A Night for Two (1)
She could feel Minsu's fluster. Even so, Yuri didn't let him go. If anything, she pulled him tighter.
"Guildmaster...?"
"Stay like this for a moment."
It had been a sparring match to attune their Gears to one another, but the training had been close to actual combat. Minsu's body was still burning hot, sweat running down him even in the winter mountain cold.
His scent pressed in, overwhelmingly close. Of course it did — she was holding him.
Minsu's scent...
There was nothing unpleasant about it. He didn't smell bad at all. If anything, his presence pressed in on her more sharply, and her heart hammered against her ribs. She didn't let it show. If Minsu so much as guessed at what she was feeling—
It's embarrassing...
So she had to hide it.
Right now, cooling the fire raging through his body came first. Without calling on Nibis, she raised her own pure mana and let it wash over him from head to toe.
And with that, she felt even more tightly bound to him. She wanted to weave a barrier of ice around them and stay like this. To bind him so that he could never leave her. To keep him here, forever.
Wait. What am I thinking...?
The thought startled even her. She was the guildmaster of Flame. Indulging her own selfish desires with a guild member was not something she should do.
No... this isn't selfishness...
She rushed to deny it. But unbidden, her mind turned to the blood she carried — her mother's lineage.
Yuki-onna...
The nickname people had always given her. But to Yuri, it was more than a nickname.
She wasn't of pure Slavia blood. She was mixed. She had never once seen her mother, who had been Japanese — her mother had died giving birth to her.
And her mother had come from a Japanese village where the legend of the Yuki-onna was still told. She had been an ice-attribute mage, just like Yuri.
Grandmother used to tell me the legends of that village...
But even that grandmother, she had only spent three days with. As if to cut the thought short, Minsu called out to her.
"Guildmaster...? I'm... I'm all right now."
Which meant the brief embrace was over. Come to think of it, even back at Eins, she had never held him like this.
She had wrapped her arms around him from behind once, in his rented room. But facing him like this, sober, this close — that was a first.
Minsu's warmth reached her again. She still didn't want to let go.
He's this close... Minsu is this close.
But Yuri swallowed the reluctance and released him.
She had sinned against him. Even if he had come back to her, that didn't mean he had fully forgiven her.
That's right. This isn't something that can be forgiven so easily.
If it meant earning that forgiveness — if it was for Minsu — she would do anything. She worked to keep even that from showing as she spoke.
"Then we should move. The sun's already gone down. We can't stay here."
She held out her hand, keeping her tone businesslike, trying not to let any personal feeling leak through.
"Take my hand. It's already dark, so the way down is far more dangerous than the climb."
"Ah...? Understood. I'll be in your care."
Minsu sounded puzzled again, but thankfully he didn't refuse the hand. Yuri didn't let go until the hand she held had grown warm.
And so the two of them made their way to the shelter on Seoraksan.
The two of us stepped into the shelter together. I looked around.
Looks like no one's been here in a while.
This was a closed season for the mountain. Even in spring or summer, they only opened it after the monster culling was complete — which meant civilians had no real access. Compared to Geumgangsan, where I'd been on assignment not long ago, the conditions here were frankly poor.
Well. That's why we can train here in peace.
And right now, Pyotr of Solaris had his eye on this whole stretch of mountain. Surprisingly, Korea's major corporations had poured more investment into the former North Korean territories. Those regions sat geographically closer to the Slavia Kingdom, and Grand Duke Andrei, who chaired the bilateral alliance council, had likely put his thumb on the scale.
Which is why this area is still open for Pyotr's Solaris and Flame to move in.
A mountain where gates formed on a regular cycle. If a single guild could stably control the dungeons of a mountain this size, that was no small thing.
It's like striking a rich vein of ore.
But building the infrastructure to actually control it took money. Meaning they needed backing from a corporation like Solaris. Of course, an economic plan of that scale didn't come together overnight. The odds that I'd live to see the Seoraksan region thrive the way Geumgangsan had were... not great.
Still, Solaris and Flame launching a major project that no small-time guild could even attempt — the rumor alone was a useful tool for expanding Flame's influence. It would demonstrate what Flame was capable of. In the original, Si-woo's guild, Justice, had profited considerably from that same plan.
Meaning more hunters might start showing up here.
Not bad news for Flame, all things considered. But it also meant some other hunter might stumble onto the ancient dungeon Si-woo had found in the original.
I'd rather Yuri notice the ancient dungeon before that happens.
In the original, the discovery had been almost a coincidence. I decided to put a little faith in the revised causality — in Yuri filling the original protagonist's role. If there was no sign of it at all, I was prepared to step in myself.
While I was lost in thought, Yuri finished surveying the shelter and spoke.
"It's rundown, but it should keep the wind out well enough. Not bad."
But the moment we'd stepped inside, the shelter was already warm. I'd seen mana stir from Yuri the instant we entered.
She put a barrier over the entire shelter?
That barrier seemed to have cut off the outside wind completely. A high winter mountain, a night of heavy snow — it should have been bitterly cold and dangerous. Right now, it felt almost cozy.
Wooooong—
Wind Cutter voiced its displeasure. It could have blocked wind like this itself, it was saying. Having fully unleashed its power today, Wind Cutter clearly wanted to keep playing.
Wind Cutter. A dagger with a wind spirit dwelling in it, they said.
The nickname "the Gear that kills its master" felt almost ironic. I was adapting to Wind Cutter just fine.
Like a tiny spark catching on a tree and spreading into a wildfire. Wind and fire together produced explosive synergy, and Wind Cutter seemed to feel an instinctive fondness for me.
Ruby really can't stand Wind Cutter, though.
Still, Ruby was a highborn, composed young lady — shrine maiden through and through. She wouldn't show her displeasure outright. Of course, with our mana hearts fused as one, I felt every bit of it.
After sitting with the two Gears' wills for a moment, I turned to Yuri.
"Shall we unpack and have dinner?"
"Let's. You must be tired from sparring with me, after all."
We'd both come with backpacks suited to a winter mountain trek. I'd dressed in hiking gear to match. Yuri, though, was in her usual formal wear.
I set down my pack and started pulling things out. When I'd guessed we'd be heading to Seoraksan, I hadn't figured it for a day trip. So I'd packed some decent camping gear.
"It's warm in here, but should we still light a fire?"
"Th-that's... yes. Let's."
She startled at a remark that hadn't been anything special. I hadn't been thinking about it, but looking around — we were two young people, a man and a woman, alone in a sealed space. And this was a snow-mountain shelter no one else could possibly reach, during a closed season. Maybe Yuri had become more aware of me.
I unfolded a collapsible mini stove and set it in the center of the shelter. Yuri raised a hand and opened the ventilation window.
Just ice magic, and she can do that...
The mana pressure of her ice spell had shoved the window open as if it were nothing. It drove home just how dangerous the pretty woman sitting in front of me really was.
Yuri was the youngest person in hunter history to reach S-Rank. If she hadn't been the daughter of Grand Duke Andrei, one of the Five Heavenly Stars, she probably would have been even more of a sensation.
Bloodline, huh.
Most people probably didn't know much about Yuri's mother. Like Soso, Yuri was an only daughter. But her mother had died giving birth to her, and Grand Duke Andrei had already taken a second wife. At Eins, I was probably the only one who'd known that.
Yuri doesn't talk about herself to other people.
The two of us sat down in front of the stove as if it were the most natural thing. Yuri drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. I sat cross-legged, ordinary as anything, and fed the stove the dry branches I'd gathered on the way.
Fwoooosh—
A strong flame caught almost at once. The two of us fell quiet, watching it burn.
And I found myself thinking, unbidden, of the moment after our spar — of Yuri pulling me into her arms.
She did it to soothe my mana roads, I'm sure...
But the sensation wouldn't leave me. It wasn't the first time our bodies had touched. Back at Eins, we'd at least held hands. But facing her, holding her tight like that — that felt like a first. A real embrace. And you'd have to be an idiot not to notice how much feeling she'd poured into it.
True to an ice mage, her body had been cold. But the heat pouring off my seething mana roads had warmed her a little, too. That warmth of hers, that sensation — for a moment I'd nearly lost my composure.
If this were back at Eins, I...
I might have thought myself the happiest man alive. But not now. If I opened my heart to Yuri again with some half-baked resolve, the same thing that happened at Eins might happen all over again.
So from that moment until we'd arrived at the shelter, I'd been forcing myself to settle. It hadn't been easy — Yuri had gone and taken my hand again, holding it tight. I'd managed, somehow, to still the wavering. But the heat coming off the stove was loosening me up without my noticing.
"It's a small stove, but it's warm. Maybe because you lit it, Minsu."
Yuri broke the silence first. The orange glow of the fire caught her pale face. No — it was faintly flushed now. She looked languid, but alive, different from the Yuri I usually knew.
Honestly, she looked even prettier than usual. I crushed that thought down again. Arin's face had surfaced in my mind, and Soso's too.
Neither of them... well, Yuri included, none of us are actually anything to each other.
I tossed out a joke, just to hide the tangle of feelings.
"Warm enough? Still, it's definitely more firepower than a lighter. At this rate, I guess my spells are about torch-lighter grade."
I'd lit it with a fire spell, after all. A dad joke, thrown out for no good reason.
"A torch lighter? You don't have to sell yourself short. During our spar today, you were more like a flamethrower."
Watching Yuri take even a dad joke in stride left me even more at a loss for words. Then she pulled a sealed container from her backpack without warning.
"Ah, that's right. I prepared dinner myself tonight. Would you like to eat together?"
What Yuri pulled out was, of all things, pork fat.