.

“Wow, my luck is absolute trash. I came on purpose when it shouldn’t be peak time…”

For some reason the shop, which usually had almost no line, was packed. The queue stretched all the way to the storefront next door.

“What’s going on? This was my secret delicious spot. Did someone leak the Doksan-dong restaurant list on the gallery?”

She could have gone somewhere else, but on a day when she had suffered this much stress, she absolutely had to eat something good.

Besides, the shop didn’t have infinite ingredients. If she didn’t join the ever-growing line, they might close before she could decide.

“Ugh, getting in line…!”

Cheong Ha-rin hurriedly ran over and stood behind a black-haired girl.

‘…Whoops.’

The girl’s hair was so long it was dragging on the ground.

She had almost stepped on it by mistake.

‘Jeez. Dragging her hair across this dirty floor.’

Cheong Ha-rin, who had rather strong tastes in style for a fixer, always carried spare hair ties in her pocket.

And that kind of personality sometimes led her to approach others without hesitation.

In the blink of an eye she gathered the girl’s hair into several ring shapes and tied it up.

Thanks to being the fastest hand in the Cheong Clan Alliance, she finished styling the girl’s hair before the girl even noticed.

‘Let me just brush ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the dirt off too…’

She combed out the dirt-filled ends with a fine-tooth comb, removed the foreign matter, shook it clean, and that was it.

It had been quite a noisy hair-styling session, yet the girl didn’t move an inch.

Wondering if her senses were dull, Cheong Ha-rin tilted her head forward slightly to check—only to see the girl clutching her terminal with a serious, troubled expression.

No wonder she hadn’t reacted at all.

What could she be worrying about so hard?

The girl’s behavior was so peculiar that Cheong Ha-rin couldn’t take her eyes off her even while moving forward in line.

She would hold the terminal, put it back in her pocket, take it out again to stare at the home screen, then put it away again.

She repeated those exact actions for a full thirty minutes without missing a single step.

‘Huh.’

This behavior definitely looked familiar.

Wasn’t this exactly what the representative of the Cheong Clan Alliance she used to belong to had done?

Right after he had a huge argument with GodLifeAnomaly in the gallery, he had looked exactly like this—hesitating whether to log in or not, seething with anger.

Yes, that look was extremely similar to what this girl was doing right now.

‘Kids always act before they think. She must have said something wrong.’

Maybe it was because the girl looked so restless and pitiful.

Before she knew it, Cheong Ha-rin found herself speaking to her.

“Did you fight with a friend?”

Only then did the girl seem to realize someone behind her had been leaning in close. She jumped and whipped her head around.

“N-no~?”

She was incredibly cute.

Especially those round, sparkling eyes.

Ever since the Flood, people’s genes had changed, so Cheong Ha-rin was used to seeing all sorts of eye colors, but this mysterious violet was a first.

Without thinking, her hand twitched with the urge to pinch those cheeks. She pressed her right hand down with her left and spoke.

“Really? You just looked so anxious I had to ask. You okay?”

“Y-yes.”

“That’s a relief. I only spoke because I was worried. Sorry if it was nosy.”

“Not at all. Thank you.”

Right after, the girl turned forward again, put her terminal in her pocket, and didn’t take it out anymore.

She must have made up her mind, or maybe she was deliberately hiding it because she didn’t want the person behind her to see.

‘Ah… I butted in again.’

Maybe she shouldn’t have interrupted?

Should she have just stayed quiet?

While she was staring blankly at the sky with those thoughts, the girl finally noticed her tied-up hair and poked Cheong Ha-rin’s thigh with a finger.

“Um… my hair…”

“Ah, yeah, right. It was dragging on the ground so I tied it up with one of my hair ties. Want me to undo it? Did I do something unnecessary…?”

“No, thank you. I’m not good at doing this kind of thing by myself.”

“Then that’s good—”

At that moment the restaurant’s part-timer suddenly ran outside and began counting quietly while walking down the line.

Before long the part-timer stopped right beside the girl.

He looked at Cheong Ha-rin and said,

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but with the ingredients we prepared today we can only make one more bowl for this young lady…. We got way more customers than expected. My deepest apologies to everyone behind her as well!”

Oh no.

So in the end, that brief moment of hesitation had led to this.

The people behind her sighed as if they had expected it and began to disperse.

Cheong Ha-rin was about to step back with no other choice when—

“Would you… like to share? I… can’t eat that much anyway so I can only finish half~!”

The part-timer heard the girl and looked at Cheong Ha-rin.

It was a silent question—would half a bowl be all right?

Hair care.

A favor that could have felt like unwanted meddling….

Even though everyone had become more selfish these days, the world was still worth living in.

Cheong Ha-rin grinned.

It was a genuinely pure smile, the first she had shown in quite a while.

“Thank you so much for the meal invitation, little miss…!”