A Welcome Reunion
And so, after arriving in front of the pharmacy, another ten minutes or so slipped by.
"Auntie~~"
"Sia~~~"
"Kyaaaah—that tickles~!"
Without ever revealing her true identity, Servel had managed to reunite with Sia inside the pharmacy and achieve her goal of nuzzling those soft little cheeks with absolute smoothness.
"……"
Of course, the twenty-seven-year-old young man who had served as the linchpin of that entire reunion process—Sia's classmate, Yun Yu-min—was not inclined to share even a fraction of that warm sentiment.
"If you're here to line up for the workshop, please go to the very back of the line."
"I—I'm not here to buy medicine! I'm from Kesel Workshop! And I know Sia!"
"Did you make an appointment in advance?"
"……Well, there were circumstances—"
He had already been cursed out with a glare for showing up at dawn without so much as a call.
"More importantly—the elf behind you? Could you lower your mask for a moment so we can verify your identity?"
"Uh, um, Imeum—"
Poke.
"Mmph… sir? My escort says, well, that is—just a moment—"
Poke poke poke.
…What is she writing on my side? I'm… not her aunt… I'm just an attendant who followed you here…?
"No—"
Poke poke poke poke!
"—are you racial-profiling her right now?! My friend just wants to see a face she hasn't seen in ages, and the second she shows up with a companion you start demanding ID?!"
"What are you even—"
"Can't Sia just come out and confirm it herself?!"
Prodded in the ribs and puppeteered by words scrawled across his skin, he had been forced to pick a fight with the burly tanker on security duty.
Ziiip—
"Ah, for crying out loud, what the hell at this hour—wait, is that a line-cutter?"
"What's going on? A fight? Looking at that build, he's not even a tanker—doesn't look like a dealer either."
"Heh heh, kids these days really have guts. Back in my day—"
And as if that weren't enough, he had even gotten an earful from the sturdy Hunters who poked their heads out of their tents after being woken up.
"Huuung, what's all the—huh? …Classmate Yu-min? And Ime…"
Shh.
"Imeumureumeumme…-nim!"
Meanwhile, on the other side, a single raised index finger had been enough to keep her identity sealed and get everything she wanted.
"Are you kidding me…!"
Yun Yu-min—thirty-ninth-generation descendant of the Papyeong Yun clan, only son of Yun Cheol-ho and Yang Ji-eun—felt the top of his head go hot with righteous indignation at this intolerable injustice.
"Hmm?"
Servel smiled sweetly.
"No, really. You two look so good together."
On second thought, he could tolerate it after all.
Haa… if I want to live, I should just endure this.
Yu-min raked a hand through hair that had been forcibly cooled, sorting through a mind left in shambles from getting beaten up and making a scene.
First things first…
Right. Why he had come here in the first place.
"…Damn it, some random girl rolls in out of nowhere and starts muddying the waters of the whole industry? Hey, you—newbie!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Among your classmates there's a Han Sia who just graduated from S-Class University's Pharmacy and Alchemy departments at the same time this year. You know her?"
"Uh… I do know her, yes."
"Call her. Right now!"
"……The number says it's not in service—"
"Then go!"
"Sir?"
"Go tell her, yeah? Nicely. Tell her to stop whatever market-disrupting scam she's pulling before the higher-ups decide to pay her a personal visit!"
Yeah. That had been the start of it…
"Yes, sir! Then I'll head out right—"
"What are you doing?"
"Sir?"
"We're short on trainees as it is. You finish every job you're assigned before you leave, got it?! Where's your sense of responsibility, huh? You think the seniors are gonna do your grunt work for you?"
"No, sir!"
And that was how it had gone, too.
After that, he had barely managed to flag down a taxi with the late-night surcharge from A-District, where the workshop was located, all the way out to this transit-nightmare of an H-District.
"That's right, you. If you go around peddling our workshop's name for no reason, you're dead. For real."
…Ah, right. That had been said as well.
Anyway. That was why he had approached from the back of the pharmacy instead of the front, where Hunters were packed shoulder to shoulder—
"What the— ghhk! ……S-spare m—"
—and gotten the stuffing beaten out of him by the elf who claimed to be Sia's aunt.
"Urgh—"
Just remembering it made his battered abdomen throb.
"Hm?"
"Ah, no! It doesn't hurt at all—it's just itchy! Must be a mosquito or something, haha!"
He had let out an involuntary groan of pain, but he genuinely had no intention of playing up how much it hurt.
At the time, getting hit had felt monumentally unfair. But once he sat down under all those staring eyes and carefully sorted through his thoughts, his own mistakes came into sharp focus.
No matter how much all-nighter overtime you pulled only to have to clock in again at eight, if you were lurking around the shadowy rear of someone else's workshop at five-thirty in the morning, you had no right to complain about getting punched.
Whether he had been given an unreasonable, impossible order; whether a two-month contract trainee with a shot at full-time review next year could possibly talk back to a Sales Division General Manager—those were all his own personal circumstances.
As a military veteran, Yun Yu-min knew this well. The world did not stop to carefully consider every person's individual situation.
He nodded to himself.
So Sia must have been hit with the same kind of ridiculous misunderstanding.
Ground to dust at the very bottom of the workshop hierarchy, with no idea what was happening out in the wider world, Yu-min sincerely believed this.
Of course, the Sales Division General Manager had explained things with roughly half the words being curses, and the junior trainee on the sales team had given him a rough outline before sending him off—
"That workshop owner Han Sia is trying to starve out all the other workshops and monopolize the market by selling high-grade red potions for three million won, and putting mana-capacity expansion functions into low-grade blue potions……"
Could you at least say something that sounds halfway plausible?
—but it had been far too much pure nonsense to take seriously.
At any rate, Yun Yu-min had made more than a few foolish moves, but he was just a tired young man—neither mean-spirited nor stupid.
Above all, he had spent two years watching his young-looking classmate, Han Sia.
After finishing his military service as an enlisted soldier and returning to school, they had completed their third- and fourth-year coursework in the same section. In their senior year, they had even worked as undergraduate research interns in the same lab.
The Sia he had known back then…
"Hm? What's this little human kid doing here? Did you lose your mom?"
"No! I'm here to buy mana herbs! Classmate Yu-min, over here—mana herbs! Mister, one kilo of mana herbs, please!"
"Look, I don't deal in quantities that small… I don't even sell to people without an introduction… Ah, whatever. Here. A hundred thousand won."
"Kyaang, thank you so much!"
There had certainly been situations where her small body caused inconvenience—but just as often, that cute, childlike appearance worked in their favor.
"Waaah, a hamburger! Classmate, thank you so much, I'll enjoy it~!"
She would light up over a plain kids' burger as if someone had bought her a steak, and even that peculiar way she called him "Classmate" somehow managed to look adorable on her.
…And with that terrifying elf standing right there claiming to be her aunt, there was no way he could start talking about business ethics or scams or "some random girl who rolled in out of nowhere."
It absolutely was not because he was scared of getting hit again. The workshop's name was weird to begin with, and there was no way Sia would have pulled a scam or anything shady.
Anyway, it looked like an innocent kid had gotten mixed up with some con artist who'd made her a figurehead owner under a borrowed name. He would just ask them to call the real boss and talk to that person separately.
Yu-min finished his train of thought right there and cleared his locked-up throat.
"Ahem. Sia?"
"Nyeng?"
Having finished their nuzzle-reunion, Sia was carefully packing the blue potions Servel had ordered into a box. She turned her head.
"Could you call the owner of your workshop for me?"
"?"
"It's, uh, a little hard to explain in detail. But the workshop I work at asked me to pass along a message to the owner here."
"I'm the owner, though?"
"No, I mean the person who borrowed your name—"
"Classmate, you shouldn't lend your name to other people!"
"Yes, that's exactly what I'm—!"
…Huh?
……Wait. Hold on a second.
??
Why is Classmate suddenly acting like this?
At the sudden widening of those dark-circle-ringed narrow eyes, I instinctively took a step back.
When he opens them wide, the dark circles look twice as big…! No, no—I never even saw Classmate open his eyes that wide back in school!
Classmate Yun Yu-min.
He was the classmate I had worked with as an undergraduate researcher in the alchemy lab—a fellow graduate who had finished school alongside me.
A kind person who never bothered to correct that weird title I called him by, even though even I thought it was strange, and who occasionally bought me hamburgers!
I couldn't exactly explain that I used to be a guy, or that after my class activated and I came home to pack my things, the trauma of witnessing the fragments of my lost masculinity meant gendered terms like "Unni" or "Oppa" simply would not come out of my mouth—
—but Classmate Yu-min never once told me to call him Oppa, and never gossiped about it behind my back. He was a good person.
I had just assumed we would never meet again, because—
Splash.
"……"
"S-Sia. Auntie's sorry, okay? I honestly had no idea that dumb phone would fry the SIM card and the entire contact list just from falling in water."
I thought we'd just lost touch because I couldn't transfer my number when I got a new phone after graduation.
But he had come all the way here in person, and I was so happy to see him.
And he had come with my beloved auntie, so the happiness was doubled!
"Ahh, so that's what this was about? Then you can just talk to me. Spit out whatever your higher-ups said."
"Th-that's—"
"Mouth the words silently. Want me to make it itchier?"
"The Sales Division General Manager said some random girl who rolled in out of nowhere is muddying the industry waters—…"
And watching Auntie throw an arm around his shoulders and whisper secret things with him off in a corner, I could tell that however they had gotten close, the two of them seemed to have become really good friends.
I sat in my chair and swung my legs a little.
"Heheh, yaawn—"
They were talking in such low voices, and I was so sleepy from going to bed late and waking up early that I yawned through whatever they were saying and didn't catch a word of it—but it still made me smile.
I hope the people I like get even closer…
Kuuul…
A little while later, soft little breathing sounds filled the pharmacy.
Servel confirmed that Sia was asleep, then turned her head with an expression that had gone ice-cold.
"Perfect timing—the kid's out. Wait. Listen carefully, and deliver this to your workshop director word for word."
Then she dug out her phone and dialed somewhere in the dead of night.
Ring…
Ring…
Click.
The call connected, and the first words came through.
"Yes, this is Choi In-seo of the Hunter Association—"
At a voice steeped in cold killing intent that Sia had never once heard in her entire life, both Yun Yu-min and the person on the other end of the line shuddered from head to toe.