The Heavenly Demon Yeon Soso (1)
After losing the ability to use mana, my senses had sharpened far beyond what they were before I lost consciousness.
The Ancient Gear Hongok fused into my mana heart. It had to be the effect of that S-rank weapon at work.
‘As expected, things are different from before I left.’
The arrangement of items in the room had shifted. It could have been my imagination, but...
Since I started living alone—no, even before that, back when I was hospitalized—I had become extremely sensitive to every change around me.
‘I had to stay on constant guard.’
I knew they wouldn’t pay me any special attention now that I could no longer use mana, but I still killed a high-ranking member of Red Lake, the villain syndicate still being labeled the most dangerous terrorist group in the world.
Red Lake. They were the ones responsible for the Eins Academy Tragedy, and they were the target I had sworn to avenge.
So I had rushed out of bed, scanning the surroundings for threats, but the moment I did, a hollow sigh escaped me.
“What? It was Arin.”
Maybe the panic had made me arrive home too quickly, leaving me without even a second to process what had happened.
Once the tension faded, the faint scent of Arin filled my self-contained apartment.
“Haa, how on earth did you figure out the password?”
I opened the fridge on autopilot. It was packed with every side dish I had never bought.
And the rearranged items had clearly been cleaned by Arin.
Just to be sure, I opened the closet. Everything was neatly organized there too.
‘Even the panties are all lined up? What is this?’
With a sigh, I flopped back onto the bed.
From Flame’s headquarters, my place was only three subway stops away.
But I had spent a decent amount of time with Yuri, and the panic had caused me to miss the station I needed to get off, forcing me to circle around for ages.
‘By the time I got home, it was already evening.’
Arin had left Flame earlier than I had, so she probably came straight to my room. When I checked my phone, there were dozens of messages from her.
I scrolled to the very bottom and answered her.
I'm home. ┛
The read receipt popped up instantly. My phone rang. Of course it was Arin. I answered.
“Sen—”
“I have to eat! Talk later!”
I hung up and ignored the immediate message bomb that followed. I had no energy to read Yuri’s messages either.
I ate the rice with the side dishes Arin had prepared. It was delicious, as expected. Since Arin knew my tastes perfectly, her cooking was bound to be good.
I suddenly found myself thinking about Arin. Unlike me, she was perfect as a person.
Her pure genius might surpass that of her older sister, Professor Seong Chaerin, but she was so consumed by research that her personal life was clumsy.
At least among people, Arin had an overwhelmingly good reputation.
‘Among the people I know, she’s the most sociable one.’
Like in today’s personality interview, she could fit in anywhere instantly. And she was pretty to boot.
Even dropped into the middle of villains, Arin could make allies for herself.
That was why I had always tried to push her away. I knew that toward me, her personality could turn obsessive at times.
‘That’s all because of me.’
While my mind lingered on Arin, I noticed a photo on the table that had been turned face down. It was definitely Arin who had done it.
I picked up the small framed photo and lay back on the bed.
***
The frame read “19th Student Council.” Inside the photo were all the classmates and juniors I had been with at Eins Academy.
‘What is this stuck on here?’
Two small stickers covered parts of the glass. When I peeled them away, two familiar faces appeared.
Yuri Tarkovskaya. And Yeon Soso. Arin had covered them with her hands.
‘She’s the one who will become the master. She must really hate them.’
Of course I couldn’t look at photos of either of them for a while, but now it was fine. The medicine I had taken after leaving Flame was still working.
After gazing at the beloved faces, my eyes stopped on one spot. Instead of panic, the guilt I had never washed away came rushing back.
‘Kwon Siwoo.’
A handsome man stood beside a nun in a nun’s habit. I mentally repeated their names.
Kwon Siwoo and Chae Mina.
Yes. Siwoo had been the protagonist of the original Aca Hunter. Mina had been his childhood friend and lover.
She was destined to become a saintess and lead the original novel’s third act with him. A crucial figure. And both of them no longer existed in this world.
They had died instead of me, the extra character, to save my life. I bit my lip hard. I wanted to look away from them.
But I had endured it desperately. They had to do what I should have done in the original story. Instead, I had to carry on their duty.
‘Red Lake. Instead of you, Siwoo...’
I also had the duty to never forget the couple who had been the most beautiful at Eins Academy. I reaffirmed it inwardly.
My gaze shifted sideways again. Another student stood next to Siwoo and Mina. It was me.
Unlike the other student council members who had posed naturally, my posture looked awkward no matter who looked.
And beside me, Arin had her arms crossed.
I recalled the memory of the photo being taken.
I hadn’t been a student council member, but Arin, the secretary, had dragged me along to take the picture together.
‘At that time, it wasn’t the nun’s habit.’
Arin hadn’t been a White Cross member at first. She had entered Eins as a mercenary. It was Arin who always grumbled that Mina’s nun’s habit looked ugly.
Arin had been childhood friends with Siwoo and Mina. The three of them had been war orphans from an orphanage supported by the White Cross.
‘Professor Seong Chaerin said when she was young... she was in a separate facility.’
So Arin had lost those two people who had been like older brothers or sisters to her.
She probably didn’t realize she was overlaying their images onto me. It was something she couldn’t be happy about, but I had to keep my distance from Arin.
But the one who couldn’t do that was me.
Right after regaining consciousness, I developed severe misanthropy. It was so bad that even ordinary people were hard to meet, not just academy staff.
But I could face Arin straight on.
And Arin had been by my side during that entire year I was unconscious and until just a few months before discharge.
Suddenly, I recalled a word from Mr. Dong-hyuk at Flame Guild.
‘By chance, Arin seems to like you a lot. If you start dating...’
But the word “dating” was the most luxurious one for me now.
And in fact, I knew Arin wasn’t thinking of me as a replacement for a simple childhood friend.
The two who unconsciously licked each other’s wounds had probably gone deeper than the line each had set, and put each other’s hearts in.
But with only five years left to live and the sealed Hongok opened to allow mana use, that lifespan would shrink rapidly.
‘And even if it’s not me, there are plenty of people who would like Arin.’
Not only that. The one who had shattered the destiny of a perfectly matching couple felt an indescribable hatred toward liking someone else.
Suddenly, many emotions surged through me, so I decided to stop thinking. And I quickly grew tired. It had been the day I attended the interview from morning until late afternoon.
I changed into casual clothes and lay back on the bed.
The bed was filled with Arin’s scent. A soft, non-stimulating fragrance like body lotion, yet at the end lingered Arin’s body warmth.
Probably Arin had come into this blanket and was waiting for me.
With that familiar and comforting scent, the confusion from too many events today faded quickly.
I fell asleep right there.
***
A few days later. Monday of the third week of January. Finally, the first day of work.
Considering the morning commute hell, Flame Guild’s work hours were until 10 AM. Having eaten a hearty breakfast, I finally entered the headquarters.
At the interview I hadn’t noticed the lack of time, but when I stepped through the office entrance, I had a moment to glance around the area beyond.
Already busy employees filled the space. But those were office workers. Office workers seemed to arrive earlier than field workers.
‘I already knew the guild organization...’
I had thought about Flame for a moment, organization or not.
It had its headquarters in a luxurious building in Gangnam. But in scale, Flame was a medium-small guild.
Approximately fifty employees. Contract workers who weren’t regular also came and went, so the number fluctuated.
So when Yuri first created the guild, I had heard employees did multiple jobs without department divisions.
But now that the scale had grown, departments had been subdivided.
‘Office workers are finance team, HR team, operations team.’
That side had nothing to do with the intern system I had joined this time. It was an officially certified guild by the Hunter Association. Among them, the departments applying the Association standard intern system were field workers.
That is, for Flame, Raid Team and Information Team. In my case, naturally assigned to Raid Team. But because of the operator job, that duty also fell on the Information Team.
When I entered the office, the employees’ gazes briefly turned to me. And just as I was about to head to Assistant Manager Park Hyeongwoo of the HR team.
The voices of female office employees whispering reached my ears.
“That person. Is it the intern who entered this time?”
“Kind of? Entered as operator.”
“Then that person is the one who has a relationship with the guild master... something like that? Hey. It was just a rumor. That person looks too plain?”
“Hmm. Somehow it seems okay, but compared to Yuri guild master, the difference is big.”
I almost let out a laugh. Those employees didn’t know how sensitive my senses were. So even the quiet whispering voices were fully audible.
‘Well, it’s normal, but what is the relationship with Yuri.’
Probably among the three successful applicants, only I had been called separately by Yuri. And since the two had spent quite a long time together.
In a small guild, that could become gossip.
“Ah, right. The tanker who came with the intern, not the intern employee. He’s a complete uncle, they say? Hey. I thought a handsome new face might come. But still, the intern is better than the uncle.”
“Hey. Already compromising? Wait. By the way, the female intern is really pretty. You saw the male employees getting excited.”
“Yeah. For days, they’ve been talking about her only. But still, that new intern, her personality is really good? She greeted us all politely. I thought since she’s a White Cross nun, she’d have a more stiff style, but she seems really nice.”
I ignored the voices and went to Assistant Manager Park Hyeongwoo. He, who was already working, greeted me happily when he saw me.
“Good morning. Mr. Lee Minsu.”
“Please speak comfortably. Manager.”
“Ah. No. The field team is a separate department from us. And in any hunter guild, it’s right to favor field workers more.”
While saying that, Assistant Manager Park Hyeongwoo handed me an employee ID. It was an employee ID that looked like a credit card. My name was written on it.
“This is Flame’s employee ID. Our guild is an officially certified guild by the Hunter Association, so with just this employee ID, you can receive many benefits provided by the Hunter Association. But the details will be looked up later. For now, please follow me?”
He guided me. Interestingly, through the stairs inside the office, I went down one floor.
“32nd floor is the offices of the office teams. And there is the executive room. The floor used by the field teams is the 31st floor below that.”
Upon thinking, I remembered there was no 31st floor button in the common elevator. It seemed there was a separate dedicated elevator for the field teams.
A short time later, I stood in front of the door labeled “Raid Team Waiting Room”.
“Please wait here and wait. The team leader in charge of intern training at the Raid Team will come soon. Ah, Mr. Minsu said he is a classmate of the guild master and Eins. Then, he must be a classmate of Team Leader Yeon Soso too. Are you acquainted with that person?”
I hesitated for a moment. I didn’t know Yeon Soso, the Heavenly Demon. I couldn’t not know her. Soso was a person who gave me trauma like Yuri.
But it was the same for both sides. Soso also lived a completely different life from the original because of my selfishness.
I answered hiding that inner feeling.
“Yes. I am acquainted with Team Leader Soso... no, Yeon Soso.”
“Then it will be easier to adapt. Team Leader Yeon is a bit, um, a peculiar person. Anyway, I will go now.”
Assistant Manager Park Hyeongwoo left. And when I entered the waiting room, there were two familiar people.
“Senior! Why are you so late?”
“Good morning. Minsu-ya.”
Of course, my intern colleague. Arin and Mr. Dong-hyuk.
“Senior! You said to come to work together in the morning, why did you ignore my message? Huh? Explain quickly!”
“That’s because I didn’t want to cause unnecessary misunderstandings from the first day of work...”
Arin secretly put her arm around me.
“Oh my. What misunderstanding could there be? If it’s a misunderstanding that would make Senior Minsu uncomfortable...”
At the moment I pushed away Arin clinging to me, the door of the waiting room opened wide. And someone came in with momentum.
“You are all gathered. Are you the new field team interns?”
The three of us focused on that person, her.
A young woman with long black hair, wearing a tank top and leggings, like she came to a fitness center.
And on top of that, a flight jacket covered with dragon patterns. A very unique outfit.
When we three answered that we were, she introduced herself.
“I am Yeon Soso, the Heavenly Demon. I am the team leader Yeon Soso.”