Before You Go
The next day.
"Put the boiled eggs on my tab too."
"Ah... yes, sir."
Ethel left the jjimjilbang. He changed back into the aristocratic attire he'd originally worn and strode down the street, perfectly at ease.
Naturally, every eye turned to him.
Silver hair that rippled like fine silver thread. Blue eyes set in alabaster-white skin. A beauty so inhuman it could only belong to a Constellation.
He had the kind of allure that turned his surroundings into a film set, a scene from a storybook, simply by walking through them.
As people stared at him as though bewitched, Ethel's brow creased.
Tch. What a nuisance.
This was why he rarely went out — he drew attention wherever he went. But today he had business that required moving about, so he endured it.
The destination he reached amid all that attention was this city's Ether Management Bureau. The government department in charge of everything involving Incarnations, Constellations, and monsters — put simply, a civic center exclusively for Incarnations.
The moment Ethel stepped inside, the atmosphere changed.
"When is this going to get processed?"
"Quickly, please...?"
The people who had been demanding their complaints be handled fell silent at the sight of him.
I am not like you. A being from another dimension, in the most literal sense. His every fiber seemed to proclaim it.
…
Ethel swept the interior with his blue eyes. Turning away from the frozen onlookers as if to ignore every last one of them, he fixed his gaze on a single spot.
"There it is."
He walked over with perfect composure — and what he did upon arriving was take a number ticket.
It was the most ordinary action imaginable, yet it didn't suit a man radiating such an inhuman presence.
While everyone gaped at him blankly, Ethel waited his turn.
"Wh-what brings you in today?"
The receptionist who called his number looked flustered by his extraordinary appearance, but she carried out her duties all the same.
"I'm an Incarnation, and I'm in need of suitable work. Any high-paying monster subjugation requests?"
Living on the outside required money. As a stopgap, Ethel intended to pass himself off as an Incarnation, hunt down some monsters, and scrape together whatever funds he could for the time being.
"Ah, if that's the case, may I see your proof card first?"
The receptionist asked for the card issued by the Bureau certifying an Incarnation's identity. Without the slightest hint of embarrassment, Ethel drew it from inside his coat.
"Here."
"Yes, let me just verify—"
The receptionist examining the card he held out made a peculiar face.
"Name: Ethel. Age: forty-five...?"
Both the name and the age were strange. No family name — just a lone given name — and an age far older than he appeared.
That wasn't all.
"This was issued twenty years ago?"
The issue year printed on the card was absurdly old.
"Twenty years ago? That's back when the Ether Management Bureau had only just been founded."
"That's right. I may not look it, but I'm an Incarnation from the earliest days. A survivor who lived through those turbulent times."
"...Your level is quite high as well."
The receptionist dubiously examined the level and position recorded on the card.
"Level 30... a Supporter?"
"Is there some problem?"
"It's just that levels this high are rarely seen..."
Level 40 alone was treated as the ceiling of what an ordinary person might ever come face to face with. Level 30 — just ten below that — still counted as high-level.
Which was exactly what made it suspicious. A card issued a full twenty years ago. Even the name and age were off.
"I'm sorry, but do you have any other form of identification?"
"Why? Does this look fake to you?"
"It's just so old that, by regulation, I'm required to run a verification procedure..."
The receptionist said this while giving Ethel a suspicious look.
"It's only a simple check, so please hand over your ID."
"Couldn't you just type my name into the computer and confirm it that way?"
"The internet is down at the moment."
So that was why the lobby was full of people waiting — the internet had gone on the fritz.
"Nothing elaborate is needed. Even a resident registration card will do. I'll compare it against the card and verify."
As if I'd have a resident registration card.
Ethel was dumbfounded. For a Constellation like him, there was no ID other than the card. So he tried persuading the receptionist instead.
"Do you know who I am?"
"No... who exactly are you?"
"You'd be in trouble if you knew."
"Excuse me?"
"But even without knowing who I am, I do look like somebody, don't I?"
Well, he had a point. It was sophistry, but even mid-fluster, the receptionist found herself involuntarily agreeing.
But rules were rules.
"If you really are somebody, then please provide any document that proves your identity."
...Impressive professional integrity. The card itself is genuine, though.
The information written on it was utter nonsense, of course. But the card had, in fact, been issued by the Ether Management Bureau.
He'd asked for a forged identity to be made, figuring it might come in handy someday.
He'd had it made through a connection inside the Bureau. Now that the card was being treated as a fake, Ethel said, somewhat sheepishly,
"I have a witness. Try calling whoever issued this card."
"And who would that be?"
"The Bureau's—"
He was mid-sentence when—
"Ethel!"
A voice rang out that everyone present recognized. A tall beauty with sleek black hair, dressed in a sharp business suit. Lee Miri, leader of Eternal Moment — known to every soul living in this city.
"It's Miri!"
"That's Miri-ssi, isn't it?"
Eternal Moment, the finest Incarnation team in the nation — and the member most often featured in the media was its leader. When a beauty they'd only ever seen on screen appeared out of nowhere, everyone was stunned.
"Good grief..."
Ethel's expression turned wry as well.
"...Right. If it's you, of course you'd know where I am."
"You wouldn't come no matter how long we waited, so I concentrated my mind and pinpointed your location."
Miri answered his grumbling with a clipped, barbed tone. Unlike the other three, she was bound to the Constellation Ethel by an especially close connection. Concentrate her mind, trace that thread, and locating him like this was a simple matter.
"Honestly! What are you doing in a place like this?"
Having found him, Miri seized his hand irritably and made to drag him straight out — but Ethel pulled his hand free.
"...What do you think you're doing?"
"That's my line. What's this business of hauling a man out mid-errand without so much as a by-your-leave?"
Ethel was making a perfectly fair point, yet Miri looked almost taken aback that he could talk back at all. She stared at him, bewildered for a moment, then fired back.
"Don't tell me you're actually planning to take Incarnation work here?"
"You know me well. I need money, so what choice do I have?"
"Goodness. If that's the problem, then just come back home!"
Miri, who knew Ethel's true identity, pressed him, calling the whole idea absurd.
"Pay no attention to what Heuk-ri said. She didn't mean it, not truly. If anything, the moment you actually walked out, she was the one urging me to go find you and bring you back."
"Is that so."
"Things have escalated this far, so if you come back, she will apologize. And if she won't, I'll make her. So let's go home, shall we?"
Miri assumed that much would be enough to make him understand, but—
"Hey, that's not the fundamental problem, though, is it?"
Ethel pointed out the real issue.
"If the guild doesn't stop expanding, then nothing has been resolved."
At his swift mention of the guild — the source of the whole quarrel — Miri's brow furrowed.
"Then we'll discuss it once we're back. Not in a place like this."
"And what if, after we go back, someone blows up at me again and tells me to get out? You want to keep repeating this damn circus — me storming off, you hunting me down, over and over?"
Ethel spoke in a tone of sheer incredulity.
"What do you take me for? Those half-assed promises that just plug the leak don't sway me one bit."
"Then are you planning to keep up this absurd performance out here?"
"Nothing says I can't."
Ethel replied in a languid voice.
"Besides, there's something I realized after leaving."
"And what would that be?"
"Once I was out, I had no money, no nothing. Quite the predicament."
"Well, of course. You walked out without taking a single thing with you..."
"No, that's not what I mean."
Ethel dropped the bantering tone and spoke with more gravity.
"Essentially, I owned nothing."
"What do you mean?"
"It felt like I'd accomplished a great deal here all this time, but when you actually look into it, not one thing was legally mine. The bank account is yours. The house is yours."
Reduced to buying on credit for want of money, he had come to feel the weight of the problem with unexpected seriousness.
"So while I'm out, I'm going to set up money of my own, along with odds and ends. That way, even if I get thrown out again, I'll be able to cope."
"We did not throw you out!!!"
At words that brushed her persuasion aside entirely, Miri, too, could no longer contain her fury and shouted.
"She's emotionally unstable and not even in her right mind — why would you take her telling you to get out seriously?? Just brush it off like you always do! And the account and the house being in my name — that was all because you ordered it!"
"True. I did order it."
Ethel conceded the point for now. He'd done it back then out of fear that a Constellation opening accounts in his own name might invite complications — but now that money was actually tight, he wondered if it hadn't been overkill.
"Now that I need one, I'm thinking of opening another."
"If that's the case, I can arrange one separately—"
"Not needed. If you make it, it's as good as yours."
Your help isn't needed, so don't interfere — just get lost. When that inner sentiment was laid bare all too plainly, Miri's face went grave.
"Why, you—"
"Everyone's watching."
As she moved to raise her voice again, Ethel reminded her that this was a public place.
"Wh-what's going on with them?"
"Do those two know each other?"
"Are they dating?"
"Whoa, incredible."
The exchange was apparently juicy enough that everyone was observing it with great interest.
"Keep this up and your reputation will take a hit. Go on, now."
"...Understood."
The moment Miri, left with no choice, turned to leave—
"Hold on."
"?!"
Ethel called after her. She turned back, wondering if perhaps he'd had a change of heart—
"Before you go, vouch for me. Vouch for my identity, would you?"