Squishy-Pat Chewy Bean-Cake, Waaah—Grr, Bark
Why is everyone—the President, packs of lunatic monsters, all of them—so obsessed with Hunter Gallery?!
Hyun Kyungju shook so hard she couldn't force out a single word. The only person she could trust, the only one who might actually protect her, was Baek Hanyul.
"Uuugh..."
She looked up at Baek Hanyul the way a puppy looks at someone about to leave it on the roadside. If it was Baek Hanyul—that sage—surely even now she would think of a way to pull her out of this.
"You may go."
"Hehe, thank you. This is my number. Call me anytime, if you need me. Well then... hang in there, Ms. Hyun."
Aaah!!
As if saving her had never so much as crossed her mind, Baek Hanyul abandoned Hyun Kyungju at the speed of light.
"Hic..."
She could whine all she wanted on the inside. No one here was going to grant the wish of a Hyun Kyungju who had already lived her way to twenty-five.
"You."
"Y-yes, ma'am! I was listening!"
"Follow me. There are far too many eyes."
"O-okay..."
My life...
The old days of being dragged around by the school bullies came back, and her feet grew heavy. Stopping here, though, would only make whatever punishment came next even more frightening.
She shrank in on herself.
Wedged into a corner, Hyun Kyungju waited on nothing but the word of the girl who had named herself an agent. Strangely, the fear she had felt from that girl a moment ago was gone, and the peculiar black aura had vanished with it, bleached clean out of the air.
"Wait."
Without warning, the girl pressed a phone that made no sound at all flat against her ear.
"Yes, Your Majesty. I hear and obey. ...A role, you say? Yes. As Your Majesty commands."
Don't tell me Her Majesty—no, 404—is watching us even from here?! They said she was stronger than those monsters!
The possibility that 404 had been watching from the very start sent goosebumps racing over her whole body.
Whatever had been said, the girl slipped the phone into her pocket and loosened up, easier in her body than before. Oddly enough, there was even something a little ordinary about her now. A touch of the commoner.
"Her Majesty has commanded me to perform according to my assigned role, so from this moment, I will. Ahem. So. You're the Hunter Gallery mod, aren't you?"
"Th-the m-mod? Yes! Yes!! That's me!"
The violent swing in temperature made Hyun Kyungju flinch hard. How could one person be this different? And what if the girl standing in front of her now was fake as well? Switching the way she spoke that calmly only fed the fear that she could play any part, in any shape at all.
"I-I'm saying it again, I don't taste good..."
"I'm not eating you, so quit the fuss. At least not today."
"T-today?"
"I'm joking. I'll get to the point. Let us use Hunter Gallery however we please. Her Majesty takes a great interest in novelties like that."
"......Hunter Gallery?"
No.
If she lost Hunter Gallery, what would be left of her? A middle-school dropout. A shut-in. A jobless bum who had never even worked a part-time shift. To Hyun Kyungju, Hunter Gallery was everything. Lose that, and she would be useless as a hunter too.
"Um, th-there's this thing, you see..."
The thought of Hunter Gallery disappearing tore the tears out of her, and she couldn't stop them. Even so, she was too afraid to look at the agent's face, and she clenched her eyes shut.
"Couldn't I at least keep being the Hunter Gallery mod? I'll do whatever you tell me—anything—so please, just not that..."
Silence.
If this soured the agent's mood and she was disposed of, what a wretched end that would be. Cause of death: refused to give up the Hunter Gallery armband. And yet, strangely, the silence stretched on far longer than it had any right to.
"I think you've misunderstood. I wouldn't take that armband if you paid me. When we get in touch now and then, just rig a hot post, or ban whoever doesn't suit Her Majesty. That's easy enough, isn't it?"
"Huh...? Yes."
"Don't cry. Stop."
Being soothed by a girl who looked half her age was humiliating beyond words, but the handkerchief looked unbearably soft.
"Th-thank you..."
I should refuse. I should refuse... But maybe these people aren't only terrible?
She could brace herself all she liked. She had absolutely no immunity to gaslighting, or to Stockholm syndrome.
"Hnng—! Th-thank you, here..."
"Ah... just keep it. So you can do it, right?"
"Yes, yes. That much, I can do."
"Good. Let's do this properly. This is my number. I'll call you later. Come on, Winter."
"Yes. Take care."
She bowed.
Somehow she had even managed a goodbye, and then Hyun Kyungju was left standing there alone.
It's not like anything will actually happen, right? Cooking the hot posts, swinging the ban hammer—I do that as easily as eating.
The thought that this person called 404 might have haunted the galleries just as obsessively as she did stirred a private sense of kinship. And if you looked only at their faces, they were pretty. Cute, even.
"Still, I'm scared, so I really shouldn't write a verification post..."
We were cutting through the back alleys toward the lodgings, heads high, like generals home from a triumph.
The Arrogance effect had cut out halfway through, so I'd put on a little show of receiving orders, and it seemed to have landed well enough. Excellent. To think I'd won the right to swing the Hunter Gallery mod's armband! From now on, anyone who picked a fight while I was lurking the gallery would eat a seven-day ban, and I'd quietly nudge the posts I wrote myself up onto the hot list.
"I still can't believe it, though."
"What is it you mean?"
"That the Hunter Gallery mod is still a woman."
I couldn't even begin to guess her age. A side effect of awakening? The way she'd suddenly wrung herself dry like that, she had to be young.
"She appeared easy to manage. That one so naive, and so fearful, should be S-rank... she does not reach even the tip of Your Majesty's toe in majesty or in valor."
"I appreciate the compliment, but anyone who's climbed all the way to S-rank has a trump card. Don't write her off completely."
If anything, the awakenings of people who looked that clumsy and hopeless were the frightening ones. You could never predict them. It meant the world had still stamped a proud S-rank on someone whose temperament had no business in a real fight. And you were supposed to watch the ones who looked like small fry.
"You know how murim novels always say to watch out for women, old men, and children."
Enuk's mouth fell open, as if something vast had just dawned on her.
"Your Majesty, who hides wisdom deeper than any elder's behind the likeness of a little girl—how far does that strength even go? I cannot dare to guess..."
"Hey! Enough."
I'd teased Enuk long enough. Time to look at the hot posts piling up on Hunter Gallery.
"Let's see..."
[Title] 404's Identity Still Isn't Out—She's Seriously a Government Secret Weapon, Right? (I Have Evidence)
[Title] The American Quad Made an Official Statement on 404
[Title] The Tyrant Shouted Out 404
[Title] (Trembling) The Lunatic Difficulty 404 Cleared, According to the Quad
"Mm. Very satisfying."
I liked that wherever I went, the talk was nothing but me.
"Maybe I'll scroll a little fur—"
Huh?
I'd refreshed and was scanning the hot list when a string of posts that didn't belong shot to the very top, one after another.
[Title] The Paju Grade-School Hunter—Isn't This Her?
[Title] The Hunter Who Took Down the Qilin Syndicate, Holy Crap
[Title] This Is the Level of a Korean Grade-Schooler
"What are these supposed to be?"
The flying fiasco had made the hot posts too, but in the end it had blown over. Don't tell me I'd been caught on camera again.
I scrambled to open the thread.
(A photograph of a girl's face, taken from far away.)
Active hunter living in Paju. The Qilin Syndicate showed up at the market. I was sneakily plastered against a building, reading the room... and then yellow smoke just spread.
I jumped and looked out the window, and a kid like that flying grade-schooler from the old hot post, plus a woman built like a model, walked right between the Qilin members paralyzed in the smoke. Not long after, she fought the guy who looked like the boss and cut his arm off. Holy crap.
After that I can't handle gore, so this hunter-baby cried in the corner...
"Uwaaong..."
It felt like my brain was melting. What were these Hunter Gallery bastards even saying? Squishy-pat-pat, chewy bean cake, waaah, grr-bark—what kind of nonsense was that?
"How dare they put such unspeakable words upon our pure Majesty! Shall I summon the mod this instant and have them banned forever?"
"No, it's fine. It's not as if Hunter Gallery turned into this overnight."
Most of it was ambush rallies from the Hunter World Cup crowd and the patriotism bugs, plus sexual harassment of the mod and the deputy mods. They hadn't grown in the slightest.
"Still, having it aimed at me feels incredibly strange."
I refreshed once more, and another hot post climbed the list.
And at the same moment, a status window rose with it.
I looked at it and blinked, twice.
The Queen's Majesty has risen to Stage 2!
"Why is this majesty."
No—more than that. Don't tell me...
"If I go around with two identities, does majesty stack at double the rate?"