What on Earth Is Going On??

What on earth is going on??

While Sang-jin was still lagging behind, finally crawling out of the Hunter Gallery and clutching his messenger with cold sweat pouring down his face—

the gallery itself had plunged headlong into a cauldron of pure chaos and was going up in flames.

What set the gallery ablaze was a single spark, tossed back onto a drug rumor everyone thought had gone cold—by the very person at the center of it.

Of course, when the post first went up, nobody believed a word of it.

A hunter's herniated disc—the kind where even needles couldn't get in properly, leaving you no option but to rot into a cripple without surgery—cured by sticking on a pain patch? A meigobang that left nothing but side-muscle scraps, fully healed by two bottles of low-grade Red Potion?

Even if you were high, there were limits. Not a single sentence made a lick of sense. So the dopamine-fried aggro crowd had a field day, while real hunters just clicked their tongues, used it as a cautionary tale—look at this hopeless drug addict, I will never touch that stuff—and moved on.

But the mood began to shift once the Blue Sea Guild's raid party members started posting and commenting.

The gallery hurtled even deeper into chaos. Preexisting assumptions aside, the claim that a three-million-won potion had produced a three-hundred-million-won effect was simply too absurd to swallow.

Utter, pure chaos.

But then a single post from the former gallery power-user who'd started the whole rumor in the first place—a guy who'd once been so deep in the gallery he'd even held a mod badge before graduating into married life—began to slowly bring the disorder back under control.

Ordinarily, the moment anyone said something was effective, the gallery's baseline assumption was paid promo—front-loaded ads, back-channel ads, whatever. But the second someone went yeah no it doesn't work, I'm keeping it all for myself, every eye in the room snapped open with a this bastard—?!

That was the contrary-toad logic the gallery world ran on.

From Sang-jin's post onward, the confused public opinion slowly flipped.

And then eyewitness accounts of the Han sisters showed up, and it was a complete KO.

In the hunters' community, a visit from figures who carried both combat power and public credibility was the equivalent of a senior legend in the music industry giving a shout-out—a golden seal of authenticity for that workshop.

Sang-jin was too busy fretting over what to reply in his messenger to check the gallery any further, but public opinion no longer needed persuading. It had already recognized the arrival of a revolutionary new workshop—and was rapidly overheating.

How overheated? Even posts written entirely in initials, with zero concern for privacy lawsuits, were climbing onto the concept-recommended board—every last detail about the pharmacist inside the shop and the Han sisters.

"That's personal information, so I can't tell you."

And to Kim Seo-won, who'd come in person specifically because he was curious about the green bottles, came back an answer of unusually low temperature. Somehow her gaze seemed to be saying Pervert!

"Also the medicine is sold out. If you want to make a reservation, write your name and phone number and quantity on this paper. If you write too much I'll cut it down later!"

The same tone that had been all hehe with the team leader was now, if not sharp, thoroughly businesslike—and she'd heard the same question so many times that at the very top of the personal-info sheet she'd even written: Asking about other customers' purchases is prohibited!

Kim Seo-won was so wronged on so many levels he could have died right there.

Look—he'd had no work, didn't want to do any, and on top of dodging that witch's revenge he'd submitted a remote early-leave request and come while the sun was still up. He'd only seen the Hunter Gallery after arriving here. He even knew her aunt. He'd gotten here first and waited outside before Han Ye-na even showed up in the car!

But he was wearing a hat and mask for fear of running into the team leader, so he couldn't exactly advertise that he'd been there earlier.

Alright, ten bottles of Red Potion and… one Blue Potion? Hss— make it two bottles?

All he could do was scribble out a reservation and leave.

And so, thoroughly dejected, he finished filling out the reservation book and was about to open the door and go—when the little pharmacist's voice suddenly lit up with pure delight.

Ding-a-ling—

"Oh, Mister!"

A man who looked like he'd slept several days in a dungeon—monster stink on him, a face like a mountain hermit, a body built like a tanker.

"Here's the Blue Potion you reserved, Mister!"

"Huh? I only asked when it would be ready…"

"That's a reservation!"

Damn it. Damn it all.

Kim Seo-won opened the pharmacy door and walked out with a face that looked ready to bite a handkerchief if he'd had one.

Trudge, trudge.

He walked back the way he'd come with thoroughly dejected, deliberately slow steps—when, beyond the boundary of light cast by a streetlamp, a woman stood in the shadows.

Han Ye-na?

Hat and mask, black coat, black platform shoes. She had the hat and mask on, but he already knew the outfit, and that silhouette wasn't exactly common—so he recognized her instantly.

Then that Han Ye-na suddenly looked behind herself and broke into a hurried little run. Startled, he reflexively jumped aside—and she went straight up to the mountain hermit who'd just come out of the pharmacy and linked arms with him.

"Sang-jin, did you finish the raid okay?"

"N-Noona. Could you just call me casually like usual…"

"I heard our Sang-jin didn't even pack the high-grade potion his noona stabbed him with."

"Huk… Noona, th-that, wait just a second, my arm hu— ugh, uwaaaargh—"

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"Mm, shall we go talk in the car first? Our Sang-jin's tired, so let's stop by the lodge with noona and head straight home~"

Heh heh.

At the oddly spine-chilling yet sitcom-like conversation drifting from behind him, Seo-won couldn't laugh out loud—he swallowed the laughter and hurried his steps.

Clomp, clomp.

But when he saw another woman's silhouette in the shadows beyond the next streetlamp's circle of light, Kim Seo-won finally understood.

"Our deputy team leader's really grown up, hasn't he?"

"T-Team Leader. About that."

"Got an excuse?"

"…I'm a buffer, so if I take an arrow I actually die. Please spare me!"

That he was in no position to laugh at anyone else.

"Hwaaam—"

Flipping through page after page of the reservation book, taking orders late into the evening, until at some point the customers drained away like the tide and stopped coming altogether.

[OPEN]

Tak—

[CLOSED]

Watching for the right moment, I flipped the sign, pulled down the shutter, and retreated to the cozy compounding room behind the counter.

"Huuuum—"

Late evening.

After washing up, I crushed and ate the leftover half of the cup ramen I'd set aside from lunch like a bag of chips, finished the Red Potion I'd been making by packing beads into a column and filtering it with pure water, gave the Blue Potion a few more stirs, and poured fresh troll blood and ingredients into the pot where the Red Potion had been boiling.

This time, packed in tight and full.

"…It won't overflow, right?"

A lot of orders had come in, after all.

"Haam—"

And by the time I was making the medicinal paste for the pain patches, it was bedtime.

I lay down on my bedding. I pulled the blanket up to my chin, then slyly fished out the reservation book I'd been peeking at now and then while making medicine.

"Ten, three, two, five… waaah, did this many orders really come in?"

And if you factored in what Hunters Han Ye-na and Han Mi-na had ordered on top of that, I'd need to buy ten more cauldrons.

Thud.

I set the reservation book down on my belly and folded both hands over it.

I looked up at the ceiling and thought.

What on earth is going on??