Take Responsibility
Kim Sujeong had been the one driving. She pulled onto the shoulder, planted her forehead on the wheel, and stayed like that for a long while.
"What. Wish you hadn't?"
"....No. You did the right thing. Thanks."
There was a faint note of relief in it, as if something had finally cleared. Even so, the words were crowded with something subtle and tangled.
She sighed, lifted her messy head, and looked at me.
"Oppa, seriously, what was that?"
"What."
"That SSS+ Rank whatever you did to me. Was that real?"
"Real? Since when does a rank like that exist."
"Pull it up."
"Pull what up, you crazy bitch. Don't flop on your back and spread your legs, then tell a man to whip it out."
"...Oh, for— I meant pull up your status window!"
"Indecent."
"....You really did it, didn't you. That thing."
She knew me about as well as I knew her, and the look she turned on me was thick with certainty.
Fair enough.
This was the brother she'd watched for twenty-three years—the one who'd spent more than a decade rotting in his room playing games, then vanished overnight and stayed gone for a week, only to come back with Recovery Herbs and items worth over fifty million won. He'd even brought a Glass Stone, the kind of thing that would pull in billions at auction.
No ordinary Awakening could ever explain that. And today, in a C-rank dungeon, he'd put on a show no freshly Awakened hunter had any business giving.
Her guild was, if you measured it like a company, about the size of a miserable little startup. Small to mid-sized, sure, but the party itself was solid enough, with an A-rank tank and a B-rank dealer besides. Which was why, shitty as the place was, she'd gritted her teeth and clung to it day after day, trying to grow.
Today, that broke.
"I was going to quit anyway. It's been getting way too bad lately... so you don't have to feel that guilty."
"Who says I feel guilty?"
"If you give me the Glass Stone, I could get into a pretty decent guild as a Glass Stone mage."
"I wasn't even thinking of giving it to you yet..."
"You need to raise your level anyway, right? Let's run together. I won't drag you down. Just until you've grown."
I don't think I'd ever had a conversation this serious with Kim Sujeong. Not that I was being serious.
Maybe I ought to just hand her the Glass Stone and tell her to get lost to some other guild. This clinging was starting to look like trouble, and I had no intention whatsoever of stepping into a dungeon with her.
"Ah. I'm leaving the guild because of you, Oppa. Take responsibility!"
And just like that, the brat threw a full-blown tantrum.
When I got home, good news was waiting.
"The transfer went through. Thank you."
"Hurry up and make the potions, then bring them over."
"Yes! I'll make ten as samples first and come see you."
Lee Jihyun must have closed the contract with Dad without a hitch. She'd taken the down payment and transferred the Recovery Herb money to me. I had an account, but it had always sat at zero. Now sixty million won was in it.
The herbs themselves came to about fifty-two million, but Jihyun—saying she'd only gotten that deposit thanks to me—had coolly sent sixty. I didn't refuse. In a sense I was skimming Dad's money, but Jihyun had just made a hundred million won for free when she otherwise would have had to take out a loan. Pocketing a few million as a finder's fee wasn't going to be a problem.
Dad also filled me in on the auction schedule.
"It opens the day after tomorrow. Both the gloves and the Snaggletooth Dagger are going up. We're promoting them hard, and I'll see they sell for a good price."
"Okay."
"Ah, and... the Glass Stone. That..."
He glanced sidelong at Kim Sujeong as he asked.
Even after coming inside she'd kept watching me from across the room, throwing a little fit whenever she got the chance, so she latched onto his lowered voice at once.
"Dad. That's mine. Don't touch it."
"Ahem. Hm. If we put the Glass Stone up for auction and spend about two weeks promoting it to hunters overseas... there hasn't been a Glass Stone listing in a while, so we might get an even higher price..."
"Should we sell it?"
"Well, it's yours, Suhyun, so if that's what you want..."
"Dad! Oppa's still thinking about it. That's cheating!"
Dad was right that it was my item, and doing what I wanted with it was the correct call. From his side, though, he also wanted to give it to his mage of a daughter. And the part of him angling for the sale was the company president smelling a good opportunity.
If word got out that a Glass Stone had surfaced through the auction, trust in the company's auctions would shoot up on that alone. A Glass Stone—something that appeared only a handful of times in the entire world—coming not from some famous conglomerate, but from a small Korean distribution company? The verdict would stick immediately: small, but with real weight behind it.
Looked at that way, selling the Glass Stone at auction really was the right move.
Give it to Kim Sujeong, versus sell it at auction through Dad's company. Honestly, if you sat even Sujeong down and told her to run the numbers, she'd have no choice but to pick the latter. The balance was that absurd.
Hand it to her, and the only person happy would be Kim Sujeong. Her future as a mage would open wide, sure. Wear one of the few Glass Stone accessories in the world and you'd pick up an enormous bonus the moment you applied to a guild.
Sell it through Dad's company, and both of us would be happy. More people would come looking for the company, which meant more profit, and as it grew, anything I needed to buy or sell later would get handled faster and easier. The money on top of that could smooth out nearly all the hassle of purchasing what I needed on Earth to carry into the Rift Dimension. Short of truly exceptional items, Earth's goods weren't the sort of thing that would drain my wallet no matter how much I bought.
"No matter how I think about it, I can't find a single reason I should give it to you. If anyone's wearing it, it's me."
"...."
Sujeong knew. She had to. A C-rank getting, what, twenty percent stronger—how strong was that really going to be? Saying it out loud would sting, but somebody had to be the one to say the bitter thing.
"Dad, you tell her. A C-rank mage in a Glass Stone accessory is a pearl necklace on a pig."
"...You just said it yourself!"
Kim Sujeong stuck her lip out and, in the end, swallowed reality.
"I know. I do. I was just being greedy for once. Sell it..."
She trudged off to her room, and the look on Dad's face as he watched her go was bitter. So that was a parent's heart. A jewel he figured would bring in around seven billion won—knowing full well it didn't suit his daughter, and still wanting to give it to her.
Once it was just the two of us, I asked him seriously.
"You choose, Dad."
"Choose what...?"
"The Glass Stone. Whether we give it to Sujeong or sell it at auction. You choose."
"...You're sure that's all right?"
"I can always get another one."
"Heh... our boy doesn't even seem like the same person."
Dad didn't refuse. One look at my face and he seemed to understand I wasn't just testing him.
I meant it. Honestly—twenty-six years in this house, and what had I done besides eat their food, live like a parasite, and suck my parents dry while I played games? If it hadn't been for the Rift Dimension, I'd still be doing it, and I might have kept it up until Mom and Dad died. Maybe even after they died, living off the inheritance.
The Glass Stone I'd picked up at this stage was valuable, no question, and if I wore it myself it would clearly synergize hard with Leap Slash. Even so, I had no regrets. I had a feeling I'd get another one soon enough anyway. Call it paying back a debt.
I turned away without a second thought, and I hadn't gone more than a few steps before Dad called after me.
"Suhyun. Then let's give it to Sujeong."
"All right. Do that."
"Here. You give it to her. It's still yours, after all. Thank you."
"Don't thank me. We're family."
People really do need a little room to breathe. Back when I was a worthless unemployed bum without a thing to my name, would I ever have had a chance to be this filial?
Glass Stone in hand, I opened Kim Sujeong's door.
"Ah, what! I'm fine, so stop teasing me and get out!"
"I've got shopping to do, so drive."
"....You..."
She'd been lying under the blanket. As she sat up, I tossed the gem at her. She caught it without thinking, and her eyes went wide.
"Dad says it's yours."
"Oppa..."
"Pearl necklace on a pig. Don't let anyone take it off you, and use it well."
On the verge of tears, Kim Sujeong charged like a wild boar.
"Don't overdo it."
"Oppa, thank you. I love you."
I held her off with a light flick of a finger. She snatched the car keys off the desk and bolted.
"Let's go. From today on, I'm Oppa's chauffeur for life. Call me whenever, wherever. I'll even come out at four in the morning."
I didn't answer. I'd been planning to make her do it whether she offered or not.
Giving Kim Sujeong the Glass Stone wasn't the most efficient choice, but it was a satisfying one. She followed me shopping without a word of complaint, and she didn't stop at the things I was buying. She stepped in on her own to pick up whatever else we needed, carry it, and haul it around, and she played the part very faithfully.
How long that would last, I couldn't say. A Glass Stone could still be taken back even after it was made into an accessory, so if she started acting like a piece of shit again, I could just confiscate it and tighten the reins once.
"What, you moving somewhere?"
"Moving out."
"...You're going to live on your own?"
"I'm making money. About time."
The constant nosy questions grated a little, but this was something I'd have to get through once anyway. I'd managed to scrape past it this time, but vanishing for seven days at a stretch and calling it a dungeon run was riskier than simply living as if I'd moved out. Live on my own, and no one would have reason to suspect I was going to the Rift Dimension rather than a dungeon. And when it came to buying mattresses and the rest, "I'm moving out" was the more convenient excuse.
"Why are there so many boxes of ramen..."
"And what's with the snacks. Why would you eat this in a dungeon? At least get preserved food or something."
"If I say buy it, buy it."
Either way, the Glass Stone had done its work. We finished the shopping without a single complaint.