The Bitter Taste of Society
……
“In-seo. I’ll be watching, so do this right, okay?”
Click.
The dawn phone call that had terrified everyone who overheard it ended just like that, and time slipped forward into late morning.
“Hmm—our Sia’s sleeping so well, isn’t she? Sia’s classmate? Would you mind taking the reservations for me?”
“Yes! Of course I should!”
Yun Yu-min stepped out of the pharmacy interior with a light heart.
Sunlight poured through the window. A rough palm, callused yet endlessly careful, stroked her hair in a steady rhythm.
“Mmm—”
The gentle pats, plus the warm, soft feel of a pillow. After so long without a proper bed, Sia nuzzled her cheek against it in pure contentment.
The soft pillow laughed.
Even half-asleep, she knew that laugh by heart.
“Mmm… Auntie?”
She cracked her heavy eyelids. A beautiful face filled her entire field of vision.
But wait…
I was definitely sitting in a chair…
“Mm. Auntie moved you.”
Ahh. So that’s why I was lying face-down on top of Auntie.
But the sun’s coming in… and I have to take reservations for the people waiting in tents…
Still half-dreaming, she flailed her arms to escape.
“Nooo, let gooo—”
“Your friend is covering for you. He said you should sleep more and he’d handle it.”
“Then… okay…”
Flump.
She went limp in the arms holding her and hugged her aunt right back. Still half-asleep, she rubbed her cheek against Auntie’s chest a few more times.
It felt exactly like being little again.
Right after she awakened and became a girl, when Dad wouldn’t wake up and she was staying at Auntie’s place—whenever she couldn’t fall asleep alone, she would grab her favorite teddy bear’s hand and go to Auntie, who would set her on her stomach just like this and rock her to sleep.
But then I moved into the dorms, and Auntie got busy, so I never got to ask her to hold me while I slept anymore… I was so sad about that…
“You were?”
“Mhm…”
“But, our Sia.”
The voice that called her name also stilled the hand stroking her hair. She tilted her head back a little to look up at her aunt.
“Mmm?”
“Don’t you have something to tell Auntie?”
“Mmmmm?”
When she tilted her head in confusion, Auntie stretched out one long index finger and pointed downward.
Down?
She followed the gesture with her eyes.
Her bedding: blanket—padding—blanket. Nothing else.
…The thing she could never, ever let Auntie—who already thought she lived on the second floor—find out about.
“Hah.”
Her mind snapped fully awake.
She jerked her creaky cervical joints upright with a rattle.
The smile was still there. But the temperature of it was completely different from a moment ago.
“Sia lied to Auntie, didn’t she?”
“U-uhh…”
“We made a promise about what happens when you lie to Auntie, right?”
“…Mhm.”
The callused palm slid between her forehead and bangs and swept the hair aside.
“Hup.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath.
“Puhyaaah—”
…Why isn’t she hitting me?
The instant she cracked one eye open—
Bonk!
“Euaaang!”
She clutched her forehead.
“Auntie’s a meanie-pants!”
After getting thoroughly scolded for a long while, she fled to the rooftop to escape her aunt.
Hoo— hoo—
She squatted on the rooftop floor, blew cool air onto her palm, then—
Shashashat shashat
—rubbed her forehead frantically before the coolness faded.
“Hiiing…”
A few tears welled up.
It hurts, it hurts!
Auntie’s knuckle-rap after so long had been sharp enough to jolt her completely out of her daze.
“Auntie has every right to worry.”
Classmate Yu-min, who had somehow followed her up, handed her a plastic bag of cold water and scolded her.
Sia shot him a glare. He’d known her longer—shouldn’t he be on her side?
“From what I overheard while you were getting chewed out, you told her you lived on the second floor, then spent over a month sleeping in a cramped corner on blankets and padding. A knuckle-rap was her going easy on you.”
“…Khh. Fighting dirty with facts…”
“Why does your speech pattern sound exactly like my elementary-school nephew after I haven’t seen you for a while?”
“Elementary school?! I’m an adult now! I can even drink!”
“—Sia! Drinking?! If you drink, it’s a hundred knuckle-raps that day!”
“Hiiing…”
Auntie’s roar floated up from the first floor.
I wasn’t actually going to drink… I just meant I legally can… she muttered under her breath.
She hugged her knees with both hands and pouted. Yu-min turned his gaze to the sky and spoke.
“Talking about booze is making me crave soju, though.”
Soju? That clear green bottle?
“What does soju taste like?”
“Doesn’t really taste like anything… but when you’re stressed, it’s the taste you crave.”
“Are you stressed?”
Yu-min looked at her for a long moment, clearly debating something. After a pause—
“Yeah. You should know too. And since Auntie isn’t stopping me, I figure it’s fine to tell you.”
And so her classmate laid out the story for her.
“So…”
What he told her was shocking.
“…So you’re saying that because of my potions, none of the other workshops’ potions are selling at all?”
“Yeah. That’s why they sent me here as a kind of venting assignment—to ‘do something about it.’ You really had no idea about the other workshops?”
Well, I’d seen posts like that on the Hunter Gallery…
But this place has a terrible location, I don’t sell that many, and Hunters make good money…
“Sia. Two items with the same effect—one costs three million won, the other three hundred million. Hunters do earn well, but to clear a hundred million a year you need to be at least a high-end C-rank with seniority. Even then, you’d have to save every single breath for three years to afford one of those.”
“……”
He was right.
And from living it herself, she knew: even just breathing cost money—food, rent, utilities, all of it draining away.
Thump-thump. Her heart raced.
Then what do I do?
Doesn’t that mean Classmate Yu-min is getting hurt too?
Getting called a scammer because the performance is too good—I already went through that on the Hunter Gallery, so whatever. But Senior got dispatched here just because he knows me, the alleged scammer.
“Ugh—”
Is there a solution?
Just finish the people already in line and rush to get verified?
But even if I get the premium markup, there’s still the cost of materials—I can’t sell them for three hundred million. The price gap problem wouldn’t go away, would it?
Or… share the recipe?
Yes. That had a little potential.
The Drug Master class was a higher-tier class than Alchemist, so even with the same recipe, an Alchemist and a non-Alchemist making the same potion would see more than double the performance difference thanks to class effects…
But sharing the recipe still had to be better than not sharing it at all.
“Sia. How about we think it through and talk?”
“This is the result of my thinking! Yo!”
“…Just give me the rough recipe without the exact amounts first.”
“First, the Red Medicine… the red potion is troll blood mixed into Pure Water, boiled once in a mana cauldron, then—”
After hearing the entire recipe, her classmate’s face twisted in pure disgust.
“So you don’t put in a single drop of regular water—you only use Pure Water?”
“Yep! I have a skill called Pure Origin—it makes Pure Water bubble up all on its own!”
She demonstrated, letting Pure Water gush from her palm with the skill.
Yu-min narrowed his eyes further and studied it carefully.
What?
Everyone used Pure Water at school. Isn’t this normal?
“Pure Water is insanely expensive—there’s no way. The stuff we used at school was free only because our professor, a high-ranking water spirit, specially supplied it. And the Pure Water your skill makes… looking at it, it’s just as high-grade as the professor’s.”
“Huk.”
“The quality gap is partly class effect, but the Pure Water effect is huge too. Even if they take the recipe, the cost-efficiency won’t work out.”
Kuuung!
She collapsed under the weight of the shock.
“So I can’t control the price… and they can’t even copy the recipe…”
Could the workshops really go under because of me?
Then Classmate Yu-min would…
Lose his job…
“I’m so sorry…”
Thud! She dropped into a full prostration, pressing her face to the rooftop floor.
Two weeks ago she had laid plastic down right here and made something on this very spot—she knew exactly what that meant. This was a genuine apology.
“……”
Yet Yu-min’s expression was… complicated.
“…I don’t know. I just wish everyone except you would go under.”
Then he simply pillowed his arms and sprawled out flat.
Why?
“This isn’t something a kid needs to know.”
“I’m a legal adult, you know? I even graduated top of my class? Classmate Yu-min, you—”
Her persuasive persuasion finally got him to open his mouth.
“…Haa. I got an alchemy bachelor’s degree, sure, but I never awakened as an Alchemist, right?”
She nodded.
Admission to the Alchemy Department didn’t require an Alchemist awakening.
In fact, plenty of people enrolled hoping to awaken as one.
Awakenings could come for no reason at all, but they happened more often when you studied a field or repeated related, impressive actions—so the awakening-related majors were full of people aiming for that. Quite a few in their year had awakened while attending.
But why does that matter?
“Auntie showed me the reviews from Kesel Workshop quitters in the job board section of the Hunter Gallery.”
Huh?
“I came in as a trainee with a full-time conversion review after one year… but apparently every single full-time employee at Kesel Workshop for the past ten years has been an Awakened.”
…Wait a second.
Her tiny brain short-circuited.
So—
So he joined because they said if a non-Awakened worked hard they’d make him full-time…
But full-time was one hundred percent Awakened?
…Ah.
Then that means—
That kind of thing—
……No—
“See? I told you this isn’t kid stuff— …Hey, why are you—”
Drip. Drip.
Fat tears soaked the rooftop floor.