I Am the Representative (2)
The invitation to eat together.
It was essentially the same as suggesting we share a table with someone I’d only met today for the first time.
When I thought about how I normally did nothing but scroll the gallery, I had to wonder what on earth had possessed me to do this….
But I had to suggest it.
It felt like I’d only be able to resist the gallery if someone was sitting right next to me.
The reason I’d kept picking up and setting down the terminal all afternoon was that I’d nearly caved.
I’d planned to take a day off from the gallery just to make the gallers sweat, yet I’d almost reflexively answered the posts looking for me.
I’m not gallerying today. I’m not gallerying today. I’m not gallerying today—.
No matter how I looked at it, the worst disease a modern person could catch was internet addiction.
To the point that I couldn’t endure it without someone else’s help.
Fortunately, the woman who had tied my hair accepted the offer….
“Thank you so much for the meal invitation, little lady…!”
And so a one-day party to keep Baek San-ah from gallerying and to eat delicious food was officially formed.
I had lived alone for a stretch of time that could not be measured.
I had made friends, gained colleagues, and acquired subordinates many times, but perhaps because I had no fixed lifespan, they all eventually left.
So at some point I stopped approaching others first to make friends.
If someone came to me, I would simply become friends with that person.
“Someday, when the world is safe again, we’ll be able to eat all kinds of ramen. The chef here is a real ramen master. He said that as soon as we secure even a decent amount of fresh ingredients, he can start rolling out new menu items.”
“New menu items?! What do you think will come out first?”
“Plants are easier to grow than animals, so probably miso ramen or shoyu ramen?”
“Just imagining it is incredible…”
“You’re drooling.”
“Slurp.”
Yet this woman named Cheong Ha-rin communicated with me perfectly—at least when it came to food.
Her descriptive skills were on another level.
Just listening to her made me feel the taste and texture.
It was the first time I had drooled the entire time before the food even arrived.
Compared to a certain Mr. Woo who only ever ate survival rations, Cheong Ha-rin was a food lover on an entirely different dimension.
Her attitude was so likable that I unconsciously made an additional suggestion.
After all, I needed someone beside me if I was going to stay away from the gallery!
“Half a bowl probably won’t fill you up… How about we grab one more meal at a different place?”
“R-really? That’s okay?!”
“My treat.”
I did want to use the terminal Woo Chun-yeop had given me as little as possible, but buying someone else a meal didn’t seem like it would cause any major problems.
They said it was a paper company, so if anyone comes to register at the office I can just say the representative was buying the interviewee a meal. Like an interview fee or something.
Even if the one being fed is technically the pet instead of the representative.
Details like that probably wouldn’t make it into the official books anyway.
“Ha, if I had the money I’d be the one treating you. Sorry—my living expenses right now are pretty tight…”
Of course.
I have my own reasons for buying, too.
Don’t feel burdened.
Besides, it’s not even my money.
“It’s fine, it’s fine~.”
“Thank you so much!!”
Cheong Ha-rin seemed genuinely moved; she kept bowing to me over and over.
…However, even after we moved to the next restaurant and continued eating, the thanks kept coming, so I eventually had to stop her and tell her that was enough.
Only after we left the second restaurant did she return to her usual self. With a voice full of curiosity she asked,
“By the way, San-ah, are you a fixer?”
“No? Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I see. These days most people who are financially comfortable are fixers, so I was just wondering. Guess not, huh.”
According to the rest of Cheong Ha-rin’s explanation, the core institutions of the city offered extremely limited employment, so unless you worked for one of them, most citizens lived lives worse than those of fixers.
Because anomalies flooded the world and threatened humanity’s right to survive, the fixers who dealt with them and the military stationed on the city outskirts received the best treatment.
In short, it was rare to see anyone being generous.
Cheong Ha-rin asked again.
“Then… is your father a fixer?”
“That’s not it either. Why? You seem like you really wish that were the case.”
Her face quickly filled with worry.
We had been getting along so well that we’d spoken without reserve, but even she seemed to realize she had crossed a line.
“Ah, sorry. I should have just enjoyed the meal. I slipped into background-check mode out of habit…”
“It’s okay. The more you kept asking, the more curious I got.”
Cheong Ha-rin scratched her cheek, watching my expression carefully, then slowly told me her situation.
“Well… the place I used to work for collapsed overnight. But ever since I entered society I’ve only ever worked as a fixer, so I’ve never even considered any other kind of job. I’m at the point where I have to apply to every single office I have even the slightest connection to.”
“You were a fixer?”
“Yeah! Do I not look like one…? Hehe.”
“Not really.”
“Kuh. Well… I get it. The work I did wasn’t anything grand anyway. Most of it was rear support—regional control, logistics, that sort of thing. I’ve never actually faced an anomaly head-on…”
…Wasn’t that a huge gap from the heroic fixer stories I’d read in the gallery?
So even bragging on the gallery had rank requirements.
If I had been an office interviewer, Cheong Ha-rin would have been rejected on the spot….
Wait! I’m an anomaly, aren’t I?
If Cheong Ha-rin was useless, that was actually good for me.
Compared to a monster like Woo Chun-yeop, she’s perfect.
Anomaly wavelengths were detected no matter whether the anomaly was good or bad.
Sensitive people found it uncomfortable to even eat next to someone with a strong wavelength.
A prime example was Woo Chun-yeop, loaded with every powerful Sephira imaginable.
But the wavelength I felt from Cheong Ha-rin was zero.
It was so comfortable I could probably fall asleep beside her without a problem.
As a prospective meal companion, she was ideal.
I don’t really like eating with other people, but…
On days like today when I needed to control my gallery addiction, she would be helpful.
Once I’d gone through every restaurant on my list, her own list of good places would be useful too.
And regardless of any other reasons, she didn’t seem like a bad person to get close to….
I suspected when I heard she was from the Cheong clan, and now that her company suddenly collapsed, it’s almost certain she belonged to the Cheong Clan Alliance.
It wasn’t intentional, but because the Cheong Clan Alliance had been destroyed, she had lost her livelihood.
I kind of wanted to look after her.
Would it be too hard to register her at our office? I could think of it as saving one person.
I had something I wanted to do, but I couldn’t do it right away. I would have to use the terminal I had personally sealed.
At least while I was with Cheong Ha-rin I wouldn’t be using it….
“You’re not completely broke and unable to buy food today or anything, right?”
“Nope. I can just buy survival rations at the convenience store! Why?”
Once today’s restaurant tour was over, I would have to ask Woo Chun-yeop.
Is it really impossible to have one person whose job is to feed the pet—?
If I told him she had lost her livelihood because of yesterday’s incident, I could probably persuade him.
“That’s a relief~.”
It took an entire day just to go through half the data on the Cheong Clan Alliance and the containment facility.
Woo Chun-yeop, exhausted to the bone and lying on the simple bed, received exactly one message.
The Bureau Chief only contacted him when absolutely necessary or arrived in person via drone like last time, so it was obvious who this was from without even looking.
…Hadn’t they already finished that conversation yesterday?
Ah. He had given her authority because she wanted to be a pet, then stopped.
It would have been better if she had accepted everything yesterday.
She must have done nothing but play during the entire containment period.
When he had first seen her, Baek San-ah had seemed rather passionate.
Half a year of containment had turned her into a complete freeloader.
At least the incident had erupted after only half a year and she had been released. That was fortunate.
If she had been locked up for a full year, she would have found going to the Core City even more bothersome.
But right now, Baek San-ah going to the Core City was the only condition under which Woo Chun-yeop could reunite with his younger sister.
He was suffering like this as the Bureau’s acting chief precisely because of that. He couldn’t just sit back and watch.
Time to apply a little pressure.
The ghost office currently existed only as data, with a fake identity placed in the representative seat.
Woo Chun-yeop held the office management rights, but he could transfer them to anyone he wanted at any time.
Employee hiring rights, access to the office funds, and so on.
In other words, if Baek San-ah needed people or items, she could obtain them herself.
If people who wanted to work under her gathered, the office would naturally grow.
Cheong Ha-rin seemed passionate about finding a job, so she might be able to motivate the gallery-addicted Baek San-ah.
If the office runs well, contribution points will accumulate on their own, and a trip to the Core City will happen naturally.
Most of all, exposing Baek San-ah to that environment would give the Management Bureau material to organize and evaluate her choices.
The Bureau was always desperate to discover anomalies that weren’t dangerous, new anomalies, or unusual anomalies.
So Woo Chun-yeop readily made Baek San-ah an offer.
…But first, a warning.
However, Baek San-ah did not move according to Woo Chun-yeop’s wishes.
Hadn’t he said it before? In the past half year, Baek San-ah had become an anomaly that could be described in two words: laziness and gluttony.
It seemed the bait currently on offer wasn’t tempting enough?
Then how about this.
She seemed to be thinking hard; Baek San-ah didn’t reply for a while.
The response finally came just as Woo Chun-yeop’s eyes were about to close from exhaustion.
A reaction that was neither clearly positive nor negative.
“You’ll do it eventually, yet you’re dodging like this…”
Woo Chun-yeop closed his eyes tightly.
He resolved, once and for all, that he would never do the work that Baek San-ah was supposed to do herself.